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Superbad superheroes
There are no good guys: The superhero genre continues down its road to darkness and nihilism in ‘Suicide Squad’
Left: “Suicide Squad.’’ Below: “Deadpool’’ (left), “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.’’
Clay Enos (top, above right): Twentieth Century Fox
By Isaac Feldberg
Globe Correspondent

Gotham City’s own Harvey Dent may have put it best: “You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’’

Those words, among the most iconic to emerge from superhero cinema this century, also perfectly encapsulate the evolution of the genre, from the grounded drama of “X-Men’’ to this summer’s nervy, neon-drenched rogue’s-gallery riff “Suicide Squad’’ (opening Friday).

It’s been 16 years since “X-Men’’ ignited a new age of comic book blockbusters. The genre has grown so grim that one wonders whether even the Batsignal could pierce through all the doom and gloom. And its cape-wearing heroes, once symbols of humanity at its most high-minded, increasingly seem less concerned with acts of, well, heroism.

“Suicide Squad’’ crystallizes this dark turn, positioning foes like Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), the Joker (Jared Leto), and Deadshot (Will Smith) as the principals of their own narrative. Though their government-sanctioned mission involves taking down a dangerous threat to humanity, it’s clear from the trailers that as much as we may root for these gun-toting, chaos-wreaking characters, they’re no heroes. Instead, it’s out with the vigilantes, in with the villains.

The film’s arrival illuminates a trend away from the escapism and optimism its genre used to signify. Now, superhero movies are serving two opposed yet intrinsically linked purposes: sating our cultural hunger for tales of truth and justice, and interpreting the national need for an up-to-date understanding of the American way, no matter how disturbing that understanding may be.

The genre currently resembles a Lewis Carroll-style looking glass. It’s both the door to a fantastical alternate universe in which an alien from Krypton can handily leap tall buildings in a single bound, and a reflection of our anxiety-stricken reality, colored by 9/11 and the war on terror, in which our wanting to marvel at a superhero’s feats is impeded by mulling the devastation such beings could wreak if they were to crash through — or even target — those same buildings.

Given how essential struggles against adversity are to cape-and-cowl cinema, it’s not that surprising that the genre has been morphing for at least a decade and a half to address its audiences’ own political attitudes.

In the immediate wake of 9/11, America needed a symbol of hope and heart, and found it in a nerdy, web-slinging teen from Queens named Peter Parker, suddenly imbued with great power and keenly aware of his responsibility to use it. His guileless gallantry resonated at a time when the public viewed military intervention much more favorably.

Since then the genre has undergone a dramatic tonal shift. Christopher Nolan’s “Batman’’ (2005-2012) trilogy repurposed the character to tackle institutional corruption, terrorism, military escalation, and wealth inequality. The films were heavy, charged, and morally opaque. It followed that an American public disillusioned with drawn-out wars, economic instability, and two-faced leaders would embrace their portrait of a troubled yet well-meaning hero sacrificing himself against forms of evil both naked and nebulous.

Since that trilogy, superhero cinema has ventured even further into the heart of darkness. In the destructive “Man of Steel’’ (2013), Superman’s climactic battle with a Kryptonian general exploited 9/11 imagery, while racking up a death count in the hundreds of thousands.

This year, the genre feels murkier than ever. In “Deadpool,’’ audiences met an uncouth, ultraviolent mercenary and found him to their liking, propelling to box-office records a superhero origin story filled with almost as many severed heads as swear words.

Then, with “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,’’ things went from blithely brutal to downright nasty — and, for a movie starring Superman, oddly nihilistic. Batman is first glimpsed branding a criminal with a symbol that carries a sentence of death in the prison yard. He’s at the end of his career as the Caped Crusader — and never crueler. This Batman is broken. He doesn’t just hurt criminals; he kills them, too. When this Batman makes it his mission to take down the Man of Steel, he’s driven not by a desire for justice but fear of a rival and thirst for vengeance after the destruction in “Man of Steel.’’

That’s not to say he doesn’t have reason to be afraid. Superman, deified in comics as the apotheosis of human virtue, is reimagined as a weapon of mass destruction, so convinced that well-intentioned actions yield cataclysmic consequences that he often shies from the role of global protector, selectively intervening and often only when his loved ones are imperiled. When he crashes into a Middle Eastern compound, saving his love interest from an armed terrorist by pile-driving the individual with lethal force through a brick wall, there’s nothing noble about his actions. He’s an instrument of military might, more drone than soldier.

Over in a lighter superhero universe, “Captain America: Civil War’’ wrestles with comparable corruption of its heroes. The Avengers are warring among themselves over matters both political and private. The film treats its two factions, one led by Captain America and the other by Iron Man, as equally justified in their actions. But it’s clear from the opening minutes, as a botched mission incinerates a Nigerian office building, that they’re also both unintentional architects of destruction, terrorizing the general population with every pow-wow that spills out onto city streets. Collateral damage is so intrinsic to the superhero genre that every movie wrestles with it to some degree. “Civil War’’ puts it front and center.

Now, with “Suicide Squad,’’ the dark cloud settling over the superhero genre has entirely blotted out any residual light. Set in a gritty, shadow-soaked corner of Gotham, it makes no excuses for its characters. They’re “the worst of the worst,’’ government intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) calls them in one trailer, as audiences glimpse the deranged Harley Quinn (Robbie), savage Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), merciless Deadshot (Smith), and more of the squad, villains busted out of an insane asylum to serve as heroes for hire.

Their new roles are jarring, the reality of their mission murky — and though it’s too early to say whether “Suicide Squad’’ will offer its characters redemption, none of them deserve it. They’re the villains; the movie’s marketing not only acknowledges but revels in such self-awareness. After the sadism of “Deadpool,’’ the cruelty of “Batman v Superman,’’ and the crippling division of “Civil War,’’ “Suicide Squad’’ continues the natural progression of the genre, appropriating the superhero as a representation of America’s role in the world: Our virtue was a lie all along, intended to mask an inner, prevailing malevolence.

How can such a nation still see itself in web-slinging kids from Queens or stately aliens with red capes? Searching for symbols through which to interpret our society, it’s easy to reject dreams of saintly superheroes. What’s taken their place is a suicide squad formed in, deformed by, and belonging to that one place Superman never belonged but the rest of us keep coming back to: the real world.

Isaac Feldberg can be reached at isaac.feldberg@globe.com