After
watching the latest Superman movie — Man
of Steel — I couldn’t help wondering how alarmingly akin the making of a
superhero flick is to the writing of a PhD synopsis. Few reasons as to why I
didn’t think Man of Steel was a good
superhero film were: 1) The Superman wasn’t handsome enough 2) The villain in
Superman was not formidable enough 3) The set-up was too fantastical (aliens!)
4) There was nothing new in the film. I realized to my horror that often our
PhD synopses get rejected for the very same reasons! Behold.
For starters, a good superhero film needs a
good and noble hero; a terrible crisis that plagues the world; and most
importantly, a very, very evil supervillain.
Now how about you juxtapose these with the three elements of your
research — the hypothesis (hero), the research questions (crisis) and the
empirical evidence that you would use to falsify your hypothesis (super
villain).
First, it is imperative that you have an
appealing set of hypotheses; robust, eloquent, sophisticated, with no extra
flab (else nobody will watch ur superhero flick)! Second, a superhero, however
gallant, cannot win the minds and hearts of people if he doesn’t rescue the
world from some big problem. The more unprecedented and intractable the
problem, the more laudable is your superhero. An old problem that has cropped
up in a new avatar could also do the trick, as long as it has an angle which
neither the world nor the superhero has had to deal with before. In such a
case, past experience or knowledge of the old problem (literature review) is necessary,
but not sufficient to be able to address the new dimension of the problem for
which the superhero’s prowess is irrefutably required. However, the world
should not bother superheroes with every small problem or try to create ones
where there are none (else it shall incur the wrath of the Gods!). It is only
crises that they cannot solve by themselves, which should be handed over to the
superhero.
Finally, we have the most crucial element of
the superhero flick—the super villain. The super villain’s singular quest is to
try and take down the superhero. He (or she) could employ either brain or brawn
to achieve this but the point remains that he has to be formidable, tough and seemingly
invincible. A superhero is but nothing without his super villain. The more evil
the super villain, more heroic is the superhero. When the two clash, the
audience should have the impression that either could win (even though everyone
expects that the hero would finally prevail over the villain). However, even if
the superhero dies in the end, no matter. Your film would probably get more
applause for ‘keeping it real’.
Other things to look out for are as follows.
Choice of weapon and combat technique – how will the superhero bring the super
villain down on his knees? Good research methodology and research techniques are
indispensible for executing a cleanly shot action sequence. The superhero’s
familiarity and dexterity with the weapons would certainly hold him in good
stead. An unwieldy weapon could give the opponent an advantage. In every case,
it is the context and situation of the problem as well as the nature of the
villain that determines the combat technique. Sometimes, however, plans may go
awry and the superhero may have to improvise along the way.
Again every superhero has his limit. Since he
cannot solve all the problems of the world, he has to chart out and define his
mission carefully. For example, Batman is
only concerned with keeping Gotham City safe. Others may have a slightly more
global or even inter-galactic scope. So it is important to define the scope
right at the beginning, lest your audience is disappointed by your superhero’s
achievements. It would also be a good question to ask—what’s in it for the
superhero? Why is he doing it? Is it for fame and glory, or to get the girl, or
to settle some old score?
A person decides in the first half hour of a
movie whether to dive out of the hall or stay glued to the seats even during interval.
This goes on to show the importance of the introduction of your synopsis, to
the entire enterprise. Similarly, there has to be some connection between the
beginning and end of your superhero flick. You have to come full circle, tie
all the loose ends. Again, a good film (superhero or otherwise) needs very,
very good editing. You have to know what bits to leave out and what bits to
keep. If your audience cannot effortlessly make the transition from one
sequence to the next, then it will lose interest. You can use innovative
narratives like flashbacks or dream sequences or other webs of intricacies,
perhaps even an Inception-type plot,
if you please, but be sure to keep the audience in the loop. Also watch out for
faux pas like spelling errors, grammatical errors and logical errors as nothing
can be more frustrating that watching a good movie on a bad quality sound
system.
It is a good idea to make somebody go through
your creation before sending it to the theatres or exposing it to the movie
critics. They might see something that you may have overlooked, simply because
they are not looking through the director’s lenses.
Lastly, being a superhero does not mean that
he has to go it all alone. This by no means is a mark of being a superhero. A
good superhero needs help and guidance because even superheroes can often lose
their way. And indeed he will find both – people to show him the way forward
and egg him on, as well as people to scoff at him and make him doubtful of his
own capabilities. However, he must not give up. He may falter, be down and
bruised, get tired, even disillusioned, but at no cost does a superhero hang up
his cape.
Kasturi Moitra ,
PhD Candidate,
International Politics Division,
Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament,
School of International Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University
