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" The X-Men fight gigantic mutant-killing robots known as Sentinels in this weekend&amp;#039;s X-Men: Days of Future Past, the latest summer extravaganza to feature large-scale warfare full of mechanical goliaths, monumental explosions, and requisite collateral damage to American cities and their inhabitants. On the heels of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, it&amp;#039;s the third Marvel comics-based film to hit theaters in two months \u2014 which is almost as wearying as the fact that it&amp;#039;s the umpteenth one in which mass-destruction is shrugged off as the normal consequence of superhero business. If there&amp;#039;s a fatigue factor setting in with audiences over these movies, it&amp;#039;s probably because they now present the extraordinary through the same tired old lens: a mixture of witty banter, ponderous brooding, and elaborate CGI-enhanced combat. Meanwhile, the cost of human life is treated with a bloodless, blas\u00E9 indifference that&amp;#039;s completely at odds with the stories&amp;#039; supposed interest in issues of responsibility, intolerance, courage, and sacrifice.  What these films all lack is a true human dimension \u2014 a sense of how mythic heroes and villains might impact the real world and its billions of inhabitants. They&amp;#039;re missing a citizen&amp;#039;s-eye view of Spider-Man swinging through Manhattan&amp;#039;s streets rescuing children from peril (as opposed to The Amazing Spider-Man&amp;#039;s gimmicky shots from Spidey&amp;#039;s POV, or point of view). Or of The Avengers tearing through New York City to save the planet from invading aliens. Or of Wolverine and company confronting Magneto even as they deal with a bigoted populace that doesn&amp;#039;t understand or accept them. This is the missing component in our annual superhero sagas, and one made all the more noticeable by the fact that Marvel already has source material tailor-made to address this problem while simultaneously breathing new life into their genre: 1994&amp;#039;s groundbreaking comic book Marvels.  That four-part mini-series by Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek is rightly renowned for Ross&amp;#039;s painterly artwork, which casts its subjects in a striking, legendary light. (You can see panels from the series across this post.) Yet more crucial to its success is that it retells some of Marvel&amp;#039;s classic tales \u2014 including the first appearance of the Human Torch, the birth of the Fantastic Four, and the exploits of the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man \u2014 through the POV of everyman newspaper photographer Phil Sheldon. In doing so, it crucially shifts the focus of these stories, viewing its famous characters not as colorful superheroes struggling to grapple with burdensome duty and daunting adversaries, but as gods whose thoughts, motivations, and actions remain a mystery to those whose lives they inevitably impact. Marvels&amp;#039; prime concern is the conflicted civilians whose day-to-days are constantly upended by cataclysmic (if not potentially apocalyptic) battles that tear through the streets, disrupting traffic, frustrating work, killing innocents, and generating fear, mistrust, jealousy, and hatred. By shrinking its scope down to human scale, the book imagines Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor as deities who fleetingly zoom in and out of sight, creating messes that must be cleaned up by ordinary moms, dads, and kids \u2014 who, in turn, feel compelled to reevaluate themselves (and their place in the world) vis-\u00E0-vis these unknowable beings who hold the fate of so many in their hands.  In other words, Marvels does precisely what current superhero movies don&amp;#039;t: namely, present a real-world POV that ponders what it might mean to actually have superheroes among us (and why we might love or loathe them). Highlighting that contrast even further, Marvels tackles two key incidents \u2014 the death of Gwen Stacy, and the rise of the Sentinels \u2014 that are also depicted in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past, respectively. While those events are treated in the movies as mere speed bumps along the road to more smash-bang-boom set pieces, Marvels instead employs them as vehicles for its protagonist Phil Sheldon&amp;#039;s ever-shifting outlook on Spider-Man (slandered as a criminal by the media, and many New Yorkers), the X-Men (victims of prejudice spawned from ignorance), and himself. It asks not what these monumental moments mean to the heroes, but to us. In doing so, it exhibits a moral incisiveness \u2014 raising questions about how we feel about ourselves, our fellow countrymen, the &amp;quot;other,&amp;quot; and God \u2014 that&amp;#039;s far more personal and profound than any individual superhero&amp;#039;s grief and anguish. If any recent blockbuster has attempted this tack, it&amp;#039;s last week&amp;#039;s box-office hit Godzilla, whose action is presented by director Gareth Edwards from a street-level vantage point. Yet while those aesthetics provide a you-are-there perspective on the monster&amp;#039;s rampage, they&amp;#039;re undercut by a narrative disinterest in actual people, and their reactions to the creature&amp;#039;s existence. Godzilla&amp;#039;s military protagonist (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), as well as his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and various scientists and officials, are ciphers designed to be empty-vessel witnesses to the chaos on display. As a result, the film is incapable of confronting the actual emotional impact Godzilla&amp;#039;s presence might have on the human race, too busy is it indulging in the usual urban-demolition action, in which loss of human life is ignored (and thus rendered unimportant) so we can enjoy more awesome skyscraper-toppling monster mayhem.  This isn&amp;#039;t to argue that Marvel (or its big-studio brethren) should altogether ditch their current approach to superhero moviemaking. Rather, it&amp;#039;s a plea for them to invigorate their franchises by using their superheroes to shine a light on those regular folk forced to exist alongside them. This could be done via horror&amp;#039;s favorite genre device of the moment, the &amp;quot;found footage&amp;quot; POV (\u00E0 la Cloverfield or the tortured-teens-turned-superheroes gem Chronicle), or simply by telling celebrated stories through men like Marvels&amp;#039; Phil Sheldon, whose changing opinions about Captain America, Mr. Fantastic, and their ilk provide insight into human psychology and socio-cultural matters. Regardless of the specific means, however, it&amp;#039;s an approach that would re-energize an increasingly stale genre that, having exhausted itself with endless explosions \u2014 and a general who-cares-about-the-casualties? attitude \u2014 could benefit from a more poignant, personal angle. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28816/superhero-movies-new-perspective/>