Holding Out for a Hero: Difference between revisions

and he's gotta be fresh from the fight''|'''Bonnie Tyler''', "Holding Out for a Hero"}}

 

 

The transportation systems seems to be incredibly buggy. Every month there's at least one train/plane/subway crash that sends its passengers to apparent fiery doom. Should higher industrial standards be made to prevent these from occurring? Naah, as long as a hero catches it each time, it's not really a problem.

[[The Government]] is taking away people's rights; should people rise up against it? ...that's iffy, [[La Résistance]] is often either ineffective or scary terrorists, assuming they're [[Fighting for Survival|effective]]. Let's just have the hero take care of it.

 

 

If someone is [[The Chosen One]], that means everyone else ''isn't'' and [[Never Be a Hero|shouldn't bother]], unless they're [[Hero Secret Service|taking a bullet for the hero]]. In any case, [[All Up to You|it's all up to the hero]]. If the main characters are common people, they may discover that he has [[Feet of Clay]], and have to manage without him. If combined with [[All of the Other Reindeer]], the people may start to look not only lazy, but ungrateful ''and'' hypocritical at that.

These arguments tend to fall flat however, when used by an actual super villain. If the villain truly want to help humanity progress, rather than trying to give philosophical angst to the super hero, they could probably improve matters more if they would just ''power down the death ray and stop being so damn villainous''.

 

 

It does have the advantage that when the angry citizens demand [[The Hero]] persecute the [[Reluctant Monster]] or something equally wrong, and he turns the demand back on them, the trope [[Who Will Bell the Cat]] often comes into play.

 

Perhaps you [[I Thought It Meant|were looking for]] the trope called [[Big Damn Heroes]]. (Wherein the premise is played straight and the [[Hero]] ''is'' in fact the only person who can save the day.)

 

== Anime and Manga ==

 

{{quote| '''Man:''' Shut your mouth, lady! You're looking at a man who shot down five mobile suits in the war a year ago!<br />

'''Dorothy:''' That's funny, I don't see any men around here. The only men I know are either dead and buried, or are up on that screen! ''(points at giant TV showing the Gundam Pilots fighting)'' }}

{{quote| '''Rorschach''': The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."}}

** The US government has stopped finding ways to end the [[Cold War]] through peaceful means because they have Dr. Manhattan on their side.

* In ''[[Y the Last Man|Y: The Last Man]]'' the leader of the Fish & Bicycle Troupe deliberately conceals the existence of a living male monkey (which implies the existence of other surviving males) to prevent false hope amongst women that some man is going to come along and save them.

* Averted in an issue of ''[[The Avengers (Comic Book)|The Avengers]]'' where Jarvis goes to visit his mother, only to find a bully has been harassing the folks in her neighborhood. The rest of the neighborhood wants Jarvis to get his Avenger buddies to take care of the problem. Jarvis tells them that minor problems like this need to be taken care of by normal people. So Jarvis challenges the bully to a fight, only to start losing until the rest of the neighbors pitch in to help him.

 

* In the second ''[[Spider-Man (Film)|Spider-Man]]'' movie, when Peter Parker quits being Spider-Man for a while, the crime rate in New York jumps by 75%. This isn't supervillain crime, this is stuff like two guys with shotguns robbing a bank then riding away. Either Spider-Man's presence was previously enough to deter petty criminals, so his absence has all the criminals coming out of the woodwork, or the NYPD has come to be waaay too reliant on Spidey's help.

** The first Spider-Man movie featured the song "Hero", by [[Nickelback|Chad Kroeger]], which mentions this trope:

{{quote| ''And they say that a hero can save us<br />

* In ''[[Hancock]]'', step one of the plan to give homeless but super-powered [[Vigilante Man]] Hancock a more credible image is to allow himself to go to jail in response to destruction of public property. Step two is to [[Genre Savvy|watch as the crime rate sky-rockets]].

* It's suggested in ''[[Hot Fuzz]]'' that pretty much the only thing stopping London's crime rate from spiralling completely out of control is P.C Nicholas Angel... which makes it a bit of an own goal when his superiors, sick of him upstaging them and the rest of the force, transfer him to Sandford in the middle of nowhere and have to humiliate themselves by crawling there to beg him to return. {{spoiler|And then he turns them down anyway. Whoops.}}

* Explored in ''[[The Incredibles]]''.

* The people of Metro City in ''[[Megamind]]'' fulfill this trope practically to the point of deconstruction; they're so dependent on the hero to solve their problems that when the hero's no longer around, there's no one brave enough to stand up to the titular villain. However, this ends up demoralising the ''villain'', who finds himself facing an existential crisis over the fact that everything's so easy for him now that the hero's no longer around and practically everyone else is too cowardly to oppose him. So he gives someone else superpowers in an effort to find someone who'll challenge him, and when the newcomer kicks his ass everyone flocks toward their new 'hero' -- unfortunately for them, they haven't considered the possibility that someone having superpowers and beating up a villain doesn't mean they're not a potentially ''worse'' villain... {{spoiler|and of course, the whole mess started in the first place because the original hero was so demoralized over the fact that everyone expected him to solve all their problems without consideration for what ''he'' might want to do that he just gave up.}}

** Unfortunately, it's also worth noting that the Doctor has been known to get very uppity when humans make a concerted effort to act without his permission or in ways he doesn't approve of. On the downside, this has led to the death of Harriet Jones and Britain's Golden Age. On the upside, this led to a truly [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|epic moment]] when the UNIT commander that the Doctor had been sneering at for most of "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky" managed to not only defeat the Sontaran ground forces of power-armored genetically engineered super-soldiers but impress the Doctor in the process.

* In one episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Jonathan casts a spell to make himself into a [[Badass]] so great that the whole town worships the ground he walks on, and everyone remembers things as if Jonathan had always been that way. One consequence is that Buffy is less strong and confident than normal, since she remembers Jonathan rather than herself saving the town. It stands to reason that the [[Muggles]] must have suffered a similar loss of self-reliance.

** In fact, Sunnydale was created as a subversion of this trope, as a place for demons to feed, with their police and such kept deliberately incompetent and with an extra-strength masquerade. When others step up and try to help, they're rarely punished for it, though told they shouldn't. That Buffy empowers people around her is part of the premise and shows up in the pilot, with Willow standing up for herself, and at the end of the series with the use of the scythe.

* There was an episode of ''[[Walker Texas Ranger]]'' involving a Shop teacher in High School who was [[The Aggressive Drug Dealer]] sending out his students to send out drugs. The plot simultaneously tried to preach the strength to stand against the drug dealer... while having the drug dealer kill anyone who wasn't [[Chuck Norris]] or protected by Chuck Norris.

** A similar episode had another teacher, this time a student of Walker, stand up to and thoroughly trounce three gangbangers who had barged into his classroom and started harassing one of his students... only to be shot and killed by the trio later that day. Apparently only Walker's martial arts can stop crime.

* Even heroes aren't immune. In ''[[Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]]''/''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'', the Rangers begin to slack off when their commanding officer becomes a [[Sixth Ranger]] and begins busting heads. As soon as he finds out, [[Helping Would Be Killstealing|he begins answering calls for backup with "Suck it up and do it yourself."]]

* Brother Tuck suggests the people of Locksley and surrounding areas are becoming like this in ''[[Robin Hood (TV)|Robin Hood]]'':

{{quote| '''Tuck''': The Lord helps those who helps themselves, Robin. Your protection weakens them. We're failing in our mission. We're supposed to be inspiring these men to stand up and fight for themselves, giving them ''real'' hope.}}

== Web Comics ==

 

* ''[[The Godsof Arr Kelaan]]'' when Mike, god of Honor/Valor, first gained his powers he worked as a superhero causing this effect. He decided he needed to change his strategy.

* In the ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' arc "Phoenix Rising," Oasis takes the role of vigilante protector for the town of Podunkton. Most of the citizens accept her either out of gratitude or fear of being next on her hit list, and the local police force thinks this is just peachy, since they get to collect their government paychecks without having to do squat. Officer Tod ''does'' prove himself able to hold his own against an expert assassin, though, having been a mob enforcer before Oasis cleaned up the town.

** Earlier in the film, when the heroic Lex Luthor brings the Justice League to his earth, he asks Superman not to interfere in his fight with [[Evil Counterpart|Ultraman]], saying it won't mean anything if an outsider defeats him.

* Utilized in a very dark way in "Superman: Doomsday". After seemingly coming back from the dead, one of Superman's first acts is to save a little old lady's cat from being stuck in a tree... After which he gives a rather soul-crushing [[Reason You Suck Speech|diatribe]] about the fact that while he was helping doing this, there were any number of car accidents, bank robberies or supervillains he could have been stopping, and the people maybe needed to start thinking for themselves before he started getting angry. {{spoiler|Of course, he was a [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] [[Cloning Blues|clone of Superman]] created by Lex Luthor to discredit the Man of Steel post-mortem, but still...}}

 

== Real Life ==