If real people got powers, do you think they would all become corrupt, evil psychopaths?
If people had superpowers, vats of trauma and ego issues, and megacorps wanted to wrangle it for profit and control… absolutely yes.
This would totally happen in the US and other countries. 100%. No doubt.
The Boys is barely even satire, they pull so much from reality.
I used to think it was over the top for expositional purposes. Used to.
The realistic thing about The Boys is that it isn’t a world where normal people get superpowers, it’s an evil company making superheroes into celebrities for profit.
Are superpowers analogous to money IRL? If so, I think you have your answer.
I like how Vought is (among other things) so much like American professional sports organizations, the NFL in particular. I could definitely see supes being handled that way.
The only thing stopping Homelander from going on a rampage, killing tens of thousands of people and seizing control of the world is that he cares what people think about him. He wants to be loved, not feared.
He kills innocent people but he does it discreetly or when it looks like he can justify his actions.
But can you imagine an absolute piece of shit like Stephen Miller getting super powers? He’d be far, far worse.
This is one of the only issues I have with the show… Homelander’s leash appears to be super hamfisted in, or in general it makes little sense why corporate has so much control with so little relative power. Lots of people in that world have powers, and it would be total anarchic chaos in reality.
Isn’t that like his entire arc? He slowly realizes his leash is only as strong as he believes it to be
They haven’t told us yet how Vought controls Homelander.
Well, at first it was Madeline Stilwell and that sweet sweet mommy milk
They’ve reiterated over and over again. They’ve even explained it very explicitly in the episode where he went down to the lab where he was kept. He needs to feel loved. I don’t know how you’ve missed such a main plot line.
No. I don’t think The Boys would be an accurate portrayal.
I think it would be much worse. Like apocalyptic.
It’s not a direct comparison, but look at what happens to people that have money and power in our society. They become evil monsters. I think superpowers could have a similar effect. Although getting money and power requires you to be a monster already on some level, I don’t think suddenly gaining superpowers would have the exact same effect.
They become evil monsters.
Most, sure, but far from all. The list of historical benevolent dictators isn’t very long, but it’s not short either.
That’s true. The list of benevolent billionaires is zero as far as I’ve seen though.
No, it’s much more interesting than that.
It’s an accurate representation of Garth Ennis being mad about having to work with superheroes despite not liking that at all and being a bit of a petty bitch with a bit of a dudebro sense of humor that, frankly, we all overrated at the time because when you were a teenager in the 90s you thought Preacher was hilarious and much smarter than it is, and it got to his head a bit.
And then it’s an accurate representation of Eric Kripke who was very much the right age to have gone through that, taking the material and going “well, that Trump guy sure was a thing, huh?” and “aren’t you kind of over all those MCU movies, also?” because superheroes in film were at the same point in 2019 than they were in comic books in 2006.
Don’t be the teenager we all were in the 90s and assume that “edgy and mean and over the top” is the same as “smart and realistic”. It’s not.
I’ll say that the show is at least less callous than the original material and it’s at least trying to be political, which makes it slightly more plausible and internally consistent than Ennis’ HR complaint of a comic book. Hollywood has a history of taking this edgelord crap (see also: every single Mark Millar adaptation) and making it palatable by applying the same mainstreaming and dumbing down that kills every Alan Moore adaptation. Turns out if the original material isn’t that smart to begin with that’s actually a good thing to do.
It’s an accurate representation of Garth Ennis being mad about having to work with superheroes despite not liking that at all
I’m slightly confused… Are you suggesting that Jeff Ennis, the creator of The Boys, previously worked alongside actual superheroes?
Edit: Oops, Garth*
No, no, Jeff Ennis worked as an actual superhero briefly in the 1970s you’re thinking of John Ennis, who created The Boys as a musical in the 90s, but he was mad about his working conditions.
No, no, John Ennis was the guy who wrote the play Boys Boys Boys after working as a roadie for Mötley Crüe. You’re thinking of Jed Ennis, who published the first blog called The Boys back in 1848 before the web even existed.
I think people would still be people, but the monsters would be unstoppable. Psychopaths and corporations would be just as bad as depicted in the show.
However, normal people would still be normal. See extraordinary for more info. In this series, people have their mundane problems on top of whatever problems the powers cause.
It isn’t the super powers that make them assholes, the seven just draws in assholes who abuse the ones that aren’t.
Depends on who gets superpowers, and how such powers are acquired.
The broad strokes of The Boys makes some degree of sense if we start with the premise that some megacorporation controls the manufacture and publicity of all supers. However, if supers can come from other sources, then what limitations are we putting on the premise?
I am of the opinion that most people are inherently good. Most people are also inherently stupid and cowardly, but keep in mind that these circles on the venn diagram are independent of each other despite some overlap. However, if given an opportunity to choose between helping and hurting, without any fear of repercussions either way, most people would choose to help.
There’s a popular quote: “power corrupts”, which is a shortened version of “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. I think this quote misses something fundamental: “power attracts the corruptable”. In a world without gods, no one I’d ever trust to be one would ever actively make the choice to become one unless it was forced on them somehow.
If superpowers were distributed more randomly, then the odds of us getting a superman instead of a homelander improve greatly. Still a dice throw though.
If it were an X-Men sort of world then no, otherwise absolutely
x-men under xavier, is too goody two shoes, basically toeing the line of the us, realistically its more like Magnetos side that would be more realistic.
No i meant superpowers arose as a natural mutation and not the result of a chemical compound. Not ideologically
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Further especially with powers granted from an injectable serum, the kind of people naturally drawn to it will already be the kind of people seeking power for their own ends.
It’s somewhat exaggerated but I would definitely say yes
