Superman, Spider-Man, Batman: they meant nothing to me. As for the likes of Iron Man, the Green Lantern or Daredevil – I could trip over them in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket and still not recognize them, in spite of the costumes. I realize that superheroes are all the rage right now. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequel to Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starred Thor. Barely a movie goes by without some preposterous champion strapping on some totally outrageous duds with the inevitable promise to combat evil.
Superman, Spider-Man, Batman: they meant nothing to me. As for the likes of Iron Man, the Green Lantern or Daredevil – I could trip over them in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket and still not recognize them, in spite of the costumes. I realize that superheroes are all the rage right now. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequel to Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starred Thor. Barely a movie goes by without some preposterous champion strapping on some totally outrageous duds with the inevitable promise to combat evil.
There’s something a little clichéd about superheroes. For the most part, they’re reluctant to nail their colours to the mast and insist on cowering behind a alternate identity. It’s as though they were invented by the Witness Protection Program. It’s a convention that suggests a heroic identity can emerge precisely when the need arises. It’s little wonder that most of the decent superheroes were invented during World War II. Not that they don’t have their problems.
Almost invariably, heroes are deeply flawed individuals who harbour a tragic past. This may include being orphaned (as with Batman, Spider-Man and Superman) or, in the case of the Green Lantern, the indignity of having been portrayed by Ryan Reynolds. Also, to be a decent superhero you’ve got to have a point of weakness. There’s little point being invulnerable – it would make the contest with super villains hardly worth watching. The Man of Steel is hopeless against Kryptonite, although it always seemed a bit odd that he should be allergic to his home planet. Aquaman can’t be out of the water for more than an hour which is probably fair enough. The Green Lantern, oddly enough, has an aversion to the colour yellow. Which means he could, if push came to shove, be taken down by one of the Wiggles. As for Wonder Twins Zan and Jayna, their key weakness was simply the fact that they were incredibly annoying. That and the fact they had a monkey called ‘Gleek’.
With the exception of Superman who is powerful on account of being an alien, there’s almost always some weird story about how they came to get their particular power. Spider-Man got his abilities after being bitten by a radioactive arachnid and the Flash inhaled hard water vapours, whereas Captain America chose a more contemporary path by simply opting for performance enhancing drugs (although they politely called it a ‘serum’).
Rightly or wrongly, I’ve always struggled to take these guys seriously. Maybe it’s the whole underwear on the outside thing – which never really denoted special powers to me so much as it did special needs – or perhaps I just couldn’t find it in myself to identify with them. Forget your Justice League, X-Men or Super Friends, my heart belonged to another group of less celebrated super beings who defined my childhood. Namely, Roger Hargreaves’ Mr. Men.
These guys always resonated with me in a far more profound way. For starters, they never mucked around with secret identities. Better yet, their strengths and weaknesses were nearly always declared in their names. Mr. Greedy, Mr. Nosey and Mr. Mean were all exactly as their monikers suggested. The moment you picked up a copy of Mr. Fussy, Mr. Happy or Mr. Sneeze, you had a pretty good idea of what you were dealing with.
The inhabitants of Misterland have the kind of powers that ordinary folk can aspire to. For example, the power of extreme rudeness (as in the case of Mr. Fussy), the ability to tell a joke (Mr. Funny) or the overwhelming need to be punctual. Granted, there may be a case for arguing that Mr. Rush’s insatiable desire to be on time means that he would, by today’s standards, be diagnosed as suffering obsessive compulsive disorder. The point is this: I will never be faster than a speeding bullet, nor will I leap tall buildings in a single bound but, like Mr. Daydream, I can certainly tune out when the mood strikes me.
In a market cluttered with superhero movies, one group is yet to get the Hollywood treatment they so obviously deserve. Indeed, there’s no time like the present for producers to start lobbing fistfuls of cash at a big screen adaptation of the Mr. Men series. But with so many to choose from, where to begin? The answer is obvious.
Mr. Messy – the Movie would be the kind of blockbuster that has people queuing up around the block. It’d be so great a spectacle that spotted teenagers would refrain from illegally downloading it and shell out their parent’s hard-earned money to see it. I see Nicholas Cage as Mr. Messy. Only he can properly bring to life the tortured psyche of the character. As is the way with such films, it would be a journey into darkness. Horribly disfigured in a laboratory accident, our hero is transformed into little more than a pink squiggle who fights crime. Or, if not crime, then at least the urge to tidy up. That I can relate to. Perhaps by refusing to bow to convention and not being neat and tidy, Mr. Messy is doing something truly heroic. Shazam!