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ANATOMY
OF THE
SUPERHERO
FILM
Larrie Dudenhoeffer
Anatomy of the Superhero Film
Larrie Dudenhoeffer
Anatomy of the
Superhero Film
Larrie Dudenhoeffer
Kennesaw
GA, USA
Unlike those superheroes that mostly operate alone, writing and rewriting a
manuscript requires a team effort. So I wish to recognize the editors, readers,
and staff members at Palgrave for their advice, encouragement, and assistance
in moving Anatomy of the Superhero Film towards its completion. I especially
want to thank Shaun Vigil for supporting this project and for taking the time
to discuss the most recent superhero film releases with me.
I also want to thank David Marsh, Khalil Elayan, Marvin Severson, Chris
Palmer, Keith Botelho, and several of my students, friends, and colleagues for
vetting my ideas and sharing their insights into various superhero films, com-
ics, and characters. Also, I cannot forget Vickie Willis, Ashley Shelden, and
Nancy Reichert for reading sketches of my chapters and offering me invalu-
able suggestions towards their revision.
Early drafts of the introduction and conclusion were presented at the 2016
SCMS Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia and the 2015 PCA/ACA
Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thanks to the organizers of
these conferences for allowing me the chance to share my ideas with fellow
film, comics, and media scholars.
Videodrome, one of the few remaining movie rental stores in the Atlanta
area, supplied most of the screenshots in the essays to follow. John Robinson
and the rest of the Videodrome staff deserve many thanks for their assistance
and for the discounts.
Of course, my love and appreciation go to Joe and Becky, for all the
support they offer me, including sending me terrible movies to watch, and
to Grant and Anna, for affording me the chance to see some of my favorite
characters again with new eyes.
Finally, I save my dearest admiration for Terri, my love, my partner,
my friend, and a true superwoman of whom I am truly a fan.
vii
Contents
Bibliography 301
Index 311
ix
List of Figures
xi
xii List of Figures
The 2000s saw the (re)birth of the superhero film. The first decades of the
twenty-first century, in fact, unlike the relatively measly slates for the super-
hero film in the 1980s and 1990s, average a release of about four-to-six films
of this type each year. The superhero film mostly outmuscles similar fare (war
films, crime films, fighting films, and even some science fiction spectacles)
at the ticket counter, and in addition the superhero film’s uniquely fantastic
action dynamics—the characters in it able to do the miraculous easily with
their minds, mutant appendages, or skeletomuscular endowments—more and
more so inform the stunts, set-pieces, camera motions, frantic editing style,
and digital special effects of other forms of action cinema. Such earlier action
film stalwarts as James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Sherlock Holmes now take
on the characteristics of the superhero. James Bond, for example, negotiates
the iron flanges of a skyscraper under construction in Casino Royale (Mar-
tin Campbell 2006) with the nimbleness of Batman. At close to 60 years of
age, the title character in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
(Steven Spielberg 2008), the fourth entry in the series, moves with more
suppleness than in the films from the 1980s, and appears as agile as Captain
America when dodging machinegun fire while running across the rafters of a
warehouse. The version of the sleuth in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009)
thinks in the manner of a computer, constructing mental schemata to fore-
see the moves made in fight scenes, to calculate the most effective strikes and
counterstrikes, and to unerringly execute them—this Holmes thus resem-
bles another one of Robert Downey Jr.’s iconic roles, Tony Stark in Iron
Man (Jon Favreau 2008), who uses the vision systems in the armor suit to
do much the same. Finally, the title characters of Tommy Wirkola’s Hansel
and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013) each carry an arsenal of weapons far too
cutting-edge for the early modern era and also move onscreen in the style of
such superheroes as Hawkeye and the Black Widow from The Avengers.1
Why does the superhero, though, or rather its onscreen variant, after the
turn of the millennium assume such cultural force? One reason is that the
superhero film capitalizes on Hollywood’s current reliance on computer ani-
mation, virtual world-making, and three-dimensional (3D) modeling in visual
effects design more than any other type of film. The superhero film might
not flourish as it now does if not for its almost wholesale use of the wire-
frames, virtual cameras, digital mattes, and motion-capture markers so typical
of contemporary cinema ever since the colossal successes of Steven Spielberg’s
Jurassic Park (1993), John Lasseter’s Toy Story (1995), James Cameron’s
Titanic (1997), and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of
the Ring (2001). According to J.P. Telotte (2010), these films, along with
such earlier efforts as Steven Lisberger’s Tron (1982), as they introduce com-
puter generated (CG) characters and mise-en-scène elements into otherwise
naturalistic environments, effectively explode “the boundaries between ani-
mated and live-action cinema in ever more complex ways, while also creating
new possibilities for hybrid narratives” (182). Of course, the use of digital
effects seems instrumental to compositing or incorporating drawn characters
from comics into those forms of realistic cinema that traditionally might resist
them or make them appear fake. The adaptation of the superhero comic2 thus
seems the most appropriate vehicle for dramatizing the singularities of digi-
tal cinema: in other words, much as the comic nests a fantastic element, the
superhero, into an otherwise ordinary milieu, so too does the digital film nest
a “fantastic” or rather a completely non-indexical element, the CG animation,
into footage taken of actual actors, objects, and settings.
However, the superhero film, as the crowning achievement of the cine-
matic use of digital effects, represents much more than a remediation of the
content or the aesthetics of its source material. As Stephen Prince (2012)
argues,
The digital era in cinema challenges our understanding of the medium and not
simply because of the shift to electronics from celluloid. It challenges us to think
anew about the nature of realism in cinema and about the conjunction between
art and science, as these domains collaborate in the design and use of technolo-
gies that make possible the creation of a new class of images, ones that have a
transformative effect on existing media and offer viewers opportunities to enter
new optical domains. (11)
While arguing that CG design merely offers new tools with which to create
artificial worlds, as cinema sought to do ever since its invention, Prince none-
theless confers on the digital the special ability to expose viewers to “new
optical domains.” The impressive use of travelling mattes in Superman (Rich-
ard Donner 1978) might allow us to watch the title character fly, while the
use of costly and elaborate sets in Batman (Tim Burton 1989) might allow
us to watch the title character cruise the neo-Gothic streets of Gotham City
in a futuristic urban combat vehicle. These films, though, without digital
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 3
effects, cannot for any extensive amount of screen time easily, convincingly, or
cost-effectively show us a man, for instance, continually remain on fire, or a
woman whose skin turns invisible, except for the faint motion distortion that
accompanies the activation of this superpower.
However, to attribute the vogue for the superhero to twenty-first century
upticks in digital effects, to the shift to electronics, misses out on the specific
diegetic modalities that make these films different from other fantasy, science
fiction, and action adventure extravaganzas. To do so might also risk failing
to appreciate the artistic successes and other moments of interest that crop
up in the more experimental stages of the superhero film’s formation, in the
Fleischer Superman cartoons (1941–1943), in the more episodic serials of the
1940s and 1950s, and in the more colorful feature-length film events of the
1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. If we are to establish the genre specificity of the
superhero film from its origins in the early twentieth century to its renascence
in the early 2000s—if we are to determine what makes it so different from
other types of cinematic spectacle—we must first set forth the axiom that the
real crux of the superhero film, whether it uses digital effects or not, consists
in its elaboration, exaggeration, and transformation of the normal morpho-
physiological conditions of its title characters.
Horror and action films, of course, use special effects in ways that also
signally concern embodiment. More often than not, though, these films use
them to expose the insides of their characters’ flesh to our view, whereas the
superhero film concretely and explicitly extends this flesh into the objects, set-
tings, data displays, and other compositional values of its mise-en-scène. How-
ever, the superhero film does not merely dwell on “the fractured, punctured,
trampled, and wounded body,” as Scott Bukatman (2011) contends, nor does
it necessarily use the superhuman expressivity of its characters to cast into
relief the inadequacies of its main actors’ real-life flesh, as when Toby Magu-
ire concedes the role of Spider-Man to a digital stand-in or when Eric Bana,
Edward Norton, or Mark Ruffalo morph into slightly different versions of the
Hulk as their diegetic avatar (119–122). Speculating on the formative devel-
opment of the 2000s-era superhero film, Bukatman further argues,
Must we reduce the ideational thrust of the superhero film to anxieties about
disembodiment, corporate dispossession, or the waning of our collective sense
of “realness” in the new millennium? Might we not rather say, more so in the
4 L. Dudenhoeffer
manner of Spinoza (2000), that the object of the idea constituting the super-
hero film “is the body, or a certain mode of extension actually existing and
nothing else” (47)? What can the superbody do, in other words? Or rather
what is superhuman embodiment, whether analogic or digital, actually capa-
ble of in these films?
Anatomy of the Superhero Film thus offers four “X-rays” into the rela-
tively nonhuman sensoria, anatomic structures, internal systems, cellu-
lar organizations, and orthotic, chemical, or technological enhancements
of the superhero. These X-rays, in short, offer what we might describe as a
metamorpho-physiological approach to the superhero on film. This approach,
a nominal tribute to one of DC Comics’ creations, Metamorpho, a crime-
fighter who can shape-shift into air, water, earth, or fire, examines more than
the relationship of the forms of such characters to their somatic functions, or
the ways in which their appearance dovetails into their specific set of super-
powers. This approach, as the “meta” indicates, also examines the ways in
which the “substance” of superheroes, which includes their masks, costumes,
chevrons, weaponries, and auras, extends into the diegetic environment of the
film, transgressing it, transforming it, and most significantly corporealizing
it, making it emblematic of the shape, dimensions, contours, and organismic
workings of one or more of our major organs, members, orifices, fluids, or
cell formations. This approach, then, might typically follow this schema:
Body part: Costume ∝ Superpower: Mise-en-scène
The first side of this statement sets one or more features of the superhero’s
costume—for instance, its mask, armor, cape, color scheme, chest sym-
bol, or accessories—in ratio correspondence to one or more of our organs,
appendages, somatosensory receptors, or neurochemical mechanisms. This
ratio of costume-to-embodiment functions in commensurate relation to the
next side of the statement, which analogizes the character’s superpowers
to certain aspects of the film’s mise-en-scène, as well as to its narrative arc,
ideological valences, representational strategies, and sociohistorical release
contexts. These superpowers, so as to integrate the two sides of the schema,
displace the form, functions, or cell rudiments of the superbody into the
film’s diegetic ecologies. Overall, then, the formula that sets the superhero
film apart from other action, sci-fi, or martial arts films runs as follows: some
aspect of these superheroes’ appearance transcodes one aspect of their ana-
tomic-physiological constitution, which they map onto the film’s exteriors
through the use of their superpowers.3 These superpowers, in short, act as
morphogens on the film, spreading a quotient of the superhero’s organismic
substance across its narrative structure, audiovisual style, and thematic design.
Therefore, the superhero film deals first and foremost with the conditions of
superhuman embodiment, over and above its responsiveness to the anxieties
of the twenty-first century or the transition to digital filmmaking. Still, even
if we at a minimum define superhero films as works that imagine new modes
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 5
Spy Smasher, and also apart from such contemporary action icons as John
Rambo, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games (2012), and Ethan Hunt
from the Mission–Impossible (1996-2018) series.5
Richard Reynolds (1992) enlarges upon Coogan’s three criteria, includ-
ing considerations of theme and narrative alongside the superhero’s mission,
secret identity, and superpowers. He argues that these texts additionally fea-
ture a review of their characters’ origin, which tends to separate them from
their social surroundings; a moral conflict, which often forces the superhero
to make conscientious decisions over and against the rules of the state; and
an indiscriminate use of science and magic, which coexist in the same diegetic
universes and even dovetail into each other, as in the case of the Fantastic
Four’s main villain Doctor Doom, an evil master of robotics, cybernetics,
occultism, and even alien forms of telepathic communication (104–107).
Reynolds further mythologizes such characters as “earthbound deities,” since
they do not use their abilities in a self-serving manner, as do supervillains,
criminals, or certain antiheroes (106). The trouble with these sorts of argu-
ments, though, is that they take more interest in tracing the origins of the
comics superhero to ancient mythologies, theological discourses, or other
mystical traditions—often in such a way that concedes that comics might at
first seem a sort of subliterature that requires revaluation through comparison
to more venerable sources—than they do in specifying what makes the super-
hero distinct in form and function from their fictional antecedents or other
characters similar to them. Although still describing the major characters of
the comics medium as “modern messiahs,” John Jennings (2013) thus comes
closer to setting forth some of the distinctive markers of the superhero film
(61). He suggests that the “hyper-physical body” of the superhero functions
as a “symbol of power,” in that it reifies certain social and cultural values,
such as strength, courage, and selflessness (59, 60). Jennings concludes that
superbodies inspire their audiences to recognize in them symmetries of form
and signification unattainable to ordinary men and women, and moreover
to recognize that these superbodies’ flawless sagittal quadrants connote cer-
tain notions of “balance, justice, goodness, strength, power, and perfection”
(61). However, while these symmetries may characterize the superbody as it
appears in comic strip form, they do not necessarily convey an accurate sense
of the dynamic interplay of a superhero’s unique state of embodiment with
the special effects and the mise-en-scène constructions of the cinema.6
Although she agrees that action films condition their audiences to thrill
at the musculoskeletal exertions of the stars onscreen, Lisa Purse (2007)
nonetheless qualifies Jennings’ ascription of symmetries to the superhero’s
flesh, drawing attention to the fact that it more often comes across as visu-
ally unstable and even monstrous to film audiences, especially in the era of
digital character design.7 She thus argues that “once the comic-book body,
frozen in arrested motion, is recreated in film,” it comes to seem “disturb-
ing and unnatural in its elasticity and capacity for infinite transformation and
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 7
reconfiguration” (8, 14, 15). Yet what distinguishes the superhero film from
the traditional action film, according to Purse, is that it shapes its main char-
acter’s mode of embodiment as a visible digital effect, making it difficult for
audiences to relate to a “virtual replacement” for an “actor’s flesh-and-blood
body,” one that derives its existence from computer modeling software rather
than “real-world substance” and often does not realistically emulate “impact,
momentum, weight, and gravity” (9, 10, 12). The superhero film thus at
once raises and allays cultural anxieties over the unstable and mutative effects
of digitization on our regular morphological features, in that its main char-
acters’ ability to return to normal after they assume an inhuman appearance
or fully morph into a CG clone works to situate virtue, courage, spirit, and
the other values Jennings mentions in those who can manage or retain to an
extent their “consistency of form” (16, 22).
These arguments, although they rightly identify embodiment as a cen-
tral concern of the superhero film, unfortunately move too far away from
it, either in a centripetal direction, towards discussion of a character’s reas-
suringly normal anatomic shape, size, and structure, or in a more centrifu-
gal direction, towards discussion of the abstract social values that a character’s
actions might symbolize and champion. These arguments do not say enough
about the ways that the superhero’s conditions of embodiment manifest
themselves onscreen. Nor do they say enough about the different varieties
of the superbody; about their interaction with the film’s mise-en-scène, not
only its narrative trajectories; or about their interfusion with animal, veg-
etal, machinic, energetic, or otherwise nonhuman substances. Lisa Purse’s
argument fails to consider some of the crucial insights of Maurice Merleau-
Ponty (2014), namely that a subject, rather than only taking interest in “real
situations” that draw upon certain functions of its “anatomical apparatus,”
can also “turn away from the world, apply its activity to the stimuli that are
inscribed upon its sensory surfaces, lend itself to experiments and, more gen-
erally, be situated in the virtual” (111). The superbody thus does not merely
confront audiences with the uncanniness of its digital rendering or supple-
mentation. More exactly, it aligns its sensorimotor experimentation with its
radical openness to its diegetic environment, as in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man,
which features a scene in which Peter Parker (Tobe Maguire), in the form of
a digital stand-in, for the first time exercises the abilities to move at superhu-
man rates, stick to walls, emit spider webbing, and swing across rooftops. This
scene treats the readjustment of Parker’s sense of embodiment as an occa-
sion for delight and amazement, at once for the character and also for viewers
able to “turn away” from the world’s realities. This scene, in Merleau-Ponty’s
(2014) words, shows us that embodiment, rather than consciousness or spirit,
functions as that site which reckons with “the possible,” which in the film’s
diegesis and in the viewer’s experience “acquires a sort of actuality” (112).
Most importantly, this scene suggests that the superhero, unlike in other
action films, does not so much dodge explosions or react to volatile situations
8 L. Dudenhoeffer
and abilities, combine into their morphophysiological features what Jane Ben-
nett describes as the occult “thing-power” of material objects. This notion
affirms that nonhuman or even inorganic objects contain within themselves
“an inexplicable vitality,” a conative and agentive force that can affect other
objects or trigger events (2, 3, 9, 18, 22). Moreover, it calls attention to the
“alien” nature of our flesh, the fact that we exist always as “an array of bod-
ies,” a confederation of organic and nonhuman components, our organs and
tissues coinciding with the minerals that make up our skeletons, the electricity
that fires our synapses, and the microbiota that assist our digestion, impact
our mental states, and stimulate our immunological responses (10, 112).
The superhero, more visibly and consistently than almost any other character
in film, is seen at once as object and organism, as an array of animal, vegetal,
chemical, energetic, mechanical, significatory, and anthropomorphic forces or
“actants” that require constant negotiation and manipulation. Spider-Man,
for example, as a superhero who can crawl up walls and ceilings, discharge
cables of sticky webbing so as to swing across rooftops and towers, and avert
danger through the use of a clairvoyant sixth sense, draws together into one
figure the flexible chitin of spiders and other arthropods, tensile epoxies or
spider silk, the sensors of early warning systems, and even the cinematic ico-
nographies of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan. Superheroes, we must conclude,
function more as objects than as deities, or more accurately as arrays of several
objects all at once.9
Graham Harman (2011), one of the foremost exponents of speculative
realism, argues that the term “object” subsumes us, nonhuman creatures,
nonliving substances, machines, energies, atomic substrates, and “those enti-
ties that are neither physical nor even real,” such as abstract concepts, semi-
otic rules, digital algorithms, or fictive superheroes (5). Objects, for Harman
(2012), are not reducible to their components, meaning that our “bodily
organs,” for example, remain autonomous from the somatosensory systems
that they comprise (15). Timothy Morton (2013b) thus concludes that
objects even withdraw from themselves, their “own parts” or qualities unable
to access them and vice versa (44). For these theorists, then, our flesh is not
the same as the organs, tissues, appendages, cells, fluids, microbiota, or neu-
ral networks of which it consists, as each of these units withdraws some of
their shadowy object-being from our cognitive-perceptual registers, our sci-
entific instruments, and our subjective consciousness. “Regions of silence are
thus marked out in the totality of my body,” Merleau-Ponty claims, anticipat-
ing the central axioms of speculative realist discourse (84). Once we see our
corpora as singular objects, irreducible to the whole that they make up, they
must then appear mysterious to us, withdrawn to some extent from our facul-
ties, compelling us to ask, in another twist on Spinoza, “What can they do?”
What can they do when they mix their objectal nature with that of animals,
nonliving things, or digital technologies?
10 L. Dudenhoeffer
The major characters in the superhero film thus do not simply incorporate
the sensual, discernible qualities of different objects or take on their appear-
ance, as does Iceman, obviously, in the X-Men series. They also tap into
what Levi R. Bryant (2011) calls the “virtual being” of objects, the system
of “powers” that inheres in a substance and delimits “what it can do” (89).
The qualities of an object, which as a rule never exhaust its virtual capacities,
do not reveal that which an object “has” or “is” so much as they indicate the
ways in which an object can act, affect other objects, or vary its own qualities
in connection with them (89–90). Bryant argues that we often wronghead-
edly ascribe a certain color, among other qualities, to such objects as a coffee
mug; rather than doing so, we must entertain the notion that the mug, in an
active sense, colors, that it “does” a certain tone or tint that varies under dif-
ferent conditions, as when the mug comes in direct contact with sunlight or
total darkness (90). The superpowers of the characters in such films as X-Men
(Bryan Singer 2000), Fantastic Four (2005), and Guardians of the Galaxy
(James Gunn 2014) similarly express the virtual dimensions—or, to use Bry-
ant’s terms, the dormant “powers”—of the objects that their flesh adapts to,
combines with, morphs into, separates from, discharges, mounts, or embeds.
The mutant Iceman’s superpowers, for example, consist in decreasing the
temperature of the water vapor in the immediate environment and then tap-
ping into the virtual “powers” of the icy conditions that result. The charac-
ter can thus use this ice as a sheath of armor; can fashion shields, missiles,
and sleds to move faster on out of it; and can even merge with its substan-
tial form or that of other water molecules to change in size, mass, or solid-
ity. Moreover, these superpowers function in an ecosystemic way, since they
awaken some of the virtual capacities of the objects with which they come
into contact, so as to affect the ambient moisture in the air; concuss, deflect,
freeze, or slip up enemies; dissolve, solidify, evaporate, deform, or reconsti-
tute certain constructs made of water; or even resize, reshape, or repair tis-
sue through converting atmospheric materials into organic ones (after all, our
flesh is 65–70% water).
The character Catwoman, sometimes an ally and sometimes a foe to Bat-
man, in another vein explores the more zoomorphic or animal-like quali-
ties of our embodiment. Her feline athleticism complements the cat-suit she
wears, and the retractable claws, caltrops, cat o’ nine tails whips, and stealth
goggles she uses cast the structure and functions of our flesh into a more con-
tiguous relation, to use Greg Garrard’s (2012) terms, to that of feral cats,
with their flexible vertebrae, quick reflexes, night vision, and sharp claws and
teeth (154). The versions of the character in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns
(1992) and Pitof Comar’s Catwoman (2004), as they endure multiple res-
urrections throughout these films, thus even tap into a more abstract type
of object, namely the cultural myths surrounding cats’ “nine lives,” them-
selves an exaggeration of these animals’ righting reflexes. One aspect of Cat-
woman’s embodiment, then, the fingernails, appears more important to the
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 11
Twists and Turns
The superhero can measure up to one of four somatotypes, which a film can
materialize onscreen through the use of either digital or more traditional
effects. These four types of superhuman embodiment involve the develop-
ment of new sensorimotor orientations that enable the film’s main characters
to interact with its diegesis in ways impossible for those of us with ordinary
morphophysiological structures, functions, or distributions. On the whole,
then, these somatotypes distinguish superhero films from other forms of
action cinema, calling our attention to the prosthetic enhancement of the
superbodies in them. The Fantastic Four films revolutionizes the figure of the
superhero, in that they divide into four taxa their main characters, qualifying
their superbodies in relation to their effects on the series’ narrative order, set
construction, and digital composition:
emotional vicissitudes, and sex intrigues, in the manner of TMZ (which also
came out in 2005) and similar tabloids. The executive shareholders, mean-
while, after the unsuccessful spaceflight, decide to dismiss Von Doom, whose
flesh slowly mutates into a metallic substance that can absorb and discharge
electricity. Ultimately, Von Doom attacks the Fantastic Four—dispatching a
missile at the Baxter Building in allusion to the film’s release after 9/11 and
the original comic’s debut after the Cuban Missile Crisis—until they combine
their superpowers to turn the villain into a statue, a smaller scale version of
the one that opens the film.
As Mister Fantastic, Reed Richards’s flesh takes on a cartoonlike elastic-
ity, stretching, squeezing, distending, elongating, and reforming at will while
remaining dense, malleable, and mostly resistant to concussive attacks, as
when it reacts to the Thing’s fists in the manner a trampoline might if some-
one were to strike it. Mister Fantastic first uses these superpowers, though,
at a dinner date with Susan Storm; after they accidentally drop a decanter
of wine from the table, Reed’s arm stretches to catch it and then retracts.
He uses these same abilities at subsequent moments in the film, for example,
to catch a fireman from falling off a truck as it dangles from the Brooklyn
Bridge, an act that ensures the Fantastic Four’s media fame. Also, for more
comedic reasons, and to undercut the ethical or mediatic seriousness of this
action sequence, we see Mister Fantastic’s arm stretch across a corridor to
fetch a roll of toilet tissue during a montage sequence that shows the Fantas-
tic Four developing new habits of sensorimotor articulation and self-control.
Mister Fantastic’s flesh appears able to configure into other shapes as well, as
when it encircles and ties up an irascible Thing, or when it transforms into
a wheel and then a mesh net to incapacitate Victor Von Doom in the film’s
climax. Mister Fantastic, through the exercise of these diverse abilities, thus
sets forth the template for the first of our four somatotypes of superhuman
embodiment: the endo-prosthetic, in which a superhero extends or releases
one of their organs, appendages, or anatomic sections—or even a symbolic
substitute for one of them—into the film’s diegetic environment so as to
accomplish some task therein, only for that organ or appendage to return to
the whole of their figure, either immediately or in due time according to the
demands of the narrative or action set-piece.
The superhuman abilities of Mister Fantastic more than imitate the elastic-
ity of rubber or the amorphousness of water. More interestingly, they make
thinkable the ways that such objects as these might “experience” on their
own the virtual capacities of their substance or the qualia they re-present to
our senses or to other objects. The superhero film, though, does not merely
speculate about the thingness of rubber or even ask, “What is it like to be
made of rubber?”, nor does it correct through an act of the imagination
our frailties or motor deficiencies. The superhero film, through its depiction
of such characters as Mister Fantastic, might also reflect on what is already
spongy or rubbery about our flesh; for example, it might map onto such
14 L. Dudenhoeffer
figures as the Fantastic Four the multipotential capabilities of certain cell clus-
ters to differentiate into other cell types. The film, through some of Reed’s
dialogue, thematizes its focus on the “recombinant DNA” of its characters,
so that the “Fantastic Four” might more accurately signify the four nucle-
obases (AGCT) that inform our chromosomal makeup. Mister Fantastic, after
all, can contort into different shapes and assume the consistency of rubber
or some other elastomer, much as stromal cells, with their considerable vis-
coplasticity, can differentiate into osteoblasts, adipocytes, muscle fibers, and
other cells. Moreover, along with the rest of the team, with the exception of
the Thing, Mister Fantastic wears a costume made of unstable molecules with
the trademark insignia “4” on it, a conceit that allows these characters to use
their superpowers without ruining their clothes. Mister Fantastic’s costume,
as it expands and contracts along with the flesh inside it and also as it evokes
the compounds of a DNA chain, indicates that the endo-prosthetic capabili-
ties specific to this character actually re-elaborate the nature of our cytoplasm,
the thick internal solution inside of our cells. This solution exists in variable
solid, fluid, and semisolid states, much as do Mister Fantastic’s skin, organ tis-
sue, and skeleton.
The cellular mutation of Mister Fantastic thus corresponds to the unstable
molecules of the Fantastic Four uniform; and, according to the formula of the
superhero film, they together resemble in their modularity the CG effects that
enable their manifestation onscreen as superpowers that can affect the digi-
tal design of the sets. The specifics of the formula for Fantastic Four and its
sequel run as follows:
Cellular mutation: Unstable molecules ∝ Digital effects: Virtual environments
One of the scenes in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer centers on Reed
showing off some unconventional dance moves at a nightclub. Ostensibly to
clue us in on the anatomic-histological features most at stake in the series,
Mister Fantastic enlarges and contorts into a shape that resembles a DNA
supercoil. He does so while wearing civilian clothes, which we must assume
derive from unstable molecules and which might seem totally anomalous to
the superhero film, until we remember that, unlike Spider-Man, for instance,
the team dispossesses themselves of a true alter ego—thus, to the masses,
Reed simply is Mister Fantastic, much as Stefani Germanotta simply is Lady
Gaga.11 His arms furthermore reach out to two women standing at a dis-
tance at opposite ends of the dance floor and intertwine them, a use of digi-
tal effects that accents the silhouettes of dancers on display on screens that
flank each side of the club DJ in the scene. The film’s diegetic environments
and its CG rendering of Mister Fantastic’s endo-prosthetic superpowers
thus reflect and comment on each other, as the dance club and its center-
piece character accomplish their spectacular effects through the same means,
namely the adjustment and manipulation of radiance values and color intensi-
ties. The cytoplasm analogous in nature to Mister Fantastic’s flesh, as well as
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 15
the unstable molecules that constitute the Fantastic Four’s outfits, discover
their complements in the manipulable subpixels that render Mister Fantastic’s
superpowers visible on the screen. These films develop throughout their nar-
ratives the correspondence of these tiniest of units: the cells that evolve its
characters into superheroes, the molecules in their costumes that transform
in sync with them, and the subpixels that allow such figures as Mister Fantas-
tic to act at a distance on the other elements within the frame, regardless of
whether they stem from material indexes or alphanumeric codes.
The impetuous Johnny Storm, as the Human Torch, can manipulate
fire; create streams of it; fashion it into spheres, rings, the numeral “4,” or
other shapes; and use it to thrust through the air at supersonic speeds, as
though relying on an afterburner. Also, true to the namesake of the charac-
ter, an aura of flame usually engulfs the Human Torch’s flesh, able to vapor-
ize almost anything that comes into contact with it. The Torch, then, might
at first appear similar to Mister Fantastic in somatotype, as these films use
digital effects to continually redesign the morphological extensities of these
characters. However, they actually oppose each other as fire does to water,
which the first film indicates, in a scene in which the Torch reacts with disgust
as Mister Fantastic melts in form in order to slip underneath a door. As the
flesh of Mister Fantastic dissolves, retracts, and returns to normal, it functions
endo-prosthetically to affect the diegetic environment in ways impossible for
ordinary men or women. The Human Torch, in contrast, does not emit fire-
balls, explode into omnidirectional nova-flames, or trail streaks of fire when
in flight in order to reabsorb them. Once these flames issue forth from the
Torch’s specific form of embodiment, they either set an element of the mise-
en-scène ablaze or die out on their own in a matter of seconds. The somato-
type of the Torch we might therefore term exo-prosthetic, as it describes those
superheroes who detach, discharge, or split off their organs, fluids, tissues,
filaments, endocrine signals, or neuro-electric charges into the film’s diegesis
so as to affect the objects, situations, or other characters in it.
The Human Torch, for example, in the climactic scene of Rise of the Silver
Surfer (2007) casts a fireball at Von Doom, which finds its target and extin-
guishes on its own soon afterwards, without reuniting with the rest of the
flames that wholly envelop the Torch’s flesh. Moreover, an earlier scene from
the sequel at once defines the Torch’s superpowers as exo-prosthetic and sug-
gests the ways that they can channel the objectal qualities of fire, or more
accurately its digital simulation, above all when it comes into contact with
some of the other material items on the set. The Torch and the Thing, drink-
ing at a tavern, compete over darts and, so to speak, enter a “heated” con-
versation; then the Torch rather “hotheadedly” throws a dart that seems to
spontaneously combust once it sticks to the wall. The exo-prosthetic super-
powers of the Torch, through clever editing and visual effects design, set the
inner rings of the dartboard on fire from across the room, with neither the
flames nor the dart ever returning to the character’s fingertips. This moment,
16 L. Dudenhoeffer
more than an adumbration of the fireball at the film’s climax, shows us some
of the ways that fire can act, as it differentially impacts the other objects or
visual compositions it touches on the screen, sometimes scorching or melt-
ing them (as with the dart), sometimes illuminating or tracing outlines in
them (as with the “4” that the Torch skywrites), sometimes doing nothing to
them (as with Von Doom’s armor). The settings of the film, though, can also
expose the shortcomings of the Torch’s specific form of embodiment, in that
they can affect its oxidation rate, as when the snow drifts on a ski-slope in the
first film smother the character’s flames or when the alien Silver Surfer in the
sequel rockets him into outer space with similar results.
The Human Torch also wears a costume made of unstable molecules, so
that, rather than turning to ash, it transmutes into the flames surrounding
the Torch’s flesh. The costume, sometimes afire, sometimes not, thus seems
suggestive of the metabolic transformations of our cells, which the Torch’s
superpowers re-enact, metaphorize, and embellish. These superpowers, in
their more destructive aspects, seem to refigure our catabolic mechanisms,
which first degrade molecules into amino acids, nucleotides, monosaccha-
rides, or fatty acids, another variation on the “4” on the team’s uniform.
Then, through an oxidative reaction, these mechanisms degrade these mol-
ecules further into cellular wastes or release them as caloric energies. Heat,
in other words, results from this series of changes. The first Fantastic Four
compares the Human Torch’s exo-prosthetic superpowers to the catabolic
actions of our cells, in that they each involve constant expenditure, and not
only when the Torch decides to toss a fireball or set something aflame. For
instance, one of Von Doom’s smart missiles tracks the Torch’s thermal signa-
ture, or trail of caloric waste, so as to chase this character over digital mattes
of the Baxter Building and the New York waterfront. The digital avatar of the
Human Torch, along with viewer inference about its catabolic efflux, more
than affects the movements of one of the digital artifacts in this scene; it also
serves as an objective correlative to the subpixels that compose them, in that,
much as with the transfer of cellular energies from one molecule to another,
they can render into new shapes or designs, alter the film’s resolution rates, or
composit images together in order to change the visual information onscreen.
However, since these subpixels also rearrange into different forms—for
instance, from facsimiles of a missile to the explosion it causes—they motion
us towards the more anabolic or constructive characteristics of the Torch’s
superpowers. Our anabolic mechanisms, those responsible for our cellular
regeneration, create tissue from the smaller units that we catabolize. Similarly,
the inchoate flames or invisible warmth that the Human Torch sheds often
reconfigure into macro units of the mise-en-scène, as when the Torch cooks
popcorn (in a popcorn movie) without a stove or microwave in the first film,
or willfully emits steam after stepping out of the shower to make an impres-
sion on a woman as “smoking hot” in the sequel. The cellular mutations that
condition the Torch’s exo-prosthetic abilities, and that, with the assistance of
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 17
digital image manipulation, reimagine our own metabolic networks, thus vis-
ibly affect other objects onscreen. The Torch causes these objects to “anab-
olize” in their own right, triggering their virtual capacities to turn either into
spectacular fireworks, edible foods, or sexual signifiers.
“Look at me!” demands Susan Storm, upset at feeling invisible throughout
a dinner conversation with Reed Richards. Of course, she turns semitranspar-
ent right at that moment, visible only to the viewer as a digital skeuomorph.
Susan Storm can thus turn invisible, even though, as the two Fantastic Four
films make clear, to effectively do so she must wear clothes made of unstable
molecules or waste time and risk embarrassment in disrobing out in the open.
Although these superpowers might frustrate the exposure times of traditional
cameras, they nonetheless expose the Invisible Woman to the constant atten-
tion of fans and TMZ-style reporters eager to catch one of their favorite
celebrities in a state of undress, in the event that this character’s superpowers
falter or malfunction. Lillian S. Robinson (2003) interprets the superpowers
of the Invisible Woman in terms of “Sue’s characteristic shyness,” a descrip-
tion of the character that these films seem to update for the era of ubiquitous
media coverage (112). Sue’s wish earlier in the first film—“Look at me!”—in
an ironic twist comes in the form of self-branding, self-commodification, and
the sort of fame that media circuses attract. Susan Storm, much more ambiva-
lent about stardom than the novalike Human Torch, thus cultivates in these
films a certain degree of standoffishness, which sets forth the characterologi-
cal tenor of the Invisible Woman’s other superpowers. More specifically, she
can create invisible force fields of variable strengths, textures, shapes, or den-
sities, so that she can use them to cushion impacts, contain dangerous forces,
fortify objects against collapse, or even cause them to explode from the inside
out, which she threatens to do to Von Doom in one of their encounters.
The Invisible Woman in the first film uses these superpowers to screen fire
away from onlookers at an accident scene, and in the sequel to stop the Lon-
don Eye Ferris wheel from falling into the Thames. At the climax of the first
film, we see what makes the Invisible Woman’s somatotype distinct from that
of the other team members, as she creates an invisible dome to safely contain
the radiation the Human Torch works up in order to turn Von Doom into a
statue. As the radiation strains the force fields surrounding it, she shouts in
agony, “I can’t hold it,” experiencing nosebleeds in this scene and in a simi-
lar one in the sequel that also requires terrific exertion. These moments thus
define the Invisible Woman’s somatotype as epi-prosthetic, in that such char-
acters, as they develop their superpowers from their mental, tactile, energetic,
technological, or supernatural connection to something external to them in
the diegetic environment, render themselves vulnerable to attacks forceful
enough to sever this connection. The force fields thus telesthetically double
for the Invisible Woman in the flesh, in that a force strong enough to stress,
rupture, or cave them in might also traumatize, injure, or strike down the one
creating, manipulating, and maintaining them, even if at a distance. Although
18 L. Dudenhoeffer
she can turn as invisible as the air, Susan Storm’s epi-prosthetic superpow-
ers still trace a digital signature onscreen, so that the force fields retain some
image of their connection to the motor expressions and morphological con-
tours of their originator’s flesh.
In Rise of the Silver Surfer, for example, the media’s obsession with the
Susan Storm-Reed Richards wedding, which their duties as Fantastic Four
teammates require them to reschedule over and over again, starts to consid-
erably irritate Susan, especially in one scene, during which she voices these
frustrations as she stares into a mirror, spots a rash of acne in it, and turns it
invisible so that none of the invitees can see it. The Invisible Woman there-
fore seems able to experiment with the “virtual powers” of those screens most
conspicuous on digital devices,12 in that she can control the information we
see down to the smallest details. The “4” on Susan Storm’s costume, also
made of unstable molecules, so that it too can turn invisible, might at first
suggest the four corners of the screen, even though it equally well suggests
the four components—the fatty acids, amino acids, carbohydrates, and cho-
lesterol—that compose the cell membrane, that aspect of our cytostructure
that this character’s superpowers more closely re-elaborate. The membrane
separates the cytoplasm inside it from the extracellular environment, while
also conferring shape on the cell and coordinating it with other cells in order
to form tissues. Similarly, Susan Storm’s superpowers work to separate out
certain spaces from other areas of the mise-en-scène, to shelter either charac-
ters or objects from deleterious influences, as when she uses force fields to
stop a helicopter from crashing into a rooftop in Rise of the Silver Surfer.
Moreover, the cell membrane is selectively impermeable, so that, through
osmosis or the invagination of its surface, it can allow the movement of ions,
small molecules, or other substances into and out of its interior. The Invisible
Woman can also modulate the density, absorbency, and toughness of the force
fields that she creates, so that, at one extreme, she can use them to delicately
inhibit the Thing from fighting with the Torch, or, at another, to thwart Vic-
tor Von Doom’s attempt to ram a metal stake into the Thing’s chest during
the first film’s action climax. However, these force fields, as epi-prosthetics
that affect the diegetic environment from a distance and still remain in tactile-
kinesic contact with their maker, displace the “anatomical apparatus” of the
Invisible Woman on to different areas of the set, much as the mirror in the
wedding scene splits this character’s image into two. To shatter these force
fields, then, is to incapacitate the Invisible Woman; conversely, to distract or
render this character unconscious is to disperse or render these force fields
ineffective. The membranous qualities of this character’s superpowers, as such
moments attest, thus square with the compositing of actual and digital ele-
ments in the visual designs onscreen. The CG aura of the force fields at once
remain separate from Susan Storm’s actual flesh and in continuous connec-
tion to it, while the invisible form of this character, through the wizardries of
digital special effects, can interact with material objects on the set.
1 X-RAY VISIONS: AN INTRODUCTION TO AN ANATOMY … 19
One of the comedic moments in Rise of the Silver Surfer offers a sugges-
tion as to which aspect of our cell structure the Thing’s ecto-prosthetic skin
most resembles. Von Doom smashes the Thing into one of the corridors at
the Siberian camp that serves to imprison the Silver Surfer, using so much
force as to indent the wall in a cartoonish fashion with the Thing’s outline.
After the surprise attack, the other superheroes rush to assist the Thing at
the same time that they notice that Mister Fantastic is also missing. He soon
turns up, though, right underneath the Thing, completely flat, as the rest of
the team scrapes them from the wall. The immense frame of the Thing, as it
conceals the image of Mister Fantastic in this scene, suggests more than the
closeness of these two friends; it also further delineates for us the ecto-pros-
thetic somatotype, in which a thick shell or “second skin” encases the flesh of
a normal-looking man or woman. However, as much as this scene caricatures
the superhuman embodiment of the Thing, it also evokes certain features of
our cell architecture, namely the close relationship of the eukaryotic cytoskel-
eton to the cytoplasm that it supports (and which, again, Mister Fantastic’s
superpowers re-elaborate).
The cytoskeleton functions as the cell’s “muscle,” much as the Thing func-
tions as the team’s “muscle,” in that it determines the cell’s shape, organizes
its contents, resists its deformation, and scaffolds the movement of its vesicles
and organelles. The Thing’s tough, nearly invulnerable skin, as it contrasts
Mister Fantastic’s more viscoelastic flesh, establishes this character as the
affective “rock” of the Fantastic Four, re-humanizing the team as a “real,”
even if mechanical, effect, especially as the other members turn the films’
action scenes over to their digital stand-ins. The Thing, in short, stabilizes the
team, counterbalancing their quirks as celebrities—despite the self-conscious-
ness of this unprepossessing figure, the Thing sells even more merchandise
than them, as one cut scene from the sequel shows us—much as the cytoskel-
eton stabilizes the cell, mediates its functions, and frames its cytoplasmic con-
tents. The Thing, though, unlike the rest of the team, does not wear a regular
uniform or even a shirt with a “4” on it. Nonetheless, a clasp in the shape
of this number appears in the sequel above the Thing’s waistline, as indica-
tive of the four components of the cytoskeleton, its microfilaments, its much
stronger intermediate filaments, its more dynamic microtubules, and its sep-
tins, amino-recruiters which assemble into rings, as do the rocklike masses
that encrust the Thing’s skin.
The 2005 and 2007 Fantastic Four films thus clue us into what exactly
constitutes the superhero film as a distinct (sub)genre of action cinema.
Certainly, these films address the anxieties of their release contexts, the
digitization of the visual image, and the universal commodification of cul-
tural creations. However, the way into the narrative codes, compositional
values, representational strategies, ideological valences, intertextual refer-
ences, or sociohistorical resonances of the superhero film must first come
about through a close examination of the specific modes of superhuman
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