everything has a tradeoff

I can't help it. Sometimes bad things happen to the good characters in movies, and it's just so ironic or horribly over dramatic that I can't help laughing out loud. And then I wonder if the other people in the dark theater think I have some sort of twisted and perverted sense of humor.

There seem to be a lot of comic book movies coming out recently. Marvel has two out this season, and DC, of course, has the block breaking Dark Knight. And there seems to be a trend towards making the heroes much more troubled and pained. I used to accuse American movies of all having ridiculously implausible perfectly happy endings. The first time I watched an international film as a young teenager, I was shocked by the incomplete ending. Where was the resolution? The sense of wholeness? It seems Hollywood finally picked up on it too. And now, unlike the happy go lucky Fantastic Four, or the first two X-Men movies, we have Bruce Wayne and Bruce Banner, tortured protagonists who are fleeing the law, losing their girls, and having generally upsetting endings to their stories. Poor guys.

Peter Parker may have been right about the idea that with great power comes great responsibility, but he missed a part. With great power also comes loneliness and isolation. In fiction, that's true from characters from Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker to Ender Wiggin and Frodo Baggins. In real life, it's been true for hundreds of great minds and those in military or political power. How many artists have you heard of who's minds where not only their greatest asset, but also a source of endless problems. Vincent Van Gogh. Wolfgang Mozart. William Blake. It seems there is a price to pay for brilliance. And those in positions of power seem to attract other power hungry people, to the point where I'm not sure how they can trust anyone, or how they sleep at night. And considering the number of political leaders overthrown throughout history by those close to them, it's unfortunate for them that they're only human. I have no desire to ever have some much power that I'm surrounded by such people. I find such greed and falsity a little sickening.

I know all of God's creations are supposed to be beautiful and created for a purpose, but really, mosquitoes?