Graeber has you covered.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going on here. These “heroes” are purely reactionary, in the literal sense. They have no projects of their own, at least not in their role as heroes: as Clark Kent, Superman may be constantly trying, and failing, to get into Lois Lane’s pants, but as Superman, he is purely reactive. In fact, superheroes seem almost utterly lacking in imagination: like Bruce Wayne, who with all the money in the world can’t seem to think of anything to do with it other than to indulge in the occasional act of charity; it never seems to occur to Superman that he could easily carve free magic cities out of mountains.

Almost never do superheroes make, create, or build anything. The villains, in contrast, are endlessly creative. They are full of plans and projects and ideas. Clearly, we are supposed to first, without consciously realizing it, identify with the villains. After all, they’re having all the fun. Then of course we feel guilty for it, re-identify with the hero, and have even more fun watching the superego clubbing the errant Id back into submission.

Yes, the rich sex pests that approve which movies get made feel like society is just about right. Big surprise there.

I think the worst one of these I can remember is big hero six. Where the villan saves his daughter from a corrupt military contracting company and goes to jail for it. They really don’t make any attempt to justify it other than he broke stuff. Stuff being the corrupt military contractors office

Where the evil villain will go on a rant about how society is cruel and needs to change and that they’re going to change it. The hero opposes this for like zero reasons and somehow we’re supposed to be on the hero’s side.

• The people are content with their lot but the villain just have to poison their mind with rabble-rousing.

• Better thing is impossible, the villain’s goal is only achievable by doing something bad.

• The villain is lying and only use the rhetorics to gain personal power.

• The villain was good but “went too far” and just fell down the slippery slope.

• What they’re going after is just not their right. It rightfully belongs to the hero or whoever they supported, as they’re the only people in the society deserving of the benefits or responsibility of whatever they’re fighting over by some infallible mandate.

Straight up anti-communist rhetorics from the cold war.

and then the villian murdered a bunch of children despite it not advancing their goals at all, just to demonstrate to the auduence who is supposed to be evil.

I think the funniest variation of that was in Arkham City where the villains’ plan is just “let’s make an open air prison and then kill everyone in it to inspire a wave of fascist reaction across the world!” and Batman’s stance is “well I agree with your tough-on-crime stance but I think your methods are too extreme!” At least in that Batman was trying to change the status quo of Gotham having an open air prison that it was actively airstriking by trying to make it stop having an open air prison that it was actively airstriking.

Another one I hate is that Disney basically told us that Movie Thanos’s* ecofascist plan was right and worked but is still bad. In Endgame society hasn’t full on collapsed from the sudden death of half the planet, people are just sad.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier is far worse. It starts with the premise that the Earth was better for the five years after the Snap. There was housing and food for everyone! Everyone banded together! Not like there were terrible structures in place which would have perpetuated inequality and famine in favor of greed.

And the pseudo-Anarkiddies** who are the villains preach about the communal good, giving power back to the people, etc…then bomb a random building because reasons. Plus the Anarkiddies’ reasoning doesn’t exactly make sense. They were people who enjoyed the 5 years with half the planet dead, but they got moved into concentration camps when the rest of the people came back? Wouldn’t it make way more sense to keep people where they were, then have the newly houseless people returned from the dead be put in concentration camps? No, because we have to have the main villains say “Thanos is right”. Which in the fiction of the universe, he was.

*Comic Thanos’s plan was way cooler. Killing half the universe wasn’t his major plan, it was just a thing he did on a whim because he wanted to impress Lady Death. Dude was crazy and it didn’t even work. Rational eco-fascist nut face from the movies is #notmythanos.

**Love for my anarchist comrades, was one once. But it’s funny call these pseudo-anarchists kiddies.