Tuesday, Jul. 01, 2008

Chaotic times call for superheros

Now there are superheroes, but once there were secret agents.

In the 1960s, secret agents were the kings (and, occasionally, queens) of popular culture, reigning over both big screen and small. There fantastic four was Sean Connery's James Bond, Robert Vaughn's Napoleon Solo ("The Man From U.N.C.L.E."), Diana Rigg's Emma Peel ("The Avengers") and Michael Caine's Harry Palmer ("The Ipcress File").

Secret agents were the rock stars for all people: hip, glamorous, up to the minute.

How times have changed. Superheroes aren't so much a summer-movie genre as a summer-movie industry. We've already had "Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk." This month brings "The Dark Knight," featuring Batman (with the late Heath Ledger as the villain), and "Hellboy II." There's even a superhero who doesn't come from a comic book, "Hancock," which opens Wednesday.

The only movie secret agent this summer is a joke, literally: Steve Carell's Maxwell Smart, in "Get Smart."

The funny thing is, Bond and most of his brethren are actually little different from comic book characters. Beneath the veneer of shaken-not-stirred sophistication, Ian Fleming's hero is every bit as cartoony as any Marvel comics character -- if not more so. In any comparison of Fleming and Marvel guru Stan Lee, the smart money's on Lee as regards intellectual acuity and psychological depth.

For better or worse, the culture was unwilling four decades ago to acknowledge the authority of the comic book.

During the secret agents' heyday, there was a Batman series -- the campy Adam West one -- during prime time. Instead of the brooding, Wagnerian figure presented in Tim Burton's 1989 film and its many spawn, the Caped Crusader got played for laughs right down to superimposing words like "kapow" and "bam" over the screen.

The secret agent was the Cold War protagonist par excellence, a complex moral agent in the blunt geopolitical struggle between capitalism and communism.

Superheroes, with their all-powerful abilities, are able to leap complexities with a single bound -- an increasingly welcome talent in an age of terrorism where enemies are at once everywhere and nowhere.

Maxwell Smart faced KAOS on TV. As we face chaos in the real world, the appeal of the superhero using his all-powerfulness to embody good and stave off evil extends far beyond the box office. Yet the very anxiety such an age breeds affects even the superhero. Witness the Hulk's rage, Batman's self-doubt, Hancock's boorishness.

The secret agent has never entirely gone away. Bond, the father of them all, very much remains with us. His next outing, "Quantum of Solace," is scheduled for November release. Tom Cruise had his three "Mission: Impossible" remakes. And the "Austin Powers" movies did their jokiest to embalm the secret-agent genre once and for all.

The most potent onscreen spy of recent vintage, Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, underscores the shift. The three "Bourne" pictures aren't actually spy movies; they're paranoid thrillers, a very different entertainment animal.

The '60s were awash in secret agentry. "Dr. No," the first Bond film, kicked off a craze that would include the Matt Helm series, featuring Dean Martin; the "Our Man Flint" films, with James Coburn; and such one-offs as "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold."

On television there were both British imports ("The Avengers," "Secret Agent") and such homegrown shows as "I Spy," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and "The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.," as well as "Mission: Impossible" and "Get Smart."