It’s not uncommon to hear about moviegoers experiencing superhero fatigue right now. That makes sense, given the constant deluge of Marvel content and DC’s varying attempts to replicate that success. So why the hell do we make so many of these movies anyway? Maybe it’s the spectacle of it and the insane backlog of adaptable content created by eighty years of comic books. Maybe it’s that this is just currently the most popular version of something much older. Once in a while, you’ll hear someone discuss humanity’s primal instincts. Those animalistic tendencies that lead us to consume and to fight. But those aren’t the only primal instincts we have. As a species, we also have some more positive primal instincts, to sing and dance, to befriend, to protect. Hell, we’re so aggressively social that we domesticated an apex predator (wolves –> dogs). And to tell stories. I single these instincts out because no matter where you look in the world, there was an ancient society that did exactly these things. Just as fighting with each other (seriously, every culture made a sword pretty early on), we all had gathering together for song and dance and storytelling as an integral aspect of our cultures.

So what were those stories about? What were those stories that were handed down over and over again? That survived no matter how many years went by? We can split those into three categories. First, you have the cautionary tales told to children, to keep them safe. For example, every culture has some creature in the water (often an attractive woman, for some reason) that wants to drown you. It makes sense that these stick around, as those who heed their warnings survive, meaning they’re quite effective at their job. The second are historical and philosophical records, which are written for the express purpose of being handed down to future generations. The third category is the heroic tale, which comes in many forms, from ancient epics to fairy tales to the modern superhero story. And this is the category I most want to talk about today.

These stories are ancient enough that they include the oldest story we know, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Ancient tales of the hero, whoever they may be, are just as integral to what a human is as the need for food, and we see the hero appear in every era in every culture. Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Sun Wukong (or should it be Tripitaka?), Beowulf, Mulan, King Arthur. The hero is an ideal we see replicated and reimagined in every culture. What they are is tailored to the audience, and sometimes they don’t have to be identifiable. When it comes to defining the heroic tale, there’s no practical difference between those named heroes and the nameless knight who slays the dragon in a children’s bedtime story. The hero gets reworked at times, taking new forms to suit the character’s purpose to the audience. Just as the hero can be Odysseus or Mulan leading the charge in wartime, the hero can also be Cinderella, persevering through every hardship that faces her. In some way, in some form, all these ancient stories star heroes, characters struggling for something better, characters the audience needs to be able to look up to. What matters is not the details of their story, but what “The Hero” represents.

And what does the hero represent but the ideal? The classical heroes of ancient myth are consistently larger than life characters of great strength and honor. Gilgamesh represents the ideal that man can reach to the ancient Mesopotamians. Odysseus and his many compatriots from Greek myth are the heroic champions of their gods, often only carrying flaws shared with those gods. Cinderella, as possibly the oldest fairy tale hero, embodies the resilience and belief in a better future that was needed in times of struggle. This pattern repeats and repeats throughout history, appearing again in later myths and fairy tales, appearing in folk heroes like Robin Hood and John Henry, and taking its more modern form in superheroes like Superman and Wonder Woman, and in newer running stories like James Bond. You see them in every genre, with even slice of life stories featuring characters who end up as better people in the majority of instances. Pretty much the only stories that don’t feature these heroes or fit into the molds I’m describing are pure absurdist comedies, and it should say a lot that such stories held in high regard are so rare. Because when something is so integral to the audience, only a master can sell a story that doesn’t somehow embody the ideal.

The ideal varies of course, and sometimes there can be multiple ideals that, while not quite the same, are visibly compatible, both equally worthy to strive for. I can’t demonstrate this point with characters from the last century better than I can with a pair of All American heroes from a rough time in the country’s existence: Superman and Snow White. Superman is often derided for being the boring one, where DC’s colorful roster is concerned, yet the company still holds him up as the center of their sprawling fictional world. Why? Because he is the ideal that world is supposed to strive towards. Superman exists to be the strong man, both physically and morally, the one that can be instantly trusted. He’s not intended to be the most interesting of his compatriots, but he is intended to be the standard the rest of DC’s cast is held against, the one that everybody can comfortably look up to. And for those who find it boring, consider that the same traits are the foundation of his genre, and still being replicated in successful stories now, with Invincible being the most noteworthy of the iterations on the character (I’m talking about Mark here, he’s the Superman analogue because of his ‘invincible’ morals, not his father). From the same era, in a wholly different genre, Disney gave us their reimagining of Snow White. She’s not the most popular of the Disney Princesses nowadays, but it’s become all too common to deride her as weak when she was designed to be the perfect American hero at the time. In a country that was coming out of its greatest economic turmoil, and slowly being set on a path to a necessary war, in a culture that valued hard work, resilience, and a willingness to earn your happy ending, came the heroine who was just that. Snow might be known for being surrounded by animal friends, but those same animals start to abandon her the second she lets herself cry at her misfortune, only returning when she gets herself together, apologizes for reacting that way, and steps up to the situation at hand. She finds asylum with the dwarves for one night, and sets herself to work earning the right to stay there, because she doesn’t expect the handout, but expects to work for her safety. Similarly, while the Prince comes to save her in the end, she never wants for him throughout the story, nor is he ever her goal; he and the safe life he represents are her reward for persevering through the upheaval of (and attempts on) her life. Perhaps that’s not the hero people want right now, the current ideal, but to the audience she was created for, she embodied the values of the culture perfectly, acting as the ideal 1930s American.

And we see these points in much of today’s media, even if it’s not always done well. When Disney remakes their films, they try to modernize the characters to reach a modern ideal, because they know that not everyone wants to be Snow White anymore. Whether or not they are accurate in what that modern ideal looks like is a conversation for another day. When people look at the modern Superman stories, Man of Steel gets trashed by fans for not embodying the ideals of the character, while Invincible ends up beloved for focusing on exactly what made its inspiration so beloved in the first place. The ideals of a culture might shift over time; that is inevitable. But the stories that spring forth from that culture also reflect that, and you can study the development of a civilization’s ideals by cataloging the stories they tell, create, and preserve. These stories, these heroes, they are what the culture wants to be. They are what the storytellers want their audiences to be, what the audiences should want to strive towards.

That, I think, is why these stories keep being told. Why they keep being reworked and reimagined. One of those core human traits, those primal instincts, is to inspire. These stories are told to children from the earliest stage of their lives. They’re shared around campfires and converted into films as we grow up. The details get more complex, the characters get deeper, the story gets more mature, but the hero is still held up in the same way. The ideal, the thing the story is intended to pass along for the audience to strive towards, is carried along in each entry.

It says a lot to me, that when we think of the most influential stories ever told, one that always comes up is Shakespeare’s Hamlet, almost solely for the reason that it starred the first true antihero, the character who didn’t match this mold. The character who wasn’t the ideal. That brings me back to the start of the article, to the cautionary tale. Because as we all know, Hamlet could have avoided his tragedy if he had been more willing to act. Because this is what the antiheroes are for. If they aren’t the ideal, they’re a cautionary tale with flaws the audience can identify to avoid. And as for villain based franchises? They’re the struggle, the one that the hero of each entry needs to overcome to reach their ideal. We pass those villains along as well so that we can see someone new rise to the occasion against them, hence why Freddy Krueger can never win, and why test audiences almost always push for a happy ending if there’s two options. Because what people want is for their ideal to win out, for the thing we’re supposed to strive for to be worth it, to be good enough to overcome that struggle.

No matter where you go, no matter when you go, one of the surest signs of humanity is that we are telling stories of these characters, these heroes. Because among those primal instincts we all have, is the desire to either tell or hear of someone that inspires us all to be better and reach an ideal. And for all that may be wrong with us, I just think that’s amazing.