It is a generally understood fact that superhero movies hit their peak in terms of popularity and influence in the past decade. After years of scattered efforts from different film studios, the Marvel Cinematic Universe emerged in the 2010s as a unifying force for superhero movies and a franchise juggernaut at the box office, steamrolling the competition and giving every studio in Hollywood a desire to create their own cinematic universe based on existing IP.
With the decade-plus domination of the MCU came a number of smaller superhero live-action projects that serve as a counterpoint to Marvel’s take on superhero culture. The most prominent project on this list is The Boys, Prime Video’s hit streaming series that explores a world where superheroes are far from a benign influence. Let’s look at how, across multiple seasons, The Boys hilariously skewers not just superhero stories but modern superhero movie culture and its massive fandom.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
A World Away from the MCU
Prime Video
The Boys TV show is based on Garth Ennis’ comic book series of the same name. Both the comics and the show tell the story of The Seven, the premier superhero team of the world whose members (or ‘supers’) are pastiches of prominent Marvel and DC Comics characters like Superman, Captain America, Thor, and Wonder Woman.
Standing against The Seven are a group of normal human assassins led by Billy Butcher, who has a personal vendetta against superheroes and a desire to reveal the truth to the world that supers, particularly The Seven, are not benevolent heroes, but cruel, selfish, and perverted monsters who care nothing for humanity. The worst of the lot is the leader of The Seven, Homelander, who is rapidly undergoing a personality downslide from petty egomaniac to full-blown vengeful psychopath.
The Boys Makes Fun of Superhero Tropes
Right from its first season, The Boys explored a world where super-powered beings are not motivated by an all-consuming need to serve humanity, but by their own selfish desires and ambitions. The superheroes in The Boys are full-blown celebrities, and the show uses them to point out the hollowness of celebrity culture, as well as the fans who prop up such personalities with blind worship.
The superheroes, in turn, are shown to despise their fans as inferior beings, while simultaneously craving their approval and acceptance. Much like real-world celebrities presenting a shiny facade to the outside world, the members of The Seven live secret lives behind closed doors filled with drug abuse, domestic violence, and rumors of cruel and violent behavior that somehow never manage to make it to the newspapers.
The Real Big Bad
At first, it seemed like The Boys was showing The Seven as the main villains of the show. But it is confirmed in later seasons that the true overarching villain is Vought International, the company that created The Seven, and owns the rights to the heroes. A thinly-disguised parody of Disney, Vought is in charge of disseminating every piece of information about The Seven to the rest of the world, much like Disney does with the MCU.
RELATED: The Boys VCU: Exploring Every Part of the Vought Cinematic Universe
Over three seasons, audiences see Vought systematically cheat and lie to the public to keep the criminal activities of The Seven a secret, while at the same time turning the superhero team into a multi-billion dollar media franchise complete with movies, documentaries, tie-in branding, and secret dealings with the government.
Capitalism Screws Everyone
The main lesson of The Boys is that, more than any one individual, unchecked capitalism is to blame for society’s problems. The Seven, despite being evil sociopaths, are also victims of capitalism since their very reason for creation in a lab by Vought was to use them as cash cows, with individual members of the team being replaced swiftly if they are deemed too big a risk to the company’s profit margins.
RELATED: The Boys Star Antony Starr Charged With Drunken Assault While Filming Movie in Spain
Similarly, it is a capitalistic system of governance that props The Seven up as saviors of humanity despite their many questionable actions, simply because they “look the part” of heroes that a gullible public can rally behind. This type of system finds an echo in modern superhero movie culture, where the problematic behavior of stars like Ezra Miller is swept under the rug by the studio looking to make a profit at the box office.
The Seamy Underbelly of Superhero Fandom
With later seasons, The Boys explores other taboo subjects relating to superhero fandom. The show introduces a special drug that Billy Butcher uses to gain superpowers just like members of The Seven. This can be seen as a commentary on the rampant steroid abuse that takes place in bodybuilding (and acting) communities out of a desire to gain that coveted “superhero physique.”
Similarly, The Boys takes on the issue of blind fan worship among celebrities, which often results in the fans attacking anyone they see as being opposed to their worldview, like the online flack Martin Scorsese got for daring to question the cinematic validity of the MCU, or the antagonism Chris Pratt received for religious beliefs. On The Boys, Homelander becomes a Trump-like figure, using this same blind devotion from fans to encourage QAnon-style conspiracy theories that lead to real-world violence.
With the show still going strong with new seasons and spinoffs, The Boys looks to be in no mood to slow down with its shrewd commentary on superhero culture in the real world. With the superhero media landscape, the MCU, and the DCU evolving in new directions, it remains to be seen how the series will address those changes and continue to evolve along its own dark, twisted path.
