IVP - Strangely Dim

Superhero Movies I May Have to Make Myself

By David A. Zimmerman

Every one of us has a choice: we can (1) sit on our hands waiting for our dreams to fall into our laps, or (2) go out and make our dreams happen.

Personally, I prefer option 1. Who has time to make all their fantasies into realities? And why should every thought in my head be actualized anyway? I mean, come on, are my thoughts really that substantial?

We live in an age, however, where so much progress is being made that every passing thought, no matter how abstract, has a certain potentiality to it. My house is littered with scraps of paper on which I’ve written the title to my next treatise or the undiscovered rhyme that will revolutionize popular music or the joke that will kill at our next party. I write these things down so I won’t lose them while I’m tending to my household chores—they’re too important to let pass.

But some fantasies, no matter how important we make them out to be, will never become reality. Films on the docket for the near future include A-list superheroes—Spider-Man 3, Superman Returns, Batman Begins, X-Men 3, Fantastic 4 (wait a minute—I never saw Fantastic 1-3!)—but nowhere to be found are the films I make up in my head using characters that only people trapped in a high school locker might recognize:

 Cloak and Dagger: Two orphans living on the street are kidnapped by drug dealers and exposed to toxins that make one the embodiment of darkness, the other the bearer of light. They’re heroes, they’re recovering addicts; they’re dependent on each other, they exist in complete contradiction to one another.
 Daredevil: Born Again: A blind devil with ESP thinks he’s an orphan but discovers that his mother is a nun after his drug-addict ex-girlfriend sells him out to the mob, which then systematically deconstructs his life and tries to kill him.
 The Black Panther: The leader of an African country summers in the United States, where he fights crime and endures systemic discrimination and rampant nationalism.

I have others, believe me. And I’m not alone. I’ve encountered people who have moved heaven and earth to see such dreams become reality: the guy who sews superhero costumes for himself and his wife every Halloween; the guy who pours money into “previews” of superhero films, such as Grayson, he’d like to see in the theater; the woman who nearly fainted from excitement when she met the guy who created the character she was dressed as.

There’s a euphoria that comes with the fulfillment of dreams—even little dreams—that can hardly be matched elsewhere. But not all dreams come true, nor should they. The life I’m living now is not the life of a rock star, a superhero, the president of the United States or a spiritual guru—all of which are lives I’ve dreamed for myself. The life I’m living now is much more simple than all that: enjoying my friends and family, finding satisfaction in my labors and trusting myself and my future to a good God. It’s a good life, and for the most part I didn’t do much to make it happen. It pretty much came to me—kind of the way dreams do.

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Check out my latest dream come true at www.ivpress.com/zimmer-man.