Diversifying the superhero

In the last decades, superhero movies have become the most financially successful sub-genre of movies, reaching massive audiences globally. Though they have generated a significant amount of academic interest, it still pales in comparison with their cultural impact. Historically, these films have mostly had white male protagonists, though there is a relatively recent push towards diversity in terms of gender and race. I would like to investigate the ways in which this attempt at widening the image of the superhero affects the constructions of the heroic ideal itself. These more diverse films have gathered praise from the represented groups themselves, after all, the same power fantasies can mean something very different to those who have never been allowed to see themselves in them. They have also, however, been accused of appropriating identity politics in order to whitewash the same old narratives which glorify violence and, in particular, the US military – whose direct involvement in many of these films, including veto power over their scripts, is an open but little known fact. What contradictions are embedded in this modification of the classic white male mold?