今天突然想起Tom這篇文章（雖然已經是2012年的舊聞了），
沒想到自己的網誌並沒有保留這篇文章，
趕緊來放一下當備份。
喜歡Tom解釋Super Hero的視角！
Tom的原文如下：
Earlier this year, beneath the wind-whipped tarpaulin of a catering tent in Gloucester, I was working on a film with the actor Malcolm Sinclair. Over scrambled eggs at an ungodly hour, he told me something I had not previously known: when Christopher Reeve was young, barely out of Juilliard, he was roundly mocked by his peers on Broadway for accepting the role of Superman. It was considered an ignoble thing for a classical actor to do.
I grew up watching Superman. As a child, when I first learned to dive into a swimming pool, I wasn't diving, I was flying, like Superman. I used to dream of rescuing a girl I had a crush on (my Lois Lane) from a playground bully (General Zod). Reeve, to my mind, was the first real superhero.
Since then some of the greatest actors have turned superheroes into a serious business: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the first venerable knights of the X-Men, who have now passed the baton to Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. In spite of 20 years of mercurial work in the likes of Chaplin and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, it was his rock-star-charismatic yet somehow humble Tony Stark in Iron Man that helped wider audiences finally embrace the enormous talent of Robert Downey Jr. And Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight quite simply changed the game. He raised the bar not just for actors in superhero films, but young actors everywhere; for me. His performance was dark, anarchic, dizzying, free, and totally, thrillingly, dangerous.
Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.
I have never been more inspired than when I watched Harold Pinter speak in a direct address to camera in his Nobel lecture in 2005. "Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond with the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Some times you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost."
Big talk for someone in a silly superhero film, I hear you say. But superhero films offer a shared, faithless, modern mythology, through which these truths can be explored. In our increasingly secular society, with so many disparate gods and different faiths, superhero films present a unique canvas upon which our shared hopes, dreams and apocalyptic nightmares can be projected and played out. Ancient societies had anthropomorphic gods: a huge pantheon expanding into centuries of dynastic drama; fathers and sons, martyred heroes, star-crossed lovers, the deaths of kings – stories that taught us of the danger of hubris and the primacy of humility. It's the everyday stuff of every man's life, and we love it. It sounds cliched, but superheroes can be lonely, vain, arrogant and proud. Often they overcome these human frailties for the greater good. The possibility of redemption is right around the corner, but we have to earn it.
The Hulk is the perfect metaphor for our fear of anger; its destructive consequences, its consuming fire. There's not a soul on this earth who hasn't wanted to "Hulk smash" something in their lives. And when the heat of rage cools, all that we are left with is shame and regret. Bruce Banner, the Hulk's humble alter ego, is as appalled by his anger as we are. That other superhero Bruce – Wayne – is the superhero-Hamlet: a brooding soul, misunderstood, alone, for ever condemned to avenge the unjust murder of his parents. Captain America is a poster boy for martial heroism in military combat: the natural leader, the war hero. Spider-Man is the eternal adolescent – Peter Parker's arachnid counterpart is an embodiment of his best-kept secret – his independent thought and power.
Superhero movies also represent the pinnacle of cinema as "motion picture". I'd like to think that the Lumière brothers would thrill at the cat-and-mouse chase through the netherworld streets of Gotham in The Dark Knight, with helicopters tripping on high-tensile wires and falling from the sky, and a huge Joker-driven triple-length truck upending 180 degrees like a Russian acrobat. I hope that they would cheer and delight at the rollercoaster ride through the skies of Manhattan at the end of Avengers Assemble. These scenes are the result of a creative engine set in motion when the Lumières shot L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat in 1895. The trains just move a lot faster these days. And not just trains; trucks, bikes, bat-mobiles and men in flying, shining iron suits. The spectacle is part of the fun – part of the art, part of our shared joy.
How far I hope we have come since the judgment of Christopher Reeve's peers. Maybe playing superheroes isn't such an ignoble undertaking after all. "I still believe in heroes," says Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury in Avengers Assemble. So do I, sir. So do I.
今年的早些時候，在格洛斯特一個提供餐飲的帳篷下——帳篷的防水油布被風吹得鼓鼓作響，我正和演員Malcolm Sinclair合作拍一部戲。我們不合時宜地吃著炒蛋，他講起了一則我不曾知曉的軼聞：年輕的Christopher Reeve幾乎是剛從茱莉亞學院【紐約著名的表演藝術學校】畢業時就徹徹底底地被百老匯的同儕嘲笑了——因為他接受了飾演超人一角。那時候一位傳統正派的演員這樣做是被視作不甚光彩的。
《超人》電影伴隨著我長大。還是小孩的時候，當我第一次試著在遊泳池里潛水時，我不是在水下潛行，我是在空中飛翔，像超人一樣。我曾經幻想著從操場惡霸（類似Zod這樣的人）手中拯救我喜歡的女孩（我的Lois Lane【《超人》的女主角】）。Reeve，在我看來，是第一位真正的超級英雄。
其後，有些偉大的演員已經把超級英雄（的飾演）變為了嚴肅的演藝事業：如《蝙蝠俠》里面的Micheal Keaton和Jack Nicholson【Tim Burton版】；《X戰警》里令人尊敬的第一代騎士Ian McKellen和Patrick Stewart，如今他們已經將接力棒傳承給了Michael Fassbender和James McAvoy。盡管近20年來小羅伯特•唐尼的作品風格多變，如《卓別林》和《小賊、美女和妙探》，然而正是他本人搖滾明星般的魅力使他不同尋常的天賦最終被更多更廣的觀眾接受，這種魅力甚至使《鋼鐵俠》中的Tony Stark也黯然失色。希斯•萊傑在《黑暗騎士》中的表演堪堪改變了這種局面。他不僅僅為超級英雄類電影里的演員，更為全球所有的年輕演員豎起了一面旗幟——當然，也為我。他對那個陰暗危險的無政府主義角色的刻畫是如此炫目而自如，並且完全地，讓人不寒而栗。
擁有各種才能的演員和任何類別的藝術家一樣，他們的靈感都源於好奇心，源於他們對探知生活全貌的的渴望——無論是光明還是黑暗的，並且想要把他們的收獲反映到自己的作品中去。揭示自己和別人的人性是藝術家本能的追求，美德和活力，抑或是脆弱和不可靠，而這些人性特質都是交替出現的。
我受啟發最深的時刻莫過於2005年觀看Harold Pinter在他獲得諾貝爾獎時的發言【錄像演說】，“戲劇中的真實難以捉摸。你永遠也找不到它，但想要追尋它的欲望無可抵擋。這種追尋本身就是動力。你的任務就是不斷追尋。往往你會在黑暗中偶然窺探到真實的全貌，或者瞟見了一個似是真實的影像、輪廓，卻不自知。然而事實上戲劇藝術中根本就不存在唯一可循的真實。真實有很多種。這些真實彼此相悖，彼此妥協，彼此映射，彼此忽視，彼此嘲笑，彼此熟視無睹。有時你覺得自己把握住了剎那的真實，但它又在你的指間轉瞬而逝、無處可尋了。”
演傻乎乎的超級英雄電影的家夥說起話來還真是大言不慚，我料定你會這樣腹誹。但超級英雄電影給了我們一個可共享的、無信仰的現代神話，從中也能探索到些許真實。在我們日漸世俗、神靈和信仰日益繁多的社會里，超級英雄電影展現了一塊與眾不同的畫布，在這里可以上演我們共有的希望和夢想，以及浩劫般的夢魘。遠古社會有著天人合一的神：龐大的萬神殿為戲劇提供了綿延幾個世紀而不衰的題材；父與子，殉道士類的英雄，命途不佳的戀人，王者之死——這些故事都教會了我們傲慢的危險和謙遜的重要。這正是每個人每天的生活，而我們熱愛它。可能聽起來是陳辭濫調，但超級英雄也會是孤獨、虛榮、傲慢、驕傲的。只是在大多數情況下，他們能克服人性的弱點以追求更高的善。這種救贖的可能性近在咫尺，但我們一定要去獲得它。
《綠巨人》正是我們對憤怒的恐懼的完美化身；還有它毀滅性的影響【大概指破壞力】，它吞噬一切的火焰。這顆星球上可能沒有哪個人不希望在自己的生活中來一場“Hulk式的毀滅”。然而當暴怒的火焰冷卻，我們所剩下的不過是恥辱和悔恨。Bruce Banner，Hulk柔順的另一個自我，常常和平常人一樣，對自己的憤怒感到畏懼。另一個超級英雄Bruce Wayne是哈姆雷特式的超級英雄：一個往日陰影縈繞不去的靈魂，被人誤解，孤獨，永遠背負著為父母不公正的死亡而複仇的命運。美國隊長則是一個海報式人物，展現軍事戰鬥中的英雄主義——天生的領袖，戰爭的英雄。蜘蛛俠是永恒的青少年，Peter Parker那擁有蜘蛛異能的另一身份是他人生最隱秘之處——他獨立的思想和力量——的具象化。
超級英雄電影作為電影，也代表了電影業的頂峰。我很樂意想象Lumière兄弟【就是拍《火車進站》的啦】會因為《黑暗騎士》裡的場景而感到興奮：哥譚市地下街區里上演的貓鼠遊戲，直升機絆上高壓電線然後從高空墜落，以及小醜駕駛的3倍長大卡車像俄羅斯雜技演員那樣180°上下翻轉。我同樣希望他們會喜歡《複仇者聯盟》結尾處在曼哈頓上空上演的過山車之旅，並會為之喝彩。這些場景都是由Lumière兄弟1895年拍攝《火車進站》所開啟的“創意機車”一路飛馳發展至今的結果。只不過如今的火車更快了一些。並且也不止是火車了，還有卡車，自行車，蝙蝠車和穿著閃耀的鋼鐵戰衣飛行的人【閃瞎人眼的妮妮……】。這樣的視覺奇觀是樂趣的一部分，是藝術的一部分，是我們共享的歡樂的一部分。
我希望我們的觀念已經大大超越了下那種判斷的Christopher Reeve的同輩。畢竟，扮演超級英雄也許不再是一件不光彩事情了。“我仍然相信超級英雄。”Samuel L. Jackson在《複仇者聯盟》里扮演的Nick Fury如是說。我和你深有同感，長官，深有同感。
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