My thoughts on super, and why so many people hate it

For me, Super was a refreshing satire of every other superhero movie, and it went about its business by walking an extremely fine line between light comedy, serious drama, and ruthless violence. So many of the bad reviews I've seen for this complain about either the violence or the inconsistent tone/characters. But the way I see it, the whole point of the movie was to juxtapose your typical fantasy superhero movie with what it would actually look like if someone dressed up in a silly costume and tried to fight crime; it wouldn't have flashy fight sequences, there wouldn't be witty banter every 2 seconds with perfectly scripted one-liners, and the people trying to act out their superhero fantasies are probably going to be a) very human and b) insane (which Frank and Boltie both very much are).

If I had to boil the movie down, it is essentially a comedy where the humor comes from violating your expectations of what a typical superhero movie should look like. Frank talks about being special and being chosen, but he is more likely just schizophrenic/manic. Boltie at first comes across as the cute and peppy side-kick, but she turns out to be more of a psychopathic nymphomaniac. When Frank is at his most heroic, storming a well-armed gangster hideout to save his kidnapped girlfriend, the way he systematically and cold-bloodedly shoots all of the wounded men on the ground reminds you that he is actually seriously mentally ill. Even at the end, you expect him to get back together with his girlfriend, but it takes the realistic approach of her getting her life back on track and him staying as a crazy, lonely nut-job (what else would you seriously expect to happen in real life?).

Everything that the characters do, if seen only in the context of the movie itself, is dark, horrible, and depressing. But where it becomes interesting is in the way that it implicitly condemns all of the fantasy violence from X-men, ironman, superman, etc. and brings it all crashing down to earth with a few well-executed scenes. If you miss this point, then I am pretty sure you are definitely going to hate the movie. But I think if you pay attention to all of the scenes that seem out of place or weird and actually think about why it seems so out of place, I think you might realize that it's a deeper movie than it seems.

/end rant