Heroes Should Fail

With perseverance, legends are made.

As I was re-watching bits of Avengers: Infinity War, I was struck by two things.

First: Marvel movies used to evoke positive feelings within me and I miss the grand, sweeping events of those tales.

Second: the heroes fail. Badly. And it feels so good.

On the surface, the above statement might sound counterproductive, but failure is crucial for stories. It is the catalyst for humility and change, greatness and redemption, triumph and forgiveness, confidence and sacrifice. Those are all basic storytelling components without which a story is made hollow. If the heroes learn nothing because everything’s easy, why be excited for the grand finale when there’s never any doubt? Where’s the excitement for the long-awaited victory?

When Thanos snaps his fingers and half of all life turns to dust, it is a failure of such devastation that the remaining characters can only stand there in shock. Even the Avengers’ theme song, usually rousing and inspiring, is whittled down to a tentative piano solo. These heroes, who have more or less won all previous battles, are without a backup plan, and at half power to boot. Of course I knew they would win in the next movie. Somehow. But knowing that terrible consequences are possible, even to those who are super in some way, is important because it adds that dash of realism to epic tales. Realism is necessary in order for a story to matter to the audience and if it matters, it is one that will be shared for many years.

At the start of Endgame, everyone’s raring to go find Thanos and get the infinity stones back. But when they find him, he’s destroyed the stones. Thor decapitates Thanos with one cathartic sweep, but it’s a hollow victory. Five years pass without a jot of hope. It’s a very long failure, one they can’t shake. Captain America says, “You know, I keep telling everybody they should move on. Grow. Some do. But not us.” Say what you will about the rest of that movie, but that time of being at their lowest was very important and a good story choice. And they do win in the end, but with another failure: the death of Tony and Natasha.

A reason I didn’t like the movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare as much as I could’ve is that the guys cruise through all their objectives. The prison is crawling with guards? No problem. The docks are crawling with guards? Also no problem. The boat needs to be moved? Still no problem. There isn’t enough conflict for them to push against and that also hurt their brotherhood. A difficult mission with no hurdles might as well be a walk in the park. And that’s not very exciting.

Consider The Count of Monte Cristo, Ben-Hur, Dracula, Fullmetal Alchemist, the Red Rising series, most superhero movies, and the ending of The Empire Strikes Back. Even the botched proposal in Pride and Prejudice. You see the good guys fail and you immediately ask, “How are they going to win now?” This failure creates interest in the outcome and makes you invested in their struggle because you can bet there’s going to be a satisfying victory at the end. (See what I mean about it being a basic part of storytelling? Adding failure is an easy way to hook your audience. So long as the character is one they like, which is a problem for a different post.)

Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft is a great book for the main character failing. Senlin goes on his honeymoon to this exotic city but immediately loses track of his wife and spends the rest of the book trying to find her. He doesn’t find her in the first book, but the journey he goes on breaks him and toward the end he does start to re-mold himself into a bolder, better man. I really hope the rest of the series is good because it’s a strong start.

A story can even end with a big failure and still have a strange sense of victory, like 3:10 to Yuma, Braveheart, Gladiator, and The Last Samurai. This is why time travel and the multiverse are hurtful to meaningful tragedies: the failure is impermanent and thus not something to overcome. Failure to a hero means a time of perseverance, a time of fighting to reach a better place. When they say, “I don’t know if I can do this, but I am willing to give it my all,” that is what sets them apart.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve heard is “Don’t be afraid to let bad things happen to your characters.” That’s why girl bosses are unpopular. Their nucleus of existence is to be the hot stuff that never gets burned. There is no failure for them and if there maybe is, it’s swept under the rug and not made into a moment for reflection and learning. There’s nothing of note to take from these characters and as such, they DO fail, but in the wrong way.

Overcoming failure doesn’t have to involve battles and villains. It can take a more personal, internal route. But with that type of failure, it really only works if the character learns from it.

Rory from Gilmore Girls is a great example. After years of being told she’s special and she’s going to do great things, her dream of becoming a reporter is tested when the owner of a newspaper tells her she shouldn’t be a reporter. This guy is painted as a villain and wrong and totally out of line. But he’s right. Very much so, in fact, and this is borne out in the show’s revival (which is garbage) where she is barely a so-so reporter. But she’s had ten years of not being around people who unconditionally love her, and the failures that she must have encountered somehow never made a dent on her. She went on a presidential campaign after college and no one realized and acted on the fact that she’s not cut out to be a reporter? How is this possible, aside from bad writing? I think she should’ve crashed and burned a lot sooner and in the revival she could revisit being a writer. The failures that she has, regardless of their severity, are often twisted around to not be her fault. It’s detrimental to her character. Why didn’t she learn? That’s her schtick. She learns, she studies, she’s a good student. Apparently not when it comes to life, even though it’s borderline impossible that she never met another person who said she shouldn’t be a reporter. Rory failed to learn from her obvious shortcomings.

Another example of never learning from failures is the tv show The Flash. I quit watching part way through season five mostly because of Nora, whom I hate. But another reason is these characters would have the same miscommunications, forgetfulnesses, troubles, self-doubts, judgment errors, miscalculations etc. etc. for multiple seasons…AND LEARN NOTHING. I don’t even know how many times Barry doubted if he could run fast enough. It didn’t matter that pretty much every time, he did, because next time around, he’s all “I don’t know if I can run fast enough.” Like, dude, you can do it. You did it last week and you’ve been doing it for years. (And by the way, you’re the leader of the group, so accept it already.) I know they did it for the drama and the fact that it was a CW show, but my goodness, everyone in that show has a special kind of brain damage. A character can have the same troubles thrown at them a couple times before they really learn from it and do better. But if it takes them many moons and they still haven’t made the tiniest move toward improvement, it’s gonna start to annoy the audience.

An offshoot of not learning from failures is when the character is told by an expert that they’re not ready and the character then ignores the advice, goes in, screws up and isn’t humbled by the failure. Not to park too much on The Flash, but Nora, with her blazing IQ, thinks that because she can also run fast like Barry, she is as good and useful as he is. She doesn’t compute the idea that his years of experience might give him an edge and if he says she shouldn’t come on a mission, maybe she shouldn’t come on a mission. But Nora and her blazing IQ decide that she knows better and oh look, she completely ruins the mission. I’m not saying that arrogance or asking for a chance are not viable avenues for a novice; they are. And maybe they get lucky and succeed that first time. But if this is a young or inexperienced person, as soon as those training wheels go off, they need to hit a wall. And that wall needs to humble them and impart some rock-solid experience that they will then use going forward. I don’t remember that failure having a positive impact on Nora and that’s about the time I quit watching the show.

These are just some flavors for failures. One to keep an eye out for with the upcoming holiday season is miscommunication and misjudgment, two staples in lame Christmas movies—and boy, have I seen some lame Christmas movies. Those aren’t quite so damaging as losing half of all human life, but even the mildest stories need obstacles if they have any hope for a semi-compelling 90 minutes.

The ultimate goals of failure are to learn and then be better, and characters who never learn will stagnate and become boring. What readers/watchers want, whether or not they realize it, is for these characters to fail, and then get better. It might sound cheesy, the whole “you fall down but you get back up again” mantra, but it is a universal message of hope and healing and general betterment. That is what heroes should represent, spandex or no. When you are down, you want to see someone else getting back up and extending the metaphorical hand to you. Because no matter what comes, no matter how many times we are beaten down, we should give it all to stand up one more time.

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What is the best fictional failure that led to victory?

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I’m Not a Big Re-Reader of Fiction

Books that SHOULD be Adapted

Things I Miss About Prime Time TV

Brutality, Honor, and “The Lords of Discipline” by Pat Conroy

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