Troperville
Help us survive. All donations are anonymous on the wiki and unacknowledged, as we don't wish to create a hierarchy among Tropers.
Editing
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Useless Super Science "Stardust, whose vast knowledge of interplanetary science has made him the most remarkable man that ever lived, devotes his abilities to crime-busting..."
"Nobody thinks of the idea of using this to help out real-life cocaine addicts because that would actually make sense."
The observation that in some genres, characters can have fantastic technology far beyond our own, yet this technology only gets used to solve equally fantastic problems.
A person who controls weather will never make it rain in a place famous for drought. A person who can control fire will never stop brush fires or get a job at a power station. And a supergenius (such as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four) who can whip up anti-alien parasite vaccines on command will never take a weekend to cure cancer (or even five minutes to find out what causes piss shivers). All potential solutions to real-life problems will only be done in novel (fictional) situations - useless. Status Quo Is God, and the status quo of the real world even more so. It's the same reason you can't stop Hitler from starting World War II.
There are three typical motivations for this:
1) To keep the world similar to the real world. This is particularly common in an Urban Fantasy or another sci-fi / fantastical series set in a world that is superficially similar to the real world, such as the superhero (sub)genre; unlike, say, Star Trek or Lord Of The Rings, which take place in worlds clearly removed from the reader's own, one of the key draws of the series is it could be taking place right outside the reader's window, a draw which is lost if you make the fictional world too fantastic in comparison. This is particularly common in comic books, where major modifications to the world are only done to fictional locations, and often only to current levels of technology.
2) To ensure that there's some level of drama in the story. If the super science or magic can literally do anything, then the heroes can just use the super science to get them out of any jam. Goodbye potential conflict. Even in the case of Star Trek, there were tons of things the replicators and transporters should have been able to do which would have ruined the plot of half the episodes, necessitating a lot of Holding Back The Phlebotinum to maintain drama.
3) To avoid trivializing real-life problems. This particular application dates back to World War II; the editors and writers of the time felt it would be disrespectful to have superheroes solve world problems, since the next day would still see hundreds of soldiers fighting and dying over the same issues, with most comic books of the time instead focusing on the characters' fictional universes (although some, notably Captain America, did featured Allied heroes fighting in zero-sum games with Axis villains). A similar governing principle exists today, since if Mr. Fantastic actually does discover, say, a cure for cancer in the Marvel Universe, there's going to be plenty of real-world sufferers still suffering from it when they finish reading the comic, and they aren't necessarily going to be too thrilled with the suggestion (however inadvertent) that the only hope of curing them is to hope for a comic book superhero to solve the problem.
This justification may be offered even if the solution is on a small enough scale that the first motivation doesn't apply; curing one case of cancer isn't going to make the world different from our own — but then, if you can cure that one case, why can't you cure all the others? And what makes that one case more deserving of the cure than any of the others?
This trope is often associated with Fantastic Aesop, where the moral is that these are problems with no easy solution in the real world, and as is common for Fantastic Aesop, the moral doesn't fit very well into the fictional world. However, as superhero comics especially have begun to explore the ramifications of their characters on real-world settings more closely over the years, this question has been raised (and addressed) more frequently. It is sometimes lampshade hung as making people "too dependent" on superheroes. You would think comic book citizens are already dependent on superheroes to defend them from supervillains, but apparently not. It's a good thing Louis Pasteur didn't feel this way.
Sometimes the writers try to hide this implication behind The World Is Not Ready, or the necessity of a Masquerade. This doesn't really make sense in a traditional Super Hero universe, given that Reed Richards, the titular character for this trope, lives in Manhattan in a gigantic skyscraper in the shape of the number 4. He is not trying to keep out of sight. Furthermore, the official explanation of his wealth is that it comes from his patents; this makes it seems as if he's selling off minor trinkets while keeping the good stuff for himself, which is certainly not what the authors intended.
Newly-created Super Hero universes tend to avert this, especially if the writer is trying to make a geopolitical statement. Stories set in the far future may also be exempt from the second version.
Oddly enough, this doesn't apply to supervillains.
See Ignores Aesoptinum for aversions and also Plausible Deniability.
Examples
Anime
- Magic in Mahou Sensei Negima is also kept hidden behind the usual Masquerade, preventing mages from exposing their identities and openly using magic to help people. Starting with the Tournament Arc, one character leads the Mahora scientist faction in a coup to expose magic to the world and thus force the mages' hand. The idea of being able to freely use magic to help people proves quite seductive to some characters; mages do work to help humanity, but there's only so much they can do when they also have to maintain the masquerade. Even Negi has quite a bit of trouble justifying his opposition.
- Averted in Death Note: Light Yagami, the brightest student in Japan, aspires to be a detective until he gets distracted by the little matter of creating a Utopia and becoming a god. The series goes on to subvert this trope by having Light's day job be with the police team working to bring him to justice.
- Averted in Shin Mazinger. Kouji's grandpa, a scientist, has a huge number of patents and uses the money to fund even more research. He's also made major breakthroughs in robotics and renewable energy.
- Similarly, Professor Saotome in Getter Robo was planning on using the Getter machines for space exploration before the defense of the planet took a forefront.
- Averted in Baccano!, where some of the remaining alchemists use their pseudoscientific knowledge for mundane, semi-commercial (although rarely legal) purposes. For example, the Runorata mafia has an one on their payroll for the purposes of synthesizing new drugs for release on the black market.
Comic Books
- With regard to the trope's namesake, in recent years Marvel have attempted to justify Reed Richards by making it a matter of cost — Reed invents machines and solutions too costly to recreate. Mr. Fantastic is only smart enough to build a flying car, but not quite smart enough (or too busy) to make it run on anything less complicated than comet gas or the pain of damned souls or whatever. Another frequent justification is that Reed could invent some of this stuff, but his mind works at such an advanced level that no one else would fully understand the equations and formulas he comes up with (or even comprehend them at all), so it would be near-impossible - or even dangerous - for anyone else to duplicate it anyway.
- The Ultimate Reed Richards is even smarter, and consequently more useless. When he fights the Ultimate Sub-Mariner, he's invented a helmet that turns his every thought into concrete reality (yet still manages to lose!). Surely, even a scrap of such a device's technology could be put to immeasurable practical use.
- The rationale/Hand Wave behind this is that everything he does is financed by the army, and most of his discoveries are consequently classified or reserved solely for their use, and he's mostly only allowed to work on projects that they request (or his own pet projects like holographic baby versions of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America). Tony Stark, on the other hand, apparently invented the mp3, and is presumably funding lots of research on cancer, since he has an inoperable brain tumor.
- Which is still a retarded explanation. Tell me of one administration who would not want to declare "Under our leadership the army developed a cure for AIDS/Cancer". Instant re-election guaranteed.
- In a recent plotline, Doom travels back in time to stop Reed from changing the world. The future-Four follow him, and Doom is forced to admit that the future is a paradise, and the only reason he wants to stop Reed is so that he can do it. Reed sends him to a alternate universe where all the heroes are dead, leaving future-Doom as the only superpowered being.
- Hand Waved somewhat during the Mark Waid run on Fantastic Four, when one issue revealed that Reed does indeed make money from some of his patents... by taking money from other corporations to delay releasing advanced products that would revolutionize whole industries overnight and likely destroy the world economy by putting millions out of work. For instance, he takes money from Sony not to release a portable super-computer he has developed, which would presumably pose a significant risk to Sony's current market share and operational procedures (and those of other computer manufacturers as well). He presumably does this with other advanced technologies, but it is not specified which ones; a later issue mentions him selling a cure for acne to Revlon.
- Doctor Doom has a healing ray machine that can regenerate full-body third-degree-burn patients to full health in a day. Being the bad guy, he hasn't released it. But Reed hasn't even tried to duplicate or reverse-engineer that project... and anything Doom can do Reed can do, and vice versa.
- Doom uses it for his nation only, wend he takes over the world he tends to use all his tech to fix the world's problems
- And on the non-canon side, the premise of Steve Engelhart's Fantastic Four: Big Town is basically "What If Reed Richards wasn't useless?"
- A Running Gag in the 80s John Byrne run was that various characters would ask Reed why he hasn't cured cancer/created a super cleanser/perfected cold fusion/etc. His usual response was "What makes you think I haven't tried," followed by a short burst of technobabble explaining why he hadn't succeeded.
- This troper remembers coming across a "what-if" comic involving the death of Susan Storm. A case of
Break The CutieBreak The Scientist causing Reed Richard to lose it, and using all his mental ability to go after those responsible, dealing with them in some rather cold and horrible ways. Be glad he's useless.
- I've heard it said either here or in SomethingAwful's comic book threads that Richards and other scientific and magical geniuses would've been unable to save someone from, say, a gunshot wound because it's not a fantastic science or magic problem.
- There is technology higher than the real world's available in the Marvel Universe- everything from ray guns to cybernetics to jet packs and more; it's just too expensive for the average person. This is the very reason for the existence of companies such as Tony "Iron Man" Stark's, which provides wealthy organizations like SHIELD with their equipment. Sometimes it even filters down to less rich people, for example if stolen. Of course, why the process for making it all cheaper hasn't been invented is a good question.
- Not if you know modern tech like, well, aerospace in general. Manned space flight is solely practiced by NASA; which is both A). a research agency more interested in building new tech instead of streamlining the old - so it all remains expensive fifty freaking years after it was developed. and B). a regulatory agency, making it the only business in the US that is permitted to deny licensing to their competitors, meaning nobody else gets to try. A less soul-crushing example is supersonic flight - the Concorde wasn't advanced enough to be efficient and therefore wasn't profitable. The new SSBJs (Super Sonic Business Jets) are a more reasonable attempt at developing a market for the technology. Stark and Richards probably have prototype wondertech up the wazoo but no market to develop it into commercially viable products - The Government isn't going to let their contractors provide protesters with Powered Armor and Flying Cars.
- Marvel Comics's New Universe, published in the late 1980s, was possibly one of the first aversions, including such things as military use of supers and the complete and utter (accidental) destruction of Pittsburgh by a "hero" who was trying to get rid of his own powers. Interestingly, though, it started out as "The World Outside Your Window", trying to be more like the real world than the established universes.
- This trope was completely averted in the graphic novel Watchmen, where superheroes have been changing history for thirty years before the story starts. The plot revolves around the big changes (like America winning the Vietnam War, and Nixon halfway through his fifth term as President in 1986, electric cars), but there are literally hundreds of smaller and more subtle ones (prevalence of pirate comics), some of them only found hidden in the background of a single panel.
- Both used and averted in Alan Moore's other work The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen: by 1958, Earth has been invaded by Martians, there was a huge scale Air-War in Europe prior to World War I, and Britain was controlled by IngSoc from 1945 through 1953, yet absolutely none of this has had any effect on the Cold War, World War II, or, in fact, anything regarding the general course of history. Of course, this is what happens when you combine all of fiction into one universe.
- The DCU seems to be moving away from this slightly in the wake of Infinite Crisis - socially, at least, the world in general has been shook up. However, it's too early not to expect the pendulum to swing back, when considering such past examples like every human being on Earth temporarily developing superpowers in an effort to fight an ancient, godlike destroyer of worlds after a heavenly host of angels stop World War Three in a ridiculously epic climax without any apparent changes in the political or religious climate of the world. Thank you, Grant Morrison.
- Superman in general has often wrestled with the fact that he can't use his superpowers to simply force away wide-ranged problems plaguing humanity. Attempts to bring about world peace by disposing of nuclear weapons didn't fare too well in the fourth Superman movie or the premiere of Justice League. His attempt to cure starvation in third-world countries is detailed in the graphic novel "Peace On Earth". This results in An Aesop being that these are things that will only be solved when all of humanity chooses to solve them. There are often short-lived Alternate Universe depictions of him going too far in forcing humanity to follow his ideals to solve these problems, thus becoming a Knight Templar.
- The beginning of the animated movie Superman: Doomsday lampshades this, as it shows Supes unsuccessfully trying to cure cancer; he comments how odd it is that, even with all of Kryptonian technology at his disposal and all of the unbelievable things he's done, he's never been able to help Earth beyond "being its resident strong man". Of course, his immediate reaction to every threat the movie throws at him after that is "hit it with my fists until it stops moving", so maybe that's his own fault.
- Contrast to Lex, who sells such cures them in a Reed manner (not that Reed would do that kind of thing, mind you).
- Averted completely in the classic for all the wrong reasons Imaginary Story "Superman Red and Superman Blue", in which Superman is duplicated into two identical Supermen. Not only does this provide a handy solution to the Silver Age "Lois or Lana" Love Triangle, but the extra free time and the fact that two Supermen are working together allows them to solve all of humanity's problems, by among other things building a device that eliminates evil. The issue of free will is never brought up.
- Explored in the series Superman: For Tomorrow, where at one stage Superman intervenes in a nameless Third World country, in the throes of civil war. Using his super speed etc, he flies in and removes all the weapons etc from either sides armies. There's a Dramatic Pause as the people register their shock and realisation of this... and then pick up rocks and continue fighting. "Hate will find a way", seems to be the message.
- That plot is lifted directly from Captain Atom #22 and #23, published in 1988, in which Cap intervenes in a Central American civil war by disarming both the Soviet-backed Communist government and the American-backed rebels. Needless to say, they continue fighting with rocks, sticks, shovels, kitchen implements, etc. Lampshaded when Nightshade (Nightshaded?) tells Cap "Guns don't kill people—people do!"
- One seems to recall, that only time Supes has succeeded in making an utopia out of the world, was in Superman:Red Son... A communist utopia at that.
- Warning: Communist Superman Utopia may contain lobotomies. Do not take if you are sensitive to thought police.
- And the Utopia is achieved with the help of Brainiac...
- One recent storyline had him simulate what the world would be like without him. It turns out to be identical to ours, right up to the point where some guy writes a comic about a guy in tights called "Superman".
- Batman is at least partly an aversion, as Bruce Wayne regularly pours his millions into charity and humanitarian causes, but this troper has read at least one excellent fanfic pointing out that Bruce's obsession with dressing as a bat and beating up the criminals infesting Gotham may have distracted him from using his family fortune and extensive business empire to save Gotham City through social and economic reforms.
- Addressed by the movie Batman Begins, where Bruce's parents were doing just that, but failed because of the influence of the mob, leading Bruce to the conclusion that social and economic reform wouldn't be enough to break the stranglehold of organized crime.
- Furthermore, his parents might have pulled it off the Big Bad hadn't arranged their deaths. A Big Bad which only Bats can defeat, of course. But then Batman proves to be useless in the sequel when it's his fault everyone turns to the Joker.
- Explored briefly in one of the recent comic arcs, Bruce learns that Kord Industries, which he had been using to develop his equipment, was bought out by european investors who fired Bruce from the board of directors. Bruce explained to Alfred that while he has enough supplies for a while, it means that the equipment stored at Kord will either be released in the public sector, or kept in the hands of government agencies and whatever less-than-noble person who can get access. There's a good reason that Batman doesn't put his stuff out for sale.
- This trope is used to justify Barbara "Batgirl\Oracle" Gordon remaining wheelchair-bound despite the ready availability of possible cures in The DCU: she doesn't want to receive special treatment and therefore dishonor public servants who were disabled in the line of duty; either a cure becomes available for everyone, or she stays in the chair.
- There's also that some cures that have worked for other characters (Ravan, Gangbuster, etc.) won't work on her, as her spinal damage was more extensive than theirs. Some other possible cures, such as Green Lantern rings, have been retconned to be only temporary in effect.
- Overtaken By Events — spoilers are that Barbara's going to be seeking a cure in this years' comics. And putting the Batgirl costume back on.
- the real reason for it is because it would be a slap to the face for the handicap everywhere, "Because you can't save the world if your legs don't work" plus she's been Oracle longer than she's been batgirl, also it would be like Dick going back to being Robin.
- On one occasion, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner gets phenomenal cosmic powers. Among the things he does with them is help him draw his comic strip better. Oh, and hand out customized food packets to starving people in Africa.
- In the process of solving most of the humanitarian problems, however, Superman points out the increasing number of cults and Misaimed Fandoms that have sprung up around Kyle as a savior, relying upon him to solve -all- their problems no matter how small.
- Lampshade hung, and almost subverted in James Robinson's Starman, where the original Starman (the title character's father) dedicated his later years to turning his cosmic rod into a more general energy source that would revolutionalise the world. Although a visitor from the future claimed his success led to him becoming a scientific hero on the level of Einstein, it never actually happened in The DCU.
- Robinson's series ended with Ted Knight having finished all the research necessary to use his cosmic energy powerplants for commercial applications, and leaving all his notes with his son Jack with instructions to license the patents. Predictably, every writer since in the DCU has completely forgotten this ever happened.
- The graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel (the Marvel Universe's Mar-Vell, not the better known Fawcett/DC one) hung a lampshade on this by claiming that every (mortal) sentient race has a disease similar to cancer, and that none of them have ever found a cure for it. Furthermore, when Rick Jones appeals to the superheroes who are scientists and doctors to find a cure for Mar-Vell's cancer, they find themselves uncomfortably realizing they could have made this kind of effort beforehand for others.
- Which just raises questions on to how we've managed to cure certain types of cancers IRL...
- In a What If based on this story, Mar-Vell got his cure. And it created a contagious form of cancer that nearly wiped out humanity. And the Kree, and the Skrulls, ending their war.
- The scientific portion of that is at least justifiable. Cancer is a random mutation of a body cell into an undifferentiated, individual cell. Any organism that's made out of cells that can mutate has all the conditions needed for cancer.
- The fictional African nation of Wakanda in Marvel Comics is, due to a surreptitious abundance of Unobtainium as a natural resource, a first world nation. This does not extend to any other part of Africa we see, though this is probably why writers don't show that very much. Although to their credit from fairly early on they attempted to justify it by having the Wakandans have a policy of isolation that goes back centuries. Don't forget, the Wakandans have also cured cancer but are holding out on the rest of the world. Seriously. The UN effectively offered anything for the cure. Wakandans got offended at the notion and refused. When Mar-Vell was dying of cancer, the Wakandan King was there and said he could do nothing. Sorry, Mar-Vell!
- Back when a good writer (Christopher Priest) was on the book, Wakanda only became super-advanced after Ulysses Klaw attacked Wakanda, killing hundreds, including King T'Chaka. The actual advancing was done by sending children to study in Europe and the U.S. and taking what they learned back home (kinda like what Japan and China did). It didn't hurt that the new King, young T'Challa (aka The Black Panther), was a genius up there with Reed Richard and Dr. Doom, and had a key role in making the country a technological marvel. This was later retconned to say that Wakanda had always been thousands of years more advanced than every other country, ever since the ice ages, and T'Challa actually hasn't invented anything, he just inherited lots of cool toys. Presumably someone thought it was a good idea to retcon away the title character's greatest accomplishment, modernizing a country into a world power, in order to have him inherit a utopia instead.
- Hudlin: retroactively making Black Panther and the Wakandans not simply as useless as the other scientists, but a massive Jerkass!
- Another subversion in yet another out-of-mainstream examination of the comic book hero: in the Squadron Supreme miniseries, resident genius Tom Thumb devises and sells effective personal force shields, 'rehabilitation' (read 'brainwashing') devices, limited-lethality stunning weapons and various other amazing devices as part of the 'Utopia Project' wherein he and his fellow Supremes try to create an ideal society. He was unable to find a cure for the cancer that was killing him, however, so instead he developed a form of suspended animation through which the terminally ill could be kept indefinitely until a cure is found. In the end, every one of his inventions proves to have some catastrophic flaw in it, or else is rejected by society after the Utopia Project goes south.
- Another Wildstorm example. In Wildcats 3.0, the leader of the titular superhero team, sought to use the advanced extra-terrestrial technology that belonged to his creators to change the world. The limitless batteries alone caused quite a stir.
- Yet another aversion, the comic Invincible has a character, Atom Eve, who was initially a part of a teenager superhero team, but later realize that it would be better to use her matter transmutation power in a more practical way, such as helping the people suffering from famine in Africa by turning their drought-ridden land into fertile fields.
- Also averted in the Wild Cards Shared Universe novels, where the existence of Xenovirus Takis-A victims (especially the grotesquely deformed 'jokers' - superpowered 'aces' actually have less of an impact) radically alters the course of history in a variety of ways (but not quite to the point of being unrecognizable). On the other hand, the work of "Mechanic" type supers generally can't be duplicated by others, and are sometimes "dummy devices" powered by their creators.
- Justified in the Wild Storm comic Planetary, in which the villains are a thinly veiled version of the Fantastic Four, and the Reed analog purposely keeps their discoveries and inventions from the world for personal gain.
- Real reason why Fourth man founded Planetary was because this really pissed him off. And in last, never released, issue, according to the script, Planetary uses their technology to turn world into Utopia.
- Examined by Warren Ellis in the "Change Or Die" storyline of the Image/WildStorm comic Stormwatch, in which a team of Expy superhumans attempts to radically change the world with their trademark abilities;
Superman The High shares his ideas on society developed over several decades with his super-brain, Doctor Strange The Doctor Breaks the Masquerade by teaching everyone magic, Iron Man The Engineer creates an oasis of Nanomachines in Nevada capable of producing food, energy, medicine, and nearly anything else people would need without limit, Deadman The Eidolon teaches the world of The Nothing After Death, Wonder Woman Wish forcibly declassifies government secrets such as cancer cures, Jet Packs, Alien Abductions, etc. Of course, The Government sends assassins to kill them all, and hits the place with a chemical weapon to destroy the nanotech. The justification for Reed Richards choosing to be Useless is because he doesn't want to be executed.
- Warren Ellis examined the trope further with Stormwatch's successor, The Authority. One arc, "The Nativity" explicitly asks the question "Why do super-people never go after the real bastards?" The Authority, like the Stormwatch superhumans, did devote their time to solving the problems of humanity; The Engineer in particular. She developed a cure for leukaemia and spent her spare time developing renewable energy. The Authority are also pretty thorough about addressing the crimes perpetrated by humans rather than superhumans - such as totalitarian regimes. However, this backfires: they are accused of presenting "unfair competition" for medical and industrial companies, and blamed for mass redundancies. Moreover, after the Coup D'Etat storyline The Authority become the unelected government of the USA, which, all things considered, was a tad hypocritical of them. Not that they were squeaky-clean heroes to begin with..
- "The Nativity" wasn't wrote by Ellis.
- Homage comics "Ultra" had the Cowgirl using her powers to build canals in Africa. On the other hand, the "fighting bad guys" aspect was less effective, as the heroes had to follow agency protocols.
- Averted by the recent Thor relaunch, which has seen Thor helping a medical camp in Darfur and berating his fellow heroes for failing to do anything about Hurricane Katrina (while, as a storm god, feeling guilty about it himself even though he was dead at the time).
- Virtue (Ethan Edwards) currently uses his healing powers to help the sick in Africa after its pointed out that he can help more people with this then by just being another superhero.
- Albert Destine tried to use his healing powers to stop the Black Death, but was unable to do so.
- Averted in the comic Invincible Iron Man v4 05, where Tony Stark buys a company that sells soft drinks solely because they have vending machines everywhere in Africa and he wants to use them to sell Retrovirals and later the AIDS vaccine.
- In the first run of New Warriors, the titular team decides to use their powers to resolve a civil war in 'Trans-Sabal.' They only manage to make matters worse and receive a resoundingly righteous ass-chewing from Henry Peter Gyrich upon their return.
- Averted in the comic The Boys, where the government employs a group specifically to keep the 'capes' in line. Of course, Garth Ennis is a bloody-minded bastard and the supes get up to all kinds of mischief anyway.
- The Boys is a weird one, as it turns out that superheroes really are useless. When The Seven try to avert the comics' version of 9/11, they fuck it up catastrophically. The message, of course, being that the military and other trained resque organizations are the real heroes.
- Completely Averted in Miracleman by Alan Moore and then Neil Gaiman: After defeating the big bad, the super heroes do take over the world and make it a Utopia.
Jobe: "If the end doesn't justify the means, you're working on the wrong problem!"
- Justified in the case of the Atom's shrinking technology: Ray Palmer wanted to commercialize it, tried to commercialize it, and had to abandon the hope because everything exposed to the reducer exploded upon re-expansion. Only Ray himself could use it to both shrink and grow, owing to a unique energy within his body. Of course, making anything explode sounds exploitable...
- Ex Machina plays with this trope. The main character is a former superhero who has the ability to talk to machines (so he could tella train to stop itself, tell a computer to turn itself on, and tell a gun to jam itself). However, he hangs up his cape after he screws up a bit too much (plus the government specifically forbade him from doing any more superheroing while it was studying his gear). He only goes back to work on 9/11, where he's not quite fast enough to stop the first plane, so one tower is still demolished (he saves the other one). He then decides to run for mayor of New York City, figuring he'll do more good in that role. For the most part, he's correct.
- Subverted in Rising Stars. After a considerable amount of fighting, the people with superpowers (Specials) realize, what are their powers for, and use them to end drug trade, defeat organized crime, destroy nuclear weapons and so on.
- Spider Man's webbing. Real life spider silk is, pound for pound, stronger than steel, tougher than Kevlar, as flexible as yarn, and incredibly lightweight. It's also prohibitively hard to manufacture, as spiders don't "farm" well. Peter Parker somehow has managed to manufacture spider silk (or a synthetic that's very close to the real thing) that's cost-effective enough for him to always be in supply, and yet he doesn't seem to feel the need to release the formula so it can be used as a revolutionary building material.
- In the early Ditko-era comics Spidey actually did try to sell his webbing formula to an adhesive company. They didn't buy it because his webbing only lasts for an hour before dissolving, making it virtually useless as an adhesive much less as a building material. Also, Spider-Man knew that he could modify the webbing to better suit their purpose, but it would cost him a lot of money he didn't have.
- Indeed, Peter's efforts to profit from his scientific creations were frequently thwarted by his desire to keep his Secret Identity. Once, he did find a buyer for his web formula but the deal fell through when they asked who to make the check out to and Peter realized he couldn't cash a check made out to Spider-Man. And even ignoring the negative opinion the general public has of Spider-Man thanks to The Daily Bugle and J. Jonah Jameson's editorials, no respectable company would hand Spider-Man a suitcase full of money as payment for his web formula nor would the government allow him to anonymously apply for the patents required to profit off of his creation.
- Of course, that offers no reason why Peter Parker couldn't have done it himself, without even mentioning Spiderman. Even if you argure that it would have been suspicious that he'd developed it on his own, since he had access to university chemical research facilities, it's difficult to believe he couldn't have "discovered" it there.
- The movie also kind of invokes this, Spiderman's web slinging skills is linked to his DNA.
- Subverted in the Thunderbolts #130 where Norman Osborn does cure cancer with the intent of using it to kill Deadpool.
- The DCU stories set during World War Two explained why the superheroes didn't just Blitzkrieg into Berlin and end the war: Adolf Hitler had acquired the Spear of Destiny, which he could use to control any superpowered being that entered the boundaries of the Reich. Later, Hitler's belief in the Spear's power was discussed in an episode of Justice League Unlimited.
- In the comics that were published during the early days of World War II, it was not uncommon to see superheroes intervening in, if not outright stopping, conflicts that involved thinly veiled Nazi proxies. The story where Superman brings Hitler and Musollini to justice is the most famous example of this trend. This changed when United States actually entered the conflict - many non-powered and low-powered heroes continued to fight the Nazis on the front lines, while the more powerful superheroes focused their efforts on fighting Nazi schemes at home. As stated above, the real reason for this was the writers didn't want to trivialize the war by having their imaginary heroes solve it in days, while thousands of real troops were dying. When the tide of war turned in the Allies' favor, the writers became more open to having more powerful heroes participate in battles, but even then, the heroes weren't allowed to completely defeat the Axis forces.
- Subverted in, of all places, in the Hellraiser comic Pinhead vs. Marshal Law: Law in Hell, where a bunch of Captain Ersatz superheroes wind up inside Pinhead's memories of World War One. Their attempts to help fail spectacularly, with things like the guy in power armor sinking in the mud and the guy with eye beams choking on poison gas, while the hero made of rock who can shrug off bullets gets blown apart by much heavier artillery.
Pinhead: Those idiots! What do they think they can achieve in a real war.
- In the 'Marvel Knights' miniseries, 'Silver Surfer: Requiem.' the Surfer prepares to leave earth for good, and return home, having contracted 'super-cancer.' Before he leaves, he talks to Spider-man about how he might change the world: they review several previous examples, decide all of them are unusable and talk about other things. Later in the issue the Surfer grants the 'Power Cosmic' to MJ, giving her the power to fly in space, among other things. He then does the same thing (on a lesser scale: sans space travel.) to the rest of the planet: 'The world stopped for four seconds: no war, no violence, no hate.'
- An obscure Golden Age example. In Target Comics "Calling 2R" feature, a benevolent scientist known only as Skipper transformed his estate into Boystate, a high-tech refuge for unwanted boys. Boystate residents a variety of high-speed aircaft (by 1940s standards), "force wall" forcefields, cosmic-ray-powered healing chambers, portable radio communicators and other nifty gadgetry. But while Skipper was very happy to share his technology with his charges, he went out of his way to make sure it never left Boystate's confines. The later stories averted it when World War II broke out and Skipper was ordered to develop high-tech weaponry for the army. He was happy to comply.
- In What If Spider-Man Keept His Cosmic Powers, Spidey don't loss powers of Captain Universe, but started to fell responsible for whole world, right to the point he asked Thor to bring rain in area affected by drought. And when Thor tried to explain him, that this would cause drought somewhere else, Captain Spidey gets pissed off and beats him.
- Norman Osborn found cure for cancer.... and turned it into a wepon to kill Deadpool. That's massive dickery.
Film
- In the Iron Man movie, Tony Stark's power cell is stated as being able to generate 3 gigajoules per second of energy - which is, of course, 3 gigawatts of power generation. This is about as much power as produced by the largest man-made nuclear reactor and about 15 times the power of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier (and two and a half times the power required to travel through time). He uses it for flying robots.
- Earlier in the movie, the trope is averted: Stark mentions that his company produces crop-growing and medicinal technology.
- He also says that he wants to get the company back on examining how to make the technology available to everyone, so it's not like he's literally holding out on them just so he can have his flying robot all to himself. He just wants some reasonable safety precautions to make sure that every terrorist in the world doesn't wind up with their own flying robot, first, which the movie shows us is a pretty damn reasonable worry.
- Also, before he builds the miniaturized generator, the only previous use of the technology was an enormous model that barely produced enough electricity to power the Stark Industries complex, and was generally considered a dead end design kept around only for PR reasons.
- In the comics, it is Hand Waved that since most of Stark Tech goes to the Goverment or SHIELD it takes years for them to reach civilian hands (pretty much Truth In Television).
- In Bruce Almighty, not only is Bruce incredibly stupid but he seems to have no desire to use God's power to make this a better world. His only attempt at this really involved more of "how can I get people to quit bothering me" and even that was handled so stupidly it defies belief.
- In The Prestige, Nikola Tesla makes magician Robert Angier a machine which was intended to be a teleporter but turns out to be a matter replicator. It could be used to make unlimited quantities of food, clothing, machine parts, construction materials . . . it could put an end to hunger and material poverty for all time. And Angier can think of no better use for it than a stage-magic act.
Literature
- In the Harry Potter novels, the Ministry of Magic keeps the existence of wizards secret from Muggles because, as Hagrid puts it, "They might want magical solutions to their problems." It never seems to occur to any wizard to ask, "Well, why not?" In the Muggle world, wizards could become simply one more category of useful, respected, highly-paid professionals... Of course, it could go horribly wrong. The prejudice against so-called "witches" - that for some reason still infests the real world - shows how badly that could go.
- This troper would like to mention that wizards seem to be extremely outnumbered by the muggles. Assuming that Harry's class size was average - meaning about 5 boys and 5 girls in each year per House - there aren't even 300 students at Hogwarts. While it has been implied that there may be other wizarding schools in the UK - Hagrid calling it the best implies there are some that aren't the best, after all, and Harry had his name on the list from birth, meaning some don't have their name on the list. Logic says they have to go someplace - they probably aren't the size of Hogwarts as they were never mentioned. In 2007, the UK had over 60 million residents; if you take Hogwarts stats, then you have about 40 wizards at each consecutive age (40 15-year-olds, 40 16-year-olds, etc). Even if you assume these numbers stand for all ages (considering it is the wizarding world, I'll even guess high and use a spectrum from birth to 150-years-old), there would still only be 6,000 wizards in the UK. That's one in every 10,000 people. Also take into account that the wizarding community was most likely shrinking as is implied by the scarcity of pure-blood and the two harsh wizarding wars. So, if they outed themselves, they would be so vastly outnumbered that being overpowered couldn't be too difficult. It's merely self-preservation that keeps them from announcing their "gifts" - the same way that any sane individual wouldn't walk into a room full of strangers waving around a winning lotto ticket; it's just asking for trouble.
- The reverse is also true - wizards are apparently completely mystified by such things as escalators, telephones and computers, despite having their very own (magical) version of radio and the odd impossible purple triple-decker bus. And not one of them, not even the two major characters that were born/raised in the Muggle world, ever considered non-magical solutions to their problems, such as:
- Firearms. (While that wouldn't stop Voldemort forever, it would slow him down if he had to do the whole blood-bone-flesh spell again).
- Then there's the idea of working around the spells curses with modern technology, such as using a defibrillator on anyone who gets hit with a death curse. Or using the old lemon-juice technique to send secret, non magical hidden messages.
- The basic rule seems to be that prolonged heavy use of magic affects the conductivity of the air, meaning that most forms of electronics are screwed up. This doesn't affect explosives or weaponry.
- The wizarding world has access to a potion that can regrow bones. Muggle medicine would be infinitely grateful for that alone, and, judging by the novels, most potions are concocted from naturally-occurring components. Despite that, although certain potions are dangerous, or could become dangerous in the wrong hands, wizard ethics are just as fragile as a regular Muggle's, so keeping the knowledge to themselves is unbelievably selfish and negligent.
- To be fair, "unbelievably selfish and negligent" is a really good description of the Ministry of Magic itself up through Harry's time. Perhaps things had changed by the time of the Happily Ever After epilogue, though if they have, we're not given any indication of it.
- Wizards also have their own diseases, their own weapons, etc., and they can't fix their own problems any faster or more efficiently than the Muggles, or at least so is implied. They might be able to regrow bones, but they also have Dragon Pox. Although who's to say that Muggle medicine can't come up with a Dragon Pox vaccine? The two together should still be stronger than the two separate.
- Along the same lines, it's interesting to note that the Masquerade began in the 1600s when the wizarding world split from the muggle world and went into hiding. The fact that the wizards only have familiarity with 17th century technology seems to justify this, until you realize that weapons such as longbows (12th century) and muskets/hand cannons (14th century) were around long before that time. Either of these weapons could easily take out a wizard from outside the range of their spells, but that's beside the point; just imagine how effective Magitek versions could have been in the Potterverse.
- And now you get the picture why the HP JBM page is so very freakin' long.
- The elves from Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Trilogy are self-righteous, vegetarian, nudist, atheist Wiccans (who cares if that's a contradiction) who are "coincidentally" superior to crude, meat-eating humans and the overtly religious dwarves in every way, shape, and form. They're also ridiculously powerful magicians who nevertheless never actually do anything about The Empire they so hate.
- Subverted in that the elves, up until the Big Bad took over the world, always gave out just about all of their technology and magic that wouldn't be horribly abused. Quality of life for the humans has dropped off dramatically in the last century or so since the elves got run out of town. They're also ridiculously powerful magicians who are hopelessly outnumbered by almost-ridiculously powerful magicians led by a magician powered by Ancient Secrets.
- The Dresden Files book "Turn Coat" explores this. The reason so far given is that if mages were to be part of the world; they would become part of the political process. Wars between Muggles would become wars between mages; and then nobody would be able to stop the vampires. Whether this is a good reason is left open...
- Actually this is a gross oversimplification of the reason given. Luccio says that, while in hindsight the "good" and "evil" sides in mortal conflicts might be evident, in the heat of the action, it isn't so (because in real life, no one thinks of themselves as a villain). She uses WWII as an example, saying that it would have been impossible for the White Council of Wizard to choose between allied and axis propaganda (and both sides accused the others of atrocities). So the only way the council could interfere with mortal business would be by deciding who's right and wrong, thus taking power over the mortals. Also, the council is an international forces, and if it were to pick sides, people who felt their country was being picked on by the council would split away from the council, which would leave the council in a state of civil war, splintered and unable to defend the mortals against evils like the Vampire Courts, Warlocks and the like. The laws of magic, while having no sense of justice, do make it illegal to use most black magics, limiting the damage a single individual could do.
- Theodicy
 is essentially the study of why God, the main character of The Bible, doesn't just solve all of our problems in Real Life. Is it possible that Status Quo Is God?
- A Ray Bradbury short story ("A Piece Of Wood") has the army-employed scientist protagonist invent a machine that causes immediate rust: a pen, a tank, a rifle will dissolve into red dust. The finale reveals that since the device has a time delay: he has been walking around the entire military base disabling the entire installation, and it is revealed he plans to do this to the entire world. (How he would get there is unaddressed.) The story ends with the general he was talking to getting up from his chair and breaking off a leg, intending to use it as a club.
- In The Watch books, the Others do interfere with human affairs, but an elaborate system of mutual sanctions makes sure that interference isn't overt. The sanctions were set up to preserve the Balance, which, in turn, was established because open warfare between the Light Others and Dark Others left catastrophic casualties on both sides (not to mention untold collateral damage). Of course, this doesn't stop each side from trying to find an advantage that would allow them to win without triggering Mutually Assured Destruction.
Live Action TV
- Magician scientist Zelda Spellman from Sabrina The Teenage Witch tried to make a machine that would somehow, using de-ionization and the Hanta virus, to process dirt into edible protein pellets and end the suffering of millions. When the first prototype blew up she became frustrated and quit trying, blaming her disinterest on a lack of electricity in the poorest areas... Yeah, right.
- Doctor Who spends a lot of time deciding what can and can't be changed with alien technology and time travel. Particularly in season 2 episode "School Reunion," where the Doctor has the chance to change the universe to whatever he chooses. Rather than bring back his people, eradicate disease or make resources infinitely plentiful, he listens to Sarah Jane when she says "Things just have to end." They wouldn't if you CHANGED THE FRIGGIN UNIVERSE!
- The Tenth Doctor has developed a habit of talking about time being "in flux". When it's in flux, it's possible (read: he's allowed) to change things. Otherwise, it's a no-no. Time seems to be conveniently in and out of flux whenever the plot demands it, which is nice.
- In the wonderful fanfic "People Used to Dream About the Future," he is convinced to do this. Unfortunately, what he does is wipe himself out of existence, undoing everything he's done or not done. And it's implied heavily this is the world we have today, if you believe what the story's narrator says, that is...
- Do recall that when the Fourth Doctor was literally omnipotent for 5 minutes at the end of The Armaggeddon Factor (thanks to the Key to Time), it seems that he was scared and horrified at the temptation it presented him, and he abdicated that power as soon as he could before it corrupted him...
- On the subject of Sarah Jane, in one episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures the characters suggest using an alien device to cure an old woman's Alzheimer's disease. This Troper instantly knew, because of this trope, that it wouldn't work.
- In one episode of Law And Order, a mysogynist modifies a commercially available machine pistol from semi-auto to full-auto, turning it into a highly efficient killing machine. He uses it to shoot a group of female med students, killing 15. He pleads out by about 0:35, and in a brutal subversion of Not So Fast Bucko, Jack McCoy decides to go after the pistol's manufacturer for knowing their product could be easily modified and not doing anything about it. (It's mentioned that the gun has been used in a hundred-odd crimes in a few years, and in every case but six the gun was modified.) 15 counts of negligent homicide, and the city of New York wins. While everyone except the defendant is celebrating, the judge goes "Hold it!" and delivers a directed verdict of "Not Guilty", due to the people basing their case on emotion rather than fact. Immediately followed by an Author Tract, in classic trope style, about how the problem can't really be solved by putting people in jail. Also doubles as a Wall Banger, since if the original verdict had held, it would've heralded the start of a new age of corporate accountability, leading to widespead change in the L&O'verse. Can you say Status Quo Is God?
- It's a Ripped From The Headlines, actually.
- Not to mention that the judge's entire point is that once you start focusing on the results of your actions and not caring about how you get there (and how it fits or doesn't fit with the law), you start getting into Utopia Justifies the Means.
- The Stargate universe is full of these. While the series begins with 1995 people using 1995 technology, by the current date, the SGC has at its disposal nearly infinite energy production, medical, construction, mechanical, computational, and metallurgic advances, and an entire empire of inter-galactic colonies and allies...but flatly refuses to share the technology, because every time they do, the Trust or some other Earth-based bad guys abuse it.
- There were two times that they met with an alien race called the Aschen which offered to solve a massive part of Earth's problems, and the heroes were more than willing to go along with it until the aliens turned out to be evil.
- At which point the whole thing was conveniently reset with time travel. Later when their own technology went far beyond the Aschen, the Masquerade still remained the primary concern.
- Possibly averted (or at least starting to be) by the last season where its shown the SGC is displaying prototypes of local versions of alien devices but have to be careful about how much they do lest too many questions be asked.
- Dr. Morris and his team on Now and Again successfully created an artificial human body with superhuman strength and a nanotechnology-based Healing Factor, and then successfully transplanted a human brain into it. Any one of the solutions to the problems they had to have overcome to do this would revolutionize medicine; for example, a method for reconnecting nerves would end trauma-related paralysis by itself. To be fair, Dr. Morris does want this technology to be available to everyone, but it's both ridiculously expensive and a military secret.
- In Heroes, the Healing Factor is so powerful and so intrinsic to an individual's cells that a single blood transfusion is shown to be able to cure a bullet wound to the head. There are currently three main characters possessing this power (although admittedly one of them is a sociopath), yet neither them nor anyone else has even considered that they could literally save thousands of lives every single day with nothing more than a needle, a tube, and a constant supply of plastic bags.
- Granted, blood is very fickle when it comes to transfusions. It is possible that it only works on someone with the correct specific blood type. While Peter and Nathan probably have the same blood type, we can't be sure that normal humans will react at all the same way to mutant blood.
- On the occasions when regenerator blood has been used to cure a disease, heal an injury, or outright raise someone from the dead, blood-typing has never been a concern. This seems more like a feature of the power that has just been conveniently forgotten.
- Or possibly it is a feature of the power. Maybe it not only heals, but also "fixes" the recipients, possibly even "correcting" their blood type to match. Alternately, maybe Claire and Peter are O negative, the universal donor.
- Claire at one point wants to use her power for just this purpose, but is convinced otherwise by her father. Remember, Them What Have Powers in the Heroes universe have good reason for remaining incognito, and such activity would attract dire attention.
Tabletop RPG
- Lightly averted in GURPS International Super Teams, the "house campaign" for superhero roleplaying in GURPS: the presence of superpowers stimulates research in numerous directions, and by the 1960s blasters and powercells with high energy densities (among many other technologies) have resulted. Furthermore, contact with an alien species during the 1980s has resulted in humanity gaining a stardrive before the end of the 20th Century.
- Exception: In White Wolf's Superhero Table Top RPG Aberrant, "Project Utopia" is dedicated to using the new superheroes for the betterment of mankind, including greening the sahara, patching the hole in the ozone layer, getting rid of pollution, inventing new technology, toppling dictators, etc. It is also dedicated to regulating technology, especially that created by those super-beings who are hyper-intelligent, and hiding away those it deems society can't handle.
- Naturally, there is a thriving black market for such technology as a result; the Yakuza, and in no small way, Japan as a whole, make excellent profits that way.
- Aberrant's Player's Guide provides options for keeping "super-science" from changing things excessively; basically, provides those running games the means to enforce this trope as they see fit.
- Mentioned explicitly (though not by name) in the Tabletop RPG GURPS, with the "Gadgeteer" advantage, which allows characters to invent new gadgets more easily. While Gadgeteer allows characters to make gadgets for themselves or to solve problems that arise during an adventure, in order to sell their gadgets for money (or even outfit their teammates with gadgets) they must purchase additional advantages which cost more Character Points.
- Genius: the Transgression features many of the Inspired trying to stop being useless, but it's not going well because normal humans cause Wonders to break, dissolve, or start hungering for their creator's blood.
Video Games
- While Mega Man mostly averts this trope, as in the Mega Man X and subsequent series the world has been radically changed by the advances that Doctors Light, Wily, and Cossack made in robotics. Space travel actually seems to have taken a large step backwards between the original and X series from which it apparently never recovers. Most of the levels in MM3 take place on mining facilities on the moons of Saturn and/or Jupiter and in MMV on the Game Boy. Mega Man travels across the solar system fighting Wily & the Stardroids. In X, all we get is a couple of orbiting space colonies and an elevator tower, most of which end up destroyed, MMZ has a space colony-sized Kill Sat that also blows up and ZX has no space travel at all. In Legends it gets a little better, with a new Kill Sat and something that's either an artificial planetoid or a terraformed moon, but it still appears nobody's tried to get beyond Earth's orbit in all this time. Sadly a case of Truth In Television, as little progress has been made in manned spaceflight since the Apollo missions and it is unlikely that much more will be made in the lifetime of any human alive today.
- In Pokemon Bill has invented a way to store objects as data (and the ability to use this to transport objects cross country instantly) Teleportation (albeit with The Fly like consequences) and time travel and all that comes of this tech is for trading Pokemon.
Web Comic
- Jayden and Crusader has a character Smic who is apparently a genius, inventing an infinite pizza machine, a working time machine, man-eating anteaters (presumably genetically engineered) and a steam powered time travelling hover-cycle. However he never seems to have turned his skills on anything useful in the slightest.
- So very averted in Girl Genius, where mad science has literally reshaped Europe.
- Which might also serve as a good exemple of why, sometimes, it's a good idea to suppress anachronistic world-reshaping technology.
- Dracula found the cure for cancer, you know. He hid it in Mars.
Web Original
- Averted multiple times in the Whateley Universe. Jobe Wilkins, the son of supervillain Gizmatic who is the king of his own Caribbean country, has almost cured dysentery. He's 14, and he has already come up with a far more effective vaccine for dysentery that is predicted to save 600,000 to 800,000 lives a year. Oh, and he tested the vaccine on convicts back home in his country.
- Averted in the <3-Verse, with Thunderbolt. The world's most powerful hero, mostly uses his Thunder-God powers to continue his work as a missionary, building hospitals and churches, as well as bringing rain to drought-stricken areas and beating bad guys.
Western Animation
- The cartoon series Batman The Brave And The Bold has the seemingly retired, former Blue Beetle convincing the current Blue Beetle to help put the alien technology that gives him his powers to greater use via a fleet of perpetual-energy machines and robots that'll irrigate the Sahara, end world hunger and turn the world into a paradise. Of course it doesn't work out that way, but neither Batman nor the Blue Beetle stops to wonder if such a plan really wouldn't be better than just using it to beat up crooks. Note that the former Blue Beetle was actually dead, this guy was an impostor, and he planned to use the robots to conquer the world.
- Parodied in Invader Zim: Professor Membrane (a non-villainous Mad Scientist) has just invented perpetual energy, and is about to demonstrate it to the world. Then, on a whim, decides "no power for you!", dismantles the project and leaves.
- It's not just on a whim, the insensitivity and impatience of the audience ticks him off and he decides they're all undeserving. Not, of course, to say that justifies it...
- Phineas And Ferb build interplanetary rockets, animal translation devices, and the like every morning. But by the time their mom gets home everything is back to normal.
|
|
