Many villains in fiction have troubled childhoods, from Batman’s nemesis the Joker to Black Panther’s foe Erik Killmonger. Supposedly, such villains are driven to hurt people because they’ve been hurt in the past. But in DC and Marvel superhero movies, a rough childhood doesn’t always mean that characters become villains.
“We know that when you have a hard childhood, there is a risk that you can have more challenges when you’re an adult,” says Jennifer Jackson. She’s a professor of nursing at the University of Calgary in Canada. But many people who experience difficult things when they’re young go on to have a great adulthood, she says. Jackson and her colleagues wanted to see if DC and Marvel movies reflected this picture of the real world.
The researchers watched 33 films and rated the childhood experiences of 28 villains and heroes. For each character, they tallied up the number of adverse childhood experiences. “This is something that is really bad, but that you don’t necessarily have any control over,” Jackson explains. Adverse childhood experiences included lack of support in a family, violence, poverty and parents getting divorced. For example, Black Widow from the Avengers sees her mother die and is separated from her family.
“All of us have some adverse childhood experiences,” Jackson says, “because life is just difficult.”
Of all the characters, Black Widow probably had the most difficult childhood, Jackson says. “And she was still a hero.” In fact, the team found that overall, there was no link between how bad a character’s childhood was and whether they chose good or evil. The findings appeared in January in PLOS One.
“Whether you’re a hero or a villain is a choice that you can make,” Jackson says. “It’s not only about what happens to you.”
Some heroes provide hints about how to deal with hard experiences. In Black Panther, T’Challa and Shuri lose a parent and experience war in Wakanda. But they had support. They talked about their feelings and connected with others in their community, Jackson says. And they sought out their elders on the Ancestral Plane. Seeking out supportive adults is one way to get help during hard times.
In the long run, these characters continued doing good. In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the main character sees his mother die. His father pushes him into harsh martial arts training and sends him out to avenge his mother’s death. Shang-Chi eventually runs away and makes a new life for himself. He becomes a supportive friend and a force for good. Both he and Black Widow seem happy because of their choices to be heroes.
Ultimately, these characters show us that we can make our own paths, Jackson says. We live in a world that can feel overwhelming with many hard things that we can’t control. But, like in superhero movies, no one’s path is set in stone. We all still have choices to make, she says. “All of us can be heroes.”
Coming up ACES
Researchers tallied up the adverse childhood experience, or ACE, scores of 14 villains and 14 heroes from DC and Marvel movies. A higher score means a character had a more difficult childhood. The yellow bars show scores for heroes, including Spiderman, Black Widow, Aquaman and Wonder Woman. The blue bars show scores for villains, including the Joker, the Riddler, Loki and Killmonger. Each bar shows the number of characters that have the ACE score on the y-axis.
Data Dive:
- Look at the data for heroes. How many heroes have ACE scores of 2 or lower?
- How many heroes have ACE scores of 6 or higher?
- Look at the data for villains. How many villains have ACE scores of 2 or lower?
- How many villains have ACE scores of 6 or higher?
- How would you go about calculating the average ACE value for heroes or villains?
