Heroes and the Economy

Anyone who lives under a rock might not have noticed that a vast number of recent movies have been about superheroes (and heroines), heroes new and old have been fighting crime and bringing people to the theaters in a way that I believe is similar to what happened during the Great Depression, and for the same reason.

Here are some recent superhero movies from the past couple years (or movies that will be coming out soon):
Man of Steel (superman redoux coming soon)
The Dark Knight Rises
Wreck-it Ralph
The Amazing Spider-man
The Avengers
The Green Lantern
Iron Man 2
Iron Man 3 (coming soon)
X-men First Class
The Green Hornet
Captain America: The First Avenger
Thor
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
Kick-Ass

Excluding the unreleased movies, that is 12 superhero movies released during 2010-2012 for an average of four per year.  These movies (most of them anyway) have had huge profits and this excludes non-hero movies (Twilight, Harry Potter, the soon-to-be-released Hobbit, etc.).  During the Depression, people would go to the theaters (if they could afford it) to take their minds off of the hard life that existed outside the theater.  I think that the recent 'Great Recession' is the reason behind the influx of superhero and other movies (I'm focusing on superhero movies because I think that they best represent the type of film that people would go to in order to escape the outside world).  Isn't there something about history repeating itself...?  Yeah, I thought so.

It seems to me that Americans (and perhaps people in other countries that have high movie attendance also) are ostriches putting there heads in the ground until the trouble passes.  We are letting our lives flow by and complaining to the few people who are (hopefully) trying to fix our problems like Obama, or our congresspersons (using the royal 'we' and 'our' here with the knowledge that not everyone is being an ostrich, just an apparent majority).  I think that all Americans pull their heads out of the ground and instead of calling out Obama, or our other leaders, for failing to fix our problems, we should do something for ourselves and maybe we can get ourselves out of the recession instead of hoping for someone to lead us out.