Arch­en­e­my

We live in the era of the super­hero. Those cos­tumed cru­saders have been all over our screens, mythol­o­gis­ing the pol­i­tics of our times, while exploit­ing ado­les­cent dreams of empow­er­ment. Yet in a uni­verse par­al­lel to the world-build­ing super­fran­chis­es of Mar­vel and DC, there exists an alter­na­tive mode of super­hero movie – films like Peter Berg’s Han­cock, Peter Stebbing’s Defendor and James Gunn’s Super which reveal their heroes as high­ly human (i.e. deeply flawed) schlubs who either mis­use – or mere­ly imag­ine – their metahu­man abil­i­ties, deploy­ing them to ques­tion­ably hyper­vi­o­lent ends.

Tak­ing a sim­i­lar­ly decon­struc­tive approach to the super­hero, Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Arch­en­e­my makes a virtue of its rel­a­tive­ly low bud­get. For here all the off-world sci-fi busi­ness is pre­sent­ed in afford­able ani­mat­ed form, in part to acknowl­edge the com­ic book ori­gins of the super­hero, but also, through its con­trast with the live action of the film’s more earth­bound scenes, to give the back­sto­ry of Max Fist (Joe Man­ganiel­lo) the sta­tus of oth­er­world­ly myth.

A limp­ing, grey-beard­ed home­less alco­holic and drug user, Max tells sto­ries to any­one who will buy him whiskey of how, while fight­ing to save the beloved city of Chromi­um from the ​‘Void Machine’ of his arch­en­e­my Cleo (Amy Seimetz), he slipped through a black hole to our plan­et, los­ing his super strength and pow­ers of flight along the way.

Nobody believes Max’s rav­ing sto­ries, except per­haps teenage orphan Ham­ster (Sky­lan Brooks). Ham­ster is him­self a sto­ry­teller who has the word ​‘Fic­tion’ tat­tooed in neat cur­sive under one of his eyes, who reimag­ines his crime-rid­dled urban neigh­bour­hood as ​‘Ham­ster City’ for the media site Trendible, and who, in becom­ing Max’s chron­i­cler, finds a big online audi­ence for the vagrant’s unhinged antics. Hamster’s blue-haired old­er sis­ter Indi­go (Zolee Grig­gs) is also some­thing of a fan­ta­sist, styling her­self ​“a sug­arplum fairy inter­stel­lar princess” even as she fan­cies that she can out­wit and escape the drug-deal­ing gang that cur­rent­ly employs her.

When Indi­go gets into hot water with her boss The Man­ag­er (Glenn How­er­ton) – who must answer to a boss of his own – Max puts him­self for­ward as pro­tec­tor both of the fugi­tive sib­lings, and of the city which he hopes to clean up and renew. Ham­ster and Indi­go are about to learn valu­able lessons about the messy real­i­ty of pow­er, and also its malleability.

“I’m not a fuckin’ super­hero,” Max insists. Max may seem to con­form to the type of the reluc­tant, fall­en hero, ris­ing again to become the Christ-/Su­per­man-like self-sac­ri­fic­ing sav­iour he was always des­tined to be. But Mortimer’s more sub­ver­sive take on the genre leaves it unclear whether there is any truth to Max’s off­world ori­gin sto­ry, or indeed whether we should be root­ing for him at all.

Instead we get a city of mul­ti­ple sto­ries, con­tain­ing with­in itself alter­na­tive worlds and clash­ing real­i­ties. Here crime-fight­ing leaves a trail of har­row­ing con­se­quences, the forces of good and evil make strange bed­fel­lows, and often peo­ple are super­heroes only in their own nar­ra­tives. Whether Arch­en­e­my is a tale of gen­uine urban renew­al, or mere­ly of pow­er shift­ing with­out any real under­ly­ing change, remains tan­ta­lis­ing­ly ambiguous.