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I find "stretch" powers (Mr. Fantastic, Ms. Marvel) uninteresting and boring. I don't care how much it is argued that is allegory or a metaphor I just think it is stupid. Any powers that if they pop up make your eyes roll up in the back of your head?

Not a specific power as such. But when a given power is just overdeveloped.

For instance, Wolverine being able to regenerate from a charred Skellington or single cell. The Flash always being fast enough for the job at hand.

Drax being able to laugh while being pulled by a spaceship, through space.
Intelligent hulk.
All of Batman
Magneto being unable to break out of a jail where he's kept 30' away from metal, then being able to lift the Golden Gate bridge from several miles away.

Invulnerability when its not consistent.

Case in point : Any of the Viltrumites from Amazon's Invicible (never read the comic, so the show is my only point of reference). Second season had a Viltrumite get impaled by a stalagmite (or stalactite! can't remember the scene completely) but they can withstand all sort of other damage when the plot needs it.

The list of all super powers and the list of super powers that piss me off are equal sets.

I feel like most abilities where they project a force bubble like the invisibile woman or hard-light objects like the Lantern corps always seem to get caught in the situation where they're trying to protect themselves in a dome that get progressively more cracked or smaller and before it eventually caves in they always go "I can't hold it much longer!" and I've seen that same scene over and over that I feel like they MUST have a better way of creating defenses for themselves. It's just a very boring and predictable way for them to try and create tension.

I also find the inconsistency of the application of telekinesis in general as well to be annoying, especially if they've established that they can have precision in using it, since at that point you can literally tear apart people limb from limb or explode their heart, you don't need to ragdoll them around and give opponents a chance to even respond. Star Wars is somewhat guilty of this, since Force Choke is established to have some measure of precision, I feel like there should be the ability to do things much more visceral or worse (hell, twist somebody's balls off and that'll do a lot more than choking someone if you want to incapacitate them), especially against non-Force sensitives.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Drax being able to laugh while being pulled by a spaceship, through space.
Intelligent hulk.
All of Batman
Magneto being unable to break out of a jail where he's kept 30' away from metal, then being able to lift the Golden Gate bridge from several miles away.

My favourite is the old cartoon where they had Magneto full on suffer on-the-spot dementia when Mister Fantastic somehow gets him arrested by tricking him with a wooden gun

Casual time manipulation of any sort never ends well.

 nels1031 wrote:
Invulnerability when its not consistent.

Case in point : Any of the Viltrumites from Amazon's Invicible (never read the comic, so the show is my only point of reference). Second season had a Viltrumite get impaled by a stalagmite (or stalactite! can't remember the scene completely) but they can withstand all sort of other damage when the plot needs it.

Super strength tends to have the same representation problems. Netflix's Jessica Jones was irritating for this... her strength was wildly inconsistent depending on the specific scene.

This also ties into the 'overdeveloped' complaint. Superman is a much more interesting character when his powers have sensible limits.

I won't hear a bad word about Wolverine, though. I mean, yes, regenerating from a charred skeleton is absurd, but it looks damn cool in a scene... His healing factor has admittedly come a long way from the original 'I'm tough and I heal quick' that he started out with, though.




As a kid, I always hated magic in my superhero stories. No idea why, but it felt unrealistic. I've lightened up on that one over the years...

It really bothers me when super strong characters spend the whole film punching through people or crushing necks, and then get caught up in the final fight slapping the protagonist back and forth for five minutes.

 insaniak wrote:
As a kid, I always hated magic in my superhero stories. No idea why, but it felt unrealistic. I've lightened up on that one over the years...

Magic's good, magic's the only one that is inherently handwaveable. Mutations and alien powers are in that awkward place where they pretend they could conceivably exist but aren't actually any more possible than being gifted spells by literal Satan or whatever.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
As a kid, I always hated magic in my superhero stories. No idea why, but it felt unrealistic. I've lightened up on that one over the years...

Magic's good, magic's the only one that is inherently handwaveable. Mutations and alien powers are in that awkward place where they pretend they could conceivably exist but aren't actually any more possible than being gifted spells by literal Satan or whatever.

Yeah, I get that it's possibly a little backwards, it was just how my brain worked. Bad pseudoscience was inherently more believable than magic. I think because science has plausible limits (even if they're made up and inconsistent), whereas magic just works because it's, you know, magic.


Although looking back, it wasn't always consistent. I was fine with Green Lantern having a magic ring, I just didn't like straight up magicians like Doctor Strange or the like.

Probably not really what the OP wants, but I find it's not the powers themselves that cause my eyes to roll. It's the writing. Even a fairly lame power can become cool if it's written well, and even a really cool power becomes lame when written poorly.

Or simply written lazily.

Inventive application of powers. That’s what I like.

Except Squirrel Girl, who gets a pass from me.

 nels1031 wrote:
Invulnerability when its not consistent.

Case in point : Any of the Viltrumites from Amazon's Invicible (never read the comic, so the show is my only point of reference). Second season had a Viltrumite get impaled by a stalagmite (or stalactite! can't remember the scene completely) but they can withstand all sort of other damage when the plot needs it.

In all fairness,

A) It was a space stalactite on a bug planet,

B) The guy had been disemboweled first, so you could argue that Viltrumites are just softer on the inside, and

C) He walked it off.

Superman's super breath. It's so dumb. It sticks out of inertia and because he's another way for him to creatively superpower his way out of difficult situations. But it should be gak canned like super-ventriloquism and some of the weirder ones from the Silver Age IMO.

Regarding his power level being too high...it's fluctuated a lot over the decades. But high power levels just mean you need him to face problems he can't punch his way out of, or enemies that can take his punches.

I had forgotten about Super Ventriloquism. The Silver Age was a wild time.

 gorgon wrote:
Superman's super breath. It's so dumb. It sticks out of inertia and because he's another way for him to creatively superpower his way out of difficult situations. But it should be gak canned like super-ventriloquism and some of the weirder ones from the Silver Age IMO.

Superman being the Swiss Army Knife of superheroes is one of the things I've always disliked about the character. Particularly as a part of the Justice League, where it largely renders everyone else irrelevant. Back in the late '90s when they went through his power crisis, they should have used the opportunity to reset the character and give him a power prune.

Writ most large in Justice League, where soon as Supes gets his head on straight, we see him exceeding everyone else.

 Ahtman wrote:
I had forgotten about Super Ventriloquism. The Silver Age was a wild time.

Technically it stayed in the arsenal until the Crisis. I have Bronze Age books where he uses it to get out of meetings at GBS.

I hate powers where the only limit on the use of the power is the creativity of the user, and then they're just not creative. Green Lantern suffers from this, hugely. But so does Magneto, it's like he never bothered to read anything about magnetism.

I think of course the issue is the writers, but that's why it's better to give more limited powers. I think Green Lanterns would be more interesting if each one had a more limited suite of powers from the ring.

 insaniak wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Superman's super breath. It's so dumb. It sticks out of inertia and because he's another way for him to creatively superpower his way out of difficult situations. But it should be gak canned like super-ventriloquism and some of the weirder ones from the Silver Age IMO.

Superman being the Swiss Army Knife of superheroes is one of the things I've always disliked about the character. Particularly as a part of the Justice League, where it largely renders everyone else irrelevant. Back in the late '90s when they went through his power crisis, they should have used the opportunity to reset the character and give him a power prune.

It all stems from the (bad) story template of putting Supes in some crazy situation and having some highly creative/ridiculous use of his powers or the sudden creation of a new power be the solution. I think his power menu should be kept limited (although I didn't mind his newer solar flare ability, as it seemed like a sensible extension of his abilities).

But his power level itself isn't really an issue. I can rattle off probably 10 villains of his that are around the same level. And in the modern Justice League he really isn't far beyond some of the others. WW operates at a near-Kryptonian level, as does Martian Manhunter. GL has "the most powerful weapon in the universe", and Flash might actually be the most powerful Leaguer of them all if you really consider what he can do.

The movie made power disparity seem like more of an issue by leaving heavier hitters like GL and MM off the team, reining in WW a bit, and not really giving them a big enough threat. Steppenwolf is ultimately just one New God and someone that Superman (or potentially WW, MM or GL) could handle on his own. The Snyder Cut at least introduced Darkseid as a much more dangerous threat behind the threat, but in the theatrical version it did all seem unbalanced and pointless.

What do you mean Superman's Great Wall Rebuilding Vision is stupid power? Have you no class or taste?

It’s no magic cellophane S power.

 Gert wrote:
What do you mean Superman's Great Wall Rebuilding Vision is stupid power? Have you no class or taste?

I recently saw something about that. The original idea was that Supes would use super speed to rebuild the wall. The problem was that after they did the animation for the wall being built back up the production was out of money to make and add Superman to the animation so they just used footage of Reeves looking at the wall.

 Da Boss wrote:
I hate powers where the only limit on the use of the power is the creativity of the user, and then they're just not creative. Green Lantern suffers from this, hugely. But so does Magneto, it's like he never bothered to read anything about magnetism.

I think that depends on which Green Lantern we're talking about, as different users of the ring (possibly due to different writers/artists) have been shown to be more or less imaginative about how they use it.

There's a nice sequence in Green Lantern: Rebirth (I think it is) where we get Hal Jordan's perspective on how the other Lanterns present at the time use their power ring, and how each uses it differently.

Adjacent to the super powers limited by the user’s imagination, it bugs me when these sorts of things are limited by the copyright of the things being imagined. It just pulls me right out of experience. The films inkheart and ready player one are good examples of this problem. ( not sure if this qualifies as super powers though).

 Dysartes wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I hate powers where the only limit on the use of the power is the creativity of the user, and then they're just not creative. Green Lantern suffers from this, hugely. But so does Magneto, it's like he never bothered to read anything about magnetism.

I think that depends on which Green Lantern we're talking about, as different users of the ring (possibly due to different writers/artists) have been shown to be more or less imaginative about how they use it.

There's a nice sequence in Green Lantern: Rebirth (I think it is) where we get Hal Jordan's perspective on how the other Lanterns present at the time use their power ring, and how each uses it differently.

Geoff Johns's run is legendary for exactly this. It's really the one time we've gotten a good Hal and its entirely because Johns writes the GL powers as an externalization of their inner world. He rarely confuses what they can do with who they are and the result was a near decade of books in which Hal, John, Guy, Kyle and the rest felt as distinct from one another as the Justice League.

Honestly, this is true for pretty much all of DC. Whether its the League or the BatFam or the Flashes or whatever, their book shines when you get authors who are more interested in expressing the character than the powers. When Grayson was Batman only a few authors understood the assignment and wrote an acrobatic Batman who lacked the size and strength of Bruce. Unfortunately its a big weakness of their movies, that tend to result in charaters like Hal Rayner or Wally Allen that clearly started as powersets rather than people.

 Ahtman wrote:

 Gert wrote:
What do you mean Superman's Great Wall Rebuilding Vision is stupid power? Have you no class or taste?

I recently saw something about that. The original idea was that Supes would use super speed to rebuild the wall. The problem was that after they did the animation for the wall being built back up the production was out of money to make and add Superman to the animation so they just used footage of Reeves looking at the wall.

IIRC, the world-circling animation from the first film was originally for the sequel but then things shifted around, and the studio had spent a lot of money on it. So in it went, creating plot holes and bigger questions that are pretty on topic for this thread. Namely -- if he's fast enough to circle the planet many times a second, how come he can't stop two missiles traveling in opposite directions? Instead he goes back in time...and then apparently does stop the missiles after all? And after that whole sequence, you're left with the idea that there's nothing he can't just undo without any real repercussions other than scoldings by Jor-El's floating head, making him...God?

Also from the movies - don't forget about Super-Forgetful Roofie Kiss. It's just wrong on so many levels.

I guess the only super power I really don't like is Time Travel.
Every now and then a good Time Travel movie/show/plot comes along - Terminator, Back to the Future x3, Quantum Leap, Star Trek 4, etc.
But on the whole? No, please stop with the time travel. Especially in Star Trek.