A significant issue with giving characters extraordinary abilities/powers is they always grow over time. Comic books have this issue big time, and it's now pretty common for the comic book universe to undergo some sort of crisis which rewrites history and everyone's powers. The television show, Dragonball (pick your flavor of it), is particularly noteworthy, because our hero Goku is so mind numbingly powerful that he now must fight universe destroying creatures just to have a real challenge. Long running book series also run into this, as do video games.
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| Goku (Dragonball Z) charging up to a more powerful state |
The temptation is to make heroes stronger, so they win, yet conflict comes from the possibility of losing, so the villains need to be stronger too. It's called power creep. And, it's incredibly seductive. Is it bad? Not necessarily, but it does make life difficult when creating conflict. In Star Wars, would Luke Skywalker be challenged by Darth Vader if his future self fought the same battle from Episode V? Yes, absolutely, because their powers are simply more refined and not boosted. But, if he was powered up beyond Darth Vader, you'd need a new villain to maintain tension. It's a delicate balancing act.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has mostly avoided this trouble by having villains who aren't super powerful (which will change the moment they put Thanos into play). The side effect is Marvel villains are joked about as being dull and boring. That's the trouble and why it's such a struggle to keep things interesting. But, audiences also love having heroes become more powerful, and then fighting even more powerful bad guys, and on and on and on. Anime does this cycle constantly and it clearly works. Either way, consider the consequences.
- M
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