DAVID COLMAN2026年8月17日 Kimberly Elliott14 years after the first “Avengers” movie hit theaters, superheroes have become a bore. Their supernatural strength, their predictable near-indestructibility, their vehicles or magical powers that whoosh them in and out of multiverses galore. Can any of it stand up to what is happening to the world outside? And when the stakes are so ridiculous, does any of it actually resonate?自第一部《复仇者联盟》电影上映已过去14年，超级英雄早已令人厌倦。他们超凡的力量、可预见的近乎不灭之身，以及他们的载具或魔法能力让他们在多元宇宙间呼啸来去。所有这一切能跟外面的真实世界一较高下吗？在生死攸关的时刻，这些东西真的能引发共鸣吗？We don’t need Mr. All-American-From-Krypton or a showboating billionaire with a bat attitude. Not with the federal government currently at war with itself, its populace, its Constitution, all common decency and Iran. Even Lex Luthor might cringe at the brazen corruption of our oligarchs. No, this is not a job for Superman. Nor is it one for several gaggles of superheroes — the Avengers, the X-Men, the New Avengers and sundry others. Sure, they know how to oust alien invaders, but they also tend to destroy entire cities in doing so, leaving the normies to clean up their messes.我们不需要那个来自氪星的美国精英先生，也不需要那个自命不凡、带着蝙蝠态度、花里胡哨的亿万富翁。联邦政府正与自己的人民、宪法、所有基本道义以及伊朗开战——连莱克斯·卢瑟恐怕都会对我们寡头们的无耻腐败感到汗颜。不，这不是超人能解决的任务，也不是复仇者、X战警、新复仇者及其他各路超级英雄团队能搞定的。当然，他们知道如何驱逐外星入侵者，但过程中也往往毁掉整座城市，让普通民众来收拾残局。We need just a spider. Two weekends ago, the perpetually put-upon Peter Parker swung into action again in “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” in almost 4,500 theaters across North America, frantically juggling supernatural, romantic, financial and psychological battles. He doesn’t get through them with ease, but along the way he handily broke the domestic box-office record for a movie’s opening week, surpassing $500 million. The worldwide gross may well reach $2 billion this weekend. The success affirmed what many of us felt in our gut: If you want or need any superhero right now, you’re better off with Spider-Man.我们只需要一只蜘蛛。两周前，永远焦头烂额的彼得·帕克在《蜘蛛侠：崭新之日》中再次登场，登陆北美近4500家影院，疯狂地周旋于超自然、爱情、财务和心理等多重战斗之间。他并未轻松过关，但一路轻松打破了北美影史首周票房纪录，突破5亿美元。全球票房本周末可能达到20亿美元。这一成功印证了我们许多人的直觉：如果你现在想要或需要任何超级英雄，蜘蛛侠是更好的选择。Which is funny because, by most Marvel measures, Spider-Man is not particularly impressive. He can scamper up walls, can shoot and swing from sticky webbing and has superhuman strength and that spider sense. That’s about it. He can’t fly; one of the reasons he is so identified with New York City is that he needs the architecture to get around. Plunk him down in an Iowa cornfield, and the guy has to walk. He’s not immortal or immune from injury. Bullets don’t bounce off him; he even gets shot in the new movie and ends up in the hospital.说来有趣，因为按漫威的大多数标准，蜘蛛侠并不特别出众。他能爬墙，能射出蛛丝并借助它们的粘性荡行，拥有超强力量和蜘蛛感应。仅此而已。他不会飞；他之所以与纽约市紧密相连，原因之一就是他需要借助建筑结构来移动。把他丢在爱荷华州的玉米地里，他就只能步行。他不是不死之身，也会受伤。子弹不会从他身上弹开；新片中他甚至中枪住院。He doesn’t have a hidden high-tech lair filled with an endless arsenal of deadly crime-fighting gadgets. In “Brand New Day” he has an attic workshop where he makes his own devices. And he’s not superhero hot. Yes, he’s impressively jacked in the new film, but when he has to strip off his kit to meet with Black Widow in a Russian bath, he still looks like a nervous teen.他没有隐藏的高科技基地，没有无穷无尽的致命犯罪打击装备库。在《崭新之日》里，他只有一间阁楼工作室，自己制作装备。他也不算超级英雄里的帅哥。是的，新片中他有一身肌肉，但当他不得不在俄罗斯澡堂里脱掉战衣与黑寡妇会面时，他看起来仍然像个紧张的少年。Believe it or not, Spider-Man was almost doomed to the wastebasket before he ever existed. In the early 1960s, Stan Lee pitched his publisher the idea. The response: “Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard,” Mr. Lee recounted to BBC Radio 4 in 2015. “First of all, people hate spiders, so you can’t call a book ‘Spider-Man.’ Secondly, he can’t be a teenager — teenagers can only be sidekicks. And third, he can’t have personal problems if he’s supposed to be a superhero — don’t you know who a superhero is?” But Mr. Lee pulled together a story and published it in the final issue of a canceled comics title in the summer of 1962, and Spider-Man took off.信不信由你，蜘蛛侠在诞生之前几乎注定被扔进废纸篓。20世纪60年代初，斯坦·李向他的出版商提出这个想法。得到的回应是：“斯坦，这是我听过最糟糕的主意，”2015年李在BBC广播4台回忆道。“首先，人们讨厌蜘蛛，所以你不能把书叫作‘蜘蛛侠’。其次，他不能是青少年——青少年只能当跟班。再次，如果他是超级英雄，就不能有个人问题——你不知道超级英雄是什么样吗？”但李拼凑出一个故事，并于1962年夏天在一本已停刊的漫画书的最后一期上发表，蜘蛛侠就此起飞。That’s because Spidey’s limitations make him more, not less, of a superhero. He’s finite right down to his crime-fighting brief and his classic territory — baddies in New York City, no more, no less. That’s a powerful part of his unspoken mission statement: Act locally. Be the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Plus, he’s entangled. Yes, he has archenemies like Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus. But he has friends and frenemies, a horrible boss, that on-again, off-again romance and a secret he does everything to protect. That pretty much describes me and everyone I know.这是因为蜘蛛侠的局限性使他更称得上超级英雄，而不是相反。他的有限性体现在犯罪打击职责和经典活动范围上——纽约市内的坏蛋，仅限于此。这是他未说出口的行动宣言中强有力的一部分：立足本地。做你的好邻居蜘蛛侠。而且，他身陷纠缠之中。是的，他有绿魔和章鱼博士这样的死敌。但他也有朋友和亦敌亦友之人，一个糟糕的老板，分分合合的爱情，以及他竭尽全力保护的秘密。这几乎描述了我以及我认识的每个人。That’s what made me love Spider-Man as a kid. When I was growing up in rural Wisconsin in the late ’70s, far from any place you could buy a 45 record or comic book, The Milwaukee Journal had “The Amazing Spider-Man.” He was the only superhero I ever imagined being — a young man living in the city, trying to keep it all together with a combination of frayed nerves and spider silk.这正是我小时候爱上蜘蛛侠的原因。70年代末，我在威斯康星州乡村长大，那里远离任何能买到45转唱片或漫画书的地方，《密尔沃基日报》上有《神奇蜘蛛侠》。他是我唯一想象过自己成为的超级英雄——一个住在城里的年轻人，用紧绷的神经和蜘蛛丝努力撑起一切。It was impossible to be Superman. I was never going to be as rich as Bruce Wayne. But, hey, I was good at science. For all I knew, I could visit a lab on a school trip, get bitten by a radioactive spider and start transforming. And this fantasy came with a bonus, which any teenage boy going through the agonizing social-sexual changes and perplexities of puberty could relate to. (If only every adolescence came with one supercool secret instead of 1,000 embarrassing ones.)成为超人是不可能的。我永远不可能像布鲁斯·韦恩那样富有。但是，嘿，我擅长科学。说不定我可以在研学的时候参观一个实验室，被放射性蜘蛛咬一口，然后开始变异。这个幻想还有一个额外的好处，任何经历青春期痛苦的社会性变化和困惑的少年男孩都能共鸣。（要是每个青春期都有一个超级酷的秘密，而不是一千个令人尴尬的秘密就好了。）Peter Parker is finally an adult in “Brand New Day,” but he’s still fighting the same demons. That’s what makes him burn so bright right now: how refreshingly uninfected he is by the shallow, deluded fantasies of power being sold like snake oil on our national stage every day. He’s not a fitness influencer selling deep thoughts and peptides. He’s not a culture-warmonger pushing machismo and hate against a trumped-up enemy. He’s not a dark-money tech titan mythomaniac propping himself up on a pedestal as humanity’s savior. What these master of the universe wannabes have in common is that they are selling you a superhero fantasy you can’t afford — a dream of unlimited muscle, longevity, wealth or power, of living your true potential.在《崭新之日》中，彼得·帕克终于成年了，但他仍在与同样的心魔斗争。这正是他此刻如此耀眼的原因：他令人耳目一新，没有被那些每天都在国家舞台上像蛇油一样兜售的肤浅、虚幻的权力幻想所感染。他不是贩卖深度思考和肽类补品的健身网红。他不是文化战争煽动者，教唆人们对着某个假想敌展示大男子主义和仇恨。他不是用黑钱撑起的科技巨头妄想狂，把自己捧上神坛，自封为人类救世主。这些自封的宇宙之主们的共同点在于，他们向你兜售一种你负担不起的超级英雄幻想——一个关于无限肌肉、长寿、财富或权力的梦，一个活出你真正潜力的梦。Spider-Man lives in the here and now — New York City, today, give or take — and he’s fully entangled with all the obligations that entails. It might seem that his stakes are low compared with the world’s. But then, he is actually interested in facing up to his mistakes. Doing the right thing.蜘蛛侠活在此时此地——大致上就是在今天的纽约市——并且完全纠缠于随之而来的所有责任。相比世界大事，他似乎无足轻重。但话说回来，他确实有兴趣正视自己的错误，去做正确的事。The greatest challenge Spider-Man always has to contend with is the oft-repeated words of his ill-fated uncle Ben: “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s something that those with great power today might want to consider.蜘蛛侠始终要面对的最大挑战是他那不幸的本叔叔常说的那句话：“能力越大，责任越大。”这或许是当今那些手握大权之人应当考虑的事情。David Colman自1996年以来一直为《纽约时报》撰稿。翻译：经雷点击查看本文英文版。