The First Superhero Film Started A Culture War

(Updated final draft)

Introduction

If you google “the first superhero movie” the results you’re going to get are either 1920’s The Mask of Zorro, a film about a wealthy and handsome, yet bumbling man who is secretly a vigilante.

Or you may hear 1951’s Superman and The Mole Men. The name explains the concept of that film more than enough.

But regardless of which of these films, among some other early titles you may decide is a true “superhero” film, you’d be absolutely wrong. Because the first superhero film isn’t Superman, or Zorro, or Batman. The first superhero film ever made is David Wark Griffith’s (Is that seriously his name?) The Birth of a Nation. That may sound outlandish, but Birth not only contains multiple of the superhero genre’s defining tropes, it is credited with creating much of the visual language superhero films still rely on today.