Director – Douglas Attal, Screenplay – Douglas Attal, Melissa Godet & Charlotte Sanson in Collaboration with Cedric Anger & Gerald Bronner, Based on the Novel by Gerald Bronner, Producers – Alain Attal, Marie Jardillier & Emma Javaux, Photography – Nicholas Loir, Music – Adrien Prevost & Nina Vella, Visual Effects Supervisor – Alexis Wajsbrot, Visual Effects – Compagnie Generale des Effets Visuels (Supervisor – Alain Carsoux) & Mikros (Supervisor – Cedric Fayolle), Production Design – Jean-Philippe Moreaux. Production Company – Tresor Films/Les Productions du Tresor/Artemis Productions/Artebis/VOO et Be tv/RTBF (Television Belge)/Proximus.
Moreau is an officer assigned to the Paris gendarmerie unit dealing with crimes involving superpowers. He is assigned a new partner Lieutenant Cecile Schlatzmann as they investigate a series of crimes that are committed by individuals who seem to be ingesting a drug made from the blood of people with superpowers. Behind this is the criminal Naja who has been abducting superpowered individuals and draining their blood. With the aid of Monte Carlo, a retired superhero, and others, Moreau and Schlatzmann set out to track down Naja. The battle involves Moreau’s discovery of the fact that he has superpowers.
Superhero Films featuring superheroes that are original to the screen (ie. not adapted from comic-books) are a relative rarity. Certainly, original screen superheroes have failed to enjoy the massive popularity that Marvel and DC films have. There have been sporadic efforts ranging from tv’s The Greatest American Hero (1981-3) to Darkman (1990), The Meteor Man (1993), Unbreakable (2000), tv’s Heroes (2006-10), Sparks (2013), Fast Color (2018), The Hyperions (2022) and Samaritan (2022). More successful in this regard have been parodies/deconstructions such as The Incredibles (2004), Defendor (2009), Super (2010) and Brightburn (2019).
How I Became a Super-Hero is one of these screen original superheroes. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect before sitting down. The title suggested either a comedic treatment or something like a teen film about a kid discovering they have superpowers. In actuality, the film is neither. What it peculiarly seems to be is a superhero or perhaps more accurately a superpowers film that is relayed in terms of a French police thriller.
Much of the film is focused around police detective Pio Marmai and his new partner Vimala Pons as they investigate the use of super-powered pharmaceuticals. This has a number of similarities to another recent original screen superhero work Code 8 (2019), which had people – in that case a criminal gang – engaged in a fight over drugs derived from superpowers. Both films also take place a similar world where the superpowered are not heroes but are marginalised figures. Superpower pharmaceuticals with narcotic possibilities also played a significant plot element in tv’s The Boys (2019- ) around the same time.
Pio Marmai as police detective MoreauTeam of superheroes and mortals – (l to r) Leila Bekhti, Benoit Poelvoorde, Gilles Cohen and Vimala Pons
How I Became a Super-Hero is an okay effort. The expected light-hearted treatment never comes about. Even so, you keep wondering what there is that is new and original that it can offer the genre. It feels as though all the air in the room on the topic of superheroes has been sucked out by the assorted Marvel and DC offerings, who have been doing the superhero game for so long there are few original ideas that have not been tried out.
I did like Camilla Japy who plays a psychologist to superheroes, which would be a great idea for a character in Marvel/DC canon. Benoit Poelvoorde has amusement as a retired superhero suffering from Parkinson’s whose teleportation ability has a habit to randomly end him up in different places. Aside from that though, everything comes by the playbook and the film is unmemorable.
How I Became a Super-Hero was a directorial debut for Douglas Attal who had previously made short films. It is based on a novel by Gerald Bronner, who elsewhere is a prominent French sociologist and has written several books on the subject.
