Is It Time to End Anachronistic Comic Book Origins?

 Recently when I watched Green Lantern the Animated Series and also the 2011 movie and the animated 2009 movie Green Lantern: First Flight, the origin of Hal Jordan really bugs me.  It's this idea of him being a daredevil test pilot who finds Abin Sur's ring and becomes a Green Lantern.  In the 1950s when the character debuted, test pilots like Chuck Yeager were a big deal.  They were rock stars before there were rock stars.

The problem is in the 21st Century no one cares about test pilots anymore.  Go ahead and name one.  Who cares if some guy can fly a new plane?  We've put people on the moon now.  We've sent scientists, teachers, and even pop stars into space. 

In the 2011 and 2009 movies they still try to make it work with that old Hal Jordan origin, but it just doesn't.  If they eventually get around to another movie or TV series, maybe it's time to retire that Hal Jordan origin.  Either come up with a new one or go with one of the other human Lanterns:  Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz, or Jessica Cruz.  They all probably have more contemporary stories that would be easier to work.  Really, they should make him an astronaut and he could find Abin Sur in space sort of like the Earth One story where he was like a space miner but a contemporary astronaut would also work.

The only other way to do it would be to set Hal Jordan's origin in the 1950s the way they set Captain America in WWII instead of updating it for modern day.  Since he's out in space all the time and has a Lantern ring they could just say he's been away for a long, long time.  He could be the man out of time and come back to Earth to find that not only is not cool to go chasing women around the office, there are actually women in fighter cockpits now.

I doubt they'd do that, but I'm just saying his original origin story is an anachronism.  You know who else has an anachronistic origin story?  Batman.  Like Hal Jordan they keep trying to make Bruce Wayne's original origin story work.  But it really doesn't.  I mean the Waynes are one of the richest families in Gotham.  They have millions or billions of dollars.  They have tons of cars and a chauffeur.  So...why would they be walking in an alley after a movie?  What kind of rich people are walking around alleys in New York City?  In Batman Begins they change it to an opera, but why the hell are they riding a train?  In Joker they're watching a movie when a riot breaks out.  How stupid were they to be out with all this stuff going on?

I get that Batman's parents in the alley with him standing or kneeling over them is good imagery but it's really an anachronism in the 21st Century.  Even if you change it to the early 80s like Joker or Batman v Superman, it still doesn't make a lot of sense.  Rich people walking around dark alleys was probably not even that plausible in 1939-1940.

I don't know what they'll do in The Batman, but it will probably still be something along those lines.  What would probably make more sense is that there's an attempted kidnapping of Bruce when he's with his parents and they're killed when things go wrong.  Maybe Alfred was driving and he gets wounded and feels bad for letting Bruce's parents down.

But while we're at it, the idea of the butler adopting the richest orphan kid in town also seems kind of ridiculous.  It can still probably happen if that's what the Waynes put in their will, but doesn't it seem like there would be relatives coming out of the woodwork to get a piece of that fortune?  In real life whenever a rich person dies there's always a bunch of moochers trying to get in on it.  A millionaire or billionaire with no parents whose only guardian is a butler?  If I can prove I'm a second cousin once removed why wouldn't I go to court and try to get guardianship?

Watching Titans recently brought up Dick Grayson's origin, which is rapidly becoming an anachronism now that circuses have closed down.  Right now it can still work but in another 10-15 years it really won't be plausible anymore that he could come from a family of traveling acrobats unless he's part of Cirque de Soleil.  The other Robins's origins are both fine, especially Tim Drake as sort of a computer geek who figured out Batman's secret identity.

I suppose you could say, we can't change their origin stories!  But it has been done before.  Spider-Man was originally bitten by a radioactive spider because in 1962 radiation was still a big thing and an easy way to explain stuff like that.  The same for the Hulk where Banner ran onto a bomb testing range to save Rick Jones.  The radiation thing was changed in the 2002 Spider-Man movie to a genetically altered spider and I think something along those lines was used in 2012 too.  The less said about the 2003 Hulk movie the better but since testing nuclear bombs was outlawed they had to change it in 2003 and 2008 to some other experiment with gamma radiation.

I'm not sure the Fantastic Four origin works all that great anymore either.  A group of people--2 of whom are related--being changed by "cosmic radiation" is kind of old-fashioned.  That's probably why they decided to go with the Ultimate Fantastic Four origin for the failed Josh Trank movie.

As for Superman's origin, it still works.  It didn't really work in the 2013 movie but the core concept still makes sense:  a planet is dying and so Kal-El's parents put him in an escape craft that shows up at Earth.  They just need to make the specifics a little less stupid than 2013 and it would work better.  I'm just saying.

Just some stuff for Phantom Readers not to think about.