comicsalliance.com – By: Andy Khouri
Outside of Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, it’s really quite rare to see a superhero film in which any costumed crusader pursues an explicitly progressive agenda. The consensus amongst genre academics is that introducing realistic politics of any kind into a capes-and-tights stories inevitably leads to a discussion of fascism, as demonstrated by such works as Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. But that convention is being challenged in a very big and very loud way by Madame X, a recently released Indonesian film that tells the story of a superpowered drag queen who fights to protect minorities by preventing the election of a militantly homophobic political party.