One time-honored way to allow “the little guy to be the hero” is to make your protagonist an anti-hero. In such stories there is no question of the main characters saving the world. Like most of us, they have their hands full just saving their own souls.
Coincidentally just yesterday I saw the 2010 James Gunn film “Super”, a movie which seemed to polarize people when it came out. Put me firmly in the camp of thumbs up — I happen to love movies that start with some beloved but under examined genre (in this superheroes) and proceed to pick it to pieces by exposing its inherent absurdities. “Super” does that sublimely.
It’s also worth seeing just for Ellen Page’s performance as the most cheerfully enthusiastic psychopath in movie history. And it is also a great example of protagonists as anti-heroes. Speaking of which, as I watched “Super”, I felt there was something familiar about it. That in spite of the apparent insanity of it all, there was a classic structure underlying Gunn’s screenplay.
And then I had it! “Super” is basically “Sweeney Todd”, updated from 1846 to our own post-millienial age: Honest working man loses his beautiful young wife to an evil and powerful villain. Driven mad with grief, he becomes a self-styled avenger against evil, which he unfortunately defines a bit too broadly. Things get really nuts when our hero teams up with a woman even crazier than he is, who doesn’t even have his whole “good versus evil” thing to hold her back. By the end, not everyone gets out alive. The perfect plot for a penny dreadful.
I’m particularly intrigued by the realization that Page’s character of Libby/Boltie is an update of the indomitable Mrs. Lovett. When you think about it, Ellen Page as a reincarnation of the young Angela Lansbury makes perfect sense.