"Super" is about what would happen if an ordinary man became a superhero, as well as what kind of person that man might be. James Gunn imagines him as schizotypal - aloof, friendless, humorless, psychotic. Frank (Rainn Wilson) adopts an alter ego not because of an enforced narrative overlay but because of his pathology.
Ellen Page enters the picture as a comic book shop clerk. Frank, who is in the process of inventing his alter ego, looking for weapons ideas, asks her for comics about superheroes without powers. She's eager to oblige. Before we know it, she charms the pants off us, if not him. She's the only character in the whole movie who we like and will ever like.
Frank becomes a superhero at last. He dresses in red and whacks people on the head with a bolt wrench. The news runs a story on this new "real life superhero." Page sees it and wonders, could it be Frank? She appears at his workplace. She wonders aloud about the whole situation. She comes close to him. She's coy. She's lost in his gaze. She can't stop smiling. She asks if it's him. He denies.
Frank, in character, is shot. With no one else to turn to, he turns to her, showing up at her door. She takes him in and patches up the wound. He spends the night. She asks if she can be his sidekick. He hesitates but in the end agrees.
She never had any interest in stopping crime, it turns out. She only wanted to murder people. She was a psychopath all along. Frank doesn't hold this against her. She remains his sidekick. After all, isn't she just another sad person in a sad, sad world?
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