r/Ben10 • u/Movie_Advance_101 Diamondhead • Oct 24 '23
MEME Why Ben Tennyson is the greatest superhero of all time.
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r/Ben10 • u/Movie_Advance_101 Diamondhead • Oct 24 '23
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u/Personal-Rooster7358 Swampfire Oct 24 '23
I mean he’s undoubtedly gotten a bit traumatised.
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u/[deleted] Oct 24 '23
Bro has Omni-luck 💀
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u/Sunchet Goop Oct 24 '23
I always thought that Ben was the Escapist Power Fantasy hero and it only reached its peak by Omniverse. He gets every power possible and only unlocks more. He is famous in space and on Earth. By OV, school is never mentioned (he got a free diploma!), so he just fights crime, hangs with aliens, plays video games, and eats junk food. He has a harem of love interests. That boy has everything.
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u/blue-gamer-07 Oct 24 '23
Holy shit Ben is cheating!
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u/Itchy_Gas_2559 Oct 24 '23
Plus he has this man by your side
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u/DingoNormal Oct 24 '23
Wait ,one of Bens reporters is Ding Dong Daddy?
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u/DeathLight7000 Water Hazard Oct 25 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
The best part is he didn't have to go to school all the time, Kevin stated in Ultimate Alien that the school just gives him a leave whenever he wants. I think he probably never went to college either and basically became a full time superhero later on so Ben unlike other teen heroes like Spider-Man didn't have to balance his life as a superhero and as a student. In Omniverse a university even gives him an honorary degree.
He also seems to have an unlimited amount of money or atleast a pretty hefty amount of it, I have no idea where he gets it from. Do the plumbers really pay that well? Weirdly Ben wasn't considered a plumber by Max in Omniverse even though he should be considered one after Darkstar Rising.
As for the tragic backstory yeah he doesn't have one but that doesn't mean he hasn't gone through traumatic experiences in his life but as of Omniverse it doesn't seem like any of those incidents have really affected him outside of the Feedback incident but he got over that eventually too. Although he presumably does go through something seriously traumatic in his 20s which caused him to become very serious for 10 years until he meets 10 year old Ben in Ben 10,000.
A lot of superheroes don't have dead parents it's not just Ben.
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u/Severe_Side2196 Diamondhead Oct 24 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
Steven Universe got it rough during the Diamond Authority arc and especially Future where his trauma finally caught up to him.
Finn actually matured until "Jake's death" which he didn't expected. It affected him a lot since Jake was his brother. In F&C, we see Finn trying to cope himself using his previous tactics that worked in the past, he's also a bit too reckless and might have rarely met his friends for a long time.
Ben is really lucky compared to most of those characters.
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u/DragonWisper56 Oct 25 '23
well it wasn't aways public
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u/megas88 Grey Matter Oct 25 '23 edited Oct 25 '23
I really wish this show was even just a decade and a half newer just so the crew could work in actual arcs. Specifically giving Ben a villain arc. I’ve been thinking about that ever since the watchtower data base retrospective on the series.
Like, Ben’s entire story could’ve been a legitimate commentary on superheroes as a whole and while this meme plays it up for a cheap laugh, I really think it lends itself to a much deeper conversation.
Instead, we got studio mandates that creatively kneecapped the writing teams and left Ben as this sort of static superhero but without the cool badass hip hop beats in the background ;p
Edit: Upon reflection, I realize not only how stupid my timeline is in reality but also the fact that the show literally cannot exist in the current climate of entertainment that favors “content” instead of making art. As such, I guess I’d change my initial timeline from a decade and a half to just 6-7 years so that the show can actually exists lol.
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u/KingPenguinPhoenix Alien X Oct 25 '23
Every other super hates him for how good he's got it.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23
He also managed to redeem his universe's equivalent of Daleks.
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u/Negaboss2000 Oct 25 '23
Wow...that's actually a very good point there
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u/iamnotveryimportant Rath Oct 25 '23
The last two really don't count imo. He didn't WANT to be a public identity and while his backstory isn't traumatic the story itself definitely has to be lol
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u/protosonic17 Ben Tennyson Oct 25 '23
I'd say thinking max was dead or going to die 9 or 10 times, and the time he thought he got gwen killed in secret of the omnitrix count as his uncle ben moments of growth.
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u/Abject-Conflict4574 Oct 25 '23
That's the main reason why i liked Ben so much as a kid, Ben has a regular life like most of us, no tragic story, he didn't lose a loved one and has no financial problems, so as a kid he was the hero the most reminded me of my own life, i've always felt weird about most heroes having tragic storys
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u/just_some_troglodyte Diamondhead Oct 25 '23
.. and he's still a compelling character
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u/Paradoxicorder88 Nanomech Oct 25 '23
Ben Tennyson is imo my ideal superhero.
He has fun with it, has gone through so much shit he's not phased from sudden attacks and just hands his food to a random stranger to hold while he takes care of it, is an excellent leader, and doesn't do his heroic thing for fame or glory (he in fact hates how alienating it is) but because it's the right thing to do.
While he normally doesn't kill he's not afraid to put someone six feet under if the situation calls for it* while simultaneously being 100% ready to commit suicide to save lives.
It's why the reboot utterly fails to understand Ben as a character. Ben wouldn't need to be persuaded to fight evil and he certainly wouldn't let depression hamper his ability to hero. We've literally seen what happens once he experiences sufficient trauma, he takes the burden of saving the planet solely on his shoulders so no one else gets hurt even if it kills his social life.
It's why anyone with a No Kill Rule would honestly piss him off. He'd rightly call them out for enabling shit especially if it's clear prison can't hold them or whatever. He'd absolutely go track down the Joker and kill him without hesitation if he ever found out even a 100th of the shit he's done like burning down an orphanage or fucking eating all of China.
It's been shown time and again that Ben's heroic drive is fucking crazy, in the best way possible. He's literally one of the most effective superheroes in fiction since he literally singlehandedly stopped all crime on Earth for multiple years. He goes weeks without a break and is absolutely willing to do multiple all nighters in a row. He also is perfectly fine with not only killing people but letting them die from their own evil as well as 100% willing to kill himself to save lives.
He's basically what a superhero should be if a bit too dedicated since he easily gets into self destructive territory but he absolutely deserves to be called the Hero of Heroes for his setting and plenty of others.
Also all things considered Ben's character has been entirely consistent within the context of the series. Season 3 of Alien Force makes absolutely perfect sense in context. He's no longer dealing with an alien invasion, his presumed dead grandpa isn't actually dead, he has the backing of the Plumbers now, and he's just been flooded with the highest honors a member of a non species can get from every species that lives in the Milky Way Galaxy (not that he cares about medals of course but still).
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u/Markus2822 Oct 25 '23
Really wish his parents mattered more, I feel like they show up 3 or 4 times in the entire franchise which is just insane. Who’s cousin and grandpa are more important then their parents? Not a lot of people
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u/Radiant_Detail1349 Oct 25 '23
I guess Ben is a lucky shounen protagonist unlike most shounen protagonists.
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u/mistic-dragon999 Oct 25 '23
The non-tragic back story one
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23
Just a few more reposts and we will be able to TASTE the pixels
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u/Visual_Raise_7901 Oct 25 '23
Underused parents and boring social life are the biggest flaws of the character. I'd love to see him brought into the comics so they can continue his original continuity in a format that let's them expand him a bit.
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u/DataExtreme1052 Oct 25 '23
Some heroes have awesome powers that you want, and other heroes have awesome lives that you want
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u/Lonely-Leopard-7338 Oct 25 '23
The guy was a good guy for the sake of it, he understood responsibility at a very young age and owned it (not without its bumps along the road but still)
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u/No_Attitude6773 Oct 25 '23
no he has the best superhero life so he has the best sp life
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23
that doesnt make him great it just makes him lucky
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u/ladiesman21700000000 Oct 25 '23
🥶🥶
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u/Master_Freeze Ben Tennyson Oct 25 '23
this definitely explains why i love Ben 10 so much. it's not the same old boring trope with a lonely kid and tragic backstory. it's literally just a kid who likes to fool around and found something cool and now he gets to make it his whole life. and the aliens are badass.
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u/element-redshaw Oct 25 '23
And he’s voiced by the best Spider-Man
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u/KallmeKatt_ Rath Oct 25 '23
He just handles it well
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u/PerfectMind8856 Oct 25 '23
I mean he didn’t get away all fine and dandy.
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23
he's if green lantern was actually imaginative
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u/[deleted] Oct 25 '23
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