Why have most Superhero movies ditched the "Secret Identity"?

Question

When I say "most", I primarily mean the Marvel Avenger series. Out of all of them, even Ant-Man pretty much up and exposed himself, revealing his true identity to anyone he looked at.

One of the few movie series that keeps the "secret identity" trope alive is Spider-Man, keeping true to the comics, which added all the tension of keeping his friends and family safe, while having to deal with the stress of not being able to explain his common disappearances, injuries, etc, which (IMO) added a lot to the story.

So why has the superhero "Secret Identity" become little more than an easter egg?

Answer 1

Quite simply, because Marvel thought the idea was "overplayed". Kevin Feige explained this to BleedingCool a few years ago:

KF: The one we haven’t done in the MCU is the secret identity thing. I thought that had been overplayed for a long time which is why we had Tony Stark out himself at the end of his first movie. We were sort of announcing to the audience that we’re not going to play that game.

He went on to say that they had an idea which may play out at a later date.

KF: I think there is and I think we will get to it at some point. We have an idea. As a matter of fact, I was just talking about it the other day with one of our filmmakers. The fun thing about the job, though, is that idea I was talking about with a filmmaker might not happen for four or five years because it may or may not be appropriate for a first movie.

Answer 2

Because it isn't logical when you have real human beings. Clark Kent doesn't stop looking like Clark Kent just because he's taken his glasses off. In the comics they can draw the characters differently depending on which persona they're in (Clark Kent certainly doesn't have the same build as Superman!), but that fails when you have a real human being. Lois Lane would have had to be completely blind to fail to notice the similarity between Christopher Reeve in Superman mode and Christopher Reeve in Clark Kent mode.

That's one of the few things the otherwise-awful Green Lantern movie was right about - simply wearing a mask across your eyes doesn't stop you being recognisable!

Of course if you have a full-face covering (and perhaps a disguised voice) then you probably can keep your identity secret, for as long as the face covering stays on anyway. So Spidey and Batman are mostly OK, but Superman and Wonder Woman definitely aren't. They even made a thing of this in the first Spiderman trilogy, where his mask was ripped off but the people he'd saved promised never to tell anyone what he looked like.

Answer 3

I'm indulging in armchair psychology, but a "secret identity" may have lost some of its allure to viewers today, when everyone can have their own "secret identity" or avatars in online games, social media and stackexchange. It's awfully mundane these days.

Writer Marshall Lemon (if that is his real name..) takes another view. In the early 20th century, the superheroes started out as vigilantes. They are outlaws, anti-establishment. Like Zorro who fights against tyrannical government officials and uses his secret identity to avoid getting caught. With some exceptions, superheroes stopped being anti-establishment after WWII, but the secret identity remained as a writer's crutch.

A third possibility, in the realm of armchair psychology, is that the secret identity mirrors the situation of teenage comics readers, who must learn to balance a carefully constructed outward appearance against their inner "true" self. You can find plenty of other thinly veiled teenage-themes in comics and you could argue that the secret identity theme would correlate with the degree of enforced conformity in society. This would explain the downward trend in the US over the last half-century. However, I lean against rejecting this idea, as "secret identity" is infrequently seen in Japanese comics, even though Japanese society is famously conformist.

Answer 4

Some of it may be an update based on the sliding time scale which puts heroes in the same time frame as our own. While comics such as Spider-man explored the idea of ubiquitous cameras in the city decades ago, the fact of the matter is that, today, the odds of a super-hero maintaining their secret identity for any reason other than the police and general populace looking the other way is looking pretty slim. DNA analysis means any blood or hair left on the scene can be analyzed. Even without security footage, there's enough cameras in the general populace that the odds are that a hero will be filmed changing. And analysis tools such as gait analysis and analysis of body structures mean that it's likely that computer systems will passively analyze any footage and pin down who it is.

TL;DR

Rather than try to explain how the heroes could possibly keep their secret identities in today's age, they rather have the heroes be open about who they are.

Answer 5

I am surprised nobody pointed out yet another reason: Most of them do not need actually a secret identity.

Black Widow: Natalia "Natasha" Alianovna Romanova
Hawkeye: Clint Barton

Both are orphans and have no known relatives which need to be protected. Both are also relatively lonely and are working secretly for SHIELD/Avengers which is their ersatz family now.

Nick Fury

He has actually a secret identity, his role as leader of SHIELD is clandestine. Hydra was able to attack him because they subverted SHIELD.

Captain America: Steve Rogers

He was frozen in ice some decades, so all the people he knew and loved people are dead now. In "Civil War"

his deepest love died of old age. Her daughter niece is a friend working for the CIA, so she has protection (and can take care of herself).

and he lost most of his popularity after the defeat of the Nazis. Like Romanov/Barton, the Avengers give him a group of peers.

Thor

He is one of the most powerful Asgardians and Earth is not his home so he does not have humans to fear. His temporary dismissal which caused him to be left powerless on Earth seems to have been unnoticed by any possible enemy, so his human friends have nobodyto fear.

Hulk: Bruce Banner

He had secret identities: Before the Avengers and when he decides that leaving the Avengers is better (sure, they know where he is, but at least SHIELD has the decency to hide that they know it). And really, who is dumb enough to try to make an unstoppable juggernaut angry ?

Iron Man: Tony Stark

Well, he is famous in the MCU, rich and powerful. The earth has also trouble to hold the weight of his ego, so he invites enemies and in fact protecting his loved ones with a known identity is a key point in the movies. What is helping him is that many people think that he is an overconfident asshole/womanizer so they do not assume that he cares very deeply for his bodyguard/chauffeur Hogan and Pepper Potts.

Ant-Man: Scott Lang

Given that the actually has an ex-wife and a daughter, not having a secret identity may give him problems in future...

Answer 6

In my opinion, the most significant reason is simply because of modern technology. Maintaining a "secret identity" in a first-world country seemed feasible 20+ years ago. Today? Not so much. The only people who can operate in the shadows are those deeply involved in technology and thus their actions must remain in an electronic playing field.

Unless you have a superhero saving lives with his/her amazing "hacking" powers, the idea that a superhero's true identity can remain completely anonymous in a world with cameras on every corner (and in the pockets of every citizen) just doesn't make for a believable story. I don't think it gets more complicated than that. Additionally, I don't buy the fact that Marvel felt that it was "overplayed". The entire super hero movie genre is a bit overplayed at this point (let's be real, they all follow almost the exact same formula) yet we still love them.