I don't think the public really believes that, say, you can get superpowers from radioactive spiders.
The important part of this defense of the general public is that you mention radioactive spiders, not the "genetically-enhanced super spiders" that were used to hand-wave away the spider powers in the movies. Of course the public doesn't believe radioactive spiders will give anybody super powers or create giant atomic monsters. That was the fear of the 1950s/60s when radioactivity was at its least understood. Now that we know better, we scoff at such nonsense...
...while setting up our heroes to be mutants and genetically-enhanced soldiers using different methods that we don't fully understand the repercussions of now. That's all the difference is. I could buy that most people understand that DNA doesn't work the way they say it does in movies, least of all superhero movies. But that doesn't mean that they don't still, sort of, believe that lurking beneath the hyperbole is something almost as transformative. So super-strength, the ability wall-crawl, okay, we're not that dumb. But what about something like Splice, where we can pipette in some human DNA and transform a hybrid animal into one that is sentient and human-looking? Well, that guy did just make self-replicating synthetic life....
Perhaps the public gets it, but the writers don't, that's for sure.
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The important part of this defense of the general public is that you mention radioactive spiders, not the "genetically-enhanced super spiders" that were used to hand-wave away the spider powers in the movies. Of course the public doesn't believe radioactive spiders will give anybody super powers or create giant atomic monsters. That was the fear of the 1950s/60s when radioactivity was at its least understood. Now that we know better, we scoff at such nonsense...
...while setting up our heroes to be mutants and genetically-enhanced soldiers using different methods that we don't fully understand the repercussions of now. That's all the difference is. I could buy that most people understand that DNA doesn't work the way they say it does in movies, least of all superhero movies. But that doesn't mean that they don't still, sort of, believe that lurking beneath the hyperbole is something almost as transformative. So super-strength, the ability wall-crawl, okay, we're not that dumb. But what about something like Splice, where we can pipette in some human DNA and transform a hybrid animal into one that is sentient and human-looking? Well, that guy did just make self-replicating synthetic life....
Perhaps the public gets it, but the writers don't, that's for sure.