I think the issue is largely that teen Drama is written by a bunch of guys who were in high school decades ago, at a time when the entire face of the school system has changed radically over that time instead of remaining as relatively static as it used to. In cases where someone involved in doing a movie like this *DOES* have a clue about the material they are writing, there are concerns over content from the same older crowd that doesn't get it, and thus there is a lot of editing.
Oh sure, there are a lot of cliques and such, and some social lines are still more or less the same as they used to be. However I think people tend to overlook the extent to which bullying is taken, the level of personal armament in schools just for general protection, not to mention being part of the whole gang/drug subculture. Where at one time a school might have a "dark history" if it had ONE student that died, today things like teen suicides, drug killings, or even just muggings gone horribly wrong (like a kid stabbed to death over pokemon cards... albiet that was JR. High if I remember), your ridiculously lucky if your school doesn't have a fatality or three every year, and if your school has *NEVER* had one, that is like the absolute epitome of luck today.
This is not even getting into the issue of school shootings, which are a scary thing, because they are a reaction to a system nobody wants to change. Above and beyond the whole issue of a bunch of nerds coming to school with guns and cutting loose, there is also the much-sidestepped issue of the entire system and social order that caused these things to happen.
The point here being that the whole "Saved By The Bell" schtick might have worked decades ago, especially for those not yet in high school who see it as something magical to look forward to, but for an actual teen or late pre-teen audience who lives in the real world? Not really. Enforcing those tropes as a way of establishing normality doesn't work, because really today the biggest problems facing kids in schools is usually not things like bullies, and when it DOES involve bullies it's typically beyond the pale getting into levels of torture and torment that people generally don't want to think about. In a school your not likely to have like one jock doing steroids, or a couple of druggies, but entire organizations and inherant subcultures built around those things, including beatings, shootings, stabbings or just the prescence of weapons connected to it. Today's issue isn't so much "OMG that kid on the football team is doing 'roids secretly" it's a matter of them all doing it, and things like one of them not being able to pay his bills and getting beaten up or killed, or someone deciding to cut corners by tampering with the garbage they are distributing.
This is long, and getting away from the entire point of "Number Four" here, I'm just pointing this out because it's all a big part of why I think teen drama has been an epic fail train recently, especially among an adult audience who can see it from the outside and don't want to delude themselves.
Honestly if someone was to take the time and write high school as it actually is nowadays for the backdrop of a story like this, I think that could work quite well. Plenty of ambigious stuff for a budding super hero to have to worry about without the old trope of "OMG, he's being bullied by guys he could handle easily. How does super-guy deal with the other kids who have guns in their lockers, and might need them to protect themselves? The drug and steroid distribution subculture? Girls selling themselves sexually/camwhoring for things? Especially when you look at how tight the net is and how pulling at one part of it causes reactions elswhere that can be even worse than the balancing act. In the end a super hero should of course win in the end, but you could do a LOT with that before the real super-bad guys show up... and really, that's what a teen drama should be today, especially if you want to provide analogies to real problems and solutions even beyond some kind of magic super hero thing.
That's my thoughts at any rate.
Also for the record, my early life was hardly normal, but I will say that from what I know of the school system from when I was there, and what I learned later, if I had the powers of say "Spider Man" I'm not sure exactly HOW I could solve a lot of the real problems with those abillities. As a writer though you can find ways, and truthfully I think that's part of the healing process is to get the fantasy going in the right direction.
