\u201cWe\u2019re in the endgame now,\u201d says Doctor Strange, mid-way through Avengers: Infinity War. He\u2019s talking about the epic battle against the mega-villain Thanos, who is threatening to destroy half the universe. Stopping Thanos is going to require every Marvel superhero that Disney\u2019s franchise rights can access. But Doctor Strange is also reminding us that Infinity War is the culmination of the most awesomely ambitious, successfully coordinated crossover project that cinema has ever seen, which has unfolded over a decade and nearly 20 movies.<\/p>\n
But Infinity War could represent another kind of endgame. Superhero movies are undoubtedly the success story of modern Hollywood. They have been having their cake and eating it, combining lucrative spectacle with social and political relevance. And there\u2019s no indication that their appeal is on the wane. But as time goes on, the superhero genre has been edging ever closer to its own contradictions, and something\u2019s got to give.<\/p>\n
In the predecessor to Infinity War, Captain America: Civil War, the US secretary of state visits the Avengers HQ and points out the elephant in the room. \u201cWhat would you call a group of US-based, enhanced individuals who routinely ignore sovereign borders, who inflict their will wherever they choose, and who frankly seem unconcerned about what they leave behind?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n
Like their audience, Iron Man, Captain America and co thought of themselves as flawed but noble superheroes uniting for a cause \u2013 until suddenly they were confronted with the possibility they might be dangerous, destructive, unregulated vigilantes. We\u2019ve been seeing these awkward moments of self-awareness more and more in comic-book movies. Another one comes minutes later in the same movie. \u201cIn the eight years since Mr Stark identified himself as Iron Man, the number of enhanced persons has grown exponentially,\u201d points out Vision, the Avengers\u2019 cyborg super-being. \u201cDuring the same period the number of potentially world-ending events has risen at a commensurate rate.\u201d It\u2019s a bit like the Mitchell and Webb sketch where a Nazi soldier wonders why they all have skulls on their cap badges and asks: \u201cAre we the baddies?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a question worth asking: what makes superheroes the good guys? It\u2019s taken as a given in these movies, but there\u2019s a nagging sense that for all their tales of heroism and sacrifice and vanquishing alien threats to Earth, the superhero moral compass is no longer pointing in the right direction.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, there was a very simple reason why superheroes were the good guys: they were on our side. \u201cUs\u201d being the US and its allies. DC Comics\u2019 Superman pledged to \u201cfight for the common man\u201d. He took on the corruption and injustice that plagued his post-Depression society. Batman swore to avenge his parents\u2019 death \u201cby spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals\u201d. Wonder Woman fought with truth and love. You could argue that Superman was more socialist-leaning, Batman more rightwing and Wonder Woman impossibly idealistic \u2013 but they were all on our side. Marvel\u2019s 1960s stable complicated the issue a little. Titles such as X-Men and Black Panther broached civil rights issues and blurred moralities. But still, Captain America socked it to Hitler and Spider-Man knew that power comes with responsibility, and kept his crimefighting to neighbourhood scale. Good guys.<\/p>\n
They were still the good guys when Sam Raimi\u2019s 2002 Spider-Man kick-started the current comic-book movie era. The attacks of 9\/11 were so fresh in the consciousness that the Twin Towers had to be airbrushed out of the movie\u2019s posters, and its themes of inner courage and community spirit resonated. \u201cYou mess with one of us, you mess with all of us,\u201d a random New Yorker yells at Spider-Man\u2019s adversary. The first cycle of superhero movies followed a similar template, especially Iron Man, who took on Middle Eastern terrorists in his 2008 debut.<\/p>\n
In previous eras, superheroes such as Michael Keaton\u2019s Batman or Christopher Reeve\u2019s Superman operated in more abstract fantasy worlds, but as superheroes began to interact with vaguely here-and-now political reality, their methods came under new scrutiny. Alan Moore\u2019s seminal 1987 comic Watchmen was one of the first to suggest that people who enjoy dressing up in costumes and beating the crap out of people might be in need of psychological evaluation, or a war crimes tribunal. Vigilantism looks a lot like authoritarianism, which looks a lot like fascism.<\/p>\n
Where does that leave a \u201cgood guy\u201d such as Batman, who operates as both judge and jury, even applying the death penalty, with zero tolerance or oversight? Put him in the real world and you get someone like Vladimir Putin or Rodrigo Duterte.<\/p>\n
As with the Avengers, Batman was called out on this in the recent Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice. Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman, is told: \u201cCivil liberties being trampled on in your city, good people living in fear … he thinks he\u2019s above the law\u201d. The person probing him is the Daily Planet\u2019s ace reporter Clark Kent, AKA Superman.<\/p>\n
The other change was the direction of US and western politics. That post 9\/11 moral certainty rapidly evaporated as the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan brought torture, extrajudicial killing, \u201ccollateral damage\u201d, deception, mass surveillance and other abuses into the court of \u201cthe good guys\u201d. Around the same time, superhero movies were entering their team-up phase, with the Avengers and Justice League. Questions of individual values became more complex questions of collective values \u2013 of power and its abuses, of loyalties personal, political, even planetary.<\/p>\n
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\nAs the political soul of the Marvel cinematic universe, Captain America\u2019s movies track the shift. In his 2011 debut The First Avenger, he\u2019s a typical good guy: a Nazi-socking patriot with greatness thrust upon him. By the 2014 sequel, The Winter Soldier, his old-school moral certitude can\u2019t get with the modern-day US government\u2019s plans for universal surveillance and pre-emptive drone strikes. \u201cThis isn\u2019t freedom; it\u2019s fear,\u201d he assesses, and turns his back on the government (rightly so: it turns out to have been infiltrated by the neo-Nazi organisation Hydra). In the era of Edward Snowden and contentious remote warfare, this was radical stuff for a superhero movie. By part three in 2016, Civil War, Captain America refuses the secretary of state\u2019s demand that the Avengers agree to UN oversight and splinters off with a bunch of rebel superheroes. That sets the scene for a clash of opposing superhero teams.<\/p>\n
A similar thing happens in Batman Vs Superman. And in both cases, the schism has been engineered by a hostile third party peddling false information and turning superheroes against each other. You could say these clashes reflect the polarised state of politics in the US, the UK and elsewhere, and foreign attempts to widen the divisions. Or they are just brazen attempts to sustain interest in the genre by orchestrating a bogus superhero face-off. Either way, the question again needs asking, who are the good guys here?<\/p>\n
A useful way to examine the question is by turning it around and looking at some of the baddies. Let\u2019s start with the most recent hit: Black Panther. Michael B Jordan\u2019s antagonist Killmonger was widely regarded as one of the best things about the movie and with good reason: he\u2019s not really bad at all. His grievances are actually perfectly valid: how could resource-rich Wakanda stand by and let all these atrocities \u2013 slavery, colonialism, world wars, racism \u2013 happen to their African brothers and sisters? Wakanda is like a Black Switzerland. It stands aloof and neutral (come to think of it, so does Wonder Woman\u2019s home, Themiscyra). Killmonger is defeated, but he wins the argument: Black Panther realises he\u2019s not the good guy! At the close of the movie, Wakanda begins to engage with the rest of the world, albeit on its own limited terms, which are a far cry from the armed uprising Killmonger had in mind.<\/p>\n
This seems to be the pattern with a lot of superhero movies: the challenging political sentiments are not coming from the heroes; they\u2019re coming from the villains. And the provocative ideas they raise are initially paid lip-service to, then conveniently forgotten in the heat of the third-act battle.<\/p>\n
It happens again in Thor: Ragnarok. Yes, Cate Blanchett may be the goddess of death, Hela, but she reveals that Asgard\u2019s wealth was built on colonial plunder. \u201cLook at these lies,\u201d she says, contemplating a medieval-looking ceiling fresco, \u201cGoblets and garden parties, peace treaties. Odin, proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it.\u201d She rips the fresco down to expose an older one underneath, showing scenes of violent conquest. \u201cIt seems our father\u2019s solution to every problem was to cover it up,\u201d she later says of Odin. Anyway, let\u2019s have a big fight!<\/p>\n
Take another example, Michael Keaton\u2019s Vulture, villain of Spider-Man: Homecoming. His salvage firm is put out of business when the contract to clean up New York after the last Avengers battle is handed to a public-private partnership between the US government and Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man. That\u2019s Stark, the billionaire weapons manufacturer and corporate predator who inherited his wealth. \u201cA lot of the assholes who made this mess are being paid to clean it up,\u201d one of Vulture\u2019s colleagues observes. He seethes with understandable contempt for Stark, the Avengers and the one percent. \u201cThose people up there, the rich and the powerful, they do whatever they want,\u201d he says. \u201cWe build their roads and we fight all their wars and everything. They don\u2019t care about us.\u201d It\u2019s a long way from, \u201cYou mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taking this idea of class war even further, before backing out of it, was The Dark Knight Rises, the third film of Christopher Nolan\u2019s Batman trilogy. It was made at a time of the anti-globalisation Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, and class war was in the air. \u201cWhen it hits, you\u2019re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us,\u201d Anne Hathaway\u2019s Catwoman tells Bruce Wayne (who, like Stark, is a hereditary billionaire arms-dealer).<\/p>\n
The villain, Tom Hardy\u2019s Bane, bankrupts Wayne, exposes his political lies and provokes a popular uprising in Gotham City. At one point, he literally occupies Wall Street. \u201cWe take Gotham from the corrupt! The rich! The oppressors of generations who have kept you down with myths of opportunity, and we give it back to you \u2026 the people.\u201d Again, you have to remind yourself that Bane is the bad guy. So does the movie: Bane\u2019s rebellion devolves into show trials, executions and violence on the streets.<\/p>\n
As usual, Batman gets to be the hero, restoring order and sacrificing himself for the sake of the Gothamites (or at least that\u2019s what they think). The superhero movie\u2019s flirtation with radical politics \u2013 also known as \u201csocialism\u201d \u2013 turns out to be another red herring. As the philosopher Slavoj \u017di\u017eek noted at the time: \u201cThe actual OWS movement was not violent, its goal was definitely not a new reign of terror; insofar as Bane\u2019s revolt is supposed to extrapolate the immanent tendency of the OWS movement, the film thus ridiculously misrepresents its aims and strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n
This brings us up to Infinity War\u2019s villain, Thanos. With a name like that, you know he\u2019s not a good guy. But nor is he textbook evil. He doesn\u2019t want to build an empire or amass wealth or any of the usual despotic bad-guy things. He just wants to restore balance to the universe, indiscriminately. You could call him a Malthusian extremist. \u201cThe universe is finite, its resources are finite. If left unchecked it will cease to exist,\u201d he explains. \u201cSo many mouths and not enough to go round.\u201d You wouldn\u2019t call that evil if David Attenborough had said it.<\/p>\n
Thanos\u2019s methods are hardly humane, but there is a logic to his argument: climate change and environmental destruction are inarguable threats. Human existence is unsustainable. But Avengers gotta avenge. Rather than debating the validity of Thanos\u2019s arguments and acknowledging that something ought to change, the superheroes once again fight tooth and nail to preserve the status quo.<\/p>\n
Avoiding spoilers, one thing Thanos\u2019s rampage does achieve in Infinity War is to unite the divided factions of the Avengers. They\u2019re all the good guys again. In the face of his existential threat, all other differences pale into insignificance. Here, at last, is a message that the outside world could really do with hearing.<\/p>\n
Source:https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/film\/2018\/apr\/27\/what-if-superheroes-arent-really-the-good-guys<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe\u2019re in the endgame now,\u201d says Doctor Strange, mid-way through Avengers: Infinity War. He\u2019s talking about the epic battle against the mega-villain Thanos, who is threatening to destroy half the universe. Stopping Thanos is going to require every Marvel superhero that Disney\u2019s franchise rights can access. But Doctor Strange is also reminding us that Infinity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=714"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/britishdailynews.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}