Alter Egos: On Marvel’s Avengers, Joss Whedon, and growing up

When I was a kid I wanted to be Spider-Man, though I knew I couldn’t. I didn’t live in New York for one. No way to be a webslinger in a beachtown. And two I wasn’t that into science; I’d probably fake sick out of some fateful field trip to a laboratory. The fantasy pulled me through some of the tougher days. Imagine my glee as a 10-year-old seeing it realized on a film screen.

But now, like many of you, I’ve developed some feelings regarding superhero movies. Complicated ones. I look at Comics Alliance’s comic book release schedule and a dread seeps through my limbs. Sometimes I believe it’s some optical illusion that if I only stare long enough, it might re-arrange into something different. Something, perhaps, more manageable.

I must be clear: I am not discussing ‘superhero fatigue.’ That is not what this is about. I (kind of) reject ‘superhero fatigue’ anyways. It’s a boring concept, as if people don’t want their childhood fantasies realized on a screen, as if these ideas and characters and stories aren’t dazzling fun, as if this isn’t a world that feels in need of superheroes in recent years.

But as a quasi-closet nerd*, comic book movies and their ascendancy into thing status has been weird. We went from a few franchises (X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman) into oh-shit-they’re-making-a-Suicide-Squad-movie status. The movies themselves transformed from nerd plaything to becoming this strange dependable backbone to Hollywood. We live in an entertainment ecosystem where a Captain America-related movie is a more bankable product than any Tom Cruise vehicle. The longer I live in this world the less I understand it.

*My college roommate used to make fun of me because I’d hide our video games when I brought girls home. I didn’t want to look lame. Once, I forgot and this particular girl remarked how cool my roommate’s retro game collection was. She wanted to play. We did, and my roommate had a shit-eating grin so wide I thought he might break his face forever. (In nerd terms: He looked like The Killing Joke’s Joker.) I let him have it; he earned his moment.

But right now is the tipping point for these comic book movies. You can feel it. Listen merely to the discussion, the discussion, THE DISCUSSION every time a new movie releases regarding its necessity/validity. These movies have encountered the same problems dogging mainstream comics forever: It’s pretty difficult to construct consistent narrative tension and drama within static storytelling. Stan Lee once said Marvel’s secret is the “illusion of change” but I never considered it much of a secret. You can’t kill the hero; the comic would ostensibly end. (This is saying nothing of superheroes like Superman or Wolverine who essentially can’t die.) Even if some superhero dies, everyone’s been resurrected like five thousand times so it (sort of) doesn’t matter.

Now infuse stars like Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner, it’s damn near impossible to believe for one second that any of these characters might encounter death—let alone, trying danger. I’m begging the question that’s dogged comic book writers for decades: How do you make it interesting beyond good vs. evil? And also what even is ‘good’ and ‘evil’?

I’m not sure the answer to those questions. So instead let’s discuss how the Avengers: Age of Ultron is about America.

***

This game of Marvel’s has been a long-con, dating back to Iron Man’s release in 2008. Part of me can’t believe that was seven years ago; the other part thinks it was even sooner than that. Living in a hyper-mediated, hyper-connected culture like ours has that effect.

With the aim to construct the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)*, it seems a bit strange to start with Iron Man. Captain America, the typical leader of the Avengers, makes the most sense. A symbol of blue-collar America. Iron Man, meanwhile, is a functioning alcoholic, egotistical to his own detriment, stupidly rich from war and a walking weapon constructed out of sheer desperation: how could America relate to a charact—oh.

*Note: The release of Hulk in 2003 has been retconned in the MCU despite some 11-year-old boy liking it quite well, only to realize as a 23-year-old that a) he wasn’t supposed to like it and b) it basically didn’t count.

Then comes The Incredible Hulk, gamma-radiated as an experiment to re-initiate the ‘super human’ project. Instead, Bruce Banner turns into a mobile atomic bomb, unable to control his own powers, despite desperately trying. You do not need to be a politically savvy obsessive to recognize the parallels of the 60s and how some of those sentiments might be echoed in 2008.

Eventually came Captain America, an American man of simpler times and worries, and Thor, a Norse God protecting us from foreign evils we never considered. All of this was a plan to beget the Avengers. The moment all our heroes materialized on screen together for the first time was bliss. I could barely contain myself. Unlike X-Men or the Spider-Man movies that were more using comic book stories and contextualizing them into cinema, the Avengers was comic book as movie.

I watched the premiere alone, no friends or family—I needed my dosage pure. No ‘I didn’t understand why Hawkeye wanted to hurt his friends’ or ‘It was good, but a bit long don’t cha think?’ or ‘Why do you want to stay after the credits? The movie’s over.’ I would not have any of that. Childhood me had waited too long for this.

Anyway, Avengers was fun. All my bubbling anticipation clouded any critical perception of the thing; I was just glad it existed.

Then came Marvel’s Phase 2, which had its hiccups and highlights, but I want to maintain focus here. This is about the Avengers.

These characters and movies persist as a sort of paradox for the past decade or so: Superheroes serve as one of our few ubiquitous cultural touchstones, yet they’re based on (quite) outdated ideals and attitudes. Since most these narratives are pulled from Marvel’s Golden Age, these themes and ideas from the 60s and 70s, don’t really have the most elevated thinking of race, gender identity/politics, portraits of power etc. If we time-traveled back then, I’m sure almost no one would know what a gender politic is. (But they’ll probably still know what a joint is!)

You can see it on the screen, which lacks any diversity outside of strong, white men. A note on this: It’s a low-hanging fruit, admittedly. Critics who harp on this fail to engage Marvel betting big money this would work, i.e. who knew if the public would buy into all this like it has? It was a long-shot. So Marvel Studios hedged its bets by ensuring nerds would be satisfied. And to clarify, it’s not that nerds only wanted to see strong, white men onscreen (although that’s probably part of the truth), it’s because screwing with original incarnations of these stories runs antithetical to giving the people what they want. Which is to see their childhood superheroes on a big screen. Which is to nerdgasm. Which is to ‘feel safe’ remembering a time in their lives when things were simpler. I’m not condoning it—in fact, the upcoming Marvel and DC movies that fill in these diversity holes excite me the most—but it’s an understandable move.*

*I wrote this part of the essay before Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios announced 19-year-old Tom Holland as the new Spider-Man. (Because I can’t resist: still #donald4spiderman.) We’ll finally get a Peter Parker in high school, which is exciting, but I know people wanted Miles Morales, a black Latino teen who becomes the new Spider-Man when Peter Parker dies in Ultimate Spider-Man #160. (Peter Parker was still the main Spider-Man in the non-Ultimate Marvel universe. I know. Comics are confusing.) The writing was on the wall with this one, though. Marvel Studios wanted Peter Parker because he’s pretty important to this comic book Civil War arc they’re building post-Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s disappointing Marvel continues to care more about its vision than serving underfed members of its diverse audience…but that vision has made them like billions of dollars so they’re unlikely to change. On a pretty freaking bright note, Miles Morales will be the official Spider-Man no asterisk in Marvel Comics now! It’s all part of Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars event that—very long story short—will consolidate all these different Marvel continuities into one universe. For Marvel Comics to replace Peter Parker, a.k.a. Marvel’s cash cow, with Miles Morales shows a sincere and serious commitment to diversity. Marvel Studios, not yet. But Marvel Comics probably feels secure making that type of creative risk precisely because all the money Marvel Studios prints. It’s a little more complicated than the Internet would have you believe.

So Iron Man. He’s different. He’s brash, funny, and wholly contemporary. If the America of today created real-life superheroes, they’d probably be close to Iron Man.

What they would not look like is Captain America. Cap just isn’t that cool. He’s Mr. Do-The-Right-Thing-Always, Mr. Self-Righteous. His old-mannered uncoolness becomes a through-line in Avengers: Age of Ultron because he chastises Tony’s “language.” Sigh. He’s basically your grandpa who never aged; you love and respect him, but you wouldn’t regularly hang with him for funsies.

So when you’re thinking about the Avengers, ignore ‘Captain’ America. It’s a farce. The true MCU Avenger captain is and always has been Tony Stark. He embodies some different post-9/11 American ideals: extreme techno-optimism and techno-hubris, an obsession with pre-empting attacks, staunch American Exceptionalism, an unwillingness to compromise, all covered by a shiny, cool charisma as a cultural icon. I wouldn’t call him liberal or conservative—he’s a bona fide capitalist.

***

Joss Whedon, architect of the MCU’s Avengers, has some opinions. Okay not some. Whedon has lots of opinions.

Let’s focus on one opinion of his, though. At Comic-Con 2012, a fan asked Whedon to spit his economic philosophy. Here’s what he had to say:

“Um, y’know, I was raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 70s, by the people who thought John Reed and the young socialists of the 20s were some of the most idealistic people, and that socialism as a model was such a beautiful concept. And now of course it’s become a buzzword for horns and a pitchfork.

And we’re watching capitalism destroy itself, right now. And ultimately all of these systems don’t work. I tend to want to champion the working class because they are getting destroyed. I write about helplessness—helplessness in the face of the giant corporations and the enormously rich people who are very often in power giving those people more power to get even more power.

We are turning into Czarist Russia. We are creating a nation of serfs. That leads to—oddly enough—revolution and socialism, which then leads to totalitarianism. Nobody wins.

It’s really really really important that we find a system that honors both our need to achieve, and doesn’t try to take things away from us, but at the same time honors everybody’s need to have a start, to have a goal, to have a life, to have an income, to have a chance.

The fact is, these things have been taken away from us, sometimes very gradually, sometimes not so gradually, since the beginning of the Reagan era, and it’s proved to be catastrophic for so much of America.

During the writers’ strike I was furious; I remain furious. I’m not always sure what to do about it. I don’t think most of us are.

But I do know that what’s happening right now in the political arena is that we have people who are trying to create structures or preserve structures that will help the working class and the middle class, and people who are calling them socialists.

And nobody has the perfect answer. But I honestly think we are now in a political debate that is no longer Republican versus Democrat or even conservative versus liberal. It’s about people who are trying to make it work because they still remember, they still have some connection to the idea of personal dignity—and people who have gone off the reservation and believe Jesus Christ is a true American.”

Umm, what? I thought we were talking about superheroes?

***

Joss Whedon directed the first Avengers. As an arbiter of geek/nerd culture and a prime pop culture storyteller, it was a wildly heralded move. He placed some of his Whedonian tropes within it, but with the script already written and a story set up through previous movies, he was more following a gameplan. It should be mentioned the reason why Avengers remains particularly memorable is Whedon and Mark Ruffalo’s nuanced duality of Bruce Banner/Hulk. Hulk pulverizing Loki and Banner admitting “That’s my secret, Cap, I’m always angry,” are two of my favorite moments of the film.

With Avengers: Age of Ultron, Whedon directed and wrote the movie. It’s his baby through and through. So what’s it about?

It begins with our Avengers assembled, infiltrating Hydra’s compound to recover Loki’s scepter. They do cool superhero shit. Two Russian enhancements*, the Maximoff twins a.k.a. Quicksilver and Scarlet Watch, disrupt the team’s advancements a bit. While Tony Stark explores the base, finding a secret room containing Loki’s scepter, Scarlet Witch sneaks behind him.

*Mutants. That is what they are: mutants. But because Fox owns X-Men, we must call them enhancements. It’s the equivalent of someone calling tuna ‘chicken of the sea.’ Everyone knows what it really is—why lie? Then again, people like Jessica Simpson exist. Oh well.

She corrupts his mind, revealing to him a vision of his deepest fear: A future with all his superhero friends dead because he couldn’t save them. This spurs Stark to create Ultron, an A.I. that goes rogue and becomes our baddie. Chaos ensues and our heroes, for once, receive a beatdown. The team begins fighting amongst itself, but most notably Captain America vs. Iron Man. The team retreats to Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye’s secret farm where his wife and two kids live to recuperate.

The film skews dark. Tony Stark seems like a paranoid junkie, desperate to prove he can right wrongs he keeps creating. Steve Rogers realizes he isn’t the leader he thinks he is. Thor retreats, terrified his prolonged Avenging has left his home world Asgaard open to an attack. Bruce Banner can’t reconcile losing his ability to control the Hulk. Clint Barton wishes the team didn’t need him, but believes his presence unifies the team. Natasha Romanoff reveals the sacrifices forced upon her to transform into an elite killing agent.

It is these moments that are my favorite in comics. When we see the struggles, the enduring cost and commitment to saving the world, yet these people choose to press on and inhabit something larger than themselves. This is what we talk about when we describe superheroes as symbols.

Audiences like this, too, though they might not recognize it. Why else would Spider-Man and Batman, the mainstream characters most tortured by their personal demons, be the world’s most popular heroes*? We love superheroes as much for their kicking ass and crime-stopping abilities as their innate humanity.

*That and their stories present an everyman, superheroes-can-be-anyone vibe to them.

But…after all that wonderful setup, the movie’s third act drops all the interesting tension and character drama as everything sort of just works out for our heroes. Tony Stark creates Vision, another superhero who’s super powerful (he can lift Thor’s hammer so you know he’s legit…I know) and the Maximoff twins join the Avengers. Together, they defeat Ultron, they save the planet, the day is won. Quicksilver dies saving Hawkeye, who Whedon toys with killing throughout the movie. (Much like Ruffalo as Hulk in the first Avengers, Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye grounds this movie, albeit for much different reasons.) Cap and Black Widow launch presumably the Secret Avengers with a new academy, Hulk disappears, Thor and Hawkeye return home, and Iron Man hangs up the suit.*

*Weird continuity error with Iron Man: Didn’t he just hang up the suit in Iron Man 3? It’s never explained why he’s back avenging at movie’s beginning or why he returns to not fighting by movie’s end. If Iron Man 3 takes place before Avengers 2, this is most confusing. (Yes, I realize how trivial a nerd concern this is.)

Oh and Thanos re-introduces himself, so we know that he’s our future villain. Overall, Avengers: Age of Ultron has better dramatic storytelling and characterization (even though it falls apart) than the first but that doesn’t top the thrilling realization of all that potential in the first Avengers. That magic probably won’t be topped in any future Marvel movie.

***

During his press run leading up to the movie’s release, Joss Whedon revealed some interesting tidbits. Like: At one point, he had a cut of the movie spanning 3 hours and 15 minutes*. Also, Marvel Studios basically placed a gun to his head, making him choose between Thor’s Infinity Gauntlet side plot (the puzzling cave scene) or the farm scene where our heroes lick their wounds. Whedon chose the farm. He’s also mentioned how filming two Avenger movies back to back while serving as the MCU architect made him tired, like supes tired.

*I really want to see this cut of the movie.

Basically, he didn’t create the film he wanted; he made the best movie possible considering numerous restrictions working within Marvel’s studio system and its master plan (I resist adding the phrase “to take our money” to the end of that sentence; I prefer not to be a cynic). And this makes me sad, because if he can’t, what hope does anyone else have? Edgar Wright, another nerd folk hero, quit Ant Man over creative differences. Michelle MacLaren, who directed many of Breaking Bad’s best episodes, has been ‘replaced’ as Wonder Woman director (different studio but still). I remain optimistic regarding Selma director Ava DuVernay helming Black Panther. I hope it works out, but it’s not a good track record.

Here’s the movie I believe Whedon wanted to make: A character-driven drama about these superheroes who lost sight of why they fight and instead spurned by fear, they created an evil more powerful than they could contain. One character in particular would have to sacrifice his ego and himself to stop it.

I’ll come out with it: I think Avengers: Age of Ultron was intended to be about the death of Iron Man. Quiksilver wasn’t supposed to die for Hawkeye, Iron Man was. And Whedon meant it as some larger allegory as he’s wont to do within his creations.

All these ideas bubble within the first two acts of the movie. I was enraptured. Then it all vanished and so did my inside feels. It was pretty disappointing.

***

I guess I’m writing about all this because I’m at a strange point of my life. I feel torn between this urge to finally ‘grow up’ and a compulsion to stay true to my younger self. And I guess these movies and the conversation surrounding them have become some barometer for me. Am I still in need of symbolic saving like I once was or is it now all some unnecessary pump of misplaced nostalgia?

It’s stuff like the outrage surrounding Black Widow’s subplot in the film that pauses me. After Bruce Banner shares his insecurities over controlling ‘the other guy’, Natasha Ramonoff opens up about her struggles as people usually do during vulnerable heart-to-hearts. She unveils that during her training they sterilized her so she’d be the ultimate killing machine, without any ‘complications’ holding her back.

I thought it was touching, demonstrating Black Widow as a stronger character than Hulk, while humanizing Natasha Romanoff who’s only appeared as a Bad Ass in the MCU. Apparently I was wrong. The Internet machine decried how such a strong heroine was reduced to a woman who only wanted to have babies. It was the dreaded male gaze once again misconstruing the female experience.

Instead of attempting to mansplain the issue, I’d rather let Salon’s Libby Hill take it: “As much as it may look on the surface like Natasha is mourning motherhood, what she’s actually mourning is her ability to choose. It’s not about children; it’s about choice. What she has lost isn’t even so much her ability to have a family (as mind-bogglingly brilliant as she is, she, of all people, could find a way to procure a baby). No, what she mourns is her ability to fantasize about that “normal” life, the world opposite the one she currently lives in.”

Most conversation surrounding the issue purposefully ignored Whedon’s feminist-leaning creations and rather blatant social liberalism. I don’t think most people even cared.

This has become my other dilemma: Are people writing about these things as a means to advance their personal agendas or was it a genuine critique of a piece of culture?

Symbols hold great importance. The stories we tell ourselves become the stories we fulfill. What’s ‘mainstream’ or ‘popular’ fills these gaps but what happens when what’s ‘mainstream’ or ‘popular’ changes week to week, sometimes hour to hour?

There’s this false equivalency between Internet outrage and effective activism. One thing social media has demonstrated is that a lot of people have had their voices denied far too long. Social media amplifies those voices, finally allowing them to have an equal say in the conversation. It’s great for those that do have something important to say.

But read the Internet and it’s clear we’re just a nation of Hulks; we’re always angry, willing to dispense it wherever, whenever. It’s like everyone’s so addicted to the beast’s power, no one cares or wants to be their rational Banner selves. And if we’re outraged all the time, important issues and stories are received with the same timbre and fervor as the dumb, dopey stuff.

One thing I fear about my generation is we don’t know what we like anymore. We don’t even know what’s important, herded in different direction depending on the day. We’re all such sheep, expressing some impassionate moral indignation whenever a story ‘blows up’ on Twitter or any other social media. It’s so transparent that some of these people only do it to fit in or show they’re not on the ‘wrong’ side of these sentimental narratives; the persons leading the charge often feel this false vindication because of it. In our race to be heard we’ve eliminated any pretense of context for an issue or a person or a story.

It plays out the same every single time and nothing significant changes as a result. We don’t even start on the path to true progress because we’re off demolishing these side trails of self-stroking superiority.

My larger fear is I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

***

“I sometimes enjoy [superhero films] because they are basic and simple and go well with popcorn. The problem is that sometimes they purport to be profound, based on some Greek mythological kind of thing. And they are honestly very right wing. I always see them as killing people because they do not believe in what you believe, or they are not being who you want them to be. I hate that, and don’t respond to those characters. They have been poison, this cultural genocide, because the audience is so overexposed to plot and explosions and shit that doesn’t mean nothing about the experience of being human.”

That’s Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu last year in an interview with Deadline. Pretty strong words, huh? He had more.

“Superheroes…just the word hero bothers me. What the fuck does that mean? It’s a false, misleading conception, the superhero. Then, the way they apply violence to it, it’s absolutely right wing. If you observe the mentality of most of those films, it’s really about people who are rich, who have power, who will do the good, who will kill the bad. Philosophically, I just don’t like them.”

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised the man who directed a fantastic film lampooning Hollywood’s superhero and sequel driven engine doesn’t like superheroes. (That Birdman won a Best Picture Oscar shows you more what Hollywood wants to think of itself than anything else.) I just finished criticizing the nonstop outrage online, but Iñárritu makes me believe we’re not talking enough about this stuff. (Or rather, we’re not discussing it the right way.)

Iñárritu also mentions in the interview how “there’s a disease in not growing up.” That’s what I’m struggling with here: Does my liking superhero movies, playing video games, obsessing over sneakers hamper my humanity in some way? Or is there a difference between those actions and ‘growing up’?

Let’s get into this. This turmoil brews within me wondering what is and isn’t worth my time, because I believe it’s the only true currency in this world. So I’ve been trying to manage my media diet effectively. Often when I open an Internet browser, thirsty for information and/or entertainment, it feels like a fire hose shooting gallons of water at me; I usually just hope I retain something useful.

So my better self has become pickier, constantly checking if my actions or concerns or worries might be wasted time. But another part of me thinks: Isn’t wasting time, leisure time, fundamental to the human experience? It is. So I should indulge. But let’s plan it out. I don’t want to keep checking the Internet for news and three hours later I’m stooling in some shame spiral of wasted time spent reading Twitter and three Game of Thrones recaps and college football rumors and some YouTube, more Twitter and…

What does any of that have to do with superheroes? Well it stems from this desire for a type of ‘easy entertainment’. Because I still want some carby feel-good stuff to digest alongside the more meaty offerings. Something like a Fast and Furious movie to pair with reading Consider the Lobster and Rand Paul’s plan to blow up the tax code for example.

This carby, yummy stuff still needs some nutritional value, though. Bread has nutrients in doses, especially if you buy multigrain with nuts on the crust, ya know? And I believe something like Avengers: Age of Ultron has some value. You can’t dismiss these movies outright because they’re starring superheroes, especially when Whedon’s the architect behind it.

It means something that the villain Tony Stark, i.e. humans, created analyzes the human race and deems us so corrupted Ultron must destroy us. That is the only way to save us. Whedon is trying to tell us something, but instead the whole speech was mocked. Forget that it had echoes of Daniel Plainview proselytizing “I hate most people…there are times when I look at people and see nothing worth liking” in There Will Be Blood. People ate that shit up. Maybe because even though Plainview technically ‘wins’ he’s painted definitively as a corrupted, lonely, irredeemable man. But that can’t happen in Marvel’s world. Tony Stark must win and be a hero.

So I find myself partly agreeing with Iñárritu, but also wanting to to say fuck you, Iñárritu. I don’t for fear of sounding like Robert Downey Jr.: “I think for a man whose native tongue is Spanish to be able to put together a phrase like ‘cultural genocide’ just speaks to how bright he is.” (Downey apologized after a public backlash. Persons leading the charge often feel this false vindication…)

Anyway the point of all this: Why do we still need superheroes? Why do I still need superheroes? Probably because there are days I’m more like Plainview than I care to admit, not seeing much I like of people in the world. But not fully. I maintain this childish optimism that world can still be transformed into a better place. And I think part of that comes from all this dopey nerd stuff. Where good does defeat evil, even if it’s not in this robust, nuanced, politically correct way. Not every story needs to be so perfect, as long as we acknowledge its shortcomings.

I recognize the problems with Marvel and DC and Sony and Fox and all these superhero movies. They can be better. They should be better. The stories we tell ourselves construct the world we live in.

So I guess my answer is this: Yes I can love the things I loved as a kid. I can be that inner dork inside whenever I want. But I don’t need to rely on them like I once did, but they are there when I need some reminding. That’s somehow both freeing and melancholic. Kind of like growing up.