Lego Advent Calendar Haiku 2021 Day 4

Turret on target
Litter strewn about the floor
The Black Widow strikes! 
 

An 11-Year Endgame

The first Marvel comic I remember reading is What If? #1, which asked the question "What if Spider-Man Joined the Fantastic Four?" Now, I must have read Marvel comics before that one, because I understood who all the characters were and I knew What If? was an unusual comic because, of course, Spider-Man never joined the Fantastic Four. 

I read that comic in Shane Berthauden's room in Leaf Rapids, and it really captured my imagination. The initial counter-factual (in the context of the mainline Marvel universe) setup had an incredible cool factor, but things turn dark when the Invisible Girl, feeling overshadowed by Spider-Man, leaves the group. Things get worse after that, but by comic's end, we are reassured that these events happen in a parallel universe to the familiar Marvel world we know. Even so, the impact of that comic remains powerful, because those events did happen (somewhere), and the triumphs of and tragedies of those characters remains somehow real. They grow and change in a way denied the prime Marvel universe, because in those comics, the status quo generally reigns supreme, with major changes in characters' lives happening only once every few decades (though the pace is slowly accelerating). 

Avengers: Endgame reminds me of the What If? stories because in this movie, all the chickens come home to roost; consequences are real, lasting, and permanent. Even though this movie uses a do-over as its major plot, Endgame somehow shows that there really are no do-overs. It's impossible to explain this seeming contradiction without spoilers, unfortunately. But the filmmakers manage it beautifully.

At one point in the film, a mother tells her son, who feels as though he has utterly failed as a person, that he should stop trying to be who he's supposed to be, and instead be who he is. Only today, after thinking about the film a little more, did I realize that conversation turns out to be the arc for the major characters in not only this film, but for all the Marvel films in which they've previously appeared. Whether or not you appreciate superhero movies, that is an accomplishment in film that I believe is unprecedented in cinema: character and story arcs spread out over 22 films and 11 years. That the Marvel movies, particularly the overstuffed Avengers films, are coherent at all is something of a miracle. That they're actually entertaining and have something to say about the world is astounding. 

This movie speaks best, of course, to the audiences who have invested in the entire journey. I would argue, in fact, that those not so invested may be bewildered by Endgame, and its companion piece, Infinity War. And that's okay. Not all art is digestible in a moment, or an hour, or two, or a week. Some takes time to percolate, to evolve, to age at the same rate as we mortals. 

Every moment in this movie is earned thanks to the rich backstory told over the last 11 years. Some of these moments moved me to silent tears; others caused elation and that "gee whiz!" sense of wonder that gave me such thrills as a kid. 

What a long, strange, amazing journey it's been. Endgame is a fitting end indeed. 

An A for Avengers

In the beginning - and only the beginning - super-heroes inhabited their own worlds. Batman struck terror into the criminals of Gotham, Superman brought robber barons to justice in Metropolis, Wonder Woman fought Nazis. But it was only months before Sheldon Mayer and Gardner Fox decided that their four-colour heroes should meet, and thus, with the publication of All-Star Comics #3 and the Justice Society of America, the concept of a shared superhero universe was born.

Decades later, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby decided that the next wave of super-heroes, Marvel's Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and so on, should also explicitly inhabit a New York teeming with super-heroes. For decades, shared universes of larger-than-life characters have been the norm in comic books.

But a trope taken for granted on paper has proven difficult to translate to film. The Superman movies of the 70s and 80s made no mention of Batman or Green Lantern; the Batman films have referred to Superman only in passing.

That all changed when Marvel Studios began the most ambitious comic book film project ever: introduce a handful of Marvel super-heroes to the big screen one movie at a time (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger), weave over-arching narrative threads and supporting characters through each film, then bring all the heroes together in one spectacular team-up.

That team-up, of course, is Joss Whedon's The Avengers, the story of a small group of people with remarkable gifts and equally potent hang-ups who are recruited to save the world. It's a super-hero story in which the paper-thin plot serves merely as an excuse to play these characters off one another, and frankly that's fine with me.

Even though each of the titular Avengers - Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Captain America, Hawkeye and Thor - have already been introduced to movie-going audiences via the preceding films mentioned above, Whedon spends a little time to re-establish each character, mainly to ensure that when they're brought together the various personalities clash in believable and amusing ways. Norse demigod Thor is torn between respect, frustration and amusement for the "little people" he sees as children in need of protection. Captain America, frozen in time since World War II, struggles to adapt to modern mores. Bruce Banner - the Hulk - reigns in his berzerker rage with dark, quiet humour. Tony Stark, the billionaire genius under the Iron Man armour, tosses sarcastic barbs at his comrades to mask his own hopes and fears. And Black Widow's lethal professionalism is tempered with a tiny hint of realistic - not sexist, not pandering - vulnerability. (She alone seems to understand the full danger of recruiting the Hulk.)

While the film is generally serious in tone, its greatest asset is the warmth and humour generated by putting all of these characters (and their fine actors) together in the same milieu. Each of them is given multiple moments to shine, and at the screening I attended these moments were greeted with great enthusiasm by the audience.

Oh, there's a threat, of course; Norse god Loki recruits an alien armada to eke out revenge for his treatment in Thor, but the existential threat hardly matters to the audience; what's fun is seeing how these messed-up characters learn to work together. The last third of the film is a glorious mess, a hyper-kinetic action set-piece that puts each hero through his or her paces and sets the stage for more adventures to come.

The show-stealers this time around are Black Widow and the Hulk, for reasons I can't reveal without spoiling the fun. And as with other Marvel films, be sure to stay all the way through the end credits for not one, but two additional scenes.

The Avengers may not be as complex as Christopher Nolan's recent Batman films, but its greatness is of a different kind. This is comic-book fun of the first order: unselfconscious, brazen, hyperbolic, and most of all, just plain fun.