heroes | unobtrusive lucidity

The Nature of a Hero in Fantastic Four: First Steps

A long time ago (and no, I won’t finish that sentence…), in the before times, I started writing a series of reflections on the Nature of a Hero. I added to that periodically through the subsequent years, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been motivated to re-consider these themes. Largely disappointed with what has become a mass market of superhero stories recently, I had forgotten the power that these stories can have in the lives of the viewer or reader. Marvel’s latest cinematic installment, Fantastic Four: First Steps, had brought me back to thinking about this theme, though, because it has a depth that has been missing in recent Marvel and DC films.

I’ve written a more general review elsewhere of the movie, and here I want to focus on the theological themes, but I’ll say up front that this is the first movie since the most recent Spider-Man installment in which I’ve truly felt as though I’ve seen an exploration of heroism. The character of a superhero is, at it’s surface, someone who has some sort of advantage over those around them, whether that be resources, abilities, or metahuman powers. They can do things that the rest of us can’t. In reality, those are only storytelling devices to get to the depth of the nature of a hero, however, as the constitution of a hero is ultimately the choice to take what they have use it for the better (usually in the defense of) those around them, often at great cost to themselves.

The Fantastic Four, as the team was originally concieved, is ultimately about family. The characters go through a life-changing crisis with each other that results in them gaining their abilities, and that crisis could have proven catastrophic. They get through it because they are there for each other, as a family, both in the biological and extended sense of the word. They are role models for how family members support each other, without question and without condemnation. They are heroes to each other first, and by extension, heroes to the rest of the world. This movie introduces the Fantastic Four to the MCU in a separate timeline, where they are the only heroes, and have been world-changing, positive influences to the world around them. The world-building shows a dream of a planet at peace because of their heroism, but the focus, established by a positive pregnancy test in the first scene, is inward, as a family unit. This is the state of their timeline when they are visited by the Silver Surfer, heralding the coming of Galactus and the destruction of the Earth.

As the plot progresses and the Fantastic Four encounters Galactus for the first time…not as adversaries, but as explorers…we’re suddenly gut-punched by a theological metaphor that’s difficult to miss. To spare the Earth, Galactus demands Franklin, Sue’s unborn child. Reed refuses. Insistent, Galactus uses the power cosmic to induce Sue’s labor then and there, and the heroes narrowly escape.

They return to New York, already being celebrated as heroes. When the gathered crowd is advised of Galactus’ demand and their refusal to pay it, the crowd becomes angry, demanding an answer to “are we safe?” There remains an uneasy tension as the Earth wrestles with the ethics of sacrificing one to save millions. The good of the many, as Spock tolds us decades ago, outweighs the good of the few. And so we watch Sue Storm fiercely protect her son from a public desperate to ensure their survival.

There’s no escaping a Christological metahpor here: the sacrifice of one’s child to save humanity. This is compounded by the fact that comics readers know that Franklin will grow up to possess a nearly omnipotent ability to re-write reality to his will. Of course, all metaphors break down at some point, and I’m not sure that this one in particular was intentional on the part of the writers, but it’s certainly there. Of course, Sue and Reed refuse to sacrifice their child, and any mortal parent would make the same choice, I think, hero or otherwise. This reinforces the higher level of love showed by Christ, “…in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NKJV).

There is a different spiritual theme that’s driven home, as well. Not necessarily theological, but spiritual in a more secular sense, is the focus on saving the family. Sue’s monologue to the gathered crowd is beautifully written, and she does something very important in this speech. She re-defines her family as all of those gathered. The important message here, and one to which I think our culture would do well to listen, is that we all have more in common than we think. What Sue does that’s so important in this scene is to break down the “us vs. them” mentality, and the result is a world-wide cooperation in a plan to save the planet that would seem to be an impossible dream in our world today.

The concept of heroic self-sacrifice enters the story at least one more time, as the Silver Surfer wrestles with her role in contributing to the deaths of billions of people on various planets in her role as Galactus’ herald. She accepted this role in a self-sacrificial gesture, choosing to be indentured into this servitude to spare her own planet and family, but appears to come to a realization of the lives she’s traded by the end of the film. Ultimately, she chooses to sacrifice herself in a more complete sense by defeating Galactus, pushing him through the portal and away from Earth instead of Johnny. Here, she chooses again to take someone else’s place in a heroic act, but in this moment, she chooses repentance from her lethal travels as Galactus’ herald.

Part of the reason I’ve been so enamored with this film is that it’s the first superhero film in some time that I’ve seen do what superhero stories should do: provide a metaphorical depth that causes us to theologically wrestle with the human condition or, at best, our relationship to God. At its core, this is the reason I’ve always loved comics and superhero stories, and it’s been absent in most movie ventures of late. I’m thrilled to see it return. I encourage you to see Fantastic Four: First Steps, and see how it causes you to think about these themes.

Where Have All The Good Guys Gone?

Last week, I finished watching Ironheart, the latest installment of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. My disappointment is difficult to overstate, but this isn’t intended to be a review of the series. Rather, I observed it solidify a theme that’s become increasingly obvious to me since I recently heard the death of post-modernism proclaimed.

If we rewind into comic book history a bit, Marvel’s take on the heroic narrative has always been different from DC’s. DC came first, with Marvel appearing soon after, and they each have distinctly different perspectives on their characters, but what has remained consistent is that Marvel injects a gritty realism into their characters while DC tends to hold theirs above the fray, as it were.

Each of these mainstream comics lines, as they developed from nascent pulp into a new literary genre, encapsulated a cohesive mythology in their stories, what in today’s pop culture terminology we would refer to as a “universe.” While its noteworthy that antiheroes have always been present in both (DC has always had Catwoman, Marvel has always had Namor the Sub-Mariner), the focus was on the fight of good vs. evil, and that’s what’s compelling about these stories. We are all instinctively aware that there is an evil that we can’t fight, and we desire someone to help, to fight that battle for us and win. The difference, over-simplified, is that DC has historically held these heroes who fight our battles up as larger than life, more than human, an over-arching theology from above approach. Marvel has historically taken more of a theology from below stance, focusing our attention through the eyes of those with the same flaws as ourselves.

While this has morphed over time to adapt to the current moment (something at which this art form is particularly adept), the foundations have proven to be persistent in the DNA of the different universes. I think that’s why, as deconstructionism has been the watchword for a generation, we’ve seen the suspicion that all good must inevitably turn out to be disappointing play out more in Marvel’s narrative than in DC’s.

Let’s think back to what we now know as Marvel’s Phase 1. This was the first legitimate attempt to reproduce the cohesive mythology of comics on film, and it was successful. As such, it began with normal people taking on extraordinary challenges…Tony Stark builds his iron suit, Steve Rogers takes the super-soldier serum…and are rooted in the greatest generation and the purity for which it stood. We’re then introduced to Thor, who holds good above all else, and even Bruce Banner is willing to sacrifice all of his dreams to prevent the monster raging within him from wreaking havoc. As this universe has expanded and unfolded, though, we’ve seen it adapt to the modern age. All heroism has become suspect. The Scarlet Witch became the villain, driven mad by grief. Tony Stark loses sight of morality and creates Ultron. Loki, a villain, saves the day through his self-interest. Steve Rogers gives up his shield to live a life he feels he deserves. Dr. Strange chooses to meddle with dark forces to defeat a threat to humanity, believing that the ends justify the means. The list goes on, culminating in the Thunderbolts, a team of antiheroes held together by a “why not” mentality, replacing the Avengers in a world that needs heroes, but is seen as incapable of producing them. Of the past 3 years’ worth of the deluge of Marvel offerings, only Spider-Man truly embodies the nature of a hero, and he ultimately must suffer from that decision.

In Ironheart, we thought we would see a hero, but instead are presented with a troubled character who occasionally does good, but ultimately holds a similar tragic flaw as Stark. It’s difficult to define Riri Williams, who writers forced into Wakanda Forever. While certainly not a hero, I have difficulty defining her as an antihero, either. Rather, a character who could be intricately and compellingly written becomes a symbol of the collateral damage of what could barely be called an age of heroes, someone who ends her series making a Faustian bargain to resolve her grief.

Having never been an adherent to postmodernism, I’m exhausted, and think many others are, as well. The ultimate end of deconstruction is a void, in which there is nothing to believe, no faith to hold, a cycle of cynicism that destroys from within. In my reading of comics, I think that’s why I’ve gravitated more toward DC in recent years, because in print they have often avoided the emotional morbidity of their films.

What has always drawn me to superhero mythology is good vs. evil, the hope that the good guys win over the bad guys. This collapses in on itself, however, when good and evil are not defined. There has always been space for antihero narratives (the Watchmen being the ultimate example of this), but even in these lie a recognition of good and evil that is lacking in most of these recent films and series.

Comics as an art form have always held a mirror to the current moment. Postmodernism is troubling in its belief that all is relative, that good is often evil and evil is often good. I’m interested in the new Superman film, even with all of the flaws I see in its trailers, because it appears, at least visually, that this could mark a return to true heroism. As we look up in the sky, I’m in hopes that we’ll be reminded of what a hero looks like. If our cultural interest in deconstruction truly is waning, then the art form would be holding its mirror to that, showing that we’re ready for good again, ready for a hero.

How refreshing would that be?

A Review of Aquaman

I confess that I haven’t been sold on the striking, “tough guy” image of Aquaman that has appeared in the DCEU films beginning with Justice League. To be fair, Justice League wasn’t exactly a terrific debut for any character as it was a waste of film overall, but, deeper than that, I’ve grown attached to the Arthur Curry we met during DC’s New 52 reboot 7 years ago, and that is the image that stuck. The blow was softened a bit by comics artists recently beginning to depict our aquatic hero with long hair to give some consistency between print and the film, but Aquaman is just difficult to sell as a tattooed, beer drinking, self-described “blunt instrument.”

Still, our hero is from New England, which gives him some home court advantage, and Wonder Woman proved that DC is capable of producing good films after all, so I gave Aquaman his chance this weekend.

I was unexpectedly surprised.

The key word there is “unexpected.” The movie is unexpected in many ways. First off, it’s very well written, with only a couple of unexplained or under-explained moments that, for the most part, I was willing to overlook as a genre convention. Geoff Johns is behind the story, and thus we can expect that the characters be treated with care.

Still, I found the inconsistency in character in events at the beginning of the movie to be jarring, as Curry leaves a pirate to die aboard a sinking submarine because that pirate has taken innocent lives. While this is loosely consistent with the source material regarding the origin of Black Manta (our secondary villain for the film), the intentionality of the act is disturbingly out of character, and decidedly un-heroic. I think that the goal here is to develop the results of a childhood without a mother and Arthur Curry’s resulting rebellious outlook on life, but I think that it still does violence to the character. There is repentance in the end on Aquaman’s part, or at least a hint of it, but this still walks dangerously close to destroying the film before it even gets started.

The world building here is beautiful. Atlantis is breath-taking, both visually and in the depth of culture that is revealed. This is quite possibly the movie’s greatest strength, as the audience is drawn completely into this world beneath our waters and its ancient history.

Perhaps Aquaman’s largest flaw is that it’s overly ambitious. This is the story of a would-be king fighting for his kingdom and a throne that he doesn’t want. It’s also the story of a man coping with his tragic childhood, with the two concurrent sub-plots of a romantic interest with Mera and the development of Black Manta. The film is around two hours and 20 minutes, but could easily have been twice that to give all of it’s plot points sufficient time to unfold. As is, it skillfully maintains the story, but comes very close to not doing so on numerous points. That is, the movie nearly derails several times because there just isn’t time to unpack everything, but then manages to tie some things together with some well-written dialogue and move on to a climactic battle. Still, a bit too close for comfort. I almost wish that Black Manta had been introduced in his own film later…we still would have had more than enough to enjoy in this one.

I enjoyed the interactions between Arthur and Mera, who is portrayed very consistently with the comic, and actually very well acted by Amber Heard. I hope that she continues to be featured in upcoming films, as well, and not relegated to a side character in only a few.

All in all, Aquaman is a surprising success. I’m actually not entirely certain how they managed to pull off as much as they did in the time frame, but this film continues to move the DCEU in an upward trajectory. You should make time to see it over the holiday, especially if you only remember Aquaman from those old Super Friends cartoons, and re-imagine the underwater hero that never quite received the respect he deserves.

Image attribution: LucasBaiao under Creative Commons.

The Nature of a Hero Gone Wrong

Collectible statue of Thanos. Used under Creative Commons. A few days ago, I went to see Avengers: Infinity War for the second time. As usual, you see a lot that you missed in the second viewing. I still hold to my original critique that the movie is too big for it’s own good. However, there was another layer that I had missed the first time due to the sheer epic scale, and I think that it ties into the concept of the nature of a hero.

I’ve heard interviews with the writers of Infinity War in which they say that this movie was about Thanos. I found this to be very true, to the point that the heroes are almost all incidental characters. I applaud this, also, because, in order to tell the story of a hero well, one must have a compelling story behind the villain. Cheap and one-dimensional villains cause movies to fall (we all try to forget the altogether unfortunate treatment of the Mandarin in Iron Man 3). Thanos is anything but cheap or one-dimensional. He’s just as heart-breaking, in fact, as he is terrifying. He is terrifying because he acts with a decisive conviction. He will do anything, up to and including murdering the one person whom he (claims to) love, to achieve his goal. This is bad enough, and evil enough, in it’s own right.

On the second viewing of the film, I realize that Thanos is driven by such conviction because he earnestly believes himself to be the hero.

In any genre of literature, the most dangerous of villains live here. They are dangerous because they fight with the same conviction as the heroes. They believe that their cause is just. The motivation that comes with the belief that one is doing the right thing is not easily defeated.

The postmodern tendency here would be to lean on relativism. That is, if the villain can so easily be convinced that he is right, and fight with such a firmly held belief, and that fight can be the cause of so much evil, then let us stop defining “right” as an absolute. “What’s right for me is right for me, but maybe not for you,” and all that. That’s a slippery slope, and it’s a logical fallacy here, because there is an absolute point in which Thanos specifically proves himself to not be the hero.

Thano’s flaw is that he fails to respect all life as sacred. In the self-perceived nobility of his cause to save life, he is reduced to only logic. He sees the world, the universe, as only a mathematical equation, a “simple calculus.” In this reductionist worldview, killing some at random to save others is completely acceptable, because it is an action borne only of logic, while being devoid of any ethic.

The most powerful moment of this film is when Captain America refutes this type of logic with ethics. When confronted with the Vision’s sacrificial impulse to give up his own life to save many others, Steve Rogers replies firmly, “We don’t trade lives.”

There must be an objective litmus test that separates the hero from the villain. Respect for life is one of those. The absence of this objective proof is a dividing line that proves the nature of a hero, or defines the nature of the villain.

Image attribution: William Tung under Creative Commons.

A Review of “Avengers: Infinity War”

Photo Avengers Infinity War Poster. Used under Creative Commons. All of the build-up for this film was that it would be big. Even huge. It is, after all, the culmination of 10 years of Marvel faithfully adapting its characters to the big screen. It’s also big in the sense of how we are seeing the Marvel Cinematic Universe stretch, recently bringing in paranormal and extra-terrestrial elements. Just as in the source material, Marvel has explored every genre, from science fiction to YA, high fantasy to spy thrillers to space opera.

There’s a trick to bringing so many characters, and their native genres, together into a “team.” This is the challenge with writing any super-hero team, and the challenge becomes greater as it scales. The Defenders, for example, is easier to pull off than the Avengers. Now, however, we’re going a step beyond. Now we are seeing teams brought together with teams, along with solo adventurers. The Avengers were big. This is bigger than big.

So, however, is the threat. Thanos is a Titan. We’ve seen him coming with a sense of dread attached to the foreshadowing, but even those of us steeped in the comics literature forget that he is more dangerous than all of our heroes’ rogues galleries combined. Now he is acquiring the Infinity Stones, making him all but impossible to defeat.

So, this is the biggest. This is the film’s strength, and also it’s weakness.

It’s too big.

In fact, it’s almost numbing.

We see some fantastic heroic moments here, don’t get me wrong. Some characters, particularly Wanda Maximoff and Dr. Strange, really have an opportunity to shine. Others though, while their presence and actions are critical, are cheated of very important moments. One that stands out is when Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanof encounter each other again for the first time since Ultron’s defeat, and we get barely a five second close-up before we’ve moved on. This is understandable in a way, given the sheer volume of characters and the scope of the story that this movie is telling. There simply isn’t time to explore everything. Still, having been spoiled by Marvel’s Netflix series making time (such as devoting an entire episode to the conversation that results from Foggy Nelson discovering Matt Murdock’s identity), this is a bit hard to swallow, especially given how we’ve grown to know and love these characters. In the case of Banner and Romanof specifically, I gladly would have spent another 10 minutes in the theatre to have some kind of conversation take place.

Also, there isn’t any time to fully explore the fallout from Civil War. These loose ends are either left hanging, or tied off too neatly. Not that this is really critical when the universe is about to end, but, again, an extra few minutes here and there would have been nice.

What was nice was the inventive combinations of characters working together. The pairings were thoughtful, very deliberate and well-crafted on the part of the writers. This also led to some beautifully-written dialogue, and well-timed comic relief to alleviate some of the weight of this story as it progresses.

There is no happy ending here, and some of the prominent deaths will shock you. This doesn’t resolve until a year from now with part 2. What will be fascinating is how other stories, specifically Ant-Man and the Wasp, will be told during the interim, having to deal with the aftermath of the ending of Infinity War.

Fascinating, and a welcome relief, because they will be smaller.

And we could use a little of that right now.

Image attribution: Brickset under Creative Commons.