Tag Archives: heroes

What happens when a hero abuses his power?

Thor is much different from the rest of the Avengers canon. First, the film is more fantastical. Here, we have left the groundings of science and weapons that we’ve known with Iron Man and Black Widow, and even the accidental scientific occurrence that created the Hulk. Here, we enter realms of extra-dimensional beings whom primitive cultures worshipped as deities, and it is here that Thor earned the reputation of the god of thunder.

From childhood, Thor is certain to be king of Asgard. He is a warrior, and he is proud of it. His perception of leadership is that of a warrior, and his response to provocation is to meet it with force. When he chooses to attack the enemies of the Asgardians, and thus place the realms of the universe at the brink of war, Thor’s father, Odin, deems him unworthy of the immense power he wields, and banishes him to Midgard, or Earth.

By the end of the film, Thor recognizes where he has gone wrong. He sacrifices himself to save the lives of his friends, as well as the lives of other innocent people, telling his evil half-brother Loki that the people around him have done nothing wrong, and offering his life in their stead. This act of self-sacrifice regains his power, but he must again make a sacrifice: destroying the only bridge that will lead him back to the woman he loves in order to save the lives of an entire race, although that race are sworn enemies of his own people.

Along with self-sacrifice, Thor recognizes here that all life, even the lives of his sworn enemies, are worth preserving (he even attempts to save Loki before he falls to what appears to be his death). He is willing to give up his own life to preserve others. Interestingly, Thor must also sacrifice his pride. He fulfills everything he promises throughout the film, until he meets Jane Foster. In the end, he finds himself unable to fulfill the promise he made to return to her. Thor dies to himself, in a way, in order to save the lives of innocents.

Thor is unique in the characters that will appear in this weekend’s Avengers film because he is the hero that has had to earn the right to be a hero. All of the other characters (at least as much as we’ve seen…the Black Widow is developed, but we have little backstory, and Hawkeye is not developed at all at this point) have had heroism thrust upon them through events outside of their own control. Along with being (arguably) the most powerful of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Thor is also the character that respects his power the most, because he has seen what happens when he mis-uses it. Thor shows the nature of a hero when he learns to respect his power, and to respect the value of all life around him.

The last in my series of retrospective posts is tomorrow night: Captain America. Then, the weekend is finally here!

Photo Attribution: popculturegeek

Next up in my retrospective of the Avengers’ cinematic adventures to date: Iron Man 2.

This is a complex movie. Tony Stark enjoys a much more significant character development that the other Avengers, by virtue of the fact that the writers have had two films in which to develop him. I’m interested to see how this will balance with the other characters in the Avengers film this weekend. As I mentioned in my post on the first Iron Man film, here we see that Stark, while choosing to make the most of his second chance at life by acting as a hero, has not overcome his narcissistic tendencies. We also discover why: a father who, by Stark’s description, was cold and calculating and never told Tony he loved him, and that the very power source that is keeping him alive and enabling him to function as Iron Man, is also killing him.

As Tony begins to feel his own mortality, he begins to push away those closest to him, notably Rhodey and Pepper. He begins to act self-destructively, giving fuel to the fire of government officials that want his technology shared. Here we see Stark’s fear: that more of his technology will fall into the wrong hands, and be used for evil. When Rhodey takes one of the Iron Man suits for government use, and it becomes weaponized into the War Machine armor, Stark begins to see his fears materialize. Yet, still he acts courageously to protect innocents who are in harm’s way.

Compounding all of these stressors is a new villain, Anton Vanko, whose father was exiled to Siberia because he tried to exploit Tony Stark’s father’s technologies for pure profit. Vanko blames Stark for this, saying that Stark comes from a family of “thieves and butchers.” Having began to put the arms-development past of his father’s company behind him, Stark is now once more forced to face the ghosts of his past that threaten to bring him, and everyone he cares for, to their knees.

Ultimately proving the victor, Stark recognizes his own self-destructiveness, and chooses to move beyond himself to act in others’ best interests once more. This includes professing his love for Pepper at the end of the film. What Stark learns, though, is that he cannot continue to carry the enormous role of a hero in which he has found himself alone. That role is too big for one man, now. In this film, Stark wins with the aid of the War Machine and Black Widow.

Stark accepts his own limitations, and faces his own demons, to overcome his own fear of mortality and again act to help those who cannot help themselves, even against overwhelming odds. While he flirts with becoming a sort of anti-hero in this film (and who among us wouldn’t?), Iron Man remains a hero by choosing what is best for others over what is best for himself.

I’ll be interested to see how the writers will develop the potential friction between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers in the Avengers film, as the two will  compete for leadership of the team.

Next up in my retrospective: Thor.

Photo Attribution: mikequozl 

Continuing my short posts on the previous Avengers films as I build up to this weekend’s opening, tonight’s topic is the Incredible Hulk.

I remember being very glad that a new big-screen attempt was being made for the Green Goliath when this was announced several years ago, as the previous Hulk film had been…well, let’s just say that we all prefer to forget it. This newest incarnation is a good film, though, if a bit underwhelming compared to the rest of the Avengers films.

Chronologically, the events in the Incredible Hulk occur simultaneously with the events in Iron Man 2 (how do we know this, you ask? Check out a cool rundown of hidden nuggets of visual niceties in all the movies here). Bruce Banner has been on the run for some time, though, as the film opens stylistically recalling (though Banner’s eyes) the accident that transformed Banner into the Hulk. We learn later that these experiments were veiled attempts to further weaponize the World War II “super-soldier” serum that created Captain America, and that Banner is ultimately an unintended consequence of these experiments.

Banner, and the so-called monster into which he transforms, are fascinating because they are reluctant heroes. Banner is on the run, desperate to cure himself of the transformations that afflict him, because he recognizes that the power of the Hulk is too dangerous to be weaponized (this smacks a bit of Tony Stark’s fear of his Iron Man technology falling into the wrong hands, as I’ll talk about in my next post). Banner just wants to return to his life before it went wrong, and to live it with his true love, Betty Ross. While in hiding, he reluctantly stands up for what he knows to be right when he defends a lady’s honor against the predatory men who corner her. Even when confronted by the wrong-doers later, and while pursued by those who would capture him and attempt to extract the Hulk from him to harness his power for destructive purposes, Banner still pleads for a solution that prevents him from becoming angry enough to trigger his transformation into the Hulk.

Initially, the Hulk acts on instinct, retaliating against those who hurt him. Of course, he continually astounds his military pursuers with his sheer power, because the angrier the Hulk becomes, the more powerful he becomes. However, we see the character that was originally created by Stan Lee as a hybrid between the Frankenstein monster and Mr. Hyde recognize the woman he loves, and act to defend her, even against the consequences of her revenge-driven and power-hungry father. In the end, the Hulk defends her father, as well.

When one of Banner’s rogue pursuers transforms himself into the Abomination and begins wreaking havoc among innocents, Banner has potentially been cured of the Hulk transformations. At the risk of dying himself, he leaps from the aircraft at the climax of the film in hopes of triggering the transformation. He hates and fears the Hulk, but recognizes that only the Hulk can defeat the threat that is currently taking the lives of innocents. He suspects that he cannot control the Hulk, but agrees to “aim it,” in hopes that, whatever happens to himself, the monster within him will accomplish the good that no one else can. In the end, after the Hulk’s victory, he flees his pursuers once again, and ends up alone…but gaining the ability to control the Hulk.

Bruce Banner shows the nature of a hero because, while he doesn’t choose the life of the hero, he agrees to accept it because of the unique power that he now holds. He agrees to use this power to save others, others who are helpless to save themselves, despite the risk that he may not survive the attempt himself, or may lose himself inside the monster. The fact that Banner is such a reluctant hero makes him one of the most fascinating.

Next post: Iron Man 2.

Photo Attribution: stan