Marvel: A Theophilosophical Examination of the metaphors and psychiatric symbolism in the Superhero Genre (aka, a rant)

 

With great power comes great graphics and terrible cliches

The MCU is a staple of pop culture. We have the comics, the movies, the series, the mini series, the action figures, the power cards, the t-shirts and so on and on and on. And On.

 Loved by children, teenagers and some adults globally, Marvel and its heroes are todays' symbols of  courage, integrity, awesomeness, good looks, consumerism and woke-ness world-wide. The ultimate commercialization of the American Dream.

It gave us all  those epic, ultra-photographable moments- Captain America staring off gravely into the distance, the Black Widow landing on all fours, Iron Man extending his palm in the direction of the current enemy

Feeling the deja vu yet? Cause I am, and here we come to the root of the issue. Deja vu. Seen before. We have seen it all before. Again and again and again.

A part of me understands. Marvel is cute and PG enough for parents to not feel guilty about letting their child watch it, but also violent enough to keep the kid from whining about sappiness.

It has great visuals (various spaceships, planets, multiverses, Captain America) . It has heroes who are, as said before, commercializations of the American Dream. It has a fascinating assortment of weapons, ranging from guns to lasers to weirdly shaped swords.

All in all, what more could kids and their families want?

Maybe a dose of creativity and novelty , and maybe some actual wit to the dialogue instead of the same cringe punchlines, pick up lines and other general lines, and maybe a little more complex message and maybe...

Kids and their families could want quite a lot actually.

But here's the thing about Marvel. You come back to it after every disappointment You see, it goes like this.

 

A new trailer drops on YouTube. You watch it, despite alarm bells going off in the rational part of your brain.  And it looks so GOOD. Marvel makes a great Trailer. They make it  so visually appealing, so different each time. They basically scrape up all the good moments in the movie and present it artistically in a two minute clip. They play the catchy tag lined without putting in all of the monotonous dialogue that leads up to the punchline.

You believe that this time it's different. You dare to hope it's changed. You watch the movie, when it drops. The first few minutes are good. The concept seems interesting. The hero seems novel. You say, “see I was right to hope”. and then it all falls apart. The dialogue stumbles, falls, never gets back up. Heroes deliver ridiculous ripostes immediately before delivering the final blow. Heroes try to avoid talking about their tragic childhoods.. 

The plot slowly tumbles down. You continue watching in spite off all of it. You have invested too much to stop now. You piece together the flashbacks to get a picture of the hero's tragic childhood. There are never ending fight scenes set to perky music. Before the climax, the hero is given a pep talk or gives a pep talk to team.  Then the final straw, the final confrontation with the villain. At the end, before defeating the villain, the hero delivers a dialogue that an earlier conversation has been leading up to. You watch as the hero pulls some trick that using some technology that was mentioned earlier in the movie. Finally, you stagger away, determined to never watch a Marvel movie again.

 

Then, flash-forward a few months, and the next trailer drops. And it looks so good.

Overall, I would say Marvel is an insult to humanity's intelligence. Then again, considering Marvel's enormous profits, I may have to take my estimate of society's IQ down a few points. Bah, scratch that. We get the movies we deserve.