Avengers: Infinity War and the Civil War Britches

If you’re any kind of superhero movie fan, if you are even passingly familiar with the thing called movies, if you have been near a television or the internet recently, then you are probably aware that a movie called Avengers: Infinity War is on the horizon.  There’s a clamor of inevitable hype around it—it’s frequently billed as one of the biggest movie events in history—but some of that isn’t actually hyperbole.

Infinity War promises to cap (or perhaps conclude) 10 years of cinematic story-telling in a cohesive franchise of 18 movies.  There are other franchises with that many movies—James Bond is the most obvious, but depending upon how you count the original Universal Monsters, that franchise dwarfs most others combined—but none of them are as spectacularly successful, and certainly none have been as deliberately unified.  Whatever else it turns out to be, regardless of whether it’s fabulous or a flop, Infinity War is in fact momentous and uniquely ambitious.  No one has ever done anything quite like this before.  There are good reasons to be excited.

This is official promotional material, the rights to which belong with Marvel, Disney, and probably a complicated throng of other people.

But there are also good reasons to be skeptical.  Most of them fit nicely under the heading “Captain America: Civil War.”

“Captain America: Civil War.”

(See what I did there?)

How we judge Civil War will of course depend on our frame of reference.  Compared to other action/adventure blockbusters like the Mission Impossible movies, it’s pretty good.  Compared to the Transformers movies and anything put out by J. J. Abrams, it’s high art.  The bulk of those judgments though are determined by the mediocrity of the comparator films.  The outcome isn’t clearly a strong positive statement about Civil War.  If you do compare Civil war to a quality film, you get a different result. Compared to Captain America: Winter Soldier for example, the intuitive and most unavoidable comparison, Civil War is lackluster, verging on bad.

Captain America Does Not Approve.
(The rights to this promotional artwork are also Marvel’s and not mine.)

I think the reason is obvious.  It committed both too much and too little to the Civil War storyline.  It didn’t commit enough to it to do it justice.  With no real time to unpack what disagreement could tear the team apart, the conflict felt forced and unearned.  Added to an unwillingness to embrace its own stakes then, most of it also felt inconsequential.  The “Civil War” became just an excuse to throw a bunch of characters at each other for an (admittedly entertaining) fifteen-minute comedy rumble.

At the same time, the commitment to telling that particular story overshadowed and ultimately displaced the much more poignant conflict the movie already had between Ironman and Captain America.  If it hadn’t been committed to adapting Civil War, it could have explored a much better and more meaningful (though less populated) fight.

Again, thanks to Marvel. This is a nice crisp image.

Instead we got a movie which tried to do two things and did both badly.  It had too many characters, most of whom were wasted.  It had too many responsibilities in the franchise.  In the words of countless people to me when I was younger, it was too big for its britches.  (For the record, I still am not certain what this means, but one should never squander an opportunity to use the word “britches.”)

Which brings us to Avengers: Infinity War, a movie with more plots, with more characters, with more responsibilities.

No pressure. It just has to justify like a billion magazine covers.

As much as anyone, I hope it’s successful.  I’m sure it will be decently enjoyable; the MCU hasn’t really had a flop yet, and like I alluded to above, their bad movies are still better than most of their chief competitors’ ones. However, I think fans have good cause for wariness.

Over the next few days, I hope to unpack most of this further, because I happen to like the craft of cinematic storytelling.  If you have questions you’d like me to answer or comments about what I’ve said so far, feel free to chime in below.

Up Next:  How to Fix Captain America: Civil War

Superheroes Should Be Men

Before people start to yell at me for being backward and sexist, let me start with a fairly obvious claim:  violence against women is bad.  Violence in general is bad of course, but when we say that violence against women is bad we’re not just saying that violence in general is bad.  The “against women” part adds something to the claim.  Violence in general is bad, but violence against women is worse precisely because it’s against women.

Violence is frequently involved in superhero stories.  It isn’t always, of course, but it’s rather the exception when superheroes and supervillains resolve their differences through conversation.  Most of that violence is directed at the superheroes, too.  (A violent superhero beating up a pacifist supervillain would be almost incomprehensible.)  If the superheroic target is a woman, this becomes violence against a woman.

First let me respond to the suggestion that perhaps it isn’t the same sort of violence against a woman that people mean when they say, “violence against women.”  My response:  do we really want to nitpick?  Do we want some violence against women to be more acceptable than other violence against women?  Do we want some husband who beats his wife to get a lighter sentence because he’s able to show that he “doesn’t mean it in that other way.”  If you want those things, I simply can’t understand your position, and you will probably never understand mine.  I suspect that the overwhelming majority of humanity is on my side though.

Second let me respond to the argument that the superheroic woman is superpowered, and thus shouldn’t draw the same response.  Perhaps you mean that in essence she is a superhero, not a woman, and therefore the violence is merely violence against a superhero.  If being a woman isn’t essential to her though, why all the clamor to make sure that some superheroes are women?  If she isn’t a woman, then the other superheroes aren’t men, so there can be no gender disparity.

Perhaps you mean that superpowers alter her in some fundamental way so that we don’t need to see her as a women when she’s the target of violence.  Again, it isn’t clear why there’s such a clamor to make sure some superheroes are women then, since becoming a superhero means becoming less of a woman.  You might suggest that she becomes more of a woman, although then the would still be the target of “violence against women” and you’ve added an odd insult to all the women in the real world:  they are not woman enough to endure violence.  Do we really want to say that?  (Again, if you want to say that, we will probably never understand each other and the world is on my side.)

Perhaps you mean that her superpowers make her somehow equal to the fight, whereas real women are presumably not equal to any fights.  This radically changes the dynamic of superhero stories though, in addition to any insult to feminists.  While everything in superhero fights scales up (often dramatically), the basic situation of a man fighting another man (or group of men) is realistic.  Good men often fight evil men in the real world, too.  The only difference is scale.  I may never get in a fight that threatens a city and has global implications (a la Superman in Man of Steel, which is almost traumatically scaled up), but I may someday have to fight someone else on my own meager level.  That isn’t an unrealistic possibility in and of itself.  (Although it is thankfully unlikely.)  If real women are not equal to any fights (and that’s the source of our conviction that violence against women is especially evil), then any man fighting any woman is objectionable regardless of scale.  Giving a woman unrealistic powers doesn’t make the basic situation more realistic, it only highlights how unrealistic it is for a woman to be in that situation.

Third let me respond to the argument that violence against superheroic women isn’t objectionable because the women involved volunteer for it in some way.  What makes violence against women objectionable though can’t be that women usually don’t choose it.  That would make “violence against women” nothing more than “violence against the unwilling,” but even men can be unwilling.  (For example, I am unwilling.)  What makes violence against women objectionable has to be something either about the fact of womanhood or the choice of the attacker to target a woman.  Both of those would remain even if the woman had superpowers.

With all of those responses in place, consider the most common argument in favor of making some superheroes women:  the need for superheroic women as role models.  Marvel has just announced that Thor will soon be a woman; let’s imagine that I start my daughter reading Thor.  Thor is a pretty violent comic.  Pretty soon Thor is going to get into a fight against some man, perhaps Kurse.  Kurse is unlikely to refrain from punching Thor, since hitting Thor is one of Kurse’s favorite passtimes.

Now, in the real world, if my daughter comes across a man who happens to enjoy hitting her, what I’m going to want her to do is get to safety and get help.  (If you don’t agree with that desire, see my earlier comments about how we will never understand one another.  And stay away from my daughter.)  So, what I want Thor to model for my daughter is running away and getting help.

Instead Thor pulls out her hammer and fights.  What is my daughter supposed to learn from that?  That it’s okay for her to get hit in some situations, perhaps as long as she hits back?  That’s not helpful.  That she might be able to handle the situation differently if she can be something other than a woman, or if she can be more of a woman (or less of a woman)?  That’s not helpful.  That it’s certainly nice not to be weaker than attackers?  That’s not helpful.

What virtue is she supposed to imitate?  Bravery?  I’m fine with her being a coward if it gets her away from the violence.  Endurance?  I don’t want her to wait and see how much violence she can endure.  Hope that she can eventually overcome?  HOPE IS WHAT GETS WOMEN AWAY FROM VIOLENCE!!!  (If you ever tell an abused woman to just have hope that she can overcome….  you are a sick monster.  Give her hope that she can escape abuse.)  I don’t want her to take a beating while she watches for a chance to win the fight; I want her out of the fight.

(That last illustrates a crucial distinction.  My wife is a fourth-degree black belt; she can defend herself.  I have no particular problems with women learning self defense; I actually think that’s a good idea.  Superhero stories aren’t just about superheroes defending themselves though.  Batman doesn’t just know martial arts for self-defense, for example.)

At least with respect to violence, superheroic women inspire all the wrong sorts of behaviors.  Violence is a significant part of superhero stories however.  Even worse because of this, things we ought never want to see come packaged with material intended to entertain us.  We want to read a story or see a movie about people saving the planet, but for half of it we’re watching some woman getting beaten up for the sake of dramatic tension.

I think it’s great and positive for superhero stories to include important, complex, and powerful women.  I’m not advocating a return to some sort of world in which women are nothing more than McGuffins, characters that are only included because the superhero has to be rescuing somebody.  I don’t think women should be background objects, attractive but useless.  I just think that when it comes to the action part of superheroics, when it comes to getting in the fights that need to happen, it’s better to leave that fighting to men.

The Climax of Human Drama

One of my favorite television shows of all time is a Canadian gem called Flashpoint, which ended this past year after a five season run.  It was well written, well acted, incredibly dramatic and exciting, and, because it was Canadian, it wasn’t graphic with its violence.

(God bless Canada.  It says something about my non-Canadian culture–not something good, in case that wasn’t clear–that we think realism requires gory, bloody, anatomically accurate carnage.  Similarly we think love requires sex.  Apparently we can’t fathom anything that doesn’t happen to our bodies.  Hooray naturalism.)

In brief the show follows a group of dedicated police officers who enter terrible and dangerous situations, then try to defuse them and get everyone out alive.  Usually someone has made terrible life choices, gotten themselves into a heart-wrenching situation, and created a worse situation in the haze of despair.  Sometimes things go badly–as they say in the show, they can do everything right and still have the situation go wrong–but other times the heroes save the day.

That’s what the police are intended to be in the show.  (Yet another thing to like about it; police usually don’t get enough respect.)  Its creators describe it as a show about the human cost of being heroes.  We’re supposed to see the heroes be heroic and understand what it takes for them to do it.

Now, anyone who knows me at all knows that they had me at heroes.  There are no genres I embrace more enthusiastically than heroic narratives.  Lately I discovered another show, Arrow, which is about the DC Comics superhero Green Arrow; it’s badly written, poorly acted, doesn’t seem to understand even the basics of drama, and I watch it anyway.  I kind of miss it when I can’t watch it, actually.

It might be easy to dismiss this particular infatuation because I’m male–lots of folk talk about how men want to be heroes themselves, and even more folk talk about how women are sick of people thinking they need to be saved by men–but there’s a bit of a twist.  Yes, I like the idea of being a hero–I’m enormous and hairy, so there’s no point denying the level of testosterone in my system–but I like hero narratives because I’m already in one, and I’m the person in distress.  For me hero narratives point to the hero of my own experience, who is most certainly not me.

Let’s use our imaginations for a moment and imagine a person who makes bad choices.  (This should not be difficult.)  Bad choices tend to lead to bad situations, and in bad situations it’s easy to make more bad choices.  If you watch any crime shows at all–or have even a passing acquaintance with actual human beings–this is easy to understand.  People end up addicted, desperate, trapped, and doomed.  A lot of the time they get themselves there freely.

So let’s imagine a boy who’s small and scared, poor and isolated.  He’s constantly hungry and nervous, in addition to the usual childhood burdens of jealousy and impotence.  Then someone offers him a way to be less hungry, less scared, and the cost is relatively small, maybe a petty theft.  Well, it feels good to have a bit of power over his own fate, so he does that a few more times.  Eventually escalation is required, but it doesn’t seem as hard anymore.

Fast forward to the teenager in a gang who’s more scared of the people over him than he ever was of the outside world.  Now he’s seen the terrible dehumanizing cost of the life he leads, but what can he do?  Even if he could escape, what would he be escaping to but either justifiable punishment or a miserable life trying to hide both from punishment and his gang.

Incidentally, this is exactly the sort of teenager who would make a desperate decision and need to get rescued by the police in Flashpoint.  Also incidentally, it’s the story of Christmas.

You see, there’s a moment in every heroic narrative when the hero shows up.  If it’s done well–so don’t look for examples in Arrow–it’s magical.  As the one song puts it, there’s a “thrill of hope” that maybe everything will be ok.

In the heroic narrative we call history, that point happened about 2,020 years ago.  Every human being was that desperate teenager I described above.  We all made bad decisions, we all chose such corrupt power as the devil offered in place of God, and as a race we came to deeply regret it, but what could we do?  Our situation was hopeless; we didn’t know how to fix what we’d caused, we didn’t want the punishment we knew we were due, and we couldn’t stop making things worse.

But then God came.

When it comes to holidays, Easter is the most important one in the Christian story–if Christ wasn’t crucified and resurrected, nothing else matters–but Christmas is the climax.  Once God shows up, resolution is inevitable.  The resolution is also inevitably good, because God is Good, but that takes a bit more unpacking.  What’s clear though is that everything changes.  To use a toned down version of the cliché:  “Things got real.”

Let’s imagine that desperate teen above confronts the leader of the gang.  The leader of the gang responds with violent fury.  The teen imagines he’s going to die.  Then Batman shows up and says, “Leave the kid alone.  If you want to tangle, how about you tangle with me.”

That’s Christmas.  That moment is Christmas.  The eternal Son of God shows up and says, “Okay, Sin, how about you tangle with me?”  (Spoiler: This does not go well for sin.)

And that’s why I like heroic stories.  For me, every heroic story reflects the one truest one, the story of a heroic God.  It’s why I like Christmas too, when the heroic God showed up.  Frankly I can’t get enough of that story.