My Thoughts After Rewatching All 23 Marvel Movies
By Josie Brandmeier, Arts Staff Writer
When I was sent home from my study abroad program, I had a lot of newfound free time. Originally, I thought that I would find myself watching a lot of new movies. However, when I sat down with my family, no one really felt like watching a new, moody masterpiece. Instead, we found ourselves watching the first Iron Man movie; and then the second one; and then the first Thor movie, and so on. After two weeks, somehow my family and I successfully made it through all twenty-three movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Part of the reason for this was the certainty. I’ve always been someone who likes to rewatch the movies I love multiple times. There’s comfort in choosing a film and knowing exactly how it will affect you emotionally, or at the bare minimum, knowing you’re going to like it. Also, since I was watching movies with my parents, the films were a safe option. Overall, by watching every Marvel movie, I was prescribing myself a very controlled experience where I knew how I would be feeling at the end of each movie.
And for me, this made me feel pretty good. I’ll admit I’ve always been a huge Marvel fan; I’m one of those people who always stays through the insanely long end credits just to see the post-credits scene reveal. I like the action sequences, the self-referential jokes, the bad guys who always get defeated and the cameos from Stan Lee in each movie.
After rewatching the movies, I started thinking about the reason why superhero movies resonate so deeply with society, enough to make these movies a consistent feature in American pop culture since the 1930s. Marvel movies are known as a “four quadrant franchise,” meaning that their target audience includes almost every age and gender combination (Riesman, 2018). That is no small feat, but I think there are a few reasons why it applies.
Superhero movies are part of an escapist genre that serves a need during hard times. Superman began the superhero genre in 1938, serving as an escape and beacon of hope in a post-depression world (Eury & Sanderson, 2020). Similarly, the MCU was born in the midst of the economic crisis of 2008, beginning with Iron Man. Based on my sudden desire to binge superhero movies while being in quarantine for a global pandemic that promises shocking economic effects, this analysis matches my personal experience. During difficult times, people don’t necessarily want to watch movies that make them feel bad, so they turn to the fantastic, adrenaline-filled, hopeful superhero genre where the bad guys are always avenged.
The MCU also plays on themes relevant to the political landscape. Iron Man is all about the feeling of conspiracy behind conflict in the Middle East and distrust of the American government. Throughout the movies in the MCU, suspicion of the institutions in charge of war, along with questioning the impact of combat, are the most pervasive themes.
On a more individual level, superhero movies also play to the innate desires we have to become something great via the origin story trope. It usually goes something like this: there’s a shocking event that changes the hero forever, followed by the struggle to reconcile with it, the confrontation of their fatal flaw, and finally, the overcoming of their fear to fulfill their destiny as the hero they were always meant to be.
This plot format resonates across demographics. An origin story is all about finding yourself out of your station. It enforces the idea that we as individuals are still “becoming,” and that one day we will find ourselves to be spectacular, rather than stuck the way we’ve always been. The desire to be more than you are is childlike, but universal.
Not everybody loves Marvel movies. Many argue that they are just money grabs for Disney, dominating the box office with overdone, CGI-heavy plots. Director Martin Scorsese even wrote an op-ed for the New York Times where he controversially said that he doesn’t consider the films “cinema,” comparing them to theme parks (Scorsese, 2019). I won’t argue with Scorsese; Marvel is popular enough that defending them is a waste of time.
All I will say is that I think the audiences of Marvel deserve more credit than the critics give them. People don’t just watch anything fed to them by producers. Marvel movies are specifically popular because they have themes that resonate with society. They feature characters that people care deeply about. And they do feature incredible craftsmanship by their programmers, writers and designers. Maybe Marvel movies are similar to theme parks, but people like theme parks. At the end of the day, I think that’s all that really matters.
Sources:
Abraham Riesman. “How the 2008 crash shaped the Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Vulture. Aug 9, 2018.
Michael Eury, Peter Sanderson. “Superman.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Feb 20, 2020.
Martin Scorsese. “I said Marvel movies aren’t cinema. Let me explain.” The New York Times. Nov. 4, 2019.