Total Pageviews

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Avengers End Game - Intimacy and Coming to Grips with Mortality Hidden in an Epic’s Conclusion




A close friend, who has had tremendous success in his life both as an athlete and as a businessman, was, as a child, somewhat surprisingly (to me) a big comic book aficionado.  Growing up, my friends who read comics were, like me, nerds.  He was not – yet he read Marvel comics in particular, and he continues to be disturbed when his heroes are harmed – they are, after all, Iron Man or Thor and they are heroes who are there to demonstrate what it means to be a hero: to be invincible, unvanquished, unconquered – and perhaps even more, unconquerable.  It is ironic, then, that this friend of mine is also, in our pick-up games where he is the go-to guy and I am the role player (at best), is an advocate for not overplaying – for deferring when the opponent has gotten a rebound and dropping back on defense – don’t make a bad play worse by trying to make up for it all at once, is his philosophy – be a thoughtful hero who takes his mistakes in stride.  Live to play another day.

Avengers Infinity Wars left us with a universe that had lost half of its population to Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) use of the infinity stones – something that he, despite being a bad buy, seems to have intended as a kind of do over for a universe that he believed to have been overpopulated.  Unlike earlier ensemble pieces, notably Age of Ultron, that left the family putting the plot twists together in the car on the way home from the movie and puzzling over them for days to come afterwards, both of these last two installments seemed relatively straightforward in their plots.  The complications came more from the efforts to include all of the spin off characters that have been added to the Marvel Movie Universe along the way.  And though the movie threatened to topple under the weight of all these characters, it never quite did.  And despite the usual battle scenes and overwhelming CGI effects, this movie ended up feeling somewhat tender and even intimate.

At the beginning of this film (yes, this will include spoilers – if you want to see the film first before reading, please do), the universe (though we really only see this on earth) and the Avengers are recovering – or more precisely failing to recover - from Thanos decimation.  There is a palpable pallor over creation with some heroes (Captain America – Chris Evans) offering vapid bromides in AA like meetings in an apparent effort to help people rally – and some, who have lost more (Hawkeye – Jeremy Renner) having turned to the dark side, wreaking havoc as only a superhero can, apparently because despair somehow leads to harmful violence. 

Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) are marooned in space but rescued by Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Iron Man’s arc of recovery is notably different than the others.  He is reunited with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and they retreat to a woodland hideaway and have a child.  Iron Man, the son of the military industrialist who designed war weapons, has never been comfortable in his own skin.  He has been so uncomfortable that he has avoided other's touch whenever he can.  But here we finally see him at play – doting on his daughter and connecting with her in a truly loving fashion.  So when a group of surviving Avengers approach him about undoing the devastation of Thanos, he is unwelcoming on two levels – first because they failed before and he doesn’t want to be reminded of his failure – and this is consistent with the Iron Man of old – the super hero who can’t be scratched, much less defeated – the one who doesn’t defer, but plays for the win in every moment.  But when he comes around (was there any doubt?), he includes a caveat – that the clock can’t be reset to the moment when Thanos won and so many creatures died – because that would eliminate his daughter – but those who died must be returned in current time.

Well, as it turns out, it is a good thing that Iron Man put the current day parameter in the works because that is the way, in the Marvel universe, that time travel works.  In a send up of all the films about time travel (no mention of Einstein or any physicists musings – we are in the world of science as depicted in films here – though Hermione’s time travels in Harry Potter is a notable lapse in this overly encyclopedic rendition of past movies), we discover that time travel cannot change the past – it will only change what happens within this dimensional reality.  So, we have introduced infinite universes (never discussed) and we have abandoned at least one other, with all of these heroes in it, to languish without the resolution that is being offered on this track (I think even condemning them to a track that prevents this resolution) also never mentioned.  But I have been derailed by my musings (perhaps erroneous) about time travel in the imaginary Marvel Universe.

To make an epic ending short, the group travels through time, retrieves the infinity stones, and Iron Man uses them – in an act that imperils his own life – to restore to life those who were destroyed by Thanos.  And, despite Thanos’ self-proclaimed inevitability – the Avengers team – including Captain Marvel who could have single handedly cleaned up the whole mess but arrived late – works as a team to undermine and defeat Thanos, freeing the universe – at least this particular version of the Marvel Universe (there are infinitely more out there to be mined for prequels and sequels and other superheroes) – from Thanos forever.  So there is no teaser in the trailer – quite a disappointment to the reluctant wife and I who, with a family of four next to us – were the only ones from the packed house silly enough to think that this tradition would be continued in this last installment.

So what do we make of Iron Man’s demise?  More precisely, what do we make of Tony Stark’s – Iron Man’s host ego – demise?  Tony has the opportunity to travel through time and, as he does this, to meet his father just before he is born.  He is able to share with his father the anxiety of having a child – having recently survived doing that himself.  He is able to reassure his father that he will indeed be a competent father – even though Tony will, as all children do, suffer at his hands.  He is also able, as an adult, to see the competent and compassionate man that his father is – something that he wasn’t able to see within the traditional arc of his life because his father died prematurely – but also something that we can never do as the child of our parent – for we can never put aside the parental role that our parents play in our lives and see them simply as people – no matter how much time and psychological work we put into doing that.  The chance meeting between father and son – before the son is born – offers this magical moment of connection.

On the other end of the spectrum, Tony is able to take his leave in person only from Pepper – who arrives on the battlefield to support him after he has spent himself channeling the power of the infinity stones.  He says goodbye to his daughter as a pre-recorded hologram.  Hardly a moment of traditional intimacy, but in this age of social media – who knows?  He tells her – harking back to a moment of tenderness at the beginning of the film – that he matches the unfathomably big batch of love that she has for him.  And we believe him.  But there is also great sadness that he, like his own father only at an even earlier age, is irrevocably leaving her.  What Tony wanted to prevent happening at the beginning of the film – the erasure of his daughter’s life – has been accomplished, but only sort of.  Perhaps as an iron clad hero Tony doesn’t get that the other part of the equation is the importance of his presence in that life – that the development of our children is a co-created and relational development.  We are integral to the appreciation, but also the arc of that life and part of the experience of love is the living of it and in it across time.

I think the film captures – in the demise of Tony, but also in the life choices of Steve Rogers (Captain America’s host ego) something important about the healthy developmental arc of the narcissistic heroes that we have become so enamored of and attached to – in the end, they are people and it is the connections with the important people in their lives that are most important and end up being sustaining - assuming they are lucky enough to value those attachments enough to be able to invest in them.  At this moment, I am feeling a resonance with the words of a friend – words of his that were read at his funeral – where he talked about learning – in the last six months of his life when he was sick with cancer – that people cared for him as a person – not just or even primarily because of all the things that he had accomplished in his life.  This was a revelation to my friend – and I think it was a revelation to Stark and to Rogers – though less so to Rogers who had long expressed his yearning for a family life.  Both Stark and Rogers, then, were driven not just by a wish for glory, but a wish to accomplish the goal of attachment through duty - through doing what was expected of them - and when that expectation was met - of feeling - finally - whole.  I think the conclusion of this movie, then, may also be a somewhat ironic nod to Stan Lee – the creator of the Marvel Universe – who reveled in his late life notoriety (including taking Alfred Hitchcock-like cameo turns in the movies) while he may or may not also have been a pawn in some kind of battle over his estate.  It was Lee's desire to be human and to have human connections - to be loved - that shines through these alter egos of his.

Heroes are important to us.  Men like Alexander Hamilton (and Lin Manuel Miranda, who brought him back to life for us) help us imagine our ways – even fight our ways not just into new spaces, but into new ways of being.  We love – if love is the right word – admire? - them for doing that – but we also stand a few paces back from them.  They often have a level of self-confidence, while simultaneously exuding the need for adoration - sometimes in ways that they seem themselves to be unaware of - that interferes with our being able to be in touch with them – to know them as people who are comfortably flawed as well as competent - even, at least in their imaginations, perfect creatures.  This film, despite its continued love affair with the crime fighting heroics of the lead figure's alter egos, ends up urging us to realize that what the host egos most want may not be realizable through their heroics, but through much simpler and more human pleasures.  And the transformative effects of the various radiations and energy sources that have given them the powers that we ogle at and are awed by have also distanced them from something more essential.  And this essential humanity – which is what I think is articulated in a much more accessible way in the Marvel Universe and so makes it much more appealing than most of the DC comics universe (and not the quality of the CGI)– ends up being a double edged sword.  While this film checks all the boxes – it is was also, at least for me, a bit disappointing to walk away from.  I, like my basketball friend, want to be able to hang onto heroes who are invincible.  Even as a psychoanalyst who believes in the value of connection, there is something about a film that celebrates the triumph of interpersonal connection over heroic immortality as the ultimate force that should rule a universe that we would want to live in leaves a kind of void.  I am, perhaps like most people, drawn, almost against my will, to a world of fantasy where we live on forever doing good things - perhaps that is why I write about the experiences that I have - in the vain hope that this self, writing these words, thinking these thoughts, and perceiving this world will live on forever.  Would that this movie franchise could more consistently support my particular delusion.



I have written also written about Captain Marvel, Age of Ultron, Black Panther and, in the DC Universe, the movie Wonder Woman.

Of course, I have written about many other things as well - to access a narrative description of other posts on this site, link here.  For a subject based index, link here. 



To subscribe to posts (which occur 2-3 times per month), just enter your email in the subscribe by email box to the right of the text.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The Covenant of Water: Is it a Great Book?

 Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Diversity, Quality Is The Covenant of Water a Great Book?   Abraham Vergh...