One problem I had with Avengers: Endgame was the film’s disinterest in dealing with the societal effects of Thanos’s mass genocide. In an ensemble film, especially with characters the audience knows and loves, focusing on the world around them just wastes time that could be better spent in the bubble of the heroes. For some reason, audiences don’t care about what happens outside the Avengers Complex, and would be more interested following a small set of characters in what seems to be a major, yet approachable issue. In this, I feel that Endgame loses some of the stakes necessary for a post-apocalypse redemption film, as we only follow the characters who immediately have a plan and have the superpowers to fix it.
To draw an example, we can direct our attention to The Dark Knight, or any other Batman story. Batman is a superhero, but is strictly grounded in reality. We see the world around him change as a result of the villain-of-the-week, which allows the film/story to bring up philosophically interesting questions to the reader. The stakes are real because the characters are real, and that can be lost in a film of 10+ Super Humans. Many I’ve spoken to since Endgame’s release have mentioned their disinterest in the world outside the Avengers, and I genuinely can’t understand the apathy towards contextualizing. Could it be that Marvel has conditioned fans to only find interest in seeing the same characters over and over again, and the plots are just backdrops for more scenes that sell toys instead of interesting original stories?
I’d like to draw a comparison here to a movie that I just saw in theaters, and I think does everything opposite of the MCU. In Detective Pikachu, the plot takes a backseat in favor of worldbuilding, showing off Pokemon in daily life to make Ryme city feel lived in. The main characters have their quest, but the impressive part of the film is the fact that the world has character outside the plot. We can see how these monsters integrate to society, and how the world around the leads continues to move without the plot. In real life, this is how things work (I shouldn’t have to say this), and the main characters do not dictate the world around them. In contrast, Endgame does very little to detail what happens outside the main plot. Yes, half the world has been murdered, and yes the grief scene shows people are sad, but we get no information as to the way society has reacted to a genocide on a universal scale. This makes absolutely no sense, and though it would’ve made a long movie even longer, I must argue that a film without worldbuilding is hollow. Though the Avengers save the day at the end, and we as an audience are expected to be happy about that, we’re never given reason to believe that the day needed saving in the first place. People seem to be going along with life normally, and any negative consequences of the snap are assumptions given the lack of contextualizing done by the film.
What if we found out a new political movement grew in response to the population loss, where some actually found it to be a good thing? What if relationships were torn apart? What happens to countries when their leaders suddenly disappear? Are they replaced, or is there an immediate vacuum for power? What happens to the economy when all the major corporations are without a workforce? Who runs the hospitals? Are wars suddenly over because an entire country has lost their army? What actions must people take to guarantee survival after the apocalypse?
These questions aren’t only interesting, but necessary to worldbuilding. I don’t blame the Russo Brothers here, as they obviously tried their hardest to fit everything in given Marvel’s extreme demands of both following up a major climax while concluding a 22 film saga. The grief counseling scene was the only chance the Russo Brothers had to rectify this, and I commend them for the effort.
In thinking about this, I recognized something I had neglected years ago. The Avengers has this problem as well, where the stakes of the bystanders are mentioned (better than Endgame), but the effects of the first alien invasion are glossed over.
That is, until Spider-Man Homecoming,
I do believe that Spider-Man has a specific purpose in the MCU, one that many may not realize immediately. Stan Lee once said that Holland’s Spider-Man is the closest to the comics any movie interpretation has ever gotten, and I believe that to show that the movies capture the personality of the character more perfectly than any other incarnation. Spider-Man is a superhero, but he’s also just a kid, innocent as any of the bystanders throughout the other films.
Homecoming opens with Michael Keaton’s character digging through the rubble of the first Alien invasion from The Avengers, and the plot throughout the film involves normal people’s first reactions to real-life super heroes. Where other heroes simply chat among themselves in other MCU films, Spider-Man still has a secret identity, and his position allows the audience to see how the world reacts to major events in the MCU. Maybe that’s why the audience compares these films to 80’s classics like Ferris Bueller, not because they’re shot the same, but because they embody the every-man trope so prevalent years ago. In a series where every character is an impenetrable god, it’s nice to have those who are like us.
Note: The Guardians of the Galaxy do this too, but they are developed to show how normal people outside of Earth react to things we believe are otherworldly, whereas Spider-Man can bring world-building to the plots of other Earth-based films.
We should talk about the “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good” scene as well. When performing this scene, RDJ told Holland to hone in the feeling that he didn’t understand his own death, and that he wasn’t ready yet. This could be a stretch, but it’s quite possible that this was meant to be an extended metaphor for citizens of Earth during the snap. Iron Man felt a duty to be the guardian of the innocent people of Earth, including Peter, and he was forced to watch his failures. The relationship between Iron Man and Peter is more than a father/son dynamic, but direct symbolism for the relationship between superhero and those they’re trusted to protect.
In this way, Spider-Man is the perfect middle ground between superhero and mortal man, as he was meant to be in the comics. His power is grounded, and the audience can relate to him greater than any genetically engineered Captain America or monstrous green Hulk. Thus, Marvel has a perfect character to do the worldbuilding missing in their climactic Avengers films.
Far From Home plans to deal with the effects of the reversal of Thanos’s snap, but I feel like that’s a lot to cover in one film. It isn’t fair to relegate all worldbuilding to a smaller film, and it can’t cover anything before the Avengers saved the world. I’m really glad that we’ll see the world reacting to millions being brought back to life (maybe some wanted them dead? maybe relationships have formed around people’s deaths? maybe people remarried? sold homes? sold property? found new happiness?), but that still leaves us in the dark in regards to the world’s reaction to the initial snap.
Spider-Man can help fill in the cracks of worldbuilding, and that’s clearly his purpose as a character, but I would hope that the MCU can extend their plots into the surrounding world for future films. The actions of the Avengers should have consequences outside the main plot of each film, but Marvel seems intent on covering that in side stories, if at all.
I hope that Far From Home covers these pressing questions about the long-term effects of Thanos’s actions, making the MCU feel less like a lifeless backdrop for big budget superhero nonsense, and more like an actual universe.
Ryan Dorman is a Columnist and the Content Director for the Boardwalk Times. He can be found on Twitter at @OpentheDorman, and as a host of the Boardwalk Talk podcast on iTunes.
