If we’re accurately keeping track, the film offered by the historic Jones Theater this weekend is the 36th iteration of a Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) tale over the last two decades. Captain America: Brave New World, which entered theaters on Valentine’s Day, is the first of three MCU movies being released this year. The film, its production crew and actors, have a lot to accomplish: rendering a stand-alone political action thriller, while reminding viewers of long-haul story threads from the franchise’s previous iconic superhero yarns.
This Captain America tale, however, is fraught further with what commentators refer to as current political realities. As one writes, it is laden with “analogues for real-world problems.” Really? It’s a comic book world. But, oh, wait, that really might not be far off from current realities after all…
The MCU films are part of a curious genre. They, and other superhero films like them, are extraordinarily popular with the American viewing public. Last week this film, grossing over $390M, entered the top 100 list of highest earning movies ever, and the dollars are of course still rolling in. A case can be made that this is not simple escapist viewing behavior, but a rather complex post-modern engagement with the millennia-long dependence on mythology to provide meaning and purpose found in all cultures. If you will, it’s a religious, or at least quasi-religious, venture into wishful fantasy for deliverance. From? Threat, malicious and powerful controllers, evil, bad guys and gals, coming-to-get-you ominous and secretive invisible schemers. Or maybe just a rough week at work and home.
Are there some in the audience who really do yearn for an American president, played here by Harrison Ford coming into MCU heroism after William Hurt’s death, to morph into an avenging, raging Red (note, not Orange) Hulk? And tear apart the White House, the Rose Garden, related turf, and the shambles of a federal government, to face the confrontational Captain America? Probably. That’s how immersion in mythology functions; our gods, fickle as they are, eventually protect us, save us.
USA TODAY’s Brian Truitt claims this enthralling movie is an “intelligent, superhero-filled take on real-world political agendas.” Katie Walsh, a Tribune (not our Tribune!) News Service film critic, writes in the Los Angeles Times, “The fact that the clear, crisp, saturated cinematography and sturdy action sequences rarely look like a typical Marvel movie is a good thing. It’s easier to enjoy the film as a political drama about deep-state mind control with a few superpowered individuals than it is as an overly strained bit of connective tissue in the MCU…Don’t sweat the small stuff, and Captain America: Brave New World proves itself to be a decent political thriller with something culturally resonant to say that exceeds mere comic-book particulars.”
Whew! What a rendering of American mass culture’s propensity for myth-belief, secular or religious, in the intertwine of actuality with outrageously fictional storytelling.
We can participate in this phenomenon by winging down Main Street to the Jones tomorrow and Saturday night for 7 p.m. showings, and Sunday, March 30 at 2 p.m. Rated PG-13 for violence and some strong language, Captain America rides along with your fantasies for two hours. Tickets are available at the door, opening a half hour before screen time, at prices so modest you’ll think you’re the feted superhero.
Enjoy!
– W.A. Ewing