Avengers End Game: Think It's Only a Movie? Think Again.

"Because when some people are invisible, everyone suffers."            --Gloria Steinhem

(Spoiler alert: this column contains minor plot details from the film "Avengers: End Game". You've been warned!)

Either you are a super hero fan or...you are not.   

I've unearthed this cultural divide lately as I talk to people about how much I absolutely love, LOVE, the movie "Avengers: End Game", a pop culture juggernaut. In almost three weeks of wide release, the film has made $2.5 billion, making it the second biggest moneymaker of all time. It's the biggest foreign movie ever in China, one of the most expensive films ever at $356 million and is still showing on more than 4,500 screens in the United States alone. 

"End Game" is a big deal, even if you are not a fan of watching folks run around and/or fly around in multi-colored tight fitting spandex super hero uniforms. Even if your tastes run more to Downton Abbey and sipping tea than cheering as the Incredible Hulk bursts forth in bright green muscular ripples and pummels yet another evil villain. "End Game" is the final story in a twenty two film series (yes, I've seen them all), the so called Marvel Comic Universe. Begun in 2008, the series has sold more than $8 billion worth of tickets.

So attention must be paid even if you never plan to see "End Game". 

For films, like other forms of popular culture--books and TV shows and music--these both shape who we are as a people and reflect who we are at any given moment in history, through our shared mythologies and stories and images. Think of Ellen DeGeneres, who came out as a proud and unashamed lesbian on her TV show "Ellen" in 1997. That act forever changed cultural conversations around LGBT issues. Or the 1983 TV movie "The Day After". Then the United States and Russia seemed on the brink of nuclear war and this one film about a nuclear explosion over Lawrence, Kansas, made thousands of average citizens into peace activists. This pop culture effect isn't always so profound. How many folks quit swimming in the ocean after 1975's "Jaws"?   

On the afternoon I saw "End Game" in a packed Boston theater with hundreds of others, almost every seat in that dark auditorium filled, one scene more than any other elicited the loudest and biggest and longest cheer. It was not the final scene where the story concludes, as you might expect.

In the last battle scene, the lone starring female super heroine in Marvel mythology, Captain Marvel, faces a do or die task. Spider Man asks, "How will you do it?" Another character declares, "She's got help."  And then all of the women super heroines, every last one, who've appeared in past films as sidekicks or in supporting roles: they assemble together. Twelve mighty, strong and smart women, ready to do battle.

And the audience cheers!!

I know I did.  For finally, characters who'd been sidelined or essentially invisible, overshadowed by their testosterone fueled male heroic counterparts: these women got their due, one deserved for a very long time, eleven years.  Can one short scene in such a large saga really make any difference in women's ongoing fight in the real world? To be seen, to be heard, to not so often be invisible in too many circles of power?

The lack of women in the Marvel universe just reflects the lack of women in so many other places in our culture, their invisibility. In the White House where only four out of fifteen Cabinet members are women. In the corporate boardroom where only 25 out of the 500 CEOs of the largest American corporations are women. In the film industry where, of the 100 top movies from 2018, only 4 percent were directed by women.

The problem isn't ability. A super heroine can kick butt and take no prisoners as well as any super hero, in the real world too. God made male and female together, at the same time, with equal powers and equal dreams and equal talent. What I hope is that the millions of girls worldwide who see "End Game": they will see themselves in Captain Marvel or the Wasp, or Okoye, a mighty African warrior and general. Let those young women imagine that they too have superpowers, are up on the screen, invisible no more.   

And you thought "End Game" was just a comic book movie. It is and is also a reflection of who we are in our culture and perhaps, who we might become. That's why I can't wait for the next Captain Marvel movie.  Want to go?

I'm buying the popcorn.