What Marvel’s Latest Offerings Have to Say About Politics
There are two major political takeaways from ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ and ‘Thunderbolts*.’ One is a lot more surprising than the other.
I had three questions when the first trailer for Captain America: Brave New World, which came out in February, dropped last year:
How much did they have to pay Harrison Ford to be in this?
Was it worth it?
Is Marvel getting into politics?
My third question elicited a self-chuckle. The Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU—the franchise that is somehow nearing its 40th film in less than two decades—has dealt with politics many times, primarily in its early years. And the Captain America film series has always been the most political, focusing on how he and other heroes relate to the military and its extended bureaucracy.
Still, the MCU had largely moved away from politics on Earth, let alone in the U.S., more recently, so it was somewhat striking to see that the studio would make a movie centered around Captain America’s tense partnership with a U.S. president (Harrison Ford’s character) making increasingly erratic decisions.
I considered writing about that back in February, but honestly, I didn’t think the movie was good enough to warrant much discussion. But then, the next MCU movie—Thunderbolts*, a far stronger installment—came out last month, and that one also dealt with U.S. politics, albeit to a lesser degree. In this case, a group of contract killers are all secretly working for a corrupt CIA director who is facing imminent impeachment. An existing Marvel antihero, Bucky Barnes, is also now a U.S. congressman, for some reason.
Neither of these movies is trying to send a sweeping political message. But put together, they do have two interesting things to say about the state of politics currently, one of which is more surprising than the other.
First, both Brave New World and Thunderbolts* express a deep cynicism about the ability of the government to get things done efficiently, if at all, and a distrust that politicians and other high-level officials are looking out for the common good. In Brave New World, the president comes across as overtly self-interested in private, and he nearly drives the U.S. to war with Japan simply because he won’t admit his own mistakes. Those characteristics also extend to the U.S. role internationally, with references in the film to other countries’ distrust of U.S. actions.
Meanwhile, in Thunderbolts*, not only is the CIA director—presumably appointed by the president from Brave New World—obviously corrupt, but despite how obvious it is, Congress can’t seem to find enough evidence (or, for that matter, votes) to impeach her. And Bucky Barnes, literally a sitting elected U.S. official, appears to grow disenchanted with the political process almost immediately after joining it, repeatedly lamenting that it moves too slowly.
And in both movies, the heroes are prompted to step in and save the day specifically because they believe the government cannot efficiently or effectively respond to the crises at hand, despite supervillainery being at least a biannual threat at this point. As a result, even the heroes that ostensibly work for and with the government choose to step outside its bound and act unilaterally.
To be sure, this cynicism about politics and governance is in many ways an accurate reflection of how people view the government these days, with polls in the U.S. showing low levels of trust in the government for much of the 21st century. This isn’t necessarily undeserved—an unusually high number of congressmembers retired last year citing the same disenchantment in the institution that Bucky Barnes expresses. But it has also almost certainly been exacerbated by other factors like increasing societal fragmentation and alienation (see: the loneliness epidemic).
This widespread cynicism likely played a significant role in helping U.S. President Donald Trump win reelection last year, a bitterly ironic outcome given that the second Trump administration is perhaps the worst possible manifestation of all of the problems that led to this disenchantment with government in the first place. (The fact that the CIA director in Thunderbolts* looks and acts extremely similar to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard makes the movie seem eerily prescient.)
But that also brings me to the more surprising takeaway from these two movies, which is that they are both specifically pro-cooperation, even pro-multilateralism. In Brave New World, for instance, the president suggests that his first big landmark achievement will be a treaty that equitably distributes a newly discovered, extremely powerful element so that the world’s powers do not fight over it. That level of efficient multilateralism and global cooperation would be unheard of in today’s real world, and would be even more unrealistic in a universe as insecure as the MCU—where, again, there appear to be semi-annual existential threats to all of humanity—even if it is the most rational response.
Meanwhile, Thunderbolts* is, ultimately, a movie about battling loneliness and mental health issues with cooperation and companionship. The antiheroes initially resist teaming up because they have grown so accustomed to working alone, but find that not only do they have to work together, they like working together. And in the end, the villain they battle is—spoiler—quite literally a physical embodiment of severe depression. (To really drive the point home, they defeat him through the sheer power of the human connection.) In the midst of a loneliness epidemic, that is a stark message to hear in a blockbuster film.
As a result, while both Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* do serve as reflections of society’s cynicism about politics and the government, they are also strikingly optimistic about society’s ability to address the issues that are exacerbating that cynicism.
Today, in the real world, maintaining the latter message in order to address the former issue may be exactly what is needed.
That’s all for this edition of Cansler Culture. It sure would be nice if someone put a subscribe button right here.
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