An Undigested Reflection on “The Avengers”
I just saw “The Avengers” this afternoon. It was a hoot! I enjoyed it thoroughly. It had all the stock tropes of a superhero movie though at least one of them carried an unexpected theological resonance (unintended no doubt). I want to share an immediate (which means not fully digested) reflection on it. In part the previews before the movie set up this reflection. With the exception of one, these previews were all about battling alien forces or depending on superheroes to save us. Along with “The Avengers” this got me thinking that as a culture we have a sense of dealing with problems and issues that are too big for us, whose presence daunts us and dwarfs our best wisdom to cope with them. This seems to me to account at least in part for the movies portraying humanity as under attack from aliens, mutants, and monsters. We se...