Introduction
“Militainment” has been defined by critic Roger Stahl as “state violence translated into an object of pleasurable consumption” (6). According to Stahl, Militainment is a particular aesthetic that seeks to use military imagery—servicemembers, uniforms, weapons, vehicles, equipment, symbology, combat, and the shock and awe of modern warfare in an emotionally evocative way to engage, entertain, and shape the perspectives of its audience. By combining the visual and narrative craftsmanship of Hollywood with the visceral appeal of military spectacle and symbology, films that adopt a Militainment aesthetic emerge as a potent form of propaganda which critics argue is uniquely American (Stahl 6).
The history of Militainment arguably begins in the silent-film era, with Wings (1927). William A. Wellman, the film’s director, had served as a fighter pilot in the first World War and used his connections with the Air Corps to secure support from the Department of Defense (DoD) (Suid 2002). The resulting film was unmatched in its realism in depictions of aerial combat. One reviewer remarked, “Nothing in the line of war pictures ever has packed a greater proportion of real thrills into an equal footage.” (Suid 2002). This realism, undoubtedly made possible by the collaboration with the Air Corps and DoD, resulted in Wings becoming the first motion picture to earn Hollywood’s highest honor, The Best Picture Award at the first Academy Awards ceremony. General Clarence S. “Bill” Irvine, who was the military advisor on the project, stated that the film’s popularity and depiction of fighter pilots had a positive effect on military recruitment upon its release. “Beginning about that time, the Air Corpse never had problems getting enough people” (Suid 2002).
Following the success of Wings, other branches of the military began collaborating with Hollywood film projects, eventually leading to the formal creation of a dedicated Entertainment Media Unit within the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. The Entertainment Media Unit reviews any scripts submitted by Hollywood producers seeking to cut production costs with military hardware and set locations provided by the DoD, pending script approval (Mirrlees 2014). If approved, film projects are supported by the Pentagon with a Hollywood Liasson Officer whose sole task is to shepherd the approved project to fruition by furnishing the filmmakers with otherwise prohibitively expensive military resources (Stahl 10).
While there are no official criteria to ensure Pentagon script approval, the DoD website states that the primary objective in working with Hollywood productions is “two-fold: to accurately depict military stories and make sure sensitive information isn’t disclosed (Department of Defense 2022).” However, critics have questioned whether the DoD’s claim that they seek to “accurately depict military stories” truthfully summarizes their goals. For example, during pre-production for Black Hawk Down (2001), the DoD rejected the script based on the true story of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 despite, or more to the point, due to its factual accuracy.
The DoD requested a rewrite that would elide the true crimes of one of the principal characters (Guardian News 2001). Critics have cited Black Hawk Down to illustrate how these partnerships between the Pentagon and Hollywood exist not to present a factually accurate portrayal of the American Military” as stated by the DoD, but to portray the US Military in a wholly favorable, heroic, and entirely morally upstanding light, which is specifically designed to increase recruitment and public support for the US Military and its operations.
Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the United States saw unprecedented increases in military spending, which resulted in the founding of the Department of Homeland Defense, the funding of no-bid contracts going to for-profit private contractors like Lockheed Martin and Haliburton, and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, branded as “The War on Terror” by the Bush/Cheney administration. Critics argue that this increase in spending, accusations of federal overreach, and the engagement in increasingly unpopular, protracted wars with no clear exit strategy created a need for the Bush/Cheney administration and the Pentagon to supplement its military operations with Hollywood productions geared towards pro-US military messaging (Pardy 103).
The post-9/11 increase in partnerships between the Pentagon and Major Hollywood productions was particularly notable in PG-13 sci-fi and fantasy cinema (Pardy 103). This is seen as particularly pernicious, as PG-13 sci-fi and fantasy genres are often strongly marketed towards younger, and therefore, more impressionable, audiences. It is argued that nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the case of the superhero genre, as exemplified by the most popular film franchise not only within that genre, but in cinematic history, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU (Pardy 112).
The MCU, produced by Marvel Studios (now owned by Disney) and adapted from Marvel Comics, is a series of related motion pictures that feature recurring characters in a shared film continuity. Since the MCU’s debut with Iron Man(2008), Marvel Studios has enjoyed unprecedented success, earning approximately $27.4 billion in global box office sales, becoming the highest grossing film franchise of all time (Box Office 2022). Marvel Studios released an astonishing twenty-one films in an eleven-year period, culminating in Avengers: Endgame (2019), which wrapped up the first three phases of the MCU, commonly referred to as The Infinity Saga, and became at that time the highest grossing film in history.
Six of the twenty-two films that compose The Infinity Saga have been made in cooperation and with the Pentagon’s Entertainment Media Unit. These films are Iron Man (2008), Hulk (2003), Iron Man 2 (2010), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), and Captain Marvel (2019), which also included a recruitment video for the Air Force, using footage from the film and the titular hero in its promotional materials (Pardy 114). Although this amounts to less than 30% of The Infinity Saga’s total films, many of these early films form the basis of a unifying narrative and visual Militainment aesthetic that persists throughout The Infinity Saga all the way to Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Given the MCU’s unprecedented success from Iron Man (2008) to Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Infinity Sagaemerges as a series of valuable cultural products which present an opportunity to examine how Militainment functions within the superhero fantasy genre as a potent cinematic aesthetic in the post-9/11 media landscape. However, while much scholarship has been devoted to analyzing the narrative and mise-en-scene (unifying visual and audial aesthetics) of the films composing the first two phases of the MCU, little scholarship has been devoted to the final climactic film of TheInfinity Saga, Avengers: Endgame (2019).
This Capstone project proposes the following question: in what ways do the narrative and mise-en-scene in Avengers: Endgame (2019), given the legacy of the previous twenty-one films that compose the MCU, function as Militainment propaganda to sway film audiences toward pro-US Armed Forces and the American exceptionalist fantasy in the post-9/11 media landscape?
To answer this question, this Capstone will analyze the visual and narrative techniques Marvel’s filmmakers have used to frame the real-world issues of terrorism, the military, and war through the prism of the MCU’s principal characters throughout The Infinity Saga leading into Avengers: Endgame (2019). Although Marvel Studios has continued to release new films and television shows that add onto the MCU’s continuity, the scope of this project will focus exclusively on those films released prior to Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Part I: Invoking War will examine how the MCU invokes WWII, 9/11, and the War on Terror. Part II: Cinematic Avatars will explore how the MCU’s heroes are presented narratively and visually as avatars for the American military. Part III: The Clean War will analyze how the previously discussed elements combine in Avengers: Endgame (2019) to present a “clean war myth.”
PART I: Invoking War
This section will examine how The Infinity Saga capitalizes on the Militainment aesthetic by visually and narratively invoking 9/11, the War on Terror, and WWII while minimizing these event’s moral, historical, and political complexities.
Section 1: Invoking 9/11 and The War on Terror
The MCU represents a notable shift in tone from previous entries in the superhero genre. Films like Sam Rami’s Spiderman or the X-Men trilogies, for example, appeared to frame their stories in alternate versions of the United States in which 9/11 either did not happen or was not in any way visually or narratively referenced. The first film of the MCU, Iron Man (2008), by contrast, centers the protagonist and events firmly in the post-9/11 era.
Iron Man opens with Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) being chauffeured by a convoy of US Army Humvees driving down a road in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan. The diegetic soundtrack features AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which, according to some critics, was “a band and a type of music which became heavily associated with the American military in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan” (McSweeney 43).
In the early minutes of the film, Stark refers to his new weapon system, The Jericho Missile, as “The crown jewel of Stark Industries Freedom Line,” which evokes similar Bush/Cheney War on Terror brandings like Operation Enduring Freedom and The Patriot Act. He concludes his pitch with the statement, “find an excuse to let one of these off the chain and I personally guarantee to you that the bad guys won’t even want to step out of their caves” (Iron Man 2008).Although he does not say the word “terrorists,” the implication could not be clearer.
Following the weapons demo, Stark’s convoy is attacked and all the American soldiers escorting him are killed. He wakes up in a bunker surrounded by a group of men identified as The Ten Rings, a terrorist organization coded visually through their costuming, beards, and logo symbology as Al-Qaedaesque. They speak angrily in an untranslated middle eastern dialect to a camcorder, visually referencing the horrifying videos of beheadings of high-profile American hostages uploaded to YouTube around the same era as the film’s release (Iron Man 2008).
While Rami’s Spider-Man often made prominent use of the American flag and Fox’s X-Men 2 sometimes lightly satirized American politics through an LGBT analogy, never had a superhero franchise placed itself so directly into the geopolitical landscape of the War on Terror as Iron Man (Kang 2022). The result imbued the fledgling MCU with an unmatched level of relevance, appropriating the images and narrative drama of 9/11, tapping into the “powerful reactions those events induced” and in effect promising a cinematic catharsis to the widespread terrorism anxiety and growing war disillusion that defined the post-9/11 era (Scott, Dargis 2013).
However, while invoking 9/11 proved a valuable strategy for grounding the MCU’s characters in a cinematic world that more closely resembled our own, critics have argued that a closer examination of MCU narratives exposes how the MCU routinely dodges these same “complex issues and especially the political arguments that might turn off ticket buyers” (Scott, Dargis 2013). This cunning sleight of hand employed by the MCU, as described by Scott and Dargis, involves “invoking” the emotions and anxieties associated with the post-9/11 era but “dodging” its political, ethical, and moral complexities which threaten to diminish the moral superiority of the United States, its military, and the superheroes who act, as will be examined, as their cinematic avatars.
Many of the MCU’s main antagonists are visually and narratively framed as a foreign terrorist or as an analogy for governmental overreach in the first half of the films, only to be replaced with an uncomplicated, apolitical “true villain” in the second half. For example, Stark’s battles against the al Qaeda coded Ten Rings and his announcement that he will no longer continue manufacturing weapons because “I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability,” positions Iron Man as a former advocate for military capitalism, who then becomes the loudest and most powerful critic of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) (Iron Man 2008).
However, halfway through Iron Man it is revealed that The Ten Rings were paid to murder Stark by his business partner and surrogate father figure, Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges). After this revelation, the Ten Rings disappear from the narrative and Stane, a greedy apolitical weapons manufacturer who seeks to kill Stark so that he may assume control over his company, becomes the film’s central antagonist. This absolves the filmmakers of further discussions of terrorism, American interventionism, imperialism, militarized capitalism, or the MIC. As noted by Tanner Mirrlees, “The potential of this framing of the U.S. MIC to become a structural critique of militarized capitalism, however, is not realized. Iron Man individualizes the MIC in Stark and Stane” (Mirrlees 11). In other words, villainous behavior, even when related to real-world events, especially involving the American government and its military, are universally framed within the MCU as the result of corrupt individuals, not systemic failure or corruption.
The strategy of “invocation” of 9/11 and the War On Terror followed by “dodging” its full social, moral, or political implications occurs throughout the MCU, notably in the Iron Man series of films, which routinely feature coded terrorist villains in the first half, only to reveal the “true villain” as an apolitical greedy American businessman or mad scientist in the second half, positioning Iron Man’s antagonists as a “dark mirror” for the protagonist himself. This pattern, started in Iron Man (2008), would continue to Iron Man 2 (2010) with the villain Ivan Vanko, played by Mickey Rourke, and Iron Man 3 (2013) with the villain The Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley.
Similarly, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), which was the sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the titular hero is confronted by a series of moral civil liberty compromises in the name of safety, each of which reflect post-9/11 War on Terror anxieties concerning government overreach that began during the Bush Administration, throughout Obama’s second term, and remain relevant today.
Captain America in The Winter Soldier opens showing the titular hero operating on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D, a covert paramilitary intelligence organization coded as the MCU’s version of the CIA or NSA. Throughout the first half of The Winter Soldier, Cap discovers a series of secret programs S.H.I.E.L.D. had sponsored, which had been approved by the World Security Council (the diegetic universe’s United Nations). These programs were approved following the “Battle for New York,” the climactic battle that concluded Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), which has been called “The MCU’s 9/11 moment” (McSweeney 109).
The secret programs Cap discovers range from ethically questionable (such as mass surveillance and data mining) to alarmingly apocalyptic (such as low orbital helicarriers capable of pre-emptively destroying one thousand individual targets per minute). The first half of Winter Soldier positions Captain America to attempt to navigate the complex modern debates revolving around the surveillance state, data mining, pre-emptive drone attacks, extra-judicial assassination, and the lack of public transparency of covert government organizations. However, as was the case with the previous Iron Manexamples, the second half of The Winter Soldier once again shifts focus away from its real-world War on Terror analogies, allowing Captain America to sidestep his crisis of faith in the United States and its military, and instead focus on confronting and defeating a typical apolitical adversary, HYDRA.
HYDRA, a malevolent organization within the MCU that seeks to spread chaos and destabilization to achieve world domination, is revealed to have infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and is solely responsible for orchestrating each of the programs in question, once again absolving the US government and its military of any wrongdoing. HYDRA originally appeared in the MCU in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) as an arm of the Nazi army focused on acquiring and harnessing the same powerful cosmic artifacts (the infinity stones) to which The Infinity Saga owes its name. However, as the MCU progressed through several films, HYDRA presents itself, like the greedy businessman or mad scientist archetypes, as a convenient apolitical villain for which the MCU can conveniently attach any kind of evil scheme without meaningfully engaging in the morally nuanced or politically complicated narratives embedded in the first half of each of the films.
In the third installment of the Captain America trilogy, Captain America: Civil War (2016), the initial conflict centers on “The Sokovia Accords,” a legal document in the diegetic universe that would require all “enhanced individuals,” meaning The Avengers team, to register with the World Security Council, a governing body that would have the authority to either approve or disapprove of their operations. Captain America refuses to sign the accords, stating, “If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t ignore it. Sometimes I wish I could” (Captain America: Civil War 2016). Iron Man, feeling guilty and personally responsible for the destruction and lives lost during the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), believes that the Sokovia Accords are an important step towards transparency and accountability for their team. The first half of Captain America: Civil War, much like its predecessor Captain America: The Winter Soldier, revolves around themes that mirror real world debates regarding extrajudicial covert operations, assassination, civil liberties abuses, and the philosophical border between freedom and security that became particularly relevant in the aftermath of the passage of The Patriot Act. Critic Matthew Costello characterized the conflict presented in Civil War as an “allegory for the War on Terror” (229).
However, like its predecessors within the MCU, Captain America: Civil War also shifts focus away from these complicated War on Terror analogies, and towards a malicious apolitical villain, Helmut Zemo (played by Daniel Bruhl). Zemo, a former Sokovian Intelligence operative who lost family members during the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, blames the heroes for his family’s death and commits acts of terrorism, mass murder, and torture to exact revenge on the heroes in a diabolical plan to manipulate them into killing each other.
In each of these examples, MCU films have been shown to invoke and then dismiss elements of 9/11 and the War on Terror, providing the franchise with an exigence previously unseen in previous films in the same genre. This rhetorical strategy, in addition to proving a potent marketing element, also implies that the ongoing tensions and debates involving terrorism, civil rights, government overreach, imperialism, and war within the nondiegetic United States (as well as the diegetic MCU) are not politically or culturally systemic, but rather, individuated by bad actors. The films are constructed to send the prevailing message that the quintessential virtuous American identity, as exemplified by MCU heroes, are capable of overcoming the challenges of the post-9/11 era and prove a harmonious and just force of good in the world.
Section 2: Invoking WWII
Cynthia Webber once described WWII as a “rich vein of moral certainties that the United States mines at moments of its greatest moral uncertainty” (29). One of the reasons why WWII has been regarded, at least by Americans, as a “rich vein of moral certainties” certainly rests on the wave of Hollywood war films released in the last half century. These films, many of which were made with pentagon support, almost universally portrayed American soldiers as the primary heroes of WWII, who saved Europe (and by extension the entire world) from authoritarian aggression. The MCU, through the character of Steve Rogers and films like Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), capitalizes on this same tradition of evoking WWII as “a mythic summit of national virtue,” while also minimizing the United States’ complicated moral and political history from that era (Hoogland-Noon, David 341).
Adolf Hitler would be used as a model for comic book villains throughout the Golden Age of American comics and beyond. Nazis, being a real-world example of a malevolent organization seeking world domination, presents a convenient enemy for superheroes to fight, framing the narrative in an uncomplicated battle of good versus evil. However, some of the signature aspects of Nazi-ism (namely their aggression, racism, and nationalism) are also arguably reflected in the United States’ culture, government policies, and history, especially during the WWII era. Japanese internment, racial segregation, fire-bombing, and the dropping of atomic bombs on civilian populations are just a few of the uncomfortable historical facts that can be used to convict the United States of the same evil for which it rightly condemned the Nazis.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) carefully elides these historical facts, presenting a narrative in which the United States is framed as an unassailably good counter to the unmistakably evil Nazis. In the most obvious example of historical revisionism, Steve Rogers, as Captain America, leads an integrated troop of racially diverse soldiers during a time when the US Army was heavily segregated. Charles M. Blow, the grandson of Fred D. Rhodes, who was one of the now famous “Buffalo Soldiers,” an all-Black segregated 92nd Infantry, called The First Avenger a “sanitized version of America’s darker years” (2011).
Roger’s squadron, The Howling Commandoes, also features Jim Morita, played by Kenneth Choi, as a Japanese American private who is shown fighting alongside Rogers and his integrated squad, each of whom is regarded within the film as equals to one another. The film makes no acknowledgment of the predominantly racist attitudes that pervaded American culture or of the real racial injustices perpetrated by the US government, which suspended the civil rights of roughly 110,000 Japanese American citizens who were forced into internment camps, an act that Congress would later call “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” (McSweeney 105). In the MCU’s diegetic history of the United States, such injustices committed by the government against its own citizens and the common bigoted attitudes held by many Americans simply did not happen. The film presents America not as it is or was, but rather, how Americans wish to be seen and remembered.
These cinematic representations of WWII present a mythopoetic fantasy of American exceptionalism. Persistent creative license, fairly described as pro-US propaganda, elides the history, continued struggles, and hard-fought triumphs of marginalized citizens against all-too-common cultural prejudice and state-sanctioned oppression. Like the WWII films of the second half of the 20th century, The First Avenger visually and narratively attempts to transform the collective memory of America during the WWII-era from its complicated reality to a glorious Golden Era of American exceptionalism, which will be visually evoked and appropriated throughout The Infinity Saga.
In Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), an elderly man in Germany, who is presented as a Holocaust survivor, is the only one in a crowd of German citizens to refuse to kneel before the film’s villain, Loki (played by Tom Hiddleston). Steve Rogers, who saves the elderly man before Loki can make an example of him, says, “You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.” As noted by Terence McSweeney, “There is no ostensible reason for the scene to be set in Germany other than to continue these sustained allusions to WWII” (115). By framing Loki through the lens of WWII, the MCU effectively appropriates traditional Hollywood WWII films, and the pervasive narrative of WWII as a shining example of American exceptionalism, for a younger and more impressionable audience.
Representations of WWII throughout Hollywood’s history support the mythopoetic American exceptionalist fantasy. By invoking WWII, the MCU appropriates and capitalizes on these representations, positioning their superheroes as “morally certain” war heroes for the next generation.
Section 3: Conclusion
The MCU has been shown to evoke aspects of 9/11, the War on Terror, and WWII but minimize the moral, historical, and political complexities associated with these events by individuating forces of antagonism on an apolitical malevolent antagonist, or group of antagonists, whose primary goal is wonton destruction, usually as a means of securing world domination, bloodthirsty revenge, or both. In so doing, the MCU creates an opportunity to rewrite the post-9/11 era through a popular, culturally acceptable mythopoetic American exceptionalist fantasy made popular by Pentagon supported Hollywood WWII films.
PART II: Cinematic Avatars
This section explores how Militainment visually and narratively positions MCU characters as cinematic avatars for the shifting American identity and US Military throughout The Infinity Saga leading into Avengers: Endgame (2019).
While the MCU has introduced a substantial roster of heroes taking on The Avengers mantle, the original six Avengers (Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor, Hawkeye, and Captain America) make up the principle focus of the first three phases of the MCU leading into Avengers: Endgame and are the primary subjects of this Capstone. Particular attention will be paid to Iron Man (Tony Stark) and Captain America (Steve Rogers or “Cap”), whose film trilogies make up the bulk of The Infinity Saga.
Section 1: Military Ties
Of the original six MCU Avengers, all but Thor have explicit ties to the US Military. Steve Rogers (Captain America) is depicted as a Captain in the US Army who received a “Super Soldier Serum” developed in part by US scientist, Howard Stark (Iron Man’s father). Hawkeye (Clint Barton) is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., a covert US military organization analogous to the NSA or CIA, along with Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) who defected from the KGB after being administered the Russian equivalent of the “Super Soldier Serum.”
Tony Stark (Iron Man) is a weapons manufacturer who has made billions with US military defense contracts and dons a suit of super-science military armor of his own creation. Bruce Banner (The Hulk) also works as a scientist with the military attempting to re-create the same “Super Soldier Serum” which gave Captain America his powers.
Although Thor, The God of Thunder, is presented as the only one of the original six Avengers with no explicit narrative ties to the US Military within the film continuity, his status as a supernatural warrior prince of Asgard (Thor’s celestial home in the diegetic universe) and recognized “protector of earth” positions him as a cosmic analogue to the US Military alongside the rest of the Avengers.
In assembling the team, Nick Furry, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s director (played by Samuel L. Jackson) sums up the purpose of creating the Avengers was to “bring together a group of remarkable people, so when we needed them, they could fight the battles we never could” (Marvel’s The Avengers 2012). In other words, The Avengers, or “Earth’s mightiest heroes,” exist to augment the mission of the US military as a team of living weapons.
Section 2: Violence and Sacrifice
The two most prevalent themes throughout The Infinity Saga, especially in Avengers: Endgame, are that of redemption through violence and sacrifice. Violence, when acted on by one of the heroic characters, is often framed as a defensive action, to protect the innocent against aggression. Sacrifice also appears as a recurring theme throughout The Infinity Saga, as each of the MCU heroes, typically at the climax of each film, is faced with a choice to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. These sacrifices, however, are often framed, as Terrence McSweeney has called them, as “false sacrifices,” meaning that the character willingly puts themselves in a potentially fatal situation only to be miraculously saved so that the sacrifice “very rarely results in the actual death of the hero, and functions primarily as a symbol of his masculinity, heroism, and patriotism (56).
Captain America elects to sacrifice himself at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger by nosediving his plane armed with a WMD into the Arctic to avoid thousands of civilian deaths in New York City. This is almost identical to a later situation in which Iron Man, in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) guides a nuclear warhead fired at New York City (by the World Security Counsel to neutralize an alien invasion) into a wormhole, expecting to die in the process. Although both situations prove a “false sacrifice” with Captain America surviving by being frozen in the Arctic Tundra, and Iron Man falling back through the wormhole to earth before the nuke could explode, both situations are framed as the defining moment for each character, who proves his heroism through his willingness to sacrifice his life for others.
Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) appears throughout The Infinity Saga as something of a wildcard, not inclined towards altruistic sacrifice. She is seen switching allegiances multiple times throughout Captain America: Civil War and always provides calculated, rational reasons for her decisions, which rarely involve sentimental invocations of “duty” or “patriotism” towards her expatriate homeland, The United States. However, despite this consistent characterization, it is Natasha Romanoff who commits herself to one of the only two non-false sacrifices made by principle characters to take place in the whole of The Infinity Saga.
In Avengers: Endgame, Both Romanoff and Barton (Hawkeye) attempt to sacrifice themselves to obtain the Soul Stone, which demands a life sacrifice in exchange for possession. The two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents desperately fight each other, trying to be the one who jumps to their death and save half the life in the universe, which includes Barton’s entire family. After Romanoff’s death, while the remaining five original Avengers teammates processes their grief, Stark asks, “Do we know if she had family?” to which Rogers replies, “Yeah. Us.” This affirmation of “family” in the form of “brothers in arms” echoes the popular sentiment that perhaps the closest, most intimate, and committed relationship on offer for human beings is the bonds made between soldiers in combat.
In Avengers: Age of Ultron Secretary of Defense Ross, played by William Hurt, likens the existence of high-powered characters like Thor and The Hulk with nuclear weapons, “If I misplaced a couple of thirty megaton nukes, you bet there’d be consequences.” In The Incredible Hulk (2008), Ross points to The Hulk as he rampages through the streets of Harlem and exclaims, “That man’s body is the property of the US Army!” Since the character’s inception, Bruce Banner and his alter ego, The Hulk, has been read as a metaphor for the nuclear anxieties which were rampant during the 1960s at the time of his creation (Darowski and Darowski 2015). Bruce, who until Avengers: Endgame (2019), is unable to control himself while in his Hulk form, appears to suffer from PTSD because of his guilt for having caused an unquantified amount of deaths and damage during his numerous “Hulk rages.”
However, in Avengers: Endgame, Hulk is shown returning to the timeline of The Battle of New York, the climax of Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) and is easily able to control himself amid the chaos which had previously been an orgy of violence and destruction. This return accounts for Banner’s narrative arc and functions as a cathartic allay of fears for the nuclear anxiety that birthed the character, presenting a fantasy of responsible “smart” bombs that are unlikely to harm innocents.
In terms of sacrifice, The Hulk elects himself to be the one who risks his life in Avengers: Endgame (2019) by countering Thanos’s infamous infinity gauntlet snap in Avengers: Infinity War, which resulted in the death of half the life in the diegetic universe, releasing an enormous amount of cosmic energy that nearly killed its wearer. Hulk says, “It has to be me… It’s like, I was built for this” (Avengers: Endgame 2019). While this potential sacrifice turns out to be one of many “false sacrifices” made by MCU heroes, his speech before making the decision evokes the climax of Saving Private Ryan, in which Tom Hank’s character, Captain Miller, facing certain death for a mission he did not want, looks into the titular character’s eyes and says, “Earn this” (Saving Private Ryan 1998). Hulk says, “We have to make it worth it.” In other words, they must earn Romanoff’s sacrifice by willingly sacrificing themselves so that she would not have died in vain. This frames sacrifice as the highest virtue and Military servicepeople as the keepers of this virtue. As Rhodey played by Terrence Howard, states in Iron Man (2008), “Every person that’s got this uniform on has got my back.”
Thor, who appears as an arrogant hothead, thirsty for war and glory at the start of his first solo film Thor (2011), eventually learns a degree of humility and caution by the film’s end, electing to destroy the BiFrost Bridge, a cosmic bridge between his magical realm and earth, potentially sacrificing his only connection to the woman he loves in the process, so that he may protect a race of Frost Giants, whom he previously regarded as his enemy.
Again, while this would prove a “false sacrifice,” as Thor would be able to return to earth in later installments of his franchise, as stated by Terrence McSweeney, “This act of altruism is central to the understanding of the American monomyth, which has encoded within it the idea that America’s wars and interventions abroad are never undertaken for selfish reasons, but only ever for the good of mankind and that the global superpower carries with it a burden of responsibility that no one can ever truly understand” (81).
Throughout the Infinity Saga, but notably in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, sacrifice emerges as the highest redeeming virtue in the MCU, consistently rewarding those willing to selflessly sacrifice their own lives and happiness while mercilessly punishing those who refuse.
Section 3: Iron Man and Captain America
More than any two other characters in the MCU, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are framed as generational touchstones of the ever-shifting American identity and avatars for the US Military. As the MCU’s first feature film, Iron Man (2008) set the template for how the franchise would incorporate a militainment aesthetic. When showcasing a new weapons system to allied defense buyers, Stark comments, “They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far” (Iron Man 2008).
This allusion to World War II and the dropping of the atomic bomb is repeated in a later scene when Stark is confronted by a reporter who accuses him of war profiteering. “My old man had a philosophy. Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy” (Iron Man 2008), which Terrence McSweeney has called “a variation of US President Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’” (46). Stark goes on to comment how his father, Howard Stark, “worked on the Manhattan project” and “helped defeat the Nazis,” which “a lot of people… would call that being a hero” (Iron Man 2008).
This hero worship of his father is a rare example of Stark being uncharacteristically sincere. Often, even in dire situations, Stark can be found making glib, ironic, sarcastic comments which portray a kind of disillusioned Generation-X cynicism. For example, when being called “The merchant of death,” Stark dryly responds, “That’s not bad” (Iron Man 2008). It is only when referring to his father’s legacy that Stark whips off his tinted red sunglasses to stare directly into the eyes of his accuser and becomes serious, somewhat defensive, vulnerable even, revealing an insecurity towards the notion that his father (and the United States by proxy) has been anything less than morally forthright. While Tony Stark’s characterization is imbued with a recognizable post-Vietnam/Watergate disillusionment as expressed through sarcasm and acerbic wit, he is shown to still admire his father and the “Greatest Generation” which he represents. As we will examine, the WWII era stands throughout the MCU as the shining, untarnished example of the American exceptionalist fantasy to which Stark, despite his cynicism, deeply aspires to contribute.
Stark’s contribution to the American exceptionalist fantasy comes, as previously stated, through the manufacturing and deployment of futuristic weapons which he sells to the US military. However, upon discovering that some of Stark Industries’ weapons have fallen into the hands of terrorists, Stark takes it upon himself to construct a flying exoskeleton suit with futuristic combat capabilities, which he personally deploys, crossing international borders to enter war zones on behalf of innocent civilians for whom no government will defend.
This decision aligns with Stark’s characterization. Throughout The Infinity Saga, Stark is shown to exclusively rely on developing technological solutions for any problems he encounters. Stark’s faith in technological superiority to confront and overcome any problem he faces identifies him as an archetypal Silicon Valley Millennial technocrat with a distinctly Randian libertarian bent. While testifying before the US Congress as to whether he will give the Iron Man suit to the US Government, Stark replies, “You want my property? You can’t have it. But I did you a favor… I have successfully privatized world peace” (Iron Man 2 2010). Later, in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Stark imagines a “suit of armor around the whole world” which will secure “peace in our time.” The ironic rephrasing of “peace for all time” said by Neville Chamberlain during the Munich Agreement (which preceded Hitler’s invasion of Poland within a year of its utterance) foreshadows how Stark’s intentions to use technology to protect the world will ultimately backfire.
Stark’s reliance on technology as a means for combating the challenges he encounters are presented throughout the MCU as both his greatest strength and his deepest flaw. Like his father before him, who Stark comments in Avengers: Endgame, “Never met a problem he couldn’t solve with a belt,” Stark relies too much on technology and weapons to achieve his goals, almost always through violence, and neglects the second most persistent thematic virtue expressed throughout The Infinity Saga; sacrifice.
As previously stated, violence and sacrifice account for the two ways in which the MCU narratively and visually redeems its characters, with violence being the lesser virtue and sacrifice being the greater. Stark leans heavily towards violence through technological means, though the franchise’s text indicates this is not sufficient. “Big man in a suit of Armor. Take that off and what are you?” asks Rogers in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012). “I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.” Stark replies, “I think I would just cut the wire,” again deferring to his technological prowess. When referring to Captain America, who Stark appears to hold some resentment towards, he still frames Roger’s through the lens of technology, saying, “Everything special about you came out of a bottle” (Marvel’s The Avengers 2012).
Stark’s reliance and mastery of technology, as exemplified through his Iron Man suit, provides a prime example of what Roger Stahl calls “Technofetishism.” Stahl identifies Technofetishism as “the worship of technology,” especially weapons, which are often portrayed “eroticizing” or “sexualizing” weapons, turning weapons into “an object of beauty,” and by doing so “organizes the world according to the divine right of high-tech ‘civilization’ to conquer and defeat low tech ‘barbarism’” (28). Tony Stark’s Iron Man armor visually evokes the military, particularly the Air Force. The red and gold color scheme of Stark’s suit is modeled after a photograph shown in the film of Stark and his father working on a 1932 Ford Flathead Roadster, giving the armor the visual impression of what Stahl calls “a seamless melding of hot rods and fighter jets” to create a visual effect in which the hero appears “encrusted… head to toe in military hardware (46).” In this way, man and weapon become one, a repeated theme throughout the MCU, but perhaps exemplified best by Tony Stark’s signature catchphrase, “I am Iron Man.”
Iron Man (2008) offers the audience the pleasure of seeing the world through the point of view of a living weapon. Iron Man’s point of view shots include a Head’s-Up Display (HUD) with a holographic interface that can accurately identify and distinguish between combatants and civilians, ensuring that no innocents will be harmed by Iron Man’s deadly munitions. Scholars have likened these POV shots as prime examples of “The imperialist gaze,” which depicts “the American liberator” saving the helpless “grateful foreigners” while doling out pinpoint accurate shock and awe to enemies via technological superiority (McSweeney 55).
This “imperialist gaze” is on full display with Iron Man’s first heroic act of flying to Gulmira, a remote village in Afghanistan besieged by militants. Stark flies to Gulmira to help innocent refugees and destroy the weapons that had fallen into the terrorist’s hands. An offhand comment made by one of the Airmen watching the action scene play out from a keyhole satellite (“They were using human shields; we never got the green light.”) absolves US armed forces of their inability to intervene, as democratic processes for unleashing legitimate state-sponsored military force are often depicted both in this scene and throughout The Infinity Saga as too inefficient, too ineffectual, or too dangerous to combat the fluid and powerful nature of the enemies they face (Iron Man 2008).
In discussing the Gulmira sequence, Tanner Mirrlees writes “Iron Man gives popular credence to the post-9/11 liberal imperialist idea that the US has a responsibility, obligation, or mission to use its military’s power [to] liberate or save other peoples living in other countries that are suffering from some kind of oppression” (10). Iron Man, like most protagonists in the superhero genre, is a vigilante, operating independently of external legal authority, and never allowing laws, borders, customs, or governing bodies to impede his ability to “make things right” (Iron Man 2008).
The moral obligation Stark feels to intervene echoes a mantra made famous by Marvel Comic’s most popular character, Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Also called the Peter Principle, the mantra invokes Voltaire, “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do,” and other straightforward moral mandates regarding duty and responsibility. However, if applied to matters of international security, this mantra can be read as a liberal imperialist slogan, providing thin moral justifications for any manner of military intervention, with or without validation by democratic processes. MCU heroes, beginning with Iron Man, are framed as phantom arms of the criminal justice and military apparatus, but without the oversight or accountability which are supposed to be implicit within those structures. As allegories for the American military, MCU heroes, beginning with Iron Man, frame the US as the hero protagonist of the world, presenting the United States as the only nation with the “great power” to take on the “great responsibility” of keeping the world safe. However, the lack of accountability or oversight in executing these “responsibilities” frames the heroes, as Matthew J. Costello calls it, a kind of “liberalism with a fascist aesthetic” (225).
When considered against the backdrop of the post-9/11 era and the War on Terror, Iron Man (2008) can be read as an analogy for Bush/Cheney unilateralism, particularly regarding the US invasion of Iraq. The Bush White House justified the invasion through a combination of humanitarian interventionist messaging framed around “freeing” Iraqi citizens from a repressive regime, and the need to protect the western world against weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) which the Bush/Cheney administration claimed had fallen under Saddam Hussein’s control (Pardy 103). This is analogous to the conflict presented to Tony Stark in Iron Man (2008). Upon discovering that the Ten Rings (an al Qaeda parallel), has obtained Stark’s Jericho Missile (the diegetic universe’s version of WMDs), Stark dons the Iron Man armor, transcending his role as a private war profiteer and civilian ambassador of the American military, and becomes instead its cinematic avatar. Each of the other heroes featured throughout The Infinity Saga would follow suit.
While Iron Man established the Militainment aesthetic within the MCU, Captain America is perhaps the most straightforward example of a cinematic avatar for the US Military, not only within the MCU, but in comic book history. Captain America, or Steve Rogers, has been called “The visual and narrative embodiment of American values and discourses” (Schmid 697). Since Captain America #1 first landed on newsstands across the United States in March of 1941, the character has rivaled the likes of DC’s Superman as the quintessential manifestation of the true and ideal American spirit; strong, brave, and most importantly, morally unassailable.
The cover art of the first Captain America comic book featured Cap punching Adolf Hitler in the face a full nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor (Kirby, 1941). While Congress was still debating the benefits of isolationism versus intervention in World War II, Steve Rogers’s Captain America was, albeit fictionally, already on the “right side of history.” In the eighty years since, Captain America has risen to become what Matthew Costello has called “The avatar of American ideology (13)” and “the ideological center of the Marvel universe (66).”
As previously mentioned, in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), Stark alluded to the origin of Captain America’s powers (the Super Soldier Serum), saying “only thing special about you came out of a bottle.” However, the true origin of Roger’s powers arguably comes not from his enhanced abilities, but in why he was chosen as a candidate for the Super Soldier Program in the first place; his inborn virtue of self-sacrifice for a higher good. Originally deemed too weak to fight on the front line and following his physical struggles after finally enlisting in the US Army to fight in WWII, Rogers is chosen as the candidate for the Super Soldier Serum only after he willingly jumps on what he believes to be a live grenade to save the lives of those nearby (Captain America: The First Avenger 2011).
The focus on preserving Roger’s inborn virtue throughout his training contrasts with the kind of training received by Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), played by Scarlett Johansson, who was physically and psychologically broken down and mutilated by her commanding officers to render her a cold, efficient assassin. The implication is that the core of Roger’s goodness lies in his Americanness, and how respect for the virtues of goodness, honesty, and self-sacrifice are uniquely and quintessentially American, which likely accounts for why Romanoff defected to the United States to work for S.H.E.I.L.D, another example of the American exceptionalist fantasy. As McSweeney notes, Captain America: The First Avenger implies that “if a pure of heart American participates in Erskine’s experiments his innate sense of goodness will create an altruistic hero, but if a German does it he will emerge as abhorrently evil, conveniently ignoring how close Captain America fits the image of an Aryan ideal himself” (103).
Visually, Captain America’s stars and stripes identify him as an unmistakable mascot for American military might. Similarly, Cap’s iconic shield, a characteristically defensive rather than offensive weapon, has been read as a symbol of “Captain America’s, and by extension America’s, enduring belief in its role of the protector of liberty and defender of innocents around the globe” (McSweeney 99).
However, Captain America’s status as a paragon of American virtue did not come without certain challenges and complications, particularly within the MCU. Just as comic book writers had to contend with the mass cultural and political disillusionment brought on by the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal, MCU writers were confronted with Captain America’s association with the increasingly unpopular War on Terror in the post-9/11 era and the United States’ unsavory history of state-sanctioned oppression and injustice.
In the diegetic universe of the MCU, Captain America, following the events of Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), is frozen in a crashed airplane for nearly 70 years, having sacrificed himself, as MCU heroes often do, to ensure a weapon of mass destruction does not explode. Cap’s absence from American history serves as a plot device to both unite Captain America with his modern-day counterparts and to exonerate Cap of some of the US Government and Military’s actions which resulted in mass disillusionment following the Vietnam War. In Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), Rogers expresses his disappointment for how recent American history has undermined the legacy of American exceptionalism he once faithfully represented. “When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won. They didn’t say what we lost,” to which Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. replies, “We’ve made some mistakes along the way.”
The film’s text acknowledges the general “mistakes” made by the United States and its military but keeps this acknowledgement non-specific and implicit rather than explicit. This is mirrored in how the collateral damage and lives lost from Bruce Banner’s Hulk rampages and Natasha Romanoff’s history as an assassin (and the trauma they experience because of this) are implied, but never shown, as doing so would threaten to undermine audience identification as well as jeopardize the film’s PG-13 ratings. This strategy carefully reigns in Rogers’ character slightly from the symbol of the quintessential all-American war hero for even the nation’s most dubious wars, and whose unreserved endorsement of the United States and all its military operations may have proved alienating to modern audiences on the post-Vietnam, Watergate, and 9/11 era.
Still, Captain America stands within the MCU, and nondiegetic American culture, as a symbol of WWII era virtue. Stark, who represents Gen-X cynicism and Millennial futurism, often finds himself at odds with Rogers, mirroring the cultural tensions of the post-9/11 era. As stated by Samira Nadkarni, “The simultaneous presence of Captain America and Iron Man creates a temporal play in which the events of World War II and 9/11 are made co-incident” (16). In other words, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark stand as personifications of the ever-shifting American identity. Their interpersonal conflicts and eventual reconciliation narrativizes the reconciliation that the United States government and its military sought in framing The War on Terror through the same lens as it had successfully done with WWII, as a just and “clean war,” which would be achieved largely through America’s innate moral and technological supremacy. Rogers, in this sense, represents the moral superiority, while Stark represents technological superiority.
Section 4: Conclusion
In this Part we have explored how each of the Avengers are presented as cinematic avatars for the US Military both visually and narratively through their character design and thematic redemption through violence and sacrifice, which are framed as a noble and necessary heroic and patriot acts in the eternal fight against the forces of darkness. These elements combine to evoke pro-US military attitudes among its target audience, both Americans and international people’s of all ages.
PART III: The Clean War
This section will explore how the previously discussed elements combine in the culmination of The Infinity Saga,Avengers: Endgame, by presenting a “clean war myth.” Roger Stahl identifies “The Clean War” as “a manner of presenting war that maximizes viewer alienation from the fact of death in order to maximize war’s capacity to be consumed.” (25). The Infinity Saga incorporates “The Clean War myth” through the Militainment aesthetic by adopting the “just war” narrative, sanitized violence, and glorified sacrifice (25).
Section 1: The Just War
The first and most crucial aspect of “The Clean War” is to present the need for justified violence against an unreasonable and inexorable enemy who cannot be dissuaded from wreaking harm on innocents by any other means. As previously discussed, both real-world state-sponsored military campaigns and traditional superhero fiction both benefit from narratives containing simple clear-cut right versus wrong and good versus evil, with the heroes (or US Military) always on the side of right and good, and the villains (or the US’s adversaries) always on the side of wrong and evil. This is the Just War.
Complicated geopolitical nuance and mitigating historical context often interrupts and contradicts the simplistic “good vs. evil” narrative on which the just war depends. This may account for why, as previously discussed, the MCU incorporated a strategy of invoking, but dodging the full political and historical contexts of 9/11, The War on Terror, and WWII. Avengers: Endgame continues and concludes this trend by presenting the principal villain of the Saga as the ultimate form of powerful, unreasonable, inexorable evil to justify the depictions of violence and war that the film presents as an object of visual pleasure through the Militainment aesthetic.
The principal villain in Avengers: Endgame (2019) is Thanos, an eight-foot-tall purple alien from the planet Titan. Played by Josh Brolin with the help of the finest and most expensive CGI ever committed to film, Thanos appears throughout The Infinity Saga working behind the scenes granting resources to lesser villains in his quest to acquire all six of the Infinity Stones. The Infinity Stones (The Time stone, Mind Stone, Space Stone, Reality Stone, Power Stone, and Soul Stone) are cosmic objects in the MCU’s lore that grant genie-like powers to their holders. With all six stones, Thanos intends to wipe out half of the life in the universe to “restore balance” (Avengers: Infinity War 2018). As Thanos puts it, “It’s a simple calculous. This universe is finite, its resources, finite. If life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correction (Avengers: Infinity War).”
Thanos perceives himself as the misunderstood savior of a universe that lacks the will to do what he deems necessary to preserve a quality life for all the universe’s inhabitants. Thanos’s solution is what he calls “random, dispassionate, fair” genocide (Avengers: Infinity War 2018). Thanos’s motivation, a kind of genocidal eco-terrorism preoccupied with exclusively violent solutions to issues of overpopulation and scarcity conceptualizes the problems humanity faces with the overabundance of humanity itself. While ostensibly motivated by a desire to preserve life, the solution offered is essentially anti-life.
Thanos’s anti-life solution runs counter to the self-sacrificial values of Captain America and the industrious virtues of Iron Man. The preceding films starring Captain America and Iron Man may lead audiences to believe that if presented with a crisis of scarcity, Steve Rogers would likely make the necessary sacrifices to protect life at all costs while Tony Stark would work to find a technological solution, as he does when presented with any crisis. The saga’s text suggests that if Thanos did not lack the values and virtues of Captain America and Iron Man, he too might find a reasonable and peaceful solution to the scarcity crisis he perceives. However, Thanos, as is often repeated throughout Avengers: Infinity War, is “insane,” which accounts for his nickname, “The mad Titan.” As such, Thanos cannot be reasoned with or persuaded against the course of mass violence he desires. He can only be confronted with an equal measure of violence, which is entirely justified.
Visually, the final battle of Avengers: Endgame is reminiscent of the MCU’s previous invocations of 9/11, the War on Terror, and WWII. The scorched earth, rising smoke, and falling bombs caking each hero in dirt and mud are all reminiscent of action sequences presented throughout The Infinity Saga in films like Iron Man (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Avengers: Endgame (2019) marks the culmination of not only a twenty-two-film franchise telling a single continuous story, but it also presents itself as the crown jewel of a visual language which had developed over the course of the franchise. This visual language, as previously examined, blended elements of the moral certainty of the WWII era, the moral anxiety of 9/11 and the War on Terror, and the visual and narrative mastery of Hollywood into a single culturally affirming blockbuster championing the American exceptionalist fantasy.
Perhaps the most salient visual expression of the America exceptionalist fantasy comes near the start of the final battle with Thanos, when Steve Rogers manages to lift Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir. It is a feat that, in the diegetic lore of the franchise, can only be achieved by those who are truly “worthy” according to the great and wise Odin, Thor’s father, regarded as the wisest character in the MCU. The moment powerfully affirms the American exceptionalist fantasy by showing how an American man imbued with signature American virtues should achieve the same level of “worthiness” as a god—worthiness that is notably embedded in a weapon matching the power of an atomic bomb.
Section 2: Sanitized Violence
Stahl notes the clean war rhetorical strategies of Desert Storm operations following Vietnam were designed to alienate viewers from death: “The dead were ‘fallen,’ to die was ‘to perish,’ death was one’s ‘fate’” (27). Essentially, war becomes a more palatable object of pleasurable consumption with the careful censorship, or sanitization, of wartime violence and death. This, according to Stahl, was a notable switch in messaging strategy from the DoD following the lessons learned after Vietnam, in which graphic uncensored violence and daily “body count” updates broadcast nightly on the news were perceived to “sour” the public on the war (22). The new images of the War on Terror would be carefully cultivated, crafted in collaboration with the Pentagon and the media to foster the traditional American exceptionalist fantasy of moral and technological superiority.
Critics argue that the MCU would take these notions of sanitized violence and alienated death to create a “wish-fulfillment fantasy by rewriting the War on Terror through the prism of the superhero film” (McSweeney 123). Evidence of this charge can be found throughout the MCU, but perhaps most notably in the “team-up” films which divide the three phases of The Infinity Saga. In Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), audiences are treated to images of low flying aircrafts smashing into buildings, which are then reduced to rubble, leaving civilians running for their lives, caked in dust. Several of the most memorable sequences in The Infinity Saga become nearly identical to the images of the terrorist attack on 9/11, but crucially, rewritten through the lens of a victorious American revenge fantasy.
As one critic put it, “in the world of the Avengers, there are few consequences. There's property damage, and PR damage, but no one dies. It's tragedy reimagined as cartoon” (James 2015). Marvel’s The Avengers, and much of the MCU becomes “a dream of resilience and clean war…where we can end the war in a day; where we can avoid doing grievous harm to ourselves and our values in the process” (Rosenberg 2012).
Besides omitting civilian casualties, the MCU also minimizes violence and death by incorporating a series of bloodless automaton foes for its superheroes to mercilessly destroy. This trope began in Iron Man 2 (2010), in which Justin Hammer (played by Sam Rockwell) released an army of armored drones to kill Iron Man. The automaton enemy has also been deployed against MCU heroes throughout The Infinity Saga in Thor (2011), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). In Marvel’s The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019), the heroes fight hordes of Chitauri, a race of cold-blooded lizard-like aliens who operate via a “hive-mind,” evidenced by how “the invaders collapse like toys” in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) once the neural link to their commander had been severed (Rosenberg 2012).
In each of these examples, neither the audience nor the heroes need to contend with the full moral or psychological ramifications of inflicting violence or taking life. The films’ mise-en-scene encourages audiences to take pleasure in watching the heroes pulverize, vaporize, tear apart, and decapitate these enemies, often in slow motion close-ups. The heroes’ adversaries often resemble large technologically enhanced insects, humanoid enough to resemble combat with a human being, but devoid of anything that could interrupt the audience’s enjoyment of their graphic physical destruction.
In Avengers: Infinity War, the Chitauri are shown forcing their bodies through a blue forcefield, which mangles their limbs and rips them apart, though they show no concern for their own lives or wellbeing, or access to emotions like fear or pain. These enemies are not designed to draw sympathy or compassion from viewers. They lack individuality, reason, and emotions of any kind besides rage and aggression. They appear as completely dehumanized, evil incarnate. This mirrors a common tactic that governments have used throughout history, to frame enemies of the state as inhuman, unfeeling, irrational, and entirely malevolent. Once an antagonist is portrayed as devoid of any semblance of humanity, the protagonist character (and audience) is positioned to believe that the foe is worthy of total merciless annihilation.
By the time the Chitauri appear in Avengers: Endgame, all the pieces of just and sanitized violence are already in place to secure the audience’s enjoyment of the violent spectacle. Violence is presented as the only solution to the irrational and otherwise unavoidable harm the antagonists pose, and visually becomes a metaphor of safety and peace. Audiences are positioned to experience violence wholly through the lens of interactive pleasure, cheering in Avengers: Endgame (2019) when Spiderman (a mere teenager) commands his suit to “Activate instant kill.” As stated by Stahl, the purpose of the clean war myth is to alienate the audience from the fact of death so that war itself becomes a redemptive act of self-affirming virtue.
There is perhaps no greater example of a violent act which stands as a justified, morally righteous, and redemptive act of virtue than when Stark snaps the infinity gauntlet to destroy Thanos and all his forces at the climax of Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos declares, “I will shred this universe down to its last atom and then, with the stones you've collected for me, create a new one teeming with life that knows not what it has lost, but only what it has been given. A grateful universe.” In the face of universal annihilation, total genocide of all life in the universe, Tony Stark’s decision to destroy Thanos and all his forces with the snap of his fingers is presented as a triumphant and righteous genocide. It is the ultimate manifestation of the philosophy Stark espoused in Iron Man (2008), “I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.”
Section 3: Glorified Sacrifice
As previously stated, sacrifice emerges as the most persistent and honored virtue for MCU characters to display throughout The Infinity Saga and is particularly significant to the narrative and visual language of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Besides Romanoff, Tony Stark provides the other “true sacrifice” in The Infinity Saga, at the climax of Avengers: Endgame. After Thanos reveals his plan to wipe out the entire universe to punish their insolence, Stark snaps the reformed Infinity Gauntlet to defeat Thanos and his forces once and for all, sacrificing himself in the process, as the cosmic energy dispelled by this act leaves him mortally wounded.
This conclusion had been foreshadowed in Infinity War by Doctor Strange, who claimed to have used the Time Stone to divine the outcome of 14,000,615 attempts on the Avenger’s part to stop Thanos from achieving his goal, with only one attempt proving successful. Stark’s death is foreshadowed again in Endgame when Stark asks Strange, “You said one out of fourteen million we win. Tell me this is it,” to which Strange replies, “If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen.”
Then, moments before the critical moment in which Stark must give his life to save the universe, Doctor Strange holds up a single finger, signaling to the hero that the time has come, and Stark knows what he must do. This frames Stark’s sacrifice as a metaphysically necessity for the benefit for the entire universe with no possible counter-solution. It is a Christ-like sacrifice for the benefit of all life. This sacrifice also parallels how the US Government and Military tends to frame the deaths of soldiers during war. Such deaths are viewed as tragic but unavoidable, or necessary, outcome of a justified war fought by a righteous nation for honorable reasons. As Stark puts it, in his typically glib fashion, “That’s the hero gig,” meaning that heroes must be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, as this is the price of being called a hero.
Stark’s sacrifice is further glorified in the film’s text as he is respectfully mourned by the entire cast, both on the field of battle and in a funeral scene following. He is also given the opportunity to offer his own eulogy through a recording he made prior to the final battle. Moreover, while Romanoff sacrificed herself to acquire the Soul Stone, Stark is the only casualty among the heroes during the final battle in Endgame, so the honor of his sacrifice is not diluted by the loss of any other character. The glory all belongs to him, who died in combat.
The subtext of these elements sends a message to the audience that Stark, being an avatar for the US Military, by sacrificing his life for just a righteous war, will be regarded universally as a noble and heroic for engaging in combat, that the narrative surrounding his fate would be his alone to determine, and that his memory would be properly honored, his sacrifice never taken in vain. In short, Tony Stark’s sacrifice at the end of Avengers: Endgame (2019) can be interpreted as an emotionally evocative, visually extravagant, multi-million dollar sales pitch to all young viewers regarding the divine ecstasy of dying for one’s country.
Section 4: Conclusion
The Infinity Saga, beginning with Iron Man (2008) and ending with Avengers: Endgame marks a shift in American filmmaking, applying a Militainment aesthetic popularized in Rated-R action films to the sci-fi fantasy PG-13 genre. Evocations of 9/11 and the War on Terror grounded The Infinity Saga in real-world tensions and anxieties, providing unprecedented exigence to the genre while also offering an opportunity to rewrite the events through an American wish fulfillment fantasy. Evocation of WWII allowed the MCU to appropriate and capitalize on the “moral certainty” and the American exceptionalist fantasy popularized by the wave of Pentagon supported WWII films made throughout the last half-century. Narrative ties and visual symbology incorporated throughout The Infinity Saga enabled MCU heroes to emerge as cinematic avatars for the US Military, whose acts of justified violence and glorious sacrifice propagandize audiences to adopt pro-US Military attitudes through a Militainment aesthetic.
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Films
Black, Shane, director. Iron Man 3. Marvel Studios, 2013.
Boden, Anna, Fleck, Ryan, directors. Captain Marvel. Marvel Studios, 2019.
Branagh, Kenneth, director. Thor. Marvel Studios, 2011.
d’Arrast, Harry, director. Wings. Paramount Pictures, 1927.
Derrickson, Scott, director. Doctor Strange. Marvel Studios, 2016.
Favreau, Jon, director. Iron Man. Marvel Studios, 2008.
Favreau, Jon, director. Iron Man 2. Marvel Studios, 2010.
Leterrier, Louis, director. The Incredible Hulk, Marvel Studios, 2008.
Russo, Anthony and Joe, directors. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel Studios, 2014.
Russo, Anthony and Joe, directors. Captain America: Civil War. Marvel Studios, 2016.
Russo, Anthony and Joe, directors. Avengers: Infinity War. Marvel Studios, 2018.
Russo, Anthony and Joe, directors. Avengers: Endgame. Marvel Studios, 2019.
Scott, Ridley, director. Black Hawk Down. Columbia Pictures, 2001.
Spielberg, Steven, director. Saving Private Ryan. DreamWorks Pictures, 1998.
Whedon, Joss, director. Marvel’s The Avengers. Marvel Studios. 2012.
Whedon, Joss, director. Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel Studios. 2015