Sure, The Avengers: Endgame is a conservative movie, just like Star Wars and Star Trek. “Not Star Trek!” shriek its doughy fanboys, who go on to point out how that cinematic universe embraces collectivism: the characters all conform, have no money and don’t believe in God.
Fine, then Star Trek is a millennial movie series. No, scratch that – Captain Kirk used to get babes and millennials are famously barren.
Now, it’s not like Avengers is blatant about its politics, as if the characters chose up sides in some sort of civil war. Oh wait, they did do that a few movies ago, didn’t they? I am not really an expert – watching the flick you would see the superfans get giddy in the theater every time there was an apparent callback to one of the 213 previous Marvel movies, and I’d be lost. It was still fun, though.
What I mean is there’s no partisan politics. None of the Avengers talk about digging Hillary – who would actually be a particularly incompetent supervillain – and none say “MAGA, baby!” outright, but you can pretty much tell. Tony Stark? Trump guy. Captain America, that insufferable priss? Defiantly Beto. The hot girl with Glocks? She’d pretend to be all liberal, but she would be one of those liberal chicks who seeks out Trump men.
Hawkeye? Trump. Thor? Trump. The Hulk? Mayor Pete, at least in human form. As the Hulk, definitely Trump.
Most of the stars and starlets involved don’t see this in their characters. The generic guy who is Captain America is a goofy leftist in real life. The guy who plays the Hulk is one too. And the gal who plays Captain Marvel is super tiresome, always nattering about patriarchy and privilege and how it’s racist that no one can tell the difference between her and that blonde in The Hunger Games. Her Sandra Fluke vibe comes through in the movie, and every time she shows up on screen you expect her to announce her pronouns.
Recommended
But otherwise, it’s played pretty straight with a few minor nods to political correctness. At one point, some unnamed extra talks about his recent date and then – get ready for your minds to be blown, squares – that date turns out to be ANOTHER GUY! But Captain America nods along unphased because, unlike us squares, he’s cool with Man At Discussion Group #3’s life choices. In fact, when Mike Pence, aka Dr. Cisgender, sends his robot Jesus army to gather up gay people and drag them to his conversion camp in a hollowed-out volcano, Captain America will be right there to fight the homophobic power.
The conservatism we are talking about in Avengers, in Star Wars and in at least the original Star Trek is a larger kind of conservatism. It’s one that recognizes that there is good and evil, and that good is on the side of exceptional individuals rather than faceless masses of collectivist drones (like Imperial Stormtroopers, or all those interchangeable creatures the Avengers smash to bits). Government power is to be suspected and questioned – there’s often a conspiracy of bad guys embedded in the bureaucracy. The only difference between Hydra and our Deep State is that a looming doofus like James Comey who tweets pics of himself standing in cornfields inspires ridicule rather than fear.
In these series, as in real life, evil is personified in dictators like the cackling Star Wars Emperor or Endgame’s Thanos. Conservatives despise dictators and their henchmen while liberals swoon over them – “But but but muh Putin!” babbles the socialist barista in a Che t-shirt. Thanos, who looks like a buff Barney, is a particularly interesting case because he’s an ideological fanatic. He wants to snuff out trillions of beings for his crack-pot ideals. That’s all leftist as hell. He’s sort of a one-man space Khmer Rouge forcing the universe to take a Great Leap Forward. Sound familiar? It makes you wonder what sacrifices the adherents of the climate cult would demand to appease Gaia the global warming goddess? First, it’s your cheeseburgers, then it’s your Ford Expedition. What comes next…?
Gee, I wonder. Ask your local kulak. Oh, right…
Thanos thinks he’s doing good. The Empire thinks it’s doing good. The Borg collective thinks it is doing good. Socialists think they are doing good too, at least the dumb ones for whom it’s not just a power-grab. Utopian fanaticism is a slippery leftist slope that always ends in blood, a lesson these movies teach whether they intend to or not.
There is some collectivist nonsense in these series. For example – SPOILER ALERT FROM 1982! – in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Spock dies to save the USS Enterprise. Fine. This demonstrates that the acts of individuals, rather than of the collective, make history. But he whispers as he expires, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” Um, wait up. As a moral principle, recognizing the good in sacrificing to protect others is good. But as a guideline for ordering a society, it is utilitarian nonsense for credulous sophomores flirting with Marxism. The rights of the one must always outweigh the needs of the many, otherwise they are not rights at all. Spock should have figured that out.
Politics aside, Avengers: Endgame is a fine movie, a true Hollywood summer blockbuster that showcases the movie industry at its best. It’s three hours long, and I’ve seen it twice for reasons outside my control, yet I did not lose interest for a single moment. It certainly resonated with the young audience. And the message of loyalty, duty and the need to combat evil at whatever cost was a welcome one. Hopefully the audience will understand that the real evil in our world is not personified by the Orange Bad Man as some of its mouthier stars think, but in the recurring political herpes virus that is Marxist ideology.
Also, Game of Thrones is totally conservative.
There are no superheroes in my action-packed (and occasionally hilarious) novels about the United States’ split into red and blue, People's Republic, Indian Country and Wildfire, thank goodness. What there is is non-stop action, mockery of political correctness, and eerily accurate predictions of what liberals would do if they could turn half of the USA into California without the moderating influence of normal America and our Constitution. Check them out – they come highly recommended by that pack of losers at that sad website that replaced what used to be the failed Weekly Standard, who hailed my books as “appalling.” So you know you’ll love them!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member