The Earth’s Mightiest Heroes

Growing up I had read tonnes and tonnes of mythological tales. My favourite was the epic Mahabharatha. The main plot is absolutely fantastic. I loved every bit of how the story took twists and turns. What blew my mind was the fact that each character had their history. They had their own tale to tell. The different characters manage to enter into the main plot and entwine themselves in the main story beautifully. Everyone fit like a glove. The different characters coming together for a common cause is a time tested plot. And the same is used in the movie – The Avengers.

I personally love the movie ‘The Avengers’. It has all the makings of a blockbuster. There is action, comedy, drama, emotion and even a little bit of romance if you look hard enough. No one goes to see this movie with the intent to look for inspirational messages. But there are a few things you could pick up from it. Sometimes, the best messages come from the most unexpected places.

The movie begins with Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) an agency in charge of world peace, working on the Tesseract. This alien technology is filled with unlimited power. Nick tries to build weapons in order to maintain peace (irony by itself). When this device mysteriously opens up a portal to another universe, a Demigod makes his grand entrance. Loki, the Norse God of mischief and fire, takes away the source of unlimited sustainable energy. This forces Fury to assemble various people from different corners of the world.  Loki plans to use the cube to gain power over Earth, using the help of Chitauri, an alien race of not-so-nice people.

The team assembled by Fury is coined as ‘The Avengers’ and is made up of Steve Rogers aka Captain America, Natasha Romanov aka The Black Widow, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Dr. Bruce Banner aka The Hulk, Thor – brother of Loki and Clint Barton aka Hawkeye.

The characters do have trouble coming together in the beginning. The clashing of the ego is just the beginning. They seem to have a lot of dissimilarities. The only thing they have in common is the goal – to save the world. Their character flaws and personalities come in the way a lot. Loki, the nemesis uses this to his advantage. By the time they realise how to get along and work together, half the movie is already over. ‘United they stand, Divided they fall’ is a wonderful proverb that has been proven to be timeless. Dividing the problem and not the team is the crux.

The rest of the movie is about how they defeat the common enemy. The age old moral story about a father teaching his sons to stick together with a bunch of sticks comes to my head. The movie has brilliant one-liners and slapstick comedy to lighten up the vigorous action that is required to defeat the aliens. There is something for everyone.

The movie shows how you can be a superhero and still have flaws. You can have all the money and technology in the world and yet feel inadequate. You can be a super confident spy with smooth mind-blowing moves and yet have a deep dark history. You can be an intelligent scientist with breathtaking rage issues. You could be born during the world war and have time literally frozen for you.

The beauty lies in the fact that the seemingly most unlikely people come together and make what is now famously known as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

What I love about this movie is that nobody is perfect. We all have trouble accepting who we are and are too busy trying to fit in. The fact remains that we can be who we are and be accepted as who we are. Now the whole world need not accept us. A select few will do nicely.