[ SPOILERS AHEAD ]
Last week my sister and dad and I trekked out to Linway Cinemas to watch Captain Marvel, the last movie we needed to see before Avengers: Endgame. It was cathartic in the best possible way, watching a character who had been cut down throughout the entire movie finally let loose (and joyously at that!), showing the bad guys the true extent of her power. And, of course, the power of her cat Goose.
I rarely go to see movies in theaters, but I make an exception for Marvel. Besides the fact that I’m a huge nerd, I’ve also come to trust Marvel to produce a story that cares just as much as I do about these characters.
We had just finished watching all 20 preceding movies (from Ironman to Antman and the Wasp) as a family. I think getting my mom, dad, wife and sister to watch 20 movies about superheroes and space aliens was a feat almost as huge as Marvel making all those movies. And the kicker? They enjoyed it! Of course, Mom kept saying things like, “this isn’t logical” and Dad couldn’t remember half of the character’s names at any given time, but they stuck with it. To the point, actually, that when the dust settled on Infinity War, Mom looked at me, stunned, and said, “Wait a minute, they can’t do that!”
It’s very satisfying to me to experience these movies with my family. It’s a testament to the longevity, creativity, and sheer staying power of these stories that my mom now knows who Groot is.
But in addition to the fun of introducing my parents to a talking tree and experiencing the unbridled power of Captain Marvel with my sister, watching all of these movies again brought to light several larger themes I had missed until now. And when I walked into Endgame this past weekend, the capstone to over a decade of storylines, one theme hit home with deep resonance:
What is the nature of true fatherhood?
Thanos
Thanos, the biggest and (in my opinion) the best villain in the MCU to date, is a father. He names himself as such, and we as the audience see a representation of what fatherhood means to him in his relationship with his “daughters,” Gamora and Nebula — and then in his relationship with a universe of beings.
Gamora and Nebula grew up as “children of Thanos,” the moniker given to all those who serve the purple space tyrant in his quest to bring balance to the cosmos by killing half of it.
Over the course of their stories, we learn that Thanos pitted them against each other as a means of strengthening them. Each time Nebula lost, Thanos would remove part of her body and replace it with a robotic equivalent. As for Gamora, she was adopted by Thanos after he killed her mother and half of her people. Not surprisingly, both sisters want to kill their father now.
Thanos is utterly evil, a villain we truly hate. But here’s the problem — he displays typically vaunted traits of a good father.
He is a principled leader who never lies, is devoted to what he believes is right, and is determined to help his children grow up into what he thinks they should be, no matter the test he has to put them through. He was obviously present in the lives of his children, whether that presence wrought anything positive. He believes his quest to restore balance to the universe is benevolent and necessary, and he works with patience and diligence to achieve it, in spite of the suffering it brings him.
This belief is key to Thanos’s villainy. He utterly believes that what he is doing benefits the cosmos, and that the universe will be grateful for it when he finishes. He has chosen what is good for everyone, and he will do whatever it takes — including sacrificing his own child — in service to this belief.
I’ve seen some takes on Thanos that frame him as a not-so-subtle image of God Himself. His choice to give life to some and take it from others resembles the doctrine of election, and his willingness to sacrifice his child’s life for the sake of His quest echoes John 3:16. And in the end, he desires the gratitude of the universe for his actions.
Let me be the first to say this: this is not my God. Thanos is evil because he seeks to put himself in the place of God. His plan for the salvation of the universe is based on dealing death, not on bestowing new life. And let’s not forget that God sacrificed Himself — not a separate, unwilling child — to save the world.
The reason we see the evil of Thanos’s version of fatherhood is because he is the antithesis of heroism, sacrifice, and love represented in a specific founding member of the MCU:
Ironman
(last chance on the spoiler warning, folks…)
Tony Stark is, in a figurative and literal sense, the father of the MCU. It was his 2008 debut that launched the entire Infinity Saga, and he has been there through every single up and down that this growing family of superheroes has been through. He tried to keep the team together during Civil War, he recruited and subsequently acted as a father figure to Peter Parker, and he even teaches Nebula how to play finger football when they’re stranded in space.
Tony himself grew up with a relatively absent dad, and he never had a chance to reconcile with his father or his own drive to be a father… until Endgame.
In Endgame, Tony has actually become a father. He’s doing dishes, tucking in his little girl, making dad jokes. In the five years since half of the population was dusted, he has moved ahead by choosing the life he never let himself have as a superhero.
But it’s his inherent understanding of what fatherhood is that motivates him to put himself in harm’s way one last time.
See, the first thing Tony says when he returns to Avenger’s HQ, emaciated and defeated, is that he “lost the kid.” He and the others are all haunted by what Thanos has done, but for Tony this is a personal loss. He couldn’t save his “son,” Peter Parker, whose primary father figure in life had been Mr. Stark.
Tony is a father in the truest sense of the word before he ever becomes one biologically. He is a father to the entire Avengers team, even in his falling out during Civil War. He tries to keep his family together. He puts himself in harm’s way (albeit in a reckless gut reaction) in the very first Avengers movie for the sake of everyone he cares about and a bunch of people he doesn’t even know.
He’s not the most strategic, he’s not the only smart one, he’s not very good at being present, and he’s deeply, deeply flawed – just like his own dad. He’s had to fight against his self-centered bent since his early days as a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. And the events of Endgame tighten the screws on Tony’s fatherhood to the max, to the point that when he finally gains the upper hand at the end of Endgame, he doesn’t hesitate to sacrifice his very life for everyone and everything he cares about.
But this time, it’s not a gut reaction.
Tony has built another gauntlet for the stones into his armor. He has recorded a last message for his family. When he and Doctor Strange lock eyes on the battlefield and Strange indicates that this is the one in 14,000,605 chance to stop Thanos from killing everyone, Tony is prepared. Ever since Strange gave up the time stone in exchange for Tony’s life, Tony has known that he had this role to play, this sacrifice to make. And he took tangible steps to prepare for it.
He is the antithesis of Thanos, because he sacrificed his life so that others could live rather than sacrifice others for the sake of his ideals. He was motivated not by a higher ideal or vision of truth, but by a flawed yet powerful love for his family. In this way, Tony is a flawed but true image of our Life-Giving Father, and stands in full opposition to the self-serving, abusive, and ultimately proud fatherhood that Thanos represents.
This is why my favorite moment of Endgame was Tony’s response right before he effectively finished the war and ended his own life:
“I am Ironman.”
This is a full and final realization of his true identity as a protector, guide, and loving father to those around him. This is who he is at his core. This is the proof that Tony Stark does, indeed, have a heart. It’s a laser-focused declaration of what matters most: loving those around him to the very last.
being right vs. loving rightly
Recently I’ve been mulling over several examples of people who have placed their ideologies above loving others. I’ve heard of a married couple who couldn’t come to a compromise on infant vs. believer’s baptism, and their response was to go to different churches and then to not have children at all. I know of a family that believes so strongly that their child is making a poor choice that they have cut off all contact with him until he repents. And just yesterday, the tragic death of Rachel Held Evans prompted many prominent thinkers and other evangelical voices to send their condolences, but only after they’d confirmed that they “didn’t agree with everything she stood for.” Or perhaps, they stayed silent to avoid the conflict entirely.
These are microcosms of a much broader tension facing all of us today. We are all faced with this question daily, in our personal, societal, and political conversations: will we love the person, or will we love our ideologies?
God our Father has always and from eternity past acted out of love and care for His Creation. We are his children when, in Christ and for Christ and through Christ, we do the same. This doesn’t mean we don’t have convictions or speak the truth. God forbid that we would withhold the most loving message in the world from those we are called to love! What it does mean is that true love for the other person is our first motivation. We are called to love rightly, not be right.
Fatherhood is a perfect example of this tension, because we as fathers are always vacillating between our ideals for our children and what our children actually become. We have a responsibility to show them what’s right and wrong, to guide them toward true life — but no matter what their response is, we never stop loving them.
When our fatherhood comes from a place of proving that we’re right, we’re obscuring the image of our Father in heaven that we are meant to reflect. We shouldn’t be parsing verbiage or proving our holiness to our kids, we should be giving up our “rightness” and sacrificing everything to love them, unconditionally, to never stop desiring the best for them and acting on their behalf, to never stop giving true life.
“I love you 3000”
Tony Stark’s final message to his daughter reveals this motive:
“Everybody wants a happy ending, right? But it doesn’t always roll that way. Maybe this time. I’m hoping if you play this back… it’s in celebration. I hope families are reunited. I hope we get it back, in somewhat like a normal version of the planet has been restored, if there ever was such a thing.”
Even as a flawed father, Tony realizes that wholeness and restoration — true life — is what matters most, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice he can give so that his children can have it. Little does he know that there is such a thing as a restored version of the planet, and it’s greater by far than any world we could create in real life or on the big screen.
The love Tony and other key characters show will be difficult for the next generation of MCU superheroes to shake. Ultimately, the groundwork has been laid for a wealth of stories tied together by sacrificial love, found in these fathers who laid down their lives for their children.
So then, we have a calling as we wait for the next Marvel movie to come out: how will we as fathers show our children that we love them 3000, and that God loves them an infinity beyond that?