Posted by [SPOILER ALERT] after the jump!
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I went to see Avengers: Age of Ultron yesterday. It was a rollicking good time and in some ways, I felt it was better than the first Avengers movie. The first Avengers movie spent a lot of time doing build-up whereas this movie jumped straight into the bad-ass action.
What struck me about this movie wasn’t so much the smash-bang wizardry, though that was really fun. We find out that Hawkeye has a family. A house, a wife, two kids and a third spawn on the way. There’s a shot of his wife when they take off to leave standing on the front porch watching them go.
No doubt many will think – well ain’t that effing stereotypical. Leaving the woman behind, only one female Avenger (soon to become two but still), need moar egality!
But more important than who kicks whose ass and who’s left at home is the movie’s focus on moving on, on finding a life outside of Avenging and daring-do. Hawkeye’s family, his love of his wife and children and even the projects he’s planning for the house, tie him to the real world in a way not experienced by any of the other Avengers. He has something for which to fight, other than the non-specific human race.
Fear. There’s a scene in The Dark Knight Rises where the prison doctor chastises Bruce Wayne for not fearing death.
Blind Prisoner: You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.
Bruce Wayne: Why?
Blind Prisoner: How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible without the most powerful impulse of the spirit: the fear of death. [Source: IMDB]
How about fear of losing one’s home. Fear of never having the opportunity to call something home.
It is something which all the Avengers seem to want. The storyline between Black Widow and Hulk, though it doesn’t come to fruition, seems to come out of nowhere but that longing for normalcy, for family, for a normal place in the world, is strong. Even Ironman talks about building a house out in the styx with Pepper. Captain America seems resigned to the prospect that he won’t have that but it’s clear that he wants/wanted it.
There exists the risk of mythologizing kith and kin, hearth and home. But even the most damaged of us still try to find it.
