2021 Media Review: Movies

After a nearly non-existent year for movies at the box office in 2020, we had a slow start at the box office for movies in 2021, as well. By mid-summer, however, studios beginning to release their films in theaters once again and by the end of the year we had one of the highest grossing movies in history! The top ten grossing films of 2021 were:

1. Spider-man: No Way Home

2. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

3. Venom: Let There Be Carnage

4. Black Widow

5. F9: The Fast Saga

6. Eternals

7. No Time To Die

8. A Quiet Place Part 2

9. Ghostbusters: Afterlife and

10. Free Guy

Every one of these movies has a strong, heroic lead or group in a high stakes situation filled with personal and wide scale challenges that they had to overcome. Also, every one of these movies except for Free Guy was part of a larger franchise or expanded universe. But what else do these films have in common and what can they tell us about our views and aspirations in relationships? And warning, there may be some mild spoilers ahead!

It’s no surprise that 4 of the top 5 films from last year were marvel superhero movies. For the past decade and more, the MCU has dominated the box office as year after year people have gone back to the theaters to see their favorite costumed characters in pretty recycled plot lines with the villains and the stakes getting bigger and badder with each sequel. As a HUGE comic book nerd, (and here is my personally autographed graphic novel from Stan Lee to prove it) even I can admit how repetitive superhero movies can be. In fact, comic books themselves are incredibly repetitive and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One big reason that these stories and films have done so well is because we often go to the movies as a form of escapism. The familiar characters and arcs a welcome comfort in an increasingly volatile world. We can suspend reality for 90 mins to watch a bald guy drive a car in space because so many of us want to forget the real gravity of what is happening all around us. We’ll gladly pretend that another terrible sequel wasn’t released just a few years ago so that we can cling on to the nostalgia of watching the originals come alongside a new generation and bust ghosts one more time. These fantasies all come from and are marketed directly to a desire for familiarity as the real world continues to change around us.

These heroic stories, however, couldn’t be heroic at all if they didn’t contain the vital element of self-sacrifice. Not only are we, as the viewers, clinging the familiar, but we often find our heroes fighting to hold onto their families that they have developed as well. Even James Bond, the classic British spy with a new girl and a new car in every movie, found himself racing against time to save the world but more importantly, his daughter! Tom Holland’s Spider-man is a character who has had to sacrifice more and more with each new film. The tagline of his character is finally delivered in the 3rd installment of his franchise as his aunt May tells him that with great power comes great responsibility. James Bond, Spider-Man and all of these characters remind us that it is not their skills or abilities that make them heroes, it’s their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. Dom Toretto from the Fast franchise is always putting it all on the line for “family,” while in “A Quiet Place 2,” every member of this small family caught in a post-apocalyptic world of aliens who have invaded earth must risk everything for the sake of those they love. In each of these stories, the more they sacrifice, the more heroic they become which is a stark contrast from the messages in the top songs from last year. Maybe it is precisely because we choose to surround ourselves with messages of greed, selfishness and lust in our ears all day long that creates such a longing for something very different when we go to the movies. At the end of the day, we know how empty a self-involved life is and our movies are touching on something deeper and more real; they’re just using ghosts, aliens and costumed superheroes to do it.

So, what is that transcendent piece, that universal truth that has pulled us out of our quarantined isolation and back into a theater surrounded by potential risks? What is it that these characters we love are sacrificing for? At the end of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Peter is given the opportunity to try to start over and rebuild relationships with the only family he has left but, when the moment comes, he walks away. For the whole movie, this is what he has been fighting for and yet, seeing them content and presumably safe in a life without him, he chooses to walk the world alone rather than put the people he cares about in danger. What makes this choice heroic rather than self-destructive? What about this allows his character to go from walking out of that diner to donning a new, comic book accurate, homemade Spider-man suit representing him coming into his own as a hero as the movie ends? Peter can walk away from what he was fighting for and still fight on because he realizes that what he was fighting for was something bigger. There is a transcendent, universal reality that connects us all as people. There are moments in life when we realize that our stories are just a small part of a much larger story being told. In these times, we realize that the things that we thought were most valuable were only truly valuable inasmuch as they reflect the values of the Author Who has written this grand story. That is transcendence. That is true worth, and value and purpose. These movies strike such a chord because they tap into something that we all know is true but we don’t always see or acknowledge it. The evidence is all around us and yet, sometimes, it takes an outlandish character in a suit of armor, or tights, a fitted tux or a suped up car to remind us of the larger narrative that we are all a part of.