So I finally saw the movie on Saturday. I managed to avoid spoilers for ten days. Ate a big breakfast to get through the three-hour epic and found a parking place at the Lynnwood Mall on a busy Saturday afternoon to get into the Alderwood Mall AMC theater for the show. Let me share a few Mormonish thoughts that came to me as I reflected on this whole Movie of the Decade experience.
Three Hours. That ought to ring a bell. The movie didn’t really seem too long, but that’s only because there was a lot of exciting content (at least after the first slow 30 or 40 minutes). I don’t recall a set of LDS three-hour meetings that ever qualified as “exciting content.” I can’t believe we had three-hour church for four decades. It’s nice to have that one in the rearview mirror.
Grave Mistakes. Okay, I’m borrowing this from Thor: Ragnarok, which I re-watched during Preparation Week. Accused by a big bad guy of making a grave mistake, Thor replied: “I make grave mistakes all the time. Everything seems to work out.” That’s a strange mix of hubris and humility, but his willingness to admit to grave mistakes is striking. Somehow, LDS folk theology has developed an implicit theory of leader infallibility that resists acknowledging any error, whether grave or slight. This persists despite, for example, dropping First Sunday Councils (in Priesthood and RS) after one unimpressive year, flip-flopping on 18-month missions a generation or two ago, reversing the November Policy after less than four years, etc. There is nothing wrong with these policy changes. That’s what effective pragmatic leaders do in the face of adverse experience or new developments. But what’s wrong with saying, “Sometimes we make mistakes,” rather than continuing to push implicit infallibility, which requires mental backflips and bad reasoning to square with how policies and doctrines change over time? Take a hint from Thor. We make grave mistakes all the time.
Past, Present, and Future. Time travel opens up helpful possibilities for plot twists, but it complicates techno-thriller timelines and consistency. If you are a detail-oriented INTJ, you probably spent the two hours after the movie critiquing a few temporal inconsistencies. Every techno-thriller with time travel announces an imperative “don’t mess with past events, it will screw up the timeline” order, then breaks that imperative before the end of the movie. LDS doctrine and historiography tends to screw up the timeline, with Christian doctrines showing up in the pre-Christian Book of Mormon, old Israelite doctrines like temples popping up in 19th-century LDS practice, and modern developments like Freemasonry being given spurious ancient origins. Somehow the average Mormon just feels no need to respect chronology, to respect the timeline. It’s also bedevils LDS biblical exegesis.
Thor’s Hammer. I want one. Who doesn’t? But you have to be worthy to use it. There’s that word. Here is the enchantment that Odin apparently placed on Thor’s Hammer, which as you recall caused Thor some problems in the original Thor movie: “Whosoever holds this hammer, if (s)he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” Who judges Thorean worthiness: the Hammer? Odin? The Spirit of Asgard? All the characters struggle with conscience and doing the right thing at one time or another in the various Avenger movies, but only with Thor and his Hammer does “worthiness” enter the discussion explicitly. He engaged in a wide variety of killings, feuded with his brother, lied regularly, and drinks a lot of beer. Yet Thor was found worthy to wield the Hammer. Plainly we are dealing with a different conception of worthiness than the Mormon one. Perhaps a comparison between the Mormon conception of worthiness and the Thorean conception of worthiness deserves a post of its own. Maybe we could work this into the whole armor of God passage in Ephesians: “Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, and the hammer of the God of Thunder …”
The Tragic Worldview. Here’s a quote from the strangely insightful Thanos upon the death of a character who I will not name: “No resurrection this time.” Superheroes have a habit of not staying dead, but it appears some of the dead in this movie are gone for good. As is said in biology, “Extinction is forever.” (Or at least until genetic technology makes some further advances.) This view that extinction is forever (at the cosmic scale) and that death is final (at the personal scale) are part of the tragic worldview, in contrast to the Christian worldview where resurrection cures death and grace eventually heals all wounds (if you’re a Universalist) or at least some wounds (if you are a sectarian).
The Avengers, it seems, accept the tragic worldview. Thanos embraces it with a vengeance. It certainly lends narrative depth and gravitas to the story arc. It’s the temporary nature of death, particularly the death of Jesus, who in the Christian worldview resurrected in just two or three days and wasn’t really dead even for that short period, that calls depth narrative gravitas into question in Christian accounts. If you think about it, it’s also why true mourning is sort of frowned on in Mormonism and why LDS funerals are characterized by preaching, not mourning. I’m sure some of you will be upset if I suggest Avengers: Endgame has more narrative depth and gravitas than the Christian narrative, but there you go. Ragnarok (in historical Norse myth) has more finality and pathos than Revelation, which features a happy ending.
So plainly I’m having a little fun here, but popular media culture is increasingly the lens through which we understand and think about the world. Maybe, just maybe, we can learn some worthwhile things from the Avengers.
Wheat & Tares 
In 1983, shortly after Return of the Jedi came out, my mom borrowed some of my Star Wars toys and took them to church. She told me her class giggled as she put the toys out on the table at the beginning of the lesson. But then she explained how she’d been taken with the film’s story line. She saw a parallel between Satan and Emperor Palpatine, who uses and abuses Darth Vader, and is perfectly willing to throw him away if he can get the young Luke Skywalker to turn to the dark side.
I’ve only seen the first Avengers film directed by Joss Whedon, and I truly enjoyed it. I’ve largely moved away from current superhero films. My childhood favorites are available for download whenever I want. So the new ones don’t interest me, but the timeless themes certainly do. These are our new operas and our new Shakespeare plays. Absolutely worth using them for reflection. Great post!
I think the film is a commentary on the dangers of religious fanaticism. Thanos, in theory, has a relatively benign belief about the universe: that everything should be in balance. That’s straight out of a fair number of religious handbooks. The problem, of course, is that he becomes more concerned about uncompromisingly enacting that belief at the expense of compassion for the beings whom he destroys. I found the movie chilling, in fact, because the vision of Thanos is quite similar the cult of obedience and all the talk of “perfection” that I experience/hear at church. To paraphrase Pogo Possum, “I have met the enemy and Thanos is us.” Thanos is the logical and frightening extension of a lot of Mormon cultural beliefs (not Christ’s actual teachings) and to combat that kind of blind, unethical fanaticism, you apparently need a sh*t ton of superheroes, which we, sadly, don’t have.
“But what’s wrong with saying, ‘Sometimes we make mistakes,'”
It is wrong when it wasn’t a mistake, but a decision that seemed (and probably was) appropriate at the time and circumstances. Circumstances change and thus governance changes.
I accept the possibility of mistake, even in scripture, but what does that mean? In the military, a soldier or sailor is NOT excused from duty because he imagines that his boss has “made a mistake” even when that is the case. Rare exceptions exist; if that mistake is going to sink a ship then the sailor has a duty to the ship that exceeds his duty to his errant boss., but there will likely be a price to pay for doing the greater duty.
Conversely, the soldier or sailor *is* excused from liability or consequence by obeying a mistake, with rather broad limits. For those reasons I usually obey church policy even if I think they are mistaken although right now I don’t have an example. I suppose I consider it a mistake to tie temple work with tithing. If millions or billions of spirits are waiting for temple work, then any humble person without stain of serious sins ought to be anxiously engaged in that worthy cause even if he is not paying tithing.
My great-grandfather was a steamship captain on Puget Sound, I mention it since you describe my old stomping grounds, more or less. I was saddened when my old house was bulldozed for the Joel E Smilow Teen Center but seems to be a worthy replacement (https://weinsteinau.com/projects/joel-e-smilow-clubhouse-teen-center/). My next house north of Green Lake is still there. I remember feeding the ducks on Green Lake and visiting the Woodland Park zoo.
“If you are a detail-oriented INTJ…”
How about detail oriented, pedantic INTP? Similar but not driven to distraction by inconsistencies. I can get “squirreled” by geographic inconsistencies; one moment Walter Mitty is in west central Iceland on a bicycle and the scene cuts and now he’s at the southeastern tip near Hofn.
Brother Sky suggests “Thanos, in theory, has a relatively benign belief about the universe: that everything should be in balance.”
I did not get that message. Thanos believes there are too many people and asserts that the only fair way to deal with the problem is to thin the herd randomly, without looking at the merits of each person. That is a way to avoid the necessity and sometimes evil of judgment.
As such it comports more closely to left-wing idealism of the “right” number of people without regard to whether some kinds ought to exist in greater numbers and other kinds in smaller numbers.
“Balance” makes no sense. What does the universe care about balance? It doesn’t.
“Thanos is the logical and frightening extension of a lot of Mormon cultural beliefs (not Christ’s actual teachings)”
Congratulations on knowing Christ’s actual teachings. I had no idea that anyone on earth possessed them.
Mormonism (as I understand it) teaches that rather than a random thinning and disappearance of the human race (the Thanos method), humans will select themselves into heavens largely of their own choosing (D&C 88). It won’t be in “balance”. Some aspects of Christianity are, or ought to be, at least a little frightening.
To the three readers that automatically downvote when you see “Michael 2”, blessings be upon you. Perhaps you can explain what is so offensive about me revealing to the writer that I am INTP after he has revealed himself or hinted at being INTJ? Perhaps it is just the C93H7 Judgement Gene and you cannot help it, you’ve been “triggered” 🙂
Michael 2, You’ll get used to it after awhile. You’re not the only one whose comments automatically draw downvotes — the comment content is largely irrelevant, as the moniker is sufficient for many readers here.
But please continue — I enjoy diversity of opinion and different views on topics.
Michael 2: Multiple comments in a row on the same discussion are bad form. That’s probably not what’s garnering the downvotes, but brevity is the soul of wit. And I completely agree with you that the Universe doesn’t care about “balance.” It’s a weird thing for Thanos to be obsessed about. Since human beings are always at some place between birth and death, what does the timing of the death do for restoring balance anyway?
From a physics perspective, the universe cares very much about balance, since entropy eventually drives everything to equilibrium.
I get that individuals, groups, and organizations try out things that don’t work out all the time. That is not a mistake. Calling a policy revelation and then calling its reversal revelation takes the discussion out of the realm of “I’m only human.”
“Thanos is the logical and frightening extension of a lot of Mormon cultural beliefs”
I’m curious, what Mormon cultural beliefs do you think if extended would result in the annihilation of half of humanity?
JLM the question religiously is whether our universe is actually a closed system or not – that has obvious implications for entropy.
JLM writes “the universe cares very much about balance, since entropy eventually drives everything to equilibrium.”
Caring is an emotion. Entropy is an accident. Black holes certainly do not care about balance OR equilibrium. They say, “I want it all and I want it right now!”