Marvel’s daddy issues
Share:
So I saw Black Panther. Rather than lengthen an already gruelling month of reviews, I thought I’d pinpoint a trend I’ve noticed in Marvel’s recent output. Without spoiling it, Black Panther has, amongst many motifs, a pervasive theme of dealing with a father’s failures. And T’Challa isn’t alone in the MCU with his daddy issues. This is a nail Marvel hammers on quite often. I submit to you the following examples.
Spoilers for every Marvel film.
Tony Stark
The original mummy’s boy. Iron Man’s dad Howard Stark has been described as ‘cold’ and ‘calculating’ by his son. It was Howard’s mistakes that created memorable Iron Man 2 villain Mickey Rourk- I mean Whiplash. Tony had to deal with this sub-par antagonist in an allegedly redemptive arc back in 2010. The distance between the two was clearly displayed in Captain America: Civil War when Tony decried the Winter Soldier’s murder of both his parents with the illustrative ‘he killed my mom’.
Thor
Last year’s Thor Ragnarok prominently dealt with the idea of redeeming the mistakes of the past. Odin’s past atrocities were personified in Thor’s sister Hela and it was up to the Odinson to right the wrongs of the previous king. Thor eventually learnt not to fixate on a land or kingdom, as Odin had. This lesson was taught by dad himself in trippy, Norwegian dead-person version of Skype. Thor even symbolically gained his father’s wise vision (ironically by losing an eye). But he did it without the massacres Hela shows to be Odin’s legacy.
Peter Quill
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was essentially Daddy issues: The Movie. Peter constantly venerates his mother and fantasises his ideal patriarch in David Hasselhoff. When his biological father Ego turns out to be a genocidal maniac, Peter must swallow his longing and battle his dad for the Galaxy. When Peter’s surrogate dad Yondu apologises for his abusive treatment of the young Star-Lord, Peter decides to forgive his Mary Poppins-esque father-figure.
Does someone wanna go give Kevin Feige’s dad a call?