THE HEROES WE DESERVE

Flawless. White. Indestructible. You used to know where you stood with a hero. Ahead of the release of Avengers: Endgame, a look at the delicious ways in which all that has changed

In the beginning — by which we mean 2008 — there was Iron Man and he was good. Much like any other superhero, Tony Stark was rich, strong and White. That he had an electromagnet for a heart and a metallic suit didn’t feel like a compelling superpower, which may be why four studios and 30 writers had toyed with the idea of making an Iron Man movie between 1990 and 2006, only to abandon it.

Enter director Jon Favreau who cast Robert Downey Jr in the title role. As Iron Man chucked missiles and wisecracks at enemies at home and abroad, he let audiences imagine that a little bit of the actor’s own arrogance and drug-addled, party-hard past was at play. Still, for all the irreverence that Downey Jr and Favreau brought to Iron Man, the plot was formulaic and the hero as alpha male as ever.

Eleven years and 21 films later, the poster for Avengers: Endgame includes two Black people, four women and a cybernetically modified raccoon. Sure the White men are front and centre, but, finally, there’s more than one shade of superhero.

Traditionally, the superhero’s story has taken its cue from classical epics and been about one man against many evils. Marvel Studios’ decision to create one of the most elaborate fictional universes in film has meant reimagining that construct. Heroes have been built up and broken down over the 21 films of the Infinity Saga; forced to concede defeat and seek help.

Slowly but steadily, a collective has formed, of heroes from various cultures who weathered terrible odds to become the best versions of themselves. They have survived because of their community and with every challenge, they’ve been forced to widen their worldview and include others. Instead of a cult of the individual, the Infinity Saga is about a gathering.

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In comic books, it was a given that the hero would be a White male stronger than all the men around him, and when these stories were translated to film and TV, the stereotype became a physical reality with a little help from the costume department. Before synthetic materials like spandex, lycra and polyester became popular, superheroes dressed like athletes.

Christopher Reeves’s Superman changed all that in the 1970s, with his skintight onesie. The early moulded-plastic suits ranged from disastrous — remember George Clooney’s Batman suit; yes, the one with the nipples — to clumsy, but with characters like Hulk and Wolverine in the early 2000s, the hyper-fit male body gained ground. Rippling muscles signified something freakish, flaunted as they were by feral heroes who couldn’t be tamed.

Then came the suits of today, which have created and fetishised an abnormal male shape into an on-screen norm — massive shoulders; upper arms that look like bowling balls have been surgically inserted below the epidermis; pectorals that seem to have been inflated using a bicycle pump; corrugated sheets for abs.

Redeeming this cult of the Caucasian, cookie-cutter muscleman are the stories that have emphasised the heroes’ vulnerabilities. After the first 10 films in the Infinity Saga brought in millions of dollars and effectively revived tent-pole filmmaking, Marvel Studios started making tentative tweaks to the mainframe of the hero — like giving Peter Quill of Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man’s Scott Lang criminal backgrounds and a support team arguably more accomplished than them.

Neither Quill nor Lang is the strongest or the savviest. Both need back-up and get it from characters who are collaborators rather than sidekicks (the Wasp and Rocket respectively). Next to gods like Thor, billionaires like Iron Man, scientific miracles like Captain America and freaks like the Hulk, Ant-Man and Star-Lord are practically average.

As the audience cheered for them, Tony Stark was revealed to be plagued by anxiety. Captain America struggled to keep up. Thor lost his hair, an eye, a brother and his hammer. After a long time, heroes started to fail. Their spirits were broken again and again. Sometimes, this was to teach the men lessons. Often, the heroes struggled to redeem themselves, as at the end of Captain America: Civil War, when friends and allies fight viciously between themselves.

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While the White men were being beaten up by their new circumstances, Marvel Studios broke with tradition and gave Black Panther and Captain Marvel their own movies. Here, stereotypes were firmly in place. T’Challa and Carol Danvers are mighty and flawless, and that’s fine. The fact that a person of colour and a woman are leaders in a superhero pantheon is the radical bit. Captain Marvel has no domestic side, nor a romantic interest as a subplot. Black Panther took Afro-futurism mainstream, and did it with strikingly beautiful production design and costumes.

Provided directors Anthony and Joe Russo get their act together, Avengers: Endgame could be the first time we see the entire collective in action: Heroes and heroines, sidekicks and collaborators. The prospect of seeing the interplay of their different heroisms is partly what makes this such a highly anticipated release. That and the fact that, this time, the villain is the solo act, and seemingly unbeatable; while the good guys are flawed, broken and fighting to get it together.

A long time ago, somewhere in the

universe, six stones are created. Apart from standing for things like Soul, Time, Space, etc, they stand for Franchise Material. They will eventually be revealed as the thread running through the MCU.

Back on Earth, during World War II, we get our first super-steroid. A scrawny soldier volunteers for a super serum experiment, gets all bulked up, and becomes... Captain America! In a suit of red, white and blue, with a shield of near-indestructible vibranium that also serves as a rather obvious note to the world that only America can save it.

Cut to the ’90s. A fighter pilot named Carol Danvers becomes Captain Marvel (right), a badass superhero and apparently inspiration for the Avengers Initiative.

This is where Iron Man enters the timeline. It’s 2008 and Tony Stark, genius, billionaire and playboy, is abducted. Near death, he decides to build himself a robotic suit that can fly. He escapes, heads home, is a changed man — is, in fact, Iron Man. His suits will give the MCU multiple get-out-of-jail-free cards and help save the world over and over. They also helped save Robert Downey Jr, who battled addictions and made a comeback with Iron Man that almost rivalled the superhero tale itself.

It is in the post-credits scenes of this film that we first meet Nick Fury .He hints at the Avengers Initiative; we say hi to Thor; and Captain America is awakened in modern-day America, and recruited.

It’s now 2012 and time for the first Avengers film. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk meets Downey Jr’s now-mega-grossing Iron Man and the Science Bros are born.

The world falls in love with Ruffalo as this vulnerable, indestructible, rage-filled nice guy. (Many fans are still hoping Ruffalo will get his own spinoff films). There’s also Black Widow and Hawkeye. Fury needs the whole set because the villain, this time, is Loki (right), the witty, lithe, immensely resentful half-brother of Thor. He leads an army of chittering alien invaders to Earth, which has become a sort of Thor protectorate.

The Avengers save the day, and we meet the blue cube called the Tesseract, which turns out to be the Space stone.

Meanwhile, far, far away, the Guardians of the Galaxy are an instant hit — particularly Chris Pratt as the space pirate with the groovy moves, and the adorable tree-like creature Groot.

Back on Earth, the Science Bros think they’re saving the world again, but end up giving it a super-high-tech baddie named Ultron. Trying to fix that mess, they give human form to Stark’s AI system Jarvis, and end up with Vision. Embedded in his forehead? Another infinity stone.

The same year, Ant-Man gets his first film, and a year later comes Captain America: Civil War, which gave us a young Spider-Man eager to join the Avengers.

Also in 2016, Benedict Cumberbatch enters the MCU, as Dr Strange and, incidentally, the custodian of the Time stone.

Also 2018: We get …Infinity War. Thanos, it turns out, was behind Loki’s stab at Earth. He wants the stones, and tired of waiting, heads here to get them. As Thanos places each one in his gauntlet (below), he gets harder to beat. When he has them all, he snaps, and half of all life disintegrates.

Captain Marvel has returned to Earth. Black Widow, Thor, Hulk, Cap and Hawkeye are still around and Iron Man is floating about with a slim chance he’ll make it. They’ve all tried to beat

Thanos and failed, so the theory is that Ant-Man

(featured in the trailer) will use his skills in the quantum realm to set things right. Will he?

Can he? …Endgame is out on April 26.