So Avengers: Endgame came out last week, and to cut to the chase, there is a major theme and ongoing motif that no one online is talking about. As I don’t usually talk about movies on this site, no one is going to expect this so SPOILER WARNING!
SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS! … I am about to discuss a running bit throughout the film that even fans who have seen it multiple times may not have noticed. I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH! SPOILERS AHEAD, BABY!!
You ready? Then let’s get straight to it: food! Comfort food, consumption, and the role of eating in recovery. Did anyone else notice it? This theme gets as much screen time as a whole new Avenger (definitely more than Captain Marvel and the unsnapped army.) Don’t believe me or didn’t catch it? We’ll start at the beginning.
The first thing we see on screen is a simple meal. Hot dogs on a farm. A meal that is interrupted and cannot take place. Starting small but tragically, the simple act of eating is stolen.
After the Marvel Studios logo, aboard the Milano we find Tony and Nebula drifting through space following their loss to Thanos on Titan at the end of Infinity War. Our poor Tony is starving. After his defeat, the most important thing he needs to recover, speaking literally, is food. Nebula acknowledges this when Tony offers her some rations and non-verbally declines to eat, as if to say, “You need this more than me.” Upon arriving to Earth with the help of Carol Danvers, likely sent by Cap, Widow and Company moments after meeting them during her own post-credit scene, Tony appears physically worse than he had on the ship. Distraught, angry, in denial, bargaining. His dialogue to the team practically cycles through every stage of grief in one spurt before he collapses in a heap. He needs food. He needs to recover. There’s our thematic set up.
In contrast, Thanos & food enjoy an entirely different relationship. With the universe in ashes around him, the mad Titan enjoys the silence of retirement by roaming his fields, picking fruits, and fixing a stew. This man, free from all stress, completely unburdened, is eating just fine. What a monster.
Jump to FIVE YEARS LATER, we open on Cap at what appears to be a Veterans’ meeting. The story, delivered in a cameo by one of the Russo Brothers, is about not being able to make it through a dinner. The date actually goes well! He’s seeing his date again soon. It’s the food that he and the other man couldn’t get through without crying.
At Avengers HQ, we finally see someone trying to eat. It’s Black Widow with a basic white-bread-and-peanut-butter sandwich. I’d say YOU’RE basic, Natasha, but I don’t wanna shame your obvious grief and coping mechanism. Minutes later, when she and Captain America are joined by a frantic and still-adjusting Scott Lang aka Ant Man, the first thing that we see Scott do as attempted self-care to cope with this new situation is ASK TO FINISH NATASHA’S COMFORT FOOD! Coincidence? Maybe if I didn’t have so many more examples to go!
The group, emboldened by a new plan to save the universe, first seek out Tony. Remember how poorly he took everything at the opening of the movie? Remember his disturbingly underfed Downey Jr frame? Now Tony is the most readjusted of everyone! He looks happy! He has a little baby girl. What does he do when Cap and crew try to rope him back into the Thanos-fighting game? He offers them lunch! The table is set for six if they don’t talk shop. He’s saying, “You need to eat. We all just need to eat.”
He’s not the only well-adjusted eater. Our immediate next scene introduces Professor Hulk, happier than we’ve ever imagined either he or Bruce Banner ever looking. Our heroes are meeting him in a diner, and the only person eating is Bruce, who has a bowl filled with what I seem to remember being some high-protein items, but honestly I could be mistaken. Looks like recovery and eating might indeed have a real relationship here.
Remember how Tony can’t leave well-enough alone? How he misses Peter Parker and solves the riddles of time travel using what looks like a hologram of a Hot Wheels track? He’s immediately interrupted by his positively too adorable daughter Morgan, and the next thing he does is eat a juice pop with her. What does this mean? Tony can’t eat well anymore. He’s no longer fully readjusted. He, like Natasha with her white bread, needs comfort food.
As it’s obvious, I could likely skip over Thor’s contribution to this theme. He’s not eating properly. He’s drinking a frightening amount. He’s easily the worst off emotionally of the entire team. When it comes to proving the motif of comfort food and the theme of eating’s role in recovery, this one’s too easy. Next.
Unless I’m skipping something, our next and last food moment until the end arrives as Act 1 transitions into Act 2. Our relationship with food shows signs of changing. Ant Man, still acclimating to his role in the Avengers team, barely manages to build a simple taco before the powerful engines of the Milano arrive to blow the ingredients completely out of the shell. Screw tacos and your comfort food. You’re not allowed to eat, Scott Lang! Then the happiest of all Avengers, Professor Hulk, walks up and replaces Scott’s one pathetic taco with two of his own. See, Scott? Eat. Accept some food. We’re all gonna be alright.
That’s it for comfort food and eating to recover for the rest of the movie. Characters are too busy traveling through time, sacrificing themselves to the soul stone, admiring their own asses, and defeating an alternate timeline version of their greatest enemy to possibly have time to eat… Until the literal dust has long settled, until grief has re-entered the movie and the audience once again needs to recover, this time from the loss of Iron Man himself. We get our thematic help from original Iron Man director Jon Favreau aka Happy Hogan. He asks Morgan what she’d like to eat. She answers cheeseburgers. We all cry so hard that the underpaid theater porters are left mopping up our nerd tears. But what’s he really saying? It’s okay to comfort yourself. She needs to eat. You need to eat. We need to eat. Whether you’ve just escaped captivity in a cave or you’ve just lost your Iron Man, you need to remember to eat. Recover. Have the cheeseburger. Have shawarma after the battle of New York… because that’s what Iron Man would have done.
Let’s review:
- Meal with Hawkeye Family: Canceled
- Starving Tony
- Thanos picking fruit
- Dinner-date cry-fest
- Natasha’s White Bread Sandwich
- Ant Man Needing the Sandwich
- Tony’s Well Adjusted Lunch Offer
- Hulk’s Well Adjusted Chow Down
- Tony’s first comfort food Juice Pop
- Thor’s horribly adjusted consumption
- Ant-Man’s Taco Fail and Hulk’s Taco Gift
- Cheeseburgers
That’s beyond amazing! In the midst of this three hour, multi-billion dollar epic extravaganza, the writers and directors took their time to subliminally remind us that we’re all going to need to eat when this is all over. And we need to keep eating. I want to know at what point they got the idea for this brilliant and certain to be underrated inclusion. Was it right after shooting the famous shawarma scene? Was it a note from some grief counselor at Disney who was concerned for the well-being of nerds worldwide? Whoever’s idea it was, Mr. Kevin Fiege, I’m telling my servers that the cheeseburgers are on you!
Avengers: Endgame is in theaters now, brought to you by Marvel/Disney/Buena Vista.
Written May 1st, 2019
The Favoring Wind 