How To Avoid Writing Stereotypes Like A Superhero: Endgame Edition

 WARNING: Article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame!

Originally posted on The Independent Initiative

It’s no surprise, Marvel knows how to make movies that move us and leave us with all the feels. I’m ecstatic to talk about one of their best films, Endgame, and how to avoid writing stereotypes like the pros.

It’s gonna be a good one for us because I want to talk about why being a stereotype can be good, and how to use it well and still break out of it.

When it comes to writing a superhero screenplay Marvel is good at using many of the tricks and tips that can be found with a quick google search ...

1. Make your hero likeable, give them a set of rules with their ability, and never break them

We like Iron Man, Cap, Thor, and all the others, and each one follows a set of rules. Stark has his suit and smarts, Cap is inhumanly strong and lives by a high standard of old-school morals, and Thor has lightning running through his veins because he’s the god of thunder.

2. Give the hero a villain who is more powerful than them

Thanos is a worthy villain, he’s more powerful than our heroes and if that wasn’t enough, he’s got a huge army that outmatches anything our heroes can provide.

3. Give the hero a happy ending, one in which they discover they and their ability are the answer to the problem

In the end, we get our almost happily-ever-after ending. Even with a few hard deaths, there’s still hope for the future, and it was only possible when our heroes realise they are the answer to the problem of Thanos. 

Marvel follows the rules, BUT they also know how to make those stereotypes into something unique, and they do this by giving our heroes faults, quirks, and vices. AND they flip the whole concept of Story on its head right from the beginning of Endgame. There are 3000 amazing ways they do this, but I want to focus on two.

THANOS’ DEATH

Let’s start with this major spoiler for the beginning of the film. Here’s me, sitting in the cinema, fully engaged in the story, when our Avengers discover exactly where Thanos is. Our heroes band together to head out to space and take the villain down. 

And they do. 

Without much fuss or fighting. 

Thor knocks Thanos’ head off within the span of a few seconds, and my jaw dropped.

Where were they gonna take the rest of the film? Would they jump into the multiverse and take down every Thanos in every reality? What was the big play? And how the heck were they going to get the infinity stones to reverse what happened at the end of Avengers: Infinity War?

Having Thanos’ death right at the beginning gave us a more complicated story to follow, which made it captivating. Three hours of story was easy to watch.

This is a great inspiration to break the stereotype: What can you do with your story to shake the audience up and avoid the normal journey a film takes? 

To do this well, you need to know story inside and out. Study everything you can about the art of storytelling and then, using your imagination, find a way to stay within the rules, but make it look like you’re breaking them. 

This is exactly what they do with Thanos’ death, they didn’t really break the rule because they end up fighting him again at the end - just like a normal narrative - but it’s definitely with a great twist. The Avengers fight a slightly younger Thanos who hasn’t had the experience of messing with their world as much as the previous version. But because Thanos doesn’t know our heroes as well as the other older Thanos, he’s relying more on a future yet to happen, which in turn makes him like a baby scorpion, super extra dangerous, because he doesn’t know when to stop. Thus the line to the Avengers about them not learning from their failure, so I’m (Thanos) just gonna have to end the whole world now, instead of only half.

FAT THOR

This was such a brilliant move. Something I’ve NEVER seen happen to a superhero. We’ve seen superheroes having a bad day or year in tv shows like The Umbrella Academy, or DC’s Watchmen, but never have I seen a superhero experience such trauma from a failure like we get in Endgame. 

It’s just so epic. 

Of course, Thor would be riddled with shame and guilt. Half the universe - not just earth, the UNIVERSE - is gone because he aimed for Thanos’ heart instead of going for the villain's head. 

He blames himself for millions and trillions of deaths and because of his many travels to different worlds, he knows better than most of our Avengers, the extreme number of people who are gone. I can’t even imagine the weight he’d be carrying from that, so to make him a drunkard who’s let his body slip into a state of decay makes total sense, but it’s never something we expect to see.

And the best part is he remains this way for the whole film, there’s no quick ‘get fit now’ montage, he has to live with his consequences through the entirety of the film, and it reflects in his lack of ability to get the job done. Giving us not only a great character arc and unique look at a superhero but also a glimpse of the reality of life choices. 

If you find yourself writing a superhero that you’ve seen many times, how can you flip their experiences to make something unique and original? How can you ground that character into reality, while still maintaining their superhero feats? 

Watching Fat Thor go through a gamut of emotions, I found myself wishing I’d written a character like it. He’s a complicated mess, but he’s still written with simplicity. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely follow the old cliche “Keep It Simple Stupid”, even while their story is full of intricacies, they know when and how to keep it simple. 

Watching films like Avengers: Endgame with a critical eye can improve your own writing. What character’s journey made you cry? What was it about their dialogue that appealed to your emotions? What about the story made you confused? What took you out of the film? What engaged you most? What little quirks did the characters have that worked? What didn’t work? What about the villain appealed to you? What didn’t? What twists and complications worked? 

These questions and more can help give you an education on writing your own powerful and compelling screenplays, and will definitely help you avoid those cliches and stereotypes. 

What were some of your favourite moments from Endgame where they avoided the stereotype? Leave a comment below for the rest of our film community to learn from you too; now get out there and write!

Greater Expectations

Each day starts off with certain expectations but what of our expectations of others. Do we have greater expectations of Christians than we do of other people? I think so. Just recently I have found the behaviour of some Christians hard to understand.  

In one case, a Christian friend and I had a difference of opinion that ultimately resulted in severing the friendship. That argument and what was said, was something between us and no-one else. To me it was something between the two of us and it went no further.  It didn’t concern anyone else. However she chose to relate details of the argument to others.  As we know the person telling the story invariably tells it from their point of view, so it looks like they are the one wronged.  Listen to anyone tell the story of an argument and you’ll see what I mean.

In another situation another Christian related a couple of incidents to me.  What struck me as she related the tale was the bitterness and resentment towards the other party involved in the dispute.   The situation had happened many years ago but she had not let go of it. Looking at it from the outside, it is often easy to see there was probably right and wrong on both sides.

Even though in each case the people involved were mature Christians, they struggled with their emotions and behaved in a manner that I found disappointing. The truth is we have greater expectations of Christians. Then I realised how often my actions and behaviour are also disappointing to God, to others and to myself.  How often I let Christ down and do not live up to those greater expectations.

When you look at the bible it never shies away from showing us people’s faults and times when they fail Jesus. Think of some of the disputes we see in the New Testament. There is Paul when he challenges Peter over his attitudes and hypocrisy regarding Gentiles, Galatians 2:11-21. Or Paul and Barnabas when they disagree over John Mark and his role in ministry and so go their separate ways, Acts 15:36-41. Yet no one would deny Paul was a mighty servant of Jesus.  God is always able to use any situation, even disputes, to further His kingdom.

So what does this have to do with writing? Whether we are writing fiction or nonfiction we need to show complex characters not stereotypes. Characters who struggle to make decisions, who struggle to get it right, characters that disagree and make unwise choices. As readers we need to see that even when Christians do not act as we might expect, when they harbour grudges and resentment or gossip about others, His plans are not thwarted. He can still use those imperfect people to further His kingdom.

A minister once told me and the rest of his congregation ‘if you are not having struggles sin your Christian life, then there is something wrong. Satan doesn’t think you're worth bothering with because you’re not an effective Christian.’  Let’s come back to Paul. How often did he struggle between the human nature and the godly nature and do things he didn’t want to do? Don’t believe me? Have a look at his words in Romans 7: 14-25.

In some Christian books I have read in the past, making the right decision and behaving in a godly manner comes too easily to the Christian. That makes it hard for a lot of our readers to identify with if they don’t find the Christian life and making the right choice that easy. The truth is the Christian life can be a struggle at times. So it is important we show the conflict and struggles that go on within, the time when characters doubt and make wrong decisions as well as the ultimate triumphs. I’d love to hear examples of recent books where you have found the main character has made unwise decisions and struggled with doing the right thing, while still being able to be used by God or changed by God.

 

Dale writes fiction and poetry and had recently submitted a 365 day devotional /commentary  tentatively titled A Day at a Time to a publisher. Now she's working on another novel. You can find out more about Dale at www.daleharcombe.com and you might like to follow her blog at Write and Read with Dale http://orangedale.livejournal.com/

BEWARE of STEREOTYPES

MOVIE GOER

This is something authors have to keep in mind

each time we create and write a character. And
stereotyping people is something we're too often
guilty of doing in real life. You only have to hear of
someone's occupation for a caricature to spring to mind.

One example: A MISSIONARY.

Now according to many Hollywood films I've seen, a missionary is usually seen as either of two types - a gentle, absent-minded soul who can't make it in the real world. Or a harsh tyrant trampling culture and forcing indigenous people to accept his own ingrained ideas of Christianity.

A real life occurrence of that mindset happened sometime ago. I'll fill in the background.

Many, many years before, five young male missionaries were speared to death in the steaming Amazon rainforests of Ecuador. They'd just begun to make overtures to the Auca Indians (as they were then known.) The mass media splashed the shocking headlines right around the world. Yet their sacrifice resulted in many great changes to those tribal people.

Now fast forward ....  When an a group of anthropology students asked permission to study these people, the tribe gave their consent. Some thirteen hours later after trekking through thick jungle and mountain gorges, the exhausted students reached camp...and fell on their faces. Once they'd recovered and eaten, the group began making pronouncements of how the missionaries had ruined their tribal culture. The people seemed puzzled. Then they were asked if they were worse off after being invaded by the missionaries, supposedly with the white man's germs killing them off.

When that was also translated the natives began to laugh uproariously. Now the students looked puzzled and asked, "What's so funny?" The tribal elders promptly answered: "No, no. We were saved from killing each other off." They then pointed out various tribal members and explained, "This man's father I killed, then his two brothers and his aunt." Another indicated a woman. "Her husband I speared, and her sister." Others soon joined in ... describing the routine of pay-back killings.

At that point the students' eyes grew rounder at the tale of horrific bloodshed.One of them asked the local missionary, "Are we safe here?"  But then the elder added, "Hating and killing we lived. But now Jesus has filled our hearts with His love. He has forgiven our many sins and now we want to tell other tribes about Him." Many an eye glistened and they experienced genuine embarrassment to realize just how far removed was the the stereotype of the bungling missionary.

Rita Stella Galieh is the author of two published books and is involved in an Australia-wide Christian radio program, VANTAGE POINT. This is an excerpt from one yet to be aired. She also shares real life stories of authors and anyone who cares to share about their personal romance/marriage in her weekly blog,
http://inspirationalromance.blogspot.com  Her contact is: ritagalieh  at  gmail  dot  com   
She'd love to hear from you!