The MCU is for Rich People
Image; Animated Times
The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the most well-known franchise in the world. Even if you have never seen a single movie, you've probably have learned something about its overall scope and premise. It's about heroes coming together to stop larger-than-life threats with witty one-liners and technology that rivals an entire country's military arsenal. You would think that a property this large would be relatable to most viewers, and in some respects, it is: the action is fun, and most people find the comedy entertaining.
Yet when it comes to class, the relatability of these heroes is often lacking. As we look at the income level of many of the MCU's heroes, the wealthy are disproportionately overrepresented. We see this inflation both in terms of characters as well as the ideologies that these films represent.
This franchise is not relatable to the working class at all. It's for the rich, which should give most viewers some pause as they watch this allegedly harmless entertainment.
When I say that the rich are overrepresented in the MCU, I mean that quite literally. People with wealthy upbringings make up about a third of all protagonists (see my data here). Characters like Iron Man's Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the new Hawkeye Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld), Shang Chi (Simu Liu), or The Wasp's Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) grew up obscenely wealthy. The same can be said for Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), and Black Panther's T'challa (Chadwick Boseman), who are all wealthy members of nobility or aristocracy.
An additional 18% are protagonists who may not own businesses, have inherited family fortunes or titles, but are upper-middle-class, working professionals. Doctor Stephen Vincent Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of the top neurosurgeons in the country before he became the Master of the Mystic Arts. Doctor Robert Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), AKA the Hulk, had a successful, top-secret contract with the U.S. military. Even Ant-Man's Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) had a master's degree in electrical engineering that he used in a successful career as a criminal.
Some of these characters were coded in their films as being working class. Scott Lang was fired from a service job at the beginning of Ant-Man (2015 ). At the start of his movie, Shang Chi was a valet, living a simple working-class life with his friend Katy (Awkwafina). However, when we look at their backgrounds, they didn’t grow up poor. Scott Lang was a middle-class, working professional stealing money from upper-class criminals. And as the leader of the Ten Ring’s organization, Shang Chi’s father was secretly one of the richest men on the planet (probably). Bruce Banner was working in a bottling plant in The Incredible Hulk (2008) because he’s on the run — not because that’s where we think he should be. He was a successful scientist. These characters were (and are) well-off people going through rough times.
Once we exclude characters who do not qualify for class analysis because they had non-traditional upbringings (think Vision, The Watcher, Natasha Romanoff, etc.), about 32% percent of MCU leads had a genuinely working-class background. These include men and women like Peter Parker (Tom Holland), Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) of Falcon fame, Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), and refugee Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen). They are people who textually are shown struggling with poverty growing up and often in the present as well. Sam Wilson, for example, has an entire scene in his show where he can’t get a bank loan.
He's definitely no Iron Man.
Many of these figures, though, are already beholden to the status quo in some way by the time we meet them. Nearly 60% of these working-class heroes have a military background with a long history of serving the state. Carole Danvers was an Air Force pilot. Steve Rogers was a WWII recruit. Clint Barton worked for the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D.. Sam Wilson was an airman. These figures seemed to have loved the branches they served and never delivered genuine dissent against the state in a tangible way. The closest we get to actual conflict is the movie Captain America: Civil War (2016), and that film is not about our heroes protesting the injustices of U.S. society, but rather them upset that the U.S. government wants to regulate their vigilantism.
Furthermore, the narrative often frames these characters so that any class commentary from the source material is defanged. For example, in the early 2000s Spiderman trilogy, Peter Parker is shown struggling with poverty. He's behind on his rent. His apartment is shitty, and he cannot get ahead in his chosen industry of photojournalism, despite secretly being the subject he is photographing.
Yet, in the MCU version, while he is described as poor (Peter allegedly had to dumpster dive to build his first suit's tech), we don't see that reality on the screen. His apartment is very nice for something in N.Y.C. He goes to a great school, and his most significant problem seems to be asking out a girl. His mentor moves from being Uncle Ben (the working class mentor who infamously said the line "With great power comes great responsibility") to the Billionaire Tony Stark — a man that seems to be framed as his father figure. "…nice work in D.C.," Stark congratulates Parker in Spiderman: Homecoming (2017), "My dad never gave me a lot of support, and I am trying to break the cycle of shame." If that's not the line of a metaphorical father figure, I don't know what is.
In the MCU, we have moved from the rich C.E.O. being the villain in the 2002 Spiderman movie (see Green Goblin) to being the hero. Peter Parker ends the second movie, Spiderman: Far From Home (2019), far removed from his alleged poor roots. His aunt effectively becomes a philanthropist, raising money for those displaced by the Blip. Her son stands behind her in a hundred million dollar suit worth more money than what was probably raised at the event.
That's not a working-class narrative.
The only two working-class protagonists I can see that genuinely are not active agents of the state or sycophants of the wealthy are Wanda Maximoff and Peter Quill — two people on the edges of Earth's society. Peter Quill is a criminal-turned-hero zipping through space in The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, far removed from the politics of our planet. And Wanda is a former freedom fighter who, after the results of WandaVision (2021), is more of an anti-hero than a true hero (she enslaved an entire town). We are talking about two leads in a list of over twenty, and they are not the capital "H" Heroes that we think of when the word "Avengers" is brought up.
In fact, many of the people with actual class commentary in the MCU are coded as downright villains. Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) from the show Falcon and the Winter Soldier (2021) wants to create equality for the people of the world and prevent our governments from returning to a pre-Snap status quo, and she is depicted as a monster. N'Jadaka (Michael B. Jordan), AKA Killmonger, wants to dismantle white supremacy, and he is portrayed as going "too far." Adrian Toomes AKA Vulture (Michael Keaton) from Spiderman: Homecoming rightfully identifies that Tony Stark, a billionaire, should not be getting paid to clean up the fallout from the battle of New York (see Avengers) because it is a mess he partly caused. Yet Toomes is the movie's primary antagonist.
No one who criticizes the status quo is a hero in the MCU, and as a consequence, our leads are often literally fighting against the people who want to change things.
I still like the MCU. I can quote monologues from Thor: Ragnorack (2017) and Black Panther (2018), but I also understand that this franchise is not for me. The MCU is a very conservative entity that ultimately perpetuates narratives that affirm the status quo. It's hyper militaristic and values the opinions of the rich over anyone else, and that stops me from getting too wrapped up in it.
If you like the MCU, that's fine. As a trans leftist, I like many properties that aren't for me. I am currently binging the Witcher 3 (2015) on Playstation (and loving it), and I am not a straight centrist who grunts at everything, and I still play it. I don't for a moment, however, think that my values are reflected in this game, and the same sentiment applies to the MCU.
It's for the rich, and if that's not you, maybe start questioning your attachment to this iteration of heroes. The rich already have enough. You don't have to give them your definition of a hero too.