Bravo Marvel!

“Something Good” Sunday

I haven’t seen many of the Marvel movies. I think I’ve seen Iron Man 1 & 2, the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and Infinity War–if that was the first one, I didn’t see the second one. End Game? These movies, while fun to watch, just weren’t my thing necessarily. I didn’t have much interest watching them. But yesterday, after Josh did some spackling and sanding of the wall in our spare room, and after I got home from my tattoo appointment, we sat down to watch t.v. He picked the movie, “The Thunderbolts” to watch.

I watched it with him, but only with half of my attention. I was folding laundry and going to our bedroom to put it away. I missed a few moments from the beginning of the movie, but not enough to not be able to get into it. Which I evenutally did.

Then came the ending. And it got my attention because I immediately recognized what I was seeing.

If you haven’t seen the movie, a quick synopsis is that a man named Bob had a very rough upbringing. An abusive home led him to become a drug addict in his adult life and he ended up alone. A woman who leads some major company was attempting to recreate the Avengers by experimenting on humans to try and create superheroes. Bob is one of those test subjects. Long story short, Bob becomes powerful but ultimately turns very dark and evil very quickly. The four Thunderbolts attempt to stop him because he’s basically going on a killing rampage.

But here’s the thing…the lead Thunderbolt, Yelena, she goes into “the Void” to try and get Bob to stop. What’s out there killing people is his superhero persona “the Sentry”. Throughout the movie, we see what the void is for the various characters. It shows their most painful memories. Yelena steps into it and goes through her own horrible memories to find Bob. She ultimately finds him and as soon as he starts talking to her, I knew what I was seeing.

Bob tells Yelena about how sometimes he feels really great and almost on a high, and other times, he feels very, very dark. He never uses the word depressed, but that’s exactly what he’s describing. He’s explaining what it’s like to have bipolar disorder. Bob is bipolar. I was bipolar. I often describe that period of my life as “bipolar hell”.

As this part of the movie continues, it is very obvious to see the metaphors for depression. Without giving away what exactly happens, here are the things I noticed:

• Bringing the bad memories to the surface and confronting them is how you get through them.
• Depression lies to you. It makes you think you’re better off alone and it makes you push friends away. But often it’s friends and/or family that end up helping you the most.
• Giving in to the depression only makes things worse.
• The intensity of depression causes memory loss.

I experienced all of this and maybe that’s why I was able to recognize it so quickly in the character of Bob. But I hope that anybody could see that. And that’s why Marvel gets all my kudos. Because what they did there with Bob was intentional. I did research this first to see if it was and it absolutely was. There’s no way it couldn’t be. Marvel put mental illness on the big screen for millions of people to see. Even if they didn’t know exactly what they were seeing, as far as the bipolar and all the signs I saw, I think it was obvious enough that someone was trapped in bad memories and needed the help from friends to overcome the bad side of himself.

This is what I want to do. To show people what mental illness is like. And to also show them that it doesn’t have to be the end. There is hope. People do get better. I’m one voice trying to show that. Marvel is one, probably billion dollar entertainment company, that showed that. We’re not the same, but apparently, we want the same thing. It doesn’t matter the volume of the voice or the size of the audience. Getting the message out there is what’s important. And judging by the $374-390 million box office sales, I’d say they got the message out there. From what Google says, it was a box office disappointment and lost Disney a lot of money. But people still saw the movie. And they saw the message they wrapped up in the character of Bob. And to that I say, bravo Marvel!