Avengers Explored
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2020 Avengers Explored IRON MAN AND CAPTAIN AMERICA: A STUDY IN TRANSMEDIA, ADDITIVE COMPREHENSION AND ADDITIVE MYSTERY OLIVIER SNEPVANGERS Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 2 1. Theory: Transmedia and Narratology… Assemble! ............................................................................. 5 1.1 Transmedia .................................................................................................................................... 5 1.2 Narratology .................................................................................................................................. 10 1.3 Method ........................................................................................................................................ 19 2. Analysis: Captain America and Iron Man: A tale of two superheroes ............................................... 20 2.1 Captain America: Fragile body, Strong mind ............................................................................... 20 2.2 Iron Man: Fragile ego, Strong suit ............................................................................................... 29 2.3 Steve and Tony: Fragile friendship, Stronger together ............................................................... 37 2.3.1 The narratological nature of the relationship ...................................................................... 37 2.3.2 Exploring and expanding on Stony with additive comprehension and mystery .................. 45 3. Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 49 Coda: Discussion and suggestions for future research ......................................................................... 50 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 51 Appendix ................................................................................................................................................ 53 1 Introduction “I love you 3000”. This phrase exploded onto the pop culture scene after the release of Avengers: Endgame and by simply uttering it some people would struggle to hold back their tears, myself included. It felt like a double whammy after the trauma that Avengers: Infinity War had already left, first seeing some of our favorite new Avengers get snapped out of existence and now losing three out of the original five for good. It marked the end of the Infinity Saga, a collection of films, tv series and comic books spanning more than a decade, with Endgame alone beating the all-time box-office record of $2.7 billion. Although it does not mean the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, quite the opposite in fact (Eisenberg, 2020), it does mark the end of some of the most beloved and important characters in the MCU, none more important than the two that started it all and led the way throughout: Iron Man and Captain America. These two characters and specifically the relationship between them have been a heavy influence on the unfolding of the story at large, a story not just told in a single film, but a large and varied catalog of media. As the reign of these two characters at the top of popular culture comes to an end, it is worth the time to look back and discover how exactly they achieved such success that millions of people across the globe collectively ball their eyes out after finding out about their death/retirement. The fact that their story has unfolded over several different media comes into play here. As they are two of the most important characters in the MCU, they have had quite a lot of stories devoted to them, not just in film, but also in comics, video games and, to an extent, tv-series. Marvel have used all these resources to construct and develop their two characters with interesting results. To give every entry legitimacy, they apply the principle of additive comprehension, a term coined by game- designer Neil Young when talking about the Lord of the Rings game he was making and popularized in transmedia research by professor Henry Jenkins. This term describes the idea that every new entry into a transmedia narrative must have something that adds to the storyworld or revises your understanding of said world, like, as Young stated, the origami unicorn in the director’s cut of Blade Runner, in which they added a scene where Deckard finds an origami unicorn, making the audience question if he is a replicant (Jenkins, 2006: 123). I would argue, however, that this term, additive comprehension, has not been explored as much as it could be. Many scholars seem to have a tendency to focus on transmedia as a whole, but there appears to be more nuance to this principle than many of the researchers give it credit for. I would argue that to build a successful transmedia narrative and give room for future development, it is not enough to just have additive comprehension in your new entry, it is also beneficial to have additive mystery, a way to entice the audience into exploring more of the universe. Marvel has used some very explicit forms of this with the way they have popularized the so-called mid-/post-credit scenes, where they tease the next 2 entry in the film series. There are however more and subtler ways to do this, and especially with regards to characters, such as Captain America and Iron Man. I have chosen to focus on these two particular characters because 1) their relationship is a large driving force for many of the events and specifically conflicts that arise in the MCU, particularly the cross-over events, such as The Avengers and Captain America: Civil War and 2) they are two of the only three characters, along with Thor, to have a complete trilogy of stand-alone films, i.e. Iron Man 1, 2 and 3 and Captain America: The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier and Civil War, plus a major role in the cross-over films, along with a plethora of canon and non-canon comics, such as Iron Man 2: Public Identity and Captain America: First Vengeance, and other media, such as the tv-show Agent Carter and the Marvel One-Shot All Hail the King, to further develop their character, their relationship and their world, which gives Marvel many opportunities to use additive comprehension and mystery to give them a complete and satisfying story arc. Basically, there is a lot to work with. All those entries into the MCU use additive comprehension and mystery to both develop the characters and to entice the audience into finding out more about them, what they’re doing and what they’re thinking. Imagine a page in a coloring book with the outline of Iron Man. It is the job of creators to fill in that drawing, and with every entry they fill in an arm, a leg or a piece of his torso, until it is fully colored in and we have a complete image of Iron Man. Every portion they fill in is with additive comprehension and every part that remains blank is additive mystery.1 This research will take the characters of Iron Man and Captain America and see how they and the relationship between them are built with additive comprehension and mystery in mind. To fully understand how a character is built through multiple media, however, the study of transmedia on its own appears to fall short. It would be beneficial for studies such as this to not only incorporate transmedia literature in this analysis, but also theories of narratology, which would provide a theoretical backbone to understanding how a character is built in just one story, to see how the transmedia producers have built it through not just multiple stories, but multiple media. Incorporating narratology into a study about a transmedia narrative gives structure and tells us what aspects go into building a character and a relationship between characters, to see if and how these aspects are applied in building the story of Iron Man and Captain America, which aspects are perhaps easier to highlight in a specific medium and how additive comprehension and additive mystery are applied to help the consumer understand and invest in this relationship. Three fundamental aspects of narratology will be discussed: space, time and character. The latter is quite obvious, but the other 1 A similar idea is also applied in open-world video games such as GTA V or Assassin’s Creed, where the goal is exploring every corner of the map, but large parts of the map start out unclear, foggy or unavailable. Players can choose to focus on the main storyline, or, in case of the MCU, only watch the films, or explore every corner of the map, or watch and/or read every other piece of media released in relation to the MCU. 3 two are relevant as well because they have strong influence on both the characters and additive comprehension/mystery and they help to not only build the character but build the world around them, which in turn helps us create a more complete image of our two main heroes. With that in mind, this thesis will examine how additive comprehension and additive mystery are employed to build the relationship between the narratological characters Iron Man and Captain America in time and space in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Two theoretical fields are important to this research: narratology and transmedia storytelling. An important note is that this research intends to add to the conversation surrounding transmedia,