Muck Man took his family to see the new Captain America movie last night. I told you they would, since they are a superhero family just learning how to be a superhero family with odor-based super powers. They all loved it, as was to be expected. But it was a great movie experience because it was full of unforeseen surprises.
The first big surprise came from Muck Lad. Muck Man chose the Friday showing at Valley View Mall because Muck Lad had to work both Saturday and Sunday and couldn’t attend otherwise. His job at the Asian Market making and serving boba tea is the most important factor in his life right now. He needs the money to buy a gaming computer. You know how important that is to a teenager in this day and age. But when the time came to go to the movie, as much as he really wanted to see it, his headache was too much to allow him to go. He needed to stay in the Muck Cave with Muck Dog and play RPG computer games instead.
The second big surprise came after Muck Momma drove Muck Man and Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… to the mall and the movie actually began. Muck Man is such a big comic book fan that he read every Civil War comic book he could lay his smelly hands on back when it was a big multi-comic event thingy in the Marvel Universe. There must’ve been at least a hundred titles to track down, and either purchase to read multiple times, or find in the library to read when Mucky was supposed to be doing other more school-teachery things. And as the movie unfolded, besides the fact that there was a big disagreement between Iron Man and Captain America that made everybody choose up sides, nothing was the same at all! The story was good, and made sense in the context of the other Marvel Movies, but the details were all different and the story was completely new. Not only new, but better! Muck Man was fully prepared to face one of the two major characters dying at the end of the movie, because that’s how the comic books turned out. But in point of fact, the movie found a much better way. Muck Man tells me I can’t explain that point further because spoilers are simply not allowed in a world where heroes are real.
Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… was surprised at how much she liked the character of Spider Man played by young Tom Holland. The character was played as a teenager. A rather handsome, wisecracking teenager with some killer superhero moves. And a new Spider Man movie was promised at the end. Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… was enthralled in ways only a Muck teenage girl… er, woman… can be.
And the movie was seriously funny. That was, perhaps, the best surprise of all (even if it is an oxymoron). There were more light-hearted moments than tragic ones, more laughs than tears. It taught Muck Man and his Muck Family a very important lesson about how to be a superhero. Being all dark and violent and Batman-y is fine for DC superhero movies, but it is also the reason we don’t love them as much.
And the delayed-for-another-time surprise was the trailer we got to see for Dr. Strange on the big screen. Muck Girl… er, Muck Woman… is not-so-secretly in love with Benedict Cumberbatch too. The Muck Family’s plans for movies in November are now set.
More Powerful Than a Potassium-Rich Banana
It is a time when we need a hero to step forward. Of course, we are always in need of heroes. There is so much in our little lives that depends on the strong among us to shield us from the darkness that fills the universe. And heroes come in many forms. There was a time when I needed a hero to step forward and deliver me from evil in the Emergency Room in Pearsall Texas. I was there because I was suffering from a severe lack of potassium in my bloodstream. You don’t realize how important balanced potassium in the bloodstream is until you don’t have it. The shakes, the pain, the fog interfering with my cognitive functioning would all have overwhelmed me permanently if the banana doctor had not run a potassium-rich IV directly into a vein in my arm and then proscribed bananas and apples in my diet when he let me go home without an expensive hospital stay. I never learned his name, hence the epithet of “banana doctor”, but he was a hero to me when I needed one.
I think the real point here is, though, that we are forever needing heroes to step up. More than once, as a school teacher, it was me who was called on to step up and do the hero job. Talking on the phone late on a Saturday night to a suffering, suicidal teen, getting between two middle school girls and a leering stranger on a field trip in San Antonio, facing down a berserk child with real metal ninja throwing stars in a school hallway and getting him to run away rather than pursuing his target… gawd, looking back, I should’ve been scared out of my wits. Don’t tell my mother that those things really happened.
And maybe that is the only place we should really be looking for heroes, inside ourselves. Believe me, there is no Superman or Wolverine in the real world outside of the one in your own heart. And that one will step up and answer the call if you sincerely need him… or her. Take it from a guy once known in high school as “Superchicken”. Now there’s an inspiring superhero name!
Leave a comment
Filed under action figures, Avengers, commentary, heroes, humor, insight, photo paffoonies