‘Avengers: Endgame’ makes $1.2 billion: Why the movie strikes a chord in our souls

I may be the only person who reads this article who has not yet seen Avengers: Endgame. This is a coincidence of calendar, not an expression of intent.

At my first opportunity, I intend to conform to the will of the masses and see the highest-grossing movie (through its first weekend) in history. Avengers: Endgame earned more than an estimated $1.2 billion over the weekend, nearly doubling the global box office record held by Avengers: Infinity War, which made $641 million in its opening weekend last April.

Seventeen AMC locations stayed open for seventy-two straight hours from Thursday night through Sunday. The movie had the best opening day in cinematic history, far surpassing the record set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Why would a three-hour movie about comic book heroes garner such attention?

Part of the answer is its excellence: the movie received a 96 percent score on the review site Rotten Tomatoes and a rare A+ on CinemaScore. Another is the way it depicts heroes redeeming their failures, a theme Ryan Denison explores in his excellent review on our website.

I’d like to explore a different angle, one that is relevant whether we’ve seen (or intend to see) the film or not.

Avengers: Endgame is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, comprising twenty-one previous films that have made more than $19 billion worldwide. Taken together, these incredibly popular movies tell us something vital about ourselves and our culture.

Raccoons, trees, and other heroes

The film series comprises more than thirty different main characters. They include a raccoon named Rocket and his mobile tree friend, Groot, a tiny superhero (Ant-Man) and a giant (the Hulk), two Captains (America and Marvel), and a scientist (Iron Man) and a brawler (Drax the Destroyer).

None of the superheroes could have sustained the franchise alone. Nor could they defeat their cinematic enemies by themselves. Their intertwined stories make the…