Abstract
In times of uncertainty, apocalyptic storytelling tends to become more widespread and culturally resonant. This was the case when Avengers: Endgame was released in 2019. Emerging three years into Donald Trump's first term in office as average global temperatures and momentum in the climate movement were both reaching new heights, its narrative imagined a way that the U.S. government (in the form of Captain America) and the tech industry/billionaire class (in the form of Tony Stark/Iron Man) could defeat Thanos; an extraterrestrial villain whose goal was to enact a Malthusian plan of mass extermination that he claimed would prevent environmental and civilizational collapse. To this day, Endgame is the second-highest grossing film of all time in the United States, and has remained culturally and politically relevant through its characters, existence in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, and its embrace of ecofascist ideas as a means of preserving the neoliberal status quo. At the same time, Endgame's popularity is part of a larger phenomenon going back to the 1990s of popular films becoming primary reference points that help to explain the trajectory of history in an increasingly screen-based experience of reality. In this way, popular films that depict future catastrophes and/or the apocalypse have begun to function as prophetic texts in contemporary popular culture; foretelling future cataclysms and showing audiences who can save humanity from them. This thesis employs textual analysis Avengers: Endgame's narrative in relation to previous eras/types of apocalyptic narrative-making throughout American history, the apocalyptic blockbuster films of the pre-9/11 era, scholarship on superhero films, and the theoretical work of scholars such as Slavoj Žižek, Richard Grusin, and Jean Baudrillard. In bringing these sources together, this thesis aims to show the socio-historical context that Avengers: Endgame emerges out of, how its narrative anticipates a future confrontation between the institutions of contemporary American society (government, military, finance, tech) and environmentalists who are seen as existentially threatening to the American way of life, and where audiences are beginning to map aspects of its worldview and narrative onto contemporary American politics.
