Marvel’s “The Avengers” is making millions at the box office, and deservedly so because it’s worth every over-inflated cent you’ll pay for the movie theater experience. Bringing a bunch of great superheroes together, the film has already been given the green light for a sequel.
Instead of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Black Widow and Hulk in the sequel, I’d like to suggest one with some lesser known superheroes: politicians.
The film could include all the big names nationally from all political parties: President Barack Obama, as well as all of our living former presidents; all those who ran for president this year, including Gov. Mitt Romney, Sen. Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rep. Michele Bachmann; Rep. John Boehner, Speaker of the House; and Sen. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader.
It would also include some of the more local ones: former governors Tommy Thompson and Jim Doyle, Sen. Herb Kohl and former senator Russ Feingold.
Leading the team would be Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s current governor for at least the next three weeks.
I know putting all these people on the same team seems more fiction than the current “Avengers” film in the theaters – one which features the superheroes battling foes from elsewhere in the universe – but that’s what makes it brilliant. It would portray something nobody ever thought possible: political teamwork.
Their nemeses would not be the American public, as it seems to be in real life, but just a bunch of cool villains that would make for seemingly impossible opposition. My list of villains for this film, which is my creation right now, would be Darth Vader, because he’s the ultimate villain; John Kreese, the evil sensei from “The Karate Kid” films who is the ultimate bad-ass; Kurgan, the ultimate underrated villain from the first “Highlander” film; the shark from “Jaws,” because it’s the ultimate revenge-seeking fish; and Freddy Krueger from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series who is the ultimate horror film villain.
Defeating this team of villains would be difficult. Vader has the Dark Side behind him, Kreese relies on cheap tactics such as leg sweeps, Kurgan is good at chopping people’s heads off, the shark always seems to come back no matter how many times it is killed, and Krueger will terrorize people in their dreams.
It will take a good plan and lots of teamwork by this team of politicians to defeat these villains. Each politician will have to search deep to find the innermost strength they can offer in the battle, and all of those strengths will have to be used to their fullest potential to find the solution to win the fight.
While finding such strengths will be impossibly difficult, as politicians haven’t demonstrated this ability in years, maybe decades, the fact they have to work with people they don’t agree with will probably be the more difficult task. Normal people have been doing it forever, but politicians are a special breed who decided long ago they are not going to work nicely with people who have differing ideas. Compromise is a fictional word in their world.
In my “Avengers” sequel, the politicians would defeat the villains, mainly because nobody wants to see an ending in which the bad guys win.
While my idea for a film will never come to fruition, the politicians could attempt to recreate it in real life. Instead of ultimate villains, though, they would focus their attention on some of the real-world issues every one of us faces. Each one would determine their strengths and how they use them as best as possible, and then they could cross party lines to work nicely with the people who should all have a common goal of improving this country.
I know such a film probably isn’t in the cards anytime soon. But like “The Avengers,” maybe someday it will get made.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, May 18, 2012.
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