Throughout this global pandemic, essential workers have being going around the clock to provide the public with services that will help us get through COVID-19. But one of the most essential aspects of everyday life has been overlooked: movies.
Throughout this long and hostile pandemic, filmmakers have been working tirelessly to both preserve the film industry’s future and to provide their viewers with entertaining and insightful films to enjoy and to learn from. These filmmakers present us with movies that prove through their inspiring themes that now more then ever we need the art form of film to tell stories that inform and inspire students around the world to never give up and to be all that they can be.
There is no finer example of this than the phenomenal film franchise known as the Marvel cinematic universe (MCU).Ever since Tony Stark’s spectacular introduction in the MCU’s first superhero movie, 2008’s Iron Man, the MCU has been popping out little Marvel film miracles without showing any sign of franchise fatigue. This is because the films they make don’t just serve as pure fun entertainment: they also show the medium’s true superpower, which is the ability to tell moving stories that resonate with every single person who sees them.
For example, when it was released, Black Panther arguably changed the filmmaking landscape forever by proving the importance of inclusion. Then there’s the upcoming film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Throughout this last year we have seen a devastating increase in anti-Asian racism. This behaviour has to stop. Luckily, this is exactly what director Destin Daniel Cretton plans to address with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. This film will be the first Marvel movie to have an Asian actor, Simu Liu, as its star (Liu is also Canadian). It marks a huge step in the right direction and will hopefully show young Asian actors and directors that it’s not just white people that can make it in Hollywood.
We can learn a lot from film. The most important lesson that us college students can take away from the MCU movies is that we need to start being our own superheroes. Don’t go jumping off of buildings to see if you can fly; what I mean is that we all have our own special talents that we can use to make our world a better place. This is especially true for college students, because we need to keep in mind that we are the generation that will be in charge of building our country back—and maybe making it even better than it was before—when COVID is dealt with.