Does Disney’s Deluge Of Marvel And ‘Star Wars’ Content Really Count As Mythology?

Nothing goes viral on Twitter faster than a bad take, and yesterday, this tweet comparing the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a kind of American mythology quickly attracted attention. 

This isn’t a horrible take, really – comic book movies, along with the Star Wars franchise, do take influence from a wide range of genres (comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, samurai movies, and westerns) and throw it all into a big melting pot to create something new, distinctly American, and most importantly, easily digestible; there’s a reason these stories are so incredibly popular.  

Even a respected filmmaker like Werner Herzog has called Star Wars “a new mythology for our times, whether you like it or not.”

But, as much as I hate to disagree with Herzog, prominence in pop culture does not equal modern American mythology. At least, not under Disney’s watch – merchandise collectors might view their favorite figurines as sacred shrines, millions of people can be inspired by the morality of superhero stories, but a monolithic corporation wielding tight creative control over these characters cannot be compared to the organic rhythm of mythology and folklore.  

True mythology is crowdsourced, rising from the bottom of society, often hijacked by religious authorities, but originally created by the masses, collectively. Superhero movies, on the other hand, come straight from the top, and trickle down into the crowd, where Disney’s vicious copyright lawyers ensure they don’t get out of control. 

While Marvel mines content from their massive library of weird, wacky comic books, which sometimes results in genuinely interesting and subversive stories, these movies are still the product of a corporation, carefully considering every possible controversy, always steering the narrative to profitable waters.  

Funnily enough, the often-cringeworthy world of fan fiction is the only place where corporate mascots can transcend into the mythological, where the ebb and flow of the collective unconscious can reshape superheroes and Star Wars characters into figures that truly represent the people who “worship” them. 

If one wants to find modern-day mythology, American or otherwise, there’s plenty of it out there on the World Wide Web, in the form of memes, TikTok trends, and creepypasta stories like “Slenderman” or “The Backrooms.” 

These crowdsourced narratives resemble the surreal tales that emerge from oral storytelling traditions – a far cry from the scripts approved by Disney executives, from the final cut of films created primarily to entertain crowds, and sell boatloads of plastic trinkets. 

Of course, that doesn’t diminish the value of Marvel or Star Wars; both franchises churn out fun, family-friendly stories, and are often much more interesting than they first appear. 

But the current patchwork of interconnected superhero movies definitely doesn’t constitute mythology – even if the behavior of fans can sometimes resemble a cult.