‘Avengers: Endgame’ Movie Review and ‘Station 11’: Comparative Analysis

Understanding Mass Extinctions: A Comparative Analysis

"It takes a variety of strategies and initiatives to address this pandemic. It's about life and death and the survival of humanity." -Barbara Lee. Emily St. John Mandel's novel, Station 11, and Kevin Feige's movie Avengers Endgame are very closely related. Endgame is set in a time when half the population gets wiped out, and a group of heroes known as the Avengers fight to bring it back and save the world from an alien invader named Thanos.

Station 11 is set during a time when a mysterious disease deemed the Georgia Flu has wiped out most of the world's civilization in a matter of weeks. Station 11 and Avengers Endgame are similar in the methods of survival used, but they both play out in very different ways, and they both have groups of people working vigorously to try to restore the world to life before the mass extinction.

The Aftermath of Thanos' Actions

Endgame portrays survival just like Station 11 does, but the tactics used to survive differ greatly from Station 11. In Endgame, the villain named Thanos got the six infinity stones that gave him unlimited power to wipe out 50 percent of the population at the snap of his fingers, vanishing most of the Avengers as well. The Avengers are living in the world after the incident and are trying to figure out a way to undo what he did using any means necessary. They find Thanos on a remote planet after they are able to track him because of the radiation the stones put off after they become aware that he has used them again. They find him only to see that Thanos has used the stones to destroy the stones themselves. Thor becomes so enraged by this he decapitates Thanos. The Avengers become helpless and give up for years after that, not able to live with their own failure. Five years later, Scott Lang (Ant-man) escapes from the quantum realm he got trapped in while trying to figure out time travel. He manages to find his way to the Avengers compound, and he explains to Black Widow and Captain America that while everyone on earth had experienced five years since Thanos, he experienced only five hours while trapped inside the quantum realm.

He states that the quantum realm could allow time travel; the three ask Tony Stark (Iron Man) to help them get back the Stones from the past to reverse Thanos' actions in the present. Stark refuses, not wanting to give up his wife, Pepper Potts, and daughter, Morgan. Stark, however, changed his mind after thinking about how he caused the death of Peter Parker and how he had a chance to bring him back. Stark and Hulk start to work to build a time machine. Hulk notes that changing the past does not affect the present; any changes instead create branched alternate realities. Hulk and Rocket visit the Asgardian refugees' new home in Norway—New Asgard—to recruit Thor, now overweight and drinking heavily, despondent over his failure to stop Thanos.

Black Widow travels to Tokyo to recruit Hawkeye, who had become a vigilante due to him losing his family when Thanos got rid of half the planet. Banner, Lang, Rogers, and Stark traveled to New York City in 2012. Banner visits the Sanctum Sanctorum and convinces the Ancient One to give him the Time Stone. Rhodes returns to the present with the Power Stone, but Nebula becomes incapacitated when her cybernetic implants link with those of her past self, allowing 2014 Thanos to learn of his future success and the Avengers' attempts to thwart it. Reuniting in the present, the Avengers place the Stones into a gauntlet Iron Man created. Stark uses the stones to bring back everyone but also dies in the process, as the stones are too powerful for a human to withstand. Following Tony Stark's funeral, everyone is back on Earth, and the world is finally at peace from all the alien takeovers. While Avengers Endgame deals with a whole different cause of near extinction, Station 11 is still very similar.

Station 11: Surviving a Pandemic

In station 11, the Georgia flu wipes out most of the world's population in a matter of weeks. The book starts out with one of the main characters, Arthur dying during a performance on stage. Shortly after Arthur's death, a mysterious pandemic called the Georgia Flu wipes out billions of people across the globe and forces the few survivors to group together and use any means necessary to survive the new post-apocalyptic world they live in. The story is about people that were close to Arthur while he was alive and how they all formed a symphony after the outbreak and traveled around and performed to give people a small bit of hope during these terrible times. Station 11 focuses on how life is truly meaningful and that you can't survive on bare will; you have to have something to live for and look forward to. That is what the traveling symphony tried to serve. A reason to keep living and to spread hope. The six main characters in the book are all tied to Arthur somehow. Jeevan is the second main character we are introduced to, as he is the man trying to revive Arthur when he collapses. He was connected to Arthur from that moment because he followed Arthur around as paparazzi years before.

The third main character is Kirsten, a child wandering around the stage after Arthur dies. She is connected to Arthur only because he gave her Miranda's comic book, Station 11, shortly before he died. Miranda is the next main character we meet. She is the creator of the comic Station 11 that gave the book its title. She was an artist with an abusive boyfriend that was one of the many women seduced by Arthur. She was his first wife and certainly not the last. Elizabeth is his second wife who he has a son with. Arthur and Elizabeth's son ends up being the prophet, who is a crazy religious man with an army that takes over villages and forces girls to be his wife. He believed that God saved him so that he could repopulate the Earth after the plague. While Kirsten is the lead actress in the symphony, she is a totally different person than the Kirsten we met at the beginning of the book. She now has knife tattoos documenting the number of people she has killed. Her saying was, "Survival is insufficient," which was her reason for being in the symphony for so long. She needed a reason to want to keep surviving. The book is set 20 years after the plague because Mandell wanted to show a new culture and lifestyle that had emerged from all the destruction and not just the immediate after-effect. Station 11 ends with The Prophet about to kill Kirsten when she distracts him, and one of his followers shoots him and then takes his own life. Civilization slowly begins to rebuild and work its way back to life before the plague.

Survival Tactics: A Common Thread

The tactics used for survival in Station 11 and in Avengers Endgame are very closely related to one another. In both Station 11 and Endgame, the characters are forced to kill in order to survive. Kirsten is very similar to Black Widow in Endgame, as they both have had to kill to survive and are. Thanos and The prophet are very similar in the fact that they both think they were sent by God and are superior beings. They both want total control and believe that what they think is the right thing, no matter how many lives it will affect. This seems to be a popular trend with every single crooked ruler. Survival is a basic instinct that lives deep inside every human on this earth. Even with nothing and all hope lost, there is always an urge to survive. The constant urge to survive is pictured throughout the length of both Endgame and Station 11, as it appears that they will both do almost anything to survive. Even if it means killing anyone that seems a threat to their existence. While the Avengers and the symphony kill people, that is not their overall goal at all.

Their goal is to try to save as many people as possible from the hands of criminal-type people such as Thanos in Endgame or the Prophet in Station 11. The Avenger's goal is to try to rescue the 50 percent of the population that disappeared when Thanos used the stones. One of the Symphony's goals is to try to rescue any girls that the prophet has captured and forced to be his wife. Being good at being able to survive is a key part of our human race, making it as long as we have. Survival for oneself is not always the most important priority as much as making sure everyone around you is healthy and well able to survive through the toughest of conditions. Much like today as we fight the coronavirus outbreak and try to help treat the thousands that keep being infected and try to reduce the number of deaths, all while we keep trying to prevent thousands more from contracting this horrible pandemic.

Conclusion: The Human Spirit in Times of Crisis

Station 11 and Avengers Endgame are both set during times of mass extinction in their world and are about trying to work together to bring back the population. They both use similar tactics in order to survive. Both represent humans' natural urge to survive and to have a reason to continue every day. The Avengers and the symphony both have many things in common, and they are both playing a key role as people are both counting on them to give them some hope in the failing and miserable world they live in now because of the mass extinction of most of mankind. Overall, the key factor that is to be taken away from this is that survival as a whole is much more important than the survival of the fittest and most capable, and it will feel much more rewarding doing good for other people rather than just doing something good for yourself.

References:

1. Lee, Barbara. "It takes a variety of strategies and initiatives to address this pandemic. It’s about life and death and the survival of humanity."

2. Mandel, Emily St. John. "Station Eleven." 

3. Feige, Kevin (Producer). "Avengers: Endgame." Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo.

4. “Avengers Endgame.” 

5. “Plot Summary of Station Eleven.” 

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