Let me start this Superhero Sunday post off by stating that all talk of ages is excluding Thor. 🙂 Also, no spoilers for Age of Ultron, just in case you’re wondering. Haven’t watched it, so yeah…
Did you know that Hawkeye and Tony Stark are the same age? Go figure. They’re both 44. Bruce Banner is the oldest Avenger at 45, although technically Steve Rogers beats him, at 96, but “biologically”, he’s 29. And since Natasha Romanoff is 30, that makes Steve, technically, the youngest Avenger. (Also, I must admit the Steve/Natasha shippers out there have the better age difference, compared to Clintasha and… Brucetasha? Speaking of which, I wrote a letter about this…)
Back on track. Steve’s the youngest Avenger. And yet, in The Avengers, he’s the one calling the shots. I was thinking about this, the other day, and it brought to mind this verse:
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.
-1 Timothy 4:12
This is quite possibly one of the most useful quotes from the entire movie.
So maybe you’re younger than Captain America. Maybe you’re not a super soldier, with five amazing people at your back, fighting off a group of Chitauri.
But you are you. You don’t have to wait until you’re older to make a difference. You can do that now. You can make a difference at school. You can make a difference at work, or church, or the grocery store. You can make a difference at home. You can make a difference online. You can make a difference anywhere.
And it all starts with you.
Y
O
U
After all, you’re more than just a kid from Brooklyn.
I had no idea making memes could be so easy and so fun.
When erinkenobi2893Â said she was planning on doing an Avengers fan art dump on her blog today, I thought of all the memes I’ve been making, and figured it would be a great chance to share them… with the world! But let me warn you…
*All of these memes were made by me, but I do not own the pictures, and the quotes may or may not be original, although I think they are, but who knows… All of my memes are certifiably clean. Only violence included comes from a Christmas song…*
Got this quote from Tobymac’s Irene in case you’re wondering…
Marvel has just released the “Official Extended Trailer #2” for Avengers: Age of Ultron. So basically, they released another trailer. 😛
So I’ll be able to extend these posts longer than I thought. Yay! 😀
There’s a very distracting scene in that montage. You may or may not have noticed it, but there’s a group of… ballerinas?
Yeah. Ballerinas. Um… what? Marvel, you feeling okay?
One of the explanations I’ve heard (really the only one I’ve heard) is that that is actually a flashback scene for Natasha Romanoff!!! That would be really, really cool. *Captain America: The Winter Soldier spoilers*Â And before that we see her standing in an empty room from the former Shield headquarters. *end spoilers*
And speaking of flashback scenes… *wiggles eyebrows* Did you notice the awesome Captain America flashback scene? That’s supposedly a flashback scene as well! If you pause the video during that scene, you just might be able to spot Peggy’s red dress…
And if you didn’t notice the look on Hawkeye’s face during the part when Ultron comes out at their little party, go back and watch it. Made me laugh. 😉
What’s next? Got a little off track… Oh, yes, the Maximoff twins. If you have no idea who the girl wearing red and the guy wearing bluish-gray is, let me enlighten you now. They’re twins: Pietro and Wanda Maximoff. Apparently Pietro, aka Quicksilver, has already appeared in X-men or something like that, and there’s a whole big argument between Marvel and Fox… But anyway. They’re pretty cool, and there’s a lot more about them that I don’t have room for if I’m to get to my point… whatever that is…
Speaking of arguments over rights and characters, if you’ve only watched the movies (and haven’t read the comic books), you might remember that Captain America’s shield is made of vibranium. I haven’t read the comics, but I learned that Captain America’s shield was originally made of adamantium, just like Wolverine’s skeleton. But of course, they had to change it due to legal rights.
Did you know that Ultron’s robot body is (at least, as far as we know) going to be made out of adamantium? Which would definitely explain Cap’s broken shield at the end of the trailer.
Aaaaand speaking of trailers… there’s a reason I included the new extended trailer in this post instead of the old one. Why?
Because we hear Ultron saying some new, possibly even more threatening things. In fact, we learn some of his motives, although we’re still left with more questions than answers.
“You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. There’s only one path to peace. Your extinction.”
So we see that Ultron, a robot originally designed to help the Avengers bring peace to the world and help clean out the Hydra bases (Did you know Hydra is a monster from mythology, Greek I believe?) just wants to bring peace to the world. And he believes the Avengers are in the way.
I’m still not sure how his line “I’m gonna show you something beautiful. The world. Screaming. For mercy.” fits into this point of view. I’m working on that.
But see, no matter how good your motives may be, the wrong thing is still the wrong thing. Wrong is wrong, no matter what.
Next week: Age of Ultron trailer part three – The Hulkbuster, the mystery woman, and… Bruce Banner and Natasha??? And of course, more Ultron!
Caution: There may be a few spoilers in this post, or, if you’re like Sherlock Holmes, you could deduce spoilers from things I say in this post. Just sayin’.
Have you ever noticed that it’s impossible to believe that people are actually dead in superhero movies?
I’ll admit that the same problem occurs in other movies, too, and in books fairly often. Or is that just my imagination? It’s not.
Sherlock Holmes, for example. He “died” in the books, and he “died” on the BBC Sherlock show (Which I have not watched, but I know quite a bit about thanks to a few friends. *wink* And a past post I reblogged.)
And then, of course, there’s all those minor characters in the superhero movies that supposedly die but don’t. Sometimes main characters, too, like Captain America, although we know that something’s up from the beginning of the movie. You can almost never believe that people are actually dead in those movies.
But you know what’s cool? That’s happened in real life before, too! All those people that are raised from the dead, like Lazarus. (We don’t know the names of most of them.) But the best coming-back-to-life episode? Jesus.
Unlike in superhero movies, Jesus really died. And then he came back to life. He conquered our sin by suffering the worst death the Romans could invent, and then he rose again, conquering death itself. He love us that much.
In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.
-Ephesians 6:16
So what are the fiery arrows of the devil?
Temptations.
I talked quite a bit about temptation in another post, but after yesterday’s post, with faith as our shield, I thought it would be nice to add a little to our allegory-ish thing with the fiery arrows of temptation.
When you think Marvel, “the shield” normally makes you think of Captain America’s shield (or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D…), and “arrows” normally make you think of Hawkeye. (Quick note: Everything I know about Hawkeye comes from watching the Avengers, and my friends talking about him. So… don’t judge.)
So, when Hawkeye shoots one of his explosive arrows, what normally happens afterwards?
Yep. Ka-poof. That’s what happens when we give in to temptation. Now, maybe it doesn’t get that bad, but consequences always follow sin. Even if it doesn’t seem like anyone will ever find out.
So use your shield of faith to block the arrows of temptation. Cuz the devil won’t mind if you blow up.
If you want to read more about temptation, check out my previous post about it.
In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.
-Ephesians 6:16
With our faith, we can block the flaming arrows of the enemy, like a shield. Paul was probably thinking about a Roman shield, kind of like this one:
Maybe. The Roman’s shields were made out of wood, but they were covered in leather so they wouldn’t catch on fire, which was a big part of their battles. (Thank you, Pastor Tim from Wayside!)
When we think of shields, we normally think of something more like this:
Sorry, I couldn’t help it… But, although this shield would definitely stand up pretty good to some flaming arrows (now there’s an idea, Marvel!), it doesn’t provide quite as much full-body protection. See what I mean?
The stronger your faith is, the better your shield will be, and the better you’ll be able to guard yourself against the devil’s flaming arrows of temptation. Which just might be mentioned in the next post.
(I can’t help it… which shield would you rather have? Why?)
Recently, I had the idea to try and make the Captain America shield on an online graphing calculator. I liked the way it turned out, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t save the graph on the graphing calculator, so the best I have for you is a screen shot. If anyone knows how to graph a flat donut shape, please let me know! I had to do individual circles to fill in the red parts. 😛
Proverbs 31 Teen 