What we can learn about storytelling from Marvel: Part 2

What we can learn about storytelling from Marvel: Part 2

Over the years, Marvel has learned how to contextualize decades-old stories, captivate audiences, and keep us coming back for more year after year. In my last post, I discussed what the Church can learn from Marvel about contextualization. Today, I’ll be diving into what we can learn from them about captivation.

There’s no question that Marvel executives, directors, and screenwriters know the stories and characters from their comics. Source material from the first comics published in the late 1930s and 1940s is still being repackaged and used in Marvel creations today. However, I would argue that even more than knowing their source material, Marvel knows their audience and is able to captivate them like no one else.

Marvel fans weren’t satisfied with just one movie about Thor. There are now three headliner movies about the character, five that he appears in, and two more in the works. Not to mention a TV series about his brother, Loki. This is just one example of a storyline that Marvel audiences are fiercely captivated by.

Do we, as the Church, use stories of biblical characters to captivate audiences in the same way? Are we explaining the complexity of biblical characters and allowing audiences to learn from every aspect of their life? Or are we simply reducing them to one headliner story? The lives of Biblical characters are at least as robust (if not more) than Marvel characters. Let’s not limit the potential they have to captivate the next generation.