The Golden Age of Olden Age

Everyone seems tired lately.

And no, I’m not referring to an endless news cycle, hectic political theater, insurrectionists dominating the media landscape, a global pandemic, a wrecked economy or the sense of impending doom brought upon us by an ever-connected global network of bad news and sadness (though I guess none of that helps).

Rather, I’m talking about the explosion of weary protagonists permeating popular culture on all fronts.

Lately, we’re seeing warriors and strongmen beaten down and struggling. We’re seeing the deaths of our favorite superheroes (see Logan and Avengers: Endgame). We’re witnessing a time in popular culture permeated by brokenness, a milieu dictated by the fetishization of the suffering hero.

And honestly, I kind of love it.

Let’s take 2017’s Logan as the primary example. The X-men franchise’s first outing in R-rated territory, the opening of this film shows a battered and scarred Wolverine (played by the legendary Hugh Jackman) awaking in the back of a limousine. The first line of the dialogue in the movie is, quite aptly, “Fuck.” As the movie progresses, we see our that favorite <once-indestructible> anti-hero exists in a world in the not-too-distant future of 2029 in which there are no other mutants. We see the once respectable and optimistic Professor Xavier (played by Patrick Stewart) babbling incoherently as he wheels around in an electric wheelchair. Logan, being poisoned by the fictional metal adamantium, which is melded to his skeleton, no longer heals quickly and no longer metabolizes alcohol quickly. He’s drinking excessively and continues to break down as the movie progresses.

For another example, we’ll transition to a different form of media to 2018’s God of War, a PlayStation-exclusive video game that borrows characters and themes from Greek and Norse mythology and presents them as original, beautiful and violent storytelling and action-gaming for the 21st century. Kratos, the protagonist and anti-hero who made his first appearance in the 2005 game of the same title, is no longer the young and fit Spartan warrior of the original franchise. He’s beaten and battered, a widower and a father to a young son. Kratos and his son begin a journey to fulfill his late wife’s last wish by spreading her ashes from the highest peak in the nine realms. The journey quickly goes sideways, jeopardizing both of their lives. (Note: a new entry in this franchise is slated for later this year.)

Sticking with this similar theme, the Xbox-exclusive franchise Gears of War also portrayed a once-great warrior as a withered-down warrior in 2016 Gears of War 4. Building on its predecessors, Gears 4 takes place 25 years after the events of Gears 3. Occurring on the fictional Earth-like planet of Sera, the characters are celebrating the anniversary of defeating the alien invaders in the original trilogy. As a new threat is discovered, the protagonist JD Fenix is recruited to battle it. Circumstances take them to JD’s father, Marcus Fenix, the protagonist of the original trilogy. The booming-voiced warrior of yesteryear is discovered to be widowed and alone in a dilapidated house, far from any city or town. Scars from previous wars are visible, and he reluctantly agrees to help his son. The fight continues in 2019’s Gears 5.

Further still, we have the events of 2019’s Rambo: Last Blood, 2014 ‘s The Expendables 3, 2019’s The Lighthouse, and even the John Wick franchise to some extent. Across movies, television shows, and video games, there is a plethora of protagonists, often old warriors, experienced workers, or grumpy curmudgeons, juxtaposed by younger, less experienced protagonists. When did this obsession with the weary warrior come about? And what does it tell us?

Perhaps, in part, it’s because there are many people who are also tired and worn down. It’s cathartic and relatable to see the beaten and battered represented as reliable and strong, despite the years of work, fighting, pain, et cetera, that they’ve faced. It is also, perhaps, inappropriately relatable. Everyone’s life is different; a person can face the same amount of pain, heartache and struggle in 20 years that another person faces in 80 years. There is no age limit or discrimination to struggle and pain. However, the world is doing decently well, despite the impression you’d see on social media or in the news. Child illiteracy rates are dropping; starvation rates continue to decrease; global poverty continues to decrease. Even the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 has rebounded better than some would have thought in early 2020, and will hopefully continue to. However, it wouldn’t be fair to discount the suffering from the ongoing mental health crisis exacerbated by COVID-19, the number of deaths as a direct result from COVID-19 (though, thankfully, the death rate is decreasing thanks to the vaccines), and the ongoing wage stagnation.

Make no mistake, the suffering and misery of recent years, particularly most 2020 and all of 2021, is very real. I’m not trying to discount that. However, millennials have a habit of exacerbating their suffering, most often by spending an inappropriate amount of time on social media (particularly Twitter, where the fast and easy consumption of thoughts from thousands of people every hour significantly amplifies the worst of reality). Writing in the New Yorker in 2018, Mark O’Connell argues “To be alive and online in our time is to feel at once incensed and stultified by the onrush of information, helpless against the rising tide of bad news and worse opinions. Nobody understands anything: not the global economy governed by the unknowable whims of algorithms, not our increasingly volatile and fragile political systems, not the implications of the impending climate catastrophe that forms the backdrop of it all.” Most millennials are not beaten and battered warriors, despite the fact that the liberal Twitterverse is patting itself on the back for defeating Trump (a fascist) by voting and tweeting (because that’s how you take down a literal fascist…by voting).

There is a kind of connection that can be drawn to the protagonists in media that are clearly past their prime. It’s a meditation on the inevitability of time and aging, knowing that soon one day most of us will hold the experiences and wisdom that age, struggle and strife brought to us. We should appreciate that; as I wrote earlier, I personally love it. It’s encouraging, that even after the struggle and pain endured by these protagonists, there still exists a sense of duty buried within them. But we shouldn’t glorify or fetishize it; to do so would be to glorify suffering itself, and that’s easy to do from a couch or office chair while enjoying a drink and eating a snack…right up until when the actual suffering starts.