Further thoughts – with bigger spoilers this time! – on the new Avengers movie, adding to my previous thoughts about Romantic individualism and technocracy. I saw the movie again, and this time what stood out was Families Versus Monsters:

In one corner we have Tony Stark, the Romantic individualist. With clear echoes of the Frankenstein myth, he seduces Banner away from loyalty to the group, seduces him into creating a “monster.” He even says to Banner “we’re monsters” and urges him to embrace that identity…

In the other corner we have, not Steve Rogers this time, but Natasha Romanov. She tries to seduce him as well, to seduce him away from loyalty to the group, but in this case toward the creation of a marriage…And the family, of course, is the great foundation of human nature.