Personally, I'm not a big fan of super-hero films. I get a bit tired of the wisecracks and the fake explosions and crumbling buildings. But that's me, I'm afraid. Age. Generational change. Fuddy-duddy etc. 

However, they are interesting thermometers of the culture. Black Panther certainly taps into a revolt against racism. Guardians of the Galaxy revolves around lost fatherhood. And the really, really bad guy in the latest epic, Avengers: Infinity War, is obsessed with population control. He has a plan for eliminating half the population of the earth. It's a reprise of Paul Ehrlich's 1968 damp squib, The Population Bomb, which predicted social collapse and environmental disaster unless the brakes were put on world population. It was a very scary script and it never happened, like most disaster movies. 

What I wonder is this: does this mean that over-population still scares people or that it no longer does? Thanos, after all, is a villain, and the Avengers are out to defend the world, not support his extreme environmentalist creed. My feeling is that very few people are fretting about over-population as such, although the real problem, a shrinking and greying population, isn't attracting much interest either. Any thoughts?

Michael Cook
The latest Marvel movie taps into anxieties about population
1525142940
overpopulation