Why Celebs Are Dunking On Ted Cruz's Bad Avengers And Watchmen Takes

Consider Ted Cruz, the junior senator from the great state of Texas, where rumor has it that the stars at night are big and bright. Cruz's political leanings notwithstanding, it can at least be agreed across the aisle that his neckbeard constitutes a clear and present danger to the pursuit of a more perfect union.

Next, take into account HBO's Watchmen and Marvel Studios' Avengers: Infinity War, two of the biggest and most well-received superhero adaptations of the last decade. To the average observer, they are what all good, big-budget science fiction and fantasy adventures strive to be: moral fables with computer generated superheroes exchanging traumatic brain injuries. To Senator Cruz's eyes, however, that's not all they are — at least, not according to comments he made during a recent episode of his podcast. To him, they are demonstrable evidence of "the view of the Left ... that people are bad and everything would be better if we had fewer people."

Now, this is a hot take. Infinity War does, yes, present audiences with a character who wishes to erase half of all life from the universe. It seems worth mentioning, however, that the character is Thanos, a genocidal alien who, like so many genocidal aliens throughout pop culture history, isn't the hero. Watchmen, too, boasts a player who wants fewer people — specifically, fewer non-white people, owing to his fiery-eyed racism. In both cases, the "less-is-more" approach to the human population is something to be combated. Arguing that either story progresses an anti-people narrative seems roughly equivalent to saying that Star Wars promotes blowing up Alderaan.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Watchmen writer Lila Byock tweeted "Literally what the f*** are you talking about?" on Monday at the venerable deliberator from the Lone Star State.

Members of the show business community circled the social media wagons during the first week of February to give Senator Cruz's difficult-to-parse take on superheroes the old "sunlight is the best disinfectant" treatment. 

James Gunn, the writer and director of the Guardians of the Galaxy series and DC's upcoming The Suicide Squad, brought the Hermione Granger "it's levi-OH-sah" energy, tweeting "Maybe he can start with pronouncing Thanos correctly & then work his way up to making sense." Cruz pronounced the name "Thaw-nos," like nobody else ever. 

Comic book writer Ron Marz chimed in with "Ted Cruz thinking the villains are the heroes is pretty on brand," while Seth Rogan took the unlikely role of the exasperated substitute teacher trying to keep an easily distracted class on topic by tweeting, "Let's not focus on the fact that @tedcruz doesn't understand movies and focus more on the fact that he inspired a deadly insurrection by perpetuating lies about mass voter fraud."

The mental acrobatics necessary to understand Cruz's intended point here are difficult to master. Both Thanos and Senator Keene were unavailable for comment, owing to their having been killed at the ends of their respective story arcs because they were the bad guys.