Not always literal cowboys, but Whedon favors the cowboy archetype: a figure who is outside of society in some way, but has a sense of honor that draws he/she into the fray to defend its people. Buffy, Angel, the entirety of Serenity's crew, even his proposed Batman all fall into this category of outsider-hero, and of course so do the Avengers, who are summarily dismissed in the film as "a handful of freaks." They are. Each and every one of them is a freak. They are also Earth's mightiest heroes.
Another key element of this archetype is self-sacrifice. Hell, Buffy died twice to save the day, and Mal risked dying alone in the dark of space to save his crew. So how do the Avengers stack up? [SPOILERS AHEAD] Well, Captain America's major beef with Tony Stark is that he's a smart-ass who never really puts himself at risk, "Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away, what are you?" seethes Cap. And he's right. The old-fashioned Captain America takes life-threatening leaps without blinking, while Tony has a suit that can get him out of every jam…until it can't. In the film's final climactic scene, Manhattan is about to be annihilated by a hastily released nuke, and all that can save us is a big man in a suit of armor, who must fly a suicide mission to get it out of our world. It's a remarkable sequence that plays out like the best of Whedon finales
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