I only saw three movies in theaters this summer: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Yes, there were plenty of other movies I wanted to see, but I made it a priority to see those three movies.

Why?

Because I love superhero movies!

I love everything about them: the action, the special effects, the themes and the actors. Even the music is empowering. You might even say superhero movies are the main reason I love summer. I love spending a late summer night in a movie theater with my friends, getting lost in a world where good always triumphs over evil.

Now let’s get one thing established. Am I a nerd? Yeah, pretty much. Moving on.

My favorite “supers” include: Superman, Captain America, Spider-man, Wolverine, Thor and, of course, Larry-Boy (yes, I grew up watching Veggie Tales).

There’s so much more to superhero movies than sci-fi, pyrotechnics, fight scenes and incredibly good looking actors. These stories provide the motivation to go save the world in your own special way.

The Avengers is currently my favorite superhero movie. I love how Marvel managed to combine so many of the heroes in their franchise and bring their clashing personalities together for an epic showdown with an evil foe.

One of the reasons I loved The Avengers was because of the way it combined action and humor. The movie took these amazing superheros who had to fight past their differences in order to save the world, and at the same time made it genuinely funny. The seriousness of the “good versus evil” plot was cleverly broken up by sarcastic, smart-aleck remarks from Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Hemsworth.

In any movie, controversy always surrounds a superhero. The people they are trying so desperately to defend often doubt them, even reject them, because they are different. Sometimes, the hero even begins to doubt himself. But in the end they always triumph.

We will always need someone to save us. It’s an old-fashioned idea that never really gets old. The purpose of a superhero is to give people a symbol to look to when all hope seems lost. They give us something to believe in. They make us believe we can be more than ourselves.

They give us hope. We will always need them to save our lives via the silver screen.