Forgive us for being corny for a hot second…but the reason you should care about The Avengers is togetherness.

The Avengers is about not one, not two, but seven superheroes fighting together to save the world. The fight isn't exactly groundbreaking, but the sheer number of characters definitely is. And it's that aspect of the film—not the kick-butt special effects, not Thor's silky locks, not Nick Fury's effortless cool—that's the most interesting.

Because it brings a lucky number of good guys together, we can read The Avengers as a moral tale about safety in numbers. And not just any campfire-side story served with a side of kumbaya—but a tale of networking.

This is a movie that came out in 2012, which is both the year that the earth didn't end (thanks for nothing, Mayan calendar) and a year that was dubbed "International Year of Cooperatives" by the United Nations. Now the UN was talking about worker's cooperatives, but the same ideology applies to a band of superheroes: united we stand, divided we fall.

The spirit of togetherness was in the air when The Avengers hit theaters, which was part of the reason it was such a massive success—the early 2010s saw the mainstreaming of ideas like the "sharing economy," "peer to peer," and "collaborative consumption." Everyone was onboard with the idea of banding together to get things done.

The lone caped crusader was out; dream teams were in.

If The Avengers has a moral (besides "don't be an evil Asgardian dictator," or maybe "always be angry"), it's that one man can't do it alone. Even if you're a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, you still are probably going to find that, sooner or later, you'll need the help of a super-soldier, a Norse god, a Russian secret agent, a humongous green rage monster, a one-eyed spy, and…a guy who's good with a bow and arrow? (Sorry, Hawkeye. You're definitely not the most memorable Avenger.)

And that moral resonated with a viewing public that was just beginning to go along with the idea that renting out another person's apartment was preferable to staying in a motel, getting into a car with a pink moustache on it was preferable to hailing a cab, and leaving your doggy with another corgi-lover when you go out of town was preferable taking him to a kennel.

Of course, sometimes superheroes get into fights, and sometimes Airbnb guests throw wild parties…but we'll talk about that in Captain America: Civil War.