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MCUniverse: Cat Scratch Fever edition.


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9 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Also, if Batman is a cop, so is Captain America.

I didn't watch the link, but Batman is a detective.  Cap is a Navy SEAL.  Both have very successful procedurals.

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12 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

I like JMS, but no. That might be an argument for character popularity (whatever the media) but not why the Marvel movies have had more success than DC movies. Also, if Batman is a cop, so is Captain America.

I dunno, I think that actually might be a part of the puzzle. Or maybe its just what you conceded as the first part, but this is exactly why I had no interest in Cap until around Ragnarok when the noise on twitter and film youtubers convinced me that despite that being where the characters archetype starts it is not where this version of Cap has ended up. A big part of that has also been Chris Evan's being a fantastic ambassador for that characters ideal out of character. If Cap was a cop he'd be the one signing the accords, but he's rejected them because he won't sign away his right to stand up for what's right.

Do the successful DC movies follow that pattern? I'm not super familiar with Wonder Woman but the vague associations I do have don't die her to standard authority figures. All I know about Aquaman is that he's royalty which is a point against, but he seems more Thor style than cop?

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Cap worked with SHIELD, so that kinda makes him a cop. Batman is a detective, and yeah he works with the police, except for when he doesn't. Plus the last two movies Batman was in were shit, and I really don't see how people liked them less simply because the characters are authority figures, sort of.

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1 minute ago, Corvinus said:

Cap worked with SHIELD, so that kinda makes him a cop.

I would think working for the most covert/black op-sy agency in the world would make you as far away from a cop as possible, at least in law enforcement terms.

3 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Plus the last two movies Batman was in were shit,

Wait, are we talking Affleck Batman?  Cuz that dude can crawl right back up Damon's ass.

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Simplifying it as "a cop" probably isn't doing the best job of conveying that, I think its much more to do with the "mega wealthy white man" is closely associated with the levers of power in the US. That's why he's an authority figure, not because he beats up criminals.

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1 hour ago, karaddin said:

Simplifying it as "a cop" probably isn't doing the best job of conveying that, I think its much more to do with the "mega wealthy white man" is closely associated with the levers of power in the US. That's why he's an authority figure, not because he beats up criminals.

Iron Man

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2 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

Iron Man

And I'm not really a fan, and he was on the cop side of the accords...but yeah didn't really hurt the popularity of the movies so I'm going to chalk this up as projection on my (and maybe JMS) part.

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7 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

@DMC Re: Scarlet Witch and reality stone - her powers were granted by the mind stone right? But both aesthetically and in nature map directly onto the reality. That's a bit weird.

Didn't she have sort-of mental powers in Age of Ultron for a bit? And now she has generic energy projection powers, mainly.

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9 minutes ago, mormont said:

Didn't she have sort-of mental powers in Age of Ultron for a bit? And now she has generic energy projection powers, mainly.

But they were RED mental powers. And making people see stuff is kinda in the reality stone wheelhouse too.

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4 hours ago, karaddin said:

I think its much more to do with the "mega wealthy white man" is closely associated with the levers of power in the US. That's why he's an authority figure, not because he beats up criminals.

I don't think that's the spirit of Batman, or Cap (although it seems like you're solely talking about Batman here).  Would be totally fine with Batman being a different ethnicity or gender, but being ridiculously rich is pretty essential to the character.  And I don't think anyone has anything to apologize for in terms of depicting that over the past 80 years. 

This reminds me of an anecdote about Dark Knight.  Considering when it came out there was a lot of argument about whether the film encouraged Dubya's torture tactics or was criticizing such.  Nolan basically said "I didn't give a shit about that, was just trying to make a good movie."

22 minutes ago, mormont said:

Didn't she have sort-of mental powers in Age of Ultron for a bit? And now she has generic energy projection powers, mainly.

Yeah it seems they kind of retconned her Ultron "I can fuck with your head power" since then.  Didn't see it in Civil War either.  BUT, that does remind me that both me and kara were wrong - Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver did not get their powers from the Tesseract, or space stone, but rather the mind stone - HYDRA got a hold of it in between movies.

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19 minutes ago, mormont said:

Didn't she have sort-of mental powers in Age of Ultron for a bit? And now she has generic energy projection powers, mainly.

I wonder if it's because the mental manipulation thing seems to be Mantis' thing now?

I can see how Wanda would focus on her telekinesis rather than her mental stuff - she only used the mental stuff for bad reasons, it might have bad associations.  Or she might have promised Bruce she would never use it again.

Did she use it briefly in IW on Vision?  When they are in Scotland he feels something from the Mind Stone and she flicks some red stuff at his head and says "I just feel you".  Possibly Vision is immune to any mental manipulation anyway.

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10 minutes ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Add in Thandie Newton and yah, this is me...

I named the other two due to them being out as bisexual and pretty much goddesses of the online queer women circles lol. Thandie is also superb and a reason to watch, absolutely.

4 hours ago, Mosi Mynn said:

I can see how Wanda would focus on her telekinesis rather than her mental stuff - she only used the mental stuff for bad reasons, it might have bad associations.  Or she might have promised Bruce she would never use it again.

I think this is what they're going for yeah, she pretty much solely uses mind visions when bad and mostly telekinesis after she's good.

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On 3/31/2019 at 2:11 PM, The Anti-Targ said:

 

Yeah, I think the Accords are about trans-boundary activity. If you cross international borders and do superhero-y shit then the Accords will have something to say about that. Domestically it would be up to each country to decide how they regulate (or not) their super citizens. And honestly, as much as Tony wanted some oversight, I think he would also have lobbied hard for limited domestic regulation on his activities.

Which is why I was always irked by Cap’s resilience to any talk of regulation. There’s no comprise with him. No regulation seems remotely acceptable to him. And he comes across as very entitled imo. Like he acts like he should be able to walk into any country, with no legal approval and be able to dispense whatever justice he thinks is right in the exact matter he sees fit no questions asked. 

 

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26 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Which is why I was always irked by Cap’s resilience to any talk of regulation. There’s no comprise with him. No regulation seems remotely acceptable to him. And he comes across as very entitled imo. Like he acts like he should be able to walk into any country, with no legal approval and be able to dispense whatever justice he thinks is right in the exact matter he sees fit no questions asked. 

At the same time, I found Cap's point valid about answering to people with agendas. And it's natural for him to have such an attitude, given his experiences with Hydra. And also, this was Tony's attitude at one point, too. In Iron Man 2 he refused to work with the US government. "I privatized world peace". But Tony is a very reactionary person. His PTSD and Wanda playing with his mind made him create Ultron. A woman showing the picture of her dead son was the catalyst for his attitude on the Sokovia Accords.

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22 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

At the same time, I found Cap's point valid about answering to people with agendas. And it's natural for him to have such an attitude, given his experiences with Hydra. And also, this was Tony's attitude at one point, too. In Iron Man 2 he refused to work with the US government. "I privatized world peace". But Tony is a very reactionary person. His PTSD and Wanda playing with his mind made him create Ultron. A woman showing the picture of his dead son was the catalyst for his attitude on the Sokovia Accords.

Him becoming Ironman was a reaction to seeing his weapons be used for misery.

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54 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I named the other two due to them being out as bisexual and pretty much goddesses of the online queer women circles lol. Thandie is also superb and a reason to watch, absolutely.

I think this is what they're going for yeah, she pretty much solely uses mind visions when bad and mostly telekinesis after she's good.

Oh i see, lol. I thought it was just their stunning good looks and fabulous acting :laugh:

Didnt actually know that about Tessa Thompson, interesting! I knew she was all aboard the Marvel/Valkyrie ship and that her character was bisexual but didnt know she was bisexual herself. But then im seldom up to date with the relationships of celebs or iconic figures for the LGBTQI+ community (more’s the pity!)

ERW should be a goddess in all circles. Her sexual assault testimony was so incredibly brave and inspiring

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Tessa and Janelle Monae are a fairy tale couple :p people picked up on signs of them being together long before they both came out.

On a slightly more on topic note she also has fantastic chemistry with Hemsworth which is why I want that road trip movie and why I'm excited for Men in Black.

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2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

At the same time, I found Cap's point valid about answering to people with agendas.

I think that could be a reasonable worry. People with ill-intent could over stack the accords with rules that do nothing but hinder.  At the same time Cap doesn’t really seem to be wanting to answer to anyone. No regulation of any kind. The opposite unreasonable extreme.  The reasonable solution is somewhere in the middle. Where the Avengers don’t operate with no care for the law but not totally hogtied by it. Besides it is extremely useful for the Avengers to be able to coordinate their plans with a foreign country’s government. The government could more appropriately respond to when/if the Avengers efforts have the potential to endanger civilian life. Evacuations could be made if the threat the avengers are facing  looks to be really serious. 

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

And it's natural for him to have such an attitude, given his experiences with Hydra.

Wariness of government is not in of itself irrational, Cap would be mad if he thought the government only consisted of good actors after his recent fight with Hydra.

But still I feel Cap’s behavior goes beyond simply being cautious. 

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

And also, this was Tony's attitude at one point, too. In Iron Man 2 he refused to work with the US government. "I privatized world peace".

There is a shift in Tony I’ll concede that. 

2 hours ago, Corvinus said:

But Tony is a very reactionary person. His PTSD and Wanda playing with his mind made him create Ultron. A woman showing the picture of her dead son was the catalyst for his attitude on the Sokovia Accords.

I think Ultron along with the picture of the dead woman’s son formed Tony’s acceptance of the accords. The first kinda humbled him. He nearly indirectly destroyed the earth playing God with technology. He had no oversight in his pursuit of protecting the world and he nearly destroyed it. The second humanized the collateral damage that the Avengers cause when trying to save the day. To which prompted him to search for ways to which could decrease the unintended damage. I think his fear of superheroes being left to their own devices is rational response to Tony given what he’s been through. It’s a who watches the watchers situation. 

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3 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

No regulation seems remotely acceptable to Cap. And he comes across as very entitled imo., like he should be able to walk into any country with no legal approval and be able to dispense whatever justice he thinks is right in the exact matter he sees fit no questions asked. 

His views are a good representation of how a super man of conscience would come to see his proper role in shepherding the flock.  He wouldn't trust us, on account of how deeply untrustworthy we are.  Hitler had the super man complex , believing in german superiority.  Then, the super soldier who defeated hitler also has super man politics, perhaps not so shockingly because that's what he is, just without the germans' ethnic bias and lust for conquering.  Because Cap has seen the WW1 importance of him being able to wade in to the warfront to do what only he can do.  He knows the number of lives he can save by ending conflicts earlier, etc.  So this drives him to nudge his politics in front of ours. And agencies like the U.N. will limit Cap's ability to act, they'll want him to turn a blind eye to the black market status quo of member nations, they want the game to continue being theirs, played without superhuman oversight and Cap ultimately making the call.

  They wouldn't trust Cap to solve Jurusalem.  Would we?   Leaving our most fateful decisions to be made by one stubborn guy who might be a hothead that day wouldn't sit well (ha! Sitwell.  People tend to prefer sneaky Sitwell types who make our decisions for us in secret over Cap types who do it out in the open, which invites scrutiny.  Politics teaches us to be sneaky because nobody ever wins once they're under scrutiny in the open.) (Well, Trump.  But that's an exception since the scrutiny was improperly applied to him- -they knew their investigation was solely politically motivated from day one and that it would find nothing.  The game was simply to prolong that nothing.  With Cap, there's something to scrutinize.  He's caused some deaths while preventing others, and since he's not always acting as an official gov agent he's on shaky ground.)

  I don't read Superman so I don't know how much trouble he historically gets into with human governments, but I get the impression Superman stories skirt around this issue somewhat by framing things in a way so Clark doesn't have to deal with Civil War fallout as much, he just flies away from the ugly side of humanity and people get the message that they don't control him as much as Cap is having to grapple with?  Then Supes does something endearing to humanity and his PR problem dies down?   So Cap may be giving us a more honest appraisal of how humanity won't allow itself to be saved by super men.  It's all part of the equation summed up by saying, "They don't deserve you, Diana."

8 hours ago, karaddin said:

But they were RED mental powers. And making people see stuff is kinda in the reality stone wheelhouse too.

I run into this problem when organizing my own powers into categories: 

Mind over Matter abilities, gained as we evolve toward the godhead, are tough to differentiate from top-down godlike powers such as Alter Reality.   They overlap.  And when you try to justify keeping them as separately sourced power sets, your explanations become thin and even you don't buy it.   When you cast a spell to create a probability engine to improve the lives of people in the hood, does that count as a use of Mentalism or Archangel Grace?    Lots of these lil' dilemmas crop up, too.

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