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Jupiter‘s Legacy


Arakan

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Yeah, it seems like he has developed the view that it is a slippery-slope. Much as people say has happened to law enforcement in the US, where the police are increasingly likely to escalate to lethal force when they feel threatened. Once they start to believe killing is the best solution to a specific set of situations, killing might start to creep in as a solution for more and more situations.

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13 minutes ago, red snow said:

 

I still found the "never kill" even when a villain is killing off your team-mates a bit odd. Police, soldiers and security are all permitted to use lethal force when protecting life so it's a bit odd that Utopian insists on no killing ever. But again, this is something most traditional super heroes do all the time.

Yes it’s odd and I think maybe they wanted to address the whole slippery slope of killing in self-defense as such. I am honest, what counts as self-defense in the US shocks me from time to time as a European. I don’t necessarily agree with the Utopian but I agree that all options other than killing should be explored. 

For example killing someone on the basis of the „Stand your Ground“ rule of some US States would never fly in a German court as Self-Defense.  

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7 minutes ago, Arakan said:

I mean people here watch news I am sure. You can make a very good real world example: 2003 US invasion of Iraq or 2002 Invasion of Afghanistan. In both cases the US Military basically was Superman. Their enemies didn’t stand even a iota of a chance from a military perspective.

 

Your analogies don't really work to WWii because Iraq and Afghanistan didn't declare war on the US.

Also Western interference in foreign affairs is a terrible idea yes but there is a line past which there is a responsibility and preventing genocide is surely well over it.

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10 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

 

Your analogies don't really work to WWii because Iraq and Afghanistan didn't declare war on the US.

Also Western interference in foreign affairs is a terrible idea yes but there is a line past which there is a responsibility and preventing genocide is surely well over it.

Allright. I agree the Nazis where the closest to clear cut evil in the past 200 Years. But you didn’t address my questions: where do you draw the line? Was Stalin that much better than Hitler? Should Stalin be removed? What happens then? What about Mao? In reality there is no ethical balance to those things. Some genocides are bigger than others. That’s about it. 

In real life there Never is this one exception. Goal posts will move. You engaged yourself in WW2? Why don’t you help your fellow countrymen now in Korea? The show even addressed this with the Skyfox situation. 
 

Note: yes technically Germany declared war on the US but that’s it. A technicality. 

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Just now, polishgenius said:

 

Yes.

Ok. The Soviet Union breaks up and another civil war occurs. What then? 
 

The Utopian believes in accountability. If he removes Stalin he cannot leave the rest in ruins. 

Thus I think my analogies with the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions work quite well. In the end the US said fuck it we are out of here. That’s not how the Utopian works. You start something, you better finish it. I give him respect for that integrity. 
 

End result: God Kings on Earth. 

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The Utopian is not stupid. He knows what realpolitik means. In the end it’s about power and hegemony. And if you involve yourself with that you play the game till the end. This is what his brother and Skyfox wanted. 
 

Another example @polishgenius the Utopian is clearly portrayed as anti-racist. The US until the 60s was officially a racist country with Apartheid like laws. What should he do?

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5 minutes ago, Arakan said:

The Soviet Union breaks up and another civil war occurs. What then?

 

Depends. But you stop atrocities if you can. You just should. The reason Stalin wasn't removed wasn't because it was seen as morality better to let him do his shit it was because after the war they didn't know if they could take him and then the USSR became a nuclear power. 

Like your argument appears to be that not interfering in the Rwandan genocide was the right thing to do.

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The show clearly has flaws.  But I thought it flowed well, and was very enjoyable. 

I don't think the issues with the code here are particularly fair either.  Remember, the most powerful superheroes were all born around 1900.  That's going to create some archaic structures and viewpoints.  Especially when they're the heroes that others look up to.  

19 hours ago, Ran said:

From what I've read of Jupiter's Legacy, there are grandchildren of heroes running around as well. I think they have probably cut down the number of heroes alot though. The first issue of the comic says a hundred different heroes had responded to the Blackstar emergency, whereas it was like ... eight people on the show. Some of whom are not clear in regards to how they relate to the founding members of the Union, or if they relate at all (like the Tectonic guy, Brandon's friend at the club). Some reviewer said that by the end of the first season you still don't know how a lot of the younger heroes got their powers.

Its shown in the last episode.  When the majors got their power their was a blast outward and some appear to have had some of the script written onto them.  Presumably they or their children got powers, but at a lesser level.  Thus why the utopians are referred to as the 'majors'.  Their kids seem to be in the same category.  

This would also be the source of the villains with powers. 

10 hours ago, divica said:

When his country goes to war against another country and he lets his country soldiers die when he could have prevented it?

Since WWII has the USA been involved in a single conflict where its been black & white who the good and bad guys are, and the USA are clearly good? I can think of a handful of possibilities, but there are far more where this would not be the case.  As soon as you decide to fight in war, you're effectively letting your government politicise your actions since you're making yourself a part of the war machine.  It also has the potential to cause more conflict as potentially "good" superheroes fight each other due to nationalism.

Having a code which action in war sounds a (generally) good thing. 

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9 hours ago, Arakan said:

Allright. I agree the Nazis where the closest to clear cut evil in the past 200 Years. ...

They are now.  But was that really known in the USA then?  Remember, there was a huge domestic push for the US not to be involved in WWII.  Were they aware of what the Nazi's were doing?  What the Japanese were doing in China and Korea?

Because the reality is, if the Nazi's hadn't been killing Jews/homosexuals/roma and soviet POWs like they did, there wasn't that much to distinguish the European war from any number which had occurred prior to it.  So those saying Germany was a clear evil, really need to show that the heroes would have known at the time about the genocide.  

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19 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes, it's rather like someone asked, "How do I have a god-like hero who is as explicitly as possible not a fascist". So you give him a moral code that's so strict that the only thing he involves himself in are the things that humanity cannot handle , and he and his are purely law enforcement.

 

Except most of what they do is fight bank robbers, which I'm pretty sure humanity can handle okay. 

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Really, yall are talking about a much more interesting show that doesn't exist. Most of the Code on the show was not about interfering in human politics or wars - it was about the very basic "never kill no matter what". Whole major arcs were devoted to that and that alone. 

And that was really stupid and sophomoric. 

If the show had done more about the choice being interfering in society and well meaning fascism vs strict nonintervention? Okay, cool, that might have been interesting. But they didn't. The framing from everyone about the Code was whether or not it was okay to kill. 

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9 hours ago, ants said:

They are now.  But was that really known in the USA then?  Remember, there was a huge domestic push for the US not to be involved in WWII.  Were they aware of what the Nazi's were doing?  What the Japanese were doing in China and Korea?

Because the reality is, if the Nazi's hadn't been killing Jews/homosexuals/roma and soviet POWs like they did, there wasn't that much to distinguish the European war from any number which had occurred prior to it.  So those saying Germany was a clear evil, really need to show that the heroes would have known at the time about the genocide.  

Utopian can "hear" a rogue comet coming for Earth as far away as outside Mars. He can fly to Iowa from New York in about a minute. The general public heard rumors of the concentration camps in 1943. The idea that super-powered beings couldn't find this out is ridiculous. 

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11 hours ago, Karlbear said:

Utopian can "hear" a rogue comet coming for Earth as far away as outside Mars. He can fly to Iowa from New York in about a minute. The general public heard rumors of the concentration camps in 1943. The idea that super-powered beings couldn't find this out is ridiculous. 

There would have been a lot of screaming, death and agony coming from Europe at that time.  He may not have been able to distinguish. 

But fundamentally, you're saying he needed to investigate a rumour.  Which undercuts the position that WWII at the time was a clearcut war to stop an evil. 

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1 hour ago, ants said:

There would have been a lot of screaming, death and agony coming from Europe at that time.  He may not have been able to distinguish. 

But fundamentally, you're saying he needed to investigate a rumour.  Which undercuts the position that WWII at the time was a clearcut war to stop an evil. 

He can fly around the globe in about 3 minutes. Was he too busy stopping another bank robbery?

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I'm through episode 4 so far. It is indeed slow-going. The Great Depression-era stuff is utterly interminable (although Kurtwood Smith makes a very welcome, if all-too-brief, appearance), and I simply don't understand why they felt this stuff was necessary. The six issue miniseries basically had, like, 8 pages out of 130 devoted to how Sheldon and co. got their powers, and that was that. The present-day stuff is better, especially since the introduction of Hutch, and the Chloe-focused episode 4 was actually pretty good.

I do think the Utopian may be the weak link in the series. Not that Josh Duhamel is performing badly or anything, but the character's role in the present timeline is too archetypal despite the extremities of the Code he adheres to. It leaves him a static character, so far, lacking dynamism. Perhaps that's why they've put so much into the past segments, I suppose, to do the heavy lifting of explaining his character.

Don't think it's necessary, and I think a fan edit could tighten this whole thing up to, like, 4 hours and be just fine.

 

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On 5/9/2021 at 2:57 AM, Ran said:

Saw the first episode. It has some real pacing problems that reviewers all seem to suggest do not get fixed across the entire season. Some of the editing and line deliveries were not good. 

I did appreciate the exploration of comic book morality in a more "real" world -- the Utopian's Code (echoing the Superman of the 50s and 60s) requiring one to never kill under any circumstances starts to look quickly absurd in  the face of the problems they face. And the ending was intriguing enough.

@polishgenius

I'm not sure. There's a face blasted off and we're giving a loving image of what the insides look like not once, twice, but at least three times, and someone's body is blasted away below their neck, and there's cursing and drug use and stuff.

I am not a Millar fan either. He's a self-promoting shock jock for the most part. But I hope Frank Quitely is getting the big bucks thanks to the series. Tremendous artist.

I love Quitely’s artwork as well.  

I used to be a fan of Millar, but he turned out to be a bit of a one trick pony.  And I think by the time I got to Jupiter’s Circle, while I loved the art, I thought the story was fairly ugly and uninspiring.  

I kind of felt the same way about Amazon’s Invincible cartoon.  While I enjoyed the original comic well enough, the whole bloodbath that was portrayed in the cartoon turned me off.  

The older I get the less impressed I am with the grim and gritty “realism” being put in superhero comics.

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On 5/9/2021 at 9:34 PM, Arakan said:

Yes it’s odd and I think maybe they wanted to address the whole slippery slope of killing in self-defense as such. I am honest, what counts as self-defense in the US shocks me from time to time as a European. I don’t necessarily agree with the Utopian but I agree that all options other than killing should be explored. 

For example killing someone on the basis of the „Stand your Ground“ rule of some US States would never fly in a German court as Self-Defense.  

Yeah, in the UK I'm still glad that the police are rarely armed. There's still cases of unnecessary force but at least it's a lot harder to kill someone without a gun.

I guess that's sort of the point the show/Utopian is trying to make. If you have that amount of power it'd be easy to just kill everyone claiming it's the safest option/saves most lives. And that is a slippery slope.

Although it's why I'm still frustrated that no-one (presumably WB/HBO as they own DC comics) hasn't made an "authority" or "wild cats vol.3" show/film. The authority was about what happened when a god-like superteam decided to use their power to deal with all problems heavy-handedly and Wildcats was about a superteam that realised they could change the world for the better via corporations and capitalism (controversial!). I guess the boys and Invincible are sort of doing what the Authority did but I think Wildcats would stand out as something quite different in the crowded superhero scene. If someone pitched "Avengers meets Succession" to me I'd be all over it.

 

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15 minutes ago, red snow said:

 

Although it's why I'm still frustrated that no-one (presumably WB/HBO as they own DC comics) hasn't made an "authority" or "wild cats vol.3" show/film.

 

II suspect the terms for the creators on those early Wildstorm titles were too lucrative, meaning WB will prefer exploring IP they have more financial stake in.

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I really do want a six-or-so-movie arc based (loosely) on Warren Ellis' run on Stormwatch, Bendis' fall, the rise of the Authority based on Ellis' run but more overtly political than the deliberatly-watered-down-in-protest-at-low-Stormwatch-sales stuff he did, then skipping over the shit Millar etc runs and going straight into  Authority: Revolution.

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