Most Marvel movies suck.
They didn’t use to.
The problem is the studios have gotten lazy and risk adverse.
The reason why Endgame was so huge was because the studio took some risks and did the work to set everything up for that payoff.
There were movies in the first few phases that fell flat, like Thor 2, but even that movie pushed the plotlines forward.
Post Endgame, marvel hasn’t really had a unified plan. They’ve also become so risk adverse that if any given movie underperforms, it kills the entire plotline.
Which leads to movies that don’t have meaningful character growth, so who cares about those characters? Or those movies?
What movie is this even referencing? Almost every depiction of spiderman has him as a man of and for the people. Admittedly I haven’t watched more recent marvel movies. Has that changed, somehow?
No, nothing has changed. You could make the argument in the comic about Spider-Man’s appearance in Captain America: Civil War, but nothing else.
Homecoming: Spider-Man is fighting criminals trying to steal hyper advanced technology to weaponize it and sell to other criminals.
Far From Home: Spider-Man is fighting a guy who is using advanced tech to stage destructive attacks with elaborate illusions in order to set himself up as a hero, despite the large amount of destruction and harm he’s causing without care.
No Way Home: Spider-Man is trying to redeem and prevent from dying some inter-dimensional villains he inadvertently caused to be dragged into his universe.
Infinity War/Endgame: Spider-Man joins other heroes to fight a galactic tyrant with Malthusian ideas of population control, hell-bent on eliminating half of all life in the universe.
In none of these movies was he fighting for the government to maintain the status quo.
He’s always been my favorite since 6th grade, relatable and really just trying to protect his city from shitbags. Sometimes he’s literally just patrolling looking for crime.
I also enjoy that a bit insubstantial number of his problems are the result of him just messing up while trying to do the right thing. Like the entire plot of No Way Home was caused my multiple screwups while Peter was trying to help people.
Metal Gear Solid 2 plays out like this. Spoilers below but it came out in 2001 so whatever
The bad guy is a former President that knew his job was just as a figurehead, nothing more. He found out the hard way that even his orders came from a cutout.
He recruited “terrorists” to take the sitting President “hostage” so they could “force him” to detonate an EMP over the east coast. The plan is to dismantle the shadow government (actually AI) running the government/censoring public opinion and hopefully free the country
You play as the wide eyed idealistic special forces infiltrator, trained heavily through VR and sent to “rescue” the sitting President from the “terrorist leader” and learn that everything you know is wrong and you were given orders by the AI all along
Thanks for the succinct explanation. For anyone looking for a solid explanation of the whole timeline I’d recommend
This is tangential to the main point you are making, but:
… I also always interpreted Raiden as basically Kojima more or less openly mocking or taunting the western player base of… well, mostly white male, naive/emo/astoundingly insecure children.
I remember there being absolutely massive backlash when MGS2 came out with tons of ‘gamers’ just calling Raiden a ‘gay little effeminate f@ggot boy’ and shit like that.
… Which I found quite funny in a meta-ironic sense.
And then of course, if you…actually do play through the game… well, from Raiden’s POV, … it basically is a shonen, a coming of age arc, making mistakes, struggling, being confused… but ultimately getting his shit together just enough to … well maybe not " “save the day” ", but avert utter catastrophe…
… as well as Raiden develops maturity as a character, reveals that… he actually has a lot of extremely serious trauma in his past, and he genuienly becomes a hero as he comes to terms with, and overcomes much of it.
…
MGS2, where Hideo Kojima dared to ask: What if an action hero wasn’t an absolute badass with a gruff voice?
(took western culture almost 20 years to even come up with the phrase ‘subversion of expectations’…)
Spoilers below but it came out is 2001 so whatever
I had someone get mad at me b/c I described a plot from a book written 70 years ago. I declined to edit my post to hide the “spoilers”. I guess I am the asshole.
I beat that game once and this is the first time I had any idea what it was about, thanks for a solid explanation
Thanks! To be fair I glossed over a LOT
The most shocking revelation was that Jack didn’t have any posters in his room!
Ironically and not, that’s exactly what Iron Man brought Nu-Spiderman to do in the CW movie. Government is crying about control, so a war profiteer recruits, illegally extricates from the country, arms and indoctrinates a kid to collaborate in a paramilitary action to oppress the following groups represented: war veterans, the elderly, women, foreigners, scientists, disabled, performance athletes, amputees and people seeking asylum.
Geez. Considering the previous movie was about a nazi takeover of the US, seems like someone shoud have seen things coming!
In the comics he’s originally on Iron Man’s side of registration due to his personal guilt, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap’s side. But yeah in the MCU he’s literally a child soldier who doesn’t know what he’s fighting for.
, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap’s side
No he doesn’t; he just realizes that it personally inconveniences him because it gets his (only) moral tether killed, and decides to walk back that support to restore his own benefit, at the cost and harm of everyone else.
Don’t forget the paroled convict
True, how could I!
I always think back to this one quote, something like
You can tell the morals of a society by the myths they tell themselves. We tell stories of heroes who save the world then quietly go back to their day job until they’re needed again
I read that and I actually think positively on it. To me, i read it as the good person doesnt stand by and do nothing, they fight evil as it crops up, even at the cost of their peaceful life they desire. Im not sure I can agree to any one type of story them we tell though. Its pretty varied.
I’m curious, what’s you’re take on that then?
Liberalism in a nutshell.
We just want an insurance policy, not for anything to change. We want to protect what we’ve built, write off the horrors of the world as isolated events like a collapsing building or asteroid impact. They stop the villains from rocking the boat, even when the villains have a morally superior position because “you have to do it the right way”
But the heroes aren’t too morally superior… They can’t make us feel bad. They do something about problems in front of them, and then go back to their job. They don’t use their power to actually address root issues, they don’t try to lead, they just defend the status quo
But, then heroes started to get more complex. Batman is a billionaire who fights crime, despite having the ability to actually fix the crime problem in Gotham, he just fights. He suffered a random act of violence as a child, and so that instilled a sense of justice. He works with the police and uses his wealth… In any way except actually changing things
Spiderman learned the hard way noblesse oblige, that his power gives him the responsibility to use it well. And he does, he saves people around him while also actively working to make the world better at his day job - inside the system. He’s basically an activist
Then you have captain America, who puts his sense of justice above the system… But he mostly works inside it, but sometimes it’s infiltrated and he fights or it’s wrong and he stands against it
But when you get to more recent heroes, they start to get dark. The system is broken, so they work outside it as best they can. They don’t have day jobs anymore. They kill sometimes. They make sacrifices, they fail. They question themselves.
People scream at them “where were you when we needed you?” And they explain the answer to that question to the readers through character development, even though there’s nothing they can say to the victims
The heroes aren’t infallible, they aren’t strong or wise enough, they constantly struggle, and they fail. This isn’t a hobby for them, they don’t go back to work. But they keep trying, especially at great personal cost
And they carry every failure with them as penance for not being good enough to have saved us when we needed them
Some versions do try to tell a more complex story, like The Boys and Invincible. My Hero Academia is also there as an anime
Doesn’t Invincible literally work with and for a secret government military organization?
TBF, Cecil is like the gold standard for shadowy government operation heads - he’s not corrupt, he listens to experts, he has no hidden agenda besides a full commitment to the Earth’s defense from near-constant alien invasion, and the worst thing he does is not fully trust Mark (with pretty good reason, let’s not lie) and rehabilitate villains by forcing them to use their abilities to protect the Earth. That and teleporter abuse, but he’s earned that.
, and the worst thing he does is
…to farm dead veterans and turn them into cyborg soldiers solely so that he can antagonize Mark and (fail to) make a point about how “above things” he has to be?
Oh and he tapped the water supply of the entire country. Possibly the entire world, who knows. Anyone who’s read Batman “protocol” stories how where do those “preparations” lead and how.
That and teleporter abuse, but he’s earned that.
At the cost that has been calculated by the fanbase, in the apparent economy of cities being destroyed on the double? Okay that one I might be willing to concede.
Season 3 spoilers:
Tap for spoiler
Mark realizes Cecil is using them and nearly kills him, leaving Pentagon. There’s an epic episode showing Cecil’s past
Yeah I haven’t actually seen season three yet, but I have read all the comics and I got to tell you he keeps working with them.
Only at first, when he was naive.
then
The shadowy organization betrayed him because hes not fully human, and invincible basically starts fighting them while still fighting the impotent bad guys.
I like One Punch Man. While he is a hero. The fact that he does it for fun and is frustrated at being so powerful makes it really stand out.
I love OPM, however I think it’s more about shonen anime stereotypes rather than western superhero stereotypes
Saitama is hilarious in the driest way possible, which is a humor that not everyone can appreciate
The pilot episode where he meets a crazed villain who loses his shit when Saitama tells him ‘I am a hero for fun’, and goes on a rant on what a stupid backstory that is… before he gets blown to bits with one single punch.
The running joke of him always losing at video games because he just does the same move again and again.
His entire relationship with Genos
Umbrella academy?
Loving invincible currently
Don’t remind me of umbrella academy.
Worst ending ever.
Now I can’t remember if I finished the last season or not
You’ll know because it ends.
Horribly.
There’s also an arc with Lila and Five which is…stupid.
You’ll know
superheroes are “benign” fascists, it’s fiction that would never work. Even in the gooest, saccharine interpretations I would be the one criticizing superman lol
I question how many comics you have read then since many of these characters were created as anti-fascist figures. Captain America, Superman, and The X-Men for example were all vocally against fascism, bigotry, racism, and more.
Captain America for instance has a history of being in opposition to his government on issues around civil rights. He has always been an icon of anti-fascism.
Of course non-media literate people and just people who only know the character from posters and t shirts see the stars and stripes and think he’s simply a “patriotic” hero.
As far as whether it would “work” in reality, well I think that is beside the point. These are about fantasy, myth making and legends. They are not supposed to be real. They explore ideas around what makes a hero with layers of fantasy and unreality that make the stories unpractical for our real world and to dismiss the ideas they explore because of that misses the point of the art. But…
The moral questions that would arise if they were to exist the real world have also been handled really well by the comic book medium, books like The Watchmen, Rising Stars, V for Vendetta, Miracleman (pretty much anything by Alan Moore tbh), and more.
Comics and superheroes are modern day myth making, and the value of that shouldn’t be dismissed. Captain America, Spider-Man, The X-Men and more have inspired generations to view altruistic acts as things to be admired and aspired to. And the value of that should not be underestimated.
I agree. When the heroes are vigilantes, they’re only acting as vigilantes because either the police are corrupt, or the police are overwhelmed.
I am not a Batman fan, and love to joke that if he and the other Gotham billionaires paid a reasonable tax, Gotham wouldn’t be such a hellscape. But, the Batman theme is that the police are frequently corrupt and always overwhelmed, so a civilian needs to step up and protect the people.
Spiderman’s whole deal is “with great power comes great responsibility.” He puts his life on the line to protect people, and mostly from small-scale disasters like a run-away train.
What this comic gets absolutely wrong is that comic book heroes never try to stop someone from changing the status quo if they’re doing it peacefully. The only ones they try to stop are the ones trying to do it by force. And mostly the change they’re trying to make is to bring literal Nazis back to power. I think most sane people would have preferred status quo to Nazi takeover, though obviously the USA is getting there on its own without supervillains today.
Also it bleeds into other media. Like the kid’s show Paw Patrol. I am obviously far too old to watch the show and while I have enjoyed watching kids stuff from time to time I just haven’t been able to spare rhe time for that one.
However based on a cursory knowledge of it and reviews from youtubers the show has some really bad ideas in the subtext.
Firstly the shows basic services in the community are fully privatized. They even have some scenes where outsiders want to call the cops or some other local service only to be reminded by locals that in that community they are done by this kid and his dogs.
Also that kid who commands paw patrol? He is like the avengers in that he lives quite apart from the community he is supposed to be serving.
This is akin to how billionaires don’t just live far away… they live REALLY far away and secluded from most people and don’t interact with them directly. This is despite the fact that they control extremely critical assets to the community, they are not just isolated from the community, they are also unaccountable to them.
So, paw patrol is a libertarian dytopia?
Pretty much.
Fair enough, but watchmen is cool
It’s cool because it deconstructs the whole thing, down to having a quasi god as one of the heroes
And having Captain America be The Comedian, because American exceptionalism is a joke.
The Comedian was based on Peacemaker. The initial pitch was that all of the Watchmen would be DC’s (at the time) recently-acquired Charlton characters. DC nixed the idea, so Moore just tweaked them and renamed them.
Just like how Nite Owl is based on a Blue Beetle with absolutely no other influences.
That’s the problem with superhero stories. The story needs to begin and end with the world in a state similar to our own (for relatabilitiy and sequel potential) despite the vast power of its protagonist, so the hero must ultimately be concerned with preserving the status quo.
It’s one of the reasons why superhero movies are in decline now that all the most famous storylines have already been adapted, and why comic book sales have been going downhill ever since they started taking themselves seriously.
Also, often, the status quo they’re trying to preserve is “Earth is not being invaded by aliens”, or “this supervillain is not currently on a rampage”.
As for movies about changing the status quo, that’s really what the whole X-Men comic has been about since it came out in the 1960s. The whole theme there is “mutants aren’t accepted by society, but they want to be, so they put their lives on the line to try to prove mutants are good”. Over the years mutants have stood in for jews, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc.
Sometimes the X-Men are fighting off supervillains or aliens. But, often they’re fighting off an oppressive government that is trying to wipe them out. So, the status quo they’re trying to change is “the people hate mutants and the government wants to wipe them out”.
You just reminded me of one of the Life is Strange fanfics I read once. Where Max and Chloe have these time and space warping powers and just go the opposite way, they determine the status quo is fucked and needs to be rectified globally and then start doing it in an actually thoughtful sensible way. (There was some shadowy confusing adversity but I can’t recall its nature)
This is my condition on lemmy 🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐
You just made a post to describe how you can’t make posts. Why not just post what you want?
Posts are not a problem. It’s when l form my communities, that’s when l get banned. Two lemmy instances banned me after l created my communities and started posting in them !!
You must be a great person if everyone agrees that their community is better off without you in it. You are not being silenced you are being shown the door
They made Spiderman rich in the movies because the writers a rich and think writing about a poor beneath them.
Other assholes include: Thor who is a dumb over privlaged fratboy who causes interndimentonal wars by acting like a dumb frat boy.
Ironman who was not only a war profiter who gave one the most powerful weapons platforms in the world to some teenager without any kind of oversight whose main story arc involves him fucking over poor people
Captain marvel is a brutal space pig who uses their powers to intimidate indigenous people on whatever planet she is on. Uses a weapon that can level city blocks and her character progression is that she needs to be more emotional. Plus she was fine committing genocide on the skrulls until she found out they had women.
Wakanda is a monarchist enthnostate presented as a utopia that tortures and murders outsiders and is presented in such a way that if it was the US the movie would be labeled as propaganda. Plus using ‘colonizer’ as a slur to call the people helping them even though they were never colonized
The eternals are boring
Wonda is everything that justifies the hate of mutants. But it’s not her fault so she gets an pass. But it highlights everything stupid about the gay and minority parallel. No hates black or lbgtq people because they can think a hundred peope to death.
Almost all of these people are sone kind of aristocrat.
Black Widow spends all of her movie rescuing like 12 people while letting and entire gulag of men die in an avalanche without even flinching. Not to mention the fact that her and Hawkeye worked for the CIA and probably overthrow countless democracies.
The guardians of the galaxy employ a dangerous psychopathic racoon who thinks nothing of murder.
The least aggregous is Captain America, a living propaganda poster. Antman, one of the only poor person appearing in End Game is treated like a joke even though he should be the most dangerous one among them.
USAgent was treated like crap before he did anything wrong to the point I kind of felt bad for him
Getting rid of Zemos direct Nazi ties makes him almost a hero. And those ties are less then SHIELD’s and less then that of most countries
Also, do not forget the beef between Disney and DeSantis only started when people saw they were working together. And only do scenes involving any kind of homosexuality in such away as to edit them out for whatever dictatorship they want to impress.
Also the original MCU Quicksilver was a thousand times better then yet another quipy hero that we don’t need. Plus asshole Quicksilver is closer source material.
Edit: wtf am i getting down voted for?
When did they make Spider-Man rich?
He got a lot of money from the arms dealer
From Stark? When?
We see him get a bunch of tech from Stark, but we never see him get money. Then, at the end of No Way Home he gives up literally everything, including his identity as Peter Parker, and is shown living in an extremely cheap apartment.
Edit: wtf am i getting down voted for?
I can’t imagine why a long-winded, dripping-with-cynicism, not-funny effort-post ridiculing and attacking the entire marvel universe and all the characters that some people might like, won’t get you those precious, precious upvotes.
Truly, I have outgrown marvel, but this is the kind of brain-dead karma-whoring and social-brain-death that I don’t miss on reddit. Not everyone thinks this deep about kid’s movies or cares about upvotes.
Sure doesn’t sound like you are over it.
Come on, you could have done better than that. I thought you were here for karma?
Not really, I was just wondering. But don’t worry Disney will be alright
eternals wasn’t just boring, it was built on the idea of “ancient aliens”, which is horribly racist conspiracy theory that effectively claims that brown people cannot build cool shit. Pyramids? Aliens. Nazca Lines? Aliens. Nobody questions the Colosseum though.
You must have found the eternals fan lmao
There’s like two way it could end when a superhuman being try to change the status quo for the good, one is through the courtroom, which is slow and boring, another one is to forcefully take over the “bad” government and force the “good” on people, which we have seen in something like Injustice.
This is the reality of the world 🌍!!
Great. So we’re going to be seeing this meme 8 times every month?
This is why the Nolan Batman trilogy (really the first two films) resonated so well with the global audience.
It was an ordinary guy against systemic corruption, something that a majority of the global population lives in every day.
Not a superhero against an externalized villain whose motives can be boiled down to either “evil because I deserve it” (the main antagonist) or “evil because of necessity” (every thug and extra who gets beat up).
Iron Man was also basically a giant ad for the US military in Afghanistan lol. Marvel never brought back the Taliban ten rings in Shang Chi
the Nolan batman trilogy is just how the public are sheep and they need a super badass Seal Team Six operator to save them from themselves
Calling Bruce Wayne an ordinary guy is a travesty. And the whole point of the Iron Man 1st movie is that warmongering is a terrible legacy. Are you sure you watched any of these movies?
dc is more guilty of this than marvel, but yeah.
Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one… he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he’s being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm’s way.
In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won’t, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).
MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn’t. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.
And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that’s willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.
Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?
Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he’s done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.
Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.
Iron Man 3: Wouldn’t you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.
Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.
Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.
Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.
Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.
Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.
Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.
Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.
The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.
Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.
Alright, I’m not listing any more, there’s a million of these things, you get the idea.
The Falcon movie, set with a background of black oppression and empowerment, is about how General President Ross is really a good guy who loves his country and family even though he did medical experiments on and then enslaved a guy.
The villain.
Disney hasn’t actually done that bad a job at messaging so far but that’s… Pretty bad. And suspiciously timed.
Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call
More precisely, the wake-up call being: the weapons that he sold to the US military as a war profiteer have ended up in the hands of the enemies and he gets blown up with a missile that has his name on it. It was rather on point.
Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.
…my memory must be shit; I don’t remember Captain America ever fighting DOGE…
doge is a recent name for hydra.
