Now if only someone proposed an antagonist who wanted to abolish all comics and superheroes F451 style, @Xoic would become more prolific than James Patterson
I don't read the comics, but they did seem pretty blown out of proportion in other media. Like is Iron Man and Captain America really that ridiculous and vain than in just the movies? From what I can understand, aren't the avengers supposed to be a hyper organized super team only for elite heroes or something? In which case, why are they having child-like hour long arguments in cinema with each other? Doesn't make any sense. As an extension of my prior post, if you dislike superman or that particular archetype, check out invincible if you haven't already. Omni-Man is kinda interesting.
They are arguing because contrived conflict is the best you can do when you are churning out movies every 3 or 4 months without care.
I'm seeing a definite trend here. The people who dislike the movies the most seem to be very unfamiliar with them or just don't understand them. Iron Man is vain yes, he's a narcissist. I don't remember Captain America being vain though. What I do remember is them clashing over their values, since Tony Stark (Iron Man) represented the desire for safety while Steve Rogers (Capt. America) represented the desire for freedom. It's a way of dramatizing the big clash that goes on in America between the political groups. And it was leading up to the movie Civil War, in which the Avengers actually broke into warring factions and the faction led by Iron Man was put in prison, where he believed they belonged. This dramatizes the ideas behind the groups that are always trying to defund the police and those who believe the police are needed to protect us from violent criminals. As for the Avengers fighting, that was for 2 reasons in the 1st Avengers movie. Joss Whedon (writer/director) wanted first to show how their powers and personalities relate to each other. That was done powerfully and very visually (they are very visual movies, dramatizing ideas through action) by having them fight over Loki, who had been captured by the Avengers but then Thor tried to take him to Asgard to face justice there. In the ensuing battle we could see for instance Thor with his hammer fighting against Captain America with his shield and Iron Man with his suit of armor. The irresistible force versus 2 different immovable objects, and offence versus defense. It was their way of getting to know each other. If you've ever known any rowdy guys, this is just how they are, they introduce themselves and test each other by clashing, verbally and then physically. And rowdy guys are what you need for a fighting team. Then later, on the Shield helicarrier, they started arguing because Loki used the Spear of Destiny to get into all their heads and make them argue in order to break them apart into small factions. This is standard strategy against a team or a country, break it into small warring factions and keep them fighting against each other, then you just sit back and watch them destroy each other and step in and clean up after the fact, rather than having to fight against them all as a unified team. It's actually very intelligent. And of course ultimately his main point in getting them all riled up was to unleash the Hulk who he knew would wreak absolute havoc on the ship giving Loki the distraction he needed to escape. If you want to turn Bruce Banner into the Hulk, the way to do it is to piss him off. I've found one group of people who doesn't like superhero movies are the practical-minded ones. It's not only superhero movies they don't like but anything that requires some imagination and understanding of symbolism. I've known a few people like that, and they hate all science fiction and fantasy and anything speculative, where ideas are symbolized and dramatized. My mom was utterly unable to understand this stuff no matter how many times I tried to explain it to her. Since then I've met many other people along that same spectrum, who seem to only want to see movies or read stories about real people doing normal things in a normal world, no imagination allowed. I'm not saying I think anyone in here is part of that group, I kind of doubt it since this is a writer's forum. Just sharing an observation that helps me understand people and their psychology and why some people like certain things while others seem to hate them.
Not exactly. There was definitely no hyper-organization, they were just assembled by Nick Fury because there were huge threats to humanity that could only be fought by such a group of super-powered individuals. Threats the police and armies are unable to deal with. There was nobody in charge, no commander or hierarchy of command. They were a group of free warriors, each with very specific abilities. You don't force a group like that into conformity, it would neutralize their individual powers. You let them fight against the threat in whatever ways occur to them, to use their unique abilities in the best possible ways. Some things need to find their natural form from the ground up and can't be forced or controlled. And to continue my analysis of why some people dislike superhero movies, I think a big reason is that they dislike violence. In a highly civilized society with police and courts to handle and regulate everything, people can grow disconnected from realities such as the need for violence. Not all violence is bad. I mean, if the good people (police, military) refuse to commit violence and lay their weapons down, then the bad people have a very easy time looting and pillaging and raping and killing. It isn't violence that's the bad thing, it's people who use it for illicit purposes. Violence itself can never be gotten rid of, so you need people willing to fight to protect you. If there weren't good people prepared to use violence to protect us, there would be no such thing as civilization or safety, we'd have to live like it's the Wild West and all just protect ourselves.
I'll concede that symbolically, all the super hero concepts tend to hold up. But I disagree that rowdy guys tend to start fighting each other after being with each other for so long. It may have been normalised in MCU. But in general, I'd say its pretty weak characterisation that they just randomly start fighting each other physically over every disagreement. At least, I've not seen this in real life; people don't just start fighting physically over every disagreement at work. IRL they'd have genuine character growth that would allow them to trust and harmonise each other eventually. But the problem is that the MCU and comic books in general don't want them to grow up. Their characterisation has to be relatively consistent and symbolic to go through all these cameos and battles with different villains. It's characterisation driven by marketing. The MCU want to be able to get you to watch any marvel movie and have a consistent view point of who the bad guys and good guys are. If you see a cameo of spider man, you know he's there to help his friend Iron Man. They want these scenes to happen without question or build up. This significantly lowers the need to actually act anything out. Just get the actor to show his face for a few sec to fight a bad guy. That's why small breaks in characters tend to heighten the tension like you said in Stark vs Rogers. But by far most of them tend to be consistently within the same camp. But they still need to have this show of contrived tension. Which is where the disagreements would come up. In reality, most of them wouldn't bicker so much in my opinion.
Being with each other for so long? I was talking about when they first met Thor. In fact they met because he attacked them. He wasn't an Avenger at the time. And I believe I said, or meant to say, this this is often how rowdy guys behave when they first meet. I'm not talking about people at work, more like biker gangs or tough guys when they encounter each other in a bar or a parking lot. But come to think of it, yes, I've seen people arguing and backstabbing each other at work all the time. And not just rowdy guys, geeky guys and women of all kinds participate in this time-honored tradition. And after they had thoroughly introduced themselves through fighting (in a superhero movie, where fighting is what it's all about... ) then they got along nicely. Until the next big event like Civil war where they clashed over ideological reasons. It seems so weird to me that any of this needs to be explained. This makes it seem that some people just react strongly (one might almost say violently ) to certain ideas being presented in the movies.
Ah I see, in first meeting clashes, it totally makes sense. They live in a world where they don't know who to trust and it can be hard to let your guard down. But I think they still bicker a lot even after this point though. They are not always on the same page exactly. Also the point about work, I kind of agree there is some back stabbing going on. But that's in relation to workplace politics and promotions and shit. But generally people are in unity when actually working.
Not sure how disliking those movies correlates with lacking imagination or anything else you suggested. Hopefully the story is different in the comics, because arguing for hours when the world is in danger would surely lead to it's swift destruction. There's no psychology behind it, the movies and comics just aren't interesting to me.
As I said above, give some examples, besides the ones I already explained. I can't think of any other times they bickered pointlessly instead of fighting the bad guys. In fact even the bickering I was talking about above was well motivated, two different groups both wanted to take custody of Loki, a terrorist. I'd hardly call that pointless arguing. It was the Avengers on one side (Earth's protectors) and Thor on the other as an agent of Asgard, where Loki is from. It's easy enough to see how those are competing interests who would naturally tussle. Happens all the time in the real world, often through diplomacy or legal battles, and sometimes through combat or guerilla warfare. Ok, thanks for the honesty.
This is some stupid year 5 class bickering. Everyone talking over each other like children. But fair enough this was the first Avengers so they didn't have enough time to grow. Thor randomly grabs a colleague by the neck for no reason and they spend the precious time berating Tony as if he wasn't trying to do something good. He did make a mistake but it's pretty dumb to be infighting just prior to Armageddon. It feels contrived and cheap to me. So again they start bickering about who was right and wrong. It feels contrived and cheap. But having watched it again, they do serve some sort of narrative purpose. But I don't have the skill to dissect why I found those scenes quite egregerarous so I won't argue the point. Possibly I'm wrong and it's just an opinion on my part.
Well the first one you posted is the scene I just explained in detail above. Banner is even holding the Spear of Destiny that Loki was using to control all of their emotions and cause them to fight, his ultimate goal being to make Banner turn into the Hulk as a distraction so Loki can escape imprisonment. Come on man! You're not paying attention. In the second one it takes place at an early point in Thor's character arc where he's still a rebellious ruffian, a spoiled child not mature enough to take the throne of Asgard. Later he grow much more mature. But I can't say much more about that scene, I don't have Ultron and haven't watched it more then once, that being a long time ago. The third one is another example of Tony and Steve arguing over their ideological differences. And Tony is just about destroyed by his PTSD and increasing neuroticism over all the traumatic things he'[s experienced. I think it's quite realistic he would explode like that. People do it all the time in real life, especially over ideological arguments. This is why message boards have a debate room. It almost sounds like you just don't think there should be powerful conflict within the group. How would a story work without powerful conflict? That's the driver of all the drama. And in each example you've provided so far it's well motivated and seems pretty realistic to me (aside from the magical elements like the Spear of Destiny and the fact that they have powers, but for that we have suspension of disbelief). Thank you for making my point for me. Agreed.
Sometimes you do your research and it leads you down some dark dark alley ways. You meet a demon and it whispers in your ear, "You were right all alllooong..." You gotta fight that and stay humble. Edit: but to be fair to me, it's a testament to how forgettable the movies are that I don't remember them. I remember nearly every movie I watch. It's freaky as hell. But the MCU is a blur. Edit: I think my little story doesn't make much sense, I was the one going down the alley way and fighting off my ego telling me I had to be right.
Sorry if I sounded arrogant, I didn't mean to. I did it with a wink and a nod, trying to be humorous. But it gets tiresome fighting for so long over these differences of opinion. Hmm... seems to me that's a real-life example showing that indeed, people do clash over their opinions. Since you quoted that post I've added more to it, talking about each of the clips. And I didn't do it to rub it in that "hey, I was right!", but to try to work out this discussion we're having. Much of what I'm saying I discover as I think these ideas through. I actually know a lot more about the movies now than when we started this thread a few days ago.
Oh, were you talking about my: Lol, well, what do you think a teacher would say if they had just got done explaining something in great detail and you immediately raised your hand and brought it up as if you didn't hear the explanation?
Haha, it's not that I've not paid attention. In regards to consumption of media/books I have a fairly large memory bank of information. So even if I don't fully know it I tend to go with instinct. I overestimated it a little today and I am happy to admit that I was wrong to convey my opinion as a fact.
I don't think you came across as arrogant. Just as someone who came across as someone who proved their point. I don't begrudge this at all however, it's kinda why I am here on this site. Being introduced to new ideas and concepts is kinda my thing.
Ok a bit more time to think about it. I think the problem I have with those scenes is that they are predictable within the narrative structure that was created for the MCU. Thor is always the loose cannon of the group, Tony is the narcissist and Rogers is the spiritual leader. So I guess the main issue I have is that even with it is that even if it's a conversation that needs to happen narratively, it ends up feeling like bickering because you know they will move past it and end up doing the same things anyway. You could literally remove the entire argument and every character would behave consistently straight after that. It removes emotional tension of Tony arguing with Rogers because they are going to be kumbaya the scene after. It's all vanilla and interchangeable scenes. People were discussing Bob Ross in this forums and I guess he's the most direct example of what MCU means for art. You could have variety of different paintings being drawn, but the process is largely the same as Bob Ross doing his thing on the canvas. The same techniques, no soul, but a pretty landscape. I'm still not quite satisfied with this critique, but it's the best I got. I'll probably spend some time away from this thread and think about it some more in any case.
Now you're getting into some different territory where I wont' argue with you but would rather work to understand better, because these same things bother me as well. Well ok, one point I would argue, a minor one. I just don't think it's unrealistic that 2 guys on the same team who are bickering will pull together when it's time to fight the larger enemy. That happens all the time, on TV shows where actors don't get along with each other but have to do love scenes, or on sports teams etc. I've been able to work exceptionally well with people I couldn't stand at my job sometimes because once we had to get busy there was no time for arguing, and we were both excellent workers. In some cases we had mutual respect for each other as workers but would argue when we had the free time for it or when something brought up a subject we disagreed on. But your other point is what Martin Scorsese was getting at when he famously accused the Marvel Cinematic Universe of not being cinematic (ironically enough). Obviously when they named it they were simply referring to movies as cinema, but he has a more specific understanding of what a cinematic movie is: I'm not sure I agree that the word cinematic means quite what he believes it does, but I agree with his major point. The Marvel movies, like all blockbusters, are simply entertainment. They're not at all on the high artistic level of movies like Taxi Driver or Pulp Fiction (arguably I suppose). They're written as simple straightforward genre fiction, very predictable and in fact very formulaic. After you've seen a few of them you start to see the repeating patterns. I've grown to hate the stupid armies of identical faceless hordes made entirely in CG at the end of so many of them, especially all the Avengers movies, but also like The Hand in Daredevil and The Defenders, and I think there was a band of identical faceless ninjas in Iron Fist IIRC, but not done in CGI, rather they all wore identical costumes that covered their faces. That was also the case for The Hand. Basically these movies are almost cartoons with live actors in them often going up against fully animated or motion-capture enemies like Thanos. In fact for that reason it's very surprising to me the level of thought and work that went into some of the themes and the underlying ideas running all through the entire series. I guess that was a necessity, overseen by Kevin Feige, in order to coordinate a whole series of series together so there are ongoing character arcs for each main character that criss-cross and interact with each other across different movies. That's one of the things that's amazing about Marvel, and that no other company has even come anywhere near getting right in superhero movies. DC keep rebooting all theirs because they rush them out and don't give the level of character development Marvel does, and each movie is a disaster of one sort or another. So yes, while Marvel is mere popcorn entertainment and lacks any kind of redeeming artistic qualities, it's still a towering achievement at that level. It takes incredible foresight and skill to be able to pull that off.
I'd say the difference between Marvel style movies (what they called Franchise films in the video) and what Scorsese calls cinema is much like the difference in writing between genre fiction and literature. There just isn't much character depth there in the franchise films, and the themes, while maybe not exactly trivial, are just shallow compared to themes explored with heart-wrenching and often devastating honesty in movies made by directors like Scorsese or Paul Thomas Anderson or Andrei Tarkovsky. "No emotional danger" is exactly right, and no emotional complexity or subtle nuance. They're more like comic books than like Moby Dick or War and Peace. But then I mean, what else could you expect?
I went through a period of snobbery when I was younger that lasted probably a decade and a half, maybe more. I thought of myself as so discerning that I could instantly sniff out quality from crap, and I kept pushing my standards higher and higher. Eventually I had reached such rarefied levels that I could hardly enjoy anything, and the things I thought measured up were so literary or so fine-art they were devoid of any joy or verve for life. You get a lot of that at the snobbish end of things. I'm glad my ivory tower eventually collapsed under its own weight and I emerged from the depression that went with it. Now I can enjoy art-house films, foreign movies, and high-quality cinema and then turn around and eat a pizza while enjoying Ant-Man and the Wasp and downing a few cold brewskis. I can see the excellence in what Marvel has accomplished without becoming a Marvel fanboy or mindless supporter. I can love both high-level Cinema and low-level genre (what some people would call garbage).
