Topic: Civil War.

[8ullfrog]

I haven't seen the film yet, so this post is pure speculation.

Cap was funny in avengers, but just kind of a rage filled poo in the self titled film, like he succeeded despite his efforts, rather than because of them. I didn't "buy" the interaction between him and agent carter, she just seemed like a beta version of black widow sent out to dupe a soldier into signing up for the supersoldier program. And then, after what seemed like two or three 20 minute meetings they're supposed to be besties?

I also didn't care for Howard stark being a beta version of tony. I prefered the captain of industry howard from iron man 2.

Anyway, the fun was gone in winter soldier, and poo really hit the fan, supposedly destroying the status quo, which for some reason, returns in ultron.

Seriously, networked heli-carriers with stolen stark tech were the big threat in winter soldier, not rabid pitbull bucky barnes. Oh, and lets reinstate shady poo Fury. Why not?

As far as I can tell from the trailers, Tony has sold out to "the man" possibly to avoid war crimes charges (Banners shitty AI coding vs. Infinity gem highjinks) set aside because ONLY THE AVENGERS KNOW THIS. Jarvis had anti evil protocols. Ultron? Not so much.

And cap wants to protect rabid pit bull barnes. For reasons. I can buy this motivation, considering what a madam movie Rogers is vs comic cap.

I'm not totally sold on Tony backing the man though, he spent quite a bit of Iron Man 2 fighting against stark tech being coopted by the military, and one of the baddies in Iron Man 3 was the Vice President of the united states.

So I buy the skeletor robot riot bots from ultron, not throwing all he eggs in the uncle sam basket.

Not sure where Igot the idea, but it kind of seemed like he was killed in the supersoldier process and then reanimated. Might have just been my brain misfiring.

Winter soldier was more of a movie. Made black widow and cap into black ops soldiers, which worked, but my mom wouldn't watch past the boat scene because of the brutality of the fight scenes. Clearly steve is repressing the poo out of his feelings, like how he jumps out of choppers and stays in his time capsule appartment


Tablet moved some paragraphs around, and I don't have a computer around to fix it.

[8ullfrog]

Iron Man 3 had terrorism as a subplot, and the original even had the balls to use afganistan (DC comics have the fictional nationstate of quarac)

Even with the magic armor, there are still problems operating in such an enviroment, and in fact that is lightly touched on, but they mcguffin it.

Shield was scary. In Avengers their shadow council tries to nuke NYC to prevent an alien beachhead, and in winter soldier they go full skynet, and the emperor is shown to be wearing no pants.

Nick Fury pulls so many schemes out of his ass that his death should have been left legit.

In the shitty GI Joe movies they experience reprecussions, or "blowback" for their actions, but it is eventually handwaved away, but in ultron, the team wiped out the capital city of an eastern european nation (which had previously been shelled with stark munitions.)

Tony really should have stuck with the clean energy plan and left the suits blown up. I just realized he also did takebacks on Pepper's christmas present, the richard.

But he did pay for the surgery to make her not be a road flare.

[smokester]

I come from a generation where goodies were goodies and baddies wore black hats. I really struggle with all of this "shading" that we like to put on heroes nowadays. Heroes (particularly superheroes) were invented to give us a pure white example: superman was the epitome of good, batman was the supreme vigilante. I understand that these things really reflect the world of the day (run up to WW2, cold war etc.), but superhero = good is an axiom I grew up with.

Then someone somewhere decided that heroes had to be angsty and worry about their own motivation, and then someone (maybe even the same someone) decided that saving humanity was not sufficient justification for (super)heroes, they had to do it without any damage because somehow humanity has the "right" to blame the heroes if anything gets broken in the process of the world being saved (qv The Incredibles/ Watchmen).

I can't read civil war comics, nor watch civil war films, because I cannot get behind the "heroes/ mutants/ whatever must be regulated" crap. Superheroes in particular are beyond regulation (more or less by definition), and - seriously - if the Eiffel Tower gets knocked over in a fight against aliens/ super villains does the fact that the heroes were fighting under (American) government control make it better than if they were acting out of altruism? Of course not - the fallacy appears to be that if you regulate your superhero you somehow remove the possibility of collateral damage - wishful thinking (see "Iraq"/ Team America). The reason that vigilantes appear so often in popular fiction is precisely because viscerally we understand that "the authorities" can't be trusted.

This sort of rubbish spews from people that are convinced that a democratically elected government is somehow magically endowed with infallibility, and therefore once you have a democratically elected authority all things must be bent to the will of the government. I do not subscribe to this theory. It is without doubt that in fact the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship, stress the benevolent, where the dictator actually has the best interests of the people at heart: in the real world such a person doesn't exist (even though that is exactly what Rumsfeld/ Trump/ Ayatollah whoever/ etc. think they are), so in the comics we have proxies (Superheroes/ Gods™/ SHIELD/ etc.).

Trying to examine the human condition through allegory is fine in cartoons/ puppet shows/ Shakespeare but has no place in a superhero comic/ movie.

So there.

I saw a Guardian Angel on the bus a few days ago, with red beret, fatigues, the whole kit and caboodle. He looked like he must have been from the original set as he looked older than me. I couldn't help thinking that if one of the hoodies from the Winstanley estate got on and started making a fuss, how much I'd wish that this bloke would stay in his seat and STFU. Considering that the MCU have now successfully turned Ironman in the Robert Downey Jr (warts and all), one can't help feeling the same sentiment when he's on screen.

As soon as you animate a comic hero, you anthropomorphise them too.

[8ullfrog]

They turned Iron man's alcoholism into a one-off in iron man 2, but it predates Robert Downey Jr.

Several outtakes from the films have stark behaving less than admirably, the outtake for the opening of iron man 2 has him drunkenly stumbling around the air transport plane puking in a toilet and pepper awkwardly offering him midol. An outake from avengers has him acting bitchy on his personal jet. Iron Man is supposed to be different.

I'm just glad they didn't give the role to cruise.

[goldshirt*9]

The Huntsman: Winter's War 2016 - basically a waste of time

sorry wrong thread

[6pairsofshoes]

Thanks for the tip, goldie.  I watched Person of Interest last night.  Not sure how I felt about it.  I sort of got a bit bored 3/4 of the way through.  It's an interesting idea for a show but I suspect it's going to disappoint in the execution.  Has anyone else here watched it?

Got that antihero thing going on in spades, though.