MCU and DCCU Differences in Mentality

He also pelvic thrusts to music on his headphones while trying to steal a valuable artifact, which is used again as the best thing he can come up with to distract Ronon at the end. He also plays a childish Flipping the Bird joke during the line-up at the prison. That kind of behavior is not something a "charming rogue" like Han Solo would do, who would just flip them off and be done with it. Now Peter can get serious and it isn't completely out of character, with some implications that he does it to keep sane after his cosmic kidnapping and his mom dying. So he isn't the worst case example, but he still has plenty of Manchild qualities.

Also only tangential - having fun listening to music while going about one's activities (especially in a situation he apparently believed would be a simple operation, and in which he thought no one else was going to intervene) is hardly something that only a child would do, and I could see Han Solo circa A New Hope would have done something like giving the middle finger to someone who captured him (given the way he acted towards Greedo in the original footage and Jabba in the added footage, especially the "stepping on his tail" bit).

Not that Han is the catch all for "dashing rogue" characters to begin with, or that deviation from his exact character type is a sign of not actually being an example of the trope.

Again, while he has immature qualities, actually describing him as a manchild is not way only over the top for the personality he actually shows, it's thus misleading and inaccurate. These are isolated situations out of context in which he isn't being serious, but just because one isn't serious all the time that doesn't mean they're a Manchild. That's a character type with its own qualities.

edited 13th Aug '14 3:23:00 PM by KnownUnknown

Well one, I said it's not Flipping the Bird in general but the immature way he does the "cranking it up." Especially compared to everyone else in that line-up, he comes across as childish.

Two, most of what I am saying goes more into "trope theory" than anything else. A character can have a lot of traits associated with a character type and just not be a particularly strong example of that character type anyway due to how intensely they possess those traits. I think Peter fills a middle ground between Manchild and Cool People Rebel Against Authority, as such he isn't quite either.

I'd agree with your second paragraph in a general sense, but not in this one as Manchild is a very specific trope and a very strong allegation. Merely being immature, or even doing childish things, doesn't give a character "man-child" traits, because being a man child involves not being able to develop past those childish issues. And neither does having unresolved issues from childhood, as those issues must result in the character being unable to develop either. Again, a single childish action - nor even a childish streak - does not a man-child make, nor should it be considered a man-child quality as much as just being immature.

I can see Quill as being cavalier, immature or even childish, but not as a Manchild.

edited 13th Aug '14 4:00:05 PM by KnownUnknown

Well that's treating the trope Manchild as being that it only counts if the person is so developmentally screwed up that they cannot (or barely) function without a parental figure in their life. Tropes Are Flexible, and someone can display Manchild behavior via individual scenes or Emotional Regression without coming across as having an Ambiguous Disorder.

Again, I don't think Peter demonstrates those traits constantly, but Manchild is an appropriate trope to use to describe those isolated scenes. Cause honestly, without it I don't think anything about his personality or backstory would be all that compelling or entertaining.

Well, not all tropes are flexible in any given particular way.

But in any case, Tropes Are Flexible is about how tropes can be presented in many different ways yet still be applicable, not the opposite: a character exhibiting some of the qualities an example of a trope may have shouldn't be finagled into being a example of a trope themselves - that itself does not fall under the purview of Tropes Are Flexible.

A good example of Man-Child being flexible would be, say, how both Alan from The Hangover and Thor as he originally appears can both apply as Manchild, but can do so for very different reasons - Alan for being totally undeveloped and unable to function without people taking care of him, and Thor because he never grew past his childish vanity or his boyish need to express himself through violence. Those are very different characters, but they both still embody what the trope is trying to put across.

Man-Child is by definition a trope that involves an adult who does not function as one and instead functions as a child would - either partially or entirely. It's a trope that's all about how qualities are presented, not about the qualities themselves. That's the core of the trope, and all qualities shown need to be tied to that center - if a quality is not presented with that element in place, then it's not an example of the trope no matter how flexible the trope is.

edited 13th Aug '14 4:23:16 PM by KnownUnknown

Well he is meant to be something of a loser between his successes...

"Loser" here having the definition of someone who is so likable that he makes friends remarkably easily, even effortlessly making allies out of people who were previously trying to kill him, and gets laid so frequently as to have a reputation for Crotch Sorcery.

Peter Quill is a man who thoroughly savors his life, whose personal charisma makes him impossible to hate even among people who want him dead. I have difficulty seeing the "loser" in that. Peter Quill is a man who has won at life.

edited 13th Aug '14 4:57:28 PM by TobiasDrake

This is going a little off topic, but I'm enjoying the discussion. To be clear, I wasn't the one to "accuse" Peter of being a Manchild, I'm just agreeing that he has some qualities. I was more focusing on the flippant, non-serious, "hip Earthling" attitude compared to the more stoic Shakespearean aliens (sans Rocket) and how that was getting old.

Tropes Are Flexible accounts for both specific depiction and degrees, it was originally written to explain that having a narrow view of what counts as a certain trope is a disservice to the trope. I mean you listed Thor and even when he starts off he is hot headed but perfectly capable of reason, just because Odin called him a "foolish child" doesn't mean he is a Manchild ^note the quality of character development in that movie is why I list it as the weakest MCU film.

I mean you have Arrested Development's Buster Bluth, who is of the Ambiguous Disorder crowd whose relationship with his mother has remained the same since he was 10 (a la Zip Me Up). Then there is Psych's Shawn Spencer, who is of the "Willfully Immature" crowd and whose relationship with his father has been the same since he was 17 (a la "Get a real job!"). Different relationships, but also much different age groups.

edited 13th Aug '14 5:05:48 PM by KJMackley

Quill: I didn't think that a kinda immature drifter was a 'winner', to be honest. : P

That reminds me, though, Marvel seems the company more likely to show off the odder aliens in the portion of its universe beyond Earth. We might even get to see Miss Tentacles & Needleteeth because of that flexibility.

What more is there to win than a life enjoyed?

Honestly, this is just coming off as judgmentalism. "Quill lives up to all of his values, consistently achieves his goals, and finds both enjoyment and fulfillment in his life, but I still think he's a loser because his values aren't up to my standards."

edited 13th Aug '14 6:09:17 PM by TobiasDrake

Tobias speaks the Truth. If Peter Quill is a loser and a man-child then holy heck do I want to be just like him.

Happy with his new family and a bitching starship.

edited 13th Aug '14 6:43:09 PM by TamH70

I wouldn't call him a loser, but he's definitely in the middle of a losing streak at the start of the movie, what with becoming the target of a powerful terrorist group, losing the buyer for his latest haul, having a bounty put on his head, and getting thrown in prison.

| V

And here I thought I could re-rail the conversation.

All of that is a direct consequence of stealing the Power Gem, though. He's not having a losing streak, he just took a job he shouldn't and wound up in over his head.

And then he handled it.

Was not expecting someone to invoke Godwin's Law in a discussion about Got G.

No one said that it is what makes him an awesome hero. Just that it meant that he was winning at life at that point.

So yes, if Hitler had all of those things, he would definitely be winning at life. And you can bet there would be millions of people wishing they were Hitler. And the first thing they would be saying is "Man, if I was that Hitler dude, I definitely would have skipped past the whole genocide thing and focused on the fact that I have a BITCHING STARSHIP! Screw this planet! I'm heading for Pluto!!"

This is really way off track in any event. The point was that the MCU seems to portray their heroes as often less "mature" than DC heroes in the sense of mature meaning "angsty."

My guess is that this is due to preconceptions about both universes. It's like Marvel is Pepsi and DC is Coke. Marvel is already known for being edgy, so their characters are allowed to have more fun to try and back away from "edgy" and further into good family entertainment territory. DC, meanwhile, still grapples with the shadow of Adam West's Batman and Hannah-Barbera's Superfriends, or Schumacher's Batman, for that matter. They fight the ghosts of the past with the grim n' gritty Nolanverse or new Snyderverse.

Which is funny, because they already went through this reactionary period in the comics. The Dark Age began 30 years ago and was pretty well over 15 years ago, by the time Kingdom Come came out and tried to decon the Dark Age and rebuild for the Millennium age

That was perhaps the most schizophrenic invocation of Godwin's Law I've ever seen.

In any case, "losing streak" usually implies the person has actually been down on his luck and/or failing at his job/life for some extended period of time. Quill seems pretty succeful as a Ravager (and as The Casanova, for that matter) at the start of the movie, he just ends up going over his head and tangling with powers far beyond his comprehension (namely Ronan the Accuser and Thanos The Mad Titan), but he always manages to escape relatively unscathed until the final confrontation with Ronan.

Alright, alright, I yield. >: P

Now, what about that flexibility?

Even if DC manages to push JLA by 2017, a lot of people will mock it because they think DC is trying to ride the coattails of Marvel and Avengers (never mind the fact that JLA came first in the comics).

They'll either mock it for that, or because they hated Mo S and think that a JLA movie will just be very similar.

Somehow this topic is currently mostly discussed in the DC Universe tread, so I thought I should bump this one up again. Even if it is a little bit difficult to judge based on one movie and trailers for Two movies when it comes to DC. But I think it is safe to say that they try to distinguish themselves from Marvel by doing the exact opposite. Instead of introducing each hero in a separate movie first, they start with throwing the heroes (and the villains for that matter) together as fast as possible. They also seem to take a more non-linear approach. And they go for dark when it comes to the colour scheme.

You want to understand the DCCU's mentality? Just look at the Aquaman poster.........LOOK AT IT!

It makes me kind of sad...but I guess I'll get used to it.