Marvel Cinematic Universe

Thanos murdered all but one of the dwarves because he felt like it, so go ahead and call him a racist.

I think he’s just a sadist there.

It’s very tricky how much of his actions is motivated by race or just pure bloodlust.

...I don’t care about his intent? He murdered half of the universe.

"Hey, so I murdered your entire race specifically and ensured your extinction forever... but like, not in a racist way."

This idea that racism is purely about motive and not about result is why a lot of real life racial suppression policies still get enforced through euphemism.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 9th 2018 at 6:45:46 AM

But there was no discrimination involved.

No prejudice or racism with him.

If "I targeted this people specifically just on my own suspicion that they might do something against me, down to the children" isn't prejudice based on race, I don't know what is.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Dec 9th 2018 at 6:50:15 AM

...

I'd say it's probably still racism if you do it to every race.

It's just that all the other stuff is mixed in there as well.

Plus it's possible to be racist without trying to be. Thanos may not have intended that, but that rarely matters.

Plus, he's an evil genocidal dick. So you know, it's not like we can make him worse.

There's also a speculation that some of those murdered by Thanos were thieves, murderers, and just plain bad people. In a way, Thanos didn't make the universe a better place, more that he made it exponentially last longer.

Statistically speaking, some of them were. Others were surgeons, teachers, soup kitchen volunteers, etc.

Indiscriminate slaughter slaughters indiscriminately. Thanos is worse than a thousand Hitlers by sheer body count alone. There is nothing noble or admirable about him just because he "wasn't racist about it".

The racism was not what made the Holocaust so terrible.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 9th 2018 at 8:50:35 AM

NASA has received a lot of tweets from fans recently begging them to rescue Tony Stark adrift in space.

We've only just sent anything out of our own solar system, so, good luck there, chaps.

So I've had a thought about what's missing from Bruce Banner in the MCU.

Rick Jones.

Now, yeah, the MCU Bruce Banner is basically David Banner from the TV series, but the lack of Rick Jones is an important facet of Bruce Banner's character. It's what adds further elements to the tragedy of Bruce Banner, like his love with Betty Ross that he can never really have, or the Hulk's desire to just be left alone or his kindness to children and animals. Or Bruce's history of abuse throughout his childhood that filled him with such a feeling of helplessness and deep-seated rage that manifested itself in The Hulk, the most unstoppable, the most powerful, never weak, never helpless. The Strongest One There Is.

But, back to Rick Jones. In the context of the MCU, Bruce Banner was doing a Gamma Experiment on himself in the pursuit of knowledge, although it could be seen as arrogance that he was so certain that it would work that he was willing to put himself at risk, and because of that arrogance, he was turned into a monster.

But the tragedy of Bruce Banner is that the moment that turned him into The Hulk was a moment of self-sacrifice. After "Thunderbolt" Ross and Glenn Talbot deriding him as milquetoast and weak, Bruce Banner saw Rick Jones was about to die and threw himself into danger, knowing it would cost him his own life. Bruce Banner was willing to die a hero. And for that bravery, his life was destroyed.

But he gained a friend for life in Rick Jones, a young man who was always by his side, who would do anything for Bruce Banner, who was The Hulk's only friend. Because Bruce Banner was willing to die for him, for a complete stranger, and Rick would never forget that.

Without all these little facets to help define him, and by extension The Hulk, and the lack of his own film franchise or sufficient screen time to explore him, Bruce Banner is just this nerd-guy that's kinda snarky, mumbly, and sad until he turns into Godzilla, who hates everything and everyone and will smash whatever you put in front of him.

Rick Jones in the comics is kinda of the Arthur Dent of the Marvel-verse, right? This seemingly ordinary guy caught up in all these wild disasters?

I'm honestly surprised that he hasn't made it into MCU at all - he was especially prominent in the early days of the Avengers, where he actually played a key role in the formation of the Avengers, along with his gang of teen ham radio enthusiasts.

The closest analogue is...honestly, Coulson.

Pretty much. Rick Jones has, among other things

-Helped The Hulk and Bruce Banner escape mortal peril

-Been Captain America's sidekick

-Turned into The Hulk

-Traded places with Captain Mar-Vell like Billy Batson

-Been the most successful rock and roll act in America

-Traded places with a different Kree to be a different Captain Marvel.

-And turned into an Abomination Knock-off.

Interestingly enough, the video game adaptation of The Incredible Hulk actually did feature Rick Jones in a prominent supporting role, basically being Bruce's confidant throughout the game.

The question of where the hell is Rick Jone is a good question.

Also, I'm glad that in the debate of who's worse: A racist or a Genocidal maniac? we all realized that it's a battle that ends in a draw.

Because really, there are times where no one should win, and that was one of them.

Getting back to Rick, we likely won't see him until someone has the guts to try another Hulk movie.

According to Wikipedia, Rick gets mentioned in the opening credits of The Incredible Hulk. It’s been a while since I saw the movie so I don’t recall if that’s the case.

If they ever parse through the Universal debacle that’s kept us from getting any Hulk mythos films, they could always transfer Rick over to She Hulk in some way.

Like, She Hulk was born because Jennifer Walters needed Banner’s blood transfused after an accident, right? Have that accident be a disaster where she gets mortally wounded saving Rick.

It won’t retroactively put those traits back into Bruce, but it at least gives that character a chance to make a similar impact again.

I know we're past the little talk about Thanos, but I just remembered I wanted to add that, long story short, I do prefer Vulture and Killmonger to him. Also, I wanna make an observation: it's like the name "Michael" is just a good luck charm for at least semi-antagonistic characters and performances in the MCU. Yondu, Vulture, Killmonger...

Edited by AyyItsMidnight on Dec 9th 2018 at 11:52:23 AM

Regarding the claim that Thanos plan doesn't make any sense: It makes perfect sense once you accept that Thanos truly beliefs in his "half the people" plan. And that he does belief in it, might be hard to understand for sane people, but it is impossible to claim that his belief in unrealistic considering that there are people on earth NOW who do politics on similar flawed ideas.

Let's not forget that he is the MAD Titan Thanos. What makes him mad is the fact that he considers murder an acceptable solution for shortages (and again, this isn't a new concept either...humans are killing other humans for perceived shortages).

Yeah, I don't think we're meant to actually believe his plan would actually work, merely that Thanos truly believes it. And it has precedent amongst humans - the Holodomar in the USSR and the Great Leap Forward in China are both examples of millions of people dying in the name of productivity.

comicwriter@ OMG thats my favorite gintama ED and it fits perfectly

> They can't make another Hulk movie because Universal has the distribution rights. Hence why they put Hulk into a Thor movie.

More accurately it's because all the Hulk movies so far have sucked and that means they're not going to risk another Hulk movie if it performs poorly,so Hulk is relegated to being in the Thor so they're still using him but he's a secondary character and the plot does not revolve around him