Marvel Cinematic Universe

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was widely panned. I enjoyed it, sort of, but I'll admit that Galactus is a really pansy-ass threat in it when you look at the plot from the perspective of the entire Marvel universe. The Surfer himself is pretty cool, but that's about all I can say. F4's world-building is absolute dogshit.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 4:10:15 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I don't want him to be a giant space cloud. Can we not get a giant man in purple armor, please? Including the helmet, I love the helmet.

Since the disaster that was FF 2015, I found the previous two movies a fair bit more enjoyable. Not much, off course.

But Laurence Fisburne as the Surfer and Michael Chiklis as the Thing were the 2 things I always liked about the movies.

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Gamora's death was NOT a "plot device". It was the culmination of her character arc in the film. A character arc where she realized that Thanos does have the ability to love someone, and him loving her is what causes her death. It's a sick and twisted character arc, but the twisted-ness of the arc is the FUCKING POINT. It's MEANT TO BE TWISTED AND FUCKED UP, IT'S A TRAGEDY FROM HER POINT OF VIEW. THAT'S HOW TRAGEDIES WORK. TRAGEDIES END IN BITTER IRONIES, NOT SATISFYING CONCLUSIONS.

She starts the film telling Quill that Thanos is a psycho who only wants to kill half the universe, and she makes Peter promise to kill her. Throughout the Guardians films, she's been convinced that Thanos is a heartless monster. When Quill fails to kill her, Thanos brings her back to his lair. During this scene, the subtext is bleedingly obvious that Thanos truly loves her like a daughter and is proud of her strength, but Gamora refuses to believe him, still convincing herself that he is incapable of love.

When Red Skull tells Thanos that he needs to sacrifice someone he loves, she laughs in his face, sure that she's won. Gamora is positive here that Thanos loves nothing, and in an ironic twist of fate, his dedication to his evil cause is the exact reason why he cannot attain it. Unfortunately for her, Thanos doesn't even need time to think about what he loves that he could sacrifice because the daughter he loves most is Gamora, and the ironic twist of fate is that she went years thinking he didn't and now his love is what sealed her fate.

I totally expect Endgame to have a subplot involving Gamora in the Soul Stone coming to terms with the fact that Thanos does love her, in his own twisted way, and arguing with Thanos trying to convince him that he was wrong.

Changing the topic, because some people don't understand how tragedies work: a Silver Surfer movie could be good.

I think that the core problem with the Fantastic Four is that several other movies have done the family-team-superhero dynamic infinitely better already, such as The Incredibles, and so it's stuck in the unenviable position of trying to stake its own ground in the face of superior competition.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 4:14:44 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

-zip-

I've never liked the Fantastic Four. Part of that I blame on the Incredibles being a thing, but, I just never liked their movies. Even watched a few episodes of that FF cartoon that came on CN for a little while. Saw "F4tastic." The only element of their mythos I've come to appreciate is Doctor Doom and that's largely because he was the villain of the Secret Wars story arc in the old Spider Man cartoon.

Edited by Soble on Jan 10th 2019 at 1:18:43 AM

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

Yes, it is. She doesn't die because of anything she does, she dies entirely due to Plot Functionality. Even if she knew Thanos loved her, it wouldn't make any difference, she would have died anyway.

Gee, thanks for that low key insult. I'm sure glad we were able to discuss this civilly.

Edited by alliterator on Jan 10th 2019 at 1:16:16 AM

I'll just say that this is why I'm rooting for Endgame to give Gamora a major role and possibly even resurrect her. It would help ameliorate the arguments.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 4:15:59 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So am I.

This is where Known Unknown's idea about focusing on the Four as explorers of the unknown (Challengers, if you will, who just so happen to be family as well) would be a wise move. Just because it's a reboot doesn't mean we have to retell the origin story again. Homecoming largely glosses over that bit, and is all the better for it. Just throw in a flashback. Hell, I'd love it if they were part of the same generation as Hank and Janet.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:49:56 AM

I see what you did there. But did you catch my stealth pun?

Not a low key insult. High key frustration. Every time we have this conversation, I try and explain how it fits the mold of a tragedy, and you just don't listen.

Breaking it down:

Gamora beat Nebula when they fought as children all the time out of a sense of self-preservation, and her arc in Guardians 2 was coming to terms with that with Nebula and apologizing.

Gamora convinced herself that Thanos, because he was evil, was incapable of loving another. That all of his talk about his feelings were just lies.

Gamora died because she had inadvertently taken actions to prove herself in Thanos' eyes, causing him to love her the most of all his children.

She also died because she was wrong that Thanos was incapable of love, so she didn't see his betrayal coming when he had to sacrifice someone he loved to receive the Soul Stone.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:26:12 AM

I know it's a tragedy. It just that it doesn't matter that it's a tragedy. She's still treated as a plot device and her death isn't connected to any of her actions.

We don't know this, actually. We don't know why Thanos loves her. He never gives a reason why he loves her and not his other children. He just does. For plot reasons.

Nope, even if she had known Thanos loved her, she still would have died. Hell, as soon as she realizes that he does love her, she tries to kill herself and he prevents it. What do you think would have happened if she had known about his love prior to her capture? Pretty much the same thing.

Thanos seems to care for all of his children. He expresses sadness over Ebony Maw's death on Titan, for example. He seems contemptuous of Nebula, but for some reason developed the strongest attachment for Gamora. Does it matter why? Love isn't logical.

Thanos is a tragic character. He loved his people and his world so much that he proposed a solution to their problems. Of course, that solution was insane, but that doesn't mean he can't genuinely care about them.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 4:35:46 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

There was a good few seconds there where Thanos is standing there feeling sad and contemplating the decision while she's taking time to mock him because she thinks he doesn't feel love. If she had been aware he loved her, she might have spent that time killing herself instead of making fun of him.

The important phrase here is "for some reason." For some reason, he loves Gamora over all the others. It isn't important as to why, because the only reason he loves her is so he can sacrifice her.

He would have turned the knife to bubbles like he did before. Again: he was going to kill her no matter what she did.

Edited by alliterator on Jan 10th 2019 at 1:37:01 AM

If Gamora had known that she would be the sacrifice to the Soul Stone, she would have taken herself as far away from Thanos as possible, rather than trying to stop him on Knowhere. Her tragic mistake is in believing him incapable of love.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 10th 2019 at 4:39:00 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

He loves Gamora more because she's green.

It's his favorite color. He was super-stoked to get the Time Stone.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!

And he would have found her anyway, because he made it his mission to get all of the Stones. Hell, even if she did kill herself, he might have been able to reverse it using the Time Stone just like he did with Vision.

Again: the plot required him to get all of the Stones, therefore he got all of the Stones. There was nothing that anyone could have done to prevent him from getting them.

I feel like we're just going back and forth now. This conversation feels like this:

I am curious what life was like growing up under Thanos’ care.

It be a twisted sitcom as Papa Thanos raised Maw, Cull, Glaive, Midnight, Nebula, & Gamora as one big dysfunctional family.

That makes sense.

Also I believe the reason why he loved her most was because she was the best warrior & becoming most like daddy.

Edited by slimcoder on Jan 10th 2019 at 2:03:33 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Listen. Any death of a major character, if done well, will advance the plot. We agree on that, right? That's not what you perceive as wrong in this situation. Your two problems seem to be that there wasn't any build up to her death and that she didn't have agency in it. Thanos's specific love for Gamora has been explored since the first Guardians film, where she's shown to receive preferential treatment due to her superior combat abilities. That part of the arc we can agree has been in motion for years. I think that solves your first issue. It's also clear that Gamora does have agency in her death. Firstly, Gamora knew full well that she had a high chance of dying on the trip. If she really didn't think Thanos cared about her, she would've believed he'd kill her once she outlived her usefulness. If she knew he did, she'd be aware that she would be his sacrifice. So why did she go? Gamora made the choice to sacrifice her life in order to stop Nebula's torture. This is a choice she made on her own. Even if you disagree with that, the idea that a female character dying for reasons out of their control being sexist is a little misguided. I agree with earlier posts in that, if anything, Loki was the one who's death was unjust, given that he's a powerful magic user whose tried to stab a guy with two infinity stones with a butter knife in the first five minutes of the movie. A "cool line" doesn't make up for that.

There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

That is not her having agency. It absolutely isn’t. She didn’t offer herself as a sacrifice to save Nebula, she offered information to save Nebula. She didn’t die based on a choice she made. She was literally a sacrifice to get a MacGuffin.

Edited by wisewillow on Jan 10th 2019 at 5:02:34 AM

Gamora did not have agency in her own death.

I'm arguing that her not having agency isn't bad writing. It's good writing because it is a good conclusion to her tragic character arc in the film. It's unsatisfying and makes you angry at how unjust it was, that's what makes for a good tragedy.

Gamora's death is totally a plot device. Specifically, a contrived one that exists solely to kill Gamora.

That the Soul Gem "requires a sacrifice" is uncharacteristic of the Gems. No other Infinity Gem has ever had any such feature like this, where you have to prove yourself worthy of the Gem. It's not a thing in any previous movie. It's not an established aspect of the Gems. It was written into this movie to have a reason to kill Gamora.

The explanation for the Soul Gem's inconsistency that we're given is that it "holds a special place" among the Gems. What does this mean? F*ck you, that's what, because that's all it gets. Why does it have a special place? Because f*ck you, that's why. What is this special place? F*ck you, that's what. It's a paper-thin excuse to rationalize the plot device written into this movie to have a reason to kill Gamora.

Vision dies because "Age of Ultron" embedded an Infinity Gem in his forehead and we all knew what that meant from the moment they did that. Vision's death was telegraphed years in advance by a shittier movie.

Loki dies because he tries to attack Thanos, fulfilling his Character Development and finally standing up for his brother. His death is the conclusion of his character arc.

Heimdall dies to save Banner from Thanos's attack. He makes one last great act of defiance that moves the plot forward before paying for it with his life.

But Gamora dies to fulfill the requirements of a plot device invented in this movie for the purpose of killing Gamora. The whole Soul Gem sacrifice thing exists to give Thanos a reason to kill Gamora and then feel sad about it.

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Eh. It could work, I find your analysis of the tragic elements interesting, but I just don't think it sticks the landing, in part because too much of it happens offscreen and Gamora is still too much of a passive female character — not just in that final scene, but in the ones leading up to it. There are valid in-universe reasons for why she acts the way she does, but I don't agree that it was necessary to set things up that way for the plot to hit the beats the Russos wanted, and those choices do still play into the issues I have with how Gamora is a more reactive, secondary character than I'd like. That last bit is just personal opinion, but that's my point — I think a lot of what you're arguing is about the execution of the scene, and I don't think the execution is actually the part of that scene most people with criticisms take issue with.

Edited by Unsung on Jan 10th 2019 at 3:33:04 AM