Marvel Cinematic Universe

I think the most blood we ever saw in the D+ shows was the Dead-Hand Shot after Walker beat that Flag Smasher to death with the shield.

While the movies only ever did facial injuries (like Wanda getting cuts on her forehead in Age of Ultron and Infinity War; or Tony in Endgame) when it came to blood.

I think the most blood was definitely that time in What If when the Hulk exploded.

Wait, was that blood? It looked mostly like cartoon fart gas.

It’s green blood obviously censured.

Some of the action in the last Hawkeye episode would actually look pretty brutal if the MCU was more bloody. Like one quick shot is one of Clint's arrows impaling a dude's hand to a pillar.

Moon Knight looks like it's going to be a bit bloody.

Kate also either blew up a couple dudes or had them horribly burned to death

I'm not convinced that I really need lots of blood to enjoy a Daredevil adaptation, tbh. It's not as if the character is typically gory in nature.

I do recall that Luke Cage was really straining to justify its R rating eventually. The second season really only maintained it by a couple shoehorned in sex scenes.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 6th 2021 at 10:38:40 AM

I think all those decapitations Bushmaster was doing would've been enough. I don't see Marvel Studios doing this:

That's definitely not a rated R scene. A quick, mostly obscured stabbing? See also:

Hell, I can think of scenes in the Star Wars sequel trilogy that are more violent than that one, and those films were a solid PG-13.

That's kind of the problem with a lot of Rated R violence in superhero media. Movies have been doing this level of violence just fine for decades on a PG-13 rating, which means to justify an R rating they have to throw in things that are extreme, but by that same token rarely things that actually contribute meaningfully.

Compounded with - as I said - none of the characters in the Netflix shows (except Punisher, under certain artists) being R rated characters in the first place, it's becomes kind of obvious that a lot of the action scenes are mostly just "these are the kind of scenes you'd see in a PG-13 action film, but now there's blood!" Or to put it another way, it's kind of obvious that the people choreographing these scenes were used to filming for PG-13, so just did what they were used to and added some extra blood or brief glimpses of injuries without otherwise changing much.

Which just exposes that gore as superfluous, and runs counter to the idea that being R rated makes the film/show any more mature than otherwise - at the end of the day, it's the same action scenes. Anyone who thinks these characters will lose any action or dearth of content by not being rated R any more doesn't really have anything to worry about.

Which makes sense, since with the exception of movies that actually utilized the maturity bracket like Logan or Deadpool, "we've got a Rated R superhero!" was mostly just a fad that everyone tried to jump on.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 6th 2021 at 10:54:14 AM

I get that you might not be able to go for the same kind of tone as the Netflix shows with a more toned down approach... But I fail to see that being a problem. Heroes for Hire could work very well with a Hawkeye style approach. Daredevil has had grim and gritty stories but he's also had much more swashbuckling, MCU style runs - Mark Waid's for example.

If the Netflix approach doesn't work in the wider MCU, just don't use that approach. Do something brand new instead of just season 4 of the Netflix show.

I'm reminded how Birds of Prey went for the hard R rating and was criticized for it.

Okay, more depth for the break down of who in the Eternals might have been avalible for superheroing since 2008.

Ikarus: Absolutely no chance. For the past five hundred years he's been of the opinion that humans exist to perish. Unless the perminent extinction of all sentient life on Earth or destruction of the entire planet is on the cards he wouldn't see the need to get involved.

Age of Ultron might have justifyed his intervention on that ground. If he knew Ultron's plan, not so much given that Ultron intended to replace humans with new androids. Not sure how quickly Ikarus could have gotten to Sokovia from his location in time.

The Dark World justified it as it would have extinguished most life on the universe, but there's no way Ikarus would have known that was what was at stake there.

Avengers Assemble? He wouldn't care. A colonising force is fine so long as there's some kind of sentient occupation of Earth

Infinity War? There wasn't much information on Earth about what was happenig, but also population growth is exponential, halving the population and sending it back to the 70s doesn't mean anything to him, a fifty year delay is a blink of an eye to someone who's 7,000 years old.

Druig: Guy never left his utopia in Central America.

Makiri: Big old hermit. She seemingly stole a LOT of human culture to entertain herself with, but I don't think she had any kind of connection to telecommunications to be informed of on going world events.

Gilgamesh and Thena: As far as Gilgamesh was concerned Thena was dangerous and needed constant supervisio and kept away from society

Sersi & Sprite: Were never fighters and didn't have transport to get to events. They wouldn't have known of the the exploits of the London Sanctum. I would like to have seen them and the London wizards intervene behind the scenes with the Dark Elves invasion however.

Phatos: Guy was leading a double life as normal human dad guy, he would never have left his family and he was disenfranchised as hell.

Kingo: I actually suspect he would have done some mask heroism, but only as a really casual affair for his own vanity. I doubt he had the gall to get involved with Avengers activity.

Ajax is a bit of a wild card. She was devout to the cause, but she did learn love of humans in recent years. However she lives really quite remotely and again isn't a fighter.

Edited by Whowho on Dec 6th 2021 at 7:16:08 PM

x2 And on the flipside, The Suicide Squad was widely acclaimed for it.

Honestly, with Matt, I think what Forenperser was getting at regarding the matter of the amount of blood allowed to be shown was the issue of how much of Matt's injuries would they be allowed to show on-camera. Injuries like everything he took from Nobu...

...I feel like the blood is necessary to illustrate just how much damage Matt's body is taking. Just in my personal opinion.

Edited by dmcreif on Dec 6th 2021 at 2:16:33 PM

Exactly. That is what I meant with impact. And that is also what annoys me about many PG-13 fight scenes.

The damage the bodies take is just unrealistically low.

Edited by Forenperser on Dec 6th 2021 at 9:00:30 PM

I was reading throw the Reddit marvel section, most proven false and half contradictory so your not sure 80% of the time. Yet there was one line that I wonder if It could actually be well unintentional accurate.

There won’t be another decade-spanning overarching storyline like the Infinity Saga, but there will be overarching “mini-arcs” spanning 3-6 films.

Makes sense doesn't it, you can't just go and create another Infinity Saga, a smaller scale can link with the tv shows and have more recurring villains such as Kang.

After 23 (not counting phase 4) the marvel universes has become too interconnected to play the Superman Stays Out of Gotham strongly.

Edited by SAwatching on Dec 6th 2021 at 9:40:35 PM

This is where the sorts of injuries characters take in The Suicide Squad makes the whole thing feel more impactful. Like seeing what becomes of someone after a Starro parasite attaches to you◊.

I think with Phase 4, the intention is that with the Infinity Saga out of the way, they can now move to doing more smaller scale stories since they're not building up to a big event.

I hope that's true and there are going to be smaller scale stories. That's why I liked the Netflix shows (and to an extent the D+ ones) and raising the stakes after Infinity War/Endgame would be a tad absurd.

Honestly, the smaller scale stories make sense to me. Because right now Marvel is foreshadowing both Kang the Conqueror and Valentina Allegra de Fontaine as major villains, but I highly doubt their plans connect with each other. Willing to bet one gets resolved before the other, and then we move on to a few other arcs.

Especially when there's a point where you'll need to worry about power creep.

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That might make a good Superman Stays Out of Gotham analysis. If they split hundreds of years ago and they've been relying on certain crew members to keep track of stuff, the ones who can't fast-travel or don't have access to the news would be unable to go anywhere for heroing.

Everything with Valentina Allegra de Fontaine screams "Thunderbolts" set up, with Abomination, Zemo, Yelena, Walker, etc. as its members, while every show to date is giving us shades of Young Avengers setup with Cassie, Billy, Tommy, Kid Loki, Kate, etc.

Yeah, but will the Thunderbolts and Young Avengers ever cross over? They seem to be in entirely different parts of the universe, but maybe that's just me.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Dec 6th 2021 at 1:13:29 AM

Maybe they are different threats to different sections of the MCU: the Thunderbolts for the street-level guys like Clint, Kate, and I assume Blade, and Kang for the heavy hitters like Carol, the Eternals, and the Asgardians.

That's my hope. I do remember reading back in 2019 that Marvel was planning for a major Earth villain and a major cosmic villain in Phase 4. Maybe this is that.

But wait, doesn't Blade deal with mystical or vampire-related threats? Why would the Thunderbolts be an antagonistic force to him?

Edited by MatthewWayne on Dec 6th 2021 at 1:18:42 AM