Welcome to the main discussion thread for the Marvel Cinematic Universe! This pinned post is here to establish some basic guidelines. All of the Media Forum rules
still apply.
- This thread is for talking about the live-action films, TV shows, animated works, and related content that use the Marvel brand, currently owned by Disney.
- While mild digressions are okay, discussion of the comic books should go in this thread
. Extended digressions may be thumped as off-topic.
- Spoilers for new releases should not be discussed without spoiler tagging for at least two weeks. Rather, each title should have a dedicated thread where that sort of conversation is held. We can mention new releases in a general sense, but please be courteous to people who don't want to be spoiled.
If you're posting tagged spoilers, make sure that the film or series is clearly identified outside the spoiler tagging. People need to know what will be spoiled before they choose to read the post.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Speaking of Savin, I couldn't help but wonder why they didn't just call him "Mallen", since he has much more in common with that character than he does the comic's Eric Savin.
Also, and judging by the scar on Brandt's face, it looks like she's already had an encounter with Man Thing, who, thanks to Agents Of SHIELD, we know exists in the MCU. Just a neat little (probably unlikely) connection I noticed.
Bucky wishes he were as cool as Jetstream Sam.
Now, if the two Helicarriers had combined into a Metal Gear RAY, that would have made Winter Soldier the greatest movie ever made by anyone ever.
My various fanfics.Also, and judging by the scar on Brandt's face, it looks like she's already had an encounter with Man-Thing, who, thanks to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., we know exists in the MCU. Just a neat little (probably unlikely) connection I noticed.
Actually, Ellen Brandt
is the Man-Thing's wife who betrayed and shot him to steal his research for AIM. So perhaps she did the exact same thing in the MCU.
The Extremis vets thing felt like an additional criticism of the military industrial complex.
We don't take care of our vets a lot of the times. That made them receptive to what Killian was offering.
Which makes him an even better Mandarin than Killian. Anonymity.
Edit: I don't know why you keep bringing up Cinema Sins. You'd think that the first seven times you asked the question, you'd be satisfied with our answers.
What are you looking for? What do you want us to say? JUST TELL US WHAT YOU WANT US TO SAY SO WE CAN END THIS!
edited 8th Aug '15 10:50:45 PM by Bocaj
Forever liveblogging the AvengersDoes a few people calling Fant4stic a good movie make it so compared to everyone else calling it terrible?
No?
Then why the living hell would one group of comedy writers suffering Hype Backlash and pointing out a bunch of (in some cases nonexistent) flaws make a damn bit of difference compared to all the amazing reviews?
Seriously, stop please.
edited 8th Aug '15 10:52:56 PM by Khfan429
So Winter Soldier is one of the best films in the series? Even after Cinema Sins pointed out how extremely flawed it was and that it made less sense than Terry Gilliam fever dream?
You do realize that it's Cinema Sin's job to snark about movies? Even movies that they themselves enjoy? So it's perfectly acceptable for Cinema Sins to have a video pointing out the flaws in a movie and still enjoy said movie. To, in fact, believe said movie is one of the best films Marvel has ever made.
If you really want people to take you seriously, try, I don't know, making an actual argument instead of relying on funny videos on the internet to do it for you.
"Because the line isn't just the silliness. It's that the people who picked it had no goddamn clue what it meant. They picked it because it sounded foreign and thus kinda scary."
... So? We already discussed several ways this could be fixed by giving a sense to the nickname. As I said before Red Skull's name made no sense in context in the original story and they made it work by making his head actually red. Just because the name was chosen for a stupid reason in the original concept doesn't mean it has to still be the case in the adaptation.
"But there are a ton of problematic things about the Mandarin, starting with the fact that his original portrayal was super racist. Sure, it was acceptable in the '60s (just barely), but then it wasn't. Do you know how many times the Mandarin has been used as Iron Man's arch-enemy since then? Not many. Most use the Crimson Dynamo or Iron Monger or Madame Masque."
Except this prove how little research you have made on the character, because that is incorrect. True, the Mandarin WAS very absent for a long while, but he has been brought back since after the writers rewrote him as less racist and has still been the main villain. For Christ's sake, he has been the main villain in the two Iron Man cartoons, one of which was in the 2000s!
"Its hard to see Mandarin as a suitable rival for Tony, even he seems like a racial stereotype and has no consistent personality to contrast with Iron Man."
Tony is a man of the future who wants to move his nation forward; the Mandarin is obsessed with the past and see the current regime of his nation as a decadence. Tony uses really advanced human tech he built himself; the Mandarin uses alien tech he recovered from an ancient ship. And by working the character a bit there are tons of other ways you can make them match interestingly.
"The Mandarin also didn't really fit in Iron Man's rogues gallery - he didn't use armor, he didn't even really use technology. He had "magic" rings which came from a crashed alien vessel, but that was it. His whole schtick was alien technology disguised as mysticism."
That was the whole point: making him a foil to Iron Man. Might seem hard to realize but only recently has Iron Man's Rogues Gallery been reworked as being mostly made of armored villains. Whiplash had no armor originally. Neither did Madame Masque. And even when they did, Armore Adventures fixed that by giving him an armor. It's really no big deal.
You seem to really like Iron Man: Armored Adventures. I get it, really. But I've never seen it and I don't really want to see it. In fact, I'd guess not many people have seen it at all. So using it as some sort of "proof" that the Mandarin can be done isn't really proof at all — since the show was, you know, cancelled and barely known at all right now.
True, the Mandarin WAS very absent for a long while, but he has been brought back since after the writers rewrote him as less racist and has still been the main villain. For Christ's sake, he has been the main villain in the two Iron Man cartoons, one of which was in the 2000s!
Yes, the writers had to rewrite his entire character to make him less racist. Then they could use him. And then they still barely used him. I remember Matt Fraction using him in a storyline called "The Future" (I think) and I remember Kieron Gillen writing a storyline called "Rings of the Mandarin" which didn't even have the Mandarin in it, just his rings.
Sorry, that's my Super OCD talking again. I must have really low self-esteem if I question my tastes in stories based on those sorts of videos.
Anyways, back to The Mandarin. Would the film not have done as well overseas if he was kept the same in the comics?
"Ask any German Troper what they think about Hydra or The Red Skull"
Okay, this was a claim made pages ago, but, well, different time-zone, I usually do sleep in the middle of the night.
I really appreciate how Marvel dealt with it. They made a couple of really good decision.
1. They pointed out in the very beginning the "Nazi" is not identical with "the common German" by pointing out that the first country the Nazis conquered was their own.
2. Then they removed Red Skull and his organisation even further by clarifying that he is a "rogue Nazi" whose plans even made the "common Nazi" uncomfortable.
3. And when Hydra turns up again, it is no longer a German organisation, but an international one, showing than buying into Nazi ideology is not some sort of German defect, but something humans in general can buy into under the right circumstances (if you don't believe me, read "The Wave" at one point.
So as a German, I am totally happy with how Marvel handled that sensitive issue.
edited 9th Aug '15 12:42:44 AM by Swanpride

But Metal Gear Rising had Jetstream Sam. Obviously we know which is the superior work.
My various fanfics.