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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.

    Original post 
Since Thor and now Captain America came out this year, I wanted to get what Tropers thought of the concept and execution of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. Personally I love the idea and wonder why this idea hasn't been seriously tried before. It sorta seems to me like the DCAU in movie form (And well, ummm, with Marvel), and really 'gets' the comic book feel of a shared universe while not being completely alienating.

Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#44351: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:19:49 PM

No, shut up. Just make all of them women. Recast everyone. An all-female universe. Except for the villains. The villains can all be men because they all die anyway.

I would like to subscribe to your literature.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Mukora Uniocular from a place Since: Jan, 2010 Relationship Status: I made a point to burn all of the photographs
Uniocular
#44352: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:31:32 PM

Bocaj, I'm sorry, but I think that was sarcasm.

If it was sincere, though, yeah, sign me up too.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."
KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#44353: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:33:56 PM

@Wackd: You mentioned Fenhoff...

On one hand, I don't suppose doing a gender flip on Faustus would be impossible, and I don't believe I've seen many evil female hypnotists, so there's that.

On the other hand, unless you would be willing to rewrite the finale a little, I hope you're willing to watch Sousa triumphantly punch an old lady in the face.

[up] I though Bocaj was fighting sarcasm with sincerity.

edited 10th Oct '15 10:35:03 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Oh God! Natural light!
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#44354: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:35:16 PM

[up][up].... Yeah, I got nothin'.

My various fanfics.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#44355: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:41:07 PM

You should get some pamphlets printed up then.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#44356: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:41:56 PM

"The villains are male because they all die anyway" is the part you should pause.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#44357: Oct 10th 2015 at 10:43:49 PM

It was sarcastic hyperbole based on Wack'd's insistence of making characters female when it would make no sense narratively or chronologically.

My various fanfics.
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#44358: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:05:21 PM

It probably would've been more productive for you to just point that out then instead of giving the impression that you're a hysterical reactionary.

SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#44359: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:07:43 PM

I figured it was obvious. I'm sorry.

My various fanfics.
higherbrainpattern Since: Apr, 2012
#44360: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:07:45 PM

[up][up] Honestly, this happens everytime somebody in this thread talks about wanting to have female characters with more substantial roles.

edited 10th Oct '15 11:07:55 PM by higherbrainpattern

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#44361: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:29:02 PM

I agree...one of the things I criticised about the first Iron Man is that the movie invites the audience to look down on Christine Everhart (because, hey, she is bitchy, so take that) which in turn kind of excuses Tony's behaviour. Agent Carter kind of correct that by showing how damaging the selfish behaviour of Tony 1.0 is. One of my favourite scene in the first season is when Peggy figures out that he lied to her, and he tries to distract her with the usual BS excuses male Superhero usually tell their love interests. Her answer to that is very, very satisfying.

Otherwise, there are different ways to comment on gender issues. Agent Carter does it by putting the main character in a sexist setting and showing how wrong and unfair those situations are. Agent of Shield does it by not commenting on it at all, but showing a number of different women (and men for that matter) who are send in the field based on their abilities and not their gender. I guess Jessica Jones will end up somewhere in the middle.

edited 10th Oct '15 11:32:13 PM by Swanpride

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#44362: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:34:50 PM

[up][up]There's more productive ways to go about discussing it than others, but it does suck when pretty much any attempt at it gets met with the same (over)reaction.

edited 10th Oct '15 11:35:05 PM by AlleyOop

BadWolf21 Since: May, 2010
#44363: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:38:49 PM

[up][up] I'm pretty sure we're supposed to look down on her because she's a massive hypocrite. But that might just be me.

EDIT: Also, thinking about it, not being a very nice person isn't that unreasonable a criteria for looking down on someone. Frankly, Tony's not really a good person at the start of the movie either. But he's charming, and he grows out of it around the time that Yinsen is killed, so people forgive him for it (one of those reasons is better than the other).

edited 10th Oct '15 11:44:13 PM by BadWolf21

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#44364: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:52:54 PM

[up]The point is that by portraying her that way, the movie excuses Tony's behaviour, even though he is quite a dick in general.

BadWolf21 Since: May, 2010
#44365: Oct 10th 2015 at 11:57:48 PM

I'm not sure I see your argument here.

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#44366: Oct 11th 2015 at 12:02:27 AM

[up]And I don't see why it is so difficult to understand. TV shows and movies do this all the time, they let the hero act like a dick, so that you should feel for the person he is a dick to. But then you would run into the risk of the audience disliking the hero, so they turn the person he acts like this towards into someone unlikable. Which is not a problem in itself, but has lead to a pattern which portrays woman who are used for one-night stand as stupid or as gold-diggers, and woman who are married to said heroes as unreasonable nags. And Iron Man falls into this trap too. The whole scene with Christine Everhart should be about showing how much of an egoist Tony Stark used to be in order to make is transformation into a hero more compelling. But instead we get a bitch-fight (btw the only interaction between two females in the whole movie), which suggests to the audience that what he does is not a big deal because, hey, Christine Everhart should have known better and see what a bitch she is towards Pepper Potts.

edited 11th Oct '15 12:06:20 AM by Swanpride

Wackd Since: May, 2009
#44367: Oct 11th 2015 at 12:16:55 AM

You guys do realize it's possible to, like, rewrite narratives, right? They're not reality. You can change things.

Say, for instance, that I didn't like...oh, I dunno...that the Mandarin was a fake in Iron Man 3. Would I not express this by saying I'd prefer the narrative had been rewritten? Is that not a thing people do?

Folks in here argue in favor of changing the narrative logic—of completely rewriting half a goddamn film—all the time. Because they don't like who got to depict certain characters and how. So hearing people tell me "YOU CAN'T JUST ASK THEM TO REWRITE THINGS WHAT ARE YOU MAD" feels super goddamn weird.

"But wait!" you say! "The man putting women down is the point of the series and thematic coherence and" yeah, but, y'know, I've been suggesting ways to retain that. I haven't advocated for any of the SSR guys to change gender. The most drastic thing I've asked for is Jarvis, which you can really only argue against on a plot-hole based thing. Meanwhile I'm like "yes but the Mandarin here makes a cogent point about the exploitability of racism and the military-industrial complex and—" and, well, no one cares about that. They just want their Mandarin. Which would totally demolish the entire point of the film.

I'm trying my hardest to do the whole "narratives are sacred and immutable" thing, guys. Really, I am! I think it's stupid but I realize that's how these arguments kinda have to go. Let me meet you halfway.

edited 11th Oct '15 12:23:46 AM by Wackd

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
BadWolf21 Since: May, 2010
#44368: Oct 11th 2015 at 12:35:31 AM

[up][up] Ah.

See, I'm more of the opinion that the movie isn't trying to excuse Tony's behaviour. We're not supposed to think pretty much anything he does is good in that first bit.

Like, let's break down what he actually does, a bit:

  • Doesn't turn up for the award he's being given because he's busy playing craps (and later hands off said award to some random person)
  • Basically ignores everything Rhodey says to him
  • Has sex with a woman who hates him and disappears into his workshop before she wakes up
  • Forgets Pepper's birthday, despite her being one of very few people who actually seems to like him
  • Gets Rhodey drunk on his private jet (despite Rhodey pointing out that he's working) where he has stripper stewardesses
  • Gives a presentation of a new kind of missile that's basically America taking out its dick and waving it around

That's pretty much everything that Tony does before his convoy gets blown up. And they're the actions of a colossal asshole. We forgive them because we've already seen that his karmic punishment is pretty terrible and we see afterwards that he becomes a better person because of it (not to mention the fact that this is a superhero movie, so it's kind of a given that our hero is probably not going to be completely irredeemable). Frankly, we also forgive Tony for much worse in Iron Man 2 where he's actually dangerous, instead of just a tool.

Also, while what you're talking about has definitely been done intentionally, I do think that a not insignificant percentage of the times it comes up it's primarily an audience reaction, not one built into the work itself.

For another example, Breaking Bad. People complain about Skyler White all the time, but if you listen to Vince Gilligan talk about the show at all, you quickly realize that the reaction comes from people who aren't ready to give up on Protagonist-Centered Morality yet, and are therefore convinced that Skyler's fairly reasonable desire for her husband to not be cooking meth anymore is completely out of line. It's the product of an awkward time in the storytelling where you're supposed to be aware that the main character is not a good person, but he hasn't crossed the Moral Event Horizon so you're overlooking that fact.

All of which is to say that you're right, and it comes from not making the hero too unlikeable. But it's a reaction that comes from the audience, and them not being able to handle the idea of not liking the main character, rather than being something built into the movie from the start.

That said, yeah, Christine Everheart is also pretty awful. But I think the reason is so we feel the right things about Pepper, not Tony.

Did any of that make any sense? I'm probably way too tired to string a coherent argument together.

[up]

which you can really only argue against on a plot-hole based thing

Ignoring that I couched my argument against it almost entirely in characterization and theme.

And, for the record, I loved the way they did the Mandarin. Which isn't meant to convince you of anything, I just get excited when someone else did too. smile

edited 11th Oct '15 12:39:49 AM by BadWolf21

KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#44369: Oct 11th 2015 at 12:43:21 AM

[up][up] Hey, I'm all for it, although I was fairly pleased with how things turned out.

Going back to Fenhoff, what if it was a family thing - we have a more traditional Doctor Faustus in the backstory (who, in this version, was a good guy) who taught his daughter everything he knew, before dying in the backstory via rage gas. Daughter goes on to form Leviathan, seeks vengeance against Howard Stark, basically the same thing as the show. Hell, if we wanted to, we could have another Dr. Faustus in the present day as her child or grandchild.

edited 11th Oct '15 12:43:47 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Oh God! Natural light!
AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#44370: Oct 11th 2015 at 12:49:46 AM

[up][up][up] Uh, multiple people have given a whole ton of reasons for why it would be a bad idea to genderflip Jarvis in particular, some of which are arguably just as progressive.

I can understand wanting Peggy to spend more time with the phone operators because Rose was pretty badass and I would've liked to see more of her, but given how the other aspects of the show were done the fact that it wasn't there doesn't bother me as much as it should otherwise.

Also count me in as one of the people who was fine with how they did the Mandarin.

edited 11th Oct '15 12:59:30 AM by AlleyOop

Wackd Since: May, 2009
#44371: Oct 11th 2015 at 1:19:43 AM

Sorry if folks felt misblamed. Just for the record: if you're not doing the things I was talking about, I wasn't talking about you.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#44372: Oct 11th 2015 at 1:20:18 AM

The actor who plays Jarvis once said that he lucked out that the voice of JARVIS happened to have an English accent, because otherwise he might not have gotten the role. So, yes, there is a narrative reason for him being male, aside from it giving the show the opportunity to show a male, who is ready to do house work and is concerned about meeting the sexual needs of his wife, balancing out all the other more or less matcho types.

KarkatTheDalek Not as angry as the name would suggest. from Somwhere in Time/Space Since: Mar, 2012 Relationship Status: You're a beautiful woman, probably
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
#44373: Oct 11th 2015 at 1:21:23 AM

[up][up] It's cool. I honestly just like talking about the backstories of evil female hypnotists.

[up] Honestly, if a British accent is all that's required, Hayley Atwell herself could have done it.

Actually, just have her play all of the roles.

edited 11th Oct '15 1:23:42 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Oh God! Natural light!
Wackd Since: May, 2009
#44374: Oct 11th 2015 at 1:24:21 AM

[up][up] I didn't say there wasn't a plot reason, I said that doing things like that for plot reasons are dumb. There are a million different ways you could hand wave Jarvis the machine not being exactly like Jarvis the dude.

I am not super on board with the idea that the show needs to have a token good guy to make sure no one comes away from the show thinking that it's trying to convince them all men are terrible. But if that's a necessity you could easily fold all of Jarvis' positive traits in to one of the SSR guys.

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#44375: Oct 11th 2015 at 1:28:03 AM

[up]The show gets accused way too often as portraying men as one-dimensional idiots as it is. An assessment I don't agree with, because it actually goes out of its way to show why the males in the show act the way they do, but without Jarvis in the picture it could have ended up too one-sided.


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