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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
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Now that I think about it, now would be a good time for Marvel to make a Nova film. Given how badly DC dropped the ball with Green Lantern, the MCU could upstage them yet again by showing them the "right" way to make a movie about an intergalactic police force.
edited 22nd Oct '15 10:40:00 AM by nervmeister
I think Marvel just knows that it would be almost impossible to present the character that's been hinted at in a way that would do the Mandarin justice. The Ten Rings terrorist group are a shackle around his wrists greatly limiting the character's ability to be engaging.
Because as much as people are all like, "The Ten Rings are awesome and the Mandarin is going to be more awesome and they're going to take over the world or something," the fact is that the Ten Rings are a glorified Al Qaida who were only ever menacing because of a bunch of guns and missiles that the Americans sold them. They're third-world terrorists living in caves.
It was a cute reference in the first Iron Man but it irrevocably ruined the character. Does anyone really want the Mandarin to come out and just be Discount Osama bin Laden? Does anyone honestly believe that would do the character more justice than Killian did?
edited 22nd Oct '15 10:41:52 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I already said that 3 pages ago and here as well -___-'.
Then why did you try to use them as examples for why Nova won't show up? Of course, he won't show up in those movies. He's a cosmic character.
Your second argument doesn't change my point, which is once again about unrealistic expectations.
Actually, it does. There are three movies that you have no idea about - and the Nova Corps have already been introduced in GOTG. Therefore, it is entirely possible that one of those movies could be about Nova. Say, after Infinity War, the Nova Corps decides it needs to step up it's game and protect the galaxy better, so they start to recruit from other worlds. Bam, movie.
Then there is a stand alone, which you yourself said would be too similar to Green Lantern, while I acknowledged without proper world building it would be a poor man's Green Lantern
All that means is it would need to differentiate itself. Not a hard thing to do.
edited 22nd Oct '15 10:41:38 AM by alliterator
I don't see the appeal of Rider, frankly.
Honestly, I think things like Green Lantern and Nova Corps as central concepts are mistakes. Pretty much the only good sci-fi thing I can think of where the main characters are on the right side of the law is Star Trek and the characters in those break the rules all the dang time. With the entire universe to play with it's super-hard to justify following around a buncha space cops.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.
Eh, I don't see anything inherently wrong with space cops. And it doesn't "waste" the universe. It, in fact, allows you to explore the universe in a way you can not with outlaws characters.
That said, I do agree the concepts are, ultimately, mistakes for the type of stories Marvel and DC tell. This kind of space policy needs to be both powerful enough to enforce the law and have a big enough jurisdiction to be relevant to the universe. But super hero comic universe are too open for that. You can't actually have powerful law enforcement else you will handcuff other creators. Which means said law enforcement need to be considerably less competent than they seem to be in their own stories, which causes too much dissonance. The concept works best when they are the focus of the whole universe. Not when they are sharing space with others, which is probably why it worked better in Star Trek.
Btw SHIELD suffers the same problem. Probably why MCU ultimately decided to cut their power considerably.
I wouldn't say it's a problem with space, so much as a problem with superhero stories.
It's possible to depict massive law organizations working as they should without undercutting the drama. Police procedurals do it all the time. The problem is that writing massive organizations is a very different experience from writing superheroes, the latter of whom are expected to behave in a sort of "Screw the Rules, I have Moral Conviction" sort of way.
Superhero writers bring that mindset to superhero police organizations and it results in the glorification of Cowboy Cop ideology and other pitfalls of writing cops as though they were vigilantes. They can't write huge organizations in an engaging way because it's not what they write. They write superheroes.
When you have the writers of Spider-Man or Iron Man writing a S.W.OR.D. miniseries for example, it's inevitable that S.W.O.R.D. is going to wind up written more like Spider-Man or Iron Man than NCIS in space.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:06:02 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Maybe the problem is just that I personally don't like police procedurals.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.@45228
Yeah. It'll be tricky making the genuine article feel fresh. Though maybe, Mandarin and the Ten Rings could be the polar opposite of HYDRA in philosophy. Instead of believing people cant be trusted with their own freedom, they think people should be violently shaken out the stupor society has put them in and forced to recognize their autonomy as individuals. As the saying goes, "Those who've lost everything are free to do anything." The irony however is that the Ten Rings themselves are an organized society who follow a faith and therefore tenets or rules which the Mandarin hypocritically admits to himself is necessary (for his followers, not him. He does what he wants because he's a "free individual").
So in short, he's kind of what you get when you cross Ra's Al Ghul with Andrew Ryan.
Or the "Zaheer" of the MCU
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:19:24 AM by nervmeister
Of course you don't. If you did, you'd be watching CSI instead of the latest Marvel flick.
To summarize, attempting to write a story around a massive legal organization encounters severe hurdles from both the writing and audience sides because to do it correctly would be an Unexpected Genre Change. Superhero fans don't want cops. They want cowboy vigilantes. If they did, they wouldn't be reading superhero comics.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:08:14 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
I don't think those things are mutually exclusive? My dad likes the Marvel films but he also watches NCIS whenever it's in reruns.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:08:51 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Yeah. When I was talking about "universe", I meant as in "Marvel (Cinematic) Universe". That is why I mentioned SHIELD. I realize it was a bit confusing, though, since the topic originated in a talk about space stories. My bad.
Anyway, your point is important too. Super hero (and other vigilantes/outlaws) stories kinda clash against the idea of having a competent law enforcement around.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:10:31 AM by Heatth
This all just goes right back to Civil War. It is, in fact, the precise reason the Pro-Reg side was doomed to failure even if In-Universe they had a lot of the right ideas: a massive organization of superpowered police with no secret identities efficiently policing the world is not what people read comics for.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.NCIS in Space would be really cool.
It also strikes me that the Nova Corps allow for a similar premise as Damage Control (who supposedly are getting a tv show)- for them, heroes are a bunch of elite assholes who make things harder for them.
And that underdog angle is something that works.
RE: Agent Carter One-Shot vs the series, I think Butters and Fazekias' current statement is it's still considered the canonical Grand Finale of the Agent Carter series. Supposedly they were interested in taking the series into the 50s, which would definitely overtake the one-shot in chronology, but no official confirmation of that yet. I hope they do.
There's that too.
I think the best way to portray a police organization as the underdog without undercutting their authority would be to play up the power scaling. For instance, even as a multinational organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. would have had a hard time with Graviton if he was allowed the level of power he has in the comics. They're a massive organization but they're also powerless humans in a world of gods and monsters.
But the effects budget required to do that would never work in a TV show and is better suited to the comics.
Super cool. But a lot of superhero fans would abandon ship quickly.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:14:35 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I wouldn't necessarily say they went after a fictional version of Occupy Wall Street. <.< The Rising Tide was never even on their map. They never even battled the Rising Tide, only a couple of specific members who were connected to more important things they were dealing with.
The Rising Tide was treated as a largely irrelevant background element except when they were connected to the real plot, not as a villain for S.H.I.E.L.D. to defeat.
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:17:27 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I like to just quietly ignore the first twelve episodes of Agents of SHIELD.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.And since they already introduced the Novacorps, they've arguably already done that.
All they need to do now is to introduce the Nova helmet that grows a Powered Armor around the wearer of the helmet...
...That's how it normally works, right?
Ooh! They could have Nova's helmet be a Super Prototype! I literally thought of that just now!
edited 22nd Oct '15 11:39:29 AM by TargetmasterJoe

I think the Ten Rings and the real Mandarin are essentially a Sequel Hook. So while Marvel might not have any pics on the books to use them, that doesn't mean they won't ever sit down to plot out some phase 4 or 5 movie and decide to go forward with them anyways.
edited 22nd Oct '15 10:37:01 AM by Falrinn