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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Oh, Captain America was very progressive, due to a long history with liberal writers. From the very beginning, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby had him punching out Hitler and Nazis, when there was a pretty big German-American population who supported Germany in WWII (see the German-American Bund
).
And then in the '70s, after Watergate, writer Steve Englehart had Cap go up against the Secret Empire...whose leader turned out to be the President of the United States
. (Englehart wanted to explicitly say it was Nixon, but decided against it at the time.)
And then in the '80s, J.M. DeMatteis introduced Arnold Roth
, an old buddy of Cap's from before the war who was revealed to be gay and Cap had no problem at all with it. In fact, when Arnie was kidnapped by the Red Skull and almost brainwashed, Cap said this
◊. (Cap saying that the love Arnie feels to Michael is the same as the love Cap feels for Bernie is a reference to Bernie Rosenthal
, Cap's love interest at the time.)
edited 14th Nov '15 7:14:19 PM by alliterator
You're right in that MCU!Steve isn't different from Comics!Steve. But for me, it made a difference because we meet Steve Rogers before he becomes Captain America, whereas if you go out and bought the comics a few years ago, you meet Captain America first.
I also like how the Captain America films deal with- well, not failure, but Steve has to face a lot of Bitterseet Endings The first movie, he stops Hydra and saves the East Coast, but his best friend dies and he gets frozen for decades. In the second movie, he has to destroy a branch of the US government to save the rest of it, and ends up out in the cold.
Ultimate Cap strikes me as being someone buying into the whole "a person from Cap's time would logically not be like Cap, but would instead be racist, sexist and incapable of adapting ideologically to the modern world" idea way too much.
Kind of like all those dozens "what if Superman was 'realistic' and used his godlike powers selfishly, or to kill criminals, or to force the world to change, etc" stories.
And then I think... "well yeah... Mark Millar..." Though he did do some awesome non-deconstruction Superman stories.
edited 14th Nov '15 10:43:15 PM by KnownUnknown
I mean, being a white male liberal in the 1940s was very different from being a white male liberal now.
The Overton window's moved a lot in the past seventy years.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.I mean, considering that Republicans are still debating the effectiveness/"rightness" of FDR's New Deal today, I don't think that much really has changed. Acceptance of race and sexuality has certainly changed, but politically, we have pretty much the same problems today as we did yesteryear. Only with a much, much shorter news cycle.
The problem isn't that the writers wanna make him conservative by 2000s standards. I'm fine with that. The problem is that they write him as conservative by 1940s standards, too!
Like, gimme a Cap that's trying to learn what the right words are, what issues are facing women and minorities today, and stopping himself from being needlessly condescending. That could be really, genuinely interesting. The options aren't exclusive to "flawless bastion of morality" and "bigotted dickweed."
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.Since the MCU likes vaguely adapting specific stories to film in addition to going in their own directions, are there any Spidey stories you guys think would make good cinema?
I hope we get Spider-Island some day, but it's definitely not a "first movie" kind of story. Neither is my number two pick of "Peter finally tells Aunt May, and he and Mary Jane Current Love Interest move into Avengers Tower" - though that's more of a premise than a story anyway.
Not specifically Spidey related, but a Secret War movie with Peter as the focus character would be awesome.
edited 15th Nov '15 12:30:27 AM by KnownUnknown
Don't forget what Steve was like before the Super Soldier Serum. He was constantly picked on and marginalized for being small and weak. On top of that, he's a first-generation American, born to poor Irish parents. And he was chosen because he was a genuinely good person who just wants to help people.
With his background, it's really not that surprising that he empathizes so strongly with groups that a typical straight white male in the '40s wouldn't.
Given that the most important thing to come out of Secret Wars is the black suit, it's not that unreasonable as a Spider-Man vehicle.
As for stories...this is going to sound weird, but hear me out...Clone Saga. Yeah, I know. But with the constraints of a two-hour movie, you necessarily cut out everything that bogged it down for so long, cutting right to the stuff that was actually good and interesting about the idea.
And not a storyline, but a character. We need to see Hobgoblin at some point. Dude needs more love.
edited 15th Nov '15 12:45:50 AM by BadWolf21
i mean granted they were both terrible but
edited 15th Nov '15 3:01:36 AM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.That was the Green Goblin every time (if you mean Harry). Hobgoblin hasn't had any film appearances yet.
I'd like to see Hobgoblin too, since he's a very cool mix of criminal mastermind, mercenary and card carrying supervillain. He's like the Lex Luthor of the Goblins, in contrast to Green Goblin's Joker.
And even if they don't use Kingsley, using Phil Urich would be a neat way to tie into Daredevil.
edited 15th Nov '15 3:22:24 AM by KnownUnknown
Harry Osborne isn't Hobgoblin?
Spider-Man 3 lied to me!
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Also, remember that "our enemies had the decency to wear skulls on their caps" is the current interpretation of nazism. Captain America was created before the US entered in the war. Back when a lot of people supported neutrality or even an alignment with the axis. It may not seem like it now, but it was a polemic at the time. There were death threats against the authors and everything.
edited 14th Nov '15 6:53:04 PM by Heatth