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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Yeah, I think joining a team of superheros to stop people from pulling exactly the sort of shit you pulled is atoning plenty.
Also, y'know, yeah, the Avengers are going around saving people, but they're still a bunch of Americans fucking around in other people's countries, and when you're doing stuff like taking down HYDRA you're gonna cause all sorts of unforeseen sociopolitical consequences that you're not sticking around to clean up. I can see the argument that forming the Avengers is basically just a slightly more nuanced form of selling bombs.
edited 18th Jan '16 1:47:12 PM by Wackd
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.In The Avengers we didn't see people die during the battle and yet it's clear people died. Some of the shots in the Hulkbuster fight are Gory Discretion Shots, like Hulk tossing a truck at cops or smashing car hoods. Wanda would have to be very ignorant to not know from the news what the Hulk was capable of.
edited 18th Jan '16 1:58:47 PM by Tuckerscreator
As Jessica told Kilgrave.
Context matters. She was talking about the concept of balancing the scales. Redemption as an equation in which you save enough lives to equal the number of lives you've taken and therefore your record evens out at 0. This suggestion is what prompted that response.
She was not saying that redemption is completely infeasible all of the time and anyone guilty of any crime should just be put to death immediately.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I think the issue is that we don't know the full context of Wanda unleashing the Hulk. We don't know if she intended him to attack the city or if that was a mistake. And worth noting is that she was not intended by Whedon to be on the team at the end; it was going to be Captain Marvel.
For my two cents, I think Wanda was definitely powerful enough to direct the Hulk away from the city if that was her intention. But she didn't.
I think she intended the Hulk to keep the Avengers busy and didn't care overmuch about how. From her perspective, attacking a populated city may not necessarily have been the plan, but was not an altogether unwelcome outcome either. It did exactly what it was meant to and she probably never thought about the lives it cost.
Out of sight, out of mind.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.If Wanda got her own movie than by all means, give her an arc about redemption.
Not sure there's room in Civil War or Infinity War
edited 18th Jan '16 2:43:54 PM by Bocaj
Forever liveblogging the AvengersScarlet Witch's "thing" is basically all about crossing the Moral Event Horizon due to mental trauma and usually getting away with it. So I'd call that a faithful depiction of her character.
More seriously, she may have thought that Banner/the Hulk would "shut down" after being exposed to his worst fear, but she didn't really care about his going on a rampage.
And I think this scene is one of several where the movie's refusal to show the consequences of property destruction is glaring. It feels like we are supposed to understand that the Hulk killed tons of people, but not really to care about it.
edited 18th Jan '16 2:45:22 PM by Hodor2
Trope Misuse.
The Moral Event Horizon renders a character permanently irredeemable. From the perspective of the Work, they can never be depicted in a positive light again, because the crime is so horrible that it overshadows everything else that they will ever do.
It doesn't matter how heinous you, personally, find the crime. Darth Vader murdered children and was still considered redeemable by the work.
She asked Quicksilver to fetch him. She wasn't trying to shut him down, because there would have been no point in that when he was already out of the fight to begin with. She got exactly what she wanted out of it.
edited 18th Jan '16 2:47:27 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't think what Wanda's intentions and knowledge were come into it; that's not how risk assessment works.
If she doesn't know what the avengers are capable of, she shouldn't risk mind controlling them, if she doesn't know what the outcome to mind controlling potentially deadly people like Tony, Thor and Bruce is she shouldn't risk it.
I really don't care for Wanda's entire arc, in hindsight. It's one of the few things that has a distinctly "first-draft" feel to it, like it was decided early on that she was going to be in the movie for a certain reason, but not enough was done to make her actually make sense.
Her and Quicksilver's reasons for getting involved in the first place are incredibly flimsy. They're mad at Stark because... his weapons killed their parents when they were kids. If it was recent, I could understand it, but as kids, it seems... well, vaguely similar to her role in the movie. Something that made sense at first, but gradually started making less and less sense as time went on. That, after years, she still decides that Tony is the only one to blame, rather than whoever actually fired the weapon (unless she's been systematically working her way down in a chain of revenge, in which case it's on the movie to explain that) and that somehow the other Avengers are also culpable.
There's also the fact that she never really shows any remorse for anything she does. Sure, she turns on Ultron, but only because he's planning on destroying everything. There's never any indication that she realized working with HYDRA was wrong, or that her grudge against Stark was wrong, or that maybe she shouldn't have mindwiped Hulk and set him on a populated city.
We're never shown any sign of deeper characterization regarding her morality beyond "she doesn't want to see the world destroyed" and "she's upset when her brother's killed", and that's why her joining the Avengers doesn't feel right. Calling it a form of atonement would be great, but first we need a sign that she's actually interested in atoning, or that she acknowledges what she's done was fundamentally wrong rather than something that just got out of hand.
edited 18th Jan '16 2:59:08 PM by Khfan429
Blame doesn't really work like that. It's irrational and rarely well-reasoned. People like big, obvious targets they can hold responsible. That's why the justice system is such a mess; because it has to reconcile the need for fair and reasonable treatment of suspected criminals with the public's desire to slap a "HE DID IT" label on the person's forehead, hang him from a tree, and then go home feeling proud about getting their vengeance on.
Wanda blames Tony because she and Pietro spent several days literally staring at his name on the bomb. He's the obvious source of responsibility, the big fancy name, and holding a grudge against him is more personally satisfying than trying to wreak vengeance on the ambiguously-defined military-industrial complex.
edited 18th Jan '16 3:12:23 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.If only it wasn't one minute shorter than the first Avengers, JOSS.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersIt bugs me that neither of them really got face time with Tony to conclude that arc, beyond the pre-battle banter in Klaue's lair.
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And that doesn't make her blame any less misguided considering she's been harboring it for years.
edited 18th Jan '16 3:15:56 PM by Khfan429
I don't think that face time with tony would have made them like him more.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI'd really like to see Rhodey and Sam sit down and have a conversation. Like, even just as a one-shot.
Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies.

Yes, she is. I'm just saying this is what she has to atone for during her time in the Avengers. Presumably where her character arc should go now.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."