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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

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#70501: May 12th 2017 at 9:51:50 PM

@Tobias: Yeah I'd like to offer an apology. I ran through the entire Daredevil thread and not only did you not say that, no one said anything close to it. I don't know how I manufactured this memory and I don't know how it became associated with you. Unless it was something someone said in the Netflix Marvel thread (that thread's a hundred pages long, I'm not checking that. DD already took long enough and its only 50 pages).

But really what we should be discussing is how Mr. Fear and Matador totally need to show up in Daredevil.

[up] Snyder was once asked about what he'd do to Batman if he directed his own "dark version" of it, and his answer was "(several other concepts) and he'd get raped in prison or something like that."

edited 12th May '17 9:52:05 PM by Gaon

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#70502: May 12th 2017 at 10:08:24 PM

It's cool, man. It happens.

Have a pony.

edited 12th May '17 10:09:14 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#70503: May 12th 2017 at 10:34:13 PM

Stiltman or bust.

My only problem with Netflix Kingpin (and Afleck Kingpin, actually) is that he doesn't really fight like he does in the comics. Comics Kingpin is a big guy, but he fights like a much smaller guy, with heavy emphasis on dodging and weaving through attacks to surprise his opponents with his agility while he gets in tremendously powerful quick hits. He still has his feats of strength, like incapacitating Spider-Man just by crushing his forearm in his grip, but the emphasis is always that Fisk is a smart and shockingly agile fighter.

Neither live-action Kingpin has captured this element of Kingpin's character, with both of them going for more of a Bane-like big guy fighting style.

edited 12th May '17 10:36:10 PM by PushoverMediaCritic

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#70504: May 12th 2017 at 11:15:24 PM

A random thought, but are there any really good time travel themed characters that are currently under Marvel's film purview? I'm sure there must be, but any that could carry a movie - as either a protagonist or a villain (Kang, of course, not being under that purview currently)?

KJMackley Since: Jan, 2001
#70505: May 12th 2017 at 11:35:05 PM

^^^^ That's been grossly misquoted. It comes from an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2008 about Watchmen. The actual interview talks about the changing comic book landscape at the time and goes:

  • Journalist: "Well, one new point of difference is make them more grim and gritty, like Hancock or The Dark Knight, which seems to also work in Watchmen‘s favor."
  • Snyder: "Everyone says that about [Christopher Nolan’s] Batman Begins. ”Batman’s dark.” I’m like, okay, ”No, Batman’s cool.” He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go."

During the promotion for Batman v Superman the interview quote started making rounds with "That could happen in my movie" as if it were for BVS and not Watchmen, and even if properly attributed to the right movie gets manhandled into him saying if he was to make a future Batman movie that's how he would do it. He's not, he's just talking a theoretical "What would actually be dark?" and comparing it to the movie he was making right then. Watchmen the movie, as in comic, shows an Attempted Rape and a good amount of graphic violence.

On Kingpin, I actually found his character arc to be more interesting than Daredevils. It does go a little too far making him emotionally stunted, but his relationship with Vanessa and how he expands his empire into a Villain with Good Publicity instead of staying in the shadows as a Man Behind the Man was fascinating.

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#70506: May 12th 2017 at 11:38:59 PM

His Watchmen film, though, is still significantly more violent than the comic.

KJMackley Since: Jan, 2001
#70507: May 12th 2017 at 11:54:29 PM

In certain places, yeah. In most places it's practically shot for shot identical. But by virtue of changing the ending they ended up removing what would easily be the most violent and disturbing imagery for either the comic or the movie ( the psychic squid creates a gory mess of an entire city, the Manhattan inspired nukes vaporized everything leaving it comparatively "clean").

edited 12th May '17 11:54:40 PM by KJMackley

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#70508: May 13th 2017 at 12:49:03 AM

One could perhaps read it as an A Million Is a Statistic effect. Moore's Watchmen has relatively subdued violence with some blood, and the climax depicting a massacre of bodies everywhere. Snyder's Watchmen has the climax with just debris and a crater, but considerably more focus people getting hacked apart, maimed, and exploded to fleshy bits. So a few closely analyzed deaths come off as more shocking than a city of corpses, because of our brain's capacity for death.

Although, David Hayter has been the one to take responsibility for why the film's climax is less graphic (he wanted to avoid comparison to 9/11), so perhaps Snyder may or may have lingered the camera on an ending filmed like the original. Who knows.

edited 13th May '17 12:49:48 AM by Tuckerscreator

KJMackley Since: Jan, 2001
#70509: May 13th 2017 at 2:13:12 AM

Going a little off topic of the thread, but this could be a fun conversation.

Some of the issue is that there are certain changes regarding audience experience. In the novel the art work depicts the city of corpses across a number of splash panels, such that if the reader is uninterested in that detail they can just skip to the dialogue and less gory parts (Although Watchmen is also a particularly thick narrative, it's not something you just skim over). A movie is a strictly linear engagement, the audience has no control, so you see a city of corpses and you are stuck there as long as the movie takes to move on (notwithstanding the fast forward feature, but who watches movies like that).

An example of how things are played similar but different is the assassination attempt on Veidt. In the comic he was walking with his secretary in the lobby and she ends up shot in the first attempt, and he proceeds to beat the utter shit out of the gunman in an over-the-top fashion. In the movie he was having a meeting with business partners and several of them are killed in an over-the-top fashion as Veidt avoids being shot, and he proceeds to take down the gunman in a single strike. Disregarding the thematic changes and their quality (I lean more towards the comic version), both scenes are violent, bloody and shocking in their own way.

Although realize that sometimes overly extreme violence is easier to handle than just extreme violence, as it either turns into black comedy or otherwise desensitizes you because it's commonplace. I think of watching Reservoir Dogs and how Mr. Orange was shot and screaming in agony in the back of a car, we see some blood but it's the screaming that makes you most uncomfortable in a variation of Nothing Is Scarier. The best horror films know the anticipation of violence is more exciting than the violence itself.

edited 13th May '17 2:14:34 AM by KJMackley

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#70510: May 13th 2017 at 3:08:03 AM

The best horror films know the anticipation of violence is more exciting than the violence itself.
Exactly.

Watchmen has pretty much always been said to be a comic that's nearly unfilmable, because it relies so much on being a comic. It relies on the reader being able to flip back and reread things that they previously missed or on some parallel that can only happen in a comic — for example, each issue is a mirror image of itself, the panel layouts in the first half being exactly mirrored in the second half. Then there are moments where the book will have a comic within a comic and so the narration panel of the pirate comic will say "Yellow sails," but the actual comic will show the yellow radiation sign. These are things that only a comic can do.

The book is also quite densely plotted. Every single thing is important — from missing science fiction writers to the existence of genetically engineered animals (like Bubastis) and so on — as well as being very dense thematically.

I liked Snyder's version when it first came out, but as I thought about it more and more, it failed to live up in any respect to the comic. It's a very straight adaptation and in that, it fails because there is no way you can adapt the comic perfectly. And the ways that it diverges from the comic make sense, but also show how the comic did it better and was, generally, unfilmable in that way.

Honestly, I'd say the only way to adapt Watchmen would be to do a eight to twelve episode mini-series. And even then, you'd lose something.

edited 13th May '17 3:11:35 AM by alliterator

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#70511: May 13th 2017 at 7:03:51 AM

Why are we analyzing Watchmen in an MCU thread.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#70512: May 13th 2017 at 7:14:26 AM

edited 13th May '17 7:15:08 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#70513: May 13th 2017 at 7:24:15 AM

[up]we talk about Marvel in the DC thread so we do the same heretongue

Quick, let make a fox super hero thread to talk about the other compañíes there, is only fair

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#70514: May 13th 2017 at 8:04:39 AM

There aren't many fox superheroes

They're usually played as scoundrels. I think there's White Fox and some Crimson Foxes and Shenanigan and the Fantastic Mr. Fox

edited 13th May '17 8:05:43 AM by Bocaj

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#70515: May 13th 2017 at 8:41:23 AM

White Fox is pretty awesome. I'd love to see an adaptation of Al Ewing's Contest of Champions that came out a few years ago (which is an adaptation of the game which is an adaptation of the original comic oh I've gone cross-eyed).

higherbrainpattern Since: Apr, 2012
#70516: May 13th 2017 at 5:44:15 PM

Just saw Gotg Vol. 2! It was pretty good.

Man. :( Yondu's death made me sad.

MOD NOTE: Double-check your spoiler tags are formatted correctly, please.

edited 13th May '17 7:03:16 PM by higherbrainpattern

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#70517: May 13th 2017 at 5:45:48 PM

Probably should take the second "s" out of that spoiler tag...

edited 13th May '17 5:46:19 PM by Tuckerscreator

Anomalocaris20 from Sagittarius A* Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: Love blinded me (with science!)
#70518: May 13th 2017 at 5:53:33 PM

Man am I glad I've already seen the film. I'd be pretty pissed off if you spoiled that for me simply with bad formatting.

edited 13th May '17 5:55:42 PM by Anomalocaris20

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#70519: May 13th 2017 at 6:05:51 PM

Oh man...can someone correct this? Fast?????

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#70520: May 13th 2017 at 6:08:53 PM

Is it wrong that I find this hilarious?

edited 13th May '17 6:09:10 PM by KnownUnknown

VeryMelon Since: Jul, 2011 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#70521: May 13th 2017 at 6:09:44 PM

Not really. I got a chuckle out of it.

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#70522: May 13th 2017 at 6:16:35 PM

[[spoilersss: Peter dies. Gamora dies. Groot dies. Everyone dies. Thanos reigns supreme. ]]

edited 13th May '17 6:17:05 PM by Tuckerscreator

nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#70523: May 13th 2017 at 6:18:31 PM

It's been corrected, folks. Please move on.

thatguywhotypesstuff Since: Jul, 2011
#70524: May 13th 2017 at 6:53:48 PM

The Preview Button. It's there for a reason.

higherbrainpattern Since: Apr, 2012
#70525: May 13th 2017 at 7:04:44 PM

oh shit. My bad, y'all. Sorry about that


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