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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
One step after another. Plus, ten years isn't really all that long considering that the MCU will have its 10 year anniversary next year and it feels like yesterday since it started out.
Anyway, I agree that the Claire/Luke romance feels very obligatory. Danny/Colleen to a certain degree, too, but in their case there are narrative aspects to it which justifies it partly. IE Davos anger is way more understandable when he has reason to think that Danny thinks with the wrong part of his body.
I wonder if they're finally going to subvert it in Black Panther. Nakia in the comics... isn't exactly the love interest they're semi-advertising her as in the film. But knowing the MCU and superhero adaptations in general, I could see them just adapting her as a regular love interest instead for convenience.
As bad as most of the romances in the MCU films are, I would be kind of annoyed honestly if Black Panther is the first film with no romantic stuff given the way Hollywood is really weird about portraying black sexuality. Marvel themselves are really guilty of this. Black Panther has had like, two love interests in his 50 years of existence.
edited 24th Oct '17 2:51:00 PM by comicwriter
So, so bad. The two had no prior history together until self-admitted black supremacist Reginald Hudlin, the man writing Black Panther at the time, decided that because Storm is Marvel's most prominent black woman, she should be married to T'Challa. So that happened, and it was every bit as abrupt as it sounds.
That said, I second the sentiment that T'Challa should have a love interest. Although I agree that nearly all of Marvel's romances are obligatory and the franchise could do with fewer of them, the first black superhero to receive a film in the MCU is not the place to draw that line.
Neither is Captain Marvel, incidentally. I expect to see a shallow, obligatory love interest for her as well.
edited 24th Oct '17 4:17:42 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't think characters getting together based on proximity is that bad a thing, since that's generally how it happens in real life, and a heavy audience investment likewise isn't necessary for a romantic element to work. I actually like Claire and Luke because they seem like a relationship that isn't this flagship romance that can never break up come hell or high water, because love is forever, dammit. They're two people who like each other seeing if they can make it work, and I think that's normal, that's healthy. Same with Luke and Misty— they had sex one time, but that didn't mean they were a designated couple, and it didn't make things too weird between them, or at least not for very long.
Obligatory love interests generally don't bother me (though as GOTG 2 shows, you can largely do without them), just as long as they're not entirely perfunctory like Jane Foster in Thor. Because I would have liked to have seen more of Natalie Portman in the MCU, but I get why she wouldn't want to come back, if that was all the character she got to play.
...Asgard wasn't really a deep enough setting to support it, but I wonder What Could Have Been if her story was about a human getting to investigate this alien fantasy kingdom.
edited 24th Oct '17 4:52:11 PM by Unsung
Okay, Hudlin's run is abysmal, but that is not true. Like at all. The whole idea of them being former childhood friends who still carried the torch for each other
◊ went as far back as the early 80's, and them still having feelings for each other (but being forced apart by duty) was a plot point in Christopher Priest
◊'s run in the 90's. Priest being the one who redefined Black Panther and whose work the movie seems to largely be drawing from.
I have no idea where people keep getting the idea Black Panther and Storm didn't know each other before Hudlin's run, but I've had to edit several Trope pages on this very site that erroneously claimed that. The claim that Storm and Panther's relationship came out of nowhere with zero history is one of those things the entire internet clearly knows despite never having actually read the stories in question.
Lindsay Ellis did an interesting video where she said that she really liked the fact that Gamora and Quill's relationship hadn't progressed in the sequel, because she felt it was the natural consequence of Peter being a douche and refusing to grow up. She felt in some ways Peter's characterization in Vol. 2 was a stealth deconstruction of cocky Manchild heroes, because his immaturity and childlike behavior continually fucks things up and nearly gets people killed.
edited 24th Oct '17 4:50:01 PM by comicwriter
Yeah, that's the impression I had to— proximity is a start, but you need more than that for a relationship to last. And family and friends are just important, despite most superheroes being orphans and most movie and TV characters not knowing anyone they don't also work with.
And I wouldn't mind if Peter and Gamora never really got together. Nobody ever breaks up in these movies.
edited 24th Oct '17 5:30:41 PM by Unsung
Ben Mendelsohn is in talks to play the villain in Captain Marvel
. He was great in Rogue One.
edited 24th Oct '17 5:13:05 PM by comicwriter
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Oh wow. I had no idea the thing with Storm and T'challa had been pre-established. I thought it was something they just came up with.
I'm shocked.
edited 24th Oct '17 5:26:58 PM by HandsomeRob
One Strip! One Strip!Mendelsohn seems an odd choice for Karla Sofen but I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Seriously though, giving it a bit of thought, he's almost certainly some asshole Kree (a redundancy), right? I mean he kind of has the same look and mannerisms as Lee Pace.
Also count me among people that had heard via the internet that Hudlin came up with the Storm and Black Panther romance. Learning that it's a decently longish established thing makes the criticisms of that as well as Hudlin's run generally seem pretty unfair. Also, "black suppremacist" seems like a hyperbolic criticism, lousy run aside.
I'm not sure that Black Panther would really be losing anything substantial by not having a love interest, except perhaps the opportunity to have more WOC representation. I mean, that's fairly big all things considered but you can have good and important female characters without having a love interest as well.
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In the comics Carol has a recurring Kree nemesis named Yon-Rogg
, who was accidentally responsible for her getting powers in the first place. I think that's who Mendelsohn is playing.
Okay I won't claim to know anything about Black Panther in the comics but is that one of those plot points that was forgotten and buried until it was randomly brought back years later or was it referenced occasionally?
This song needs more love.You know, now that I know they had a prior history, I can't help but think their break up during Avengers vs X Men (among the many issues that story had) was due to the fan perception that they were just thrown together just because they were both black.
One Strip! One Strip!It's difficult to say. I was under the impression that they'd be modifying her origin somewhat, so I still don't know just what it is they're doing here.
Oh God! Natural light!

Twenty, then.