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.
Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
Okay, but let's leave Thor out of it for now. I really don't want to know more about it, I have dodged the advertising for weeks for a reason.
On a purely academic level I think the notion that someone HAS to die is just a big pile of nonsense. There are barely any movies out there which kill off the main character in the end. And I honestly can't say that TV shows which treat characters as expendable are in any way more tense for me than those who don't. For one, you can usually figure out pretty easy which characters the writers really like and which ones are kind of expendable once the show sets a baseline (and yes, that includes Game of Thrones. I stopped reading the books long before the show even aired so I am not up do date, but I am ready to bet that characters like Danerys and John Snow are still alive) and two, in shows which do kill of characters fairly regularly the death is actually LESS shocking for me compared to when it happens in shows in which it is an unusual event.
Narratively speaking killing characters bears a big risk. For one, you block yourself from exploring possible future storylines, but there is also the audience the think of. Ie when I dropped Vikings after season three it was partly because I felt the narrative was gotten lazy and went for cheap drama instead of the careful exploration of culture it originally was, but I might have stuck around nevertheless if they hadn't killed off two of my favourite characters and pointlessly depowered the third one.
But let's assume a main character dies in Infinity war: This could be easily a cultural event which breaks all our hearts exactly because we spend so much time with the characters and know them so well and because there is a huge likelihood that the death will stick due to the timing.
Steve needs to be in it, if only for this scene.
◊
STEVE: As long as one man stands against you, Thanos, you'll never be able to claim victory.
THANOS: Noble sentiments from one who is about to die.
STEVE: I've lived my life by those sentiments. They're well worth dying for.
@Swanpride: You're overlooking one very important detail: live action movies and TV shows have to worry about the availability and cost of hiring the actors. There will often come a point in ongoing series where an actor will decide they don't want to come back for any more installments, or where some actors need to be cut to free up more of the budget. So at some point you'll likely have to write characters out of the series simply because you don't have the actors who play them anymore. And if you're telling an action-adventure story where the characters are constantly in life threatening situations, having them die in the course of an adventure a) is a very simple and logical way to write them out, b) makes the danger to the rest of the cast feel more real (so long as the audience hasn't immersed themselves in the details of the actors' contracts), and c) gives them a suitably dramatic moment to go out on.
So far, the MCU has been very lucky that they've been able to get Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, and Scarlett Johannson to reprise their roles more times than anyone who's ever played James Bond, but eventually some of these guys will not want to play these roles anymore, or will demand paychecks so large that keeping them around is unfeasible. True, they could recast the roles, like they did with Rhodey and Bruce Banner, but if the MCU is like a big screen TV series, then Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk are basically their pilot episode; it's one thing for a couple actors to be Dropped After the Pilot and replaced, but at this point I don't think the fanbase would accept anyone but RDJ as Tony Stark, or anyone but Hemsworth as Thor, and so on.
Thing is, if you pay an actor a shitton of money, then the actor will have a shitton of money, and offering them another shitton of money to play the role again will no longer be as tempting.
If you count his brief appearance in The Incredible Hulk, then Infinity War will mark the ninth film Robert Downey Jr. has appeared in as Tony Stark. That's as many times as Hugh Jackman has appeared as Wolverine, a role he's been very clear he is never returning to again.
He had already been talking about possibly waking away as far back as Iron Man 3. Remember, it was a big deal at the time when he later signed a new contract to return for Civil War and the Avengers sequels. In fact I am guessing that is part of the reason why Iron Man 3 was clearly written as something of an end to Tony's arc, since marvel wasn't sure he was coming back for Age of Ultron at the time.
Yep, and if they had killed him back then, coming back wouldn't have been an option.
Though I do think that the reason why RDJ came back wasn't just the money, it was also the quality of The Winter Soldier and the script he got. Let's be honest here, he is great as Ironman, but Ironman 2 and 3 didn't really give him THAT much for his acting chops. Civil War on the other hand, that one really allowed him to shine.
Plus, currently more or less every actor wants to score a role in the MCU. Success draws in talent.
edited 5th Nov '17 3:09:27 PM by Swanpride
Well of course it's hard direct someone when they're not following the script
edited 5th Nov '17 3:48:24 PM by Ultimatum
have a listen and have a link to my discord server

I overall agree, and I think the thing is it needs to be built up well enough to have some sort of emotional weight. That was my big problem with Quicksilver. His death was genuinely shocking in that very few people expected a franchise-driven studio like Marvel to introduce a new Avenger and then immediately kill him, but because of that, I didn't get any weight from it.
Conversely I thought the big death at the end of Guardians 2 was beautifully built up and fit the themes of the story much better. If they do seriously kill someone big at the end of Avengers 4 like so many are thinking (my money is still on Stark) I'd want it to be handled more like the latter rather than the former.