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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I figure the average critics come down to some sort of critic selectivity. It's the Punisher, so by essence, it will lose the let's say "most liberal" reviewers - because it's not really advocating against gun violence, because he is Judge, Jury, and Executioner, and because he is a symbol of macho violence. But he's also a super nuanced portrait of the character, so it won't please those who wanted a power fantasy. One "right-wing militia" character is explicitly depicted as a terrorist and called a shit by Frank himself.
Which left a narrower window of people to enjoy the morality of the show.
Pretty much, yeah. It's not a typical Punisher story, so it might alienate the more gung-ho part of the fanbase, but it's still a Punisher story, so it by default alienates a good chunk of both the conventional superhero fandom and the traditionally left-leaning reviewer circles. Personally I'm more interested if the interpretation makes sense internally. So far, not so bad. Though I still think the wing-nut strawman sticks out like a sore thumb. It's like if the G.I. Joe films featured a blatant straw civilian in full hippie garb, who of course secretly works for Cobra.
As for the gun control issue, I'd say it was about as subtle as the registration debate of last year. You have assholes on both sides, a philosophical discussion that ultimately goes nowhere, the intrusion of violent third parties so further reasoning can be avoided entirely, and a generally inconclusive ending that still favors the status quo on which the story premise is ultimately built on. The only difference is whether or not one approves of said status quo in the first place.
I would, however, give props to Marvel for consistency, in that while critical of government, the MCU isn't particularly restrictive on ordinary people's efforts. It's that kind of two-faced hypocrisy that tends to put me off most superheroes - that not only are civil institutions corrupt, but anyone not in possession of vast riches or supernatural abilities should just give up all agency and let the "proper" people handle things. Right-wing macho man that the Punisher would be in our world, he's still one of the few biologically ordinary and financially limited heroes in comics, and for all the token efforts at diversity nowadays, that's one group that's not only severely underrepresented there, but also, y'know, pretty much makes up for most of the fandom.
edited 20th Nov '17 8:56:18 AM by indiana404
Eh, no, because the registration debate in Civil war presented the arguments fairly and then left them for the audience to mull over. It made clear that this is a complicated issue and that the solution is somehow the middle ground (which most people understood, provided that they weren't too caught up in the whole "Team X" narrative). And this approach obviously worked, because we are still discussing those issues more than a year later.
But the gun control debate is screwed from the get go because one side of the argument is presented by the type of character we are primed to disagree with. In addition, they misrepresent what the discussion (the actual discussion which happens or at least should happen in US society) is actually about.
One of the main problems with gun control in the show that while the show paints both pro and anti advocates as morally bankrupt, but only bothers to take down the arguments of the pro-gun control one, while the anti-gun control is just a raging asshole whose actual points are never truly questioned.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."As with the fandom toxicity complaint from another topic, methinks you've simply found yourself on the "wrong" side on the issue, namely the one not favoring the status quo. Welcome to the Dark Side, we have cookies.
Speaking as one of (I am sure) many people who enjoys the MCU movies but has never actually seen The Incredible Hulk, I had no predisposition against General Ross going in, so Civil War seemed like a pretty balanced take on the whole Accords issue to me.
They specifically did focus testing for the movie to ensure that roughly 50% of the audience thought Tony was right and 50% thought Cap was right.
edited 20th Nov '17 9:43:07 AM by RavenWilder
and yet he is the one Tony must answer for and he got some line about the accords, acusing the avenger of not knowing Hulk location and even compared to him losing a nuke.
Ross is a much part of pro/anti reg discusión as others and he harm any side because the chararer is unlikable jerkass, he is the umbrige of Marvel
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"He's not my favorite character, but I don't think Ross was meant to be a Hate Sink. Plus, he has a few Jerkass Has a Point moments.
edited 20th Nov '17 10:45:56 AM by Cross
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He is an outside factor in all this. He is neither present in the big discussion round in which all the arguments are put together for the audience, nor is he present during the airport fight or any other confrontation about the accords for that matter. (Plus, it even if he would be a factor in this, it would bother me way less, because the rights of Superheroes are a mostly fictional topic, while gun control is an actual political discussion).
In The Punisher the important argument is made between one character who is portrays as a morally corrupt coward and Karen Page. In addition, the show misrepresents the issue by acting as if this is a "should we own/use guns" discussion instead of a "should we implement stricter gun control" discussion. Which is, incidentally, the favourite trick of the gun lobby to muddy the waters on the issue. Hell, it seemed as if they wrote the whole scene, aside from the higher production value it could be right out of one of their "information" videos while guns are absolutely necessary for survival.
Are we sure that they didn't sponsor the show somehow?
Anyway, this one scene is the biggest issue I have with the show. There are a few other aspects, but none of them really disturb my enjoyment. This scene does, though.
edited 20th Nov '17 10:49:10 AM by Swanpride
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even his point is undermind in how he show it, making trying to control and order stark around like a minion and Being unsoportive with the Fact cap maybe have a point and there is something in Siberia, consider how Tony decide to cut him off after cap break the raft is hard to see it as anything but strawman.
edited 20th Nov '17 10:52:01 AM by unknowing
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Trying to separate the issue into only two diametrically opposed sides just makes for an unnecessary, artificial division. I know bothsiderism is rampant, but it's possible to say Both Sides Have a Point without necessarily picking out an even number of points from both sides to agree with. We're not slicing a birthday cake, here. Opinions fall on a spectrum, the middle ground isn't some featureless no man's land, and there's a lot of complexity that's often ignored for the sake of cheap point-scoring.
Trying to prove one side is right, thus making the other wrong, that's a drastic oversimplification of Civil War, I'd say. General Ross is there to make the pro-reg side look less eminently reasonable because the mechanisms of the law are easily hijacked by those in power; super-responsible Captain America is there to help the anti-reg side put their argument into terms good honest law-abiding folk can understand, while also showing how easy it is for that kind of independence to look selfish and reckless. But the point isn't really to sort the viewer into one team or the other, it's to point out that reducing the argument to this dichotomy is what's creating a lot of friction and conflict, not necessarily that the two ideals cannot coexist. When people say the truth is somewhere in the middle, the middle is not some perfect median point between the two— it's a sliding scale, a balancing act. It requires constant examination and adjustment. The argument can't be permanently settled, and that's okay. The ongoing debate is a good thing, it's the system at work. It's possible to disagree and not take things so personally.
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...but as Adric notes, I'm sure I've said words to this effect before.
edited 25th Nov '17 4:05:08 PM by Unsung
Mind you, considering the premise of the MCU as a whole - with secret fascists and malicious superpowered aliens coming out of the woodwork - it would indeed be an interesting debate as to why ordinary people shouldn't be given more leeway when it comes to self-defense. The government going for control instead of oversight is a valid point here as well... though this time apparently working against more commonly held sentiments. If anything, it's rather amusing to see once defenders of the rights of alcoholic tycoons, shell-shocked veterans, alien warlords, biological monstrocities and superpowered ex-terrorists to utilize military-grade firepower at their own discretion, now getting skittish over ordinary people enjoying the same benefits. You have an emotionally unstable guy with his own private robot army, what's so wrong with regular citizens carrying what are peashooters in comparison?
edited 20th Nov '17 11:13:22 AM by indiana404
You are just making my point for me by misrepresenting the debate in exactly the same way the show did. Gun control is not about preventing normal people to have their pea shooter (provided that they are trained to use them, the same way you are trained to drive a car), gun control is about ensuring that the crazy instable people don't have easy access to weapons!
Thing is, much like with representation of ordinary firearms in general, the MCU already abounds with crazy unstable people with access to weapons, and most of them are the main heroes. They were simply charming, snarky and entertaining enough for you to ignore that particular implication, while the Punisher is a lot more direct about it, and his preferred form of violence - while nothing special by the MCU's own standards - is one more likely for you to see on the news. Give him a minigun-loaded jetpack and some one-liners, and it's all kosher again, no unwholesome implications whatsoever.
edited 20th Nov '17 11:27:17 AM by indiana404
"It might be just me, but I find it difficult to view him solely as a straw man due to the various moving pieces involved. Note that Tony following Cap ended up being a bad thing. "
That have to do with civil focus more in emotion that other things around, but to answer Swan and Adric, is because of this
"one side of the argument is presented by the type of character we are primed to disagree with. " And that Ross is kinda that chararter in debate, he can have point right but he kinda blew it by is overall personality or just presence, is own presence in the involment taint whatever perception because....well, he is there, is bad to said this but WHO said things matter as much what they are saying.
The other point indiana make is Punisher as hero is iffy concept because....well, he is too grounded and not in a particulary charming way, and while he debate abouyt gun control are cool, it crash when you remind yourself this is the universe were private citizen have is own mini armory Punish would kill for it.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"All I'm asking for is some internal consistency and, against all odds, this show seems to have provided it. In a world where alien invaders and robotic overlords are a genuine concern, and where random civilians of dubuious mental health can already acquire vast firepower, it might indeed be worthwhile to allow those privileged with but only a trigger-finger, to enjoy the constitutional right to a trigger to finger when necessary.
edited 20th Nov '17 11:57:41 AM by indiana404
Are we sure that they didn't sponsor the show somehow?

Well, most of the critics got the first six episodes, right? I actually think that the show is stronger in the backend. The first episodes, there is a lot of setting stuff up and moving puzzle pieces which don't connect until later. Plus, if I remember correctly the one thing I really hated about the show, the gun-control discussion, happens in the first half, too, while the majority of the stuff I considered really well done and thought out happened in the second half.
Not that the show has a bad start, but it goes from "okay" to "oh, I am not really invested in this".
There also seems to be some resistance against the show...when I was starting to watch it at Netflix, it already had a three star rating (yes, German Netflix has star ratings). There was no way that anyone could have watched more than two episodes at this point.