TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Go To

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

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#82201: Mar 12th 2018 at 10:42:24 PM

I think you are all kind of missing the point here. The message is not "Colonialism is bad". The message is "you can't just paper over the past, you need to acknowledge it and if possible make amends for it". And for this message it is not really necessary to examine the effect of Colonialism.

AlleyOop Since: Oct, 2010
#82202: Mar 12th 2018 at 10:46:52 PM

I think it's a pretty good analysis except for the last part. They're back to back because that's how the schedule ended up after the Spider-Man deal went through, before they even settled on any directors. It's not an intentional playing up of imperialist themes, just a happy coincidence.

It is possible that Ryan Coogler may have adjusted some scenes in Black Panther after having seen pieces of Thor Ragnarok while it was shooting. I'm not sure how much communication the various directors are in as their movies are being made, but Coogler shares in some of the writing duties for Black Panther so he has a lot of direct influence on the narrative.

edited 12th Mar '18 10:48:19 PM by AlleyOop

KJMackley Since: Jan, 2001
#82203: Mar 13th 2018 at 12:42:03 AM

The thing about Ragnarok is that there is a number of lines implying a colonialism theme, but functionally there was no actual exploration of the actual implications. Hela reveals that past while also glorifying it, and nothing is actually shown about how it impacts the modern day. The fact no one seemed to even know about it is the biggest issue, as that implies that Odin's switch to diplomacy and protection of the nine realms legitimately changed public opinion of Asgard to the point everyone forgot about their imperialism. Obviously that doesn't mean everyone turned to love Asgard, ie the Frost Giants, but the narrative was different. The decision to incite Ragnarok was not some sort of retribution for Asgard's sins but purely pragmatic because otherwise they couldn't beat Hela (the conversation went "She tanked The Worf Barrage, we need to Summon Bigger Fish").

In contrast, the political issues in Black Panther are explored because they gave almost the entire cast an opinion on the plot as it unfolds. The scene where Okoye affirms her allegiance to Wakanda regardless of the King was a big moment. Same with M'Baku correcting them in that T'Challa was not murdered but legally defeated. Erik even managed an Alas, Poor Villain justification. T'Challa's decision at the end of the film was the culmination of all these opinions being shared, and not just restating a random line said near the beginning of the film.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#82204: Mar 13th 2018 at 5:39:02 AM

I feel like so much of this whole argument could have gone so much smoother if you had just refrained from essentially calling Taika Waititi a white guy and then flat-out ignoring everyone who corrected you.

I never actually called Waititi a white guy.

I called Thor a white guy. I called Hela a white person. I said the conflict comes off like two white people, Thor and Hela, arguing about the flat concept of colonialism without either of them actually understanding what it is or means. I said that Valkyrie's perspective isn't that of an oppressed minority. And I said that the ending is a white perspective, by which I mean it regurgitates logic that 10-year-old white kids frequently come up with when first getting into social justice.

"Burn Asgard to the ground, problem solved," is akin to, "Well, let's just give all the land back to the Native Americans. Problem solved!" It makes sense to a kid but falls apart when you actually have to think about the logistics. It's a stumbling block that a lot of white kids run into when they start getting socially active: "Wait, going Scorched Earth would adversely affect me? But I didn't do anything wrong!"

This is where ridiculous claims of "White people are the real oppressed race!" start to gain traction. Some of these kids are able to make the leap to more nuanced approaches but others just continue backlashing at the Scorched Earth tactic and being like, "All the minorities want to kill me and burn my home just for existing!" Even though they were the ones who thought of that and no actual social rights groups are proposing a mass genocide.

That is my point about the ending to Ragnarok being a white perspective. Nobody seriously proposes burning America to the ground, killing or exiling all white people, and returning the land to the Native Americans indefinitely. The only people who even think that's an option are the white people ranting about how we have to defend ourselves from those wicked minorities and their social justice aims.

The burning of Asgard at the end is a white supremacist bogeyman that gets passed around to try and scare white people away from supporting minority causes. White supremacists fearmonger for populist support by indicating that, like, if you let black people vote, THAT is what will happen. Exactly that. "Those SJWs will burn your home and kill everyone you love just because you were born Asgardian white."

But at no point did I say that Waititi is white, nor am I saying that he meant to have a white supremacist bogeyman as the film's conclusion. In fact, I never mentioned Waititi at all. My entire criticism was centered on the film; at no point did I even bring up anyone involved in its development. From the beginning, my point has been that Ragnarok does an inadequate job of exploring its theme of colonialism, and the Unfortunate Implications mentioned above are a product of that inadequacy.

edited 13th Mar '18 5:41:41 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82205: Mar 13th 2018 at 7:09:22 AM

> The burning of Asgard at the end is a white supremacist bogeyman that gets passed around to try and scare white people away from supporting minority causes. White supremacists fearmonger for populist support by indicating that, like, if you let black people vote, THAT is what will happen. Exactly that. "Those SJ Ws will burn your home and kill everyone you love just because you were born Asgardian

Except Thor caused it and not anybody else

I wonder if the people who've lost everything will realise how Thor was responsible,he basically displaced his own people.

edited 13th Mar '18 7:12:40 AM by Ultimatum

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Punisher286 Since: Jan, 2016
#82206: Mar 13th 2018 at 7:15:25 AM

It'd be hilarious if the Guardians pointed that out to him once they meet him.

Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82207: Mar 13th 2018 at 7:22:18 AM

Rocket will totally say the wrong thing and anger the god of hammers

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#82208: Mar 13th 2018 at 7:45:48 AM

The thing with Ragnarök is that it is largely about symbolism. Which is honestly the only way it could approach the subject considering how little time the former movies spend on the nine realms.

unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#82209: Mar 13th 2018 at 7:59:01 AM

I wish they have conect sakaar with asgard a little more, they are so disconect that at times it look like two diferent movies mashed in order to work.

And yeah, is kinda weird how Thor the ruler of asgard have displace is people.....Odin and thor are kinda shitty kings, dosent it?.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82210: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:01:55 AM

Odin built an empire on bloody conquests and Thor had to cause the destruction of their homeland

They could just settle in one of the other nine realms,not with the frost giants obviously

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#82211: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:04:10 AM

Except Thor caused it and not anybody else

There are white people who support social justice.

That's the thing. The resolution that "Asgard is a people, not a place," mirrors the sentiments and feelings that victims of colonialism have been forced to embrace. There is, as others pointed out earlier, a sense of poetic irony in the colonial nation having to flee their homeland and become refugees just as many others have had to do because of colonialism.

The Asgard portion of Ragnarok is essentially an alien movie like Independence Day. Aliens have long represented white people's cultural fear of cultural retribution. They represent the worry that we're going to eventually "get ours" when, to borrow a phrase from Malcolm X, a technologically superior race "lands on" us just like we landed on Africa, the Americas, the Pacific Islands, and parts of Asia. Apologies to any victimized culture torn apart by colonialism that I may have missed in that list.

Ragnarok takes the alien movie approach with Hela as the invading alien, karmically paying back the Asgardians for their history of colonialism by colonizing them. She effectively "lands" on Asgard. However, that context makes the ironic parallel harder to digest, because by making the movie about a nation built on colonialism being itself colonized, it makes the film about white people.

This is what I mean when I say that Ragnarok makes no effort to include the victims' perspective. Because it's about a colonial nation being colonized, the victims are the descendants of the colonizers. The people they victimized are not invited to the discussion table; it's just a bunch of white people going, "Colonialism is bad because it's happening to us!" So, basically, Independence Day.

And that's what makes the ending difficult. When you say that it's "poetic justice", you're saying that the descendants of colonials deserve to have everything they know and love stripped away from them as payment for the sins of their forefathers. You're saying that the solution to the problem of colonialism is to make the children of colonials suffer.

That's a message that resonates very heavily with white people, because our ears get flooded by white nationalist propaganda claiming that it's what minorities "really want" all the time. For a message about a colonialism, it's not a good closing statement.

But that's the thing: I don't think it was actually meant to be a closing statement. I don't think it was meant to be anything more than an emotionally satisfying bit of titillation in a movie more concerned with cool moments and funny jokes than actually sitting down and talking in-depth about its core themes.

edited 13th Mar '18 8:06:57 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#82212: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:13:14 AM

[up][up]Consider the opinion of the other realms about asgard, I can said a good reason they are going to earth is because earth DOSENT hate them.

[up]As someone from a country who is falling apart and having to go to another place, the idea of wrecked country be place as "poetic justice" come as......no, just...no.

Also I dont thing hela is colonizing asgard since is her place and she is retaking the place, something that I feel the movie is missing is not only the victim perpective but the person who benefit for it, the asgardians their well and position come in large part for her and her brutal ways and look almost comical how they paint her over because they didnt like what she did.

I dont know, I feel that could offer a more indeed discution about the themes, oh well.

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82213: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:16:37 AM

Earth will end hate them too,unless Thor can somehow convince people they're not here to invade and conquer

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#82214: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:18:04 AM

@Tobias- My impression (and I think I'm going off of one of the articles posted) is that rather than being unintentionally white-supremacist (yeesh, what an accusation), it's more like the message is somewhat twisted, because Waititi identified as Maori, Jewish, and New Zealander (Kiwi?). So on one hand, he's interested in exploring the brutal colonialist past of a "Western" society. But on the other hand, he's definitely interested in and sympathetic to the idea that a homeland can exist spiritually even when it doesn't exist physically.

But the "problem" is that the same place that has the brutal, colonialist past is used for the metaphor about the spiritual homeland.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#82215: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:20:17 AM

Earth already hates them, because any time they show up, it's to wreck a bunch of stuff. S.H.I.E.L.D. started up Phase II because of them. Dr. Strange made it very clear that their continued presence is unwelcome.

Earth probably isn't going to have a very positive reception to Thor popping up like, "Hey, guys, we're moving in to stay! I brought Loki! But not as a prisoner; you can't jail him or anything 'cause he's my bro. We're gonna go blow up Phoenix for funsies!"

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#82216: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:21:40 AM

The Asgard portion of Ragnarok is essentially an alien movie like Independence Day. Aliens have long represented white people's cultural fear of cultural retribution.

Hela doesn’t really resemble a War of the Worlds / Independence Day mold. It’s emphasized many times that she legitimately is Asgard’s rightful heir to the throne and has a point that she is ‘setting it back on course’. She’s not so much “you’re getting what you sowed” as she is “we’re dropping the nice guy act”.

Nor do prior alien invasion films depict America’s comeuppance. They certainly reflect America’s anxiety of retribution, but nearly every single one ends in the Red White and Blue military blasting the invading aliens to smithereens. Thor Ragnarok is the exception in that it depicts a full reversal from empire to diaspora.

edited 13th Mar '18 8:23:30 AM by Tuckerscreator

Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82217: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:21:51 AM

What's a Phoenix?

there's no Xmen on this planet,no sir,no academy of mutants anywhere!

Earth 2 on the otherhand..

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Luigisan98 A wandering user from Venezuelan Muscat Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: I <3 love!
A wandering user
#82218: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:22:07 AM

[up][up][up] Unless by the end of Avengers 4, they end up accepting them as long Thor rules them.

edited 13th Mar '18 8:22:43 AM by Luigisan98

The only good fanboy, is a redeemed fanboy.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#82219: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:22:49 AM

Phoenix is also a city in addition to being a cosmic firebird who likes to cosplay as human

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#82220: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:23:20 AM

Well, Thor does have save earth a couple of times and unlike capitan douchebag and the iron jerk, he should have some good will on the people.

Now with loki there....that is another thing around.

I think the issues the destruction of asgard by is sin is not something Thor should handle because A)he is the one more benefit for it is entire life and B) he have so little conection to the brutal past(I mean he didnt even know Hela exist, damn it) and now all people from asgard have to live with all the choices but Odin and Thor did but hide for the public.

edited 13th Mar '18 8:24:54 AM by unknowing

"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"
Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#82221: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:23:30 AM

In before Thor learns about Democracy and Loki is voted their leader by a wide margin!

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
Luigisan98 A wandering user from Venezuelan Muscat Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: I <3 love!
A wandering user
#82222: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:25:03 AM

[up][up] Hey now, no need to throw shade at them either.

[up] Could be good if Loki becomes genuinely good by the end of Avengers 4.

The only good fanboy, is a redeemed fanboy.
unknowing from somewhere.. Since: Mar, 2014
#82223: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:25:53 AM

[up][up]only to be reveal that Thanos have interfiered with the lection to sow chaos on earthtongue.

edited 13th Mar '18 8:26:35 AM by unknowing

"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
#82224: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:26:18 AM

I mean. Did you see the entrance he made on the rainbow bridge? And he revitalized Asgard's theater industry

Everything only went to shit (coincidentally) when Thor came back

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#82225: Mar 13th 2018 at 8:30:17 AM

Hail Loki, patron of the arts!

(As long as the arts mention his giant statue.)

edited 13th Mar '18 8:30:29 AM by Tuckerscreator


Total posts: 186,763
Top