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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

SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
OmegaRadiance Since: Jun, 2011
#99327: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:17:45 PM

Sharknado I love you for declaring that.

I can ship Peggy x Steve and Bucky x Steve as much as I want and no one will tell me otherwise.

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#99328: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:19:59 PM

I like fried chicken.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 25th 2019 at 9:20:11 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#99329: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:22:13 PM

Steve has two hands.

So does Bucky, some of the times.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#99330: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:23:52 PM

Speaking of aggressive progressive Steve Rogers, a reminder:

A while ago, I came across an argument on Tumblr over whether “modern approaches to writing steve rogers are politically correct revisionist history bc people write steve now as being super accepting of all races and sexualities and genders etc.”My initial thought was: ok, I have to chime in on this. There is a mistaken belief that cultural attitudes in the past were monolithic, that everyone and everywhere was “of their time.” This is not true; even in the past, there were people and places who saw past conventional wisdom and social pressure and looked to a better future.

But the real reason I had to chime in was that Steve Rogers is my favorite superhero. Why? Because unlike other patriotism-themed characters, Steve Rogers doesn’t represent a genericized America but rather a very specific time and place – 1930’s New York City. We know he was born July 4, 1920 (not kidding about the 4th of July) to a working-class family of Irish Catholic immigrants who lived in New York’s Lower East Side. This biographical detail has political meaning: given the era he was born in and his class and religious/ethnic background, there is no way in hell Steve Rogers didn’t grow up as a Democrat, and a New Deal Democrat at that, complete with a picture of FDR on the wall.

Steve Rogers grew up poor in the Great Depression, the son of a single mother who insisted he stayed in school despite the trend of the time (his father died when he was a child; in some versions, his father is a brave WWI veteran, in others an alcoholic, either or both of which would be appropriate given what happened to WWI veterans in the Great Depression) and then orphaned in his late teens when his mother died of TB. And he came of age in New York City at a time when the New Deal was in full swing, Fiorello La Guardia was mayor, the American Labor Party was a major force in city politics, labor unions were on the move, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was organizing to fight fascism in Spain in the name of the Popular Front, and a militant anti-racist movement was growing that equated segregation at home with Nazism abroad that will eventually feed into the “Double V” campaign.

Then he became a fine arts student. To be an artist in New York City in the 1930s was to be surrounded by the “Cultural Front.” We’re talking the WPA Arts and Theater Projects, Diego Rivera painting socialist murals in Rockefeller Center, Orson Welles turning Julius Caesar into an anti-fascist play and running an all-black Macbeth and “The Cradle Will Rock,” Paul Robeson was a major star, and so on. You couldn’t really be an artist and have escaped left-wing politics. And if a poor kid like Steve Rogers was going to college as a fine arts student, odds are very good that he was going to the City College of New York at a time when an 80% Jewish student body is organizing student trade unions, anti-fascist rallies, and the “New York Intellectuals” were busily debating Trotskyism vs. Stalinism vs. Norman Thomas Socialism vs. the New Deal in the dining halls and study carrels.

And this Steve Rogers, who’s been exposed to all of what New York City has to offer, becomes an explicit anti-fascist. In the fall of 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor, he first volunteers to join the army to fight the Nazis specifically. This isn’t an apolitical patriotism forged out of a sense that the U.S has been attacked; rather, Steve Rogers had come to believe that Nazism posed an existential threat to the America he believed in. New Deal America.

The original Captain American comics are awash with this New Deal/anti-fascist spirit: in his March 1941 premiere issue published by Timely Comics (prominently featuring the eponymous hero socking Hitler in the jaw), FDR comes up with the idea for Captain America as a solution to fascist fifth-columnists interfering with America’s war-readiness program. In a deliberate thumb in the eye to Hitler’s racial science, Steve Rogers is turned from a malnourished working-class intellectual into the very image of the Aryan Superman Hitler fetishized by a Jewish refugee scientist – alternately named Joseph Reinstein or Abraham Erskine – who is then gunned down by a Nazi agent. Captain America takes up the shield presented to him by President Roosevelt, and then spends much of his early issues fighting sabotage and subversion on the home front.

And Steve was created by two Jewish writers/artists to boot.

Edited by wisewillow on Mar 25th 2019 at 12:24:28 PM

SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#99332: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:30:00 PM

Cosign. Jingoistic Captain America isn’t Steve Rogers and I HATE IT.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#99333: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:31:21 PM

I have the sudden, inexplicable urge to shake my fist at the heavens and scream MILLAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#99334: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:33:05 PM

Tell that to the to the poster in the Marvel Comics thread who just worships everything the Ultimate Line did & the writers who wrote it. tongue

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#99335: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:36:23 PM

I was more referencing The Boys and how, among hating every other form of superhero who ever existed, Ennis seems to have a particular hatred for heroes who were written to have existed or fought during World War 2, at one point having one of his author avatars literally say "YOU WEREN'T THERE, AND YOU'RE AN INSULT TO EVERYONE WHO WAS" even though, as pointed out, Captain America and many of his contemporaries WERE written by men who actually did serve in the war.

My various fanfics.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#99336: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:41:01 PM

Doesn't he like Superman? Who also was shown fighting in World War II?

At least be irrational consistently!

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#99337: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:48:02 PM

For some reason, Superman is literally the only superhero he likes, even though he's the superheroest superhero.

He also wrote an issue of Hitman with Superman in it that I think is fantastically overrated. For one thing, it somehow uses Superman to be vaguely anti-immigrant. And for another, it implies that Superman... Superman... Superman... SUPERMAN would just let an assassin carry on murdering someone because he let him vent for a minute.

But then again, Grant Morrison apparently thinks Superman has so little conviction to his code not to kill people that he'll gladly literally sidestep and let someone else do the murdering for him so maybe British authors are just secretly assholes.

Edited by SonOfSharknado on Mar 25th 2019 at 12:49:15 PM

My various fanfics.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#99339: Mar 25th 2019 at 9:58:07 PM

That is so weird.

I thought All Star Superman was a pretty good take on the character and that was by Morrison

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#99341: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:04:19 PM

I think the person he let kill was Brainiac in that story.

Also Earth 2 is a world where has to evil win.

Guess he had to make some compromises.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#99342: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:05:34 PM

Minor thing, but Morrison is Scottish.

And for good or for ill, he's not the only wrifer who was inconsistent with Superman's code.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#99343: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:14:35 PM

[up][up][up] For an issue thats about why Superman is great, it sure doesn't shy away from making him look either like a moron or someone who tacitly condone a man's death.

Edited by Bocaj on Mar 25th 2019 at 1:14:54 PM

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#99344: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:17:00 PM

But Grant Morrison is the one who made the stupid decision where evil always wins on Earth-2 and good always wins on Earth-1, because Grant Morrison has an Earth-shattering orgasm every time he writes about metafiction.

Which is why the very next writer that got to use the Antimatter universe and the Crime Syndicate said "Nope, that's stupid, doesn't work like that anymore."

My various fanfics.
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#99345: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:18:09 PM

Eh it’s an alternate reality where the main tour de force are supervillains.

It makes sense.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#99346: Mar 25th 2019 at 10:25:09 PM

Yeah, until you remember that the problem with winding the metanarrative into the actual narrative is that once you make characters aware of it, they can't become unaware of it.

For example, in professional wrestling, basically everyone but the small children know that it's staged. Still, we allow ourselves to pretend that it's not, for the sake of the show. We want to be in on the act. But sometimes in wrestling, there's something known as a "worked shoot", "shoot" meaning real and "work" meaning fake. Basically, it's pretending that something is real, while tacitly acknowledging that everything else is fake, so the "real" thing is more important. If done carefully, it can make that particular storyline more exciting and something different. But if done poorly or constantly, it makes the audience care less about the rest of the show because once you've admitted the rest of the show except this one thing is fake, why should they care about the fake things once that one thing is over?

Morrison's Earth-2 is kind of like that, except with the characters instead of the audience. The audience has always known that the comic book is a work of fiction and that the good guys will always win. But once Superman becomes aware that he lives in a universe where he's always going to win no matter what and there's zero risk of Darkseid or Lex Luthor ever, ever defeating him... why does he care? Why does he try? Why does he ever worry about anything ever again?

EDIT: And on top of that, it feels unnecessary. Why does Ultraman always win? Because he's a Superman without morals or scruples who has as little compunction about killing people as I do about cutting the tops off of carrots. Batman won't stop him because Evil Batman is on his team. So's evil Wonder Woman, evil Green Lantern, and evil Drug Addict Flash. You don't need a weird metanarrative to explain why the most powerful people in the universe never lose when they have no moral compunction to ever play fair or hold back.

Edited by SonOfSharknado on Mar 25th 2019 at 1:27:17 PM

My various fanfics.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#99347: Mar 26th 2019 at 12:07:58 AM

Count me in as totally loving Steve/Peggy and it upsets me too if she (or Pepper for that matter) are just put aside.

Now, there is some wriggling room there...if a writer goes completely AU everything goes because then it's not the characters we know from the MCU, more versions of it.

But if it is a story set in the MCU: No matter what Steve and Bucky feel for each other, what was between Steve and Peggy was real. They are my favourite romance in the MCU after Fitzsimmons. But then, nobody is as amazing as Fitzsimmons together.

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#99348: Mar 26th 2019 at 12:59:27 AM

I really want Superman to have a reconstruction film one of these days. Preferably by someone who gets that there's a difference between being idealistic and being two-dimensional or childish, and also doesn't think the only solution to that is to make everything Darker and Edgier.

Granted, I'm also of the probably rare opinion that Superman has never had a good movie (at least, never had a good non-animated movie), so maybe I'm not the right one to talk.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 26th 2019 at 1:00:00 AM

slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#99349: Mar 26th 2019 at 1:03:36 AM

Well Shazam's been getting critical reviews so hopefully DC is on the right-track now.

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 26th 2019 at 1:03:46 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Theokal3 Since: Jan, 2012
#99350: Mar 26th 2019 at 1:11:41 AM

[up][up]I think the original Superman movie was good for its time, but has aged rather badly nowaday. So I do agree a new Superman movie would be in order.

[up]Yeah, if they don't decide to avoid Superman and Batman entirely for a while due to how poorly that went to instead focus on other characters.


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