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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

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#114051: Dec 31st 2019 at 7:24:11 AM

It's one of my least favourite parts of comic book fandom. That fans are able to point out all the ways in which the heroes could easily beat any villain if the plot weren't constructed in such a way that prevents them from doing so. Like, when someone told me about that one time in the Flash where he evacuated an entire city in the 0.00000001 seconds it took for a nuke to go off.

Being told that Captain Marvel could've easily beaten Thanos if she wasn't distracted by other stuff doesn't really add anything to the scene by itself. It might be an objective factoid, I'm just not sure how it's all that useful.

You're not wrong.

What it boils down to is that no fight happens in a vacuum. If Iron Man wasn't distracted, forced into confined space, and could engage Steve 1v1 under totally neutral circumstances, he could easily have beaten him.

Which. Cool. But it doesn't change the fact that Steve and Bucky kicked his ass. Totally neutral circumstances don't exist, have never existed, and will never exist. A character's ability to think on their feet and adapt to changing circumstances is part of what makes someone a good fighter.

Carol was able to even the playing field with Thanos by absorbing the energy from the Infinity Gems. Thanos, in turn, was able to make her stop doing that via clever Power Gem shenanigans. Both of these things are the individual characters taking advantage of the unique circumstances surrounding their fight, and Thanos's opportunistic cleverness trumped Carol's in this exchange.

Narrative fights rarely take place in Final Destination with Fox Only and No Items. There are always circumstances, because circumstances are the key reason to have the characters fight in the first place.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 31st 2019 at 8:27:42 AM

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
HallowHawk Since: Feb, 2013
#114052: Dec 31st 2019 at 7:26:33 AM

[up][up][up][up] IIRC, didn't Thor and Steve trade in the middle of the final fight in Endgame, hence Thor's "You have the little one"?

[nja]'d due to browser response time hangup

Edited by HallowHawk on Dec 31st 2019 at 11:30:59 PM

Pseudopartition Screaming Into The Void from The Cretaeceous Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: YOU'RE TEARING ME APART LISA
Screaming Into The Void
#114053: Dec 31st 2019 at 7:48:03 AM

This talk about the worthiness clause makes me wonder how Jane Thor is going to work. Is the movie just never going to establish that she's worthy, and she just gets her powers from Stormbreaker? Are they going to forge or steal another Mjolnir to establish her worthiness? Are they going to put the worthiness clause into Stormbreaker?
Alternatively, they'll handwave it away with "Mjolnir reformed because magic."

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#114054: Dec 31st 2019 at 7:55:37 AM

In the comics, Thor lost the ability to use Mjolnir because of a stupid plot point. This led to Mjolnir calling out to Jane to become its new wielder.

MCU Jane is a physicist rather than an M.D. and her role in the two films she's appeared in thus far has revolved around scientifically analyzing Asgardian Magitek. Mjolnir is such a piece of Magitek, and it didn't, like, fall into a black hole or something. It was crushed into a few pieces left on a hilltop in Scotland. That shit was probably on eBay by week's end.

I don't know what Disney will do. But if I was writing it, I'd lead in with Jane having acquired those pieces of Mjolnir and working in a lab to use her understanding of Asgardian Magitek to reforge the hammer.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 31st 2019 at 8:56:15 AM

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#114055: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:04:08 AM

In the comics, Thor lost the ability to use Mjolnir because of a stupid plot point.
I wouldn't say it was stupid — Thor lost his worthiness because he didn't feel worthy. Once he felt worthy again (acknowleding that worthiness wasn't, like, an on/off state, but rather a continual process), he was able to pick up Mjolnir (well, the tiny piece of Mjolnir that survived, that is, until he reforged it in the sun).

What was stupid was that it took, like, three years before we finally learned that Old Nick Fury whispered to him to make him feel unworthy.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 31st 2019 at 8:05:20 AM

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#114056: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:06:34 AM

There are no therapists in Asgard but maybe there should be

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#114057: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:47:17 AM

Wasn't the thing Nick Fury whispered like "that guy who tried to kill all the gods was right", and Thor just had an existential crisis wondering if the universe would be better off with all the gods dead?

Also, didn't Nick Fury whisper that because he turned out to be a galactic super-agent who fought the threats the Avengers couldn't handle, and then he turned into a super-villain?

Sometimes, the comics are stupid.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#114058: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:53:29 AM

Yes to all

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#114059: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:56:35 AM

Yep. After literal years of speculation as to what, exactly, could have caused Thor to become unworthy just from a few spoken words, the answer was finally revealed. And the answer was that Jason Aaron was character-shilling the new Thor villain he'd invented one year prior to writing that event comic.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#114060: Dec 31st 2019 at 8:59:33 AM

I don’t think it would have been as much of an issue if it hadn’t been played as a mystery

Since it was, Thor was spinning his wheels the whole time when he should have been tackling the dilemma by like going out on a groove get backing journey to decide whether gods were suck or not

It should have been a character growing time period and it wasn’t

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#114061: Dec 31st 2019 at 9:01:24 AM

I guess the MCU equivalent would be something like "Hela was right" or "Malakeith was right". Man, imagine if Thor had a whole character breakdown from being told that Malakeith, one of the most flat, generic, one-note supervillains in the entire MCU, was actually right all along.

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#114062: Dec 31st 2019 at 9:01:27 AM

Yeah. Gorr was pretty fresh in audience's minds on account of, as I said, Jason Aaron inventing him just the last year.

If Fury had just convinced Thor that Gorr was right on-panel, everyone would probably be fine with it. Could have even been a bit longer of a scene, too. Like Thor has Fury cornered and then Fury busts out with the philosophy and talks Thor to death, destroying him psychologically until Mjolnir slips from his grasp.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 31st 2019 at 10:01:52 AM

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#114063: Dec 31st 2019 at 9:05:15 AM

There’s a lot of good plot that’s ruined by the weird belief that it should be played as a mystery

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#114064: Dec 31st 2019 at 9:10:19 AM

Also, didn't Nick Fury whisper that because he turned out to be a galactic super-agent who fought the threats the Avengers couldn't handle, and then he turned into a super-villain?
He didn't turn into a super-villain. Okay, this is going to be convoluted, but here goes: a group of supervillains led by the Orb and Doctor Midas broke into the Watcher's home and stole, well, one of his eyes, because it contained all of the secrets of everything the Watcher has ever seen (just go with it). Nick Fury got there right afterwards and, realizing what happened, decided in order to find and stop them, he needed the other eye, which meant, well, killing the Watcher. Which he did. The other heroes figured out it was Nick who did this, one of the eyes exploded sending secrets to everyone around it (just go with it), and Nick's secret history of being the "Man on the Wall" was revealed. Eventually, Nick was able to stop Doctor Midas (the Orb had already gone insane), but then was confronted by the other Watchers who found him guilty of killing a Watcher and his punishment would be to take his place on the moon as "the Unseen." So Old Nick Fury is currently chained on the moon, forced to watch everything.

I mean, until they bring Uatu back and stuff.

And yes, Original Sin was very weird.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 31st 2019 at 9:13:47 AM

TargetmasterJoe from Velocitron Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: I like big bots and I can not lie
#114065: Dec 31st 2019 at 10:53:35 AM

Moon Knight updates:

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Dec 31st 2019 at 1:59:21 PM

alliterator Since: Jan, 2001
#114066: Dec 31st 2019 at 11:37:39 AM

...seriously? Are they seriously going to that meme? How weird.

Dracula was never really an enemy for Moon Knight — hell, Moon Knight's schtick at first was that he fought werewolves before he moved into being more Batman-esque. (Or he fought one werewolf, actually, Werewolf By Night.) Dracula's enemy was, well, the people in Tomb of Dracula and eventually Blade. And the X-Men.

Moon Knight's main arch-enemies was Roaul Bushman and Black Spectre.

Edited by alliterator on Dec 31st 2019 at 11:38:33 AM

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#114067: Dec 31st 2019 at 11:45:34 AM

If the entire show is Daniel Radcliffe Moon Knight trying to get the money Dracula owes him...I don’t think I can be too upset.

Seriously though, they rumored the Moon Knight casting, they confirmed Ms. Marvel’s been cast but probably don’t want to release the news until the poor girl gets some social media defenses in order, but still nothing on She-Hulk.

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#114068: Dec 31st 2019 at 11:53:05 AM

It'd odd to think about how both Marvel and DC both just have a bunch of literature characters in their universes, sometimes with very important roles - I guess just because it's funny to realize that in the public domain, characters from just over a hundred years ago are in the same boat as characters from eras past like Hades or Odin.

Like, if they were so inclined, Marvel could make Gregor Samsa a mutant and put him on, like, some early 1900's X-Men team.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 31st 2019 at 12:01:31 PM

Blueace Surrounded by weirdoes from The End Of the World Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Surrounded by weirdoes
#114070: Dec 31st 2019 at 12:02:33 PM

Would DC jump to the chance to get Zorro on their playground?

Wake me up at your own risk.
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#114071: Dec 31st 2019 at 12:09:04 PM

I'm kind of shocked Zorro isn't in more superhero stuff. DC probably wouldn't because he's explicitly fictional in the DC superhero universe (traditionally, Batman's parents died after watching a Zorro movie), but there's never been anything stopping Marvel.

jakobitis Doctor of Doctorates from Somewhere, somewhen Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Doctor of Doctorates
#114072: Dec 31st 2019 at 12:10:04 PM

To be fair in the case of Moon Knight just because Dracula appears in the series doesn't mean he really does actually appear. Spector is cray-cray.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Anomalocaris20 from Sagittarius A* Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: Love blinded me (with science!)
#114073: Dec 31st 2019 at 12:11:39 PM

If they don't reference Dracula being a big fucking nerd, I will be disappointed.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#114075: Dec 31st 2019 at 12:37:21 PM

Like, if they were so inclined, Marvel could make Gregor Samsa a mutant and put him on, like, some early 1900's X-Men team.

...why has nobody done this yet?


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