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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.
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    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

Nightwire Since: Feb, 2010
#118651: Jun 23rd 2020 at 8:35:38 PM

So when I talked about how much Applicability TWS has now, I was thinking of this.

tl;dr An important History Lesson by Jared Yates Sexton, author of American Rule, about how the Confederacy survived the Civil War, and was absorbed into American culture, laws, and politics.

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#118652: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:00:50 PM

You guys say he is lousy at making decisions so why is the idea of him differing to other people a sign he is not thinking clearly?

Well he went back to not deferring very quickly, considering by the third act he flouts Ross's orders multiple times. And that's after being under the Accords for a day or two. Tony may say he wants to be held accountable but he isn't the kind of person who stays under a system for very long.

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#118653: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:12:47 PM

And if he hadn't flouted Ross's orders people would be calling him a tin soldier who only follows orders. Tony just can't seem to win with some people.

Weirdguy149 Former King from Lumiose City Since: Jul, 2014 Relationship Status: I'd jump in front of a train for ya!
Former King
#118654: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:19:36 PM

I just find it interesting that Tony, the most chaotic of the group, is on the lawful side of the conflict while the opposite is true for Steve.

The legend has returned.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#118655: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:24:01 PM

Their past experiences shaped them. Steve's experiences with SHIELD and HYDRA soured him on the idea of just trusting organizations at face value to maintain security. Tony's projecting his own failure to keep Ultron from wrecking shit onto other superhumans.

Disgusted, but not surprised
HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#118656: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:24:20 PM

That's like, one of the few things from the original Civil War that carried through into the movie, alongside the general concept of heroes fighting each other.

One Strip! One Strip!
chasemaddigan I'm Sad Frogerson. Since: Oct, 2011
I'm Sad Frogerson.
#118657: Jun 23rd 2020 at 9:54:23 PM

Yeah, at least Tony didn't go completely off the deep end like his comic counterpart.

Say what you will about him in the MCU, but at least that Tony didn't imprison fellow heroes in another dimension that would cause them psychological harm, send murderous supervillains against his former friends, make a clone of Thor that followed his orders and killed one of his former teammates, or turn into an outright war profiteer.

Edited by chasemaddigan on Jun 23rd 2020 at 12:54:57 PM

HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#118658: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:19:55 PM

Well, it helps that the writers weren't trying to make Tony a villain in this one to serve their story.

Sure, he's still a villain, because he's Tony Stark, greatest villain of the MCU, but at least it happened naturally, as opposed to something they did just for the sake of the plot they wanted.

One Strip! One Strip!
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#118659: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:24:52 PM

Lang seems to have assumed he'd just get in and out of that one particular battle without major repercussions, but he did recognize how serious the immediate threat was. Plus, there was a bit of hero worship influencing his decision making.

Lang is funny. His response to "we're doing the right thing and saving people, but to do so we have to break the law" being "meh, sure" makes sense when you think about how that's all he does in his own series. If convinced he needs to do so to help people, he'll put his life in jeopardy, his freedom in jeopardy, and at that point the law becomes secondary to him. I wouldn't call him full on Chaotic Good, but he's definitely the biggest Neutral Good character in the MCU.

Even in Ant Man and the Wasp, where him noting "I'm on house arrest, I really can't be breaking the law right now" was a plot point, he still juggles the needs of the assholes who want / force him to break the law anyway because he's thinks its right.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:31:33 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
#118660: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:30:35 PM

I seriously think that Scott might be the nicest person in the MCU.

He even likes Hank.

The only other people that like Hank are his immediate family. Nobody likes Hank on purpose!

Edited by Bocaj on Jun 23rd 2020 at 1:31:16 PM

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#118661: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:34:00 PM

I'm not even sure Hope likes Hank. She loves him, sure. But mostly all they do when together is complain about things and reminisce about bygone days where things weren't so bad between them.

Hell, I'm certain that Hank doesn't particularly like Hank either.

It's my favorite thing about Ant Man and the Wasp: it sets you up to think it's another "look at these supporting characters babysitting this Manchild hero" story (which the first movie dipped a bit into), but as the movie keeps going it becomes clear that Scott is by far the most responsible character in it, while Hope and Hank are too self-centered and caustic to really succeed on their own.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:34:28 AM

slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#118662: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:37:53 PM

Man Hank & Janet must have had one hell of a whirlwind romance.

Fun fact: At the end of Ant & Wasp, when Hank showed her their new house on the beach, the entire theater went into a collective “awwwwwwwwwwww”. tongue

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#118663: Jun 23rd 2020 at 10:41:31 PM

[up][up]Of course Hank doesn’t like Hank. Heck, he turned away Cross because Cross was too much like Hank.

Disgusted, but not surprised
MileRun Since: Jan, 2001
#118664: Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:14:52 PM

Vision... is an idiot. His math was entirely off. Several of the villains that arose after Tony's announcement either would've been a problem without it (Loki, the Chitauri, HYDRA, the Ten Rings), or are at least partly his fault, not the collective team's.

Oh, this so much. You have no idea how irked I was at his insinuation that any of the catastrophes following the I Am Iron Man conference were a result of that conference. Like, what? Thanos was sitting in his big old space chair watching space TV and happened to catch a broadcast of an Earth press conference, and he was all, "Oh, that's it! That's the planet I have to invade!"

Every conflict in the MCU up to Age of Ultron was seeded in the very distant past and was doomed to happen, I Am Iron Man or not.

  • The two Iron Man villains that popped up after the conference were the products of the Starks' past; they absolutely would have come for Tony's head at some point, whether he became a hero or not.
  • The two Thor conflicts to that point were centered on deep space political struggles that just coincidentally happened to climax in the 2010s.
  • The conflict of TWS was baking in secret for over half a century and only emerged because technology had advanced enough for it to reach its final phase. The conflict of TFA happened long before Tony was conceived.
  • Avengers 2012 was the result of even more deep space politicking that ultimately ties back to the decay of Titan. Also related to that conflict was the near-destruction of Xandar, which I'm sure Vision would have also pinned on the I Am Iron Man conference if he'd known about it.
  • EDIT: I suppose the Ego gooping of Earth also would've happened around this timeframe. Totally not Tony's fault either.

The only conflicts that arose as direct consequences of the Avengers' actions after Tony went public were the Ultron event and Zemo's scheme, the latter of which Vision didn't even know about at that point.

Edited by MileRun on Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:23:42 AM

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#118665: Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:22:48 PM

Vision's claim is one of those things that makes sense from a Doylist perspective (of course there are only supervillains when there are superheroes to fight them off) but not from a Watsonian one.

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#118666: Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:50:50 PM

Civil War also tends to implicitly run on the idea that there's stuff going on that we, the viewer, can't see. More conflicts, more fights with villains, more stuff that the Avengers are doing offscreen - and there's a bit of characters reacting to that even though we don't know what they're reacting to.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#118667: Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:51:35 PM

That also seems like taking Vision's point too literally. He seems to be pointing out a philosophical thesis moreso than a literal statement on how the universe works. There's a quick exchange to point out Vision isn't being literal (Steve - "Are you saying this is our fault?" Vision - "I'm saying there may be a causality."). He's not literally saying Iron Man's conference brought the rise of supervillains, he's saying Iron Man's arrival changed the status quo and brought them to the fore (his wording is even that "the number of known enhanced persons grew exponentially").

It's a philosophical and esoteric observation to reflect a obvious meta narrative question: why did the world suddenly become populated with larger than life super figures?. One of the best Batman stories of all time, The Long Halloween, covers that exact question and arrives at the conclusion that the world was always weird, Batman's existence just brought it bubbling to the surface. Unbreakable (and the other two films of Shyamalan's trilogy) also works on that same paradigm.

It's the philosophical idea of the superhero as a Ubermensch-esque figure whose very existence upsets the established order permanently and brings forth the rise or return of figures of similar nature (i.e other superheroes and other supervillains, in this case). In pretty much all the cases this idea is brought up it is not a literal observation but a philosophical one.

Edited by Gaon on Jun 23rd 2020 at 11:51:58 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#118668: Jun 24th 2020 at 12:17:14 AM

Now I'm thinking about The Incredibles, and how laws banning superheroes seemingly coincided with a decrease in supervillains, despite the latter having no apparent reason to start following the law.

Maybe it just wasn't fun to dress up in wacky costumes anymore when your opponent isn't also some guy in spandex. tongue

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jun 24th 2020 at 12:17:35 PM

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#118669: Jun 24th 2020 at 12:53:00 AM

Yeah, at least Tony didn't go completely off the deep end like his comic counterpart. Say what you will about him in the MCU, but at least that Tony didn't imprison fellow heroes in another dimension that would cause them psychological harm, send murderous supervillains against his former friends, make a clone of Thor that followed his orders and killed one of his former teammates, or turn into an outright war profiteer.

Well, it helps that the writers weren't trying to make Tony a villain in this one to serve their story.
By the writers’ own admission, they knew the pro-reg side was in the right but decided to give them some flaws to make things seem “fair”. The problem is that they went too overboard and we got a bunch of issues with the pro-reg side than really had nothing to do with their stance on licensed superheroes.

A similar thing happened with Civil War 2, where an editor said he realistically believed Carol was in the right but had to make her act like fascist so the story would have conflict.

Now I'm thinking about The Incredibles, and how laws banning superheroes seemingly coincided with a decrease in supervillains, despite the latter having no apparent reason to start following the law.
I figured they were all either imprisoned or killed off. If Bomb Voyage, Syndrome and the Underminer are anything to go by, supervillains in the Incredbles universe don’t have super powers, so they’d be fairly easy to deal with.

Edited by windleopard on Jun 24th 2020 at 1:12:49 AM

Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#118670: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:13:30 AM

Both Ultimate Alliance 2 and MCU Civil War were definitely much better than the comic event in making both sides more balanced.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#118671: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:23:14 AM

The Batman thing is brought up in BTAS too. The DA who is forced by a "jury" of Arkham inmates to defend Batman in a trial where they blamed him for them becoming supervillains (something she initially believed too) comes to the conclusion that they were awful people long before Batman ever showed up. Rather than Batman creating them, they created Batman. I guess the idea is that it was people like them that led to someone deciding to dress up in a batsuit to beat them up.

Edited by M84 on Jun 24th 2020 at 5:24:01 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
jakobitis Doctor of Doctorates from Somewhere, somewhen Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: I'd need a PowerPoint presentation
Doctor of Doctorates
#118672: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:25:18 AM

Visions argument makes more sense if we assume he didn't literally mean Tony caused everything but rather the Iron Man conference broke something of a masquerade. Once someone as wealthy, famous and influential as Tony Stark puts himself out there like that it's going to be very hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel."
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#118673: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:26:08 AM

I figured they were all either imprisoned or killed off. If Bomb Voyage, Syndrome and the Underminer are anything to go by, supervillains in the Incredbles universe don’t have super powers, so they’d be fairly easy to deal with.
I dunno, Bomb Voyage could probably be dealt with by a SWAT team but Underminer and the Omnidroid were holding their own against military so they seem far out of the reach of standard law enforcement, regardless of no powers.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Jun 24th 2020 at 2:27:05 AM

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#118674: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:28:29 AM

Supervillains in The Incredibles all seem to rely on tech. Bomb Voyage, Underminer, Syndrome, Screenslaver...

It's kind of idealistic in a way - the implication that everyone in that verse who develops bonafide superpowers chooses to use them to help people.

Edited by M84 on Jun 24th 2020 at 5:29:47 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
Forenperser Foreign Troper from Germany Since: Mar, 2012
Foreign Troper
#118675: Jun 24th 2020 at 2:37:10 AM

This reminds me that I really need to check out Incredibles 2.

Loved part 1 back then, really ahead of it's time.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

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