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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It's fine if the villains actually stay in prison, not so much if they get out like they've got a frequent flier miles account at the revolving door. Even in the MCU, consider Loki as an example... although at least he has a partial Heel–Face Turn so one could presume to make the point that mercy wasn't a waste of time.
In the movies, most of the villains end up disposing of themselves in some manner, saving the heroes from a measure of guilt.
Oh, come on. Batman's already acting as a pro bono extrajudicial vigilante. Drawing the line at sentencing the criminals seems like pure sophistry. It should have been obvious from the first few times that no civil authority could be trusted to keep Joker locked up.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 30th 2020 at 12:59:38 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I will give Spider-Man a partial pass here. In his early comic runs, the criminals he caught would indeed go to jail, serve their (remarkably short) sentences, then only go ham again afterwards. Given his theme as a "hard luck hero", having society around him utterly fail to learn from experience is just part of the schtick.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Spider-Man is noticeably less against killing in Russo works than he is in his own series. He tries to save Vulture and appears to show remorse (or at least sympathy) when Mysterio kills himself trying to stop him, but straight up devises a plan to kill Ebony Maw with little hesitation and his big dramatic moment in Endgame is finally choosing to activate Instant Kill mode.
I mostly just chalk it up to What Measure Is a Non-Human? and different directors having different takes on what the character and/or heroism in general looks like.
If you're trying to give a grounded perspective on the characters' situation, All Crimes Are Equal is not a realistic take on anything. Already being a vigilante does not give Batman carte blanche to up the ante by killing anyone he wants to.
One thing that really strikes me about Batman in particular is that it's not even his responsibility to kill bad guys, even if we take that he's a deputized (or effectively deputized) member of law enforcement. That's not the job he took on, nor - if he's deputized - the job he has, nor does he have any personal inclination or moral responsibility to do so: Judge Dredd, he is not. It's neither his fault nor his responsibility that Gotham's legal system is so awful and its prisons are so badly managed, and the more we try to make his superheroing realistic the more "the legal system sucks, so it falls down to the individual to kill people the system won't" becomes a dangerous avenue to pursue.
I often think people zero in on Batman having to kill people because they perceive Batman as the mainline "dark" superhero, and as a dark superhero he has to be killing people, but neither the character himself nor his world is really built for that.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 30th 2020 at 10:35:48 AM
So let's look at who killed each villain:
- Iron Man: Iron Monger is killed by Pepper on Tony's orders.
- The Incredible Hulk: Abomination just barely avoids getting killed by the Hulk, and General Ross and The Leader live.
- Iron Man 2: Whiplash kills himself and Justin Hammer lives.
- Thor: Loki attempts to kill himself but fails.
- Captain America: The First Avenger: The Tesseract yeets Red Skull to Vormir and Arnim Zola lives.
- The Avengers: Loki, the Other, and Thanos all live.
- Iron Man 3: The fake Mandarin lives in the movie but is probably dead since the real Mandarin has probably found him by now, Pepper kills Killian, Tony kills his two henchmen, and the vice president lives.
- Thor: The Dark World: Loki fakes his death, Loki kills Kurse, and Thor, Jane, and Erik participate in killing Malekith.
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier: Nick Fury kills Alexander Pierce, Arnim Zola blows up the building his mainframe is located in, and the Winter Soldier turns good.
- Guardians of the Galaxy: The Guardians minus Groot kill Ronan, Ronan kills the Other, Drax kills Korath, and Nebula and Thanos live.
- Avengers: Age of Ultron: The Avengers kill Ultron, Scarlet Witch turns good, Quicksilver turns good but is killed by Ultron, Baron Strucker is killed by Ultron offscreen, and Dr. Klaue and Thanos live.
- Ant-Man: Scott kills Yellowjacket or causes him to go through an eternity of agony, one of the two.
- Captain America: Civil War: Baron Zemo lives and Crossbones kills himself.
- Doctor Strange: Dormammu is incapable of dying, Kaecilius is trapped by Dormammu for eternity, and Dr. Strange kills Lucian.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: Everyone lives except for the first Shocker, who Vulture kills.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The Guardians kill Ego, Ayesha and the Sovereign live, and Nebula turns good.
- Thor: Ragnarok: Hela is ambiguously killed by Surtur, Skurge is killed by Hela, the Grandmaster could be alive or dead depending on how his coup affects him, and Loki turns good.
- Black Panther: Killmonger kills Dr. Klaue and is killed by T'Challa.
- Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos lives, Ebony Maw is killed by Tony and Peter, Cull Obsidian is killed by Bruce, Proxima Midnight is killed by Wanda, and Corvus Glaive is killed by Vision.
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Everyone lives, with a 50/50 shot of living past the Blip.
- Captain Marvel: The only confirmed death is Minn-Erva, who is killed by Carol.
- Avengers: Endgame: Present Thanos is killed by Thor, Past Thanos and most of his Children are killed by Tony, Cull Obsidian is killed by Scott, and Past Nebula is killed by her present self.
- Spider-Man: Far From Home: Mysterio kills himself.
Overall, it looks like Tony's killed the most out of everyone.
The legend has returned.@ Known Unknown - That's my take too. I also think that it really depends on the kind of opponent that a character is facing. Like yes, the MCU Avengers are fairly kill-happy. Dare I say particularly Tony Stark, but they are usually fighting armies of some nature.
Edit- Semi-
I would assume (hope) that none of them would endorse using lethal force against like a mugger or bank robber/burglar unless justified in defense of self or others. Which is why I think that even in the MCU, someone like Venom or the Punisher would be looked upon disfavorably.
That being said, although I've joked about it, Clint's anti-mobster crusade in Endgame is pretty Punisher-esque, and the best thing I can say about it is that it seems to be treated disavorably in-universe. Although much more in the sense of "Clint is in a bad place mentally" than "murdering people is wrong".
Edited by Hodor2 on Sep 30th 2020 at 12:31:20 PM
Tony noticeably started killing less around Ultron, at least on screen. Compare the bit in Ultron where he guns down a roomful of HYDRA goons with what appears to be rubber bullets, since they're all writhing around, to the scene where he mercs a bunch of terrorists in IM 1.
Which is just as well. Early Tony was creepy af. He's basically a guy who gave himself a license to kill and then told the government to fuck off because he was too rich and powerful for them to stop him. Especially in IM 1, which portrays him as very obsessive and driven.
Ultron in general noticeably only had the Avengers kill people either just offscreen, in explosions, or in big destructive actions, but never personally or directly unless they were a robot - something that continues to all the movies past it (I think the only person killed by a hero in non-fantastical or obscured means is Killmonger). I saw it as Marvel Studios trying to soften the universe a bit now that its widespread appeal is cemented.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 30th 2020 at 10:35:07 AM
A Million Is a Statistic: nobody bats an eye when heroes mow down a pile of goons; only the named characters seem to matter in any particular way. Also, the Horde of Alien Locusts is inherently disposable, so I'm not really sure the endings of The Avengers and Avengers: Endgame count as genocide from a moral perspective... never mind that they were openly at war with Earth.
If you count deaths in battle that are not from acts of God like a nuclear weapon or the Infinity Gauntlet, Thor has the highest count by far given his murder sprees against the enemies of Asgard.
Actually... hmm. Carol must have killed thousands of Kree aboard that ship she destroys in her film. She might give Thor a run for his money.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 30th 2020 at 1:41:09 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Do we have a trope for how audiences perceive characters dying in explosions or crushed or kicked over the horizon or what have you as less terrible than dying by other means?
It's something that's very common in family directed action. Star Wars, for example: named characters will die in explosions, where the audience doesn't have to see them literally die. When they want their deaths to be dramatic, they will be stabbed bloodlessly (something we're long trained to perceive as a noble death).
However, they will absolutely not be shot, especially execution style. Any villain who uses a gun in a Star Wars film will fail to kill anyone whose face the audience knows - at least on screen - and heroes will only shoot faceless goons.
Same here: there's much less emphasis on the heroes shooting people in the MCU now than there was before, especially not humans. And I'm sure stuff like Hulk stangling Abomination into unconsciousness (though not death) wouldn't happen any more.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 30th 2020 at 10:44:20 AM
So far, the MCU Spider-Man franchise hasn't recycled its villains. Doesn't mean it can't, but given how each film seems to be getting written as a mostly stand-alone entry (absent its wider context in the MCU itself), there seems to be little likelihood of that. We can count Beck dead unless proven alive.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Are we forgetting Thor decapitating Thanos?
Thor is sort of the murderhobo of the MCU. At least he's got the excuse of not (technically) being human, so he's not subject to our petty morality.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Decapitations tend to happen in action movies too, as long as they're mostly offscreen. The hero swings, the camera shifts to just below the villain's neckline or to other people's reactions, we see them fall over while a round shape falls to the ground in the background (or in some movies, just the noticeable sound of something else hitting the ground).
In Thanos' case, Thor killing him is onscreen, but is waaaay to the side of the screen so the audience only just sees what happened, and then we cut to far away to see the body fall.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 30th 2020 at 11:45:40 AM
Now I have this mental image of blood jetting out into the cabin, covering everyone with gore as they all stand there, shocked and staring in disbelief.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Always a bit of a gamble with a newcomer, but she's in the right age range and looks the part at least. Hopefully it will pay off.
Now of course due to the character being a superhero fangirl turned superhero, I will be watching for her to cameo in every single Marvel production filmed between now and the debut of her Disney+ show.
Seriously, how do we do Captain Marvel vs. Ms. Marvel? How is that even a thing?
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's a loaded question since, unlike comics, where the Joker can escape over and over, for movies the actor playing the Joker won't be showing up for twelve straight films. In movies, the 'Just Lock the Bad Guy Up and He'll Rot in Jail' trope, which is actually rather realistic but very rarely enforced in comics, it's much more reasonable to enforce and there's less of a need to kill.
Much like, anyway, comic books villains come back even when you kill them anyway, but not so much for movies.
Also, the 'why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker' complain always convently ignores Batman isn't the only person in the planet who could kill the Joker. He already goes out of his way to catch him risking his life when technically he's not obligated to, he doesn't have to play your state sanctioned executioner on top of that.
Edited by AmazingSpiderHam on Sep 30th 2020 at 9:56:32 AM