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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
re: underplaying the Blip:
I'm disappointed but not really surprised. They did shy away from addressing any potential consequences (practical, for lack of a better word, and otherwise) of the Blip, after all.
The MCU has built itself on being a lighthearted family-friendly-ish series. My main question is ...why write the Snap (and Thanos, natch) into the series, and then portray the Snap as a big horrible thing, and then not address the consequences of the thing or its reversal? That breaks my Willing Suspension of Disbelief - that the world bounces back so quickly from the sudden doubling of the current population with little consequence. No economic problems or problems with resources as the economy has to support double the people, no political turmoil as people discuss policies enforced in the wake of the Snap and the five years after it, no social unrest as suddenly (most) people get their relatives back after five years of them being dead... It makes it seem like people on MCU-Earth aren't human, because they don't react like "real" people (read: the audience) probably would, sort of a behavioural equivalent of the Uncanny Valley.
If the writers weren't prepared to handle the impact of the Snap and Blip in a sensible way, then... why write them in the first place? Why not do something that doesn't involve the civilian population at large? Was this the logical progression of "more stakes", or something else that I'm not aware of?
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrI don't think it's because Disney wants to be family-friendly. Since the blip was reversed, there isn't really a whole lot of family-unfriendliness on the surface, because nobody who was blipped stayed dead. There is a bit of family-unfriendliness if the writers really want to dig into it - Far From Home actually did touch on blip-years infidelity as a throwaway gag - but there's no family-based reason to avoid exploring all of the day-to-day consequences of the blip altogether.
More likely, Disney just doesn't want to be weighed down by too much continuity. They just did a big old continuity-heavy season finale, and now they're starting a brand new phase where they've begun to leave the old guard behind.
I suspect the MCU will only ever bring up the day-to-day consequences of the blip when there's no avoiding talking about it (it'll be a big elephant in the room for a future Ant-Man, for example). Otherwise, we might see movies dealing with the cosmic consequences of the blip, but not necessarily the personal consequences of the blip.
There’s also not much stuff that’s come out since the end of Endgame.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersYeah. We were supposed to be starting the next phase with Black Widow, but real life put that on the back burner...
no wait. Forgot that Black Widow takes place pre blip (can't remember if it's pre Infinity War or post Infinity War though), so that wouldn't really deal with the blip, but a lot of movies that would have dealt with it have been massively delayed.
So how Disney plans to address the blip has yet to be truly seen. Far from Home only barely touched on it really.
One Strip! One Strip!Infinity War didn't bring up any of the countless reasons why Thanos' plan would never work, so I didn't expect Endgame to go into the effects at all either. The reason is obvious: the writers wanted the win condition for Endgame to be "the Avengers bring everybody back", so the consequences of the Snap in the film aren't articulated more than "people are gone and so everyone else is sad". It's to be assumed that if a movie brings up a problem of, for example, "the Snap caused massive starvation from all the disrupted supply chains", then it's expected to address or solve them by the end, or else the viewers are left wondering what happened to that issue and the ending would feel esoteric. Therefore, it never brings them up to keep the proverbial cat in the bag.
It leads to situations in Endgame like the Avengers building a time machine and a new Infinity Gauntlet all on their own, seemingly not informing or consulting with any world leaders or civilian governments on Earth or the galaxy or across the universe even though bringing back trillions would have enormous impacts on everyone. The focus is on the light adventure among friends, so anything outside that is intentionally never brought up.
Edited by Tuckerscreator on Oct 16th 2020 at 9:24:20 AM
I feel we need it because since Age of Ultron, the movie have being jumping quite a lot in status quo that didnt stick:
Ao U: Tony finally is retiring, falcon, wanda and vision join the team in a avenger base!
Civil war: said grouo only do something onces and them fight each other, so nearly everyone is a crminal and antman goes back to square one because he is a idiot*
Infinite war: because some shanigans who was right matter very little because thanos is finally here and....he won and the earth is snap.
Endgame: the avenger time travel and undid all the bad thing...except when they didnt it.
So yeah there is A LOT that is being unsaid.
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"Maybe the repercusions of the Snap would be much easier to overlook in a real world that had kept going the way it was going in 2019.
Covid 19, in a relatively much smaller scale, changed society to such a degree that nowadays it's almost laughable to think an event that would wipe 50% of mankind off would leave it functional to such a level.
Then again, the many casualties that happened in the first Avengers movie were barely referenced during the movie itself, and not a lot (or not at all? I don't remember) afterward. Granted, it was focused on New York, not the whole Earth or the whole universe, but in any case the amount of destruction that went on during the Chitauri invasion probably more than topped 9/11, and we know what kind of mark that one left in the real world.
I guess it's one of those cases where reality keeps looking like our own despite increasingly important differences (is there a trope name for that?), just as the MCU has been doing since superheroes appeared anyway.
Edited by C105 on Oct 17th 2020 at 10:41:47 AM
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.It’s related to the Reed Richards is useless trope i think
Anyway not in the movies themselves but the netflixes did a lot with the fallout of the battle of New York as did agents of shield a little. And you could probably draw a line between the battle of New York and project insight
Forever liveblogging the AvengersOr you would, if not for the fact that the tv shows and everything they brought to the table, both good and bad are basically persona non grata now.
I blame Permulter....he's the one we're supposed to be blaming right?
One Strip! One Strip!Even if they've been removed from consideration now, they were intended to, at the time, to fill in the gaps left by the movies and showcase how the effects of Avengers rippled out.
I'mma count it.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI was overall impressed with the tone of how people reacted to the Snap, but I couldn't help but be pessimistic because I knew that they would find some way to undo it and then act as though everything is okay now. Are Hawkeyes family going to notice something about their father is broken? What about all the people who committed suicide from so much grief? Far From Home playing it as a joke confirmed exactly all my concerns that the evolving world of the MCU exists through continuity jokes rather than actual exploration.
The problem with exploring the snap is that it's way too fantastical for most audiences to resonate with.
The big thing that the MCU has done right for the past decade is giving their main characters mostly-grounded character conflicts to resolve in parallel with the bigger action conflict: We can empathize with Tony Stark trying to atone for the sins of his past; we can understand that Thor has a lot of misplaced pride that gets in the way of his own success; we can see Steve Rogers' drive to help others come into conflict with his early rule-abiding nature; we can feel the weight of the Avengers' shame and desparation after they fought so hard to prevent the snap and lost every single key battle along the way.
Having a movie that explores the emotional consequences of the snap could be interesting as a high-concept drama, but it's one that would struggle to compel general audiences unless it was done really carefully. The sensation of "I lost somebody but they came back 5 years later" is not something that a lot of people have experienced. Using it as the emotional core of a drama wouldn't really hit a lot of people the same way that, say, Stephen Strange hitting rock bottom and having to rediscover himself did.
I can see maybe Ant-Man 3 using the plot point as a catalyst for "absentee father trying to reconnect with his daughter" drama. I can't really imagine that the MCU would ever try to use the higher concepts of snap drama as a driving, emotional force in their movies, though.
In fairness, Spider-Man is not the sub-franchise for a serious take on it. Its not all goofs goofs but it is jokier even then the Marvel standard. Plus, Peter and most of his supporting cast missed out on all of it so it didn't impact them as hard.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the upcoming MCU shows explored it more. She-Hulk would be a good place to explore a lot of the legal tangles that would result. And Hawkeye will definitely have to explore the emotional fallout considering its about Hawkeye and is set after Endgame.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersEven then, I'd expect the snap to be non-essential to the drama.
For example, I do think the Hawkeye series will explore the guilt Hawkeye felt as a result of his dark period, and how that gets in the way of trying to emotionally reconnect with his family. In canon, that happened because of the snap, but the core emotional story of a man with PTSD feeling disconnected from his family could easily be told in a story world where the snap never happened.
It's kind of like the MCU Netflix shows had their drama sparked by the Chitauri invasion, but the Chitauri invasion itself was not important to their stories. All that matters is that Hell's Kitchen exists as-is for one reason or another; without the specific reason that Hell's Kitchen was shaped by an alien attack on New York, the plots of the Netflix shows would still be largely intact.
Edited by MileRun on Oct 17th 2020 at 2:56:34 AM
Thats probably the best way to handle things anyway. Keeps things from getting too space whale
Forever liveblogging the AvengersAgain, a realistic take on the Snap would be far more devastating on society and potentially unrecoverable. We're talking mass starvation, martial law, entire governments and countries fallen into disrepair, and mass extinctions across all ecosystems.
The result was that either a) you downplay the effects of the Snap so bringing everyone back won't make things worse, b) keep it realistic and don't bring anyone back, c) keep it realistic, bring everyone back, but that doesn't solve the problems caused by the Snap and end the Infinity Saga on a borderline Downer Ending, or d) just use time travel to prevent the Snap in the first place, thus erasing people like Morgan who were born during the Snap.
And that's what I think is the main problem with the Snap and the Blip. They got written in to facilitate a big sendoff and a climactic battle, but the writers didn't think about the potential outcomes or implications, and now we have a situation like
describes, where every answer to the question And Then What? is bad either from a Watsonian or Doylist perspective.

'On My Block' Actor Danny Ramirez Joins Falcon & the Winter Soldier
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Edited by comicwriter on Oct 16th 2020 at 5:07:20 AM