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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

TargetmasterJoe from Velocitron Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: I like big bots and I can not lie
#124876: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:32:05 PM

It's possible that he's blaming them for all that.

Woof. Paging Dr. Fault, Dr. Never My Fault.

Also, we don't know if he survived the Snap, right?

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Feb 7th 2021 at 5:33:17 AM

chasemaddigan I'm Sad Frogerson. Since: Oct, 2011
I'm Sad Frogerson.
#124877: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:36:35 PM

Never underestimate how much spite can motivate a person.

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#124878: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:41:04 PM

From his perspective his work is still not complete. He "broke" the Avengers for one movie...if he wasn't killed in the Snap then he had to watch the surviving Avengers come back together to protect the world for the next five years and if he did, he had to return to a world where the Avengers reunited and were probably hailed as heroes for bringing back the snapped population and stopping Thanos for good.

Either outcome probably pissed him off immensely.

Edited by comicwriter on Feb 7th 2021 at 5:41:22 AM

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#124879: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:42:40 PM

As I said, it doesn't seem like his core thesis changed. He thought superheroes were the cause/contributing factor to all these apocalyptic mega battles, and he still thinks so, he just realized his technique in Civil War didn't actually work at all. Though I have to wonder what the hell he's planning now.

I'm also going to assume that 'around the block' remark wasn't an attempt of insult to my overall knowledge or intellectual capacity just because I didn't know that particular bit of minutia about Brazilian society.

I was more saying your blanket dismissal of the entire argument as "this is a US problem/skulls can mean a lot of thing" may simply be because you, personally, haven't seen or experienced those symbols yourself rather than them being inexistent outside of the US as you claim. Thus "You might need to get around the block more".

Edited by Gaon on Feb 7th 2021 at 5:43:21 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
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.
#124880: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:50:51 PM

It'd be funny if Sam and Bucky refuted the idea that it's their fault by directly blaming Zemo himself. Like, if their response to "Superheroes destroy and remake lives on a whim, with no care for the ramifications, the Avengers are responsible for the Snap and Blip" was "Actually no, fuck you, this is YOUR FAULT. You, SPECIFICALLY, are responsible for the Snap, you asshole! If you hadn't broken up the Avengers, we'd have been able to stop Thanos in the first place. Come on, let's fuck this guy up, I've been harboring a grudge for the last 8 years now."

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#124881: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:54:49 PM

Is it just me or does Zemo’s mask resemble Thanos?

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#124882: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:56:13 PM

[up]It looks like the comic mask to me, but the purple is striking in this context.

Altris from the Vortex Since: Aug, 2019 Relationship Status: Not caught up in your love affair
Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#124884: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:58:08 PM

Not just the purple, but also the seams loosely mimicking Thanos’s face and chin markings.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#124885: Feb 7th 2021 at 5:59:54 PM

I imagine that's gonna be at least brought up at some point. I actually do hope the series gives Zemo a sustained and strong character arc, because his POV is interesting in the context of the MCU (the "normal man" trying to make gods bleed because he's tired of being in the divine crossfire) but also unsustainable one long-term.

First because the idea that heroes and villains are equally responsible for the tragedies doesn't hold up to anyscrutiny after you take away Zemo's blinding grief. So I think it'd be pretty neat if the show tried to have an arc where he has to face the lack of logic of his belief. The other problem is he can't keep the "normal man" routine if he keeps being a gigantic pebble in the shoe of super people at alarming frequency.

So I imagine his arc here would be to become a more proper supervillain (down to the mask) and tweak the incoherent aspect of his internal belief system.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Blueace Surrounded by weirdoes from The End Of the World Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Surrounded by weirdoes
#124886: Feb 7th 2021 at 6:05:01 PM

Odds on him trying to Captain America himself up or something?

If only for the irony of it.

Edited by Blueace on Feb 7th 2021 at 11:05:32 AM

Wake me up at your own risk.
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#124887: Feb 7th 2021 at 6:18:34 PM

The Thanos connection Tucker pointed out also raises some interesting questions of how Zemo views Thanos. Some of it is dependant how much he knows about him (though given Zemo is phenomenally well-informed, considering his intelligence agent background, he's probably more up to date than most), but still there's potential there. Zemo focuses almost entirely on the Avengers in civil war so he never really elaborates how he feels in relation to their enemies.

Ultron and Loki are the past and given one was a literal creation of and the latter a sibling of one of the Avengers, it's easy to imagine how he views them, but Thanos is an interesting question given he's pretty much entirely unrelated to the Avengers and one way or another he'd have wiped out half of mankind (if the stones weren't on earth, he'd just have picked them up from elsewhere, and his plan spanned the whole galaxy). He is the one foe it is impossible to blame the Avengers for (indeed they had 0 idea he even existed before Infinity War). Does he view him as a monster? Does he admire him (to varying extents) for nearly ending the Avengers and ending conflict on earth? There's a lot to be thought about.

The idea of Zemo as a Thanos fanboy is a wild one I hadn't considered before Tucker pointed out the (most likely coincidental) similarity in his mask.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#124888: Feb 7th 2021 at 7:58:44 PM

Man I always find it weird what they did to Hawkeye in Endgame, and how many fans and critics said it was an "improvement".

Really? This is the first I'm hearing of this. The closest thing I've seen to a defense of that arc was that it wasn't racist since Clint was killing all criminals not just the Yakuza and the Mexican Cartels.

The problem, as Gaon outlined, is the fact that while several of his interpretations have shown his lifestyle as self-destructive, none yet have gone as far as condemning it.

Garth Ennis has from what I recall.

Beatman1 Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Gone fishin'
#124889: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:02:00 PM

[up]Ennis goes way too far into Do Not Do This Cool Thing for any of his critiques of Frank to have teeth.

slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#124890: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:04:43 PM

Also rather hypocritical considering he does glorify vigilante men like Billy Butcher for the most part.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Bullman Enid Sinclair Since: Jun, 2018 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
Enid Sinclair
#124891: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:07:24 PM

[up][up][up] I think that was YouTube critics where I got that idea, plus all those fans wanting that time to be explored in his show. Which is also from Youtube I think.

Edited by Bullman on Feb 7th 2021 at 10:23:40 AM

Fan-Preferred Couple cleanup thread
HailMuffins Since: May, 2016 Relationship Status: Shipping fictional characters
#124892: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:18:50 PM

I did saw it as an improvement in the sense that there is an arc there, whereas Hawkeye had nothing to work with beforehand.

Not that I really care about Barton much more than I did before, but I can at least respect that an attempt was made if nothing else.

Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#124893: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:22:19 PM

I think they just wanted to squeeze in some Ronin.

Which I don't personally get. Are people actually hype for any time Clint isn't Hawkeye? Nobody is super into him being Goliath and not wearing a shirt. Were they into him randomly using a Japanese term and pretending he wasn't Hawkeye?

They should have gone with Hawk Guy.

Clint just dropping off the face of the Earth to manage an apartment building and watch a guy grill stuff on the roof.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#124894: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:23:14 PM

Ennis has a indecisive relationship with Frank Castle's demons. A recurring aspect of Garth Ennis's work (exmplified best in Punisher, but really present in his entire body of work) is to portray these incredibly violent, emotionally stunted killing machine men as incredibly self-destructive but also as incredibly cool, badass, admirable and often the only righteous choice to defeat evil, whith leads to some very thematically inconsistent series. It's also incredibly rare that any of his men evolve from the toxic masculinity on steroids he saddles them with. Long story short, Do Not Do This Cool Thing and wanting his cake and eating it too in spades.

Ennis himself likes to say in interviews he thinks the Punisher is a unhinged madman, that he always wrote him that way and that he condemns the appropriation of the character by fascists but it always seemed like a bit of self-serving memory on Garth's part given his work is the defining work of "Castle as a emotionally stunted mass-murderer but who's also much more heroic than the horrible people he's facing and whose existence is necessary for this reason" (i.e Dave Grossman's wolf, sheep and sheep-dog metaphor made into a series concept). One of the problems being that Ennis had a famous mantra of making his villains "worth the bullet" (in his own words), by which he means making them truly loathsome. It's hard to not end up with a "hey, Frank Castle is a alright guy despite being a lunatic" (and a story advocating extreme measures against crime) when every single criminal in the face of God's green earth appears to be a stone-cold, remorseless sociopath dedicated entirely to rape and murder even when it doesn't directly benefit them.

He's the main writer responsible for this whole discussion, I'd argue. Pre-Ennis Punisher was much pulpier and less grimdark, the kind of guy who could have foes like The Saracen (a jovial, Noble Demon sword-wielding international hitman) and Thorn (a mafioso who seems to have acquired superhuman resilience after being dropped into a ice-cold river).

Probably Ennis's best story (that I've read anyway) at condemning the Punisher's toxic mindset is the origin story he wrote for castle (Ironically enough), Punisher: Born. In that one it is pretty impossible to walk away with the take that Castle is anything but a unhinged maniac who'd let any number of innocents perish if it justified his need for a righteous war.

Edited by Gaon on Feb 7th 2021 at 8:23:58 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#124895: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:23:22 PM

Man I should collect the Fraction series.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#124896: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:36:15 PM

Re: The Saracen

A globe-trotting mercenary and assassin whose actions, such as plundering cruise ships and blowing up airliners, have resulted in him being branded a terrorist, Saracen hails from an undisclosed Arabian country, and is said to be happily married.

I haven't actually read anything this character was in but he certainly sounds bit more complex than the usual "death to the infidels" Arab villains that are all too common in Western fiction.

Re: Ennis. Something that was discussed over in the politics in media thread is how often war fiction tends to focus on the combatants with little to no care for the civilians caught in the crossfire. Ennis's war stories have been praised for their accuracy but I wonder if his empathy for soldiers might be a blind spot for him at times.

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#124897: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:53:45 PM

I would imagine that in Zemo's mind Thanos killing off half the universe is no different from Ultron killing off swaths of Sokovia. His gripe was never that the Avengers don't save the day, after all, but that people suffered in the meantime.

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#124898: Feb 7th 2021 at 8:56:21 PM

I haven't actually read anything this character was in but he certainly sounds bit more complex than the usual "death to the infidels" Arab villains that are all too common in Western fiction.

I bring him up semi-regularly because of that. Due being created a decade before 9/11 he is a arab villain pretty much entirely outside the usual stereotypes you'd expect. He is presumably Muslim as he name-drops Allah a couple of times, but his motivation is cold, hard cash and entirely unconnected to religion. At the time, he was a mildly stereotypical (evil hitman called "The Saracen" and wielding a scimitar?) colorful hitman type of villain, but in hindsight he looks practically revolutionary as far as arab comic book villains go.

He's a character I'd almost like to see again (which would be difficult in the comics, given Castle hacks him to pieces during a sword-duel) in a post-9/11 context solely due that.

I did not mention this but Saracen and Castle first met infiltrating a ninja training school for entirely unconnected reasons. Like I said, things were different before Ennis.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#124899: Feb 7th 2021 at 9:01:20 PM

I would say the writers have been trying to bring Frank back to pulpy or at least more fantastical stories. It's just that due to Ennis, many people have come to see the true Punisher story as him going after mob bosses and street criminals.

slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#124900: Feb 7th 2021 at 9:10:58 PM

We really don’t have much middle eastern characters how that I think about it.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

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