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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.
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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

KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#140776: Mar 22nd 2022 at 4:54:27 PM

IIRC Tony was already working on what became Ultron beforehand, also. The difference was that this time used the staff / Mind Stonee as part of the design, which he had only just acquired.

Anomalocaris20 from Sagittarius A* Since: Sep, 2010 Relationship Status: Love blinded me (with science!)
#140777: Mar 22nd 2022 at 4:56:27 PM

Ultron is a weird grey zone. If he counts as a sentient being, would Tony Stark actually be responsible for the chaos he wrought? You don't throw someone in prison just because their kid grew up to be a serial killer.

Like there's obviously some ethical culpability there worth pointing fingers over, but I question whether it would be legal culpability or not.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!
fredhot16 Don't want to leave but cannot pretend from Baton Rogue, Louisiana. Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
#140778: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:00:19 PM

The possible excuses for Tony (under Wanda’s influence, didn’t expect Ultron to break out right away) are shaky due to not applying to Banner, who was under no effects and warned that plugging in an alien weapon without telling anyone else could be very risky. And yet Banner helped with it anyway.

So Banner did wrong while being of sound mind.

So, what I'm hearing here is...Banner should be the one to go to jail.

Alright, that's a compromise: Wanda and Banner, off to the big house. Heck, jail might be good for Banner, just keep him away from the gen pop.

In all seriousness, they don't apply to Banner because Banner isn't the subject of these types of talks. Does anybody even remember quickly that Banner was part of the Ultron project? Plus, they apply to Tony because they happened to Tony.

And now to play defense for Banner: the project being hijacked by Loki's stick to be ready far more quickly then they were expecting and it turns out to be a genocidal jerk does apply to him as well as Tony. It's close to the idea of somebody building the framework of a gun and then a ninja nobody knew was around quickly finished building that gun to be more dangerous then the initial plans for it and stealing that gun to shoot somebody because ninjas have to get with the times or get left behind. None of this tossing shuriken and trying to chase down a fleeing car on foot in black pajamas, waving around a sword.

(I should probably finish season 2 of Daredevil.)

But everyone pretty much puts the blame on Tony in-universe (including Tony himself).

But yeah, he and Wanda should have gone to jail. No questions asked.

Wait, I thought you said you agreed with my post about Tony?

And given Tony quickly tried to do the same thing again with Vision, he may have not even needed Wanda’s help.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda, if you'll forgive the flippancy. You can't take away the factor that did play a part in a decision to say they probably would have made that decision anyway. That undermines the point of context.

Also, about Vision...did Tony actually ever admit the idea of the Wall of Iron, a legion of Iron Man robots protecting Earth, was a bad idea? Like, I think he and Bruce may have cottoned on to the idea about something else making the Ultron project like that- the "homicidal glitch" line, it not being anywhere near completion when they were working on it. The conversation doesn't stay on that but I think they floated the idea of external influence without knowing what that influence actually is, which is supported by the Thanos cliffhanger.

If nothing else, building Ultron would likely fall under Ain't No Rule: there aren't any laws regulating the construction of artificial intelligence, because it's just never come up before.

Not to harp on you, I'm not saying you're wrong, but I want to make this clear for the conversation: building Ultron wasn't the problem, no more then making Vision was. Ultron becoming a genocidal robot is the problem but, as noted, has so many external influences that make it hard to actually tie into much responsibility for Tony or Bruce.

Edit: I suggest we investigate this Thanos and see what testimony he has to provide for the case of Ultron.

Oh, wait, he's dead.

...Can somebody get the (Not)Infinity Glove again?

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:05:31 AM

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
Cross (Don’t ask)
#140779: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:01:28 PM

Been a while, Ao S mention a law in regards to AI because of what happened with Ultron?

Diana1969 Since: Apr, 2021 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#140780: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:02:56 PM

Banner might be able to get off with a "not guilty by reason of temporary insanity" defense or something for Johanessburg.

Tuckerscreator (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#140781: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:04:08 PM

I think legal forces would find some kind of category to slot Ultron even if he doesn’t neatly fit. They might note his means of transferring his mind through the Internet and use that to classify him as malware or a computer virus. Or note the flying robots and classify them as unregistered aircraft. They used that for Lawnchair Larry, just finding whatever stuck since there wasn’t one easily fitting law.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:06:37 AM

Blueace Surrounded by weirdoes from The End Of the World Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Surrounded by weirdoes
#140782: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:16:18 PM

Tony seemed to move from sentient robots to controlled drones, and then he left that to a teenager. Tony will always keep looking for the biggest gun he can make.

Wake me up at your own risk.
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#140783: Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:24:38 PM

Ultron is a weird grey zone. If he counts as a sentient being, would Tony Stark actually be responsible for the chaos he wrought? You don't throw someone in prison just because their kid grew up to be a serial killer.

If feel like if you specifically construct something to be a weapon, then that weapon goes haywire under conditions that you set up (since Ultron was under Stark's containment and undergoing programming he was overseeing), you are liable for the destruction it wreaks no matter how sapient it is.

There's a similar bit in the comics version of Civil War that bugged me, where Tony created Ragnarok - a psycho clone of Thor - as a weapon to use against the anti-Regs, which it then was too effective at going in a totally bugnuts way and straight up murdered Bill Foster. Tony gets some flak for that - Thor is pissed that Tony cloned him, and Bill Foster's mom is pissed that they basically buried Bill by tossing him into a ditch - but no one exactly exactly confronts him for creating the thing that murdered the guy and unleashing it on other people.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 22nd 2022 at 5:51:01 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
#140784: Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:16:59 PM

Skrullowjacket and Reed were also involved

Kind of a theme that Tony is a lightning rod for blame for things he did but also other people were involved

To respond to the thing about no law against Ultrons, yeah AOS reveals that there’s a blanket ban on AI research due to Ultron in its ghost rider season

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#140785: Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:20:08 PM

On another note when Blade comes out hopefully Ali is busting sick lines this

"Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill."

Edited by slimcoder on Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:20:48 AM

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#140786: Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:36:42 PM

Wait, I thought you said you agreed with my post about Tony?

I do, but as I've already said, I won't miss an opportunity to dunk on Tony Stark either. It has become my life's mission.

I still defend him on Ultron because I do believe the Mind Stone was some kind of set up (take not that there was a lot of machinery in hidden lab where he found the staff, which makes me think Hydra was trying to do the same thing).

But it's MCU tradition to blame Tony for everything. I'm not one to shirk tradition. It's the foundation of society.

Why do you hate tradition Fred?

One Strip! One Strip!
TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#140787: Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:40:45 PM

Could any prison actually contain Wanda at this point? Now that she's become the Scarlet Witch and has the Darkhold to learn from, she's basically the world's most powerful woman. At least Stark would be easy to subdue after you take his suit from him.

Ehh, it's a back and forth. Typically what comics will do with characters like her is build a special super-imprisonment method designed for her particular powers. S.H.I.E.L.D. will suddenly be revealed to have a Magic Division and they put Wanda in a magic-inhibiting cell that nullifies any spellcasting inside of it. Or they'll inject her with nanites that disable her ability to use magic. Or something like that.

That sword cuts both ways, though. No matter how secure a prison, it turns out to be cardboard when the writer needs the character to escape. They took Tony's suit away and now he's out-of-commission for four years of comics, real-time. But then suddenly he reveals that he's hacked all of the prison systems using a complex AI he built out of a plastic fork, a stolen wristwatch, and some spare toothpicks. So he walks right out of there and into the relaunched Invincible Iron Man #1, on sale today.

Prisons are supremely effective at containing superhumans when they need to be, right up until the moment when they need to not be.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
ECD Since: Nov, 2021
#140788: Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:55:58 PM

More generally, there's a real unwillingness to confront the heroes with their actual mistakes/misdeeds. So, Tony is only really sorta responsible for Ultron (as discussed above) but wallows in it. Banner, who has much less excuse, it's never brought up for. Wanda, who has plenty of red in her ledger with Johannasberg and Ultron, instead gets blamed for Lagos, which pretty transparently isn't her fault. While Steve, who is actually the most to blame (besides the dead terrorists) for the utter series of screw-ups that is the Lagos operation, as well as being in charge of it, never really gets blamed for that, but rather gets spanked for keeping secrets about actions taken by Bucky while mind controlled.

There's a constant stream in the MCU of its heroes doing pretty bad shit, but getting called on the greyer (whether because it's actually ambiguous how bad it is, or ambiguous how responsible they actually are) stuff they've done so we can all have a fight about which side of the line it falls on.

Also, just as a side note, because it's my pet peeve, not guilty due to mental disease or defect does not generally mean you go free. It usually means you go into compulsory and confining treatment indefinitely, until you are no longer a threat.

Edited by ECD on Mar 22nd 2022 at 6:56:55 AM

Kiobi20 Since: Sep, 2016
#140789: Mar 22nd 2022 at 7:29:45 PM

Is possible to get MCU Blade to say: "some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill"

AyyItsMidnight Look, just be decent to one another ok? Since: Oct, 2018
Look, just be decent to one another ok?
#140790: Mar 22nd 2022 at 7:31:58 PM

Can't wait to see open CGI eyes over a sleeping Mahershala Ali. And yes, that did happen in one of the Blade movies.

Self-serious autistic trans gal who loves rock/metal and animation with all her heart. (she/her)
fredhot16 Don't want to leave but cannot pretend from Baton Rogue, Louisiana. Since: Jan, 2015 Relationship Status: Too sexy for my shirt
Don't want to leave but cannot pretend
#140791: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:17:21 PM

@Blue Actually, that might be consistent with Tony throughout. Iron Man started with Tony praising the capabilities of his new Starktech missile launchers for being able to kill enemy soldiers without putting American soldiers in danger, and then moved on to remote-controlled Iron Man robots in Iron Man 3, tried to expand that to protecting the world with the Ultron project and Vision- it seems like he always had a fixation on technology doing the job so other people don't have to charge in and get hurt.

Also, I don't think Tony was expecting EDITH to be passed to Peter while he was still a teenager. Probably wasn't think he'd die very quickly, Peter would probably have lost his virginity by that time.

@Known O.K, I never actually read the Civil War comics but I keep hearing about clone Thor and I'm curious: how sentient or sapient was he supposed to be? How much was he supposed to be Thor-like?

Wait, I thought Reed made and programmed the clone Thor. (Man, Reed Richards sucks.)

At the very least, there's a difference between you making something that goes haywire and you starting to make something that is completed and perverted by another source behind your back.

Kinda like making the framework for a clock and then somebody finished your clock but snuck a time bomb in it? I dunno.

Also, just as a side note, because it's my pet peeve, not guilty due to mental disease or defect does not generally mean you go free. It usually means you go into compulsory and confining treatment indefinitely, until you are no longer a threat.

Yeah, that's my peeve as well. Getting an acquittal on those grounds means having to be stuck in a psychiatric hospital, which, well, tend to be pretty bad, maybe as bad or worse then normal prisons, with a vague sentence of "until the authorities think you're better", which can go on for decades longer then a normal sentence.

You're not getting off easy that way and it's a bloody rare occurrence for a fake attempt to work.

But it's MCU tradition to blame Tony for everything. I'm not one to shirk tradition. It's the foundation of society.

Why do you hate tradition Fred?

I thought we were all agreed that I hate ''you?''

Edited by fredhot16 on Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:19:11 AM

Trans rights are human rights. TV Tropes is not a place for bigotry, cruelty, or dickishness, no matter who or their position.
Bocaj Funny but not helpful from Here or thereabouts (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Pining for the fjords
Funny but not helpful
#140792: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:25:21 PM

It really is funny the extent to which Tony Stark receives the bulk of the blame for Civil War. Aside from Sue making him sleep on the couch for a while, I don't think Reed got much if any karmic backlash and daily beatings like Tony did.

I think the Watcher even showed up and told Reed he was totally 100% right about everything.

Forever liveblogging the Avengers
slimcoder The Head of the Hydra Since: May, 2013
The Head of the Hydra
#140793: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:31:03 PM

Well Reed is smarter than Tony so he can talk his way out of shit.

Tony just isn't smart enough to avoid the consequences for his actions. tongue

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."
Blueace Surrounded by weirdoes from The End Of the World Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Surrounded by weirdoes
#140794: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:34:29 PM

Reed has science smarts. His people smarts are worse than shit.

Wake me up at your own risk.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#140795: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:36:38 PM

Tony's self-loathing enough that he just takes it.

Disgusted, but not surprised
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#140796: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:43:08 PM

When at his worst, Comics! Reed is an awful, awful human being. To be honest, he really should get more blame for things than Tony always does.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:43:37 AM

Gaon Smoking Snake from Grim Up North Since: Jun, 2012 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#140797: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:55:00 PM

I think it's mostly because writers disagree how much of a dick Reed is supposed to be, so things usually get ignored. With Stark it's a fairly consensus character beat that he fucks up tremendously every now and then since..well...pretty much since the Stan Lee days.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."
chasemaddigan I'm Sad Frogerson. Since: Oct, 2011
I'm Sad Frogerson.
#140798: Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:59:02 PM

I don't think Reed got much if any karmic backlash and daily beatings like Tony did.

Well, there was World War Hulk, although Tony got the bigger beat-down in that story.

windleopard from Nigeria Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#140799: Mar 23rd 2022 at 12:38:52 AM

WWH also had Tony and Reed getting called out by Bill Foster's nephew for the role they played in his uncle's death.

Edited by windleopard on Mar 23rd 2022 at 8:41:58 PM

dmcreif Vault Dweller from Vault 33 (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Robosexual
Vault Dweller
#140800: Mar 23rd 2022 at 4:40:51 AM

To respond to the thing about no law against Ultrons, yeah AOS reveals that there’s a blanket ban on AI research due to Ultron in its ghost rider season

WandaVision mentions this statute of the Accords, and it's the one Hayward is breaking by trying to create White Vision.

Wanda, who has plenty of red in her ledger with Johannesburg and Ultron, instead gets blamed for Lagos, which pretty transparently isn't her fault. While Steve, who is actually the most to blame (besides the dead terrorists) for the utter series of screw-ups that is the Lagos operation, as well as being in charge of it, never really gets blamed for that

Honestly, the only person to blame for the deaths in Lagos is the terrorist that the Avengers were trying to capture, since Crossbones brought and detonated the bomb.

Edited by dmcreif on Mar 23rd 2022 at 7:50:51 AM

Okey Dokey!

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