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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
It's frustrating how polarizing Wanda gets. I don't know why I'm drawn to characters like her that are so polarizing. I lump her in the same group as Samantha LaRusso, Skyler White and Karen Page.
Honestly, I should be more annoyed about when people dehumanize Vision (he's an artificial humannote ; he had to sign the Accords, had property in his name, had a will, etc.) to trivialize Wanda's grief over his death to "she's sad that her toaster / dildo / vibrator broke".
Edited by dmcreif on Mar 23rd 2022 at 3:16:32 PM
Okey Dokey!That's an interesting point, actually. This is a criticism of the Avengers that neither the movies nor fandom really talk about. Basically, this is a problem that inevitably occurs with any militarized response group that doesn't have anything to be responding to.
The Avengers were formed as a response to extraterrestrial or otherwise super-powered threats such as Loki or Thanos. But those threats are few and far between. What are they supposed to be doing in the years that pass between space invasions? The MCU isn't like the 616; There aren't 500 different demon lords, alien conquerors, parallel universe invaders, and super-nazis all carrying out a new villainous plot every Thursday.
Well. The answer is, they do stuff like this. Because. They need to do something. If the Kree aren't invading and Mephisto isn't devouring cities, then the bar for what constitutes an "Avengers level op" slides downwards until they find a way to busy themselves.
This is a documented phenomenon. When you give a bunch of tanks, military guns, and body armor to cops, cops inevitably start looking for opportunities to use tanks, military guns, and body armor. Simple possession of a level of force makes people seek to use that force. And if no appropriate venues for that force exist, then people will inevitably pursue inappropriate venues.
If the Avengers can't fight Thanos, then the Avengers will try to fight the Kingpin. And if the Avengers can't fight the Kingpin, then the Avengers will try to fight Shocker. That's just what happens when idle hands are gripping super-weapons.
The MCU's Earth just... doesn't have a pressing need for a team like the Avengers, outside of extremely rare circumstances. They're so bored, they had to invent their own super-robot to fight.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 23rd 2022 at 12:17:48 PM
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Yup and ideally that's what the Accords SHOULD have done. A Third party (like SHIELD used to be) that the Avengers (and other superhuman groups) would work through and with to make sure they don't go tromping off on any old lark causing international incidents every 3-5 business days.
And this is why I WISH Perlmutter wasn't such a PITA because honestly Agents of SHIELD was about to start its "Becoming Legit Again" arc so between the Inhumans plot already in AOS and the Accords in Civil War it could have been a great tie in. In my personal head canon its TALBOT from Ao S to talks to the Avengers about the Accords and drops the Wham Line that because of emergent Inhumans the US Army and remains of SHIELD already have a new team of superpowered individuals ready to step up if the Avengers don't cooporate....ah the potential
The worst thing about it is the misconception some fan seem to have about Steve's stance on the issue. They misconceive his stance as being that he's against oversight. When actually, he's all for "oversight with safeguards", as in "oversight where the people in charge can't overstep their authority in enforcing it, and which will still ensure that if there's an imminent crisis where we have only hours to act, we won't be tied up by bureaucratic red tape".
Edited by dmcreif on Mar 23rd 2022 at 3:36:09 PM
Okey Dokey!
Or oversight which can't actually stop him from doing what he wants/is right (from his perspective). Which...isn't oversight.
ETA: Amusingly Lagos is actually a good example of the emergency/not split you get at. Unlike New York, it's clearly not an unexpected invasion. They had time to warn people, they just didn't and then that's entirely ignored.
Edited by ECD on Mar 23rd 2022 at 12:44:25 PM
Look, if you have a problem with superhuman discrimination being compared to real-life bigotry, I have bad news for you about the MCU's plans for adapting the X-Men. Because there's no way the MCU will adapt the X-Men without making mutant bigotry a big deal. That's the entire point of the X-Men.
I am 100% positive that MCU X-Men will be just as much of a bigotry metaphor as the FoX-Men were, if not more so. It's just inevitable, and if you refuse to engage with the idea on principle, the next few Phases of the MCU are gonna be a bad time.
God, I always felt like such a bigot watching X Men media.
the first question asked in the original X-Men movie is something like "There's a girl who can walk through walls. What's to stop her from walking into a bank vault."
The person saying it is clearly a corrupt politician, but I'm like... SHOULDN'T the government think about stuff like that? real life minorities don't have the power to melt entire towns just by going through puberty. But any solution that isn't "Let the mutants unilaterally police themselves" is almost always framed as a backdoor attempt to be racist.
Edited by GNinja on Mar 23rd 2022 at 7:59:35 PM
Kaze ni Nare!![]()
The only way the MCU X-Men can work and not be laughable with the metaphor like the Fo X-men are either:
A) Make the team not as white, American, heteronormative
B) Make them deformed
C) Don't give them powers that can level neighborhoods
Ironically, because of discrimination against people who are considered hideous, I don't see B happening anytime soon. And it's still a superhero movie so C is probably out as well.
Edited by NoName999 on Mar 23rd 2022 at 1:05:35 AM
I would make a crack about looking forward to the inevitable centrism around the issue. Y'know, the messaging Disney will almost certainly use, wherein violence automatically invalidates the positions and beliefs of the Bad Minorities. Where the "correct" way to achieve change is to quietly wait for a good time to talk and then say the right handful of words that make all the well-meaning, super reasonable bigots immediately renounce their hateful ways and change.
But I don't need to wait for it. Disney's already started pushing that angle. It's called The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 23rd 2022 at 1:03:36 AM
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Apparently the comics imply that the vast majority of mutants are incredibly weak, with mutations that outwardly look like deformities? And we only focus on the mutants that are powerful because it's a superhero story. Is that actually a thing? Cuz I'd like to see that angle in a modern film adaptation of the X-Men
Edited by GNinja on Mar 23rd 2022 at 8:08:51 AM
Kaze ni Nare!
Yeah Cyclops can whine that he's forced to wear ruby color eyeglasses. But he's still considered handsome, still has a social circle and can still get laid. lol
A Quasimodo mutant can be interesting but it would take work that comic/film writers don't like doing
Edited by NoName999 on Mar 23rd 2022 at 1:12:26 AM
It's noticeable that the Accords honestly didn't have much impact on the fight scenes in the movie.
- Lagos: Steve, Sam, Wanda, and Natasha try to stop a group of terrorists who are trying to steal a bioweapon that could kill millions.
- Bucharest: The UN sends out a tactical assault team to kill Bucky based on very flimsy evidence (a blurry photograph of a man who still looks more like Zemo even with that prosthetic, and in a world where we have the holographic face-changing technology that Natasha uses in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Black Widow), and T’Challa is trying to kill Bucky because he thinks the man killed his father. Bucky is trying to survive and escape, while Steve and Sam are trying to both keep Bucky alive and keep him from killing his pursuers.
- Berlin: Zemo reactivates Bucky’s mind control and uses the chaos of the Winter Soldier going on a rampage to get away.
- The airport: Team Cap are simply trying to obtain a Quinjet, in order to go to Siberia to stop Zemo from releasing and using a death squad of Winter Soldiers, while Team Iron Man are trying to stop and arrest them (aside from T’Challa, who is just there to kill Bucky).
- Siberia: Tony tries to murder Bucky because HYDRA had mind-controlled him into killing Tony’s parents. Bucky is just trying to survive, escape, and protect Steve. Steve is similarly trying to protect Bucky and calm down Tony.
Edited by dmcreif on Mar 23rd 2022 at 4:22:23 AM
Okey Dokey!The X-Men movies always include stuff like a mutant dropping a baseball stadium on the White House or Professor X mind fucking the President of the United States to flex on him during an address. And it's like, these things should really torpedo Human/Mutant relations you know?
Maybe Mutants actually do work better in a setting where they aren't the only weird, fantastical thing running around. Because the Fox-Men movies only have mutants. So you have incredibly powerful, god like mutants contrasted against a mostly normal "rest of the world". If mutants are running around but there's also actual gods from Asgard, literal aliens, interdimensional eldritch nightmares, wizards, and super soldiers milling about at the exact same time, then being uniquely shitty to mutants WOULD feel like scapegoating.
Edited by GNinja on Mar 23rd 2022 at 8:27:22 AM
Kaze ni Nare!I mean, we literally had an X-Men movie where Magneto outright said he agreed with the Nazi antagonist's eugenicist views, the only issue he had was with said Nazi killing his mom.
Magneto has frequently been written to where he's either more anti-heroic and genuinely disgusted with Nazism, or they draw deliberate parallels to make him an evil mutant Nazi...and I don't exactly trust Disney on handling him.
There is a comic like that. It places much more emphasis on the mutant analogues being overall average and underpowered (and the few that are violent and powerful, their prisons aren’t made of cardboard). Consequently the tone is very different from X-men; action scenes are rarer than once every 10 pages and the focus is on the emotional drama. It’s a good read, too bad it was never finished though.
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I've been meaning to ask did you have a problem with Killmongers stance in Black Panther? And if you didn't what do you feel the fundamental difference between him and Magneto is in his more villainous roles?

Fraid not.