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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

ultimatepheer Since: Mar, 2011
#22401: Nov 11th 2014 at 8:33:31 AM

Excuse me, I happen to exist near enough to St. Louis for that to be relevant and I do not take kindly to any such insinuations, regardless of their validity.

GethKnight Since: Apr, 2010
#22402: Nov 11th 2014 at 8:35:02 AM

That is in no way what is happening here.

Mattonymy Mr. Dr. from The Evils of Free Will Since: Jul, 2010
Mr. Dr.
#22404: Nov 11th 2014 at 9:29:21 AM

I dunno. While X Men is at least justifiable in that it's really one of the first Marvel movies, I still don't buy that on an absolute scale none of the characters or concepts would be remotely compatible with the MCU. Even if they don't include major plots or characters like Wolverine, I could definitely see some of their B list characters added to the cinematic roster.

But that's it- none of the other "reboot" films have an excuse. I'm sorry but not having Doctor Doom is inexcusable (I place no blame on Marvel's part though).

You are displaying abnormally high compulsions to over-analyze works of fiction and media. Diagnosis: TV Tropes Addiction.
Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#22405: Nov 11th 2014 at 9:49:29 AM

The thing with the premise of the X-Men is that they are not really an excluded group of people. The X-gene can pop up in every family. And while I am ready to believe that in the early days of them existing people might be "that can't happen in my family", eventually realization would set in that your own children might end up in one of those camps (like with HIV, which quickly went from a disease with a big stigma attached to it to something most people accept can happen to anyone who is unlucky as soon as the death toll rose). So as awesome as some of the X-Men are, the premise in itself is hard to swallow long term. If you then add a government which on the one hand tries to kill or contain mutants but on the other hand spends money in order to create super soldiers...then every bit of sense goes right out of the window. You can certainly add X-men to the MCU, but if you remove the initial premise, they are not truly X-men anymore.

I would love to see the Fantastic Four back in the MCU, less because of them, but more because of all the characters attached to them. And Spider-man is kind of the face of Marvel, without him something is just missing.

DrFurball Since: Jan, 2001
#22406: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:06:32 AM

Thor's very existence is blasphemous against God
This actually gets briefly addressed in the comics a few times. During the "Bride of Ultron" story, Thor mentions being uncomfortable in a cathedral, and in Joe Casey's "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" story, a bunch of protesters are seen outside Avengers Mansion, one holding a sign reading "Norse Mythology isn't Christian!"

I'm sorry but not having Doctor Doom is inexcusable.
Hey, Doom's great and all, but what's really sorely missing are Galactus and the Silver Surfer, especially since the MCU has moved into a more cosmic direction.

edited 11th Nov '14 10:06:45 AM by DrFurball

BadWolf21 Since: May, 2010
#22407: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:11:21 AM

Really? You don't see how knowing that you might have a mutant in your family doesn't affect popular opinion? How having a mutant child doesn't necessarily make you any more accepting of them?

Try talking to a gay person whose parents threw them out because of their sexual orientation.

GethKnight Since: Apr, 2010
#22408: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:25:30 AM

Both DC and Marvel avoid how their Heroes impact many things. At least 1602 had its Donald Blake lament being Thor. He was a Templar knight and felt he was doomed to Hell for blaspheming due to Thor's existence.

Beaver Since: Oct, 2014 Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
#22409: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:39:45 AM

What was the post that he deleted?

Is this a Jo Jo reference?
MousaThe14 Writer, Artist, Ignored from Northern Virginia Since: Jan, 2011 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
Writer, Artist, Ignored
#22410: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:42:52 AM

You know, upon reflection there's no way in hell Marvel is getiting those properties back. I mean, I already thought that before but consideirng that having their properties licensed to other studios means that they are effectively getting free advertising for their merchandise without the costs and time having to spend on making the films themselves.

Marvel Studios literally has no motivation to try their hardest to get those proeprties back except for comic book nerd deseries. Lord knows by now they could afford to, but why bother? They have their cinematic universe extremely well estbalished at this point and don't need the X-Men or Spider-man or the FF.

I mean sure Doom, Galactus, Xavier, and Osborn are vital to the universe as a whole as far as the comics are concerned but the films can easily compensate wither via obscure characters or making people up.

@Wack'd... Jesus Christ mate, what did you say?

@Tobias and Heatth, Both excellent viewpoints but ultimately I'm in the camp that says "The prejudice the mutants face is too extreme and too nonsensical given a universe where Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, and whatnot are lauded." If it was more low key and insidious like the real world, then sure, I'd understand it. But instead we have Sentinals hunting down Cyclops while Luke Cage gets to take a stroll down the block undisturbed.

edited 11th Nov '14 10:43:03 AM by MousaThe14

The Blog The Art
CassidyTheDevil Since: Jan, 2013
#22411: Nov 11th 2014 at 10:46:10 AM

Try talking to a gay person whose parents threw them out because of their sexual orientation.

Yeaaaah...that'd be a more accurate analogy if being gay meant you could shoot lasers out of your eyes.

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#22412: Nov 11th 2014 at 11:06:05 AM

And of course it makes every other hero in the Marvel Universe look incredibly bigoted when anti-mutant attacks are going on even in New York and they don't do a thing to stop it. I mean, when Reverend Stryker was conducting a huge hate movement right in Times Square, where were the Avengers then? Where was Captain America to strike out and point out how wrong Stryker is, and then punch him in the face? I thought he was all over stuff like that.

edited 11th Nov '14 11:08:48 AM by maxwellelvis

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#22413: Nov 11th 2014 at 11:08:20 AM

Probably in Europe, punching out the Serpent Society.

My various fanfics.
Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#22414: Nov 11th 2014 at 11:37:55 AM

The thing with the premise of the X-Men is that they are not really an excluded group of people. The X-gene can pop up in every family. And while I am ready to believe that in the early days of them existing people might be "that can't happen in my family", eventually realization would set in that your own children might end up in one of those camps (like with HIV, which quickly went from a disease with a big stigma attached to it to something most people accept can happen to anyone who is unlucky as soon as the death toll rose). So as awesome as some of the X-Men are, the premise in itself is hard to swallow long term. If you then add a government which on the one hand tries to kill or contain mutants but on the other hand spends money in order to create super soldiers...then every bit of sense goes right out of the window. You can certainly add X-men to the MCU, but if you remove the initial premise, they are not truly X-men anymore.

Again, the government is most of then not not trying to kill mutants. That is a hyperbole that people keep repeating. They don't help much, that is true, but there aren't many stories of them outright hunting random mutants.

Also, mutants are as much of a group as gay people are.

Yeaaaah...that'd be a more accurate analogy if being gay meant you could shoot lasers out of your eyes.

Supposedly most mutants can't either. Most mutant are supposed to be just freaky. Weird eyes, antenaes, blue skin or whatever. Too bad comic logic dictates all protagonists must have cool super powers. Still, when they need a Victim of the Week, it is usually a harmless mutant. Mutants who just happen to look like an ugly bird are kicked out of their homes just as much as the guy who have laser eyes.

Both excellent viewpoints but ultimately I'm in the camp that says "The prejudice the mutants face is too extreme and too nonsensical given a universe where Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, and whatnot are lauded." If it was more low key and insidious like the real world, then sure, I'd understand it. But instead we have Sentinals hunting down Cyclops while Luke Cage gets to take a stroll down the block undisturbed.

Sentinels are not govern sanctioned, most of the time. And Cyclops is a known criminal nowadays.

More low key stories do focus on the more insidious types of prejudice. It is just the X Men are a super hero comic, so the stories are always big there.

And of course it makes every other hero in the Marvel Universe look incredibly bigoted when anti-mutant attacks are going on even in New York and they don't do a thing to stop it. I mean, when Reverend Stryker was conducting a huge hate movement right in Times Square, where were the Avengers then? Where was Captain America to strike out and point out how wrong Stryker is, and then punch him in the face? I thought he was all over stuff like that.

If there is a thing that makes the Avengers incompatible with the X Men it is that. I find perfectly acceptable other super humans are not hated as much as the mutans are. But it is kind hard to swallow there is never a non-mutant super hero trying to stop anti-mutant violence. Uncanny Avengers was supposed to fix that, but it didn't.

edited 11th Nov '14 11:42:48 AM by Heatth

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#22415: Nov 11th 2014 at 11:50:27 AM

Again, the government is most of then not not trying to kill mutants. That is a hyperbole that people keep repeating. They don't help much, that is true, but there aren't many stories of them outright hunting random mutants.

Cough-Weapon-X-Cough, and don't forget that Mutant/Superhuman Registration Act, which effectively branded all the X-Men and all the children at the Xavier Institute as criminals, frankly I'm surprised that Tony Stark never had a team raid the mansion. Speaking of which, and talking just movies here, the U.S. government has been a bigger threat than Magneto ever was in the X-Men movies, every movie that's canon has them causing the problem-of-the-movie.

edited 11th Nov '14 11:50:41 AM by maxwellelvis

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#22416: Nov 11th 2014 at 11:58:53 AM

Weapon X is a weird outliner. Also it is Canada, I was talking about the US, were the bast majority of Marvel stories are set (for some reason, Canada is eviler than the US in Marvel Universe). Unlike the SRA, the MRA don't instantaneously make non registered mutants targets to be shot down. And, of course, the SRA was not anti-mutant specifically and, actually, effected mostly super humans as mutants were already registered by the time.

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#22417: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:06:20 PM

I'm pretty sure the Mutant Registration Act was intended to legalize the subjugation of Mutants. At least when it was first introduced by Senator Kelly.

Wasn't Operation Zero Tolerance also a government program?

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
GethKnight Since: Apr, 2010
#22418: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:13:27 PM

I thought Weapon X was a US-lead program. Alpha Strike was the Canadian version. Or something. I sometimes forget that Logan is Canadian.

Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#22419: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:20:00 PM

[up][up]I haven't read much of either stories, to be honest. But by Civil War most mutants were already registered, which was partially why the X Men didn't join a side. Since mutants weren't legally subjugated(they had their own subculture going on before M Day) I presume the law was changed at some point, before being approved.

Operation: Zero Tolerance was from the 90s and I usually avoid those.tongue It was also immediately after Onslaught, apparently, so the Avengers and the Fantastic Four didn't exist anymore. I could maybe argue that when the two biggest super heroes groups were killed by a mutant, the nut-jobs within the government would gain traction to crack down on mutants, even if they are clearly insane. But that was the 90s, and the aftermath of Onslaught, I doubt it made any sense at all.

I never said there have been no stories in witch the government didn't hunt mutants(I've made a point of saying "most stories" in my previous posts). Just that these weren't as common as people seem to think. The problem with comics is that there is multiple inconsistencies everywhere, so it is hard to figure out a big picture that make sense.

My overall point is that the concept of mutantphobia is not inherently inconsistent with some super heroes being beloved and, in fact, many stories shows that just well. Many doesn't, however, because there is way too many writers in charge and the stories have been going on for way too long.

[up]Maybe it is, I don't care for Wolverine much. It was also a secret program anyway. It is not like the government was openly picking on mutants with that. And the government in the comics do a lot of shoddy things all the time, to all people.

edited 11th Nov '14 12:21:14 PM by Heatth

comicwriter Since: Sep, 2011
#22420: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:20:59 PM

Weapon X is Canadian but part of a larger initiative called Weapon Plus, which created Captain America.

CorrTerek The Permanently Confused from The Bland Line Since: Jul, 2009
The Permanently Confused
#22421: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:27:19 PM

If the Sentinels aren't government-sanctioned, how do they get to the point where they're actually, y'know, running around and killing mutants? I mean, that's the kind of project that would raise so many flags it's hard to believe it's not government-sanctioned.

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#22422: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:40:13 PM

To make that clear: I am well aware that parents are not necessarily accepting of their child being different. But X-Men is trying to convince me that a large number of the population would be just okay with them being imprisonment for it. We are talking about Nazi-like circumstances. I can see that working under a totalitarian regime like the Nazis had, but I am still supposed to believe that the laws against Mutants, which are not just about orchestrating but about downright hunting them is carried by the majority of the population. And that I can only see happening if it would go against a special group which gets demonized - in fact history has shown that it works to a certain degree, when the US went against the Asians and the communists. But can you imagine that the US would be able nowadays to create a law which states that all Islamists (I pick them because they are currently the most popular "enemy"), including children, are just plugged from the street, send into camps to be either killed or re-educated into Christians? For decades? And even that I might be able to believe. But it becomes harder to do so if being an Islamist would be a random thing people are just born with.

Slavery mostly worked because slaves were "foreign" and easily recognizable. The X-men are neither, most of them are able to look normal and they are not from some other country but are born into all kinds of families...including influential ones.

And even all this I might still be able to buy (just), considering how stupid people can be. But not in combination with "hey, those dudes with superpowers and special weaponry, they are awesome".

And I agree...Dr. Doom I can take or leave, but Galactus and the Silver Surfer would fit so well into the MCU.

edited 11th Nov '14 12:41:46 PM by Swanpride

GethKnight Since: Apr, 2010
#22423: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:48:36 PM

Does the MCU really need Galactus? Aren't there any other Galaxy-level beings to use instead?

SonOfSharknado Love is Love is Love Since: Oct, 2013 Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
Love is Love is Love
#22424: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:50:59 PM

Mostly they're also part of the Fantastic Four Universe. Skrulls, Annihilus, Abraxas. FF have a lot of space villains, since their powers are from space.

My various fanfics.
GethKnight Since: Apr, 2010
#22425: Nov 11th 2014 at 12:52:15 PM

No Celestials still living?

Explanation: I have a very minimal understanding of the comics(haven't gotten into the comics yet. Planning on it, just haven't found a good Volume 1) so a lot of this "Marvel should get X back so that they can get Y" seems childish to me.

edited 11th Nov '14 12:55:26 PM by GethKnight


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