- cross-posted to:
- comics@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- comics@lemmy.ml
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This is my condition on lemmy 🤐🤐🤐🤐🤐
You just made a post to describe how you can’t make posts. Why not just post what you want?
Posts are not a problem. It’s when l form my communities, that’s when l get banned. Two lemmy instances banned me after l created my communities and started posting in them !!
You must be a great person if everyone agrees that their community is better off without you in it. You are not being silenced you are being shown the door
That’s the problem with superhero stories. The story needs to begin and end with the world in a state similar to our own (for relatabilitiy and sequel potential) despite the vast power of its protagonist, so the hero must ultimately be concerned with preserving the status quo.
It’s one of the reasons why superhero movies are in decline now that all the most famous storylines have already been adapted, and why comic book sales have been going downhill ever since they started taking themselves seriously.
Also, often, the status quo they’re trying to preserve is “Earth is not being invaded by aliens”, or “this supervillain is not currently on a rampage”.
As for movies about changing the status quo, that’s really what the whole X-Men comic has been about since it came out in the 1960s. The whole theme there is “mutants aren’t accepted by society, but they want to be, so they put their lives on the line to try to prove mutants are good”. Over the years mutants have stood in for jews, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc.
Sometimes the X-Men are fighting off supervillains or aliens. But, often they’re fighting off an oppressive government that is trying to wipe them out. So, the status quo they’re trying to change is “the people hate mutants and the government wants to wipe them out”.
You just reminded me of one of the Life is Strange fanfics I read once. Where Max and Chloe have these time and space warping powers and just go the opposite way, they determine the status quo is fucked and needs to be rectified globally and then start doing it in an actually thoughtful sensible way. (There was some shadowy confusing adversity but I can’t recall its nature)
Sadly the only way for an American to get a new thought is to be spoon-fed it through a screen.
The argument in the cartoon is almost exactly the same problem Harry Potter has. The protagonists, save one who is ridiculed, don’t try or even want to stop slavery or make their capitalist nobility make things more fair. Not an American phenomenon.
Remember, its not Americans vs the citizens of the world. It’s the capitalist against you.
So these cartoons basically emerge from the Cabal psyche ???🤔🤔
Ironically and not, that’s exactly what Iron Man brought Nu-Spiderman to do in the CW movie. Government is crying about control, so a war profiteer recruits, illegally extricates from the country, arms and indoctrinates a kid to collaborate in a paramilitary action to oppress the following groups represented: war veterans, the elderly, women, foreigners, scientists, disabled, performance athletes, amputees and people seeking asylum.
Geez. Considering the previous movie was about a nazi takeover of the US, seems like someone shoud have seen things coming!
Don’t forget the paroled convict
True, how could I!
In the comics he’s originally on Iron Man’s side of registration due to his personal guilt, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap’s side. But yeah in the MCU he’s literally a child soldier who doesn’t know what he’s fighting for.
, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap’s side
No he doesn’t; he just realizes that it personally inconveniences him because it gets his (only) moral tether killed, and decides to walk back that support to restore his own benefit, at the cost and harm of everyone else.
dc is more guilty of this than marvel, but yeah.
Most Marvel movies suck.
They didn’t use to.
The problem is the studios have gotten lazy and risk adverse.
The reason why Endgame was so huge was because the studio took some risks and did the work to set everything up for that payoff.
There were movies in the first few phases that fell flat, like Thor 2, but even that movie pushed the plotlines forward.
Post Endgame, marvel hasn’t really had a unified plan. They’ve also become so risk adverse that if any given movie underperforms, it kills the entire plotline.
Which leads to movies that don’t have meaningful character growth, so who cares about those characters? Or those movies?
Marvel is copaganda.
YES
What did I just click. … thank you,
Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one… he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he’s being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm’s way.
In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won’t, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).
MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn’t. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.
And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that’s willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.
Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?
Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he’s done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.
Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.
Iron Man 3: Wouldn’t you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.
Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.
Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.
Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.
Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.
Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.
Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.
Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.
The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.
Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.
Alright, I’m not listing any more, there’s a million of these things, you get the idea.
Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.
…my memory must be shit; I don’t remember Captain America ever fighting DOGE…
doge is a recent name for hydra.
Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call
More precisely, the wake-up call being: the weapons that he sold to the US military as a war profiteer have ended up in the hands of the enemies and he gets blown up with a missile that has his name on it. It was rather on point.
I took this to be about MCU specifically, so I’ll skip the first two Spiderman film continuities.
Homecoming - the villain is a lower class guy who has been screwed by the fallout of the Avengers and is making money to improve his family off of it. He is somewhat sympathetic, but the moral of the story is trust in the authorities because a well meaning guy will fix the hiccup in the system, and responding to systemic issues with force is wrong. Could be argued the real villain is Tony Stark.
I did not see the remaining MCU Spidermen, but they look to focus on more otherworldly Meta-continuity forces.
Black Panther - the villain is an extremist with a point. Killmongers desire for revenge and modes go too far. He should be better, like the royal family are. Luckily Killmonger inspires the legitimate authority to make a choice to do more and be more benign. Maybe he just should have trusted in the legitimate authorities all along and stayed inside the social bounds… Which had not made change until his use of force and theft?
I have seen the Iron Men, but not recently enough to engage with.
Civil War: the authorities want something that is controversial, but it turns out they weren’t the legitimate authorities, but secret Nazis trying to bring harm to everyone. The legitimate authorities had folks best interests at heart and fix everything. Could go either way, since forming a terrorist cell to fight authority is pretty radical.
The Thanos films: Thanos’ malthusianism is presented as bad, but not actually as wrong. There have been plenty of ways at this point to show that Malthusianism isn’t accurate, (and wasn’t actually an original part of the character) but it was put in here and not debated or shown to be wrong in itself, just “bad that he did it”. Malthusian ideals are strongly linked to right wing ideologies (as well as some nutty far left ones) that have been ascendent in relatively core right wing parties in the last 20 years.
Black Panther - the villain is an extremist with a point. Killmongers desire for revenge and modes go too far. He should be better, like the royal family are. Luckily Killmonger inspires the legitimate authority to make a choice to do more and be more benign. Maybe he just should have trusted in the legitimate authorities all along and stayed inside the social bounds… Which had not made change until his use of force and theft?
That basic theme and tension is present in a lot of black American discourse, of how much to work within the rules of the system and how much to actually violate the rules of the system in order to effectuate change. You can place a lot of the black civil rights icons onto the spectrum of how to use law breaking or violence as means to protect or advance black rights.
During the abolitionist era before the Civil War, David Walker called on slaves to physically overpower and literally kill their masters, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated for violent rebellion to overturn slavery.
Post-emancipation, anti-lynching advocate Ida Wells called on black families to arm themselves, to provide the protection that the law would not. Malcolm X also advocated for self defense, and predicted violence as the inevitable consequences of continued oppression of black Americans (which some took to mean he also advocated for initiating violence to advance black rights “by any means necessary,” but I personally think those views ignore nuance and context).
Each of these controversial figures often had a more nonviolent contemporary who advocated for less violent means to win hearts and minds.
Black Panther’s writer and director, Ryan Coogler, definitely knows all of this. He’s steeped in black history, both the history itself and the history of the art and literature and discourse around those topics. Placing that conflict and tension at the center of a freaking Marvel movie, designed to be a high budget blockbuster, was basically a work of genius.
The movie itself ultimately takes the side that coexistence is a better goal than reversing the subjugation, to oppress the former oppressor. But that doesn’t really much fit within the debate of this original comic, of whether the superhero movies advocate for preserving the status quo.
The tension of violent and peaceful activism is a history long one.
That knowledge and thought coming through is probably why Black Panther is, in my opinion, one of the best MCU films.
Unlike many Black activists however, the Wakandan Royal Family - like royalty in Africa - did not experience the bulk of racism in the Americas. Which might be why their step towards “coexistence” is to fund some community centres, which while important and having a powerful, Black, African nation would do a lot of psychic good - the racism in America isn’t really shown and the focus is on Killmonger’s dad being assassinated by T’Chala’s father. (iirc.)
You’re right in that it is more thoughtful overall, and less fit to this discussion, than most MCU films.
I don’t mind saying, I’m writing a book, and this is one of the conversations near the end. One character says to another: “Yeah, things are better. But can any of us truly say that things wouldn’t have improved if that terrorist hadn’t threatened everyone?”
Thankfully, in the story’s case, the reply to that quote is that while explosions and deaths were far more visible, a variety of powerful people were already making broad changes - just in a slower and less risky way. Of course, that’s fiction; and is not saying those things are a guarantee in the real world.
“MILLIONS MUST DIE” is a common alt right meme, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen references to Thanos included with it.
The Falcon movie, set with a background of black oppression and empowerment, is about how General President Ross is really a good guy who loves his country and family even though he did medical experiments on and then enslaved a guy.
The villain.
Disney hasn’t actually done that bad a job at messaging so far but that’s… Pretty bad. And suspiciously timed.
What movie is this even referencing? Almost every depiction of spiderman has him as a man of and for the people. Admittedly I haven’t watched more recent marvel movies. Has that changed, somehow?
No, nothing has changed. You could make the argument in the comic about Spider-Man’s appearance in Captain America: Civil War, but nothing else.
Homecoming: Spider-Man is fighting criminals trying to steal hyper advanced technology to weaponize it and sell to other criminals.
Far From Home: Spider-Man is fighting a guy who is using advanced tech to stage destructive attacks with elaborate illusions in order to set himself up as a hero, despite the large amount of destruction and harm he’s causing without care.
No Way Home: Spider-Man is trying to redeem and prevent from dying some inter-dimensional villains he inadvertently caused to be dragged into his universe.
Infinity War/Endgame: Spider-Man joins other heroes to fight a galactic tyrant with Malthusian ideas of population control, hell-bent on eliminating half of all life in the universe.
In none of these movies was he fighting for the government to maintain the status quo.
He’s always been my favorite since 6th grade, relatable and really just trying to protect his city from shitbags. Sometimes he’s literally just patrolling looking for crime.
I also enjoy that a bit insubstantial number of his problems are the result of him just messing up while trying to do the right thing. Like the entire plot of No Way Home was caused my multiple screwups while Peter was trying to help people.
This reminds me of a reel on Instagram where the singer Aurora said something along the lines of “Isn’t it weird how the «villains» want to break the status quo while the «heroes» seek to restore it?” and in the comments there were ones that said “For this nonsense people become leftist” and exactly right below that another one said “For this nonsense people become right-wing”.
Great. So we’re going to be seeing this meme 8 times every month?
This is why the Nolan Batman trilogy (really the first two films) resonated so well with the global audience.
It was an ordinary guy against systemic corruption, something that a majority of the global population lives in every day.
Not a superhero against an externalized villain whose motives can be boiled down to either “evil because I deserve it” (the main antagonist) or “evil because of necessity” (every thug and extra who gets beat up).
Iron Man was also basically a giant ad for the US military in Afghanistan lol. Marvel never brought back the Taliban ten rings in Shang Chi
the Nolan batman trilogy is just how the public are sheep and they need a super badass Seal Team Six operator to save them from themselves
Calling Bruce Wayne an ordinary guy is a travesty. And the whole point of the Iron Man 1st movie is that warmongering is a terrible legacy. Are you sure you watched any of these movies?
which movie is this referring to? I’ve been plugging away at the mcu movies and most of the time the enemy is the nazi spinoff faction seeking to subjugate all of humanity that embedded itself in multiple parts of the government. I only watched one of the other spider man movies and don’t remember anything about it
I haven’t watched those films in a while but isn’t one of spiderman’s things “fuck the police, help the poor”? I know he runs a food bank in the new games
It’s inconsistent, to put it mildly. Spider-Man is generally a working class hero and is also an impressionable kid constantly struggling under the pressure to do good. Sometimes that puts him at odds with NYPD, sometimes he comes out in favor of the Super Registration Act (he flip-flopped later)
That’s what happens when a thousand writers contrivute to one canon.
Tbh they only really swerved into it that hard with this Falcon movie.
You know, the movie with themes of black empowerment where they engage in relentless apologia for General President Ross turning a man he did medical experiments on into a slave.
Relentless? He ends up in jail.
The actual current President of the United States is unjustly imprisoning thousands of innocent people right now, and he will never see a moment of jail time.
Brave New World is unrealistically optimistic on the subject of Presidents paying for their crimes.
