.Out everywhere this week, and looks like it’ll have lots of stuff that can be spoiled, so keep it to this thread.
I’m considering stuff to watch/rewatch ahead of seeing it on Thursday, but this movie seems to be following up on so many other movies (Dr. Strange, WandaVision, No Way Home, What If?, Avengers: Endgame, Loki(?)) that I don’t know what parts of continuity will be important.
All part of the trope of putting a woman through the Wringer and/or have her go crazy with all this power.
Gut feeling, I’d say that going crazy with power is a genre trope that goes for both men and women. There may be specific ways it shakes out with women that are worth looking at more closely though.
To be fair, the non-616 Stranges that we saw in the movie also got carried away with their power, while the non-616 Wanda that we saw seemed to be just fine.
Gut feeling, I’d say that going crazy with power is a genre trope that goes for both men and women. There may be specific ways it shakes out with women that are worth looking at more closely though.
True. It is interesting that the Dark Phoenix arc seemed to have a lot more cultural impact on readers than Parallax in Green Lantern, for example.
With Wanda, it is interesting that her motivation is driven by reunion with her children most of all and that seems more cultural acceptable than using power to force people to behave like it is with heroic men that are driven to extremes by power — or something like Thanos where there is no direct personal connection to the drive for power. He’s not trying to save or resurrect any of his fellow Titans (though he could have).
Though there is no reason that a male character would not seek power to save his children, I think it is more likely that he would do so to save his wife or lover — as in the case of Anakin in the Star Wars prequels.
It is interesting that the Dark Phoenix arc seemed to have a lot more cultural impact on readers than Parallax in Green Lantern, for example.
I’d argue because it did it first and was far better written and drawn.
It is interesting that the Dark Phoenix arc seemed to have a lot more cultural impact on readers than Parallax in Green Lantern, for example.
I’d argue because it did it first and was far better written and drawn.
True. I think that was also the pinnacle of the title’s popularity as well while Green Lantern was just one step above Aquaman in the DC hierarchy.
if I was going to revamp GL or reboot him, I’d keep the origin the same, but Hal Jordan would be secretly clinically depressed. The reason he doesn’t feel fear is that he’s semi suicidal and doesn’t care if he crashes during a test run. Then the ring basically saves him from killing himself during a test flight and now this guy who doesn’t care about anything has near unlimited power.
Only he has the presence of mind to know that if he is going to use this power, he needs to get help. He starts therapy, but the healthier he gets, the less fit he is to be a GL.
It’s like a power fantasy, but in reverse.
The Sokovia accords targeted the wrong group. It wasn’t super-heroes who caused all the trouble in Sokovia, it was one lone inventor. The UN should have drawn up a protocol to stop people inventing things without proper oversight, regulation, and permissions.
Then see which side Tony Stark would be on.
The Sokovia accords targeted the wrong group. It wasn’t super-heroes who caused all the trouble in Sokovia, it was one lone inventor. The UN should have drawn up a protocol to stop people inventing things without proper oversight, regulation, and permissions.
Then see which side Tony Stark would be on.
Stark is already clearly shown to be hypocritical in the film version of Civil War (moreso than in the comics): at the end of the movie he explicitly disobeys an order not to go after Cap and Bucky, and even suggests he could end up in prison next as a result.
So it’s not like they didn’t see that Stark was the kind of person who always thinks he knows better. That hubris is pretty central to his characterisation in the MCU.
Maybe, I can’t recall all of their appearances. Pretty sure they, and Thanks, were treated as something super serious at first though.
Given that the infinity stones weren’t always identified clearly at first (the Tesseract, the spear) I think it was a variety of approaches really. Thanos was always made out to be a serious threat though.
Either way, I don’t have a problem with the characters being a bit blasé about incursions at this stage, when the multiverse is all relatively new to them and they don’t appreciate the potential threat to their universe.
The way they treated the incursions was odd. It seemed like a big enough threat to be the focal point of Phase 4, with all this multiverse tomfoolery threatening 616 with an incursion. Then the movie just had Strange turning up in universes suffering an incursion and being incredibly blasé about it.
In the Thor thread, it seemed like this phase has set up a lot of super-powerful cosmic beings and realms beyond imagining. So it seems like they could set up some sort of conflict between the heroes and cosmic (or “secret” 
) conflicts (or “wars” 
) with the most powerful beings in the cosmos coming together and deciding that the heroes are just making too much of a mess to the universal order.
And then we discover that all these threats from Thanos to Galactus to Ego were the machinations of some cosmic adversary (or cabal of them) – as well as the sudden emergence of superpowered beings on Eart in the open within the space of a decade is the equally enigmatic counter-plan of some potentially more benevolent cosmic beings that want to help us without exposing themselves to the big bad.
I also like the idea that there is something inherently weird between the “magic” side of the Marvel universe and the Science side. When it starts to get to the “Cosmic” realm, there is some kind of synthesis between them. Sorta like the idea of Green Lantern where they are this super-science corps of the most archetypal SF pulp heroes, but their rings and lanterns all run on magic. By the way, they should be called the Green Ring Corps. Why would you advertise the fact that you have to charge the damn thing up every day? That’s a potential vulnerability!!
There could be an interesting idea that the “One Above All” created science and magic as an evolutionary tool and those races that synthesize them eventually advance into Cosmic beings. However, the cosmic beings that have evolved to the pinnacle of the Cosmos take a look at humans and start to think “are these our replacements? Better just nip that in the bud.”
The eternal beings like the celestials, eternity, the Watchers and Galactus (and on and on) form a sort of order, but the next generation of super-people, particularly humans on Earth, are beginning to have the power to upset that order — and there are certainly other very powerful beings that have an interest in both eliminating the humans or on the other hand, to help them upset the order so they can grow even more powerful. The heroes’ allies might not be heroes themselves.
Besides, it would be cool to see a rogue Watcher Uatu really go hog-wild with his powers fighting to save the Earth! Not something you might see in the comics, but the movies should do it.
EDIT: Actually, thinking it over, ROGUE WATCHER would be a great Marvel comics series. You could do the star-spanning SF space opera route with the watcher crossing the universe and using his powers to face off against massive extraterrestrial threats, but I think a simpler, down to Earth (literally) and partially comedic approach could be a better hit.
Cast out of the Watcher Corps for breaking their one rule “watch everything, do nothing”, Uatu wanders the world like Caine from KUNG FU and uses his powers to help those in greatest need. However, he can’t be too open about it, because there is another Watcher overseeing the planet’s history, so Uatu has to secretly help people to seemingly help themselves.
Eventually, though, he suspects the new Watcher is not so disinterested in the events of the planet and has schemes against the Earth, so Uatu secretly conspires against this new overseer. However, he has to be careful, because if Uatu succeeds in exposing and dismissing the new Watcher, his former brothers might want to give him his old watcher job back, and that would be a fate worse than death.
If it was a TV show, I’d cast Rainn Wilson or Nick Offerman.
Watchers… just can’t trust them.
Watchers… just can’t trust them.
Who watches them, that’s what I want to know.
Who watches them, that’s what I want to know.
I imagine a heirarchy with Uatu being a regular old first grade Watcher given the task to observe a particular portion of cosmic spacetime. Then above him and several other first grade Watchers would be an OverWatcher in charge of supervising their work and delivering reports up the chain of command to the SuperWatcher, an elect group of Watchers managing the observation of vast regions of the multiverse. These are then governed by the UltraWatcher council that is chaired by a single, omniscient member known as “the Peep” who dwells in the aptly named “wholly see.”
Who watches them, that’s what I want to know.
I remember reading stories of Uatu helping and getting punished for it by other watchers… soooo… there’s a subcommittee or something? 
