[Movie/TV/Comic] Marvel Cinematic Universe: A place to talk all things Marvel

[VMSmith]

But people would've had real problems with what would've looked like encouraging violent terrorism to get vaccines to the people, when we were going through a pandemic in real-time when the show launched.

See, I dislike this entire way of thinking. That because something is going on in the real world we can't have art that speaks about it? That seems so directly opposed to the entire concept of art. Should we not have any movies right now depicting war because of Russia invading Ukraine?

I know there have been other pieces of media that have had this done to them as well, because they were "too similar" to RL events, but to me that's kind of the point of them. To point out what's going on and maybe where we're going wrong with it, or maybe it's just a fictitious world and we shouldn't read too much into it. Either way, I don't care for censoring art to avoid stepping on fragile sensibilities.

And it absolutely wrecked FATWS for me.

[Ghost of Cow]

See, I dislike this entire way of thinking. That because something is going on in the real world we can't have art that speaks about it? That seems so directly opposed to the entire concept of art. Should we not have any movies right now depicting war because of Russia invading Ukraine?

I know there have been other pieces of media that have had this done to them as well, because they were "too similar" to RL events, but to me that's kind of the point of them. To point out what's going on and maybe where we're going wrong with it, or maybe it's just a fictitious world and we shouldn't read too much into it. Either way, I don't care for censoring art to avoid stepping on fragile sensibilities.

And it absolutely wrecked FATWS for me.

Yeah, but it happens a lot. Maybe more than you even realize. The whole "non-representational" concept is pretty widespread, I guess because the presumption is that the only way to not offend someone is to make is so that your work isn't based in reality at all.

It's why you see all the weird graphics in the HR and/or IT industry that are all blue or purple skinned and such.

[everydaygamer]

eta: I think maybe part of what's bothering me is that from Civil War through Endgame it was clear that they had a plan. But, since Endgame, it seems like they thought "Oh shit, we gotta keep this going!?" and have had no clear plan other than throw out anything they think they can make cool.

Its not that they don't have a plan its just that Endgame was the end of the storyline and now we're effectively back to phase one where the focus is on introducing new characters while catching up with existing characters.

They do this kind of thing all the time in the comics but I get that it's weird going from 60mph back to 0 and having to start from the beginning again.

The point is don't expect the plan to become clear until the end of phase 4 at the earliest. Of course comic fans already have a general idea what they are planning.

[Al Gorefiend]

eta: I think maybe part of what's bothering me is that from Civil War through Endgame it was clear that they had a plan. But, since Endgame, it seems like they thought "Oh shit, we gotta keep this going!?" and have had no clear plan other than throw out anything they think they can make cool

To be fair it wasn't all as neatly tied together and cohesive as you remember. Nobody was watching Avengers going into Age of Ultron knowing all the Infinity stones coming together would be the major finale.
Once Shang-Chi meets up with Ms Marvel it'll all be clear they intend to connect the stories together in the end.

[Biomega]

See, I dislike this entire way of thinking. That because something is going on in the real world we can't have art that speaks about it? That seems so directly opposed to the entire concept of art. Should we not have any movies right now depicting war because of Russia invading Ukraine?

I agree, but their goal isn't to make art, per se - it's to make art that MAKES MONEY. And they'll play it super safe with their topics as long as they think that's the best way to make the most money out of it.

I'd LOVE it if they tackled more complex, difficult, contemporary issues in ways that aren't just immediately obvious or egregious. But that's unlikely to ever happen with a brand like Marvel/Disney, whose main concern is hitting the sweet spot between interesting and profitable; and that usually means playing to a fairly low common denominator.

[eschatological]

Marvel isn't ever going to really do deep issues. To go back to FATWS, Sam goes through this intense internal, emotional struggle about being a black man and representing America as Captain America. He meets the first supersoldier, a black man experimented on much like the Tuskegee experiments, who was relegated to the dustbin of history once Steve Rodgers came around. That mentor character basically lays out the central conflict: A black man can't, or rather, shouldn't want to, represent America. There's too much pain and suffering in the black experience in America.

Then, in the final episode, once Sam basically rejects his mentor's pain and suffering, and subjugates it to the (shown to be very) flawed concept of (Captain) America as expressed in John Walker, and accepts the mantle, he becomes just as saccharine sweet as Steve Rodgers ever was. He chides a bunch of politicans, offers no solutions to their very real policy concerns (which is essentially the political thrust of the UN-esque entity in opposition to the Flag Smashers), and quite literally says "Do Better," like he's some Twitter politico.

Edited to add: One of the reasons I was always Team Tony in the whole Civil War debate, a very much minority position, was that saccharine sweet, naive view that Steve always had. Tony was right, imo, in the big picture, but wrong in the details of the specific situations, which made Steve the morally righteous one. Which I think was a cop-out. It's almost like HYDRA infilitrating SHIELD exists purely to justify Steve's anti-government stance, when, big picture-wise, Tony was right - there needed to be some regulation on superhero activity. Because SHIELD was super-secretly evil, registration and governmental control were pushed, which was too far, but you get my point. They picked the side they wanted to be the "right one" (and superheroes regularly fall on the libertarian side of things, trusting heroes to police themselves individually), and justified it from there, when a deeper conflict could have been had justifying Tony's position.

WandaVision was the only D+ show so far for me to really dwell in the deep stuff, and it can do that because the conflict in her story is older than politics and society and civilization and superheroes - it is in dealing with grief. An experience so fundamental to humanity that it really flourishes in almost all media. It's why it continues to be my favorite of the D+ shows so far.

[Northern Goblin]

So I finally sat down to watch Ms Marvel, it's good, had a strong Scott Pilgrim vibe to its style of editing which I'm not sure works in the MCU but I applaud them for trying new things.

Two main thoughts though, the show pushes more multiversal angles, which pretty much further solidifies everything we already know going forward.

Secondly, the DoDC are back again after being in NWH quite prominently.

I'm not 100% sure what their angle is yet or what they're pushing this towards. I don't want to go for the easy cop out and say they're another Hydra unit, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Endus]

Two main thoughts though, the show pushes more multiversal angles, which pretty much further solidifies everything we already know going forward.

One point here is that Marvel essentially has two broad "types" of "universes". There's what's commonly called the Multiverse, alternate timelines with alternate histories/physics/versions of characters/etc.

And then there's dimensions, which are built in and around any given Multiversal "universe". And are best thought of as "dimensions", not "universes" proper, to avoid confusion.

The Noor Dimension from Ms. Marvel is very much a Dimension, not an alternate timeline. And it's not the first time we've seen this kind of thing; there's the Quantum Realm with Ant-Man, Asgard qualifies as a pocket dimension itself, the Dark Dimension where Dormammu lives, in Dr. Strange, the Mirror Dimension also from that film, and Ta Lo from Shang Chi. Also K'un-Lun from Iron Fist, technically, but I think the MCU wants to ignore that.

All those are part of the core MCU "universe" timeline, rather than alternate timelines. If it makes sense, thing of timelines separated horizontally from each other, and dimensions layered vertically on top of those universe timelines.

The Noor Dimension is new (and I think new, in the MCU, as in not pulling from comics), but the principles aren't; the MCU's been playing with dimensions for a while.

[Northern Goblin]

I think they're aiming to do a cross between parallel time dimensions, and alternate realities running on the same timeline. We're reaching more into the sorcery and mysticism side of things, and away from the fists and guns approach of early MCU.

The Noor itself is mostly certainly new to the MCU, but I think this kind of multiversal (both time and reality) aspect is being played on more and more in this phase.


The DoDC though, I'm wondering what their endgame is here.

[PrimiOne]

I don't think the MCU is gonna make a big distinction on alternate dimensiones and timelines because even in the comics sometimes is already pretty ambiguous. The fans like to think the story is driven by a big master plan but in the end we can see it's actually extremely fluid and reactive to the elements that work and the ones that not.

As already explained one thing is a separation of space ( another dimension) and another one is a separation of time ( another timeline). The Annhiliation Wave is caused by the growth of our universe: the bigger we become the smaller the Negative Zone is and that is interpreted by Annihilus as an invasion, as a reason to declare a war to reclaim his own.

Despite that everything is the same timeline: you can not travel to the Negative Zone and find a different Owen Reece there. If you travel from the Negative Zone to our space in the 60's you'll find 4 astronauts getting bombarded by cosmic rays. If you travel from the Negative Zone of the Ultimate Universe to the 60's you'll find nothing: the Fantastic Four won't be formed until decades later.

So we have only two options here regarding the Noor dimension overlapping ours:

1. It was not an incursion. It was a collapsing of space (not time) the same thing that happens to the Negative Zone in E616. Because an incursion is a collapsing of space-time and this is not what is happening with the Noor dimension.



2. The MCU won't really care and everything will be treated as the same concept. In the Secret Wars both dimensions and timelines would collapse on top of each other with no distinction.

I suspect the latter.

[MrLachyG]

So I finally sat down to watch Ms Marvel, it's good, had a strong Scott Pilgrim vibe to its style of editing which I'm not sure works in the MCU but I applaud them for trying new things.

Two main thoughts though, the show pushes more multiversal angles, which pretty much further solidifies everything we already know going forward.

Secondly, the DoDC are back again after being in NWH quite prominently.

I'm not 100% sure what their angle is yet or what they're pushing this towards. I don't want to go for the easy cop out and say they're another Hydra unit, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Or they're a bad sect of Skrulls, gathering superpowered people to copy in advance of Secret Wars

[Northern Goblin]

Or they're a bad sect of Skrulls, gathering superpowered people to copy in advance of Secret Wars

That's a really interesting take, would certainly be a great plot twist.


Last thought on Ms Marvel, time travel. Sorry if you didn't watch it yet, but KK goes back in time. Not Avengers' style in Endgame but literally in the grandfather paradox level of time travel where she completes a loop to her own present. Considering the scene where Lang and Rhodes are being educated on how time travel actually works, and their theory is dismissed, this acts as a complete counter to that and proves them right, about going into your past to set your own present day up.

Unless instead of a loop it becomes an endless spiral where your point of exit is your past and KK creates a new future, to continue a cycle that has gone over and over again in multiple timelines.

Which makes me wonder if the TVA would keep track of something like that, or did prior to the events at the end of Loki.

[Endus]

Or they're a bad sect of Skrulls, gathering superpowered people to copy in advance of Secret Wars

Alternatively, they spark Secret Wars by trying to secretly engage in a Skrull genocide.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a really interesting take, would certainly be a great plot twist.


Last thought on Ms Marvel, time travel. Sorry if you didn't watch it yet, but KK goes back in time. Not Avengers' style in Endgame but literally in the grandfather paradox level of time travel where she completes a loop to her own present. Considering the scene where Lang and Rhodes are being educated on how time travel actually works, and their theory is dismissed, this acts as a complete counter to that and proves them right, about going into your past to set your own present day up.

Unless instead of a loop it becomes an endless spiral where your point of exit is your past and KK creates a new future, to continue a cycle that has gone over and over again in multiple timelines.

Which makes me wonder if the TVA would keep track of something like that, or did prior to the events at the end of Loki.

There's multiple interpretations of time travel. While a lot of the MCU has relied on mutable timelines, the magic inherent in the process for Kamala Khan seems to have enforced or "encouraged" a stable timeline; she's there because she was always there, her presence changes nothing because it was already her own history. Whatever she chose to do in the past was what she'd always chosen to do. There's no opportunity for any "paradox" because nothing's actually being changed. That's a dynamic to time travel that's less often explored, but it has a real simple answer to the Grandfather Paradox; don't waste your time, because you didn't succeed, and you can tell because your grandfather lived. Maybe you jump back and get hit by a car and die and that's why your plan to kill your own grandfather fails. Maybe you chicken out. It's largely irrelevant, because we know you didn't pull it off, because your grandfather didn't die.

From the TVA's perspective, this is a closed loop that has to happen, like the Endgame time travel. They'd leave it alone. The TVA is not opposed to time travel; they're opposed to changing the timeline.

[MrLachyG]

That's a really interesting take, would certainly be a great plot twist.


Last thought on Ms Marvel, time travel. Sorry if you didn't watch it yet, but KK goes back in time. Not Avengers' style in Endgame but literally in the grandfather paradox level of time travel where she completes a loop to her own present. Considering the scene where Lang and Rhodes are being educated on how time travel actually works, and their theory is dismissed, this acts as a complete counter to that and proves them right, about going into your past to set your own present day up.

Unless instead of a loop it becomes an endless spiral where your point of exit is your past and KK creates a new future, to continue a cycle that has gone over and over again in multiple timelines.

Which makes me wonder if the TVA would keep track of something like that, or did prior to the events at the end of Loki.

I reckon, and I've mentioned this before, that Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will end with Kang being defeated and the reveal that one of the heroes dies but turns into a Skrull upon death, kicking off Secret Wars

[PrimiOne]

I reckon, and I've mentioned this before, that Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will end with Kang being defeated and the reveal that one of the heroes dies but turns into a Skrull upon death, kicking off Secret Wars

I think you are confusing Secret Wars with Secret Invasion because I try to recall but I can't remember Skrulls had any relevance in the Secret Wars sagas ( do they? <processing memories>... I really think not...am i wrong?).

Or are you saying that the MCU will intertwine both?

Anyway I will put money on the table that "The Kang Dinasty" ends with Kang winning. Maybe not Kang maybe Doom , maybe any other not introduced yet villain but I can't see this movie as anything as a total defeat for the heroes. Why? Because it worked in Infinity War ( and "Empire Strikes Back" ...and "The Fellowship of the ring"...) ,because this anticlimatic endings seems to do the needed cliffhanger for the next movie to be highly anticipated.

I wouldn't even be surprised if the movie ends with all the heroes entombed under a mountain like the original saga when they reject Doom's will.

[MrLachyG]

I think you are confusing Secret Wars with Secret Invasion because I try to recall but I can't remember Skrulls had any relevance in the Secret Wars sagas ( do they? <processing memories>... I really think not...am i wrong?).

oh whatever the second Avengers movie is directly after Kang

[Northern Goblin]

Yeah, Secret Wars and Secret Invasion are two different plot lines, but I can see them being intertwined here.

I think Kang may lose at the end of Kang Dynasty as Doom is still a threat, infact it may even be Doom that kills Kang, much like the comic series where he had Ultron do it.

But Secret Wars should involve the Beyonder in some capacity, so I really can't see it, Doom and Kang all being around come that point. I also think Secret Wars is going to begin the arc, not be the end ala Endgame.

[Ihavewaffles]

Wait, I thought they would talk about their movies, tv shows n what not? It's all about...games?..

[Evil Midnight Bomber]

Wait, I thought they would talk about their movies, tv shows n what not? It's all about...games?..

Seems like talking about Games during their Games Showcase makes a certain amount of sense to me.

[Ihavewaffles]

Seems like talking about Games during their Games Showcase makes a certain amount of sense to me.

I was promised movie, tv show news?? Or they squished it together with star wars tomorrow?...