Marvel Cinematic Universe

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dick brain said:
She was just fine in Hawkeye as a knockoff Cass Cain, why did they have to fuck with it? Why the fuck does everything have to be magic or aliens or alien magic? Why does everyone have to be special? Why can't I have characters who are relevant because they worked hard to be good at things?
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You know the best part?
The Native Woman Magic is the power to ????

It just does what she needs. She's struggling to move a thing? She gets a strength boost. She's in a numerical disadvantage and there's hostages? She gives fighting skills to the hostages. Her enemy is really fucked up in the head? She gets the power to go into his head and try to heal his trauma.

Not to go into the usual rant about women heroes and so on, but it just keeps happening: they're faced with an obstacle and they always, always just simply find within themselves the power to overcome it. Carol can suddenly fly because she can, Monica can suddenly fly because black girl magic, Carol can reignite a sun because "oh no I've never done it before oh wait of course I can", Echo gets the ??? ancestral boost she needs for whatever situation.

It's rarely overcoming their limits, coming up with a strategy, self-sacrificing, etc. No, most likely it'll be "you always had it in you", "others were holding you down by telling you couldn't", etc.
 
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Seems like Vincent's in for the long haul. Makes sense, he clearly loves the role and there's a ton of stories left to adapt. There's the whole Spider-Man side of the character that hasn't been explored yet for example.

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starborn427614 said:
Seems like Vincent's in for the long haul. Makes sense, he clearly loves the role and there's a ton of stories left to adapt. There's the whole Spider-Man side of the character that hasn't been explored yet for example.

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Too bad he's not as jacked as Michael Clarke Duncan was to show Kingpin can have a big fight with Spidey.

 
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dick brain said:
She was just fine in Hawkeye as a knockoff Cass Cain, why did they have to fuck with it? Why the fuck does everything have to be magic or aliens or alien magic? Why does everyone have to be special? Why can't I have characters who are relevant because they worked hard to be good at things?
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Because comics are mostly child power fantasies. They're first stories about "what if I had this special power" because young children love to imagine that. Then later they often become "what if I had this special power and people realised they shouldn't have treated me that way" because teenagers still have the child desire to be special but also now have the awareness to be resentful that others don't see them as special. Then as adults you... grow out of power fantasies. Or at least that's what used to happen. Now they complain about power fantasies being unearned because they can no longer relate to just a straightforward "you're now special" because they can't believe in it. They need a rationalisation for why someone becomes special that they can relate to.

I actually agree with you - I love powers to be earned because I am now an adult too (others may disagree). But the most notable exception to the powers aren't earned in comics is of course Batman. Even there he's a sort of power fantasy. What if my parents were murdered in an alley? What if my wife and children were killed by the mob (Punisher), what if I had schizophrenia and thought an Egyptian Moon god were telling me to dress up in a costume and beat the living shit out criminals (Moon Knight). They're still fantasies but their fantasies at one step removed where something suddenly gives you the super-motivation to do extraordinary things and live an exceptional life. Rather than play video games each weekend.

I would say that is the chief reason why. It's not a universal rule but the power fantasy appeal is diluted by realistically earning it. Instead sometimes you get the "moral" earning it of having an emotional epiphany where you suddenly level up and win against the villain at the last moment. These days, with these writers, most "earning it" moments in comics are about admitting something or realising something. I guess because it's quick and because most comics writers think like that.

Nick Obre said:
You know the best part?
The Native Woman Magic is the power to ????

It just does what she needs. She's struggling to move a thing? She gets a strength boost. She's in a numerical disadvantage and there's hostages? She gives fighting skills to the hostages. Her enemy is really fucked up in the head? She gets the power to go into his head and try to heal his trauma.

Not to go into the usual rant about women heroes and so on, but it just keeps happening: they're faced with an obstacle and they always, always just simply find within themselves the power to overcome it. Carol can suddenly fly because she can, Monica can suddenly fly because black girl magic, Carol can reignite a sun because "oh no I've never done it before oh wait of course I can", Echo gets the ??? ancestral boost she needs for whatever situation.

It's rarely overcoming their limits, coming up with a strategy, self-sacrificing, etc. No, most likely it'll be "you always had it in you", "others were holding you down by telling you couldn't", etc.
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I'll counter by saying that's hardly unique to women. Perhaps a bias towards it but no more. And in so far as that's the case it's probably more a correlation between female writers choosing to write expy female characters.

Now the really big and seemingly unnoticed discrepancy between female characters and male ones is this: The female character gets redeemed. Whether it's Mystique or Emma Frost, Lena Luthor or Cheetah, or a dozen others, you will find that in any ongoing series the female character nearly always gets forgiven and redeemed whilst male villains far less often do. Catwoman never remains a thief, she becomes a protector of trafficked women and steals only from people who 'deserve it'. Nebula and Gamora, killers of thousands on behalf of their adoptive father, always become heroes. The most egregious example that comes to mind is Evil-Lyn in Keven Smith's He-Man series. Skeletor tries to conquer Eternia and rule it and meets a horrible, horrible fate for it. His motivation is unexamined ambition. Evil-Lyn in this series literally destroys the afterlife wiping out every good soul that ever passed there, sets about destroying all creation because like a school shooter she can't see a point in her own life and wants to take everybody with her. And for all this we're shown that she had a rough childhood growing up on the streets and gets forgiven by the heroes (Skeletor had his face burned off by acid and remains alive only through dark magic, for comparison), hugged and the last we see they're all standing around together amicably. No punishment or consequence. She has been redeemed. Because she is female. It's not 100% infallible but it's a wildly obvious discrepancy once first noticed.
 
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seems like you could pretty easily do it where like, she calls upon Elk to bestow her with powerful strength! and Bear to empower his fortitude to those people over there! and Buffalo to plop out even more abilities!
 
Overly Serious said:
Because comics are mostly child power fantasies. They're first stories about "what if I had this special power" because young children love to imagine that. Then later they often become "what if I had this special power and people realised they shouldn't have treated me that way" because teenagers still have the child desire to be special but also now have the awareness to be resentful that others don't see them as special. Then as adults you... grow out of power fantasies. Or at least that's what used to happen. Now they complain about power fantasies being unearned because they can no longer relate to just a straightforward "you're now special" because they can't believe in it. They need a rationalisation for why someone becomes special that they can relate to.

I actually agree with you - I love powers to be earned because I am now an adult too (others may disagree). But the most notable exception to the powers aren't earned in comics is of course Batman. Even there he's a sort of power fantasy. What if my parents were murdered in an alley? What if my wife and children were killed by the mob (Punisher), what if I had schizophrenia and thought an Egyptian Moon god were telling me to dress up in a costume and beat the living shit out criminals (Moon Knight). They're still fantasies but their fantasies at one step removed where something suddenly gives you the super-motivation to do extraordinary things and live an exceptional life. Rather than play video games each weekend.

I would say that is the chief reason why. It's not a universal rule but the power fantasy appeal is diluted by realistically earning it. Instead sometimes you get the "moral" earning it of having an emotional epiphany where you suddenly level up and win against the villain at the last moment. These days, with these writers, most "earning it" moments in comics are about admitting something or realising something. I guess because it's quick and because most comics writers think like that.
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I disagree that super heroes are power fantasy since most of them lack the essential part of benefitting from their powers. They are usually not very rich (or use their money for pleasure) and their relationships are more strained than "fucking my harem every night" of the typical male fantasy hero (conan/isekai). They will also rarely abuse their powers and when they do they'll get instant karma.

Western super heroes are more inspirational figures, which is why they are pretty universal and beloved, since they embody the classical heroic traits. The power fantasy part was usually the sidekicks that children could imagine themselves as, and had the benefit of being close to the hero without the cost of having a terrible life (at least at the start).

As for liking earning powers... Isn't it universal? Everybody like a good underdog story, and we usually dislike people who got everything they wanted without effort (or at least we like to imagine that they made no effort as a reason to hate them).

As for modern writing making characters just get powers, it is a direct result of modern female writers (especially Hollywood ones). People who have always been told that they are special and magical for having a vagina will of course write characters to be special for merely existing as a woman/minority. It's the mary sure phenomena.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I disagree that super heroes are power fantasy since most of them lack the essential part of benefitting from their powers. They are usually not very rich (or use their money for pleasure) and their relationships are more strained than "fucking my harem every night" of the typical male fantasy hero (conan/isekai). They will also rarely abuse their powers and when they do they'll get instant karma.
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They're for kids. Kids don't generally fantasise about being super-wealthy or having a big harem. At least not healthy kids. They fantasise about being super-strong or being able to fly or go to space or have a spaceship. Their power fantasies are about power. What you list are sex fantasies and status fantasies. Those come later. Superman wasn't created for status fantasies or sex fantasies. Nor were the Fantastic Four. Or Batman. And so forth... repurposing for these things comes along later for adults larping as kids. You're not going to see "hard work and years of training" as the source for many superheroes' power when that's not something that satisfies kids. Iron Man doesn't create the suit because he's a forty year old man who has spent his whole life studying engineering and materials science and giving up his social life for it. He creates it because Stark is "a genius" who can make in a cave what an entire team of career scientists cannot with an entire corporation behind them. Bruce Banner doesn't become super-strong because he's a genius who spends years studying - even though he is. It's an accident that suddenly makes him the Hulk. Superheroes are, in the vast majority of cases, either straight up power fantasies (younger kids) or power-fantasies combined with persecution fantasies (teenagers). They're rarely "I worked really hard" fantasies. So you ain't going to see a lot of that.

And yes, I'm aware of the origins of Wonder Woman. That doesn't change my point that something isn't a power fantasy just because it doesn't include having a harem of women.
 
Overly Serious said:
They're for kids. Kids don't generally fantasise about being super-wealthy or having a big harem. At least not healthy kids. They fantasise about being super-strong or being able to fly or go to space or have a spaceship. Their power fantasies are about power. What you list are sex fantasies and status fantasies. Those come later. Superman wasn't created for status fantasies or sex fantasies. Nor were the Fantastic Four. Or Batman. And so forth... repurposing for these things comes along later for adults larping as kids. You're not going to see "hard work and years of training" as the source for many superheroes' power when that's not something that satisfies kids. Iron Man doesn't create the suit because he's a forty year old man who has spent his whole life studying engineering and materials science and giving up his social life for it. He creates it because Stark is "a genius" who can make in a cave what an entire team of career scientists cannot with an entire corporation behind them. Bruce Banner doesn't become super-strong because he's a genius who spends years studying - even though he is. It's an accident that suddenly makes him the Hulk. Superheroes are, in the vast majority of cases, either straight up power fantasies (younger kids) or power-fantasies combined with persecution fantasies (teenagers). They're rarely "I worked really hard" fantasies. So you ain't going to see a lot of that.

And yes, I'm aware of the origins of Wonder Woman. That doesn't change my point that something isn't a power fantasy just because it doesn't include having a harem of women.
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What age are we speaking about here? With teens it's around the time where money and sex is a factor (and they were very much the primary crowd during the dark age of comics). While 6-10 years old are usually too young to really be a consumer crowd for comics. But anyways the important part about a power fantasy is being able to lord over others, usually for petty reasons, and that's pretty rare in superhero comics (at least from my memory) and it is something that even a small child will understand.

Also with western super heroes the idea is that you get super powers because you deserve them (unless it's the X-Men where it is usually a curse), which is its own form of hard work. With the implication that if you were a bad person you would have turned out a villain instead and be stripped of your power by the hero. MCU heroes are nowadays barely heroic and sometimes outright petty and self centered.
 
The Nothingness said:
Too bad he's not as jacked as Michael Clarke Duncan was to show Kingpin can have a big fight with Spidey.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YS5HH0YxEUo
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I miss when changing race or something wasn’t for stupid political or social reasons but just because they thought an actor could play the role right. Which he could MKD was great in the role and could’ve and should’ve been a Kingpin in the Raimi films…. Which I mean technically he was Kingpin in the universe of the Raimi films because of that weird MTV animated Spider-Man show. It was suppose to be within the same universe acting as a bridge from Spider-Man 1 and 2, and it has the MKD Kingpin in it. Though that show was made invalid with the second movie and I doubt Raimi even knew it was a thing lol.
 
Oh good, I totally cared about that guy. Surprised they're going to allow 2 straight white males on the same project, even though one is the villain. Maybe they plan on gaying him up.
 
According to leaks, Sony really wants Spider-Man 4 to be just No Way Home 2, fucking Kevin Feige of all people wants it to be grounded.

I don't know how to feel about this.
 
Doctor of Autism said:
According to leaks, Sony really wants Spider-Man 4 to be just No Way Home 2
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Not surprising, since it made them a shit ton of money. But who else are they going to bring in at this point? Topher Grace and Dane Dehaan? As much as I enjoyed seeing the old Spidermen again, the member berries will lose their luster if they keep reusing them.
 
Odd Opossum said:
Did you expect anything else?
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Honestly given how the MCU has been, it would usually seem Feige would push for something like this, but given Sony is genuinely retarded, I am not that shocked.

Mac Monster said:
Not surprising, since it made them a shit ton of money. But who else are they going to bring in at this point? Topher Grace and Dane Dehaan? As much as I enjoyed seeing the old Spidermen again, the member berries will lose their luster if they keep reusing them.
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They want them to fight another Sinister Six or something or just make live action Spiderverse. Sony is creatively bankrupt to do that, and given how outside of Spiderverse, their recent Spider-Man projects mostly suck, it says a lot
 
Doctor of Autism said:
According to leaks, Sony really wants Spider-Man 4 to be just No Way Home 2,
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I mean, if they were smart about it that could be good. I'm talking way outside the box though. Like a live action version of 90's cartoon Spiderman, and Japanese Spiderman with the machine gun and mecha.
 
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