To be fair, this also effectively destroys the organization, and follows through on the “Spoils the whole bunch” part of the saying, which is better than nowt.
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Eh fair enough. I don’t claim to be an expert on the MCU, I just for some reason love Bucky Barnes, and by extension all the Capetian America movies. I’ve seen all the big ones at least once though and from what I remember, post winter soldier/civil war, whatever standin’s for authority in the US aren’t treated as the bad guys.
Kinda holds true for the entire MCU, cops/military are either portrayed as neutral or good (like when the baddies kill em, it’s a way to raise the steaks, show how strong the baddies are and how bad they are that they’re willing to do that. Hell now I’m thinkin’ it didn’t fuckin bilbo baggins play a literal CIA guy in black panther? And IIRC got a section in the end where he’s a big damn hero, shot down a plane or something.
That isn’t quite true though. Spider-man isn’t just “minding his own business until something happens”. He actively patrols the city when he can on the lookout for problems.
It also only works “kind off” though. A central core of Spider-Man stories is that it rarely works out for him and the double-life is stressful and dangerous not just to him directly but also the people that surround him. Furthermore, Spider-man only works because he is provided this impeccable moral code and only goes after “bad guys” who are obviously doing something wrong. People like George Zimmerman or Kyle Rittenhouse also believed to be protecting their neighborhood and you can see what goes wrong there.
Spider-man is also not the only kind of vigilante being portrayed in comics. E.g. see the Punisher whose portrayal has slowly morphed from obviously horrible monster to anti-hero and as a result is being idolized by people that the character would hate.
Eh, in Civil War and subsequent related films like Black Widow the UN task force headed by General Ross is pretty definitively portrayed as “wrong” due to Cap’s mistrust in such institutions as a result of the events of Winter Soldier. The Central conflict of the film is Cap’s mistrust of such institutions as opposed to Iron Man’s belief in the necessity of oversight by an authority that is more accountable to the general public.
The Punisher is not good, and almost all Punisher comics are bad. There are however, a few takes on him that give a twist or different perspective, but they are the exception.
That’s kinda my point though. Ironman and those that agree with him aren’t shown as the bad guy, both sides are considered reasonable. Hell, to my mind Ironman and co are more right than rogers and them. Public oversight and accountability are good things and in the movie’s language that means siding with like shield or the UN, or the sikovia accords or whatever the plot has that being.
In a vacuum this is a case of reasonable people disagreeing. It’s only when you try and ascribe the moving parts as allegory for real world institutions that the movies ideology becomes apparent.
Sometimes I like it when I’m right.
Actually though, the above was kind of just a snarky comment, but it is topical. I finally went and saw Spider-man: No Way Home. I already knew through osmosis that there would be some connection to the previous two Sony Spider-man series, but I didn’t know the extend. I did not expect that they would wrap three famous Spider-man storylines, namely “Sinister Six” (or in this case “five”), “Spiderverse” and “One More Day” into one neat package. But do I really need to see the Andrew Garfield ones now?
I did feel a bit annoyed in the scene where the arc-words of the Spider-man universe was spoken because I thought the series had actually a) skipped past this central pillar of the Spider-man property or rather b) explored it through Spider-man’s relationship with Tony Stark in the MCU. However, it made more narrative sense as the movie progressed.
Also can’t help but admit that I had a huge grin when I saw Matt Murdock appear on-screen.
Over christmas vacation I’ve actually been catching up with a lot of MCU stuff I’ve missed since for some reason it didn’t really grip me to get back in after the pandemic delays created a break that more or less coincided with the end of Phase 3 of the MCU. I got back into it after starting to play Marvel Champions again (see here).
- Black Widow was fine, not great. The new character of Yelena was fun, as was the MCU version of Red Guardian. It somehow felt a bit “too little too late” for the character of Natasha Romanoff though, particularly when combined with the cerfuffle over Johanson’s contract.
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was interesting but also felt a bit commercial to me, as the film was most certainly designed to appeal to the chinese market. I did like the callbacks to the Iron-Man movies which they are tied to. They did pretty well with adapting the source material while filtering out the rather orientalist leanings within it, or at least the very overt ones that even a pasty white guy from austria recognizes. Great fight scenes throughout.
- The Hawkeye TV series was pretty good. It wasn’t quite what I hoped for as I am a big fan of the Matt Fraction Hawkeye run this borrows a lot from, but considering where the character of Clint Barton is in the MCU this paved over the gap pretty well. A prequel series with a young Clint Barton probably would not have worked with a 50-year-old Jeremy Renner, and wouldn’t have given us an heir apparent in Kate Bishop.
- Venom is one of the dumbest action movies I have ever seen, but it is fun. Only watched it because I stumbled over it on Netflix, and didn’t expect to be now actually relevant to the MCU.
Overall, a lot of the MCU now feels like “rebuilding” which makes sense after the events of Infinity War/Endgame and the resulting death or retirement of the original Avengers line-up. I just hope it doesn’t fall apart.
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This is a pretty fun video going into the Chinese cultural inspirations behind Shang-Chi. They are also an author and their book “Iron Widow” is incredible.
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Agreed. Being a bit older, I always enjoyed Roger Stern’s run on Amazing Spider-Man. While most people will point to the creation of The Hobgoblin, for me it was Peter Parker maturing. He returned to college and worked towards getting his degree (or master’s, it’s been a few years). The funniest part of this being when he is trying to run down a dean to sign off on some papers, and after he signs them, the dean complains about not getting a moment’s peace. Next panel shows the dean trying to leave his office and the door has been webbed shut…
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I actually let out a big “YESSSS!” in the theater when I saw Matt Murdock in the beginning of the movie. Seeing him was just as enjoyable as seeing the other surprise appearances.
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Thank you for the video. It was interesting.
One more thing: Something that really annoys me about the MCU is that the “Blip” as it is called in-universe is given way too little weight. I mean, during Endgame we see people being devastated by half the population of earth having disappeared, and we see abandoned buildings and cities, but almost by the next movie, that being Spider-man: Far from Home their reappearance is little more than “hey, isn’t it weird that my brother who was three years younger is now two years older than me?”
For example in Hawkeye we see one character’s backstory where they turn to dust and reassemble in the bathroom of someone they are visiting with those 5 years passing in between. The person they are visiting is surprised that they are back, but in the next scene which seems to be less than an hour later they are only discussing how this one blipped person can continue on with their life. No mention of the fact that suddenly 4 billion people, including others that this person knew, have suddenly reapeared. I mean, that person is a trained and conditioned assassin, but they shouldn’t they be at least somewhat perturbed by the staggering implications of this event to both their personal life and the palent in general?
I mean, an event like that should have caused major upheaval and probably a fucking global famine. Even with the major food waste we are committing, I don’t think 4 billion people will have food for another 4 billion just at hand.
I generally agree with you that the MCU doesn’t give enough weight to “the Blip,” but isn’t what you’re talking about the entire premise behind The Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series? I forget the name of the terrorist organization, but their entire goal was to get back at the organization that was in charge of taking care of the people who returned after the “Blip.”
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The faster the MCU moves on from the blip being a big part of their movies, the better. I’m just not interested. Let it be a soft reset and just get on with it. It’s dumb, and unrealistic, but I’m not watching MCU movies for either intelligence or realism!
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I only watched the first episode of Falcon and Winter Soldier yesterday. I haven’t seen all the material available, I admit. Then again, that shouldn’t really be necessary, or at least it should have been in the same medium rather than a TV series that shouldn’t be mandatory watching.
Just something that popped into my head, but it could have been something like a “Damage Control” movie about the cleanup crew that was introduced in “Homecoming” and also showed up in “No Way Home” who have to clean up the battle sites.
I disagree with this. If you want to follow the MCU, then you have to follow all of it, both the movies and the TV series. Both are inextricably intertwined. With Disney+ and the move towards more streaming, the distinction between the MCU movies and the MCU TV series is essentially nonexistent. They introduce characters in the TV shows that I have no doubt will eventually show up in the movies (Cate Bishop, US Agent, Agetha Harkness, etc).
The MCU isn’t like Star Wars where the expectation isn’t that if you watch the movies, you also read the novels, comics, play the games, etc. The expectation with the MCU is that you watch all of it, and it’s ALL connected/relevant.
I mean, perhaps, but that is also a new and different standard from what it used to be. The TV series set in the MCU like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil and Agent Carter were supplemental and had no real influence on the films. Seeing Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock show up for a scene in No Way Home was cool, but also was basically just fanservice and had no real influence on the story other than stating a plot point that a more generic lawyer character could have also delivered.
I guess though that this is one of the issues with such an integrated multi-media franchise, that an audience that doesn’t watch all the output or watches it out of order can get lost or confused. Also an issue raised several times in the video ryan linked above.
I think there’s a difference between the pre-Disney+ Marvel Shows and now.
Technically speaking, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t an MCU show anymore. It may have started out as one with its Winter Soldier tie-in, but as the show went on, it diverged from the MCU and is in a somewhat “gray” area now.
Additionally, up until Charlie Cox showed up in Spider-Man, none of the Netflix shows have been considered part of the MCU. Whether the Netflix shows are actually part of the MCU continuity, or whether Charlie Cox is just playing an MCU version of Daredevil, remains to be seen.
Inhumans, Runaways, Legion, The Gifted, Cloak and Dagger, and Helstrom are NOT part of the MCU.
Out of all the pre-Disney+ shows, Agent Carter has the strongest ties to the MCU, but even that show is essentially a prequel to the “modern day” MCU.
The Disney+ shows are fundamentally different from all the shows before them. They are tied directly into the MCU. They were designed from the very beginning to be an extension of the MCU. I don’t see how a viewer could enjoy any of the Disney+ shows, let alone understand what’s going on in them, without having watched the movies.
Again, the Disney+ shows are fundamentally different from any of the Marvel-related shows that came before them and were on other TV channels. The Disney+ TV shows are just as much a part of the MCU as the movies.
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Hey, I almost marked out seeing Cristo Fernández (Danny Rojas from Ted Lasso) as a bartender in the mid-credits scene.
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I think Kingpin showing up in Hawkeye carrying some of his TV show continuity with him suggests the latter, but it’s still not clear enough to say for sure yet.
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I gifted this to my oldest nephew for “Dia de Reyes” he loves it!