I can totally imagine the avengers debating for years “well no we still don’t have enough proof of genocide, the best action is inaction” while immediately go to raze an Iranian city after an unfounded rumor of a WMD
Wasn’t that kind of the plot of Civil War?
That is way too believable.
Wakanda is a monarchist enthnostate that tortures outsiders and even shows outright hostility to those helping them. Their leadership is determined by the most violent among them. And this society is presented a utopia.
I fucking hate these movies.
I tried watching the animated show recently, and its basically Wakanda throughout history stealing vibranium from other civilisations because they feel entitled to complete control over the element, usually with large amounts of colateral damage and theft of deeply important cultural artifacts in the process. I assume there’s some alegory I’m missing but they just come off as assholes.
Are they bad guys in that?
The framing suggests they’re meant to be the good guys?
Not really. Unlike the Marvel movies, Wakanda in the comics is not a perfect utopia and has a lot of its own prejudice.
Well… To put it differently, unlike the movies, Wakanda’s prejudice isn’t depicted as a fine and perfectly acceptable utopia.
Keep in mind, in the comics, Storm from The X-Men is Wakandan royalty. She should be queen. But she got exiled from her homeland at a rather young age for being a mutant.
Nah, they’re morally grey/bad in Eyes of Wakanda. The point of the show is to explore how messed up their isolationism was. That’s why the last episode is about
spoiler
a time Traveller making sure that Killmonger spurs T’challa to finally end their isolationist policy so they don’t doom themselves and the world.
The country is threatened by a villainous black liberation agitator and saved with the help of the CIA.
They might as well have had Abdel Fattah El-Sisi play the lead role.
Don’t need to jump all the way to Wakanda. Thanos is an eco terrorist. Ultron is a peace activist. Magneto is patterned after Malcolm X.
The Marvel universe is the story of how a billionaire arms dealer and the US military save the world from deranged leftists. Disney heroes always fight for the status quo and the villains want to make things better (but also they’re written to be crazy and violent). It’s a billion dollar “I drew you as Soyjak and me as the chad” franchise.
Walt Disney was a major force behind the Red Scare in Hollywood, turning in his own animators for unionizing, and they’ve been terrible ever since.
Thanos is an eco terrorist. Ultron is a peace activist. Magneto is patterned after Malcolm X.
So much of this is modern to the MCU as well. What gets me about X-Men is how much racial profiling, ethic ghettos, and a hyper-militant police force played a roll in the original comic books (and 90s cartoon). Modem iterations boiled all that away and just made Magneto some angry asshole [survived the Holocaust].
I will say… Magneto as a Zionist worked disturbingly well. But they’ll never do that arc under the Disney brand.
I have never understood the appeal of marvel universe movies. It just always came across as bad world building.
The whole reason super heroes with secret identities works is they are unique, and not a fundamental change to society.
Having a world that’s basically the same, with truck loads of super heroes makes no sense at all.
I have seen only a handful of these movies.
The one who wrote Owl House (which got canceled by Disney because of LGBTQ themes) just released a pilot for her new show, a critique of what Disney has become
Well the funny part is that most of the “heroes” they sell are not really heroes, just defenders of a status quo america that never really existed
See also: “Marvel Defenders of The Status Quo” (2022-06-22) by Pop Culture Detective.
Zemo did nothing wrong.
Zemo literally caused trillions of sentient beings all around the universe to get erased out of existence by fragmenting the Avengers.
He did not know Thanos was a thing.
Does it matter? Petty revenge still caused trillions of deaths. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I still think he would still have done it even if he knew about Thanos.
Yeah, it does mater. I don’t see why he would see Thanos as anybody different then any of the heroes. The biggest genocide ever with a chance of Thanos surviving and living a life of peace and comfort on a far away planet? Plus it does not solve the issues because in all that chaos basically delivers the world to the most powerful.
If they had done that it won’t be for character reasons, just another attempt to tell the peasants that the establishment is important for ‘safety’
Basically every mainstream media is “We can’t kill the villain”
opens history book
LMAO
And then there is Andor…
Bill Burr shot first!
Bill Burr shot only.
And speaking of Burr, I’m happy to hear he doesn’t sell out to the MAGA bastards and will call out their bullshit.
Burr continues Carlin’s legacy of walking around with both middle fingers up to society, he’s one of the few left I trust would take a deep inhale before shouting FUCK YOU! straight into the face of the big mango if they met
Fuck you, piece of shit
one bridge having cityguy who bankrupted a casino
Okay but that scene wasn’t Andor, that was Mandalorian.
Ah fuck you’re right
This is why I loved the scene in F is for Family when Frank responds to the ‘be the bigger and better person and let go’ by straight up punching and knocking his abusive elderly dad after meeting up with him instead of burying the trauma further.
People are looking for a left wing Rogan. But I think we have that with guys like Bur
Bill Burr is not left. He’s a true centrist. The problem with America is that the right is so far right anyone left of them is considered left.
I’ll take it.
Bur is just as likely to call out stupid behavior on the left, he’s not partisan. It just so happens the right is doing the worst shit right now, but he’s been vicious in attacking leftists in the past. As he should be.
Which only makes him better.
The Gatekeepers on any sort of left moderation would have canceled the left wing Joe Rogan long before he can make a point.
Bad faith, and or lazy, mean, etc rolled into online communities where anyone disagreeing with the consensus is labeled a bigot in bad faith and misunderstood on purpose…
Our progressive champions, lazily misunderstanding what the community of bad faith pricks suggests. Great plan to take back america under that fine structure. It has worked so well until now! /s
It reminds me of a meme I recently saw of a preacher in front of a bunch of Indians, and he says “Before we came, you worshipped the SUN!”
And one of the Indians says “Dude, the sun is real.”
He has a point. It’s ironic that the only piece of “evidence” most religions have is a book written by humans.
Any belief in the sun/moon/stars/whatever… At least you can point and say, there it is.
But Christianity is normal and not crazy at all, and believing in Ra is the crazy thing… Sure. Yeah.
I think it’s all nuts. But whatever.
the only piece of “evidence” most religions have is a book written by humans.
Evangelism typically involves more than just a book. There’s inevitably some amount of mysticism - faith healing, weather events that turn the tide of a pitched battle, communing with the dead, miraculous survival stories, straight up stage magic.
Any belief in the sun/moon/stars/whatever… At least you can point and say, there it is.
There’s inevitably some kind of reverse causation in these faiths. Humans are constantly asserting they can manipulate the heavens with ritual and sacrifice.
You won’t find me coming to the defense of either large structured religions nor to the defense of the sun god, or his celestial counterparts.
It’s all Hocus pokus.
For less insane religions and catholicism, they have centuries of philosophy and reinterpretation to fit new societal contexts to look back on.
The only piece of evidence we have for a lot of things is a book written by humans
a lot of things.
🤔
Science doesn’t work that way. There’s provable and repeatable experiments and proofs that you can independently verify.
Last time I checked most things that aren’t metaphysical (like philosophy), have some relationship with science, and therefore, only requires that you go through the motions to prove it yourself by creating your own reproduction of an test/experiment/proof…
Science only works for scientific claims. It cannot prove that my great grandfather was in a prisoner of war camp.
Last time I checked, people didn’t found their core belief system around whether prisoners of war existed or not.
Even so, there’s tangible proof of him being there, by his physical body being there, when it happened. This can be proven by science. Obviously that’s not able to be proven after he was released from the camp, and yes, we have to take the scribbles on a page to know it happened.
I will give you that.
For anything that is a universal truth, like gravity, chemistry, the properties of light, electricity, and all the principles behind electronics engineering, etc… All of that is provable. Lived experiences, history, sure. We have to accept that what we’re reading is true or not. But that’s a choice.
Science, which defines pretty much everything that’s happening, why is happening, and how it can happen, is immutable.
The idea of “God” has no basis more reliable than someone’s report of it happening. For something so universal/omnipotent, the fact that the only “evidence” that it happened is in a book, yet this God has a plan for you right now, but you can’t know it because God won’t tell you, nor do anything outside of what physics/Science says can/will happen, isn’t evidence of the existence of such a deity, regardless of what someone calls “God”.
All other things that exist, the forces that act on those things, and all of the possible outcomes of that thing existing can be proven by science. God cannot be proven, by science or otherwise.
Even history, to some extent, can be proven, because the evidence still exists. You can visit auschwitz, and see where history happened from WW2. You can see the damage from bombs and gunfire in structures that were standing when conflicts happened. There’s still evidence for a lot of that. And again, the same cannot be said for any book about any deity.
“Yeah well, my god is invisible!”
“Dude, you can’t look at ours or you’ll burn your eyes out.”
I have been thinking the superhero movies were having many fascist themes themselves. And their popularity was helped by a growing authoritarian movement in the USA.
The actual comics do not have many of the above issues, the movies reinforced certain themes.
I say this as someone who liked the comic books for many decades
I pissed off a lot of, supposedly left leaning, comic book fans when I told them I thought Tony Stark had a good point that the super heroes in the MCU needed to be regulated. They were doing too much investigating and acting on their own without any oversight to not make people nervous. Same with Justice League Unlimited.
At least with Superman(2025), the hero’s intervention in world affairs was just a scaled up Bystander Effect.
I was thinking something else, like
The Boys Showrunner, Eric Kripke, says the superhero ultimately exists to protect the status quo, to keep things as they are or once were during more nostalgic times, while the supervillain seeks change. A superhero is pro-establishment, working to uphold the system, and viewers can be trained to believe some exceptional being will fix everything.
The earlier superhero movies made in the USA helped support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there were strategies and meetings to deliberately do just that.
I think the later Marvel movies drifted away from typecasting the villains and made the plots less American centric. But it did not loose the parallels to the popular movies in Germany made in the late 30’s.
Yeah it’s not great the way supers tend to validate vigilantism. Ultimately you can have rule of law or some form of tyranny. There are middle grounds, but those are the options. Also the hero’s journey literary paradigm has regressive aspects. 🤓
I like the comic where Batman beats up a racist cop
“Rule of Law” is itself a form of tyranny. It is nothing more than the dictates of a hierarchical authority, originating from the authority of kings, trying to assert its control over others. It is a fundamentally oppressive system that can and has repeatedly throughout history been used to facilitate the oppression of marginalized peoples.
Hhhh yes I know some form of anarchism would probably be more egalitarian and just but a society will always have rules and mutual expectations and if we’re being honest no state can afford to let people see anarchism thrive, can they?
Every collective will always have to prepare for and content with oppositional actors. Sadly, this is a fact of life. Anarchist theory is well versed in the concept that the state will inevitably retaliate as the existence of an anarchist society threatens the perceived hierarchical structure that state authority is founded on. If people understand they do not need to acquiesce their political autonomy to an arbitrary authority to ensure stability in their lives, the state loses the power it has over the people.
Anarchist society is founded on mutual agreements between individuals or groups of people acting on consensus. Just because a society is anarchist doesn’t mean people are absolved of responsibilities. It is specifically that those responsibilities are taken on willingly and not coerced by arbitrary structures that only serve to oppress one for the benefit of another.
superhero movies were having many fascist themes themselves.
you can have rule of law or some form of tyranny
Yeah like that one!
They treat us like the naive children we behave like.
TBH their “heroes” are pretty fascist too. Princes, princesses, etc. It’s a total shitshow in terms of class.
And the ones who are not are almost all solders and cops. With two exceptions that I can think of, Spiderman who might as well be rich do to his friendships and connections and antman who they treated like shit.
#deep
Check
Teaching with Disney edited by Julie C. Garlen and Jennifer A. Sandlin, 2016 (including but not limited to “Teaching Disney Critically in the Age of Perpetual Consumption”)
and
The Mouse that Roared, Disney and the End of Innocence by Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock, 2010
but the Tl;DR is that their only definition of “heroes” is whatever might sell anything and aligned with the ideology of a “founder” that arguably didn’t draw the mouse itself.
Grace Kelly said something similar years ago: “Hollywood amuses me. Holier-than-thou for the public and unholier-than-the-devil in reality.”. We have all known this for decades. The sleazy hollywood rapist was a thing long before Harvey was outed. They all knew, and yet they all kept their mouths shut.
This is why its always been so perplexing to me that so much of society looks to hollywood for its morality lessons.
But Disney has also been tearing down the imaginary heroes with movies like Captain America Civil War and The Last Jedi.
Why did you do it stan?
“The money, of couse.”
Maybe that’s why all their stories suck, completely unfounded in reality
thinking of all the movies where good triumphs over evil
You’re right. Evil usually wins IRL.
