Yes, the almost blasé murdering Falcon was doing of mercenaries in the first episode* is a departure from most of the heroes in the comic books. While it fits in with Hollywood's idea of what an action movie should be, it's not a change I prefer.
*And I realize it's not just in FatWS.
Red Skull could probably still manage to leave Vormir and resume his quest to shape the Earth in his image, Zola could have a backup version somehwere, Blonsky's still alive, The Leader is still alive, Dormamu, Mordo, and if they do bring the Netflix characters over that puts a few others in play.
I haven't checked, but didn't Yellowjacked from the first Ant Man movie survive? And I think Ghost from Ant Man and the Wasp did as well. Also, while not super powered, Justin Hammer is alive.
Good point on Yellowjacket. Last we saw, he was shrinking uncontrollably, which is an iconic way to keep him out of the picture unless the writers ever need him again. Justin Hammer is another good one. Ghost wasn't really a villain at the end, I figure.
I never saw the Hulk, so forget about those villains. Dormamu... I guess. I realize it's only my perspective, but he's more a force than a character. I suppose.
And I keep not including Mordo because while he is a villain, I don't recall that any of the heroes are even aware of him. He can't be recurring because he hasn't occurred in a scene where he dies in a hero fight.
Look, guys. The point is I'm only talking from a very narrow perspective and I'm probably wrong and don't know what I'm talking about and you shouldn't listen to me.
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I haven't checked, but didn't Yellowjacked from the first Ant Man movie survive? And I think Ghost from Ant Man and the Wasp did as well. Also, while not super powered, Justin Hammer is alive.Good point on Yellowjacket. Last we saw, he was shrinking uncontrollably, which is an iconic way to keep him out of the picture unless the writers ever need him again. Justin Hammer is another good one. Ghost wasn't really a villain at the end, I figure.
I never saw the Hulk, so forget about those villains. Dormamu... I guess. I realize it's only my perspective, but he's more a force than a character. I suppose.
And I keep not including Mordo because while he is a villain, I don't recall that any of the heroes are even aware of him. He can't be recurring because he hasn't occurred in a scene where he dies in a hero fight.
Look, guys. The point is I'm only talking from a very narrow perspective and I'm probably wrong and don't know what I'm talking about and you shouldn't listen to me.
I actually agree with the point overall - MCU kills off too many villains. But was pointing out it's not as bad as you think, but still bad.
Oddly enough New Rockstars recently discussed in a video which villains are still out there.
And yes, I think while there are a number of surviving villains we can return to, I agree with the general gist. There's also, as Andostre notes, a lot of brutally murdered mooks--which plotwise, fine, they are dead--but sometimes makes a hero look hypocritical when they are chiding someone else for bloodshed. Sometimes it makes sense for the enemy to be killed, and sometimes it doesn't--and there's a difference between fighting say folks who just blew up a building full of innocent refugees versus folks who don't want to be there who may have been forced to fight by another more powerful leader.
Mind, I honestly wouldn't expect military-trained superheroes to pull their punches. Soldiers are trained to kill the enemy. Actually Marvel would never go there, but it would have been fascinating to have Steve comment on the more brutal fighting styles of other soldiers he's fought alongside in the 21st Century. In WWI and WWII commanding officers noted that most soldiers, especially quickly trained draftees, often avoided shooting or making lethal shots at the enemy--most humans unless they have a personality disorder instinctively avoid killing whenever possible, even when they know they are in a dangerous situation or are fighting a war. They worked on changing training methods for soldiers, including conscripts, to detach themselves from the humanity of their enemies, and by Vietnam, soldiers were much more likely to kill their targets--and much more likely to suffer from PTSD and other psychological disorders, including personality disorders, as a result. (I learned about this from a book and here are some articles on this idea: here, here). Bucky being trained to kill so brutally would also be a huge contrast to how he was trained in WWII, and it would also be interesting to hear him talk about that.
My distaste for the hypocrisy of my favorite super heroes from the comics killing anyone on screen goes back to when I ran out with my friends to see Tim Burton's Batman back in '89. Like, the character's ONE rule drilled into the heads of fans everywhere was that Batman doesn't kill. The movie ends the way it does, and I'm sitting there going... "umm... maybe it was meant to just be like, an accident?"
Yes Joker falls to his death, but Batman's action in that moment is to tether Joker to the church so that he cannot get away on the chopper. It's a delay tactic so he can deal with the impending fall of Vicki Vale. Batman didn't make the gargoyle break away.
The other side of this "superheroes don't kill" argument that keeps coming up - very few superheroes actually have an "I don't kill" rule. Cap has killed both in war before going into the ice and in battle after coming out; Superman has killed -- and those two are just about the most virtuous characters you've got in the genre.
Most of these movies have done a pretty good job of having those who do have a moral imperative to try to keep the most people alive - do just that. We cannot however hold characters that have no such compunction to Batman's no killing rule, they're not all Batman.
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I don't mind superheroes who kill. I do mind superheroes who kill fairly indiscriminately and then take the moral high ground denouncing someone else who behaves similarly. For the most part, mind, I don't think this show goes too far in this direction, but the show does get weird about who is and isn't ok to kill. It *is* odd that say, Sam has no problem just straight up murdering mooks working for Batroc but refuses to engage in lethal combat with Karli when she has repeatedly endangered and killed relatively innocent people and is also threatening the lives of him and his allies. The idea of "named characters only have value" is troubling, even if I also understand why the narrative and choices for action work the way they do.
Then there's interesting superhero narratives like in the Jessica Jones tv series, where Jessica has a firm no kill code (she eventually makes an exception for Kilgrave and then angers about it for the next two seasons)... But the moral the writers appear to want readers to take away, repeatedly through all three seasons, is that Jessica is wrong for not wanting to kill the bad guys and more lives would be saved if she just took them out/they died. This could spawn a whole essay about superhero ethics alone.
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The fact that Sam didn't want to fight Karli wasn't because she was a named character, but that he felt empathy for her, her situation, and her cause, and wanted to help redeem her to see that there was non violent ways to achieve the same goals. The mooks in the initial fight with Bartoc in episode 1 were ruthless mercenary killers who didn't care who was hurt, and did it for the money.
I don't see any hypocritical stance there. It's also immensely human to have more empathy for people you know personally rather than "enemy soldiers" who are using lethal force on a battlefield, for example.
I’ve noticed a lot in this thread, the Wandavision thread and several other comic book movie related threads - a tendency to lay narrative storytelling choices at the feet of the characters within the narrative. Here the idea expressed that Sam Wilson is comfortable with killing “unnamed” characters but not “named characters.”
In the confines of the fourth wall - Sam Wilson doesn’t know the difference between the two beyond the fact that he had a conversation with Karli and not with Batroc’s mercs.
Sam had a mission briefing before going into the field - there is no narrative reason to believe that his briefing en route was less thorough than the briefing Steve Rogers got en route to the Lemurian Star to face Batroc at the beginning of Winter Soldier - and the on screen text for that showed the name of all the operatives working with Batroc.
More to the point he was on a military sanctioned rescue mission. There was a threat assessment, and he had orders related to the actions he could and could not take to rescue the hostage before the help crossed over into enemy airspace. He was acting of his own accord in dealing with Karli and the Flagsmashers.
These henchmen are unnamed to us, because we are outside of the narrative. What is the value of ascribing our exterior knowledge to interior characters?
If we expect the character to behave in a way that is consistent with our external knowledge - should we also presume that they have none of the information beyond what we the audience have?
Why is the expectation that these mass market tent pole action movies should suddenly behave in manners different than all other mass market tent pole action movies that came before it?
Because while they're "mass market tent pole action movies" they're also comic book super hero movies and the material they're drawn from has its own set of expectations.
Sure. Where did you draw the expectation that Falcon or Cap for that matter don’t kill combatants on the battlefield? From Captain America comic books? Both characters have killed Hydra troops in the comics, even amid efforts not to.
Reads thread a little... gives up halfway... now thankful there was only 6 episodes... :P
The Honest Trailer for TFATWS is out!
OMG! LMAOROTF! exactly how I feel about the whole show! :) :) :)
wow, Death Quaker, just… wow. I love the bit about "you'll have to join the MILITARY first..."
They went there!
Less funny, but I finally got around to watching the "Assembled" Making of episode. If y'all haven't seen it yet, it's worth a watch, and some of their insights answered some of my questions about the story. They dive into how COVID-19 affected their production which is really interesting. It's interesting to imagine what this (and Wandavision) would have been without the impact of the pandemic.
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With apologies for digging up discussion a show we've all stopped watching... yesterday I was watching the prequel to Agent Cart--erm, I mean, Captain America: the First Avenger and a line of the Red Skull's popped out to me:
"I have seen the future! There are no flags!"
The context is that the Red Skull is berating Cap for representing only one "flag," one country, while he is envisioning a unified world (although of course one crushed under the heel of Hydra). Cap's response is "Not my future." (As an aside, I know I am not the only person who has noticed this, but I don't recall us discussing it here, hence my bringing it up.)
I am fairly certain at that time they were NOT intentionally building up toward the Flag Smashers and the like per se in that movie. But I am fascinated in speculating that perhaps the writers of TFATWS having reviewed that and creating the possibility of that "flagless future" and or extrapolating upon what the Red Skull did see. Perhaps he saw the post-Decimation world that had become, relatively speaking, borderless. I also wonder... the Red Skull's vision was obviously one world united under Hydra. What does 2023 Hydra, as I have no reason to doubt it exists, support... the one world vision, where the rhetoric of the Flag Smashers is useful to them... or are they supporting/behind/using the Global Repatriation Council, as reinforcing the status quo will lead to more order? Their fingers are probably in both pies, of course, but what is their goal?
Anyway, I just wanted to share something I thought was kinda cool.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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With apologies for digging up discussion a show we've all stopped watching... yesterday I was watching the prequel to Agent Cart--erm, I mean, Captain America: the First Avenger and a line of the Red Skull's popped out to me:
"I have seen the future! There are no flags!"
The context is that the Red Skull is berating Cap for representing only one "flag," one country, while he is envisioning a unified world (although of course one crushed under the heel of Hydra). Cap's response is "Not my future." (As an aside, I know I am not the only person who has noticed this, but I don't recall us discussing it here, hence my bringing it up.)
I am fairly certain at that time they were NOT intentionally building up toward the Flag Smashers and the like per se in that movie. But I am fascinated in speculating that perhaps the writers of TFATWS having reviewed that and creating the possibility of that "flagless future" and or extrapolating upon what the Red Skull did see. Perhaps he saw the post-Decimation world that had become, relatively speaking, borderless. I also wonder... the Red Skull's vision was obviously one world united under Hydra. What does 2023 Hydra, as I have no reason to doubt it exists, support... the one world vision, where the rhetoric of the Flag Smashers is useful to them... or are they supporting/behind/using the Global Repatriation Council, as reinforcing the status quo will lead to more order? Their fingers are probably in both pies, of course, but what is their goal?
Anyway, I just wanted to share something I thought was kinda cool.
That's a great find, and definitely cool. To carry your line of thought one step further, I wonder if the Flag Smashers were secretly manipulated not by Hydra per se, but by Red Skull himself. After the events of Infinity War/Endgame, could he be back after being replaced/freed from the Soul Stone?
I read somewhere that Don Cheadle got an Emmy nod for his brief appearance in this show. I don't really think much of pat-ourselves-on-the-back industry awards, but I like him, so I hope he wins.
And he's just as confused about it as the rest of us.