Marvel Phase III Movie Discussion Thread

[J.T.]

12 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Stark's a lot closer than Cap is.

Cap is merely naïve. 

Stark is one nightmare short of a man-child.  His play my way or I will take my ball and go home crap is what let to the development of Ultron and pretty much starts the Civil War.

Tony Stark is an entitled dick that gets a pass because he is Iron Man.

[Cristobal]

5 minutes ago, J.T. said:

With Ronan on the move, who the fuck had time to grieve and even as an arrested adolescent, he still had the character to help defend Ronan and convinced a bunch of space pirates to help him do it.

He got his surrogate father to help him. Yondu was always on Peter's side. It was him that brought his Ravagers into the fight.

[Craig H]

6 minutes ago, J.T. said:

With Ronan on the move and a Soul Stone to sell, who the fuck had time to grieve?

And even as an arrested adolescent, he still had the charisma and character to help defend Ronan and convinced an army of space pirates to help him do it.

Peter's mom died when he was a child. He had all of his childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood to grieve, but never did until after being with the rest of the team. That all came before the stuff with Ronan and the Power Stone. 

[Cristobal]

13 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Y'all should really watch that video essay above. That's all I'm saying.

Srsly. I mean she said herself that emotional takeaways will by nature be individual, but theme and character development are kinda right out there to be examined, so I dunno how much subjectivity there can be to account for these different takes.

[J.T.]

18 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

He got his surrogate father to help him. Yondu was always on Peter's side. It was him that brought his Ravagers into the fight.

You make it sound like Yondu would've gone to fight Ronan on his own if Peter had taken the Fuck, Xandar / Get Credits route.  It was Peter that inspired Yondu to consider the well being of someone other than himself.

I'm kinda baffled how Star Lord is failing to get credit for taking heroic action and becoming a strong leader.

17 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Peter's mom died when he was a child. He's had all of his childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood to grieve.

While being raised by bounty hunters and space pirates. 

Now there is a proper nurturing environment where a kidnapped human light years from his family and his home planet can process his negative feelings.

When Peter grows up, he initally becomes a criminal, guys.  He is too busy trying to make money, stay out of jail, and not get killed to process his grief about his mother's death.

 

[Cristobal]

6 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Peter's mom died when he was a child. He had all of his childhood, teenage years, and early adulthood to grieve, but never did until after being with the rest of the team. That all came before the stuff with Ronan and the Power Stone. 

Now obviously being a teenager amongst a bunch of space pirates with a captain-slash-surrogate-father who never addressed let alone resolved his OWN parental issues is not the best place to gain emotional maturity but that's the point. Peter was an immature dick raised by an immature dick and it's only when he gets in with the Guardians that this is finally something he can start to work on but he's not good at it yet, at all.

[(BP)]

17 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

...what the fuck movie are y'all talking about?

Who "regressed so they could show growth"? 

"Star Lord's leadership?" Peter is an arrested adolescent who didn't even start to deal with his mother's death until the end of the first film. It's not until the end of the second that he's got even an inkling of how broken he is and how much growing he needs to do.

The first movie is about a bunch of deeply wounded individuals from disparate parts of the universe finding catharsis by becoming part of something larger than themselves that functions as the family they were all missing for various reasons.

The second film spends more than half of its runtime working backwards from there just so there's enough conflict that at the end they can all agree that it is indeed nice to have a family. 

[Craig H]

1 minute ago, Cristobal said:

Now obviously being a teenager amongst a bunch of space pirates with a captain-slash-surrogate-father who never addressed let alone resolved his OWN parental issues is not the best place to gain emotional maturity but that's the point. Peter was an immature dick raised by an immature dick and it's only when he gets in with the Guardians that this is finally something he can start to work on but he's not good at it yet, at all.

Yeah. Also, that too is covered in the essay. 

[Matt D]

1 minute ago, (BP) said:

The first movie is about a bunch of deeply wounded individuals from disparate parts of the universe finding catharsis by becoming part of something larger than themselves that functions as the family they were all missing for various reasons.

The second film spends more than half of its runtime working backwards from there just so there's enough conflict that at the end they can all agree that it is indeed nice to have a family. 

Deciding to be a family and successfully functioning as a family are two different things. 

[Cristobal]

57 minutes ago, (BP) said:

The first movie is about a bunch of deeply wounded individuals from disparate parts of the universe finding catharsis by becoming part of something larger than themselves that functions as the family they were all missing for various reasons.

The second film spends more than half of its runtime working backwards from there just so there's enough conflict that at the end they can all agree that it is indeed nice to have a family. 

It's great that they found a family but what kind of growth did any of them (aside from Drax) actually make in the first film? Peter finishes the movie the same immature dick he starts out as, Rocket makes next to no progress in relating to non-plant people, and Groot dies and is literally reborn. Gamora is also almost wholly unchanged.

Drax, as the one character who seemed to have come out of a stable family, and thus with some degree of emotional maturity, (albeit it had been blown to hell by his family's murder), is the exception, as he is better equipped than the rest of them to recognize how he is failing and what he needs to do to change.

They're all people coming out of fucked up situations and it's great that they found each other, but it's really not until the second film that they start really addressing the consequences of those fucked up situations and the impacts they had upon them.

[J.T.]

21 hours ago, Matt D said:

Deciding to be a family and successfully functioning as a family are two different things. 

For some families, the bar for functioning successfully is set very low and it still feels like a mile high jump.

What Quill does with the Guardians is fucking phenomenal, but they help him heal as he helps them heal and that is what really makes them family.

[Matt D]

This is such a weird March. I'm in agreement with Cristobol, Contentious C, and Craig against Mark, JT and BP. If you just added Casey into the mix it'd be full on Relevos Increíbles.

[Casey]

On 2/23/2018 at 4:28 PM, Matt D said:

You guys are the worst.

 

[J.T.]

Personally, I am shocked that I am in relative agreement with Mark.

Usually we hate each other's comic book opinions.

[Matt D]

I rank Cap 1 in my top 5! It's not my fault you guys don't appreciate Joe Johnston. 

And half of you guys are the worst and the other half of you are bizarros. I have no idea which is which anymore.

[Raziel]

1 minute ago, Matt D said:

I rank Cap 1 in my top 5! It's not my fault you guys don't appreciate Joe Johnston. 

And half of you guys are the worst and the other half of you are bizarros. I have no idea which is which anymore.

It's a fluid, sliding scale.

[(BP)]

I'm not saying that those elements aren't there and it's not what Gunn was intending. Expanding on themes from the first one is fine, but it never feels organic because much of it isn't a consequence of the proper plot (which doesn't reveal its stakes until nearly the end) and we're being beat over the head with cranked up elements that worked in the first film the entire time. I like movies where we get an understanding of characters' motivations and relationships through action and reaction instead of forcing dialogue into their mouths. The first movie is great at that because even the mouthy ones like Rocket are guarded and used to closing themselves off to others as a way of survival. The second film is a lot of airing grievances and shouting. The closest they get to it working is the Rocket/Peter dynamic, and as a consequence of that Rocket/Yondu and Yondu/Peter. 

Anyway, it's head and shoulders above both Iron Man sequels and Thor at the very least, and probably a few more. I'd totally be willing to watch it again and admit I'm wrong if I responded to it differently the second time. When I saw it there were kids in the theater playing that game where each one says "cock" louder and louder until someone tells them to shut up for the bulk of the movie. Maybe that colored my opinion. 

 

[Cristobal]

I think there's some conflation going on between the ethical choices made by these characters with regards to fighting bad guys and saving the world/galaxy/whatever and their emotional development as human beings (or sentient beings as the case may be.)

You can be ethical, heroic even, and still be a total asshole to people around you. Howard Stark was a workaholic, emotionally distant father who wasn't able to figure out how to show his love to his son before he died. Tony knew his father valued Tony's intellectual gifts, but he never knew he was valued as a son.

As an adult, Tony used his genius as a crutch, and because he WAS a world class genius, was able to get away with it well into adulthood. Throughout the films he is repeatedly confronted with his mistakes, and repeatedly he tries to invent his way around the problem, often making things worse in the process. At the end of Civil War he has to be forced to accept a decision T'Challa comes to on his own: to subsume his own guilt and pain for the greater good.

Tony is a hero and is driven to make the world better and safer but he will continue to fuck things up because he isn't willing to grow himself. And at the end of the day he really doesn't have a vehicle for that growth. The Avengers aren't a family. Pepper would like him to grow but she doesn't seem able to make him do so while also running his company and keeping him relatively sane. 

I don't think his movies have portrayed this as effectively as Gunn portrays Peter Quill's struggles.

Peter isn't the genius Tony is so things fall apart in ways he can't fix but he gets lucky and does find that family Tony doesn't. But he still needs to choose to grow and change. And only when he starts casting out his illusions, like that he's entitled to be a jerk cuz his mom died and he was stolen from his world, and he's entitled to a relationship he's not remotely mature enough to handle because he's occasionally less of a jerk to Gamora, and that yes, Yondu was a jerk but he was also the only father Peter will have ever had, that Peter can start to become the man he thinks he should be.

[Cristobal]

27 minutes ago, Matt D said:

This is such a weird March. I'm in agreement with Cristobol, Contentious C, and Craig against Mark, JT and BP. If you just added Casey into the mix it'd be full on Relevos Increíbles.

This is what happens when we don't have March Madness as an outlet.

[(BP)]

My alternate March:

"I've watched 6 collective hours of Raw, two network specials, half an Indy match, and nothing international in the past year. Now I'm going to get into a blood feud with someone because they voted for Negro Navarro over Viktor from Ascension."

 

[J.T.]

32 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

I think there's some conflation going on between the ethical choices made by these characters with regards to fighting bad guys and saving the world/galaxy/whatever and their emotional development as human beings (or sentient beings as the case may be.)

You can be ethical, heroic even, and still be a total asshole to people around you. Howard Stark was a workaholic, emotionally distant father who wasn't able to figure out how to show his love to his son before he died. Tony knew his father valued Tony's intellectual gifts, but he never knew he was valued as a son.

As an adult, Tony used his genius as a crutch, and because he WAS a world class genius, was able to get away with it well into adulthood. Throughout the films he is repeatedly confronted with his mistakes, and repeatedly he tries to invent his way around the problem, often making things worse in the process. At the end of Civil War he has to be forced to accept a decision T'Challa comes to on his own: to subsume his own guilt and pain for the greater good.

Tony is a hero and is driven to make the world better and safer but he will continue to fuck things up because he isn't willing to grow himself. And at the end of the day he really doesn't have a vehicle for that growth. The Avengers aren't a family. Pepper would like him to grow but she doesn't seem able to make him do so while also running his company and keeping him relatively sane. 

I don't think his movies have portrayed this as effectively as Gunn portrays Peter Quill's struggles.

Peter isn't the genius Tony is so things fall apart in ways he can't fix but he gets lucky and does find that family Tony doesn't. But he still needs to choose to grow and change. And only when he starts casting out his illusions, like that he's entitled to be a jerk cuz his mom died and he was stolen from his world, and he's entitled to a relationship he's not remotely mature enough to handle because he's occasionally less of a jerk to Gamora, and that yes, Yondu was a jerk but he was also the only father Peter will have ever had, that Peter can start to become the man he thinks he should be.

As is usually the case, Cristobal thinks that he and I are in disagreement when we really aren't. 

We agree in principle, just not in methodology.

I am in minor disagreement about the Avengers being family, though.  It is more family to some members than others.  To someone like the Falcon or Iron Man, it is a team of likeminded individuals coming together for the common good.

To someone like Scarlet Witch or The Vision who crave a deeper support structure or Hawkeye and Black Widow who believe that they aren't fit for anything other than superhero duty since normal is lame, it is more like a family.  Who better to relate to the issues of being a hero than other heroes?

[Cristobal]

I don't so much see a disagreement between us about Peter as I do a cross-conversation.

"Peter is a hero who brings people together for a common cause."

"Peter is an immature manchild drowning in daddy issues who has no control over his own ego (*cough*) and can't relate to other people on an adult level."

"He's better than Tony."

None of these statements are wrong.

It's the fact that Peter has had a growth arc more complex and realized in two movies than Tony has had in essentially six that's why I'm so high on GotG, especially the second.

[Craig H]

It's also almost like the movies Peter Quill has been in have had writers and a director who has been really engaged. Tony Stark on screen has been mired by recurring issues. With Iron Man, there was a great, energetic director on board who brought this character to life and then for the sequel, all of that energy was absent and it was clear Favreau was going through the motions, preferring to not direct any more MCU movies. Nearly the same exact thing happened with Avengers to Avengers Age of Ultron. 

Credit to Shane Black for elevating Iron Man 3 above 2, but the Russos have breathed new life into Tony while also making those movies a little less fun. It looks like a net positive at least.

[J.T.]

10 minutes ago, Cristobal said:

IIt's the fact that Peter has had a growth arc more complex and realized in two movies than Tony has had in essentially six that's why I'm so high on GotG, especially the second.

Tony made major strides towards maturity in Civil War and he even showed some signs of mentorship in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

He's come a long way since Age of Ultron, but his frustration that the world won't stay safe everytime he saves it continues to be his hubris and this leads to.

4 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Credit to Shane Black for elevating Iron Man 3 above 2, but the Russos have breathed new life into Tony while also making those movies a little less fun. It looks like a net positive at least.

This X 1000%.  Disney / Marvel is finally getting  people like The Russos and Ryan Coogler and Taika Watiti who "get this material" to make these movies.

[Craig H]

I'm not going to get super thrilled yet. At one point we had Joss Wheadon, Jon Favreau, and Kenneth Brannagh directing some of these movies. We thought that was amazing until they all flamed out for one reason or another. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Russo Brothers, Coogler, Taika, and Gunn keep putting out super quality stuff. I think their stuff is far better than what came out in Phases 1 and (most of) 2. I think Ant-Man and Doctor Strange could stand to have someone better directing those and we'll see how well Jon Watts does if he returns for the next Spider-Man movie.