AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
It would be neat if the SHIELD spinoff was something like Avengers Academy/Agent Coulson's Home for Gifted Youngsters, a division of afterlife and then the film has Attilan and the other inhumans coming to earth to put a stop to all this nonsense cause the Kree are a-comin'.
Also I wonder if Peter Quill is an inhuman.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
My local theatre still doesn't have tickets up to order, so I checked fandango and they have them, but it only shows like one showing every 4 hours and they're half sold out.
I guess I'm gonna keep waiting for them to add more showings. Hmm.
Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust
The 2013 Superman reboot Man of Steel wasn’t without its fair share of controversies, but the biggest sticking point for many fans was how the movie’s final battle was handled. As Superman and Zod flew around Metropolis, slamming each other into falling buildings, the scene devolved into an orgiastic display of 9/11-reminiscent destruction, with countless citizens surely perishing offscreen and a large part of the city leveled by the end. Fans were so enraged by the blithe wrecking of Metropolis that director Zack Snyder is rumored to have incorporated that sentiment into his sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, where the heavy toll of Superman’s fight is used against him.
I thought about that third-act carnage a lot while watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, which places an unusual emphasis on evacuating and saving innocent people. There’s always been a little bit of that in most Marvel movies—in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, the heroes make it a point to evacuate cities before destruction rains down—but that emphasis seems much more pronounced in Ultron, where nearly every major action scene revolves around protecting the poor, innocent people who could be collateral damage in a typical hero-villain brawl. When I sat down with Ultron writer-director Joss Whedon this past weekend, I asked him if he and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige felt a duty to portray the effects of all that metropolitan devastation responsibly.
“Absolutely, yes,” said Whedon. “Something that Kevin and I talked about from the start was that we’d seen a little bit of a trend in movies where the city gets destroyed and the heroes say, ‘We won!’ And I’m thinking, Define ‘win.’”
With Ultron, said Whedon, the filmmaker wanted to “get back to what’s important, which is that the people you’re trying to protect are people. We knew that we wanted to play with a lot of big, fun destruction, but at the same time, we wanted to say, ‘There’s a price for this.’ So we got very specific about it, because whether the Avengers are heroes or not is called into question in this movie, or whether the hero as a concept is still useful for society. It sort of becomes the central issue in the final battle, and it’s also a good way for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to be put at a disadvantage.”
Because, I ventured, it gives these fights more stakes than simply watching superpowered people punch each other?
“Exactly,” said Whedon. “What a hero does is not just beat up the bad guy—a hero saves the people.”
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
That's sort of a misleading article title and just a kind of weak and easy Marvel vs. DC piece, given Marvel had at the minimum a year to look at everything MOS did wrong and fix it (and more importantly listen to everyone's complaints about that trend in movies). It's much like each new iteration of a car more often than not fixes problems from the previous generation.
A better comparison, which has probably been done, would be Man of Steel vs. Avengers 1. Or, as we should see in March, BVS vs. Avengers 2.
(IIRC Green Lantern did have Hal trying to divert/protect people, that's the more important/revealing comparison to MOS)
Avengers 1 had scenes of the Avengers rescuing people off a bus, from a bank, getting the police to help get people off the street, and their big plan was basically "keep the bad guys focused on us."
it also had a Senator at the end going "who's going to take responsibility for all this destruction? CoughAvengersCough"
Dispite being a much lighter film, it was definitely more observant of the consequences of what was going on.
And given that movie had the Hulk crashing through everything like it wasn't an issue, it wasn't exactly setting a high bar there.
That's sort of a misleading article title and just a kind of weak and easy Marvel vs. DC piece, given Marvel had at the minimum a year to look at everything MOS did wrong and fix it (and more importantly listen to everyone's complaints about that trend in movies). It's much like each new iteration of a car more often than not fixes problems from the previous generation.
They didn't need to learn anything from Man of Steel,Avengers was released a year earlier.
A better comparison, which has probably been done, would be Man of Steel vs. Avengers 1. Or, as we should see in March, BVS vs. Avengers 2.
That's already been done before. The reporter had seen AoU and they still thought it did better than MOS did with collateral damage in super-hero fights.
(IIRC Green Lantern did have Hal trying to divert/protect people, that's the more important/revealing comparison to MOS)
People don't want to read about that shitty movie. Hal's also terrible at protecting people with his ring.
All of DC animated shows had the heroes rescuing people. Heroes saving people is kind of a no brainer, even in cartoons that have strict rules against people dying. Justice League had an entire episode where Booster Gold is put on crowd control.
All of DC animated shows had the heroes rescuing people. Heroes saving people is kind of a no brainer, even in cartoons that have strict rules against people dying. Justice League had an entire episode where Booster Gold is put on crowd control.
That's sort of a misleading article title and just a kind of weak and easy Marvel vs. DC piece, given Marvel had at the minimum a year to look at everything MOS did wrong and fix it (and more importantly listen to everyone's complaints about that trend in movies). It's much like each new iteration of a car more often than not fixes problems from the previous generation.
They didn't need to learn anything from Man of Steel,Avengers was released a year earlier.
A better comparison, which has probably been done, would be Man of Steel vs. Avengers 1. Or, as we should see in March, BVS vs. Avengers 2.
That's already been done before. The reporter had seen AoU and they still thought it did better than MOS did with collateral damage in super-hero fights.
(IIRC Green Lantern did have Hal trying to divert/protect people, that's the more important/revealing comparison to MOS)
People don't want to read about that shitty movie. Hal's also terrible at protecting people with his ring.
You're kind of proving my point that this is a Dog Bites Man article.
Marvel has the Avengers helping people in the first movie, continue to do so in the second one. OK. It makes perfect sense.
Man of Steel has nothing to do with this, since there was nothing to better a fight scene from because of the widely known lack of protecting people. It's a problem in the movie for sure, but it's tonally different than Avengers (and it's also one dude against an army). There is context to stop a direct comparison between the two films, but not to validly critique missing a key point of the character in MOS.
So there's no story here. It amount to "Avengers movies continue to show heroes helping people, why don't you put the whole world in a bottle go back and fix it, Man of Steel?"
It's a weak Marvel vs. DC argument when there's probably other stuff to clickbait in this buildup to the movie's release, go do a review of the Avengers cereal I saw in the store the other day (that's a joke please please please don't have this be an actual article someone wrote about).
And on a related sidenote, DD had a sight piece from a newspaper article where they're hovering around the idea it was only hundreds dead in the battle of NYC. That seems a little too low. I don't want death and destruction to be a focal point of the movies, but you can only handwave away Hulk destruction and helicarriers falling to the sky with robot whales and robot armies before you make everyone "see the numbers" and avoid significant damage. Fast and Furious already has the market cornered on everyone being bulletproof and invulnerable.
You're kind of proving my point that this is a Dog Bites Man article.
Marvel has the Avengers helping people in the first movie, continue to do so in the second one. OK. It makes perfect sense.
Man of Steel has nothing to do with this, since there was nothing to better a fight scene from because of the widely known lack of protecting people. It's a problem in the movie for sure, but it's tonally different than Avengers (and it's also one dude against an army). There is context to stop a direct comparison between the two films, but not to validly critique missing a key point of the character in MOS.
So there's no story here. It amount to "Avengers movies continue to show heroes helping people, why don't you put the whole world in a bottle go back and fix it, Man of Steel?"
It's a weak Marvel vs. DC argument when there's probably other stuff to clickbait in this buildup to the movie's release, go do a review of the Avengers cereal I saw in the store the other day (that's a joke please please please don't have this be an actual article someone wrote about).
It is a click bait article. Since the new Superman trailer hit they're going to draw comparisons with AoU, since the trailers go off the deep end into grimdark and careless explosions showing WB has learnt nothing. It's not a weak argument, it's an argument that DC is continual losing. What other subjects do you suggest reporters write about comparing DC/Marvel movies? I'd say how their super-heroes protect innocent people from their destructive fights is a subject that is re-occurring in super-hero movies. It's a valid critique for MOS. A key point of Superman in that movie is that he is a terrible super-hero.
And on a related sidenote, DD had a sight piece from a newspaper article where they're hovering around the idea it was only hundreds dead in the battle of NYC. That seems a little too low. I don't want death and destruction to be a focal point of the movies, but you can only handwave away Hulk destruction and helicarriers falling to the sky with robot whales and robot armies before you make everyone "see the numbers" and avoid significant damage. Fast and Furious already has the market cornered on everyone being bulletproof and invulnerable.
Agreed.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
What's weird about the whole thing is that Nolan's Batman series absolutely gets it with regards to what defines a hero. The Dark Knight, in particular, revolves around the conflict between wanting to save people and catching the bad guy.
If you want to become a hero just so you can beat up on some bad people or get revenge, then you aren't a hero. At best, you're a vigilante. At worst, you're a terrorist.
I have always got the feeling that Marvel cares about the civilians more. A few things that have always stood out to me:
- JLU always had throngs of civilians getting put onto ships and evacuated. Heroes were put on "crowd control" as if it was the B-team. Rather than praise DC for Booster Gold's exploits trying to save a few scientists, I take a bit of issue that it had to be an episode about the more exciting thing that actually happened while he was on crowd control. Oh, and his actual crowd control was using his little robotic assistant like a stoplight for the fleeing throngs. Ugh. I really enjoyed this animated series, but looking back critically this aspect always bugs me.
- Often times when a hero is saving a civilian in DC it puts a lot of emphasis on the individual. Some random guy, or a group of people, are about as important to the overall story as a statistic. If the focus isn't on particular civilians it is usually done to show off the hero. A fantastic example of this is the Flash. Saving an entire city from a nuclear bomb, shifting a plane through a bridge, and many other moments that are more about the cool way the Flash saved the people than the importance of saving people. I mean really, how notorious is DC for having a hero catch a plane out of the sky compared to Marvel?
- Marvel has had moments where saving people from the nonsense going on is the absolute focus. The hero doesn't show up to stop a villain or save the mass transit falling into their lap, but to simply help in any way they can. Hell, one thing I always adore is Marvel likening heroes to the street level emergency workers. Sometimes they even get saved by them. The Spider-man series has been one of the better examples in all of comics, even extending into movies.
- The Avengers are the emergency response team. Different heroes with different power sets arriving to save the day. One of the many things the first movie translated well to the screen from the pages was how they operated. Ignore Loki, let them rally to him and attack us. You corral, you smash, you do logistics, we will be ground level coordinating with emergency workers and evacuating people. In the gigantic party that the movie was, and the spectacle of that third act battle, keeping that aspect of the Avengers so front in center took an amazing directive focus. One I have yet to seen equaled in a DC film. Hell, the final battle in JLU is pretty much nothing but hero's beating the ever loving crap out of things. Even street level heroes are showcased by smacking around hordes of mooks and nothing else.
Just in general the impression is given that DC regards civilians as a way to further the empowerment fantasy and to cash in drama. Marvel views civilians as the reason these people became heroes. The real heroes anyway. I'm not saying that DC doesn't even do it right, or that Marvel isn't guilty of the power fantasy. These are just trends as I perceive them.
DC heroes default to Godhood, Marvel heroes default to People, as an overall brand thing.
I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea for DC to try and change that, since their Gods are more iconic than Marvel's People.
The interesting thing, though, is that DC's two most popular heroes are at opposite ends of that spectrum. Superman is power personified, while Batman is just a normal human being.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
DC heroes default to Godhood, Marvel heroes default to People, as an overall brand thing.
I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea for DC to try and change that, since their Gods are more iconic than Marvel's People.
The interesting thing, though, is that DC's two most popular heroes are at opposite ends of that spectrum. Superman is power personified, while Batman is just a guy with basically unlimited money to buy all the stuff he needs to fight powerful guys.
Having mega-cash really is a super-power. The whole thing with Batman being able to beat pretty much anybody gets absurd on its own plenty of the time, but if he didn't have the cash to do things like buy ultra-planes and kryptonite? There wouldn't be a lot he could do. He would just figure out all the things that wouldn't work when fighting somebody and have to sit there twiddling his thumbs while wishing he could buy that new sonijicator or a case of replacement electric batarangs.
Nobody looks at Patton and goes "man, that guy really did a great job of fighting Nazis alone", because the dude had a shitload of tanks at his back. Batman without his money and resources is some guy who punches muggers in alleys.
Which Marvel has been exceedingly good about, in regards to matching the heroes to the appropriate scale of enemy. Thor may be up for fighting an army alone, but Cap is definitely more the lead-from-the-front type who makes the crucial turning points that lets his side win.
DC heroes default to Godhood, Marvel heroes default to People, as an overall brand thing.
I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea for DC to try and change that, since their Gods are more iconic than Marvel's People.
The interesting thing, though, is that DC's two most popular heroes are at opposite ends of that spectrum. Superman is power personified, while Batman is just a normal human being.
Batman is just as much a legendary god as Superman. I mean, in-universe he might not have a supernatural powerset, but his role in the pantheon of DC heroes is basically Hades to Superman's Zeus. He's the dark one, the one tasked with dealing with the evil in men's hearts, the administrator of Hell. He is feared because of the knowledge he holds, not his physical power (which is nevertheless not insignificant).
Marvel, on the other hand, are less icons and more... He's Just This Guy, You Know? (correct for gender as necessary). Even the ones that are actual icons, like Cap, are, first and foremost, Just This Guy. You can relate to This Guy who just found out about Marvin Gaye songs. You can't necessarily relate to the Lord of the (Gotham) Underworld who the sinners fear. Does Batman even listen to the thousands of iPods he must own, or has he excluded tunes from his life just in case the Music Meister uses music against him?
incidentally, I've always thought that was why cyborg was such a weird include. He doesn't really have a 'portfolio,' so to speak (unless they want to do transhumanist stuff with him, but that seems a little out there for how DC has used him)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
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ShadowenSnores in the morningLoserdomRegistered Userregular
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
Everything in the movie is a conscious choice by the writers. Their focus still showcases what they think it important.
...and haven't we already argued to death that Ronan was an arrogant narcissistic asshole who practically needed as many people to personally witness his triumph at possible before killing them all?
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
The Avengers want to be on the ground when super-villains go on rampages, they have no interest in teleporting in from their moon base. Civilians will be in danger regardless, may as well be in the middle of vulnerable spots super-villains will exploit for maximum carnage.
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
The Avengers want to be on the ground when super-villains go on rampages, they have no interest in teleporting in from their moon base. Civilians will be in danger regardless, may as well be in the middle of vulnerable spots super-villains will exploit for maximum carnage.
Well, there's a difference between what the writers intend and what the characters intend. Stark Tower isn't a superhero base when Stark builds it.
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
The Avengers want to be on the ground when super-villains go on rampages, they have no interest in teleporting in from their moon base. Civilians will be in danger regardless, may as well be in the middle of vulnerable spots super-villains will exploit for maximum carnage.
Well, there's a difference between what the writers intend and what the characters intend. Stark Tower isn't a superhero base when Stark builds it.
No, that was Avengers Mansion - which was also in New York City. They simply moved a few blocks into Tony's new building. In the comics.
It's interesting how the MCU goes out of their way to put civilians in danger.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
The Avengers want to be on the ground when super-villains go on rampages, they have no interest in teleporting in from their moon base. Civilians will be in danger regardless, may as well be in the middle of vulnerable spots super-villains will exploit for maximum carnage.
Well, there's a difference between what the writers intend and what the characters intend. Stark Tower isn't a superhero base when Stark builds it.
No, that was Avengers Mansion - which was also in New York City. They simply moved a few blocks into Tony's new building. In the comics.
I think flipping from the MCU to how things are in the comics makes the discussion confusing.
In a sense, Man of Steel has ruined superhero movie discussions, because the destruction issue never stops coming up.
I watched Man of Steel like a year after it came out knowing nothing about it except that it was apparently divisive. And overall, I didn't think it was awful.
But like, I watched the end sequence and all I could think at several points as like the terraforming machine does it's thing is "Oh my god, I think like a million people just died on screen. Jesus christ." in semi-shock.
That whole section is legitimately kinda jaw-dropping in how much devastation it involves.
In a sense, Man of Steel has ruined superhero movie discussions, because the destruction issue never stops coming up.
I watched Man of Steel like a year after it came out knowing nothing about it except that it was apparently divisive. And overall, I didn't think it was awful.
But like, I watched the end sequence and all I could think at several points as like the terraforming machine does it's thing is "Oh my god, I think like a million people just died on screen. Jesus christ." in semi-shock.
That whole section is legitimately kinda jaw-dropping in how much devastation it involves.
I can sympathize with the filmmakers a bit in that massive scenes of destruction have become a Hollywood staple. From Independence Day to that shitty movie about the world sinking into the ocean, there are tons of blockbusters where literally millions of people die in entertaining ways on screen that didn't get shit on by fans and reviewers.
The idea that there was something wrong with this had to be a bit of a shock to the director. Its just something that doesn't usually come up with these type of big budget explosion fests. In this case, though, he missed an important bit of nuance about superheroes - they're supposed to be the one type of hero who can do something about all those falling buildings and burning civilians.
I liked Man of Steel's fight sequences for exactly one reason: Finally, for the first time, we get a silver screen representation of what regular combat looks like in my favorite role-playing setting, Exalted.
In a sense, Man of Steel has ruined superhero movie discussions, because the destruction issue never stops coming up.
I watched Man of Steel like a year after it came out knowing nothing about it except that it was apparently divisive. And overall, I didn't think it was awful.
But like, I watched the end sequence and all I could think at several points as like the terraforming machine does it's thing is "Oh my god, I think like a million people just died on screen. Jesus christ." in semi-shock.
That whole section is legitimately kinda jaw-dropping in how much devastation it involves.
I can sympathize with the filmmakers a bit in that massive scenes of destruction have become a Hollywood staple. From Independence Day to that shitty movie about the world sinking into the ocean, there are tons of blockbusters where literally millions of people die in entertaining ways on screen that didn't get shit on by fans and reviewers.
The idea that there was something wrong with this had to be a bit of a shock to the director. Its just something that doesn't usually come up with these type of big budget explosion fests. In this case, though, he missed an important bit of nuance about superheroes - they're supposed to be the one type of hero who can do something about all those falling buildings and burning civilians.
Independence Day was a science fiction alien invasion film, not a super-hero film. It shouldn't be that much of shock considering Raimi's Spider-man movies did it and it's not that unknown in comics and cartoons for that genre either. Snyder and Goyer have no excuses.
The difference between MoS and most of the "destroy a city" films is how it was handled.
One: MoS's destruction sequence was VERY evocative of 9/11 in a not ok way. I don't particularly blame Snyder, et. al for that because I don't believe this was intentional.
Two: MoS did not deal with the destruction, at all. One minute the skyscraper housing the Daily Planet is being evacuated (and many of their colleagues likely dying), the next the DP staff is being cheerful in their new building. It's very jarring.
Compare to Avengers where yes, people certainly died and many buildings were damaged but not entire blocks. Further, the end of the film did end on a positive note but showed the destruction in the news broadcasts.
The difference between Man of Steel and Independence Day is that, in the later, all the deaths are caused by an unambiguous "bad guy". In the former, a good chunk of it is caused by the "good guy".
In a sense, Man of Steel has ruined superhero movie discussions, because the destruction issue never stops coming up.
I watched Man of Steel like a year after it came out knowing nothing about it except that it was apparently divisive. And overall, I didn't think it was awful.
But like, I watched the end sequence and all I could think at several points as like the terraforming machine does it's thing is "Oh my god, I think like a million people just died on screen. Jesus christ." in semi-shock.
That whole section is legitimately kinda jaw-dropping in how much devastation it involves.
I can sympathize with the filmmakers a bit in that massive scenes of destruction have become a Hollywood staple. From Independence Day to that shitty movie about the world sinking into the ocean, there are tons of blockbusters where literally millions of people die in entertaining ways on screen that didn't get shit on by fans and reviewers.
The idea that there was something wrong with this had to be a bit of a shock to the director. Its just something that doesn't usually come up with these type of big budget explosion fests. In this case, though, he missed an important bit of nuance about superheroes - they're supposed to be the one type of hero who can do something about all those falling buildings and burning civilians.
I don't feel like this is really the explanation though. Nor are any of the others above this post.
I think it's more the type of film it is. It's a superhero film that suddenly kinda jarringly becomes a disaster film.
In like Independence Day or 2012 or something I think there is, on some level, an expectation of this kind of thing. It's gonna happen and you know it. And you usually get a diverse cast who's POV you see the destruction from. And maybe most importantly the destruction is the point.
Here it felt unexpected and kinda jawdropping and jarring. One minute Superman is fighting another superpowered guy and the next literally an entire major city is being destroyed and it's just kinda "Holy Shit".
I don't know. Something about the film it occurs in, the way it occurs and the way it's shown makes it seem really brutal in the way, say, the end of The Avengers did not. And it's not about it being Superman since I didn't find the whole "Superman kills people" or "Superman has a punch up through the city" parts really hit me or annoyed me in any way but the sheer overwhelming destruction before that did.
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The only thing that can get me down is: "Oh no, it might turn out to be slightly less good than I was expecting. Oh the humanity."
I think I'm in good shape.
Also I wonder if Peter Quill is an inhuman.
I guess I'm gonna keep waiting for them to add more showings. Hmm.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/04/17/how_avengers_age_of_ultron_betters_man_of_steel.html
I thought about that third-act carnage a lot while watching Avengers: Age of Ultron, which places an unusual emphasis on evacuating and saving innocent people. There’s always been a little bit of that in most Marvel movies—in both Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, the heroes make it a point to evacuate cities before destruction rains down—but that emphasis seems much more pronounced in Ultron, where nearly every major action scene revolves around protecting the poor, innocent people who could be collateral damage in a typical hero-villain brawl. When I sat down with Ultron writer-director Joss Whedon this past weekend, I asked him if he and Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige felt a duty to portray the effects of all that metropolitan devastation responsibly.
“Absolutely, yes,” said Whedon. “Something that Kevin and I talked about from the start was that we’d seen a little bit of a trend in movies where the city gets destroyed and the heroes say, ‘We won!’ And I’m thinking, Define ‘win.’”
With Ultron, said Whedon, the filmmaker wanted to “get back to what’s important, which is that the people you’re trying to protect are people. We knew that we wanted to play with a lot of big, fun destruction, but at the same time, we wanted to say, ‘There’s a price for this.’ So we got very specific about it, because whether the Avengers are heroes or not is called into question in this movie, or whether the hero as a concept is still useful for society. It sort of becomes the central issue in the final battle, and it’s also a good way for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to be put at a disadvantage.”
Because, I ventured, it gives these fights more stakes than simply watching superpowered people punch each other?
“Exactly,” said Whedon. “What a hero does is not just beat up the bad guy—a hero saves the people.”
A better comparison, which has probably been done, would be Man of Steel vs. Avengers 1. Or, as we should see in March, BVS vs. Avengers 2.
(IIRC Green Lantern did have Hal trying to divert/protect people, that's the more important/revealing comparison to MOS)
it also had a Senator at the end going "who's going to take responsibility for all this destruction? CoughAvengersCough"
Dispite being a much lighter film, it was definitely more observant of the consequences of what was going on.
And given that movie had the Hulk crashing through everything like it wasn't an issue, it wasn't exactly setting a high bar there.
They didn't need to learn anything from Man of Steel, Avengers was released a year earlier.
That's already been done before. The reporter had seen AoU and they still thought it did better than MOS did with collateral damage in super-hero fights.
People don't want to read about that shitty movie. Hal's also terrible at protecting people with his ring.
Arrow and Flash do that too.
You're kind of proving my point that this is a Dog Bites Man article.
Marvel has the Avengers helping people in the first movie, continue to do so in the second one. OK. It makes perfect sense.
Man of Steel has nothing to do with this, since there was nothing to better a fight scene from because of the widely known lack of protecting people. It's a problem in the movie for sure, but it's tonally different than Avengers (and it's also one dude against an army). There is context to stop a direct comparison between the two films, but not to validly critique missing a key point of the character in MOS.
So there's no story here. It amount to "Avengers movies continue to show heroes helping people, why don't you put the whole world in a bottle go back and fix it, Man of Steel?"
It's a weak Marvel vs. DC argument when there's probably other stuff to clickbait in this buildup to the movie's release, go do a review of the Avengers cereal I saw in the store the other day (that's a joke please please please don't have this be an actual article someone wrote about).
And on a related sidenote, DD had a sight piece from a newspaper article where they're hovering around the idea it was only hundreds dead in the battle of NYC. That seems a little too low. I don't want death and destruction to be a focal point of the movies, but you can only handwave away Hulk destruction and helicarriers falling to the sky with robot whales and robot armies before you make everyone "see the numbers" and avoid significant damage. Fast and Furious already has the market cornered on everyone being bulletproof and invulnerable.
It is a click bait article. Since the new Superman trailer hit they're going to draw comparisons with AoU, since the trailers go off the deep end into grimdark and careless explosions showing WB has learnt nothing. It's not a weak argument, it's an argument that DC is continual losing. What other subjects do you suggest reporters write about comparing DC/Marvel movies? I'd say how their super-heroes protect innocent people from their destructive fights is a subject that is re-occurring in super-hero movies. It's a valid critique for MOS. A key point of Superman in that movie is that he is a terrible super-hero.
Agreed.
If you want to become a hero just so you can beat up on some bad people or get revenge, then you aren't a hero. At best, you're a vigilante. At worst, you're a terrorist.
[Edit: Grammar FTW.]
Blackagar Boltagon, actually. And yeah, I could see Diesel in the role.
Blackagoochie Boltagenie
- JLU always had throngs of civilians getting put onto ships and evacuated. Heroes were put on "crowd control" as if it was the B-team. Rather than praise DC for Booster Gold's exploits trying to save a few scientists, I take a bit of issue that it had to be an episode about the more exciting thing that actually happened while he was on crowd control. Oh, and his actual crowd control was using his little robotic assistant like a stoplight for the fleeing throngs. Ugh. I really enjoyed this animated series, but looking back critically this aspect always bugs me.
- Often times when a hero is saving a civilian in DC it puts a lot of emphasis on the individual. Some random guy, or a group of people, are about as important to the overall story as a statistic. If the focus isn't on particular civilians it is usually done to show off the hero. A fantastic example of this is the Flash. Saving an entire city from a nuclear bomb, shifting a plane through a bridge, and many other moments that are more about the cool way the Flash saved the people than the importance of saving people. I mean really, how notorious is DC for having a hero catch a plane out of the sky compared to Marvel?
- Marvel has had moments where saving people from the nonsense going on is the absolute focus. The hero doesn't show up to stop a villain or save the mass transit falling into their lap, but to simply help in any way they can. Hell, one thing I always adore is Marvel likening heroes to the street level emergency workers. Sometimes they even get saved by them. The Spider-man series has been one of the better examples in all of comics, even extending into movies.
- The Avengers are the emergency response team. Different heroes with different power sets arriving to save the day. One of the many things the first movie translated well to the screen from the pages was how they operated. Ignore Loki, let them rally to him and attack us. You corral, you smash, you do logistics, we will be ground level coordinating with emergency workers and evacuating people. In the gigantic party that the movie was, and the spectacle of that third act battle, keeping that aspect of the Avengers so front in center took an amazing directive focus. One I have yet to seen equaled in a DC film. Hell, the final battle in JLU is pretty much nothing but hero's beating the ever loving crap out of things. Even street level heroes are showcased by smacking around hordes of mooks and nothing else.
Just in general the impression is given that DC regards civilians as a way to further the empowerment fantasy and to cash in drama. Marvel views civilians as the reason these people became heroes. The real heroes anyway. I'm not saying that DC doesn't even do it right, or that Marvel isn't guilty of the power fantasy. These are just trends as I perceive them.
I'm not sure that it would actually be a good idea for DC to try and change that, since their Gods are more iconic than Marvel's People.
The interesting thing, though, is that DC's two most popular heroes are at opposite ends of that spectrum. Superman is power personified, while Batman is just a normal human being.
Having mega-cash really is a super-power. The whole thing with Batman being able to beat pretty much anybody gets absurd on its own plenty of the time, but if he didn't have the cash to do things like buy ultra-planes and kryptonite? There wouldn't be a lot he could do. He would just figure out all the things that wouldn't work when fighting somebody and have to sit there twiddling his thumbs while wishing he could buy that new sonijicator or a case of replacement electric batarangs.
Nobody looks at Patton and goes "man, that guy really did a great job of fighting Nazis alone", because the dude had a shitload of tanks at his back. Batman without his money and resources is some guy who punches muggers in alleys.
Which Marvel has been exceedingly good about, in regards to matching the heroes to the appropriate scale of enemy. Thor may be up for fighting an army alone, but Cap is definitely more the lead-from-the-front type who makes the crucial turning points that lets his side win.
Batman is just as much a legendary god as Superman. I mean, in-universe he might not have a supernatural powerset, but his role in the pantheon of DC heroes is basically Hades to Superman's Zeus. He's the dark one, the one tasked with dealing with the evil in men's hearts, the administrator of Hell. He is feared because of the knowledge he holds, not his physical power (which is nevertheless not insignificant).
Marvel, on the other hand, are less icons and more... He's Just This Guy, You Know? (correct for gender as necessary). Even the ones that are actual icons, like Cap, are, first and foremost, Just This Guy. You can relate to This Guy who just found out about Marvin Gaye songs. You can't necessarily relate to the Lord of the (Gotham) Underworld who the sinners fear. Does Batman even listen to the thousands of iPods he must own, or has he excluded tunes from his life just in case the Music Meister uses music against him?
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Blackadict Boltabatch
That took 3 hours 39 minutes longer than I expected.
For example, in the Comics Universe, Stark Tower is located at 58th and Broadway which is a block away from from Central Park, making it fairly trivial for the Avengers to engage the Chitauri Forces with minimal collateral damage. The MCU Stark Tower is located at the MetLife Building at the end of Park Avenue, above Grand Central Station and a block away from the New York public library, giving them no such luxury.
Similarly, in Guardians of the Galaxy Ronan literally only needs minutes unopposed to complete his plan, and yet approaches the planet Xander directly above the capital city allowing a defence force to be relatively easily deployed. In Winter Soldier SHIELD has apparently built the world's largest shipyard under the world's most heavily surveilled city.
The whole "rescuing/protecting civilians" thing seems to be a conscious strategy on behalf of Marvel, since locating all of these fights such that they put civilians in danger is the conscious choice of the writers (especially since it disagrees with previously established locations in the case of Stark Tower).
Everything in the movie is a conscious choice by the writers. Their focus still showcases what they think it important.
The Avengers want to be on the ground when super-villains go on rampages, they have no interest in teleporting in from their moon base. Civilians will be in danger regardless, may as well be in the middle of vulnerable spots super-villains will exploit for maximum carnage.
Well, there's a difference between what the writers intend and what the characters intend. Stark Tower isn't a superhero base when Stark builds it.
No, that was Avengers Mansion - which was also in New York City. They simply moved a few blocks into Tony's new building. In the comics.
I watched Man of Steel like a year after it came out knowing nothing about it except that it was apparently divisive. And overall, I didn't think it was awful.
But like, I watched the end sequence and all I could think at several points as like the terraforming machine does it's thing is "Oh my god, I think like a million people just died on screen. Jesus christ." in semi-shock.
That whole section is legitimately kinda jaw-dropping in how much devastation it involves.
I can sympathize with the filmmakers a bit in that massive scenes of destruction have become a Hollywood staple. From Independence Day to that shitty movie about the world sinking into the ocean, there are tons of blockbusters where literally millions of people die in entertaining ways on screen that didn't get shit on by fans and reviewers.
The idea that there was something wrong with this had to be a bit of a shock to the director. Its just something that doesn't usually come up with these type of big budget explosion fests. In this case, though, he missed an important bit of nuance about superheroes - they're supposed to be the one type of hero who can do something about all those falling buildings and burning civilians.
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Independence Day was a science fiction alien invasion film, not a super-hero film. It shouldn't be that much of shock considering Raimi's Spider-man movies did it and it's not that unknown in comics and cartoons for that genre either. Snyder and Goyer have no excuses.
Huh, the Ant-Man trailer has over 10 million views. For a lower-deck hero and in the wake of Star Wars stuff, that's quite impressive.
One: MoS's destruction sequence was VERY evocative of 9/11 in a not ok way. I don't particularly blame Snyder, et. al for that because I don't believe this was intentional.
Two: MoS did not deal with the destruction, at all. One minute the skyscraper housing the Daily Planet is being evacuated (and many of their colleagues likely dying), the next the DP staff is being cheerful in their new building. It's very jarring.
Compare to Avengers where yes, people certainly died and many buildings were damaged but not entire blocks. Further, the end of the film did end on a positive note but showed the destruction in the news broadcasts.
Which is why it failed the super-hero test. Applying military tropes to a super-hero movie doesn't end well.
I don't feel like this is really the explanation though. Nor are any of the others above this post.
I think it's more the type of film it is. It's a superhero film that suddenly kinda jarringly becomes a disaster film.
In like Independence Day or 2012 or something I think there is, on some level, an expectation of this kind of thing. It's gonna happen and you know it. And you usually get a diverse cast who's POV you see the destruction from. And maybe most importantly the destruction is the point.
Here it felt unexpected and kinda jawdropping and jarring. One minute Superman is fighting another superpowered guy and the next literally an entire major city is being destroyed and it's just kinda "Holy Shit".
I don't know. Something about the film it occurs in, the way it occurs and the way it's shown makes it seem really brutal in the way, say, the end of The Avengers did not. And it's not about it being Superman since I didn't find the whole "Superman kills people" or "Superman has a punch up through the city" parts really hit me or annoyed me in any way but the sheer overwhelming destruction before that did.