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Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND


Bazza

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I wouldn't even try to explain how Cap's shield works in the MCU.

 

For the comics, the way I'd explain it is that impacts or energy hitting the front or the shield is dampened. So Cap's shield can take the hit from the Hulk or Cap can jump down off a second story building onto his shield with no more impact than stepping off a curb onto the street.

 

But when the shield hits something with its edge, the energy is preserved rather than dissipated. So the shield can bounce off of five surfaces and still have the momentum to return to Cap's hands.

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13 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

But in that "kill count" video Pattern Ghost linked to, there were clearly hits which weren't lethal, although concussions or worse could be expected for their targets.

 

Which I clearly called out in that post. I just picked that one because the cuts to his reactions were funny. That video also leaves out several more obvious kills. Point is, MCU Cap isn't as shy about applying lethal force as his mainstream comic book counterpart.

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Yeah inconsistency destroys drama and suspense.  What's going to happen next?  Who knows??  Can she get out of this?  Maybe, depending on how the writer decides to make things work this time.  There has to be a base level of consistency to control expectations and understanding of the character's limitations and the world they are in. 

 

If Spider-Man can now fly in one scene because that's super cool, suddenly there's no danger of him falling.  Or maybe there will be, just because it would be cooler next time.  The audience has disconnected emotionally from the entire thing at this point.

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14 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Yet the comics have done the same thing with Captain America's shield

 

I honestly don't remember the comics establishing clear rules for Cap's shield in the first place. As far as I can tell, it was just a shield made out of a nearly indestructible metal alloy and nothing more. If later writers added new properties to it then they are responsible for opening the door to internal inconsistencies; those inconsistencies weren't part of the character from the start. In any event, such internal inconsistencies are symptoms of poor writing no matter the medium. Just because the comics suffered from lazy writing is no excuse for lazy writing in movie screenplays.

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2 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Yeah inconsistency destroys drama and suspense.  What's going to happen next?  Who knows??  Can she get out of this?  Maybe, depending on how the writer decides to make things work this time.  There has to be a base level of consistency to control expectations and understanding of the character's limitations and the world they are in.

 

I see your point.  But at the same time, I don't really expect a high degree of consistency in either comic book superheroes or Hollywood action films, and I don't allow it to ruin otherwise good movies for me.

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Quote

As far as I can tell, it was just a shield made out of a nearly indestructible metal alloy and nothing more. 

 

With the official handbook etc, Marvel has been pretty specific about things that their characters and equipment can and cannot do.  Struck on the edge, the shield bounces.  Struck on the front, the shield absorbs. That's why the "flattens forest" bit when Thor hit the shield with Mjolnir was a bit off, but Cap not being bothered by the hit was right.  But then later he's hit with a grenade on the sheild and goes flying out a window.

 

Of course their established rules are not very consistent.  Hulk supposedly can press 100 tons, with "more" as he gets angry but he held the Himalayas up for a while in the Secret Wars comic, so...

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47 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

With the official handbook etc, Marvel has been pretty specific about things that their characters and equipment can and cannot do.  Struck on the edge, the shield bounces.  Struck on the front, the shield absorbs. That's why the "flattens forest" bit when Thor hit the shield with Mjolnir was a bit off, but Cap not being bothered by the hit was right.  But then later he's hit with a grenade on the sheild and goes flying out a window.

 

I remember a long-ago discussion right here on the boards about what Caps shield can and can't do that got hung up on a comic where he jumped out of a 10 story building and curled up on the shield when he landed, then ran off like nothing had happened (I noted with some amusement that he does this *exact* thing in Winter Soldier). 

Some folks were fine with it because he was just soaking the falling damage & his shield can do that.  Others were not buying it because momentum doesn't work that way.

This turned into (as internet discussions do) a discussion of "can Cap stop a bus by standing in front of it and blocking with his shield?"  It was agreed Hulk could probably punch the bus to a stop from the front, and Cap holding the Shield can take a Hulk punch so can Cap holding the shield take a hit from a bus and stop it?

 

My takeaway was that this is all rubber physics and it's mostly a question of when does your suspension of disbelief start to fray.  We are more aware of how bad falling is and how massive a bus is, but we have a fuzzy idea of how much pressure a Hulk fist applies on a Newtons per square inch level so somehow falling onto the shield bothers people in a way that withstanding a Hulk fist doesn't.

The MCU just make that even more visible.

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13 minutes ago, Jhamin said:

 

I remember a long-ago discussion right here on the boards about what Caps shield can and can't do that got hung up on a comic where he jumped out of a 10 story building and curled up on the shield when he landed, then ran off like nothing had happened (I noted with some amusement that he does this *exact* thing in Winter Soldier). 

Some folks were fine with it because he was just soaking the falling damage & his shield can do that.  Others were not buying it because momentum doesn't work that way.

This turned into (as internet discussions do) a discussion of "can Cap stop a bus by standing in front of it and blocking with his shield?"  It was agreed Hulk could probably punch the bus to a stop from the front, and Cap holding the Shield can take a Hulk punch so can Cap holding the shield take a hit from a bus and stop it?

 

My takeaway was that this is all rubber physics and it's mostly a question of when does your suspension of disbelief start to fray.  We are more aware of how bad falling is and how massive a bus is, but we have a fuzzy idea of how much pressure a Hulk fist applies on a Newtons per square inch level so somehow falling onto the shield bothers people in a way that withstanding a Hulk fist doesn't.

The MCU just make that even more visible.

 

Reminds me of the movie Clear and Present Danger.

 

The bad guys run around shooting everywhere with machine guns. The audience takes it in stride.

 

The head bad guy comes out with an aluminum baseball bat, whacks in HARD into something as a show of force, then threatens to hit someone with the bat.

 

The whole audience, as one, flinches in anticipation of a bone-crunching impact.

 

Everyone has a really good idea of what getting hit hard with an aluminum bat will do to a body. On the other hand, a machine gun bullet is much more of a theoretical.

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17 minutes ago, slikmar said:

Well, Cap's shield and a holo generator was how Reed Richards depowered Guardian enough to stop him.

 

IIRC he had Cap with his raised shield in front of him, and Invisible Woman made Cap invisible so Gladiator couldn't see what he was hitting. It looked like Reed was just standing there shrugging off Gladiator's blows. Since much of Gladiator's power was "psionic," driven by his will, shaking his confidence like that made him vulnerable.

 

Of course that means Cap's shield was completely absorbing multiple blows from one of the strongest beings in the Marvelverse. At the time that stretched my suspension of disbelief a lot. I've also seen Cap get punched on the shield by the Hulk and sent flying. Although the comic didn't mention it, I always told myself that Sue must have been backing the shield up with her force field. I could see that combination being so tough.

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Personal theory: Cap's shield is endowed with Plot Device powers. Which would be fine if it only appeared in a single plot line and then was gone, like most Plot Device powers/objects. But it is a persistent object, used in story after story, and so the Rule of Internal Consistency becomes an overriding concern, or at least it should be if the writer(s) want to be respected and regarded as competent. The Rule of Cool only goes so far before it becomes a tool for farce. For instance, I'm sure there are lots of people out there who think it would be "cool" to see Chewbacca pick up a lightsaber and fire blaster bolts from it, but that would make me cringe so hard it would break my face.

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Wanda Vision seems to be something new in that it's a different take on Superheroes.. The pop Culture YouTube channels I watch are all quite positively take by it. I haven't seen it as I don't have the spare cash for yet another streaming service. Speculation is that there might be a tie in to the future Doctor Strange movie.

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I'm also enjoying Wanda Vision, but I'm hoping to get out of TV Land sooner rather than later.  They are doing a "the world you know isn't real" plot that folks are clearly supposed to be trying to "figure out", but I'm ready for them to move on to the next phase of the story.

 

I *am* really enjoying Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany.  We didn't see nearly enough of them in the Avengers movies and it is really nice to see them getting this screen time.

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It's a combination of many of the darker Wanda plotlines.

 

Spoiler

Wanda is going insane trying to cope with Vision's death. She is warping reality in an ever increasing manner to create a world where Vision is alive and they have children(An older plotline than Disassembled that brings in magic and alternate dimensions) to compensate for her grief. MCU Wanda has a tragic history and the people she connected to the most are gone from her and dealing with their own issues while she is going quietly insane on her own.

 

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I watched an interview with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in which she mentioned that when Kevin Feige was working to convince her to take the role of Scarlet Witch, he gave her comics to read featuring classic Wanda-centric story lines like those mentioned above, which won her over. Now, she says, she's finally going into that territory with this television series.

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