Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Lawnmower Boy]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Again, the original comic concept of someone who was in love with death was a much better and more interesting premise, but they were determined to make Thanos feel more sympathetic and "deep" as a character.

MCU Thanos was in love with death. That was his motive. The whole "save the universe" thing was just gaslighting, as he himself reveals in Endgame. MCU Thanos just had a better publicist than MU Thanos. "Dude. You can't just say that!"

[slikmar]

4 hours ago, Bazza said:

Well, I’m inclined to think Feige thought that Thanos loving the personification of Death would not be groked by most of the audience. 
 

edit:

Why Thanos Doesn’t Woo a Sexy Skeleton in Avengers: Infinity War

https://www.vulture.com/2018/04/why-thanos-doesnt-woo-death-in-avengers-infinity-war.html

 

 

3 hours ago, archer said:

 

When asked about his motivations Thanos could monologue, "I've seen Death herself in my dreams. She is real. She is a person. I've sacrificed thousands, millions with no success. With but with THIS sacrifice, she will appear to me. She will come to me. And we will be together as one."

 

He's a bad guy. He's either completely right and irredeemably evil. Or he's completely crazy and irredeemably evil.

 

I don't think that's difficult for audiences to understand.

 

After the snap as he disappears from Thor, he gets a vision of Death. He seems satisfied but as he reaches out to her the vision quickly fades away. He looks devastated and asks himself, "What more can I do?" then lands on his retirement planet.

 

Then when the Avengers track him down, instead of chilling in his vacation home, he's brooding and playing with his pile of skulls.

 

You don't have to spend time with Death as a character. 

Or, they could have easily used Hel. Thanos knew her from the pre times, before Odin locked her up and thought she was ghosting him and then could be trying to get her attention. It also would have given why he attacked the Asgardians, for allowing her to be killed by Surtur.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah they could have done  it but I think the chance for an environmental message was too compelling for them to resist. I'm guessing that's the real reason behind the scenes

 

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Or, they could have easily used Hel. Thanos knew her from the pre times, before Odin locked her up and thought she was ghosting him and then could be trying to get her attention. It also would have given why he attacked the Asgardians, for allowing her to be killed by Surtur.

 

Yeah Hel was inexplicably powerful, ridiculously, pointlessly powerful beyond any logic or explanation.  Just use her as death.

[Lord Liaden]

As I've said before, Thanos is "The Mad Titan." Not "The Misguided Titan" or "The Debatable Titan." He's lived for so long with the tragedy of his planet and the conviction that he could have saved it had they listened to him, he's incapable of seeing the flaws in his plan. Many real-world people suffer such delusions.

[slikmar]

How about "The Misunderstood Titan"? 

[Bazza]

I agree that Mistress Death should have been used, and worked out a rationale how, years ago, but I’ve forgotten it. Not doing it takes something away from the character and ruins the possible introduction of The Abstract Entities like Eternity, or The Living Tribunal (with a nod in Doctor Strange). 
 

Thanos The Gardening Titan, or

Thanos The Sporting Titan

[Matt the Bruins]

13 hours ago, archer said:

Stark is a super-genius futurist. Banner might not have thought things through. But there's no way that Stark wouldn't have corrected any of Banner's oversights as he was using the Gauntlet.

Stark was a super egotist who assumed that he'd thought of all the variables and knew best despite his judgment having been proven to be terrible again and again. I wouldn't count on him having identified unforeseen wide-scale consequences of undoing the snap (remember, such only exist because of his insistence that the disintegrated people and animals be brought back 5 years later, rather than undoing it the instant it happened) in the constant slugfest between Bruce using the gauntlet and him doing so. Indeed, his standard operating procedure would have had him refusing to acknowledge that he'd overlooked anything in their previous agreed-upon plan and shouting down any naysayers until presented with overwhelming evidence of it not working exactly as intended.

[Christopher R Taylor]

The problem is no matter how good a case you make or how good a story you can write, the MCU guys will just sneer at you and say "but we made three billion dollars with our story" and what can you say to that?  Would a better story sold more?  I dunno, I suspect it might have done more poorly because people would have complained it made them think too much.  That's the world we live in now, maybe always.

[Bazza]

Bottom line: the cosmic MCU is vastly & significantly different* is subtle ways to the MU. 

*I’ve lost count. 

[Lord Liaden]

Honestly, I've seen bigger plot holes in other critically-acclaimed movies. But the mechanics of these exercises in cosmic power were never the crux of this story. The crux was the human drama, how our protagonists, and the rest of our kind, reacted to these monumental events. At bottom those events were created to stimulate and enhance the internal conflicts.

[Old Man]

4 hours ago, Bazza said:

I agree that Mistress Death should have been used, and worked out a rationale how, years ago, but I’ve forgotten it. Not doing it takes something away from the character and ruins the possible introduction of The Abstract Entities like Eternity, or The Living Tribunal (with a nod in Doctor Strange). 
 

Thanos The Gardening Titan, or

Thanos The Sporting Titan

 

Thanos the Fightin' Titan

[Bazza]

Captain Titan. 

[Greywind]

6 hours ago, slikmar said:

How about "The Misunderstood Titan"? 

 

[Lord Liaden]

11 hours ago, Bazza said:

Thanos The Gardening Titan

 

After he fulfilled his life's dream, that's exactly what he became.

[Starlord]

Thanos the Kite-in' Titan

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Kirby was told to come up with a new version of his 4th world stuff for Marvel, particularly Darkseid, so Thanos is what he gave them.  Starlin made him a much more interesting, deeper character with all that wild mystical stuff.  But the sad thing is, as the Explain This Comics Guys say...

 

...the film version is the official version.  For ever 1 person who knows the comic book history and stories, there are 9000 who know only the movies.

[Lord Liaden]

I have to correct that. Thanos was Jim Starlin's creation. Jack Kirby had no direct input on the character, although Starlin readily admits that Darkseid was a major inspiration for him. The initial concept for Thanos and the Titans had nothing to do with Eternals, rather they were an offshoot of the Olympian gods. The Eternals connection was a retcon.

 

Jack on his return to Marvel created the Eternals and Celestials; Mr. Machine/Machine Man and other inspirations from his adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey; Devil Dinosaur and his prehistoric adventure world; and I'm sure I'm forgetting other characters.

[Spence]

On 2/8/2021 at 11:12 PM, Christopher R Taylor said:

...the film version is the official version.  For ever 1 person who knows the comic book history and stories, there are 9000 who know only the movies.

 

...the film version is the official version.  For ever 1 person who knows the comic book history and stories, there are 900 that thought books from the 1990's and later were comics and 9000 who know only the movies.

 

There fixed it

 

What?

 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Thanks for the correction; you're right.  Here's some more background:

 

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Kirby had done the New Gods, which I thought was terrific. He was over at DC at the time. I came up with some things that were inspired by that. You'd think that Thanos was inspired by Darkseid, but that was not the case when I showed up. In my first Thanos drawings, if he looked like anybody, it was Metron. I had all these different gods and things I wanted to do, which became Thanos and the Titans. Roy took one look at the guy in the Metron-like chair and said: "Beef him up! If you're going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!"

 

[rjcurrie]

On 2/5/2021 at 11:08 PM, unclevlad said:

I haven't watched WandaVision at all;  I'm not in the mood to give Disney money.  My choice, of course.

 

But the gaping plot...not hole, per se, but unanswered question was with that second <snap>.  It's FAR worse than the story suggests.  Here's one point:  after 5 years with only 3.5 billion people, food production will be at a level to support.......3.5 billion people.

 

What happens when, overnight, there's 7 billion?

 

*To a degree*...if half of everything included animals, then there's a massive surge of slaughterable animals.  But that won't last that long.  And it'll still take time to slaughter, age safely, process, and distribute.  OK, there's *some* food in the supply chain, but when you double demand, it simply won't last.  And fruits and veggies?  Tree fruits and nuts...perhaps the trees wouldn't have been <snap>ed but a fair few would've fallen to lack of care.  But most veggies and grains?  They're annuals.  

 

I look at things like this in a completely different way. If a dramatic presentation says that something work, then it worked. Maybe there was a group of billionaires who believed that people would be back and paid for food to be produced and stored so there wouldn't be an issue if they suddenly came back. If Director Hayward of SWORD (introduced in WandaVision) is to be believed Maria Rambeau, mother of Monica and founder of SWORD, set up protocols to deal with the return of snapped agents.  So, it's possible that others believed in the possible return of the snapped people. Since Spider-man: Far From Home has been established as occurring about 8 months after the snappees return and we see no indication of issues, the only logical interpretation to me is that it was not a serious issue.
 

[Christopher R Taylor]

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Since Spider-man: Far From Home has been established as occurring about 8 months after the snappees return and we see no indication of issues, the only logical interpretation to me is that it was not a serious issue.

 

Alternate explanation: its sloppy writing/comic book logic, like how you can have a battle obliterate a city and its fine the next issue.  Which is by far the most reasonable and likely explanation.  That's just how it is, and who cares if it makes sense, we're just having fun here.

[rjcurrie]

On 2/10/2021 at 11:12 AM, Spence said:

 

...the film version is the official version.  For ever 1 person who knows the comic book history and stories, there are 900 that thought books from the 1990's and later were comics and 9000 who know only the movies.

 

There fixed it

 

What?

 

 

I think "definitive version" might be more appropriate than "official version". The definitive version is the version that the majority of people familiar with the character think of first. I think official version sounds like version sanctioned by the company that owns the character and can vary from medium to medium. For example, in comics, the Superman who appears in Action and Superman comics (amongst others) is the official version. On TV, the official version is Tyler Hoechlin's character introduced in Supergirl and being spun off into the Superman and Lois series debuting htis week. In the movies, the official version is Henry Cavill's version who debuted in Man of Steel. Of course, in cases of a multiverse you can multiple official versions within a medium, but these would be the primary official versions.

 

[rjcurrie]

12 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

 

Alternate explanation: its sloppy writing/comic book logic, like how you can have a battle obliterate a city and its fine the next issue.  Which is by far the most reasonable and likely explanation.  That's just how it is, and who cares if it makes sense, we're just having fun here.

 

Whatever. It's how I always interpret stories.  I'll start out with assuming that the story takes place in a world very much like our own and adjust my assumptions as the story goes along, based on what happens in the story. It's only contradictions within a fictional world itself that it starts to annoy me. 

 

As for the example of the city being repaired, obviously the city has gotten very very good at recovering from superhero fights. And maybe there's a story there.

 

[rjcurrie]

On 2/6/2021 at 8:50 PM, Bazza said:

Bottom line: the cosmic MCU is vastly & significantly different* is subtle ways to the MU. 

*I’ve lost count. 

 

I am constantly amazed when people expect the translation of a story or a character to another medium to be exactly the same.  

 

In any event, I'll admit that I am largely unfamiliar with the cosmic side of Marvel, but I am willing to bet that over the years, like moist things in comics, it has become bloated, confused, and contradictory, as multiple creators with different interpretations put their own spin on it. The movies can start with a blank slate and use what they need when and how they need it. 

[rjcurrie]

On 2/6/2021 at 7:47 PM, Bazza said:

I agree that Mistress Death should have been used, and worked out a rationale how, years ago, but I’ve forgotten it. Not doing it takes something away from the character and ruins the possible introduction of The Abstract Entities like Eternity, or The Living Tribunal (with a nod in Doctor Strange). 
 

Thanos The Gardening Titan, or

Thanos The Sporting Titan

 

As someone with only a passing knowledge of comic book Thanos, I think the Death stuff could end up just making him look like a stooge of Death's. I also wouldn't be surprised if the idea of a guy killing half the universe to impress a girl made the creative team a little uncomfortable.

But honestly, I don't see how not using Mistress Death as a motivation for Thanos ruins the possible introduction of other cosmic beings.