Avengers Endgame with spoilers

[Hugh Neilson]

17 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

To be fair, there is actually cut footage that shows the trio being taken into custody by "Artic police" (whatever that is), which gives more concrete evidence than Snyder's rebuttal to the wall thing does.  I was just yanking LL's chain a bit with it, and was going to post the info after a while (but someone beat me to it).

 

One interpretation of that would be that the Director decided that they DID die and cut the only scenes that would indicate they didn't.

 

I think it was largely accepted that they did not die because "Superman does not kill", but then that should be equally acceptable for the terrorist scene, shouldn't it?

 

It doesn't make the current crop of Superman movies great cinema, or great portrayals of the character, but it seems like we will go out of our way to make excuses in favour of some film equally out of our way to reject explanations for others.

[Armory]

11 hours ago, massey said:

I completely forgot about him letting his dad die.  Man that movie sucked.

 

That was the one fundamental lesson that movie-Pa taught to Clark that was the direct opposite of what comics-Pa taught him:  you and your secret are more important than human lives.  That created the personality in the movie universe that doesn't lead Zod out of populated areas, and ends up snapping his neck.  That is why movie-Supes is not really Supes, because DCEU Pa Kent screwed him up.

[massey]

11 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

One interpretation of that would be that the Director decided that they DID die and cut the only scenes that would indicate they didn't.

 

I think it was largely accepted that they did not die because "Superman does not kill", but then that should be equally acceptable for the terrorist scene, shouldn't it?

 

It doesn't make the current crop of Superman movies great cinema, or great portrayals of the character, but it seems like we will go out of our way to make excuses in favour of some film equally out of our way to reject explanations for others.

 

Well, I don't completely agree.  In Superman 2, Zod and his crew get depowered, then fall 10 feet into a cloud.  But they aren't up in the sky, they're... on the ground?  There shouldn't even be a cloud there.  Up until that moment, I just thought there was ice on the ground in the Fortress of Solitude.  I don't really know where they went.

 

Onscreen neck snap?  We definitely know what happened there.

 

Now maybe Christopher Reeve's Superman killed them.  That's possible.  But I don't think there's any reason to assume they're dead.  It's open to interpretation.  When I saw the movie as a toddler, I didn't even think about it.  They were defeated, they were gone.  When I saw it later, as like a 12 year old or something, I assumed they were dead.  "Yeah, kill 'em, Superman!"  When I saw it as an adult, I started wondering whether Superman had just murdered Zod.  After all, Zod is a normal human at that point.  There's basically no reason to do anything other than put him in prison.  In the first movie, Lex Luthor tried to nuke California and New Jersey, and Superman just flew him to normal jail.  I don't think Zod even killed anybody.

 

So it's not fair to say that we ignored these problems in other films.  I've definitely thought about the ending of Superman 2.  But it's such a lighthearted movie, and the "death" scene is so vague (combined with the fact that it's nearly 40 years old), I don't think it gets the same level of scrutiny.  Then there's the fact that if Zod dies, it's a traditional Disney villain death.  He falls into a chasm.  Okay, so Superman actually threw him into it, but we've been watching kids movies where the villain dies from a fall since the 1930s.  The manner of death may be important as well.

[Toxxus]

This also brings into play the issue of the phantom zone, which in earlier incarnations, was a fate far worse than death.

 

 

[RDU Neil]

2 hours ago, Toxxus said:

This also brings into play the issue of the phantom zone, which in earlier incarnations, was a fate far worse than death.

 

 

 

uh... really? Phantom Zone was just schlocky "super jail where villains go until writer needs them for a story" stuff. The PZ was more of a sieve than Arkham. So many of the things taken as canon were basically "bad writing MacGuffins" and not something that should be considered intrinsic to the mythology, but people never seem to recognize that. So many tropes that need to be jettisoned around superheroes and certain characters in general were manifestations of the reality of the medium or the politics of the time, and not intrinsically part of the fiction. 

This is why I loved the MCU, because, for the most part, they kept the core aspects of the character and world, but dumped all the non-essential minutia that so many cling to, but are essentially unimportant. Cap was always Cap no matter how many costume changes, or whether his shield was vibranium or adamantium or indestructible or not, or whatever. I think why Endgame was ultimately so amazing, while DCEU falters, is that they've failed to find and portray the core aspects of the characters in a compelling way on screen. (Wonder Woman being the shining example of when they DID make it work. Gal Gadot's version is nothing like, say, George Perez's in the details and presentation... but at the heart, it absolutely is... thus it works.)

[Toxxus]

2 minutes ago, RDU Neil said:

Phantom Zone was just schlocky "super jail where villains go until writer needs them for a story" stuff.

 

My view of it from the original Superman movie series was being confined to a pane of glass spinning end over end through the universe for all time.

 

Like some murderous spinning amusement ride that never ends and confines you to two-dimensional space and prevents you from aging - for eternity.

[RDU Neil]

2 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

 

My view of it from the original Superman movie series was being confined to a pane of glass spinning end over end through the universe for all time.

 

Like some murderous spinning amusement ride that never ends and confines you to two-dimensional space and prevents you from aging - for eternity.

 

Ok... that does sound... bad.  I never took the presentation literally, but if you do... then yeah... that is a horror show. 

[Dr.Device]

1 hour ago, RDU Neil said:

 

Ok... that does sound... bad.  I never took the presentation literally, but if you do... then yeah... that is a horror show. 

 

But, on the plus side -

 

Come to the Phantom Zone!Live forever! See the universe! 

 

It practically sells itself.

[Starlord]

I always assumed it was just a big dimension of nothingness.  If you're conscious the entire time you're in there, that would be pretty awful.

[Ternaugh]

Interestingly enough, my co-worker just called exile to the Phantom Zone "the living death". 

[Old Man]

Why?  Has he been there?

[death tribble]

It's worse than Detroit

[dmjalund]

9 minutes ago, death tribble said:

It's worse than Detroit

I find that hard to believe

[Ternaugh]

1 hour ago, death tribble said:

It's worse than Detroit

 

Well, he is from Michigan.

[BoloOfEarth]

 

[Lord Liaden]

That's why Darren Watts blew it up.

[Greywind]

That didn't help any.

[BoloOfEarth]

10 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's why Darren Watts blew it up.

 

$5 billion in urban renewal

[Bazza]

This could be interesting

 

 

[zslane]

I don't really care how Thanos came to be "who he was" any more than I cared how Darth Vader came to be who he was. This need to go back and examine the early lives of characters who became iconic at the end of their lives is rarely worth the time and effort put into it. Let's just let Thanos remain the best MCU villain there ever was and leave it at that. Deconstructing him will only dilute his mystique.

[Lord Liaden]

I respect that looking at Thanos's past doesn't interest you. For my part, I very much appreciate seeing how a character grows into what he or she becomes. If well done I find it gives the character more depth, and enhances my understanding of her or his motivations. That's a big component of the superhero (or villain) origin that's been a staple of comic books practically since their beginning.

 

That said, I agree that there's no pressing need to do this with Thanos at this point, other than a desire to milk more b.o. money out of a popular character. Thanos's motivation was well delineated in the last two Avengers movies. He served his purpose admirably, but we know how his story ends, and why.

 

BTW "deconstruction" isn't really the process we're describing here. As a philosophy and a practice in humanities disciplines, deconstruction involves breaking down creations of art, literature, language, law etc. into their component ideas, highlighting their inherent inconsistencies and internal contradictions, with the intent of then using that awareness to rebuild them into a new form. What we're talking about with exploring the past of a character is a more linear description of the "hero's journey," depicting how the component parts actually cohered to produce the final person. It's the most common modern method of character analysis in literature and drama.

[zslane]

Sure, but I'm not convinced that an examination of Thanos' early life would just be a linear description of his "hero's journey". I'm more convinced it would end up being a deconstruction of the hero myth so that it better fits his villainous destiny. This is the sort of thing that writers do to make their material appear edgy and "deep". I'd like to think Feige is smart enough to avoid piling more trash on top of that heap, especially since it is the Trash Heap that Snyder Built, and that the above "leak" is just a kind of testing of the waters to gauge fan reaction to the idea. I would caution fans to be careful of what they wish for (or express support for)...

[mattingly]

If Thanos was the only good villain that Marvel had to pick from in the past 50 years, it might be worth filling his backstory more, but I'd rather see someone else take the screentime.

[Lord Liaden]

Agreed. The Marvel reservoir of villainy is deep. With the MCU turning a page on a new era, IMO it would make more sense to draw from it for fresh additions to the MCU.

[Grailknight]

Since they opened the time travel box already, next up should be Kang.