Lord Mhoram

I hope Civil War isn't faithful, because the comic book storyline was an incoherent mess.  

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 apparently features a Simon Williams film festival, among other things. Wonder Man is played by none other than Nathan Fillion. Win!

I plan to see it on Saturday. 

And don't be surprised if we see Scarlet Witch take out Vision from an emotional angle. They are, after all, destined for an epic romance, right? It probably all begins in Civil War.

Re Civil War:-
 
In the comics Civil War storyline, Iron Man was wrong and Captain America was right.
Ditto the film.
'Nuff said.

What I find to be a drag about the whole premise of Civil War and the argument over governing superheroes is that it renounces the very core of superheroes as wish fulfillment. I don't read superhero comics (or play superhero RPGs) in order to explore the question of "What would be the real-world consequences of superpowered individuals on society?" I do it to vicariously live a life of adventure and vigilantism, where having virtuous intentions gets rewarded with victory. Where I get to watch superpowered individuals and organizations do what ordinary citizens and bureaucracies can not, and triumph over evil in dramatic and epic fashion.
 
That is why the modern obsession with examining issues of collateral damage, government corruption, and the thorny issues of ethics and vigilantism has made the superhero genre a whole lot less fun while it desperately attempts to become "relevent" and "though-provoking." Sure, Marvel made a name for themselves using superhero stories as a way to hold up a mirror on a turbulent society in the 60s and 70s, but the more they drag superheroes down that rabbit hole, the further and further away from they get from delivering that fundamental element of wish fulfillment that I value so highly.
 
I'm looking forward to Thanos coming along and, in effect, slapping everyone upside the head with the sobering realization that there is a lot more to worry about in the MCU than whether or not superheroes should be forced to function like civil servants.

$52,000 in 1980 adjusted for inflation is worth $160,355.93 today.
 
So, Avengers get paid slightly less than Congressmen do.
 
But then, even when the Battle of New York is taken into account, they also do less damage than Congress.

Great Comparison. Iron Man is the Snookie of the MCU.

We don't watch Tony because he's an awesome person. Mother Teresa was an awesome person. Did anyone watch Mother Teresa? No, because she was boring. And because she made us feel bad about our selfish materialistic lives. There's a reason all the ratings go to Trumps, Kardashians, Bachelors, Lannisters, Sopranos, and Simon Cowell. Awful people. Monsters! But entertaining.

Man, I thought from the beginning any hero vs hero fight that wasn't a misunderstanding or control thing was a really stupid idea.
 
I consider Civil War to be one of the worst comics / ideas in the history of comics. But the people handling the MCU and specifically the Cap Team have been great. I am going to see it. I really don't expect to like it (but the MCU is in a different situation than Marvel U as you mentioned) , but I am giving them a chance. I really didn't like the trailers and ideas I saw for Cap 2, but when the movie turned into people "making hard choices in a hard world that had to be made" and Cap just called them on their bull, and went out and was the Hero, I loved it.  I'm hoping the same kind of "wow they made that work" in the end for this.
 
Overall Marvel Phase two was a disappointment for me. Only actually really loved Guardians, Ant Man and Cap 2 - all the other phase two sequels were worse than their previous movie (thor 2 worse than thor, Iron Man three worse than Iron Man 2 or 1, Avengers 2 a huge disappointment). I'm really hoping phase three picks it back up.

I really wish the film would make Iron Man just as bad as his Civil War comic counterpart (read up...there's quite a lot of crap to pile on him!)...but i'll not hold my breath for this adaptation because of contractual heroism on Robert Downey Jr's part, a pandering to both fanbases ("Team Captain America" plus "Team Iron Man"), PG-13 instead of R rating, and the all-too-easy out in introducing a third-party bad guy that requires both teams to unite in order to combat.
 
Would be nice to see a symbol of America's best ideas smashing in that fascist businessman's teeth.

Poor WB DC
Everything they did in their Batman v Superman trailers folks that folks hated, folks seem to love in Disney Marvel.
"Batman in a movie with Superman? Ffft. Figures, they don't trust Superman to carry it on his own."
"Iron Man in the Captain America movie? Yay!"
 
"WB showed Doomsday! They ruined the plot!"
"Marvel showed Crossbones, awesome!"
 
"WB showed Wonder Woman in the trailer? Damn it, they should have kept it secret nevermind the the fact it's been on IMDB for months"
"Marvel showed Spider-Man in the trailer? YES!"
 
and so on.

I know it was a big annoyance for me.

Smallville = Meh

Or an amulet containing a glowing levitating all-seeing eye that grafts to my forehead and is a portal to Eternity! Stick that in your horcrux, Voldemort!

Flash died in the Crisis. Continuity is nonexistent in the comic, I'm pretty forgiving of it in the show. The show would have to work hard to have less continuity than a comic where the second flash, many decades later, is written to have created the first flash, all revealed after the second flash has died and come back. And the entire world the first flash is from has ceased to exist in the same form.
 
And then the speed force. The speed force could simply be renamed speed midichlorians.
 
That said, I love both the comic and the show.

At least Wonder Woman has kicked the butt of several incarnations of Ares.

I should warn you, I am married.  You know how in the movie Conan grew up chained to the Wheel of Pain?

That just shows you have taste.
 
I remember watching the first season of Andromeda and saw the Nietzschian reading Fountainhead. And I thought - a race built on the philosophy of those two is perfect for the bad guy race.

Not what I had in mind no. I meant someone who gets powers and realizes that getting wedgies from bullies isn't a big deal. In the early days, Pete whined incessantly about how hard his life is, instead of realizing how cool it is to have super powers and moving on to bigger and better things.
 
Ultimate Spider-Man is closer to what I had in mind.

Just to bring the thread back on topic (sort of), this is why I find Superman more relatable than Spider-Man. Both Superman and Spider-Man understand that "with great power comes great responsibility," but Pete acted, a lot of the time, like being Spider-Man and doing the right thing was a burdensome duty. Superman always accepted responsibility as a given, a sacred trust, and a privilege. He did the right thing for the most believable reason of all, because it was the right thing, same as any cop, fire fighter, or paramedic.

Sounds like you're still expecting writers of fiction to adhere to RPG rules. If you stop doing that and simply check to see that the fiction is internally consistent with itself instead of imposing constraints based on builds you're working out in your head, you'd probably enjoy the shows better. (Though not Supergirl. It's pretty bad.) Seriously, you couldn't even see that Grodd was the NPC in the first analogy, so maybe it's best not to mix genres up?

You don't need to apply RPG rules in order to achieve internal consistency . . . and you shouldn't. The earbuds work consistently, and there has been no making stuff up as you go along with them. They prevent mind control, but Grodd can still get the portion of his attack that triggers negative and painful memories through. The earbuds are simply not 100% effective.
 
Further, the way the earbuds are portrayed serves the story perfectly. First off, Grodd's mind control is a very credible threat He initially dominates (no pun intended) the heroes in early encounters. Then, Cisco makes the earbuds, and imperfect solution that's entirely consistent with his past solutions of being both a technology-based solution and an imperfect one. That quality of being imperfect is important, because it allows one of Grodd's signature powers to continue to be a threat. It's all internally consistent and allows for dramatic tension. I see no downsides to this approach.

Good points, but he is also (from his perspective) only a few years away from a war with evil, that started with the evil registering then labeling a part of the population. It may be 70 year old history for the rest, for for Cap it's very fresh - and the symbolism of registering people, for whatever reason, could be very Nazi in his mind - and a solid reason he would be anti-reg. "the last time someone said people needed to be registered, we had a disagreement too" to modify a quote.

The Martian.
 
I liked the trailer and decided to read it before the images from the movie cement themselves in my head as the "correct" version. Very good, and very highly recommended.