zslane

I'm quite aware of the fact that superhero teams are far from perfect, that they make mistakes, and that collateral damage is typically a consequence of saving the world (and BTW, I believe Tony Stark spends a lot of his company's money "cleaning up his messes", and doesn't just leave it to the victims and their governments). But regardless of how the efforts of the Avengers appear to foreign governments, the underlying issue is what is truly the best thing to do about superpowered individuals/teams, not what can merely be done as a (political) salve to assuage the concerns of a frightened and ignorant public. If you only look at the cost of stopping an alien invasion or a Hydra takeover or the annihilation quest of a mad Titan after the fact, rather than consider the cost of not stopping it at all, then it becomes all too easy to use a flawed calculus in determining how to cope with the reality of collateral damage in a universe as dangerous as the MCU.

Maybe it's just semantics, but I consider trying to shoehorn a character drenched in Eastern mysticism into a gritty street-level environment (and doing it in the most underwhelming way possible) to be the direct by-product of a profound lack of creative vision for the Iron Fist property.

I'm quite aware of the fact that superhero teams are far from perfect, that they make mistakes, and that collateral damage is typically a consequence of saving the world (and BTW, I believe Tony Stark spends a lot of his company's money "cleaning up his messes", and doesn't just leave it to the victims and their governments). But regardless of how the efforts of the Avengers appear to foreign governments, the underlying issue is what is truly the best thing to do about superpowered individuals/teams, not what can merely be done as a (political) salve to assuage the concerns of a frightened and ignorant public. If you only look at the cost of stopping an alien invasion or a Hydra takeover or the annihilation quest of a mad Titan after the fact, rather than consider the cost of not stopping it at all, then it becomes all too easy to use a flawed calculus in determining how to cope with the reality of collateral damage in a universe as dangerous as the MCU.

I'm quite aware of the fact that superhero teams are far from perfect, that they make mistakes, and that collateral damage is typically a consequence of saving the world (and BTW, I believe Tony Stark spends a lot of his company's money "cleaning up his messes", and doesn't just leave it to the victims and their governments). But regardless of how the efforts of the Avengers appear to foreign governments, the underlying issue is what is truly the best thing to do about superpowered individuals/teams, not what can merely be done as a (political) salve to assuage the concerns of a frightened and ignorant public. If you only look at the cost of stopping an alien invasion or a Hydra takeover or the annihilation quest of a mad Titan after the fact, rather than consider the cost of not stopping it at all, then it becomes all too easy to use a flawed calculus in determining how to cope with the reality of collateral damage in a universe as dangerous as the MCU.

I think it's clear who is right.
 
Look at the problems the Avengers dealt with which were pointed to in the movie as justification for the Accords to control the Avengers' actions:
 
1) The alien invasion of New York
2) The attempt by HYDRA to take over the world using new SHIELD super-helicarriers
3) The attempt by Ultron to destroy the world
4) The successful attempt by Crossbones to steal a biological weapon and the casualties from his suicide
 
1) The alien invasion of New York:
The Avengers were formed and asked to intervene by SHIELD which is the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division in the MCU. The government asked them to form and intervene in the situation. The government also bungled and attempted to nuke New York City, which wouldn't have ended the invasion, but would have just killed civilians and the heroes who were trying to stop the invasion. So the Avenger's actions were sanctioned, saved millions of lives locally, plus saved the world.
 
There was no justification shown anywhere to display how the Avengers did anything at all which was inappropriate.
 
2) The attempt by HYDRA to take over the world using new SHIELD super-helicarriers
The government's intelligence services were deeply penetrated by a terrorist organization which was using government resources to build superweapons which would assassinate everyone worldwide who might be capable of someday of opposing the terrorists. The couple of heroes who tried to stop that from happening were hounded by the terrorists who were misappropriating government resources but managed to stop events from escalating by crashing some of the superweapons into the ocean and crashing one of them into the government building which the terrorists had been using as their headquarters.
 
During these events, the only thing I could see for the US government to be upset at the Avengers would be making all those SHIELD/HYDRA secrets available to everyone on the internet. But that was done by the director of SHIELD deliberately giving his access codes to make it happen while he was standing next to the SHIELD agent who was typing in the commands.
 
There was no justification shown anywhere to display how the Avengers did anything at all which was inappropriate. Additionally, all the people working in the non-US governments of the world should be thrilled at what happened because they weren't assassinated by the HYDRA superweapon. They should also be thrilled at getting all the free intelligence information.
 
3) The attempt by Ultron to destroy the world
Once Ultron existed, he had to be stopped because he wanted to kill the vast majority of the people on Earth. In Sokovia, the Avengers took great pains to evacuate the threatened city before the crisis started. And after the crisis started, they took great pains to continue protecting and evacuating civilians.
 
If the Avengers had been slowed down by as much as five minutes while asking for UN permission to save the world from destruction, the world would have been destroyed.
 
You could argue that this series of events was started by the Avengers. But when you get down to it, Tony Stark was doing questionable scientific research behind the backs of the other Avengers which prevented them from making sure he had proper safeguards in place and which prevented anyone from being there to monitor things when it visibly started going wrong.
 
The actions that the Avengers made were entirely appropriate. The actions of Tony Stark which were made behind the backs of the Avengers were probably inappropriate. You could justify UN restrictions and monitoring on dangerous scientific research, but not the response of the Avengers. (I could also argue that the invasion of New York started in Project Pegasus because the government was doing dangerous scientific research in secret without proper oversight.)
 
You could also argue that the Hulk being mind controlled into going on a rampage was somehow the Avengers fault. But honestly, the president of the USA could have been mind-warped by the same villain and could have been persuaded into starting a global thermonuclear war. The leader of any country, company, or organization could have been just as mind-twisted as the Hulk was and would have been just as powerless to stop it. That's not the fault of the Avengers, that's just the state of affairs when a wide array of superpowers become available to random individuals who might choose to abuse them.
 
4) The successful attempt by Crossbones to steal a biological weapon and the casualties from his suicide
First of all, the theft of the biological weapon happened even with the Avengers being right there. That suggests that the theft would have been fully successful without the Avengers being there and a WMD would have been in the hands of a terrorist.
 
The chase of people trying to escape with the biological weapon was conducted with what appeared to be a high degree of professionalism and skill. All the bad guys were caught and the WMD was recovered despite competent planning on the part of the bad guys.
 
It's unknown how much time the Avengers might have had to contact the proper authorities in the nation where the events happened. But we also don't know whether the local authorities were trustworthy or competent.
 
It is also unknown why the facility had a WMD on the premises without enough armed security and safeguards to withstand a terrorist attack. Or why the facility was located in a densely populated urban area without roads of adequate size to allow a police response to an emergency. In the US, a facility like that couldn't get a high enough clearance from the CDC to do WMD research. Maybe the facility had the WMD because of an ongoing local medical emergency like an Ebola outbreak. But if it wasn't something like that (and that wasn't indicated at all in the movie), the UN should look into imposing regulations on who has access to biological WMD's, the safety of research facilities, and sanctions on any nation or facility which breaks the rules.
 
Back to the movie...the problem most of the public and governments appeared to have with the series of events was when Crossbones set off his (inobvious inaccessible focus) suicide bomb in the middle of a dense crowd of people. The purpose of an IIF is that people don't notice it. Professional hand-to-hand combatants who were familiar with Crossbones himself and who were also familiar with explosives weren't able to spot the bomb despite being in his presence for several minutes. I don't think it could be argued that if the Avengers had let the local police handle the situation that they would have spotted the bomb and have had the time to evacuate the area.
 
After it became clear that the bomb was going to go off inside of a crowd of people, the Avengers had the choice of letting the bomb go off inside a crowd of people or trying to move the bomb up and away from the crowd of people.
 
There was no way to know how powerful the bomb might be. There was no way to know how soon the bomb would go off.
 
There was no way to know whether there was a significant number of people in the multi-story building nearby or whether that building would be in the bomb's blast radius.
 
The best available option to preserve lives was to move the bomb up above both the crowd and the building. Fortunately, the crowd was saved but the bomb exploded before getting high enough to spare the building.
 
I really don't at all understand world leaders, particularly Wakanda, getting into a hissy fit about this. If the Wakandan nationals had been in the crowd walking toward the building (rather than already inside) and had been saved, I would presume by his juvenile reaction to the event that the leader of Wakanda would have been perfectly fine with that and would be praising the Avengers' brilliant reaction to the crisis.
 
Sorry, most world leaders in a terrorist event don't blame the first responders because their citizens were 40 yards closer rather than 40 yards further away from the terrorist when he sets off his suicide bomb.
 
Anyway, I don't see anything at all there to blame the Avengers for. "Let the terrorist have the WMD because if he were to have a suicide bomb which no one can see, then he might set it off" isn't really a valid plan for dealing with emergencies.
 
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So from my perspective, there's no justification for the Accords to exist (and no justification for them to have been either proposed or ratified but let's set that aside for the sake of conversation).
 
Should the Avengers have signed on to it?
 
Tony Stark is mentally unstable. When he was confronted by the mother whose son was killed by Ultron, Tony lost his ability to reason just as he did during various comic book story arcs like his Armor Wars and Civil War. That was true to the comics but doesn't make him, at all, right in his position.
 
In the HYDRA incident and the Ultron incident, the delay of just a couple of minutes would have meant the world as we know it would have been destroyed along with millions of lives.
 
There's not going to be a UN committee already gathered together 24 hours a day waiting to render decisions on whether to send in the Avengers. Just getting the committee up to speed on the information they would need to have in order to make a decision would take longer than a couple of minutes. By the time the committee had time to discuss and debate whether to send in the Avengers, the world would have been destroyed for sure at least twice and probably a third time already that we know of. So I don't see any way at all for that committee plan to work.
 
(Now if they wanted to make the Avengers do a UN committee after-action report so that better pre-planning and responses for future missions could be done, I could see something like that being useful. But that isn't part of the Accords.)
 
If I were in the Avengers, I'd have made an intellectual case to the Secretary of State, an imbecile who can't think things through on his own, and to Stark, who is mentally unstable, and try to jolt either of them into seeing that the Avengers' actions were appropriate and necessary. I'd also do the media circuit and explain to the press and public exactly why they'd already be dead many times over if the Accords were in place.
 
If that didn't work to stop the Accords from being signed, I'd advocate the Avengers not sign, stay together, and respond to any future world-threatening crisis as if the Accords didn't exist (while continuing the media appearances). Eventually, the Avengers would either save the world again and wouldn't be jailed for it due to the political backlash. Or some country which signed the Accords would experience a big enough crisis to invite the Avengers in even though they aren't UN sanctioned and that country would also become an advocate to repeal the Accords.
 

The questions raised by Captain America: Civil War do not have easy answers. For every reasonable person who believes the Sokovia Accords are a Good Idea, there is another who disagrees:
 
 

I prefer Cheadle to Howard. But to be totally honest, the Rhodey character isn't important enough (to me) that I really care that much one way or the other who plays him. I was more disappointed over the loss of Ed Norton as Banner; I thought he fit the Ultimates style Banner really well, and would have been great going forward. And really, almost anyone other than ScarJo would have been better as Black Widow, AFAIC, but I say that mostly because I'm simply not much of a ScarJo fan, not because Black Widow is a character important enough that it screams out for perfect casting.

A lot of superhero costuming nowadays is dominated by this small-minded thing called, "realism."

I think LL has the right idea with regard to Dr. Doom and how to introduce him into the MCU. And if there's anyone I trust to get Doom at least close to right, it is Feige and Crew.
 
And BTW, there is no danger of Feige tying his FF and his X-Men to Fox's versions. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

I would say Doom should be introduced as a major villain similarly to how Thanos was brought along in the MCU movies: tease him, introduce bits of his background and motivation, in movies dealing with other villains and threats, particularly any Fantastic Four films. Then make him the main antagonist and dominant character in a movie, once the heroes involved have been established.

Doubt and speculation is the fuel that keeps the engine of the 24-hour entertainment news cycle running. Nobody outside of Disney and Fox had any clue what was or wasn't actually on the chopping block.

No, this final installment of the "first class" X-Men was well into production long before the sale of the assets to Disney. In fact, it wasn't even certain that Disney would be able to acquire the Fox assets until very recently.
 
As for the uni-style costumes, well, the X-Men have gone through a couple of periods of wearing them. The original 1963 team wore them because they were akin to prep school uniforms, and it was important to Charles to reinforce the idea in his students of acting as part of a team rather than as individuals. And then ten years ago you had the Grant Morrison run, which these latest movie costumes were clearly inspired by. I don't have a problem with them apart from the fact that the movies haven't established clearly (and convincingly) why Charles is making them wear them.

I don't mind the team uniform kind of thing, but since they turned the uniform into a leather bondage outfit it seems pointless.  I guess we're lucky they aren't all wearing hoodies or something.
 
Frankly I think while they can make interesting movies, Fox has not handled the X-Men very well.

Apart from an out-of-control Jean Gray, I don't see any resemblance to the original story at all in that trailer. From what I can tell, it has essentially been completely re-written, as if the original story never existed.
 
I don't think Marvel Studios will go anywhere near this classic tale for the MCU now that it has been butchered for a second time. It's like how Verhoeven's SST movie thoroughly poisoned the well for any future prospects of a proper adaptation of the book.

I prefer Cheadle to Howard. But to be totally honest, the Rhodey character isn't important enough (to me) that I really care that much one way or the other who plays him. I was more disappointed over the loss of Ed Norton as Banner; I thought he fit the Ultimates style Banner really well, and would have been great going forward. And really, almost anyone other than ScarJo would have been better as Black Widow, AFAIC, but I say that mostly because I'm simply not much of a ScarJo fan, not because Black Widow is a character important enough that it screams out for perfect casting.

Yeah, that's what I figured.
 
But, see, that's why I used the words "nearly" and "major". I deliberately and carefully qualified my statement precisely so that it wouldn't draw contrarian comments like Cassandra's. But it seems that no matter how carefully I phrase something, someone will just gloss over what I wrote, and will make a contrarian comment anyway. It's bloody annoying.

A lot of the ideas presented are very interesting. And naturally, they tend to be very campaign-specific, which reinforces where my thinking is on this, which is that in order for a generic or house system to convey the feel of a genre you need to add genre/campaign-specific mechanics to it. Like the Sanity mechanics to BRP. Or the Knockback and Presence Attack mechanics to the Hero System. Or the Humanity and Hunger mechanics to the Storyteller system.
 
Without mechanics explicitly designed to convey specific genre tropes, a generic system will only ever feel like a generic system thinly skinned for the genre in question.

Gamma World had that flowchart system for figuring out devices, and I always thought it was an intriguing way to help convey that "lost tech" feeling of a post-apocalyptic science fiction setting.

Indeed. So how would you utilize a generic system to capture the feel of a science-fiction campaign setting with the game mechanics themselves?

"Superman is like James Bond, and after a certain run you have to look at new actors," says a studio source.
 
What bollocks. Marvel has had one actor playing nearly every major MCU character for the last 10 years. Indiana Jones (as an adult) has been played by a single actor for 35+ years. You absolutely do not need to look at new actors just because a character has had a "certain run". Hell, Cavill's Superman only had a 4-year run (2013-2017); that's hardly a reason to switch actors.
 
The reason WB switches actors constantly is because they can't put together a cohesive franchise. The most they seem capable of doing is taking the standard path of 3-movies-and-out that every other studio does, and has done for the past twenty years. Except they couldn't even put together a three-picture (solo) Superman franchise or a three-picture (solo) Batman franchise before everything fell apart. I guess this is simply more fallout from the disaster that was the DCEU. And it remains to be seen if they can even sustain enough organizational competency to get a third Wonder Woman movie made before that franchise falls victim to WB's ineptitude as well.
 
Aquaman may do okay, and the second Wonder Woman movie may do fairly well. But I don't have high hopes for the next Suicide Squad movie, or the Birds of Prey movie they have lined up. WB/DC is still a hot mess, and will likely remain so for the next decade.

GotG3 is a pointless vehicle for involving Yondu's previously unrealized Kree heritage, seeing as how he's dead and I'm sure the franchise is ready to just move on and never mention him again. If it wasn't brought up in the first GotG, then it was never going to make sense to bring it up at all. Making him Kree makes zero sense to anyone except perhaps someone who wants to win this argument.

Ethan Hunt could easily fit into the Marvel universe, as a SHIELD field agent perhaps.

"Superman is like James Bond, and after a certain run you have to look at new actors," says a studio source.
 
What bollocks. Marvel has had one actor playing nearly every major MCU character for the last 10 years. Indiana Jones (as an adult) has been played by a single actor for 35+ years. You absolutely do not need to look at new actors just because a character has had a "certain run". Hell, Cavill's Superman only had a 4-year run (2013-2017); that's hardly a reason to switch actors.
 
The reason WB switches actors constantly is because they can't put together a cohesive franchise. The most they seem capable of doing is taking the standard path of 3-movies-and-out that every other studio does, and has done for the past twenty years. Except they couldn't even put together a three-picture (solo) Superman franchise or a three-picture (solo) Batman franchise before everything fell apart. I guess this is simply more fallout from the disaster that was the DCEU. And it remains to be seen if they can even sustain enough organizational competency to get a third Wonder Woman movie made before that franchise falls victim to WB's ineptitude as well.
 
Aquaman may do okay, and the second Wonder Woman movie may do fairly well. But I don't have high hopes for the next Suicide Squad movie, or the Birds of Prey movie they have lined up. WB/DC is still a hot mess, and will likely remain so for the next decade.

That is the sign of a GM asleep on the job, rather than a sign of a game system in need of design changes.

...and he looked just like a human.  This highlights the fact that there are only so many colors for humanoid skin and the idea there are several blue-skinned (and apparently green-skinned) races is just a non-factor IMO.