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socialsecurity posted:They really dropped the ball here, there are multiple occasions early on where she either directly threatens Vision, rewinds time when he realizes what's happening or goes outside the Hex to attack SWORD. Does she think those SWORD agents are better off being clowns? She thinks they’re trying to disrupt her idyllic life and is protecting it proactively, it’s illogical and wrong because she’s grieving and having a pretty severe trauma induced breakdown deluding herself about her own actions. Plus there’s the potential that the Scarlet Witch much like the Dark Phoenix is a separate person/personality from Wanda simply manifesting in her body. None of which changes the fact that Agatha clearly had the capability to help and stop the Hex (and possibly even save the town) perhaps by training Wanda and helping her deal with her loss and instead chooses to push Wanda deeper into her breakdown to get her in a position to steal her powers. Agatha explicitly is making things worse for everyone involved out of self interest, Wanda is having a mental breakdown with terrifying consequences.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:00
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socialsecurity posted:They really dropped the ball here, there are multiple occasions early on where she either directly threatens Vision, rewinds time when he realizes what's happening or goes outside the Hex to attack SWORD. Does she think those SWORD agents are better off being clowns? Making Wanda's thinking and actions more obviously erratic outside her "script," and the magic affecting the town to be clearly out of her conscious control would have probably been a better route to go down in terms of avoiding these endless relitigations of exactly how evil she is, yes. There are plenty of lines that make it clear she's not thinking clearly and is making incredibly bad choices that if she were clear-headed she wouldn't be making. Her practically begging the town to accept her rationalization that she's made their lives better while she weeps out of shame is not exactly ambiguous. But they clearly did not do enough for a lot of people to accept the idea that she didn't mean to hurt anybody, even though the first thing she did when her delusion shattered was try to fix everything on the spot.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:01
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Also if you want to use the cartoonishly sudden evil action thing it’s not Agatha but the SWORD team anyway. Who legitimately have a reason to be concerned and try and contain the situation, but shoot children unprompted. Agatha is presented as selfish and cruel, the SWORD team and their boss jump right off the deep end at the last episode, even if they’d been doing some shady stuff with Vision already.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:06
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Sanguinia posted:Also the other Flag Smasher was clearly upset about it. I'm pretty sure this plot point is not a giant conspiracy on the part of Capitalism to undermine the concept of revolutionaries in favor of the Status Quo. Especially not in this, the show that just told us that the US Government indeed experimented on a black military hero without his consent and has been consistently about how the main character superhero is suffering constantly under systemic racism. Episode's been out for ages, I'm gonna forgo spoiler tags: I think there's a long bow to draw between reconfiguring American history as a product of racial oppression, occupation, slavery and abuse, i.e. performing an act of reparation, and endorsing the value of revolution. If anything, it seems to be supporting to the Tony Stark status quo -- superheroes as private actors acting as their own oversight. It's like the difference between Watchmen (Lindelof) and Watchmen (Moore). It's important (and honest) to acknowledge the way PoC have been exploited (in Watchmen it's the burning of Black Wall Street, here's it's the ghosts of Tuskegee), but in the absence of Tony Stark (read: Viedt) to manage and guide, support (and fund!) the superpowered, they'll either be co-opted by an incompetent, malicious government or fall into dogfight anarchy. The show argues that we instead need the return of the hero (or, I guess, a god) -- but one who's inflected through a more honest history of American racial politics. So, uh, yeah. I guess.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:09
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Lord_Magmar posted:Also if you want to use the cartoonishly sudden evil action thing it’s not Agatha but the SWORD team anyway. Who legitimately have a reason to be concerned and try and contain the situation, but shoot children unprompted. SWORD Boss was pretty bad from relatively early on after he appears, what with trying to assassinate Wanda with the Drone, but SWORD as an organization does get the Villain Ball pretty badly and needlessly at the 11th hour.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:09
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Sanguinia posted:SWORD Boss was pretty bad from relatively early on after he appears, what with trying to assassinate Wanda with the Drone, but SWORD as an organization does get the Villain Ball pretty badly and needlessly at the 11th hour. That’s bad but you could see a version of the story where he legitimately thought executing Wanda was the best and immediate solution to saving the town as a whole. That’s not the direction they went in and he routinely shows self-interest and malicious intent. But yeah the rest of the organisation only really jump the evil shark at the end, he was dancing on the line.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:15
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Alchenar posted:Uh, if a person was holding a building full of people hostage at gunpoint and forcing them via torture to act out some play they'd written then if they didn't surrender to the police you'd expect them to get shot. It would be sad if they were mentally ill, but it wouldn't change things if it got to that point. I don't think that last part is true. Wanda didn't really get how the Hex came to be and she also didn't realize (or let herself realize) that she was actually torturing people. She just knew that Vision was back in her life and that they were having actual children together. Given the shithammer that had been taken to her life before, it's understandable and very human that Wanda didn't want to poke her miracle with a stick. She was finally happy. Everyone around her at least seemed to be happy as well. So good enough. I don't like to shop for clothes. So when I go shopping for them, I focus on getting stuff that's inexpensive, durable and fits my fat rear end and I want to begin and end that process as quickly as possible. I admit that I don't do intricate research on the source of the clothes, which means that there's a decent chance I wear stuff produced in sweat-shops. I want to say that I'll do better next time, but... I probably won't because I don't want to extend the length of that chore any more than I have to. Does that make me evil? Probably a little bit. But also probably not much more than most people - including Wanda. If things are going well in someone's life, how many of those someones would have the fortitude to take a hard look at the source of that "life going well" to make sure it was "ethically sourced?" Bringing this back around to Karli, she did a bad thing - and knowingly did that bad that. I get why she did it. Her "mom"/mentor had just died of a completely preventable, treatable, curable disease. She died because those responsible for her well-being couldn't be arsed to give her the medicine and treatment she needed. So they let her die. So, it's not hard to get that Karli's reaction to that would be "Fine, you let my people die, I'll let your people die." It's not a move that's good, smart or mature, but... Karli probably isn't that mature. Erin Kellyman is 22 years old. Figure her character, Karli is around that same age. Think about the bull-poo poo ideas you had when you were 22. And add in that Karli is pretty much on steroids that are on steroids with the Super Soldier Serum.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:18
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Open Source Idiom posted:Episode's been out for ages, I'm gonna forgo spoiler tags: That's a fair reading of the situation. I'm still hoping it goes in a more "A little revolution now and then," direction since they did go out of their way to distance the rest of the Flagsmashers from the personal nature of what was done. Obviously there's going to be limits on how far that goes, I'm relatively sure nobody is going to be toppling the United States or advocating the downfall of Capitalism and its replacement with a more equitable distribution of wealth on a global scale, but I don't believe that they're going to completely turn the Flagsmashers into strawmen to be punched by Our Heroes for the sake of "Its Not The Best System But."
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Apr 4, 2021 10:22
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Everyone posted:Bringing this back around to Karli, she did a bad thing - and knowingly did that bad that. I get why she did it. Her "mom"/mentor had just died of a completely preventable, treatable, curable disease. She died because those responsible for her well-being couldn't be arsed to give her the medicine and treatment she needed. So they let her die. So, it's not hard to get that Karli's reaction to that would be "Fine, you let my people die, I'll let your people die." It's not a move that's good, smart or mature, but... Karli probably isn't that mature. Erin Kellyman is 22 years old. Figure her character, Karli is around that same age. Think about the bull-poo poo ideas you had when you were 22. And add in that Karli is pretty much on steroids that are on steroids with the Super Soldier Serum. Sanguinia posted:That's a fair reading of the situation. I'm still hoping it goes in a more "A little revolution now and then," direction since they did go out of their way to distance the rest of the Flagsmashers from the personal nature of what was done. Obviously there's going to be limits on how far that goes, I'm relatively sure nobody is going to be toppling the United States or advocating the downfall of Capitalism and its replacement with a more equitable distribution of wealth on a global scale, but I don't believe that they're going to completely turn the Flagsmashers into strawmen to be punched by Our Heroes for the sake of "Its Not The Best System But." I mean, you've got to really hope that the show doesn't see the people who are redistributing vaccines to the poor as villains.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:27
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I was enjoying the dumb neon city and the John Wick homages until the show went full 'Now you have a reason to hate these extremely correct revolutionaries. If only they'd protested peacefully they could have affected real change but now they must be hunted down like dogs'. gently caress off
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Apr 4, 2021 10:38
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Lord_Magmar posted:That’s bad but you could see a version of the story where he legitimately thought executing Wanda was the best and immediate solution to saving the town as a whole. That’s not the direction they went in and he routinely shows self-interest and malicious intent. But yeah the rest of the organisation only really jump the evil shark at the end, he was dancing on the line. In watching WandaVision and previous Marvel stuff we came to know and care about Wanda, so we empathize and sympathize with her grief. But here in the real world if that poo poo went down, I think a large majority of us would be on Team "Shoot her in the loving head ASAP." Open Source Idiom posted:I mean, you've got to really hope that the show doesn't see the people who are redistributing vaccines to the poor as villains. If I recall correctly our heroes (and Zemo) were going to the camp where Karli's "mom" just died. So, they'll see the lovely situation for themselves and they'll get kicked in the teeth with the idea that Karli and company are attempting to address a real need. And then they'll hear about her frying the dudes at that warehouse. It seems like they're setting up a "both sides" situation except that both sides are clearly wrong. Karli shouldn't be stealing (and especially not killing) but the GRC shouldn't be hoarding this stuff when people desperately need it and are dying without it.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:41
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It is unclear why the GRC are hoading stuff, which is a problem. Like, the show could next week say "yes that was six months supplies. For the next six months. Now there is nothing and that's really bad" and that would be credible (they won't, but it would be open to them).
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Apr 4, 2021 10:45
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I felt the whole deal with the flag smashers at the end in the episode was very IRA.
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Apr 4, 2021 10:53
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I didn't really put together that Karli's mom died from TB in the fugee camp, i just thought it was, like, blip sickness or something. That combined with her line about their being medicine just sitting in the GRC lock up clears it all up for me
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Apr 4, 2021 13:26
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I stand by my earlier point that WandaVision was frustrating for so many because the protagonist wasn’t the moral center, it was Vision. Normally in marvel, The title characters are super quick to stop doing something when someone tells them it’s wrong, but she didn’t. (Captain Marvel does this in a kind of hilarious way at the midpoint of her film.) Scarlet witch was told to stop but she didn’t. Because of that, people want to rehabilitate Agatha, who opposed someone who is immoral. But she is completely fine with torturing the people of the town if she gets power, explicitly saying in the final episode “give me your powers, I’ll perfect your spell.” She points out that Wanda is evil mostly to gently caress with her, not out of empathy. I think the “right” MCU morality hedges closer to the scene in Civil War where Captain America says “whatever you did, it wasn’t you Bucky,” and he responds “But I did it though.” We expect our protagonists to handle their past guilt, atone with their fathers, and die nobly when there’s no other option. We expect the villains to have something they want, cross lines to get it, and shoot a blue laserbeam into the sky.
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Apr 4, 2021 13:28
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in general absorbing a ton of Marvel movies over the last two weeks there is a strong recursive, almost Catholic, theme of civilian casualties being washed away in the baptismal waters of "feelin' bad". Bucky is the only character in the entire series that seems to deal with their grief is a realistic way, showing their guilt on their face and living every day to make up for what he did... But everyone else is just, like, "yeah I mind controlled 3,000 people for a month, yeah i blew up the UN, yeah I staged a massive alien invasion and killed thousands but I'm Weally Weally Sowwy!" and *poof* just like that you are totally absolved and the writers give you all sorts of plucky quips so we know without hesitation that it's ok to like you. (I really like Zemo but he definitely killed a ton of innocent people to kill like 5 guys)
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Apr 4, 2021 13:43
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There's a fine line to walk there though. Supervillians are fun, its easy to like them, the whole conceit of supervillains having heel face turns is fun to play around with. But, supervillainy usually involves murdering people if you think about it (unless its like, catwoman or someone stealing from the rich). So you get tonal dissonance between the writers who want to treat an alien invasion as a 9/11 level threat and those that want to treat it as a saturday morning cartoon caper.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:09
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And honestly these are just the sorts of problems that crop up in a shared universe. Like, I think the somewhat relatively cartoony handling of the Battle of New York works in a vacuum, just like I think the Zod/Superman fight having catastrophic fallout works (apologies if this infects another thread with Snydertalk). But eventually you get a creator who wants to treat the former with more gravitas or the latter with a less serious face.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:20
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Bust Rodd posted:But everyone else is just, like, "yeah I mind controlled 3,000 people for a month, yeah i blew up the UN, yeah I staged a massive alien invasion and killed thousands but I'm Weally Weally Sowwy!" and *poof* just like that you are totally absolved and the writers give you all sorts of plucky quips so we know without hesitation that it's ok to like you. I don’t think MCU has ever just poofed away guilt by having someone say I’m really really sorry, To y Stark practically spends every movie feeling guilty for something and fixing it, Black Widow definitely doesn’t think joining SHIELD cleaned the “Red in her Ledger”. The closest is the stuff with Loki and that poo poo took 2 whole movies of him realising he’s an idiot and that he loves his brother and his jealousy was bulls it and he has to somewhat atone for his actions in the first Avengers (although it is specifically not in Loki’s nature to show visible guilt, a really good example is when not stopping the Dark Elves led to the death of his mother he pretends to be fine until his illusion drops and he’s basically destroyed the room in grief and self-loathing). Plus we never see the reaction of humans to Loki’s supposed heroic shift, we see Thor (who is noted to have a bad case of blindness and softness for Loki anyway) and we see Dr Strange (who very much does not want Loki on Earth at all no matter if he’s working with Thor this time). It’s very much not poor you’re absolved, it’s you recognise your fault and are now going to strive to undo it or make up for it (Tony Stark realising his weapons are killing innocents and Americans so he goes to undo that, Wanda realising she actually was straight up just hurting everyone around her and ultimately deciding to master herself so it cannot happen again the way it did). Whether that’s enough is a secondary question, Tony himself clearly struggles with that answer, and we don’t know where Wanda is going to end up yet because she is part of the next Dr Strange.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:31
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Imagine a bunch of foreign soldiers come to your city and force you out or your homes to tell you where to go live and horde food so they can control when to give it out and then some fat sweaty nerd in his mom’s basement goes “well ackshually they have noble and laudable goals but they used violence so TERRISM BAD” and flashes a thumbs up to his signed Dick Cheney headshot
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Apr 4, 2021 14:36
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Cage Kicker posted:Imagine a bunch of foreign soldiers come to your city and force you out or your homes to tell you where to go live and horde food so they can control when to give it out and then some fat sweaty nerd in his mom’s basement goes “well ackshually they have noble and laudable goals but they used violence so TERRISM BAD” and flashes a thumbs up to his signed Dick Cheney headshot The debate's not considering the morality of the action so much as the show's perspective on it.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:39
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"They'll never know what you sacrificed for them" gently caress off with that poo poo.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:55
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Cage Kicker posted:Imagine a bunch of foreign soldiers come to your city and force you out or your homes to tell you where to go live and horde food so they can control when to give it out and then some fat sweaty nerd in his mom’s basement goes “well ackshually they have noble and laudable goals but they used violence so TERRISM BAD” and flashes a thumbs up to his signed Dick Cheney headshot Oh, like a tankie defending violent revolutions and authoritarian regimes just because they have a veneer of Marxism? “Well ackshually Che Guevara was noble and laudable for executing all those political dissidents in the jungle”.
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Apr 4, 2021 14:58
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Hellbore posted:Thing is this isn't the Flagsmashers being shown wrong, this is, so far, specifically Karli being wrong. We were shown that this isn't their usual MO with the Australian guy she was with being horrified. yeah so what’s up her leadership. because it can’t just be “her charisma.” she plays every scene moodily staring into the middle distance or hunched over speaking so softly she sounds on the brink of tears, when she isn’t actually crying. everybody is kind of weirdly paternal to her. the few big speech moments shes had have been kind of limp. it’s not like the actor is inherently unbelievable in the role, she did it just fine playing basically the exact same character in a fraction of the screen time in Star Wars. not sure what to make of that anyway marvel movie politics basically being CIA propaganda are part and parcel at this point so whatever, you knew going in that at some point she was going to have to execute a baby to give our heroes a reason to flying dropkick her into a wind turbine and remind us that better things aren’t possible unless they’re done Incrementally by agents of the state. only our heroes get to do somber self-reflection and receive absolution over killing just loads of people through collateral damage in pursuit of narrative justice. whatever they learn from the misguided dead revolutionaries and their ideologies are valuable life lessons that will definitely inform the beliefs and actions of the system going forward though, promise.
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Apr 4, 2021 15:23
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I figure she's the leader simply because she was the one who stole the serum and came up with their M.O.
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Apr 4, 2021 15:30
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honestly I just hope by the end Sam gets the new super soldier serum that gives you Captain America super powers without needing the actor to stay jacked constantly it’s a little tiring having Sam just eating poo poo constantly and knowing if there’s any kind of fight with a big bad guy it’s just a countdown til they rip one of his wings off and he’s just a guy with dumb goggles. give the black guy the powers and the suit and the loving shield christ
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Apr 4, 2021 15:37
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My theory is that Sam won't take the serum. Instead he'll get a blood infusion from Isaiah.
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Apr 4, 2021 15:43
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Thundercracker posted:My theory is that Sam won't take the serum. Instead he'll get a blood infusion from Isaiah. sure, that works too. however they want to do it. I’m just going to be annoyed if they find a way to wriggle out of giving us Sam being the real actual new Captain America. with some mealy mouthed “oh actually Captain America/the serum isn’t really a good thing anyway, look what happened to Isaiah, look what a monster Walker is, Sam’s better off without it anyway/he’s his own man/the world needs to let Captain America go” moral. I want to see the guy in the loving suit with the shield
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Apr 4, 2021 15:53
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Just a reminder that Killmonger was never in any way good, he directly murdered several innocent people, and his accomplishes murdered more. And that’s not mentioning how problematic his ultimate plan is.
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Apr 4, 2021 16:01
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Oasx posted:Just a reminder that Killmonger was never in any way good, he directly murdered several innocent people, and his accomplishes murdered more. And that’s not mentioning how problematic his ultimate plan is. oh well in that case
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Apr 4, 2021 16:59
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Oasx posted:Just a reminder that Killmonger was never in any way good, he directly murdered several innocent people, and his accomplishes murdered more. And that’s not mentioning how problematic his ultimate plan is. IIRC they added him murdering his girlfriend and being really mean to the old ladies in a rewrite because, basically, people didn’t understand how he was a bad guy by wanting Black people to have weapons and fight back in focus testing
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Apr 4, 2021 17:11
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Sanguinia posted:Are people really like, not getting why Karli crossed the line? It wasn't left field at all. Someone important to her died from Tuberculosis that they got from being in a refugee camp. She escalated against the people responsible for the refugee camps out of anger and grief. The other Flagsmasher guy even asks her if she wants to put off the mission because she's upset and she forcefully tells him no. She wanted revenge. This isn’t a documentary, though. The writers created that situation to make Karli cross that line. That’s the trope people are complaining about. On a different note, I think this show is ultimately going to suffer from only being 6 episodes long. We’re halfway through already, and I still feel like we’re setting the stage.
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Apr 4, 2021 17:23
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Killmonger was a black radical who wanted to confront global inequality and white supremacy, violently if necessary, but he also introduced the idea that Wakanda had a responsibility to Africa and the African diaspora. That view already puts him into conflict with Black Panther, without the extra scenes where he declares global war and kicks the metaphorical puppy. The point is that the MCU consistently associates proactive radicalism with violent terrorism, and this is the source for a few of their villains. Black Panther has a synthesis moment towards this view in two scenes, one of which was post-credits, where they took the most milquetoast first step in that direction.
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Apr 4, 2021 17:53
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Flag smashers just need a combat division separate from main ops of expropriations https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Combat_Organization
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Apr 4, 2021 18:17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGsHq-mZI8U&t=73s
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Apr 4, 2021 18:22
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The irony is that Marvel ate poo poo for years because their villains were generic and bland. It's only when they started making villains sympathetic and with understandable motives did they have any success.
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Apr 4, 2021 18:27
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live with fruit posted:The irony is that Marvel ate poo poo for years because their villains were generic and bland. It's only when they started making villains sympathetic and with understandable motives did they have any success. Is there an unsuccessful MCU movie? I feel like there are only less successful ones but they've all made profits.
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Apr 4, 2021 18:28
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Spacebump posted:Is there an unsuccessful MCU movie? I feel like there are only less successful ones but they've all made profits. When it comes to having an interesting villain, yes. Many.
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Apr 4, 2021 18:30
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I can't wait for Dr. Doom to be introduced so I can unironically say that he's right. "I mean, he's right: only Doom can rule. It just makes sense and if you don't agree you support laissez faire capitalism and colonialism!"
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Apr 4, 2021 19:22
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Doom is right, a benevolent philosopher king is truly the only solution to the tragedy of the commons as over a long enough timeline the damage he causes will be eclipsed by the damage the world will do to itself if he does nothing.
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Apr 4, 2021 19:26
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