The Marvel Thread (Spoilers, and language!)

I pondered on the CGI part, as it's usually one of the last things added to a movie - but there is clearly some already done in the teaser and he's a fairly prominent part, Groot is in the teaser also.
 
I have no prior knowledge of Guardian's comic wise and I'm very excited for this movie, especially after seeing that teaser. Can't wait to see the full trailer later tonight.
 
Likewise, in general the only stuff I know about Marvel outside of the films are the content of wiki pages I have read due to said films... but I had at least heard of Iron Man etc before, whereas until I saw it listed in Phase 2 I had no knowledge of GotG at all and was wondering how it tied into the rest of the MCU. It should be fun!

The internet is both a curse and a blessing in many ways, but it sucks to even get small spoilers - like reading a short summary of Cap2 a few months ago even just the cast list gives away a character's true identity. Sure it isn't exactly a plot twist for anyone who knows anything about the comics, but I would've still been all "Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhh, didn't think of that!" when I saw it.
 
Gotta love how DC is struggling to make a Wonder Woman movie for ages, while Marvel is already releasing a movie with a talking gun-wielding raccoon and his best friend the talking tree :D
 
Indeed!

I will stand by my point that the issue is with the source material and not in the adaptations. Yes, DC has had some lame adaptations, but overall, their characters just do not stand up to Marvel's.

Every one of the Marvel films manages to tap into the humanity of the heroes, something which DC (save for Batman and the CW's "Arrow") has failed to do. Granted, it's not too easy when your biggest superheroes are either descendants of God-like creatures or gifted their powers by aliens.
 
lol, it's probably just due to the music in that trailer... but it looks like it's going to have a lot more comedy than the other Marvel films so far. I haven't seen Chris Pratt in anything other than Parks & Rec and his character is pretty goofy in that so I wasn't sure how this would work, but it looks great :)

I don't know much of either DC or Marvel but the ones that I do know... I would say Marvel have both the better source material and the better process of adapting, I mean sure there are still fanboys raging over costume changes etc but frankly I think I'd be somewhat less interested in a film if the main character was a guy running round in some of the costumes from the comics. One comment I've seen a bit recently is lack of diversity, all the main characters are white male etc - well I don't think they're choosing which characters to adapt based on anything like that, nor are they avoiding doing a female or black led film due to it being potentially ill recieved or anything else.. they're simply going on which comic characters are most well known and/or popular.
 
That looks terribly fun.

I think the problem with diversity in Marvel is that they compartmentalized their diverse characters. Open up the Avengers (in the comics) and look at the people within:
Captain America - straight white American guy, Christian
Wolverine - straight white Canadian guy***
Iron Man - straight white American guy, atheist
Thor - straight white Asgardian guy, self-ist
Ant-Man - straight white American guy
Ms. Marvel - straight Pakistani-American female, Muslim (this literally just happened this month)
Captain Universe - no gender, sexual identity, or even a body.
Falcon - straight African-American guy
Hawkeye - straight white American guy
Hulk - straight green American guy
Manifold - straight Aborigine guy
Shang-Chi - straight Chinese guy
Spider-man - straight white American emo male***
Spider-woman - straight white American female, presumably also emo***
Sunspot - straight Afro-Brazilian guy
Doc Ock - straight white-Octopus American guy
Wasp - straight white American female
*** indicates that rights are elsewhere

And nobody's heard of Sunspot or Manifold.

But go look at the X-Men! You got black ladies, gay Canadians, blind people, wheelchair people, people with body hair issues, a Cajun, a Jew, a practitioner of beastiality, a Vietnamese lady, a French-Algerian Muslim lady, a couple Russians, a Roman, a Cheyenne native-American lady, a lady from India, and a few more.

Marvel chose to use one of their major lines to discuss diversity. Then...they sold that line to someone else. So yeah, it hurts for them, a lot. That's why you're going to see Scarlet Witch being pushed in the next Avengers movie. Ms. Marvel just got relaunched too, but I don't know if you could convince people to show up and watch a movie about a Muslim superheroine. I'd go, but how many Reel 'Murikans would?

There's potential for black heroes - Black Panther, Luke Cage, Blade. There's potential for female heroes - Ms Marvel, Wasp, Jessica Jones. You could do an MI-13 movie (which would make me SO fucking happy) and get some awesome Brit heroes in there. But I'm not sure that we'll see that. Marvel is rumoured to be doing a Hell's Kitchen TV series starring Daredevil, Luke Cage, Ms Marvel, and Iron Fist, taking a lot of those heroes out of the running. Marvel hasn't been interested in developing the Blade property for awhile - the last occurrence was in Captain Britain & MI-13, a publication that sadly undersold, because it was awesome.

In the end, I guess Marvel probably won't do much of that at all.

DC, of course, has been recently striving to add superheroes of all ilk and creeds. But that stuff won't hit the movies, so...meh. White guys it is. I guess we're lucky Iron Man got to stay an atheist, not that he ever talks about it.
 
LooseCannon said:
Marvel chose to use one of their major lines to discuss diversity. Then...they sold that line to someone else. So yeah, it hurts for them, a lot. That's why you're going to see Scarlet Witch being pushed in the next Avengers movie.
Click to expand...

Is Elizabeth Olsen not a straight white American?

LooseCannon said:
Ms. Marvel just got relaunched too, but I don't know if you could convince people to show up and watch a movie about a Muslim superheroine. I'd go, but how many Reel 'Murikans would?

There's potential for black heroes - Black Panther, Luke Cage, Blade. There's potential for female heroes - Ms Marvel, Wasp, Jessica Jones. You could do an MI-13 movie (which would make me SO fucking happy) and get some awesome Brit heroes in there. But I'm not sure that we'll see that. Marvel is rumoured to be doing a Hell's Kitchen TV series starring Daredevil, Luke Cage, Ms Marvel, and Iron Fist, taking a lot of those heroes out of the running. Marvel hasn't been interested in developing the Blade property for awhile - the last occurrence was in Captain Britain & MI-13, a publication that sadly undersold, because it was awesome.
Click to expand...

I could see them touching on Ms. Marvel in the future, maybe Avengers 3. Joss might try to tap into that for the sake of diversity (even though most of own creations feature nothing but white people).

They definitely need some sort of diversity in the films, it's getting a bit ridiculous. There's no reason they can't take blind casting into account. Even Fox's Fantastic Four reboot just cast Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm. If they're not going to introduce some diverse characters, at least start casting people without being beholden to their white skin from the comic pages.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Is Elizabeth Olsen not a straight white American?
Click to expand...
Yeah, but at least she's a female, which would make 2.

MrKnickerbocker said:
They definitely need some sort of diversity in the films, it's getting a bit ridiculous. There's no reason they can't take blind casting into account. Even Fox's Fantastic Four reboot just cast Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm. If they're not going to introduce some diverse characters, at least start casting people without being beholden to their white skin from the comic pages.
Click to expand...

I wholeheartedly agree.
 
That's what I just finished saying! X-Men was designed to tackle the concepts of diversity, the whole mutant thing isn't just a way of telling a story, it's meant to be a metaphor for the evolution of American society. There's a reason the main X-Men "leaders" represent the apex of conformity - a white rich guy - and the absolute worst story in race relations in our history - a Holocaust survivor.
 
They did cast Idris Elba as Heimdall even though Heimdall is white in the comics.
Its-something.jpg
 
X-Men is certainly Marvel's most relevant property, and they shot themselves in the foot big time by selling it off to Fox.

They also introduced Deathlok in SHIELD, which is little to do with the movies, but as NP said, it's something.

Side note: I never knew that Megadeth's "Psychotron" was written about Deathlok until yesterday! Doesn't make it a good song, but interesting nonetheless.
 
The thing is people are implying that they are making their choices on adaptions based on "Only white male led films will do well", which I don't think is the case at all, they are adapting the comics that are either a) easiest to adapt or b) most popular or c) someone has expressed interest in adapting. I don't think they're actively avoiding diversity at all. It would be good to get diversity in there but I'm not upset by the lack of it, I don't care what ethnicity/religion etc the characters are, as long as they are well written and entertaining, have I noticed a lack of diversity? sure.. but it's not affecting me.

On the other hand, as you said, they can change characters with casting to create diversity... but given the way fans kick off about the smallest of costume changes (the arguments over Cap's suit changes on some boards are hilarious) having a main character change like that would probably make a very divided fan base. If I recall, they have scripts written for Black Panther but as up to Avengers 3 is already planned out it won't be seen for a bit.

X-Men being owned by Fox is a big problem for them yeah, although I think trying to connect X-Men to the current MCU would just get messy even if they had tried it from the start. When super powered people are everywhere they kind of lose the awe factor (both for the audience and for the people within the film universe itself).
 
Crimson Idol said:
The thing is people are implying that they are making their choices on adaptions based on "Only white male led films will do well", which I don't think is the case at all, they are adapting the comics that are either a) easiest to adapt or b) most popular or c) someone has expressed interest in adapting. I don't think they're actively avoiding diversity at all. It would be good to get diversity in there but I'm not upset by the lack of it, I don't care what ethnicity/religion etc the characters are, as long as they are well written and entertaining, have I noticed a lack of diversity? sure.. but it's not affecting me.
Click to expand...

Oh, I completely agree. I don't think anyone at Marvel is trying not to be diverse, I think it's just the nature of the original source material. The majority of the popular, easy-to-sell characters happen to be white men. That's just a sign of the times when those characters were created.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top