Once upon a time, superhero movies concentrated on the "hero" part of the equation. People may have had cool toys, or special powers, but in the end, they used those tools to protect people. Often at risk to themselves.
But that is a quaint view of the world that includes concepts such as Right and Wrong, and maybe even ideas like Good and Evil.
Now we are in the no-accountability era, where nothing matters. Superheroes no longer save people.
There were other ingredients in the mix back in those quaint old days of the early 2000's, like character arcs. People who were not awesome from day 1, but had to grow and change.
But all that has changed. I will let Jedi Brooks explain things. Using as a comparison of the introduction of Tony Stark from the original Iron Man (2008), together with some examples from earlier movies, with the introduction of Iron Heart, from the 2nd Black Panther movie, and how right and wrong don't seem to be an issue. Saving the innocent? Why would a super-powered woman do that? There are jokes to tell, and she has to prove what a girl-boss she is.
All the way to her complete lack of care for the safety of others, just for an action scene. [SNIP]
From her morality to her motivation, they've somehow managed to botch everything.
Politics is downstream of culture. Is it any wonder that the concepts of Right and Wrong, of Good versus Evil, have disappeared from public discourse? Right is whatever an individual wants, because there is no good or evil. Those concepts are being systematically erased from the culture.
This is Jedi Brooks' video Why Ironheart SUCKS - A Scene Comparison. That is a 15 minute video.
It is another cold reminder of why the MCU is dying a slow, embarrassing death.
I was introduced to Jedi Brooks by way of the most recent Open Bar podcast from The Critical Drinker. That is a 2 hour video, and I haven't seen all of it, but I usually see the entire thing over the course of the week.
I stopped seeing superhero movies a while back. Looking back, it was mostly the second movie that I didn't like. Avengers, Captain America, Thor. I kept up with X-Men, but Apocalypse was shite, so stopped watching them as well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, like Star Wars, you're expected to watch lots of different things to see the full story. Maybe comic book fans have time for that, but I have no desire for it.
Comic books are different in that they come out 10 to 20 pages at a time, once a month or twice a month. And for 25 cents (or I guess they are up to 4 or 5 bucks today) as compared to a paperback or hardback book.
DeleteThe superhero movies were fun when they concentrated on character, ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances, Good vs. Evil, etc. They told grand stories.
The original X-Men was a classic that way. A villain twisted by his past. Heroes trying to stop him. A Betty/Veronica trope. And more. Classic.
Today they skip story, character, and rationality in favor of special effect. I thought that was a lesson Hollywood learned in the 1990s - special effects do NOT substitute for telling a good story.
Of course everything wrong with movies went wrong with comics 10 years or so ago. When Disney purchased Marvel they started pushing the Woke crap in the comics. And comics died. Now movies are dying.
DeleteAnd it isn't just Marvel/DC. Pixar has had 3 MASSIVE failures in a row. Strange Worlds, Lightyear, and Elemental. For the same reasons. Woke. The Mario Brothers movie would have gone down the same path were it not for the game's owner stepping in and saying "No F-ing Way." (They were headed in that way before the game company put the kibosh on making Mario a bumbling fool.)
They can't help themselves. 2016 broke them, and they remain broken.
See this posting (and the embedded video) for a discussion of what went wrong with DC comics: The Woke Disaster that is DC Comics
Delete