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  1. #256
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Even with that in mind, their choices can be judged and found vaunting. With the restrictions in play, the idea of getting the most out of a deal, means that they should have had Spider-Man team-up with everyone across the MCU instead of being an Iron Man subfranchise. The deal never gave us what was promised. Like where's the iconic bit of Spider-Man and Cap teaming up, why is it that Far From Home revolves around "Nick Fury" (and not even the real one) rather than Paul Rudd's Ant-Man (who'd be a better fit for a story about a tech-driven illusionist), heck why not have Spider-Man team up with T'Challa in Far From Home, which considering Boseman's passing, is obviously never ever going to happen, and a forever lost opportunity, and a damning example of the flagrant misuse of the character. Considering that the sequel has Peter go abroad, you could have easily had him come in T'Challa's radar, and connect Mysterio's tech to Wakanda's cloaking and illusion tech. Or you know, Spider-Man and Hulk, Mark Ruffalo's Hulk who did show up prominently in Ditko's run, and having Spider-Man meet another great scientist, one without Iron Man's alpha male affects, would have been awesome.
    In Homecoming's case, Iron Man made the most financial sense since he is the face of the MCU and their most popular MCU character. (To Civil War and Homecoming's credit, though, Captain America gets some decent screentime with Spider-Man in both of them (even if it's only through a TV screen in Homecoming). If we're going to have a Spider-Man who grew up in the MCU and that has to look up to someone, it's important he interacts with both Iron Man and Cap. This is also one of my critiques with FFH aside from Aunt May not being there for Peter while Happy is - Cap is nowhere to be seen even though he absolutely should be if we're gonna do the mentor shtick.)

    In FFH's case, the film comes off like they wanted to tell a solo story and wrote in Fury so they can just say they abided by Sony's crossover rule in the contract.

    These could have been fun cool movies dealing with a 'gets-to-be-fun' version of Spider-Man. This will surprise quite a few but I genuinely liked Spider-Man in Captain America Civil War, that to me is the only satisfying showing of Spider-Man in the MCU. He got to be cool, he got in the faces of Ant-Man, Winter Soldier, Falcon, his best exchange with any superhero ("Queens...Brooklyn") and the airport battle is genuinely up-there with the Raimi films in terms of Spider-Man in battle and action.

    The airport battle is kind of interesting because the Russos introduced Spider-Man in that scene and they wanted to do the iconic Spider-Man so he comes off a lot more competent than he does in the Watts movies and in the IW-Endgame movies (where he's frankly annoying*). Heck, Watts had to retcon CW in HOMECOMING to make Holland Spider-Man come off as more petulant and immature than he was originally, which basically shows that somewhere they decided that no they don't want Spider-Man to be fun after all. The airport battle also shoots Spider-man in broad daylight so we get to see him in action, and it manages to work while avoiding superficial realism (i.e. airports being flat terrain should not give Spider-Man many places to swing around and yet he does and nobody cares).

    I think that kind of observation is too unfair. Sure Sony has made some weak Spider-Man movies but they are in the business of making other kinds of movies and not just Spider-Man, unlike Feige who has never had to face the tests and challenges of a real movie producer. The Russos recently claimed that they were the ones who pushed for Tom Holland while Sony execs were skeptical, and fundamentally I do think Holland is miscast, so I am not sure the flaws of the movie are entirely down to one party alone.
    Interesting. I loathed their portrayal of Spider-Man in Civil War and liked what Watts did with him in Homecoming. Homecoming is still my favorite portrayal of him and the one film where I think he feels the most like a real teenager and like Peter Parker / Spider-Man.

    I wrote about this previously, but one of the reasons why this Spidey is this way is due to Watts and the Russos having entirely different visions of him from the get-go. I wrote about what I didn't like of the Russos' portrayal and why Homecoming's Spider-Man was an improvement in an old post, so I'm just going to quote that because I don't think I can word it better than this:

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
    There was some notable difference between Peter and Spider-Man in Homecoming. It's mostly the other films where the difference isn't there.

    Homecoming is sadly more problematic in hindsight than it was in 2017. Based on what Watts and Feige said at the time, Peter rejecting Tony at the end of the film was indeed supposed to be him taking Vulture's words to heart and breaking off from Tony. Feige also sourced Batman Begins as an influence on Homecoming, and BB is a film where the hero learns a lot from the villain.

    Outside of that, Homecoming in general had a rebellious teen spirit to it. There are multiple references to 60s counter-culture music and to John Hughes films. Many characters talk about the need to rebel sometimes. And Peter himself is the most Peter Parker he's ever been in this universe:

    1. Snarking at the Avengers thugs and at Vulture & Gargan's men.
    2. Bragging to Ned about going against Tony and Happy's wishes.
    3. Being the most assertive, like when snapping at Tony or insisting he wants to take his luggage upstairs himself.

    It's pretty clear that the intention of the film was for Peter to branch out on his own, but then Infinity War/Endgame happened. My guess is that they weren't sure where Peter and Tony's relationship would go next in those films, so they added in that joke about Tony showing him the Iron Spider suit as a "test" in case they had to backtrack (and backtrack they did).

    I'm sure the studio execs at Sony and Disney were part of why Peter's split from Tony didn't stick, but a lot of that also has to do with the Russos. Based on their Civil War interviews, I'm convinced all the tension and split between the two characters in Homecoming came from Watts and not from the Russos. It doesn't seem like Tony and Peter going their separate ways and having disagreements was ever in their cards. I'm not going to accuse the Russos of intentionally discarding an entire film's character arc for their vision, but at the very least I do think there's some confirmation bias in how they interpreted Homecoming's ending.

    Homecoming was my favorite Spider-Man film at the time it came out, but I've grown more indifferent to it for several reasons:

    1. A lot of the ideas I thought were new turned out to be taken from Miles Morales, and I now find in poor taste.

    2. Some of the ideas I thought they were seeding turned out to be only in my head.

    3. And yes, I admit that MCU Spider-Man as a whole kinda left a poor taste in my mouth that affects my enjoyment of Homecoming.
    The only thing I wanna add to this is that Watts in Homecoming also plays up Tony as dismissive and not much of a loving father figure (completely different from how he is played up in the other 4 films). It's almost as if Tony was intentionally using him and keeping him down, hence the Vulture's line of how "Guys like Stark don't really care about us." Again, this was all retconned and is now glorified headcanon after the triple-hit that was Infinity War/Endgame/Far From Home.
    Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 03-04-2021 at 03:49 PM.

  2. #257
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
    In Homecoming's case, Iron Man made the most financial sense since he is the face of the MCU and their most popular MCU character.
    But does Happy Hogan have to invade Peter's supporting cast like cane toads in Australia's ecosystem? By including Happy, those AI systems (which wasn't in Civil War after all), they essentially infected the MCU Spider-Man with Stark.

    Even if Iron Man had to be there (and I agree that he deserves to have one the same way other MCU supers deserve it) you could have done it in a better way. Mostly by having just him interact with Spider-Man. In the comics, whether Civil War or Bendis' USM, Iron Man personally interacted with Peter multiple times.

    In FFH's case, the film comes off like they wanted to tell a solo story and wrote in Fury so they can just say they abided by Sony's crossover rule in the contract.
    But again why do we have Iron Man and his legacy infect FFH. Even without "Fury", the Stark problem contaminates MCU Spidey interminably.

    Interesting. I loathed their portrayal of Spider-Man in Civil War and liked what Watts did with him in Homecoming.
    Ah well, that's fine I guess. For me MCU Spider-Man was best when he had all the promise (not yet broken) ahead of him and when he felt like a fun novelty.

    I wrote about this previously, but one of the reasons why this Spidey is this way is due to Watts and the Russos having entirely different visions of him from the get-go.
    Your post is pretty good. And yeah, the Russos and Watts taking the character in totally different directions and the wires being crossed is very much a problem. Of course this is a wider-MCU problem in general*. One of the issues of the MCU resembling the comics serial storytelling is that occassionally directors/writers have radically different and contrary interpretations of the character which often jar with the most recently seen version of that character. Anyway, for me, my feeling about Spider-Man in the MCU (which to be honest, I never wanted in the sense that I thought it was necessary or anything) was that at least we might get some fun moments of Spider-Man having interactions with these other superheroes. And for me CIVIL WAR captures that.

    The Spider-Man of the MCU after that, especially in the Jon Watts' movies, it just doesn't feel like fun. He tacks on these absurd gadgets and AI which a) Totally Unnecessary, b) Subtracts from the character, c) Removes a greater fantasy (having superpowers) with a lesser one (having gadgets given to you by rich patron). You have these jokes constantly about Spider-Man not being Spider-Man, the references to Spider-Sense as "Peter Tingle" which again can you please stop addressing the audience that knows about the Raimi movies and how it was there, and actuallly reintroduce this to an audience who didn't know that before? I say "Jon Watts' movies" because I am not sure he himself is responsible for all of this (after all on MCU, directors don't really do a good chunk of the directing). I also say "Russo movies" because I am not sure if they were the ones entirely responsible for how Spider-Man behaved in the airport rumble.


    * what I mean by wider MCU problem is that, the issue of contrasting directors overwriting characters happened before:
    -- Iron Man 3 had Tony quasi-retire and at the very least decide that he doesn't need to tinker with stuff anymore to deal with anxiety and have confidence in himself and people around him. Then Whedon comes along with Age of Ultron and makes Tony the creator of the robot (which he wasn't in the comics) and to me, Iron Man 3 (the only IM movie I totally enjoy) only makes sense as a non-canon one-off. We have a similar issue with Russos breaking up Tony and Pepper off-screen at the time of Captain America Civil War (when IM-3 had made them committed for life and essentially engaged and married at the end) and then Jon Watts at the end of Homecoming off-screen brings them back to where they were at the end of IM-3 again.
    -- Joss Whedon portrayed Captain America as a relic out of his time, "I understood that reference" in Avengers 1, the whole language thing in "Age of Ultron" whereas the Russos showed him as adaptable and able to blend in.
    -- SHIELD was the big connective tissue of the first five movies, but then in Phase 2 the Russos torch Shield in WINTER SOLDIER (which wrecked the ABC show) and the result is you have a major status-quo game changer that overshadows completely what Whedon was planning in Age of Ultron and which he barely addresses (Hydra the big new thing in WS gets taken out in the opening of AoU).
    -- Hulk is practically a different character in every movie appearance he's made, with nothing carrying over film by film. Waititi's Ragnarok is the best take on Hulk with Ruffalo getting to really act but then the Russos make him a really bland whiny dude in IW and Endgame and inexplicably give Hulk nothing to do in any of the battle scenes in those movies.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 03-04-2021 at 04:21 PM.

  3. #258
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    But does Happy Hogan have to invade Peter's supporting cast like cane toads in Australia's ecosystem? By including Happy, those AI systems (which wasn't in Civil War after all), they essentially infected the MCU Spider-Man with Stark.

    Even if Iron Man had to be there (and I agree that he deserves to have one the same way other MCU supers deserve it) you could have done it in a better way. Mostly by having just him interact with Spider-Man. In the comics, whether Civil War or Bendis' USM, Iron Man personally interacted with Peter multiple times.



    But again why do we have Iron Man and his legacy infect FFH. Even without "Fury", the Stark problem contaminates MCU Spidey interminably.
    Beats me. I'm going to guess the Iron Man connection continued due to:

    1. Spider-Man, for better or worse, being strongly tied to Tony's character arc Infinity War/Endgame.

    2. Spider-Man being reintroduced through Iron Man worked financially, so why fix what's not broken? (from a shareholder's POV)

    3. Superficial connections: they're both scientists, like to quip, and were both very popular in the 2010's.

    The Spider-Man of the MCU after that, especially in the Jon Watts' movies, it just doesn't feel like fun. He tacks on these absurd gadgets and AI which a) Totally Unnecessary, b) Subtracts from the character, c) Removes a greater fantasy (having superpowers) with a lesser one (having gadgets given to you by rich patron). You have these jokes constantly about Spider-Man not being Spider-Man, the references to Spider-Sense as "Peter Tingle" which again can you please stop addressing the audience that knows about the Raimi movies and how it was there, and actuallly reintroduce this to an audience who didn't know that before? I say "Jon Watts' movies" because I am not sure he himself is responsible for all of this (after all on MCU, directors don't really do a good chunk of the directing). I also say "Russo movies" because I am not sure if they were the ones entirely responsible for how Spider-Man behaved in the airport rumble.
    At least at the time Homecoming came out (and this goes back to what I said about Watts initially intending for Peter to break off from Stark), I got the sense you were intentionally not supposed to be fond of the gadgets. Yeah, he gets the suit back at the end, but there is no indication the gadgets are still there, especially since he messed up the first time using them (also I just realized, but he doesn't use any gadgets in the other films). I thought maybe the AI might still be there but I chucked that up to them trying to replicate comic book monologues.

  4. #259
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    But does Happy Hogan have to invade Peter's supporting cast like cane toads in Australia's ecosystem? By including Happy, those AI systems (which wasn't in Civil War after all), they essentially infected the MCU Spider-Man with Stark.

    Even if Iron Man had to be there (and I agree that he deserves to have one the same way other MCU supers deserve it) you could have done it in a better way. Mostly by having just him interact with Spider-Man. In the comics, whether Civil War or Bendis' USM, Iron Man personally interacted with Peter multiple times.



    But again why do we have Iron Man and his legacy infect FFH. Even without "Fury", the Stark problem contaminates MCU Spidey interminably.



    Ah well, that's fine I guess. For me MCU Spider-Man was best when he had all the promise (not yet broken) ahead of him and when he felt like a fun novelty.



    Your post is pretty good. And yeah, the Russos and Watts taking the character in totally different directions and the wires being crossed is very much a problem. Of course this is a wider-MCU problem in general*. One of the issues of the MCU resembling the comics serial storytelling is that occassionally directors/writers have radically different and contrary interpretations of the character which often jar with the most recently seen version of that character. Anyway, for me, my feeling about Spider-Man in the MCU (which to be honest, I never wanted in the sense that I thought it was necessary or anything) was that at least we might get some fun moments of Spider-Man having interactions with these other superheroes. And for me CIVIL WAR captures that.

    The Spider-Man of the MCU after that, especially in the Jon Watts' movies, it just doesn't feel like fun. He tacks on these absurd gadgets and AI which a) Totally Unnecessary, b) Subtracts from the character, c) Removes a greater fantasy (having superpowers) with a lesser one (having gadgets given to you by rich patron). You have these jokes constantly about Spider-Man not being Spider-Man, the references to Spider-Sense as "Peter Tingle" which again can you please stop addressing the audience that knows about the Raimi movies and how it was there, and actuallly reintroduce this to an audience who didn't know that before? I say "Jon Watts' movies" because I am not sure he himself is responsible for all of this (after all on MCU, directors don't really do a good chunk of the directing). I also say "Russo movies" because I am not sure if they were the ones entirely responsible for how Spider-Man behaved in the airport rumble.


    * what I mean by wider MCU problem is that, the issue of contrasting directors overwriting characters happened before:
    -- Iron Man 3 had Tony quasi-retire and at the very least decide that he doesn't need to tinker with stuff anymore to deal with anxiety and have confidence in himself and people around him. Then Whedon comes along with Age of Ultron and makes Tony the creator of the robot (which he wasn't in the comics) and to me, Iron Man 3 (the only IM movie I totally enjoy) only makes sense as a non-canon one-off. We have a similar issue with Russos breaking up Tony and Pepper off-screen at the time of Captain America Civil War (when IM-3 had made them committed for life and essentially engaged and married at the end) and then Jon Watts at the end of Homecoming off-screen brings them back to where they were at the end of IM-3 again.
    -- Joss Whedon portrayed Captain America as a relic out of his time, "I understood that reference" in Avengers 1, the whole language thing in "Age of Ultron" whereas the Russos showed him as adaptable and able to blend in.
    -- SHIELD was the big connective tissue of the first five movies, but then in Phase 2 the Russos torch Shield in WINTER SOLDIER (which wrecked the ABC show) and the result is you have a major status-quo game changer that overshadows completely what Whedon was planning in Age of Ultron and which he barely addresses (Hydra the big new thing in WS gets taken out in the opening of AoU).
    -- Hulk is practically a different character in every movie appearance he's made, with nothing carrying over film by film. Waititi's Ragnarok is the best take on Hulk with Ruffalo getting to really act but then the Russos make him a really bland whiny dude in IW and Endgame and inexplicably give Hulk nothing to do in any of the battle scenes in those movies.
    just like comics although for endgame they did brought back the directors for those movies so they can continue directing their characters. Hulk is the weird one though people wanted Savage Hulk vs Thanos but nope we dont get that
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  5. #260
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    But does Happy Hogan have to invade Peter's supporting cast like cane toads in Australia's ecosystem? By including Happy, those AI systems (which wasn't in Civil War after all), they essentially infected the MCU Spider-Man with Stark.

    Even if Iron Man had to be there (and I agree that he deserves to have one the same way other MCU supers deserve it) you could have done it in a better way. Mostly by having just him interact with Spider-Man. In the comics, whether Civil War or Bendis' USM, Iron Man personally interacted with Peter multiple times.



    But again why do we have Iron Man and his legacy infect FFH. Even without "Fury", the Stark problem contaminates MCU Spidey interminably.



    Ah well, that's fine I guess. For me MCU Spider-Man was best when he had all the promise (not yet broken) ahead of him and when he felt like a fun novelty.



    Your post is pretty good. And yeah, the Russos and Watts taking the character in totally different directions and the wires being crossed is very much a problem. Of course this is a wider-MCU problem in general*. One of the issues of the MCU resembling the comics serial storytelling is that occassionally directors/writers have radically different and contrary interpretations of the character which often jar with the most recently seen version of that character. Anyway, for me, my feeling about Spider-Man in the MCU (which to be honest, I never wanted in the sense that I thought it was necessary or anything) was that at least we might get some fun moments of Spider-Man having interactions with these other superheroes. And for me CIVIL WAR captures that.

    The Spider-Man of the MCU after that, especially in the Jon Watts' movies, it just doesn't feel like fun. He tacks on these absurd gadgets and AI which a) Totally Unnecessary, b) Subtracts from the character, c) Removes a greater fantasy (having superpowers) with a lesser one (having gadgets given to you by rich patron). You have these jokes constantly about Spider-Man not being Spider-Man, the references to Spider-Sense as "Peter Tingle" which again can you please stop addressing the audience that knows about the Raimi movies and how it was there, and actuallly reintroduce this to an audience who didn't know that before? I say "Jon Watts' movies" because I am not sure he himself is responsible for all of this (after all on MCU, directors don't really do a good chunk of the directing). I also say "Russo movies" because I am not sure if they were the ones entirely responsible for how Spider-Man behaved in the airport rumble.


    * what I mean by wider MCU problem is that, the issue of contrasting directors overwriting characters happened before:
    -- Iron Man 3 had Tony quasi-retire and at the very least decide that he doesn't need to tinker with stuff anymore to deal with anxiety and have confidence in himself and people around him. Then Whedon comes along with Age of Ultron and makes Tony the creator of the robot (which he wasn't in the comics) and to me, Iron Man 3 (the only IM movie I totally enjoy) only makes sense as a non-canon one-off. We have a similar issue with Russos breaking up Tony and Pepper off-screen at the time of Captain America Civil War (when IM-3 had made them committed for life and essentially engaged and married at the end) and then Jon Watts at the end of Homecoming off-screen brings them back to where they were at the end of IM-3 again.
    -- Joss Whedon portrayed Captain America as a relic out of his time, "I understood that reference" in Avengers 1, the whole language thing in "Age of Ultron" whereas the Russos showed him as adaptable and able to blend in.
    -- SHIELD was the big connective tissue of the first five movies, but then in Phase 2 the Russos torch Shield in WINTER SOLDIER (which wrecked the ABC show) and the result is you have a major status-quo game changer that overshadows completely what Whedon was planning in Age of Ultron and which he barely addresses (Hydra the big new thing in WS gets taken out in the opening of AoU).
    -- Hulk is practically a different character in every movie appearance he's made, with nothing carrying over film by film. Waititi's Ragnarok is the best take on Hulk with Ruffalo getting to really act but then the Russos make him a really bland whiny dude in IW and Endgame and inexplicably give Hulk nothing to do in any of the battle scenes in those movies.
    I really like how you just ignore continuity and time progression, just so you can say the directors ignore each other and call things like Iron Man 3 non canon.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jewel Runner View Post
    I really like how you just ignore continuity and time progression...
    By highlighting gaps, inconsistencies, contradictions, I am doing the opposite of ignoring continuity and time progression.

    ...just so you can say the directors ignore each other and call things like Iron Man 3 non canon.
    I am saying that (for me), Iron Man 3 doesn't make sense as a middle film between Avengers 1 and Age of Ultron. Officially of course it's "canon" but the fact is that if you consider it as part of the big MCU picture it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Iron Man 3 is the only movie which has Tony Stark show some maturity and character growth, try and deal with his control freak issues, and admit and show real vulnerability to the people around him. This Tony Stark, this guy would totally deserve to be friends with Spider-Man and hang out with him, and IM3 is basically my favorite version of Tony in the movies, and also RDJ's best performance of the character. At the end of IM-3, Tony destroys all his suits and admits that his over-tinkering as a result of PTSD was an attempt to establish control over his life, when he can't always be in control.

    Smash cut to Age of Ultron where Tony's talking about building a suit of armor around the world, and was hatching a plan to build a super-AI that automates superhero work and where he basically admits he hasn't gotten over nor is he properly dealing with his PTSD at the end of Avengers 1 when he went to the wormhole. Joss Whedon decided that he wanted Ultron to be the bad guy and that he wanted Tony Stark to be the one who did it, and he basically acts as if Avengers 1 was the last we saw of Tony. So you have a guy undergo severe character regression all for the sake of the larger shared universe. And then they double and triple down on "Tony messing up" for the sake of drama (the Sokovia Accords, tying him into the origins of Vulture, and Mysterio)...and the more they mined that the more anomalous IM-3 feels, and the more Tony Stark comes across as a mood-swinging backsliding jerk who literally can't learn his lesson or change or grow. Like I said...these kind of problems are nothing new in comics with virtually any character but it's especially jarring when you see it transposed to live-action across all these films. Where Shane Black (the writer-director of IM-3) had a vision and understanding of Iron Man (and a kind of satirical edge hence the repeated gag in that movie of Iron Man's suits breaking down, falling apart, and getting destroyed in multiple ways), that was entirely the opposite of where Whedon and later Russo, and Watts, took the character.

    These choices weren't inevitable. They didn't have to make Tony the creator of Ultron (because again he wasn't in the comics), they didn't have to make Tony involved in Vulture and Mysterio's origins (because again he wasn't in the comics). There were plenty of alternatives and choices they could have done to maintain the character development from IM-3 in the movies that came after. But the fact that they did, essentially unravelled and undid, and diminished him.

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    The suits in Iron Man 3 broke down easily because they were all rush jobs and Tony designed them simply to come to him and nothing else (due to his PTSD). They weren't good suits like the previous Mark I - VII. When he destroys them at the end, it's not about him quasi-retiring or rejecting Iron Man. That was him merely saying "I'm not gonna let these suits that don't even represent Iron Man well because they're not that well designed define my life." He also learns to not see Iron Man as something separate from himself like he did in Iron Man 2 (When he said "the suit and I are one" in the second film, he was still thinking of Iron Man as somewhat separate from Tony Stark The Man).

    I love the moment in Age of Ultron where he steps out of his new suit and goes to investigate in Strucker's lair. I thought it was a nice nod to Tony's arc in IM3.
    Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 03-05-2021 at 08:35 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
    The suits in Iron Man 3 broke down easily because they were all rush jobs and Tony designed them simply to come to him and nothing else (due to his PTSD).
    I don't know if "rushjobs" is a good enough explanation considering that he took a lot of time to create Ultron and he turned into a mess.

    The point is that Tony after he became a superhero started being set about on controlling stuff and eventually controlling people around him. In IM-3 he does admit and face up to those issues and addresses those problems and deals with it maturely. The movies after that backslide without giving any explanation for what we saw in IM-3.

    That was him merely saying "I'm not gonna let these suits that aren't even that well designed define my life."
    The message is "not gonna let these suits define my life" and by extension, my fears about needing to have that technology, define my life. IM-3 at the end wasn't set up to become Ultron-Maker in any sense. The issue about "well-designed" or props and so on, that's absolutely not what was intended in that moment. Ultimately when you do big grand scenes of character truth as at the end of IM-3, it's expected and understood that this isn't going to be undone the basis of props alone. Just as Titanic isn't going to be undone because there was enough room on that raft for two people.

    I thought it was a nice nod to Tony's arc in IM3.
    I think that's more a callback to Tony removing his suit and inviting Loki for a drunk in his tower-office. But in any case, having a nod isn't the same thing as having the actual character progress from movie to movie. Iron Man's entire motivation for building Ultron in AGE OF ULTRON is the chitauri invasion from the first movie, but he already dealt with his PTSD and found some peace and way to get past it in IM-3. Whedon assumed that nobody would have seen IM-3 (which is odd because it was the biggest success of the IM movies) and skated past it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    By highlighting gaps, inconsistencies, contradictions, I am doing the opposite of ignoring continuity and time progression.
    No you aren't, to call Cap able to blend in and be more used to modern life in Winter Soldier than he is in Avengers is not highlighting an inconsistency, its ignoring the fact that Avengers takes place almost immediately after he was unfrozen, while Winter Soldier is after he's had time to adjust and get a handle on things, there's no reason for him just as inexperienced and out of place.
    I am saying that (for me), Iron Man 3 doesn't make sense as a middle film between Avengers 1 and Age of Ultron. Officially of course it's "canon" but the fact is that if you consider it as part of the big MCU picture it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Iron Man 3 is the only movie which has Tony Stark show some maturity and character growth, try and deal with his control freak issues, and admit and show real vulnerability to the people around him. This Tony Stark, this guy would totally deserve to be friends with Spider-Man and hang out with him, and IM3 is basically my favorite version of Tony in the movies, and also RDJ's best performance of the character. At the end of IM-3, Tony destroys all his suits and admits that his over-tinkering as a result of PTSD was an attempt to establish control over his life, when he can't always be in control.

    Smash cut to Age of Ultron where Tony's talking about building a suit of armor around the world, and was hatching a plan to build a super-AI that automates superhero work and where he basically admits he hasn't gotten over nor is he properly dealing with his PTSD at the end of Avengers 1 when he went to the wormhole. Joss Whedon decided that he wanted Ultron to be the bad guy and that he wanted Tony Stark to be the one who did it, and he basically acts as if Avengers 1 was the last we saw of Tony. So you have a guy undergo severe character regression all for the sake of the larger shared universe. And then they double and triple down on "Tony messing up" for the sake of drama (the Sokovia Accords, tying him into the origins of Vulture, and Mysterio)...and the more they mined that the more anomalous IM-3 feels, and the more Tony Stark comes across as a mood-swinging backsliding jerk who literally can't learn his lesson or change or grow. Like I said...these kind of problems are nothing new in comics with virtually any character but it's especially jarring when you see it transposed to live-action across all these films. Where Shane Black (the writer-director of IM-3) had a vision and understanding of Iron Man (and a kind of satirical edge hence the repeated gag in that movie of Iron Man's suits breaking down, falling apart, and getting destroyed in multiple ways), that was entirely the opposite of where Whedon and later Russo, and Watts, took the character.

    These choices weren't inevitable. They didn't have to make Tony the creator of Ultron (because again he wasn't in the comics), they didn't have to make Tony involved in Vulture and Mysterio's origins (because again he wasn't in the comics). There were plenty of alternatives and choices they could have done to maintain the character development from IM-3 in the movies that came after. But the fact that they did, essentially unravelled and undid, and diminished him.
    You're proving my exact point here, you're ignoring all the things that happen to Tony after IM3 and calling everything you don't like an inconsistency, like Age of Ulton you ignored the fact the only reason he even tried creating Ultron is because Wanda messed with his mind showed him a vision of everyone dead and kicked his stress in overdrive when he had previously been dealing with it before, that's not ignoring IM3, of it was Tony's being scared of more aliens invading and killing everyone wouldn't come up since it wasn't apart of the first Avengers, it's not ignoring his growth just because it didn't go in a way you liked, nor is it diminishing his character.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    I don't know if "rushjobs" is a good enough explanation considering that he took a lot of time to create Ultron and he turned into a mess.
    I think he took only a few days to create Ultron. He even told Banner they only have a few days before Thor takes the mind stone to Asgard.

    The point is that Tony after he became a superhero started being set about on controlling stuff and eventually controlling people around him. In IM-3 he does admit and face up to those issues and addresses those problems and deals with it maturely. The movies after that backslide without giving any explanation for what we saw in IM-3.
    I think he was always like this even prior to becoming a superhero. Tony is arguably the biggest superhero believer in "the great man theory", like most defense contractors. All that becoming Iron Man changed was him taking responsibility into his own hands after his epiphany about the military-industrial complex, but I don't think he actually overcame his need to control and his arrogant belief of being a "great man" until the end of Endgame.


    The message is "not gonna let these suits define my life" and by extension, my fears about needing to have that technology, define my life. IM-3 at the end wasn't set up to become Ultron-Maker in any sense. The issue about "well-designed" or props and so on, that's absolutely not what was intended in that moment. Ultimately when you do big grand scenes of character truth as at the end of IM-3, it's expected and understood that this isn't going to be undone the basis of props alone. Just as Titanic isn't going to be undone because there was enough room on that raft for two people.
    Tony's suits breaking very easily are a gag throughout the film, and the only special ability we see them perform is coming to him and that's it. None of the suits in the previous films broke so easily, with the exception of Mark I that was put together with scraps. Also, the ending of the film is him saying "I am Iron Man", which didn't strike me at the time as an ending implying retirement (this also came out not too long after TDKR, which showed a superhero genuinely retiring).

    I think that's more a callback to Tony removing his suit and inviting Loki for a drunk in his tower-office. But in any case, having a nod isn't the same thing as having the actual character progress from movie to movie. Iron Man's entire motivation for building Ultron in AGE OF ULTRON is the chitauri invasion from the first movie, but he already dealt with his PTSD and found some peace and way to get past it in IM-3. Whedon assumed that nobody would have seen IM-3 (which is odd because it was the biggest success of the IM movies) and skated past it.
    I interpreted his PTSD from Iron Man 3 as more personal in the sense that he didn't see himself as someone who could compete with gods and aliens. Once he overcomes that in the film, it makes sense his next step would be to try to find ways of actively combating/prepping for Thanos, which is why I think Age of Ultron makes sense as the next place to take Tony as a character.

    Part of me will always miss Hank Pym from these movies, but I think Ultron was the perfect place to take Tony in for several reasons:

    1. The first two Iron Man films established Tony sees himself as Earth's keeper / defendor of peace.

    2. The Avengers established that Thanos is coming and that Earth could face more alien invasions.

    3. Tony learning to think of more than just armored suits in Iron Man 3 explains why he would try to protect Earth without a literal physical armored suit for him to wear.

    4. In hindsight, Tony creating Ultron is one of the major things that parallels him to Thanos, with Tony's speech to the Avengers mirroring Thanos' "they called me a madman" speech. Age of Ultron makes Infinity War/Endgame even better films.
    Last edited by Kaitou D. Kid; 03-05-2021 at 09:47 AM.

  11. #266
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jewel Runner View Post
    No you aren't, to call Cap able to blend in and be more used to modern life in Winter Soldier than he is in Avengers is not highlighting an inconsistency, its ignoring the fact that Avengers takes place almost immediately after he was unfrozen, while Winter Soldier is after he's had time to adjust and get a handle on things, there's no reason for him just as inexperienced and out of place.
    Then in Age of Ultron, set after WS, Cap is shown again as fairly old-fashioned what with the repeated "language" jokes. So yeah, it's inconsistency.

    You're proving my exact point here, you're ignoring all the things that happen to Tony after IM3
    Tony didn't make any appearances between IM3 and Age of Ultron. From a character perspective nothing happened between those movies.

    ...like Age of Ulton you ignored the fact the only reason he even tried creating Ultron is because Wanda messed with his mind showed him a vision of everyone dead and kicked his stress in overdrive when he had previously been dealing with it before,
    He was building plans for Ultron well before that attack and discussed it with Bruce Banner as is shown and told to us in the film. He was also deploying Iron Man drones as peacekeeping units in Sokovia, one of the robots who got a can thrown onto it, eventually became the original body for Ultron. All Wanda's vision did was show him a nightmare vision but she didn't manipulate or change Tony's mind away from what he was already in the process of doing and set about doing. And in CW, Tony says, "Ultron...my fault".

    Quote Originally Posted by Kaitou D. Kid View Post
    Tony's suits breaking very easily are a gag throughout the film, and the only special ability we see them perform is coming to him and that's it.
    It's a gag because Shane Black likes gags like that but I don't think you should infer anything deeper than that just on that alone.

    Part of me will always miss Hank Pym from these movies...
    Ultron doesn't work with anyone other 616 Hank Pym. The thing with Ultron is that he and Hank have a f--ked up hillbilly family dynamic and Hank is very much the damaged and flawed patriarch whose sins reverberate down the generations. That's why Hank Pym can never truly be a superhero, he has to be the guy who fails and f--ks up so badly that there can be no true redemption and forgiveness for what he did.

    But RDJ's Tony is meant and intended to be the great noble hero. You can't have him be that and then have him create Ultron and then have him be a great noble hero. It doesn't work.

    In hindsight, Tony creating Ultron is one of the major things that parallels him to Thanos, with Tony's speech to the Avengers mirroring Thanos' "they called me a madman" speech. Age of Ultron makes Infinity War/Endgame even better films.
    You can have the mirror and parallel to Thanos even without Ultron. Iron Man would be the guy who faced up to the abyss got pulled back and decided that he can't control everything and that he needs to have people around him to hold him to task.

    Whereas with the way the movies ended up going, Tony learns his lesson (IM-3), f--ks up majorly again (Age of Ultron), and again (CW), and leaves others to carry water for his f--k ups (MCU Spider-Man), and then fails against Thanos (IW), and then does something right at the very end, only to be revealed that he was a puppet for Doctor Strange who set him up to sacrifice his life (Endgame). The way it's done in Endgame it does feel tragic and special...emotionally it works, dramatically it's well-staged, but if you step back and take it as a continuum, the character arc doesn't entirely work in my view. It doesn't feel like a tragic arc...so much as Stark being ping-ponged for the sake of plot, with Dr. Strange making that literal. I had issues in IW and Endgame, with Pepper and his family essentially framed as a kind of reward and consolation prize for Tony rather than the way it was set up in the solo movies as a mutual relationship that builds over time.

    Much in the case of Spider-Man, the shared universe is a kind of mixed benefit and mixed pleasure even for RDJ's Iron Man.

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    Is there a reason we've spent this much time discussing Iron Man in a thread about a Spider-Man movie that will very likely not have him appear?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Is there a reason we've spent this much time discussing Iron Man in a thread about a Spider-Man movie that will very likely not have him appear?
    Is there a reason for us to presume that Spider-Man No Way Home is not in continuity to the previous two Spider-Man movies?

    Since the movie is far from being released, that means that the discussion of the previous movies and the elements of the larger continuity it's part of, would obviously have bearing on any speculation between now and its release.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Is there a reason we've spent this much time discussing Iron Man in a thread about a Spider-Man movie that will very likely not have him appear?
    I'm not ruling them out establishing some kind of connection between Electro or Ock to Tony.

    And Happy will probably be in it too.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Agent Z View Post
    Is there a reason we've spent this much time discussing Iron Man in a thread about a Spider-Man movie that will very likely not have him appear?
    While Tony may not appear (he didn't in Far From Home as he's dead), I'm curious to know how much of the narrative he'll be involved with. If the multiverse thing is true, maybe Tony Stark caused it somehow, whether it be some forgotten invention or an unintentional effect of his snap in Endgame. Though it'd be hilarious if they found ways to connect villains from other universes who never had that connection to Tony Stark. To tell you the truth...I kind of hope they do it just for the laughs. SM2's Doc Ock's arms evil AI was designed by their universe's Tony Stark in college.

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