Spider-Man 3: No Way Home

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Does attempted murder count?

It's besides the point.

But he probably didn't feel as guilty about it as Tony did for what his weapons inadvertently caused.

Tony didn't feel guilty until he got into that cave, when he was on the other end of his own weapons. And when he was over 40.

That's the point though, Tony changed and realized he was wrong. Toomes didn't care.

As Omar would say in The Wire, "It's all in the game"

I think we should've seen Peter grow disillusioned with Tony to some extent, but not to the extent where we need to downplay how much of a hero Iron Man was.

The point is that Peter thinks that Tony is some flawless paragon as if he's LeFou to Tony's Gaston. That's just not recognizable as the Tony Stark of the MCU, it's not something that Pepper Potts recognizes, it's not who Rhodey's friends with, it's not who the Avengers or SHIELD know. Heck it's not even who Thanos knows.

The whole point of RDJ's Tony Stark, is that he's the last person who anyone would expect to be a superhero, to make the "sacrifice play" and so on. He's meant to be flawed so that when he does something heroic it feels more surprising. If you have a movie pretending, and inculcating among his fans, that he was never flawed to start with, then you basically create a narrative of zero accountability.

There has to be some semblance of independent moral judgment in Peter Parker the character that conveys he's not just some toy-version of the character who the movie is sold as part of a set to mash Tony and Peter memes on social media like toddlers with their action figures. There has to be some personal reason why he latches on to Tony Stark and how that connects to his story. And no...this stuff needs to come on screen, you can't have fans do the unpaid work that professionals paid and represented by agents and others aren't doing.

Spider-Man Homecoming doesn't need to change a single thing of its plot or ending, but there needs to be a moment or two which acknowledges that Peter's aware of Tony's shady history. And no it has to be Peter himself who realizes this on his own and not have it be told to him as if it's brand new information from an inferior character like Happy Hogan.

[Frontier]

It's besides the point.

Is it though?

Tony didn't feel guilty until he got into that cave, when he was on the other end of his own weapons. And when he was over 40.

He still felt guilty though (and Toomes doesn't look like he's in his 40's?).

As Omar would say in The Wire, "It's all in the game"

Or the difference between a hero and a villain.

The point is that Peter thinks that Tony is some flawless paragon as if he's LeFou to Tony's Gaston. That's just not recognizable as the Tony Stark of the MCU, it's not something that Pepper Potts recognizes, it's not who Rhodey's friends with, it's not who the Avengers or SHIELD know. Heck it's not even who Thanos knows.

The whole point of RDJ's Tony Stark, is that he's the last person who anyone would expect to be a superhero, to make the "sacrifice play" and so on. He's meant to be flawed so that when he does something heroic it feels more surprising. If you have a movie pretending, and inculcating among his fans, that he was never flawed to start with, then you basically create a narrative of zero accountability.

There has to be some semblance of independent moral judgment in Peter Parker the character that conveys he's not just some toy-version of the character who the movie is sold as part of a set to mash Tony and Peter memes on social media like toddlers with their action figures. There has to be some personal reason why he latches on to Tony Stark and how that connects to his story. And no...this stuff needs to come on screen, you can't have fans do the unpaid work that professionals paid and represented by agents and others aren't doing.

Spider-Man Homecoming doesn't need to change a single thing of its plot or ending, but there needs to be a moment or two which acknowledges that Peter's aware of Tony's shady history. And no it has to be Peter himself who realizes this on his own and not have it be told to him as if it's brand new information from an inferior character like Happy Hogan.

I don't think Peter sees Tony as flawless, just this major adult figure in his life who had a significant impact on both himself and the world, and how he lives up to that. He's a kid, I feel like that's kind of to be expected to some extent.

I mean, I think the reasons why Peter latches onto Tony are clear enough in the movie. I may not appreciate them, but they make sense in-context of a science geek without a father figure thrust into the wider Superhero world by an older, and more experienced, science Superhero.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Does he need a high one to be a bad guy?

But he probably didn't feel as guilty about it as Tony did for what his weapons inadvertently caused.

And, again, is a high body count the be all end all of a bad guy being a bad guy? Because, y'know, their body count would probably be way higher if Spider-Man hadn't stopped them.

Toomes also did it for more altruistic reasons than Tony. That's not to excuse his actions but that also has to be taken into account. Body counts and intentions also have to be taken account when grading how evil someone is on a spectrum.

See, this is the core problem I have with simple dismissals of Vulture and Mysterio as bad guys: the insistence that in Tony's case we must be nuanced and look at him as a complex person (which I agree with), but that Vulture and Mysterio are merely "bad guys" and their intentions shouldn't be looked at with that same nuance (which I don't agree with).

It is wrong to that only Tony's actions exist on a spectrum of good and bad, but Vulture and Mysterio's actions can be looked at as black-and-white. It reeks of classist undertones and is no different from the way we talk about many disenfranchised people in real life. (I'm not calling you classist Frontier, I'm saying the films give off those undertones whether it was intentional or not).

[Frontier]

Toomes also did it for more altruistic reasons than Tony. That's not to excuse his actions but that also has to be taken into account. Body counts and intentions also have to be taken account when grading how evil someone is on a spectrum.

Altruistic from the standpoint of his crew and his family, but from an overall standpoint it wasn't necessarily overall altruistic because of what he was doing and the kind of people he was selling to. By the time of Homecoming I think what he had been doing was far more self-serving.

See, this is the core problem I have with simple dismissals of Vulture and Mysterio as bad guys: the insistence that in Tony's case we must be nuanced and look at him as a complex person (which I agree with), but that Vulture and Mysterio are merely "bad guys" and their intentions shouldn't be looked at with that same nuance (which I don't agree with).

It is wrong to that only Tony's actions exist on a spectrum of good and bad, but Vulture and Mysterio's actions can be looked at as black-and-white. It reeks of classist undertones and is no different from the way we talk about many disenfranchised people in real life. (I'm not calling you classist Frontier, I'm saying the films have those undertones).

I don't think the film is trying to demonize Vulture and Mysterio for their grief over Tony Stark, only for how they channel those actions into doing evil to the point where they're willing to murder a teenager for getting in their way. Like, you can understand why they're mad, but that doesn't mean condoning their methods.

The consequences of Tony's actions were unintended while Vulture and Mysterio were much more in-control of what they were doing.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

He still felt guilty though (and Toomes doesn't look like he's in his 40's?).

The point is that Toomes spent the majority of his adult life as a law-abiding honest citizen without a criminal record then thanks to Stark negligence he got radicalized into supervillainy using his own box of scraps. With Stark he spent the first 40 years d--king around and selling weapons to the shadiest people not caring who got in the way (and as WandaVision's last episode revealed, his weapons were so powerful that actual magic power was needed to survive it).

Why is that Tony gets to screw around for 40 years with all his wealth and resources and yet we are supposed to give him a pass when he ends up on the other end of his own weapons, while we aren't supposed to give any empathy and understanding for a guy who followed the law all his life until the law spat in his face? The issue is class. I mean this entire Toomes and Tony issue in this fan circle where the movie insists that he's some kind of monster is almost perfectly allegorical for all the issues of real-world legal system where rich people fail upwards into philanthropy and good favor, by doing the bare token minimum, whereas if a poor guy falls off the wagon once, he's condemned for all time.

Or the difference between a hero and a villain.

The difference is that superhero movies are fictional works meant for an audience that lives in the real world. In the real world there's no such thing as people wearing Vulture suits flying around and wrecking stuff. What there are is philanthropists screwing up and having regular people carry water and suffer for their negligence.

I don't think Peter sees Tony as flawless, just this major adult figure in his life who had a significant impact on both himself and the world, and how he lives up to that. He's a kid, I feel like that's kind of to be expected to some extent.

Actual teenagers of Peter's age, and Peter himself in the Lee-Ditko era, or the Ultimate era, wasn't so supplicant to adult figures in his life. IF Peter's meant to be a zoomer, then we need to compare him to the generation of kids who protested after the Parkland shootings, to the even younger Greta Thunberg.

It just makes no sense that Peter would be totally okay with Tony Stark all the way through as we see him in these movies.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Altruistic from the standpoint of his crew and his family, but from an overall standpoint it wasn't necessarily overall altruistic because of what he was doing and the kind of people he was selling to. By the time of Homecoming I think what he had been doing was far more self-serving.

I don't think the film is trying to demonize Vulture and Mysterio for their grief over Tony Stark, only for how they channel those actions into doing evil to the point where they're willing to murder a teenager for getting in their way. Like, you can understand why they're mad, but that doesn't mean condoning their methods.

Frontier, literally no one here is condoning Vulture and Mysterio's actions or arguing they didn't function as villains. The only thing people have argued is that there needs to be consistency in applying that same level of nuance we apply to Iron Man to other characters. Tony's actions cannot be judged on a spectrum while Vulture and Mysterio's actions are looked at as black-and-white. The possibility of analyzing their actions in a black-and-white way went out the window the second these films worked in Stark-induced socioeconomic issues into their backstories.

The consequences of Tony's actions were unintended while Vulture and Mysterio were much more in-control of what they were doing.

There is no such thing as "unintended" or "accidental" when we are talking about American defense contractors like pre-Iron Man Tony.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Toomes also did it for more altruistic reasons than Tony. That's not to excuse his actions but that also has to be taken into account.

Toomes did what he did not only for himself and his family but for his employees and crewmen. Most of them, Shocker aside, are quite loyal to him and who Toomes rewards in turn.

Body counts and intentions also have to be taken account when grading how evil someone is on a spectrum.

Tony is culpable for far more death in his 40 years as an arms dealer for the greater part of his life, and as the creator of Ultron for that robot's body count.

It is wrong to that only Tony's actions exist on a spectrum of good and bad, but Vulture and Mysterio's actions can be looked at as black-and-white. It reeks of classist undertones and is no different from the way we talk about many disenfranchised people in real life. (I'm not calling you classist Frontier, I'm saying the films give off those undertones whether it was intentional or not).

I don't expect Disney movies, a company founded by a proud union-buster who absolutely didn't think workers had rights and who wanted to build an actual totalitarian dystopia like EPCOT, to be fair to the working classes and the struggling. It's just that I didn't expect them to be so shamelessly propagandistic and allegorical.

I mean Mysterio's story is almost perfectly allegorical for the issues of Stan Lee and Kirby and Ditko, or Walt Disney and his animators. People here outright said that what Stark did wasn't stealing because Mysterio had no given all rights to his patents to Stark Industries...and you see the toxic mentality bleed out in the real world. The movies make Mysterio over-the-top evil and the narrative is "Stan was right to swindle Jack and Steve, so how evil they became on their own." The stuff which some fans here say, "Tony didn't actually say he created that stuff in CIVIL WAR" that's identical to the defenses Stan Lee and Stan's defenders have voiced in his favor. It doesn't fly in the real world and it doesn't fly in fiction.

Frontier, literally no one here is condoning Vulture and Mysterio's actions or arguing they didn't function as villains. The only thing people have argued is that there needs to be consistency in applying that same level of nuance we apply to Iron Man to other characters.

Agreed. For me Homecoming and Far From Home can exist as they are in terms of plot and ending, I don't want the stories to end with Toomes suddenly given a parade or anything. I just want variations in dialogue in terms of how Peter reacts to Tony Stark and how the actions are framed. Like if at the end of Homecoming, Iron Man and Peter discussed Vulture and Tony says self-deprecatingly, "Another proud villain brought to you by Stark industries, it's about the one thing I've been reliable about lately" and Spider-Man is the one who says, "I know what it's like to live with that kind of burden" and mentions his Uncle and origins to Tony, and that brought them closer...that's it, that's all I am asking for.

Tony's actions cannot be judged on a spectrum while Vulture and Mysterio's actions are looked at as black-and-white. The possibility of analyzing their actions in a black-and-white way went out the window the second these films worked in Stark-induced socioeconomic issues into their backstories.

The issue is that the MCU in an effort to emphasize Tony as the protagonist of the series and franchise (presumably it's in RDJ's contract which he got as part of "early adopter perks") keep shoehorning him in roles he didn't have in comics. In the comics it was Hank Pym who created Ultron, not Tony. It was Bestman who screwed over Vulture, and as for Mysterio well he never needed anyone to turn him bad that's all new for the movie. And Wanda and Pietro started out as villains because of Magneto's influence not because of Tony's past as a weapons' manufacturer. I think this kind of shoehorning is unnecessary and leads to weak stories and resolutions, but it also detracts from Tony as a character for him to repeatedly be involved in this. You can't have Peter Parker fail to acknowledge any of this stuff.

[Alan2099]

If you want to argue that Vulture is sympathetic, I can see that. He's still a bad guy but there's a decent enough reason there.

Mysterio, though, he's just straight up bad. He designed something for his boss and didn't like what he boss used it for or called it so he resorted to terrorism and murder. There's no way you can spin Mysterio as anything but a bad guy.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

If you want to argue that Vulture is sympathetic, I can see that. He's still a bad guy but there's a decent enough reason there.

Mysterio, though, he's just straight up bad. He designed something for his boss and didn't like what he boss used it for or called it so he resorted to terrorism and murder. There's no way you can spin Mysterio as anything but a bad guy.

Literally no one is spinning any of these guys as good guys - This is a strawman argument at this point.

As per my previous post, the only thing people have argued is that there needs to be consistency in applying that same level of nuance we apply to Iron Man to other characters. Tony's actions cannot be judged on a spectrum while Vulture and Mysterio's actions are looked at as black-and-white.

I don't expect Disney movies, a company founded by a proud union-buster who absolutely didn't think workers had rights and who wanted to build an actual totalitarian dystopia like EPCOT, to be fair to the working classes and the struggling. It's just that I didn't expect them to be so shamelessly propagandistic and allegorical.

I mean Mysterio's story is almost perfectly allegorical for the issues of Stan Lee and Kirby and Ditko, or Walt Disney and his animators. People here outright said that what Stark did wasn't stealing because Mysterio had no given all rights to his patents to Stark Industries...and you see the toxic mentality bleed out in the real world. The movies make Mysterio over-the-top evil and the narrative is "Stan was right to swindle Jack and Steve, so how evil they became on their own." The stuff which some fans here say, "Tony didn't actually say he created that stuff in CIVIL WAR" that's identical to the defenses Stan Lee and Stan's defenders have voiced in his favor. It doesn't fly in the real world and it doesn't fly in fiction.

Agreed. For me Homecoming and Far From Home can exist as they are in terms of plot and ending, I don't want the stories to end with Toomes suddenly given a parade or anything. I just want variations in dialogue in terms of how Peter reacts to Tony Stark and how the actions are framed. Like if at the end of Homecoming, Iron Man and Peter discussed Vulture and Tony says self-deprecatingly, "Another proud villain brought to you by Stark industries, it's about the one thing I've been reliable about lately" and Spider-Man is the one who says, "I know what it's like to live with that kind of burden" and mentions his Uncle and origins to Tony, and that brought them closer...that's it, that's all I am asking for.

The bolded parts are why I probably won't see the film in theatres, and why I stopped having what are essentially political arguments reskinned as Spider-Man debates. There's only so much you can take before it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth and you don't want to see any more of it.

See, I don't even think the issues brought up with MCU Spider-Man can be considered 'fan complaints'. If you ask me, they're things everyone should be upset about on principle. I'm not a diehard Captain America fan, but I would be put off on principle if Cap's next film portrayed him as someone who uncritically admires the state (Cap uncritically admiring the state makes about as much sense as Spider-Man uncritically admiring rich business types). The same goes for a Woman Woman film with sexist undertones, or if a Black Panther film had racist undertones. These examples would all be the equivalent of a Spider-Man with ageist and classist undertones to him, but the latter isn't seen that way and it's frustrating.

MCU Spider-Man is to Spider-Man essentially what Cold War Silver Age Superman was to Joe and Jerry's Superman - a character stripped of what he was about and turned into literally the opposite by corporate suits. Like, it hasn't exactly become the default take on Spider-Man like Cold War Superman did for a while, and he doesn't evoke the same "feel good" emotions that Cold War Superman did. But in terms of how he functions, that's essentially what this Spider-Man is.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Mysterio, though, he's just straight up bad. He designed something for his boss and didn't like what he boss used it for or called it so he resorted to terrorism and murder. There's no way you can spin Mysterio as anything but a bad guy.

It's irrelevant. The fact is that in the real world a dude in a fishbowl helmet armed with holograms isn't an issue (not anytime soon) but a corporation screwing over the patents and IP of its employees and abusing and mistreating them is a legit thing that happens.

If the movie wanted to trade in the spectacle of Fishbowl Dude Guy as someone for the hero to punch without any guilt or bad feelings whatsoever, they can do so without doing the latter. The comics were perfectly fine with Mysterio as a somewhat absurd and goofy s--thead (as he's portrayed by Leah Williams and Spencer currently) who at times is menacing but is mostly absurd.

The moment you make the bad guy into an employee who had his patents and creations taken and passed as the work of someone else, it's irrelevant how the movie frames his action. The same applies to Vulture.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

See, I don't even think the issues brought up with MCU Spider-Man can be considered 'fan complaints'. If you ask me, they're things everyone should be upset about on principle. I'm not a diehard Captain America fan, but I would be put off on principle if Cap's next film portrayed him as someone who uncritically admires the state (Cap uncritically admiring the state makes about as much sense as Spider-Man uncritically admiring rich business types). The same goes for a Woman Woman film with sexist undertones, or if a Black Panther film had racist undertones. These examples would all be the equivalent of a Spider-Man with ageist and classist undertones to him, but the latter isn't seen that way and it's frustrating.

Agreed.

MCU Spider-Man is to Spider-Man essentially what Cold War Silver Age Superman was to Joe and Jerry's Superman - a character stripped of what he was about and turned into literally the opposite by corporate suits. Like, it hasn't exactly become the default take on Spider-Man like Cold War Superman did for a while, and he doesn't evoke the same "feel good" emotions that Cold War Superman did. But in terms of how he functions, that's essentially what this Spider-Man is.

Great comparison. MCU Spider-Man (and if we're being honest Post-OMD Spider-Man) are inversions. Cold War Superman is a proponent of patriarchy, the good kind American father for the Jimmy Olsens to gush up and admire while also making independent women like Lois and Lana, who don't stay in the kitchen, into harpies obsessed with getting into his pants. Spider-Man's problem is that he's infantilized. An Infantarchy if you will. Where he's constantly undermined and demeaned in the BND run, in Slott's run, and in the MCU (and also the Disney cartoons) as an inferior version of all that defined him in his classic representative era. So you have a kind of unravelling and denuding of the character and all that he represents.
--Spider-Man was the first teenage hero who was independent, and his own man, who was as capable as any other solo hero. Now he's sidekick to Mr. Stark and others.
-- Spider-Man was a working-class hero. Now he goes Oliver Twist like with a bowl at hand to billionaire daddies and go "please sir can I have more".
-- Spider-Man in the comics was empathetic even to villains and the strugglings of the working poor who got screwed over, even the ones like Vulture who got turned bad. In the movie he blatantly takes the side of the rich a--hole who screwed over Toomes.

[Kaitou D. Kid]

Great comparison. MCU Spider-Man (and if we're being honest Post-OMD Spider-Man) are inversions. Cold War Superman is a proponent of patriarchy, the good kind American father for the Jimmy Olsens to gush up and admire while also making independent women like Lois and Lana, who don't stay in the kitchen, into harpies obsessed with getting into his pants. Spider-Man's problem is that he's infantilized. An Infantarchy if you will. Where he's constantly undermined and demeaned in the BND run, in Slott's run, and in the MCU (and also the Disney cartoons) as an inferior version of all that defined him in his classic representative era. So you have a kind of unravelling and denuding of the character and all that he represents.
--Spider-Man was the first teenage hero who was independent, and his own man, who was as capable as any other solo hero. Now he's sidekick to Mr. Stark and others.
-- Spider-Man was a working-class hero. Now he goes Oliver Twist like with a bowl at hand to billionaire daddies and go "please sir can I have more".
-- Spider-Man in the comics was empathetic even to villains and the strugglings of the working poor who got screwed over, even the ones like Vulture who got turned bad. In the movie he blatantly takes the side of the rich a--hole who screwed over Toomes.

See, I don't even know if Post-OMD can be labeled this much of an inversion. That may have been true under Slott, who turned him incompetent and showed contempt for him being poor, but writers like Spencer and Zdarksy have more-or-less written him normally minus him being married. His crossovers outside of post-OMD stories haven't been too bad either (like in AvX or Zdarksy's Daredevil). OMD being as problematic as it is, MCU Spider-Man is an anomaly even if we compare him only to the 616 Spider-Man of the past 13 years.

To my knowledge, the only other version of Spider-Man to be this much of an anomaly was the one from the Disney cartoons. They more or less adapted that version but with Tony as the main mentor being uncritically admired instead of Fury.

I never cared about the Disney cartoons being like that because they were so obscure. On the other hand, film is the main medium through which general audiences get exposure to superheroes, and the MCU has a certain level of credibility to it. When the MCU Spider-Man decides to copy the cartoons, there can be more consequences to that than from when the cartoons did it.

[Frontier]

The point is that Toomes spent the majority of his adult life as a law-abiding honest citizen without a criminal record then thanks to Stark negligence he got radicalized into supervillainy using his own box of scraps. With Stark he spent the first 40 years d--king around and selling weapons to the shadiest people not caring who got in the way (and as WandaVision's last episode revealed, his weapons were so powerful that actual magic power was needed to survive it).

Toomes wasn't radicalized, he made his own choices because of his circumstances. He wasn't forced into it or indoctrinated, it was his own choice to do what he did.

Tony was confronted with the reality of what he did and then made the decision to do better.

Why is that Tony gets to screw around for 40 years with all his wealth and resources and yet we are supposed to give him a pass when he ends up on the other end of his own weapons, while we aren't supposed to give any empathy and understanding for a guy who followed the law all his life until the law spat in his face? The issue is class. I mean this entire Toomes and Tony issue in this fan circle where the movie insists that he's some kind of monster is almost perfectly allegorical for all the issues of real-world legal system where rich people fail upwards into philanthropy and good favor, by doing the bare token minimum, whereas if a poor guy falls off the wagon once, he's condemned for all time.

I don't think it's a matter of not empathizing, it's just a matter of seeing how two different men reacted to hardship in two different ways.

The movie doesn't insist Toomes is some kind of monster even when he threatens to murder a teenager and his entire family for getting in his way.

The difference is that superhero movies are fictional works meant for an audience that lives in the real world. In the real world there's no such thing as people wearing Vulture suits flying around and wrecking stuff. What there are is philanthropists screwing up and having regular people carry water and suffer for their negligence.

There's only so much you can bring of the real world into Superhero fiction though.

Actual teenagers of Peter's age, and Peter himself in the Lee-Ditko era, or the Ultimate era, wasn't so supplicant to adult figures in his life. IF Peter's meant to be a zoomer, then we need to compare him to the generation of kids who protested after the Parkland shootings, to the even younger Greta Thunberg.

It just makes no sense that Peter would be totally okay with Tony Stark all the way through as we see him in these movies.

All teenagers are different. I'm not seeing Peter's MCU characterization is perfect, just looking at it in the context of how he's depicted in the films.

Frontier, literally no one here is condoning Vulture and Mysterio's actions or arguing they didn't function as villains. The only thing people have argued is that there needs to be consistency in applying that same level of nuance we apply to Iron Man to other characters. Tony's actions cannot be judged on a spectrum while Vulture and Mysterio's actions are looked at as black-and-white. The possibility of analyzing their actions in a black-and-white way went out the window the second these films worked in Stark-induced socioeconomic issues into their backstories.

I'd say there's enough nuance in that they have deeper motivations than just being your average Supervillain to begin with, it's just when their actions willingly endanger innocent people because of the choices they made that it becomes black-and-white.

There is no such thing as "unintended" or "accidental" when we are talking about American defense contractors like pre-Iron Man Tony.

I thought we were talking about post-IM Tony.

Toomes did what he did not only for himself and his family but for his employees and crewmen. Most of them, Shocker aside, are quite loyal to him and who Toomes rewards in turn.

Of course, Toomes ended up vaporizing one of them, so...

Tony is culpable for far more death in his 40 years as an arms dealer for the greater part of his life, and as the creator of Ultron for that robot's body count.

And the fact that he stopped after realizing the weight of what he was doing doesn't matter? Or that no one could have foreseen Ultron ending up the way he did?

I don't expect Disney movies, a company founded by a proud union-buster who absolutely didn't think workers had rights and who wanted to build an actual totalitarian dystopia like EPCOT, to be fair to the working classes and the struggling. It's just that I didn't expect them to be so shamelessly propagandistic and allegorical.

I don't think the writers, Feige, Sony, or Disney were really thinking that far into it.

I mean Mysterio's story is almost perfectly allegorical for the issues of Stan Lee and Kirby and Ditko, or Walt Disney and his animators. People here outright said that what Stark did wasn't stealing because Mysterio had no given all rights to his patents to Stark Industries...and you see the toxic mentality bleed out in the real world. The movies make Mysterio over-the-top evil and the narrative is "Stan was right to swindle Jack and Steve, so how evil they became on their own." The stuff which some fans here say, "Tony didn't actually say he created that stuff in CIVIL WAR" that's identical to the defenses Stan Lee and Stan's defenders have voiced in his favor. It doesn't fly in the real world and it doesn't fly in fiction.

I think it's more Quentin Beck is obsessed with attention and validation, and anything less than that drives him up the wall and insane.

Agreed. For me Homecoming and Far From Home can exist as they are in terms of plot and ending, I don't want the stories to end with Toomes suddenly given a parade or anything. I just want variations in dialogue in terms of how Peter reacts to Tony Stark and how the actions are framed. Like if at the end of Homecoming, Iron Man and Peter discussed Vulture and Tony says self-deprecatingly, "Another proud villain brought to you by Stark industries, it's about the one thing I've been reliable about lately" and Spider-Man is the one who says, "I know what it's like to live with that kind of burden" and mentions his Uncle and origins to Tony, and that brought them closer...that's it, that's all I am asking for.

I think there should definitely have been more self-reflection regarding Tony's part in what happened with Toomes than what we got in the movie.

The issue is that the MCU in an effort to emphasize Tony as the protagonist of the series and franchise (presumably it's in RDJ's contract which he got as part of "early adopter perks") keep shoehorning him in roles he didn't have in comics. In the comics it was Hank Pym who created Ultron, not Tony. It was Bestman who screwed over Vulture, and as for Mysterio well he never needed anyone to turn him bad that's all new for the movie. And Wanda and Pietro started out as villains because of Magneto's influence not because of Tony's past as a weapons' manufacturer. I think this kind of shoehorning is unnecessary and leads to weak stories and resolutions, but it also detracts from Tony as a character for him to repeatedly be involved in this. You can't have Peter Parker fail to acknowledge any of this stuff.

Adaptions usually alter and streamline stuff for the sake of the story. Like how the Big Man and OsCorp were responsible for 90% of Spider-Man's Rogues Gallery in Spectacular.

[Arsenal]

You mean to tell me that Peter looked up to a guy who had a gift, paid a price for selfishly using said gift and afterwards decided to put their lives at risk in order to use it for good? Oh, and said guy also just so happened to save his city from an alien invasion?
Nope, can't possibly see where it might have came from

At this point I'm not even sure what y'all are even arguing anymore. Bird boy had himself a guy who could reverse engineer alien tech and decided to create weapons instead of literally anything else yet Stark's the one responsible because he "radicalized" him?Bet he killed Uncle Ben too. The bastard smh

I'm not even that big of a Iron Man fan but some of y'all in here acting like he's the only one responsible for anything thats ever happened in the MCU

[Kaitou D. Kid]

I'd say there's enough nuance in that they have deeper motivations than just being your average Supervillain to begin with, it's just when their actions willingly endanger innocent people because of the choices they made that it becomes black-and-white.

Wrongdoing tied to socioeconomic reasons are never black-and-white even when the person is horrendous. Toomes and Beck can be the worst people in the world, and Peter's blind admiration of Tony would still be problematic.

Judgments of morality and accountability simply don't work the way Homecoming and Far From Home want us to think they do. I can acknowledge the Nazis as pure evil and still acknowledge the socioeconomic conditions that gave rise to them and the crimes committed by the Allies.

I thought we were talking about post-IM Tony.

We are talking about everything. But even post-IM Tony isn't anything that impressive. Tony for most of the MCU has been extremely negligent and has had a massive ego that has put people at harm. His actions in Age of Ultron would at best be considered manslaughter, which he would be tried for in real life. Infinity War and the beginning of Endgame go as far as to argue that he was Earth's Thanos.

None of this is information inferred. All the Iron Man and Avengers movies (plus Civil War) explicitly talk about this. Tony's entire character arc in Endgame works only due to this.

I'm not sure why we have to deny basic common-sense assertions of who Tony Stark was throughout these films just so this take on Spider-Man can work and make sense. I want it to work and for it to make sense as much as you do, but sadly it doesn't.