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BrianWilly posted:I've recently been made aware of the fact that some people genuinely thought Natasha's "Shall we play a game?" line to Steve was meant to reference Saw instead of Wargames. Its me. I'm some people that thought that.
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May 3, 2014 22:42
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Hbomberguy posted:Something can work (or 'function') even if the film doesn't endorse it. The point isn't that it doesn't work, but that even if it did, it shouldn't be used because it's immoral and wrong. You also often see this sort of liberal apologetics with respect to the issue of torture: that it doesn't produce useful information and does not make us safer; veiling the actual endorsement of the system that produces torture and the act of torture itself.
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May 3, 2014 22:46
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3D works if a film is shot for it. That's basically what it's come down to for me- Gravity, Hugo, Avatar etc. all make great use of it, your average post conversion does not.
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May 3, 2014 23:00
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Danger posted:You also often see this sort of liberal apologetics with respect to the issue of torture: that it doesn't produce useful information and does not make us safer; veiling the actual endorsement of the system that produces torture and the act of torture itself. "If brutalising and mutilating human beings worked, we would do it!" gently caress off! gently caress off! AAAAAAAAGH
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May 3, 2014 23:02
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At the same time, the "but it works!" argument has enough appeal to the public at large that it's worth pointing out when that assertion is an outright lie.
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May 3, 2014 23:05
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Hbomberguy posted:Something can work (or 'function') even if the film doesn't endorse it. The point isn't that it doesn't work, but that even if it did, it shouldn't be used because it's immoral and wrong. There's still a very big difference between saying a perfectly ordered society is undesirable and saying a perfectly ordered society is impossible. Cap 2 says the former, but not the latter. Hence, eliminating Hydra and joining Stark is presented as an acceptably happy ending (even though Stark is Hydra). Like I wrote earlier, it's extremely symptomatic that the film presents a false dichotomy between state capitalism and libertarian free-market capitalism. It's also symptomatic that, in this dichotomy, it can only present the state as a genocidal death machine. Contrast Cap 2 with Elysium, where the drones are also caretakers: police, doctors.... This fear of state power is undoubtedly why the film evokes Stalin's Russia, with Bucky. Cap 2 cannot conceive of radical egalitarianism, anti-capitalistic emancipatory struggle, or an efficient state apparatus that provides a base for freedom. Elysium and Man Of Steel accomplish this - as does Cap 1 - so there's no real excuse.
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May 3, 2014 23:22
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quote:Cap 2 says the former, but not the latter. Hence, eliminating Hydra and joining Stark is presented as an acceptably happy ending (even though Stark is Hydra). Did you ever say anything about what it means that Hydra tried to kill Hydra in its attempts to create a world ordered by Hydra?
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May 3, 2014 23:24
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RBA Starblade posted:Did you ever say anything about what it means that Hydra wanted to kill Hydra? It's a false conflict, like Democrat vs. Republican. If you've seen Elysium, there's President Patel, the 'Democrat' politician who's like "y'know, maybe we should be a little less oppressive to our slaves." He's superficially opposed to the 'Republican' villains, but he's still down with the slavery and stands in the way of progressive struggle. In this film, President Patel is presented as the hero.
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May 3, 2014 23:42
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Hollismason posted:Eh It'd be nice if they showcased Captain American's mental abilities a little more, he's super intelligent as well. Not like a genius but he can memorize maps from just a glance and read at probably the highest level possible. Yeah a few shots of cap looking at maps or reading really fast would have pushed this movie into solid 10 territory for me.
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May 4, 2014 01:21
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Skrill.exe posted:Yeah a few shots of cap looking at maps or reading really fast would have pushed this movie into solid 10 territory for me. I guess to be fair, they did that in the first film when he memorizes the location of every Hydra base after seeing a map for only a few seconds.
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May 4, 2014 01:26
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Has there ever been another major movie that featured a mutiny within the U.S. military?
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May 4, 2014 02:35
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Baron Bifford posted:3D has never worked for me. For some reason I have never experienced the sensation of depth that everyone else raves about, even though I have two functional eyes. The last time I was impressed by a 3D film was when I saw a tech demo at an amusement park, wherein they used really cheap techniques like poking the camera lens with a finger. Maybe there's something wrong with my brain. If it makes you feel better, I experience this same thing. 3D also always seems blurry and out of focus to me. As I understand it, this movie wasn't filmed in 3d, so it's not really worth it as it doesn't add much. I saw it in both 2d and 3d and didn't notice much of a difference, besides the blurriness that I always get with 3d.
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May 4, 2014 02:48
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Baron Porkface posted:Has there ever been another major movie that featured a mutiny within the U.S. military? The Rock.
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May 4, 2014 03:08
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I really have to wonder how the 3D effect depends on the way peoples brains are used to watching movies. A traditional film has a pretty slow framerate, but the action is smooth because of the motion blur and the way our brains interpolate motion in the series of still images. The modern methods of 3D work by using a higher framerate to trick the brain, under the assumption that the brain will want to interpolate the information as it would with a normal movie. People who watch a lot of movies and play a lot of console games might get a better benefit from the 3D effect. I have spent probably hundreds of hours playing quake 3 at 125 frames per second. 3D movies seem very stuttery to me, and I can't help but wonder if it's because my brain is prepared for the higher framerate and the trick doesn't work as well.
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May 4, 2014 03:10
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Snak posted:The modern methods of 3D work by using a higher framerate to trick the brain, under the assumption that the brain will want to interpolate the information as it would with a normal movie. I'm not sure that is correct. HFR versions of the film would be the only ones with a higher framerate, and the vast majority of showings are not HFR.
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May 4, 2014 03:45
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DFu4ever posted:I'm not sure that is correct. HFR versions of the film would be the only ones with a higher framerate, and the vast majority of showings are not HFR. I'm actually referring to RealD 3D technology which alternately projects left-eye and right-eye frames at a rate of 144 fps. The idea is that this is so fast that your brain will, with the help of the 3D glasses, parse it as 3D vision. I am suggesting that this may not have the desired effect on a brain that is accustom to parsing 125 fps as a cohesive 2D representation of motion.
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May 4, 2014 05:39
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's a false conflict, like Democrat vs. Republican. If you've seen Elysium, there's President Patel, the 'Democrat' politician who's like "y'know, maybe we should be a little less oppressive to our slaves." He's superficially opposed to the 'Republican' villains, but he's still down with the slavery and stands in the way of progressive struggle. Okay, but I was asking about what you think about Hydra trying to kill Tony Stark, or rather, why you think Hydra was trying to kill Hydra, in Hydra's attempts to control and order the world in accordance with Hydra's philosophy, not about how Captain America failed to instigate global communist revolution. Do you think Hydra would eventually obliterate itself to complete its plans?
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May 4, 2014 06:01
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Hydra is not a unified, cooperative force. Hydra is an ideology, and every branch has their own perspective. Ideologies tend to favor those who espouse them. Ideologies that do not, do no last long... Tony Stark's ideology is similar to that of Hydra's. Even if Stark is a member of Hydra, he is also a threat to any member of Hydra who may be more influential... It doesn't matter if Tony Stark were a straight up "Hail Hydra!" member, it still makes sense for Zola's algorithm to target him because Zola's algorithm is an analogy for the criteria fascists used to differentiate themselves from "the other". SHIELD wishes to use a different algorithm, but the same logic ( AKA Fascism ), but is told off by Cap. A major theme in the MCU is blindness to our own faults. Thor, Tony Stark, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and Nick Fury all exhibit this. Hydra isn't "trying to kill Hydra"! "Hydra" isn't really self aware. Hydra is a cancer, spreading it's fascist distrust far and wide. Hydra wants you afraid, at home.
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May 4, 2014 06:39
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"If they cut off one head, two more shall take it's place." Red Skull stood for pure, unfettered capitalism. When he is killed, Hydra re-emerges split between state capitalism and libertarian free-market capitalism. Captain America 2 is actually a thematic sequel to Iron Man 2, elaborating on the battle of Senator Stern vs. Tony Stark. That's to say it's the two heads attacking eachother, futilely.
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May 4, 2014 06:52
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Baron Porkface posted:Has there ever been another major movie that featured a mutiny within the U.S. military? Does Crimson Tide count?
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May 4, 2014 15:09
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:Red Skull stood for pure, unfettered capitalism.
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May 4, 2014 15:33
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Halloween Jack posted:You've written a lot of words without establishing this in the slightest The context seems to be the the Industrial Revolution definition of capital (as opposed to a country specific type like American or Chinese.) Accumulation of power/potential through technology and production. Stuff like cosmic cube for energy, surveillance and assassination for management. Power is the objective function. Hydra the organization is built for this goal - freedom and human welfare is irrelevant to reaching the full potential of power. And in terms of SHIELD, you see welfare and freedom can be discarded when they're not useful to the final goal.
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May 4, 2014 16:21
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Baron Bifford posted:3D has never worked for me. For some reason I have never experienced the sensation of depth that everyone else raves about, even though I have two functional eyes. The last time I was impressed by a 3D film was when I saw a tech demo at an amusement park, wherein they used really cheap techniques like poking the camera lens with a finger. Maybe there's something wrong with my brain. Whatup unable to discern 3d buddy. In fact watching movies in 3d tends to give me impressive headaches despite the fact that I rarely notice the '3d' bits, so I don't miss paying extra for tickets much.
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May 4, 2014 16:34
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Halloween Jack posted:You've written a lot of words without establishing this in the slightest Red Skull is a figure of pure Death Drive. What do you think that means?
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May 4, 2014 18:08
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Capitalism is bad (we agree here) and Red Skull is bad (ditto) therefore Red Skull represents Capitalism (derpderpderp no).
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May 4, 2014 19:11
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Halloween Jack posted:Capitalism is bad (we agree here) and Red Skull is bad (ditto) therefore Red Skull represents Capitalism (derpderpderp no). The standard tactic of capitalist realism in relation to eco-apocalypse is to work with the stupid ingenuity of the Symbolic. Here we might think of Lacan’s famous example of Holbein’s Ambassadors. Capitalist realism keeps attention on the ephemeral plenitude of wealth and social status, containing the nullity of ecological catastrophe as an anamorphic blot at the edge of vision. It has the advantage that such an operation is already routinely at the level of individual psychology in respect of death, whose repression no doubt one of the ‘falsities’ that, according to Nietzsche, is necessary for life. So one tactic is to stop imagining eco-catastrophe and Realise it – which is not to say bring it about, but to act as if it has already happened. This is the intriguing suggestion from Jean-Pierre Dupuy which Zizek takes up, most recently in First As Tragedy, Then As Farce. The only way to prevent the catastrophe, Zizek and Dupuy suggest, is to project ourselves into the post-apocalyptic situation and think what we would have done to have avoided it. In other words, we must act as if what is in fact the case – the inevitability of catastrophe – is the case. The simulation, the as-if, is necessary in part because the Real, here as elsewhere, cannot be confronted directly, and can only emerge in the form of a fiction. The shift to the question of ‘what would we have done’ has the benefit of circumventing the capitalist realist/ postmodernist foreclosure of the old modernist-Leninist question, ‘What is to be done.’ An anti-capitalism need not be imagined any more than the end of the world has to be: it is Realized in the encounter with the fictional-virtual-Real of inevitable apocalypse. Here we can turn to a rather less august example of fictional apocalypse than either Children Of Men or Atwood’s novels – the much derided Terminator: Salvation. The interest of this latest Terminator film was the reversal of perspective – we are not now in the pre-apocalyptic near future, but in the ruins post-apocalyptic war, after Judgement Day, in which Skynet has achieved sentience and the Terminators stalk the remains of human resistance. The film’s power derives from of its rendering of Earth as a zone fully militarized and desolated by cybernetic war: an artificial inferno built out of dysphoric Black Metal negative eschatology, cargo-culted Christology and numerous other dystopias reprocessed as artificial nightmare. Here, CGI finally codes for CyberGothic Alongside Blade Runner and Gibson’s Neuromancer, the Terminator films provided some of the fictional resources from which Nick Land constructed his extraordinary fiction-theory texts of the 90s. Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy + Deleuze and Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia remixed to remove all traces of anti-capitalism and spliced with the inorganic velocities and psychedelic cyber-topologies of Jungle. Accelerationism as inorganic anti-inhumanism: unsheathed Capital as implacable, rapacious death drive; Capital with its mask of humanity torn off, machines not as reified instrumental reason, but as a non-instrumental non-reason, the exorbitant anti-teleology of Capital’s purposiveness without final purpose de-terraforming the planet into a techno-Bochsian scorched earth unfit for human habitation. Capital as Real = Death, with the Terminator machine death’s head as the technological upgrade of Holbein’s anamorphic skull - artificial intelligence as artificial death - not now reduced to a cuttlefish smear blotting the Symbolic, but looming to the fore in a landscape in which not only human beings but the Symbolic itself is close to total extinction, as asignifying data transfer obsolesces . The imaginary-Real of Capital as the automatic autocracy of dead labour, dead production performed by that which never lived, its products the agents of death, for which there is no possible consumer. And, indeed, no-one buys or sells much in Terminator: Salvation, just as Land’s vision of Capital as the triumph of death would seem to anticipate an eventual future in which there are no humans left to exploit. Humans are only an impediment to the full Realization of Capital as machinic-fecund death, and here we are as it were confronting Capital’s own fantasy about itself – that it would be possible to remove all the fetters and achieve a kind of total productive capacity, if only it weren’t for pesky humans. Here, we confront one of the ambiguities of accelarationism: by the sheer totality of its negativity, the triumph of death changes signs and becomes a pure positivity. Another way in which Land’s work and the Terminator fictional system converge – and here we return to Dupuy and Zizek’s post-apocalypse Now temporality, but seen from a very different perspective - is on the question of time-bending. If Capital=A Death is the anti-climatic terminal of human history, it is only because the inhuman future was capable of acting on the past to potentiate its own coming. As Land puts in “Meltdown”: "Convergent waves signal singularities, registering the influence of the future upon its past. Tomorrow can take care of itself. K-tactics is not a matter of building the future, but of dismantling the past. It assembles itself by charting and escaping the technical-neurochemical deficiency conditions for linear-progressive palaeo-domination time, and discovers that the future as virtuality is acessible now, according to a mode of machinic adjacency that securitized social reality is compelled to repress. This is not remotely a question of hope, aspiration or prophecy, but of communications engineering; connecting with the efficient intensive singularities, and releasing them from constriction within linear-historical development." This is the circuit in which anti-capitalism must intervene. The war must be fought from and on the desert of the virtual-Real apocalypse. One tactic could be to explode the fantasy of unsheathed productive capacities. This involves taking the anti- of anti-capitalism seriously, as itself the sufficient condition for the emergence of a new political-economic organisation. The embrace of the anti- would become a return of a negativity which late capitalism’s compulsory positivity is compelled to suppress at many levels. What this must also be about is a struggle over libido – Land’s texts are soaked in all the inorganic libido that Atwood’s novels, for instance, can only oppose with pious organicisim. An anti-organic anti-capitalism – what might that look like?
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May 4, 2014 19:34
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So what does Stan Lee getting fired mean in this parable?
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May 4, 2014 19:44
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Boy, Nick Land has changed a lot since he wrote about that, hasn't he?
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May 4, 2014 19:57
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Both Nick Land and Reza Negarestani's work provide crucial contexts to understanding the glut of these techno- terror-myths embodied in the american superhero narrative.
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May 4, 2014 20:21
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SMG, curious... Context: There is a multi-verse and it is collapsing. Earth is at the center of this. An alternate Earth enters a universe and collides with the other, destroying both universes. The Marvel Illuminati, a secret council of key heroes of Earth, have to deal with these incursions and unravel the mystery behind them. Thus far the only solution has been to push a world back to its universe and away or to destroy the other Earth. There is nothing else they have found will work. The only tool they had to push an Earth back to its own Universe without casualty is destroyed, the Infinity Gems, because they could not handle the strain and they have nothing else. It was one time use. And if the other Earth is inhabited, both sides will fight to save their respective worlds and universes if they must. This will be right up your alley, you should read the books. New Avengers and Avengers by Jonathon Hickman. Infinity is an event that happens along the way of his run.  You were talking about the divide between Captain America and Stark, or how there should be one, well this is exactly the tone in the comics. They work together but are often at odds.
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May 4, 2014 20:41
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The Power of God wielded by Man
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May 5, 2014 06:10
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Lightanchor posted:The Power of God wielded by Man  This reminds me. Captain America is one of the very very few who is worthy enough to lift Thor's hammer. The others being Beta Ray Bill, Superman and Wonder Woman. What does that say, SMG? I suppose you have to consider what makes Thor worthy in the first place and who he is, which gets into the politics and interpretations and motivations of Asgard and Odin. And then extrapolate to Captain America and Superman.
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May 5, 2014 06:47
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The mechanic's of Thor's hammer is an endorsement of the "Divine Right of Kings". It can only be lifted by those who are inherently superior. Technology cannot elevate one to the stature of royal blood. That's why the Hulk can't lift it: Bruce Banner is a commoner. Thor and Wonderwoman are both literally royalty, Beta Ray Bill is ??, and Cap is the closest thing America could have to royalty.
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May 5, 2014 06:54
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Snak posted:The mechanic's of Thor's hammer is an endorsement of the "Divine Right of Kings". It can only be lifted by those who are inherently superior. Technology cannot elevate one to the stature of royal blood. That's why the Hulk can't lift it: Bruce Banner is a commoner. Thor and Wonderwoman are both literally royalty, Beta Ray Bill is ??, and Cap is the closest thing America could have to royalty. Nice one. Superman is...well Superman, the ubermensch (who was originally created as a villain) and is hailed as the ultimate hero and loved by the world. Wonder Woman represents the Amazons to the world and has lead the Justice League. Except that Beta Ray Bill though is a commoner alien whose people were destroyed but was worthy to lift the hammer. Although he was augmented so in a way he was chosen for a greater purpose. Odin orchestrated a fight between Thor and Bill that Bill I believe won and Odin saw fit to forge a hammer specifically for him with similar powers.   Also there's this one.  EDIT: quote:#3 Posted by Satyrquaze (4542 posts) - 4 years, 6 months ago - Show Bio And Magni, Thor's son and God of Strength from an alternate timeline. K. EDIT 2: AH HA! Here's one that's a commoner for the most part. 
Gatts fucked around with this message at 07:25 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 07:08
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Beta Ray Bill was drafted in much the same way Captain America was, albeit with much more pageantry. They were looking for the greatest warriors of their civilization to protect them as they evacuated their homeworld, so they staged games to find the physically strongest (thousands failed), then of the winners of those games were subjected to mentally exhausting simulations to determine the fitness of their minds (many were driven insane in the attempt), then he alone survived the excruciating process of genetic engineering to give him a monstrous new body assembled from the material of the most ferocious animals on his world. Rank-wise, he's the sole guardian of his people, who were put into suspended animation; he's aided only by his starship's computer and such allies as he can persuade to his cause.
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May 5, 2014 07:12
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you could always just draw a picture of whatever character you wanted holding thor's hammer and pretend it's canon. I always find it amusing that no one could lift thor's hammer and that being able to do so indicated some kind of moral purity or what have you, when the norse god Thor tended to blunder into trouble and then subsequently blunder his way out of it. He liked to drink a lot. One time a giant tricked mjolnir away from him, so loki suggested thor put on a wedding dress and attempt to convince the giant that thor is freya and "freya" wants to marry him. At the wedding party, Thor, Son of Odin, dressed as the goddess Freya, asked to hold Thor's hammer (This was after the blushing bride had astounded everyone with her appetite for meat and booze - she ate an entire oxen and drank three casks of mead) and when it was placed into her lap, Thor tore off his disguise and killed everyone there. Does this sound like something that Captain America would do? Maybe the hammer just detects an ability to party extremely hard, far beyond human limits. I bet Andrew W.K. could pick it up.
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May 5, 2014 07:54
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Full Battle Rattle posted:you could always just draw a picture of whatever character you wanted holding thor's hammer and pretend it's canon. Is that story something that happened to Marvel's Thor, or the Thor of myth? You do realize they aren't the same person. That said yeah, Thor often acts like an rear end and it's pretty much just the story telling us "no really, he's a Great Man at heart". And using the hammer to justify it.
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May 5, 2014 08:13
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Gatts posted:This reminds me. Captain America is one of the very very few who is worthy enough to lift Thor's hammer. The others being Beta Ray Bill, Superman and Wonder Woman. What does that say, SMG? I suppose you have to consider what makes Thor worthy in the first place and who he is, which gets into the politics and interpretations and motivations of Asgard and Odin. And then extrapolate to Captain America and Superman. Superman is obviously linked by the sun imagery - the hammer was "forged in the heart of a dying star," just as Superman comes from a planet with a dying red sun. I've written in other threads that Asgard is essentially a Krypton that hasn't destroyed itself yet - the hammer survives from some other system's star. Unlike Superman, then, Thor never 'learned his lesson'. Superman is fighting to prevent Krypton's fate from happening to Earth, while Thor would guide Earth into becoming like Asgard. In Avengers specifically, Asgard serves as a vision of Earth's ideal future - ideal in terms of Marvel's ideological universe. That's why they're given control of the cube (keeping it away from Hydra!) for the happy ending. As for what makes Odin worthy of all this power, I have no idea. Man Of Steel is relentlessly critical of this gold-costumed aristocracy. By making Captain America and Superman into champions of Asgard, though, it implies that Asgard is the culmination of their ideals too. But since when does Captain America fight for a monarchy? It's blatant appropriation of their revolutionary imagery.
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May 5, 2014 08:29
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Snak posted:I'm actually referring to RealD 3D technology which alternately projects left-eye and right-eye frames at a rate of 144 fps. The idea is that this is so fast that your brain will, with the help of the 3D glasses, parse it as 3D vision. I am suggesting that this may not have the desired effect on a brain that is accustom to parsing 125 fps as a cohesive 2D representation of motion. Uh, RealD isn't this sort of 3D. It projects two images onto the screen using polarised light, and your glasses block out one of the two images from reaching each eye. Polarised 3D films are projected at the same framerate as their 2D counterparts; you can make a RealD film that has a high frame rate, but each eye will still receive the full number of frames, not half. It sounds like you're thinking of Active 3D shutter technology, which isn't the same thing.
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May 5, 2014 09:35
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Reveilled posted:Uh, RealD isn't this sort of 3D. It projects two images onto the screen using polarised light, and your glasses block out one of the two images from reaching each eye. Polarised 3D films are projected at the same framerate as their 2D counterparts; you can make a RealD film that has a high frame rate, but each eye will still receive the full number of frames, not half. I genuinely curious about this, because every description I can find online of how ReadD 3D works, says that it uses alternating frames at a rate of 144fps. Do you have a source for this?
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May 5, 2014 14:42
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