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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:He became a person. How'd that work out? What Ultron became is due to circumstances Tony didn't even imagine were possible; something to fault him with for sure, but we're speaking to his intent.
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May 8, 2016 19:32
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TFRazorsaw posted:What Ultron became is due to circumstances Tony didn't even imagine were possible; something to fault him with for sure, but we're speaking to his intent. Speaking to anyone's intent without taking the context and the results into account won't get us far. After all, Hydra argued that they intended to make the world a better place in Winter Soldier, etc etc etc..
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May 8, 2016 19:35
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Speaking to anyone's intent without taking the context and the results into account won't get us far. After all, Hydra argued that they intended to make the world a better place in Winter Soldier, etc etc etc.. Ultron was created by Scarlet Witch loving with Tony's head so he'd destroy the Avengers in his manic guilt - and she almost got what she wanted. Vision is what happens when Tony isn't getting hosed with, and Vision's worked out pretty well so far.
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May 8, 2016 19:38
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Cythereal posted:Vision's worked out pretty well so far. Well apart from that time when he drove Cap away by imprisoning Wanda and nearly killed Rhodey, sure.
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May 8, 2016 19:40
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TFRazorsaw posted:What Ultron became is due to circumstances Tony didn't even imagine were possible; something to fault him with for sure, but we're speaking to his intent. Doesn't he tell the kids at MIT to imagine what's possible? If he's trying to make the world a better place, how does he keep blundering down the wrong path?
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May 8, 2016 19:42
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Well apart from that time when he drove Cap away by imprisoning Wanda and nearly killed Rhodey, sure. You're assuming that first one was the wrong thing to do, which I don't think it was, and accidents and mistakes do happen. This is my biggest frustration with Cap: just about everyone else, you can point to a moment where they hosed up and everyone in-universe agrees they made a mistake or did something bad on accident. Not so Cap - at best, he's divisive (this movie). HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Doesn't he tell the kids at MIT to imagine what's possible? If he's trying to make the world a better place, how does he keep blundering down the wrong path? Because the narrative writers at Marvel seem to enjoy that as a driving source of conflict.
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May 8, 2016 19:43
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:Speaking to anyone's intent without taking the context and the results into account won't get us far. After all, Hydra argued that they intended to make the world a better place in Winter Soldier, etc etc etc.. I'm not ignoring context, that's why I said there was something to fault himself with. Creating a contingency for the day the Avengers can't fight anymore isn't an ignoble goal on its own. Pierce and Hydra's goals had murder as a baseline.
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May 8, 2016 19:43
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Doesn't he tell the kids at MIT to imagine what's possible? If he's trying to make the world a better place, how does he keep blundering down the wrong path? It's almost like he has a bevy of personal flaws that affect his judgement or something.
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May 8, 2016 19:45
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Tony Stark's problem is that he treats his creations in much the same way as Victor Frankenstein, creating them and then moving on and forgetting about them. It always takes him by surprise when the killer deathbot builds itself from the self-replicating machines he left running because he's already thinking about the next thing.
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May 8, 2016 19:47
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TFRazorsaw posted:It's almost like he has a bevy of personal flaws that affect his judgement or something. Why is this treated as a loveable quirk, then? By his own reasoning and agreement to sign the accords, he should be imprisoned. Instead, he's deputized. Why is that?
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May 8, 2016 19:48
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In Ultron's case, he made the mistake of trying to make what he wanted before he understood the mind gem, yeah. He imagined just fine, he just didn't show restraint.
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May 8, 2016 19:49
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why is this treated as a loveable quirk, then? By his own reasoning and agreement to sign the accords, he should be imprisoned. Instead, he's deputized. Why is that? Did you watch the movie? Stark talked with the primary authority in charge and got his explicit permission to have 36 hours. Which is presumably how the Accords were intended to work in the first place. Tony wasn't imprisoned because he didn't violate the Accords. He signed them and worked with the authorities in question. Now if you want to ask why Wakanda is harboring international fugitives who violated the very Accords their late king proposed...
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May 8, 2016 19:53
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TFRazorsaw posted:In Ultron's case, he made the mistake of trying to make what he wanted before he understood the mind gem, yeah. He imagined just fine, he just didn't show restraint. ... which was a pretty heinous act in a world where people fooling with powers they didn't understand directly lead to the creation of The Hulk and The Abomination and also lead to the Cosmic Cube summoning Loki and a Chitauri army. loving around with an Infinity gem was incredibly foolish and almost caused the extinction of the human race.
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May 8, 2016 19:55
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why is this treated as a loveable quirk, then? By his own reasoning and agreement to sign the accords, he should be imprisoned. Instead, he's deputized. Why is that? A loveable quirk? Both Iron Man 3, Ultron, and this movie are about how those things are steadily destroying him. He's not imprisoned because the Accords don't prosecute past mistakes. His confining Wanda is simultaneously valid and hypocritical. By the end of the movie he doesn't seem to believe in them anymore, either. But to say he's done no good, or to say certain creations of his like the Iron Legion are something other than what they are, is disengenuous. Tony Stark's struggle with personal demons and his personal failures is endemic to the character.
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May 8, 2016 19:55
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:... which was a pretty heinous act in a world where people fooling with powers they didn't understand directly lead to the creation of The Hulk and The Abomination and also lead to the Cosmic Cube summoning Loki and a Chitauri army. Uh huh. Which is why I said that it's something he should be faulted for. But I don't see why the basic IDEA of Ultron is heinous.
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May 8, 2016 19:56
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Cythereal posted:Did you watch the movie? Stark talked with the primary authority in charge and got his explicit permission to have 36 hours. Which is presumably how the Accords were intended to work in the first place. Stark is completely responsible for the Sokovia incident. If the Accords are about subordination to laws, accountability and civilian authority, he should certainly not be tasked with enforcing that accord. The problem is that the film skirts around this. If you're comparing stuff to the comics, now's the time. The comics come right out and have the balls to say he has membership in the Illuminati alongside Doctor Doom. The films refuse to acknowledge that he is the prime mover. Cythereal posted:Now if you want to ask why Wakanda is harboring international fugitives who violated the very Accords their late king proposed... Black Panther is in the Illuminati, as well.
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May 8, 2016 19:56
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why is this treated as a loveable quirk, then? By his own reasoning and agreement to sign the accords, he should be imprisoned. Instead, he's deputized. Why is that?
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May 8, 2016 19:57
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TFRazorsaw posted:His confining Wanda is simultaneously valid and hypocritical. .... especially when he probably had some of those SHIELD chameleon masks lying around or similar tech that could have disguised her, rather than just saying "No you can't go out you'll scare people"
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May 8, 2016 19:57
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Kurzon posted:Some, like that black mother and Zemo, blame the Avengers erroneously but they seem to be the minority. In this particular case, how would they be in error?
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May 8, 2016 19:59
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TFRazorsaw posted:He imagined just fine, he just didn't show restraint. billy wilder is quoted as saying, "If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act." the problem is not that tony has a great imagination, but he just fails to exercise due restraint. the problem is his imagination - his utilitarian, rationalist projection of the 'prosperity' or 'peace' he will create which inherently fails to anticipate the most extreme - to him, irrational - consequences. john hammond's problem is not that jurassic park was a good idea, but that he relied too much on automation. you can't think through this one, razor, you have to feel it. the problem is that jurassic park was not a good idea.
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May 8, 2016 20:00
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Stark is completely responsible for the Sokovia incident. If the Accords are about subordination to laws, accountability and civilian authority, he should certainly not be tasked with enforcing that accord. The problem is that the film skirts around this. If you're comparing stuff to the comics, now's the time. The comics come right out and have the balls to say he has membership in the Illuminati alongside Doctor Doom. The films refuse to acknowledge that he is the prime mover. Scarlet Witch is responsible for the Sokovia disaster. She says it herself: she used her psychic powers to drive Stark into a self-destructive mania that would destroy the Avengers. Tony Stark has the clearest sense of personal responsibility to the world of anyone on the Avengers. That sense of responsibility is one of the primary forces of narrative conflict in the Marvel movies - he's a dude trying to save the world because he has the power to take a good shot at it, or at least to make the world a better place than it was previously, and more than one movie has revolved around the consequences of Tony Stark making that attempt but inevitably making mistakes along the way. quote:Black Panther is in the Illuminati, as well. The Illuminati isn't a part of the movie-verse.
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May 8, 2016 20:01
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Black Panther is in the Illuminati, as well. The Illuminati doesn't exist in the MCU.
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May 8, 2016 20:01
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TFRazorsaw posted:The Illuminati doesn't exist in the MCU. It does, it just doesn't have a name. Cythereal posted:Scarlet Witch is responsible for the Sokovia disaster. She says it herself: she used her psychic powers to drive Stark into a self-destructive mania that would destroy the Avengers. The whole point of a comic book futurist superhero is that he tends to create catastrophes that only he can resolve. This is a problem. K. Waste posted:john hammond's problem is not that jurassic park was a good idea, but that he relied too much on automation. you can't think through this one, razor, you have to feel it. the problem is that jurassic park was not a good idea.
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May 8, 2016 20:04
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K. Waste posted:billy wilder is quoted as saying, "If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act." That doesn't seem like it's entirely different from what I was saying. But at some point you have to take into account that Dennis Nedry was a criminal conducting corporate espionage and that Ultron became a being with his own ability to make decisions, goals, and desires. I'm not pretending Tony didn't gently caress up, but let's not act like he's not part of the same comedy of errors as Wanda and Ultron.
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May 8, 2016 20:05
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It does, it just doesn't have a name. Except it doesn't exist. You're assuming malice where there is none. quote:The whole point of a comic book futurist superhero is that he tends to create catastrophes that only he can resolve. This is a problem. And that's not Tony's fault. "The world's narrative hates you and everything you do with the fury of a thousand suns" is not an issue you can hold against the person in question.
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May 8, 2016 20:06
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:It does, it just doesn't have a name. You're gonna need to give me some evidence on this one, man. T'Challa all but states he's gone in a different direction from Tony by the end credits scene. And hell, Black Widow recruited him, not Stark.
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May 8, 2016 20:07
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Cythereal posted:Except it doesn't exist. You're assuming malice where there is none. The Illuminati is not a malicious organization with nefarious goals. It's simply an unaccountable and implicitly excepted horde of power. TFRazorsaw posted:You're gonna need to give me some evidence on this one, man. T'Challa all but states he's gone in a different direction from Tony by the end credits scene. And hell, Black Widow recruited him, not Stark. SHIELD has been disbanded, and all that's left are the various organizations that do what SHIELD does, as if nothing has changed, except they don't talk about it or have flying battleships. The Accords are a surprise to everyone but Tony because you'll notice he never gave up his relationships with the highest level of government. Tony's power and influence plus the sanction of the government and military are SHIELD. HUNDU THE BEAST GOD fucked around with this message at 20:13 on May 8, 2016 |
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May 8, 2016 20:08
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:The Illuminati is not a malicious organization with nefarious goals. It's simply an unaccountable and implicitly excepted horde of power. Which there is zero evidence of existing in the MCU. And Tony's thing is very much not hoarding power. No one's so much as asked him for an Iron Man suit since IM2 (which the whole narrative point of was Tony learning to rely on others in addition to himself) and he's freely given the Avengers all the money, tech, and equipment they need.
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May 8, 2016 20:09
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Yo I'mma do my best to say nice things about this movie, mainly because the most effective vector for saying the not nice things I think about it would be just block quoting HUNDU and SMG for an entire page. In light of that, allow me to start by quoting SMG:SuperMechagodzilla posted:The trick is that the characters are all politically infantile. Steve worries about 'being ordered to do the wrong thing', so his enemy is straightforwardly liberal democracy itself. But of course the characters can never think this, let alone say it. So it becomes a 'personal story'. It's a little more complicated than this! I agree that the movie defaults to the personal because it's hopelessly out of its depth in terms of anything resembling policy, but that's not to say that it ditches the political wholesale - in fact, it makes some surprisingly good-faith efforts to bridge that gap through visual language. In a Marvel movie, of all things! I'm talking about the location cards on the establishing shots here - they're huge, they're sterile, they're occlusive of the landscapes behind them, they evoke the imagery of oversaturated, interchangeable poster design that flattens visual identities. YOU DON'T GET TO 500 MILLION FRIENDS WITHOUT LAGOS - PRESENT DAY and so on. The effect is to render the huge range of locations anonymous and interchangeable, such that who gives a poo poo if we're currently in CLEVELAND specifically, what matters is that the personal is becoming the political by infecting another city Carter brushes that off when she mocks the idea that everyone's seeing the Winter Soldier at their gym, but there's more truth to it than she realizes: the Winter Soldier is in fact in your city, in your gym, in your living room, because one of the core conceits of the movie is that kind of everything-is-connected butterfly effect poo poo wherein an elephant sneezing in Wakanda just killed 11 civilians in Sokovia or whatnot. It's not an accident that this is the movie where civilian casualties come home to roost when the immediately preceding movie was the one where the climax made such a performative affair of minimizing civilian casualties. The ideological debate here has jack poo poo to do with reducing death, and indeed, nobody ever proposes that the UN oversight will result in better training for the Avengers, different parameters within missions to put greater emphasis on avoiding loss of life, anything like that. The victory state for the Sokovia Accords isn't that people stop dying wherever the Avengers go, it's that those deaths become part of a clearer and more overtly purposeful framework, rather than the "I tried my best and now it's my fault and I'm sad but also who can really control these things" area where they currently reside Which brings us back to those location cards, and specifically to their two pointed absences. To the best of my memory, and stop me if I'm wrong here because it'll require me to rethink this part, the Raft doesn't get a location card. The Siberian HYDRA facility doesn't get a title card (at least when we travel to it in present day - I believe it's first introduced as 1991, which, poo poo, that's a whole different kettle of fish and, honestly, its own post). These are not places that need to be infected by that personal-as-political sense of universality, because they're places that already make political statements by their very existence. So even when they're getting their own visually bombastic introductions, they're excluded from that otherwise consistent establishing motif. These are places that are getting silence in their consideration not as an act of simple cowardice like you suggest, "Let's hope nobody notices and distract them with a personal story", but as a much more complex and thoughtful act of cowardice, "These are the things that we will very pointedly, very loudly, be Not Speaking About right now". They are, ultimately, deliberate and pointed exclusions from what the film has visually established as its symbolic order By this point it's probably apparent that I was lying at least a little bit when I said that I wanted to say nice things about the movie. But, in my defense, making that kind of craven-rear end statement through a consistent aesthetic motif is a major step up for the Avengers franchise. Also I really like the foley effects on Cap's shield
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May 8, 2016 20:13
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Snowglobe of Doom posted:.... especially when he probably had some of those SHIELD chameleon masks lying around or similar tech that could have disguised her, rather than just saying "No you can't go out you'll scare people" Wanda's house arrest is not just about public perception or "scaring people". She's considered actually dangerous, and for good reason really.
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May 8, 2016 20:15
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doverhog posted:Wanda's house arrest is not just about public perception or "scaring people". Sure it is. Tony even calls it a PR problem. Which one of them qualifies as "not dangerous"?
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May 8, 2016 20:16
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It's not that long ago that she was working with Ultron, and being able to control *things* with your mind is a step beyond a bow and arrow or a fancy shield.
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May 8, 2016 20:21
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Sure it is. Tony even calls it a PR problem. Which one of them qualifies as "not dangerous"? Tony Stark can leave his suit at home.
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May 8, 2016 20:22
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The personalizing of the story, if anything, draws attention to how the personal affects the political and vice versa. Tony Stark wouldn't be making the decisions he did if he didn't have the trauma of his dead parents (the film specifically links the last day he saw them to his present day brand of showboating philanthropy), Zemo is personally affected by the trauma of his dead family which was brought about by the politics of the Avengers having free reign to build and then fight giant terror robots, which in turn was brought about by Tony's political idea of keeping the world safe from everything everywhere, which in turn is influenced by his personal trauma, etc. Policy has a face. Abstract decisions about UN jurisdiction and the like trickle down to effects on people, and shaping the world people grow up in and the values that they hold. And the politicians who make these decisions are also individuals who have been shaped in turn.
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May 8, 2016 20:24
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TFRazorsaw posted:That doesn't seem like it's entirely different from what I was saying. But at some point you have to take into account that Dennis Nedry was a criminal conducting corporate espionage and that Ultron became a being with his own ability to make decisions, goals, and desires. people were dying long before nedry lifted a corpulent finger. wanda/ultron's subterfuge and fanaticism displaces the problem inherent in utilitarian rationalism onto 'traitors' and 'spies' and whoever so that the enlightened tyrant remains fundamentally inscrutable. (see, The Magic Flute, which also features a witch and a slave turning against their master - basically, Age of Ultron is a compromised, pop art parody of this opera.) this is the thing - by misdirecting criticisms of enlightened tyranny into quibbling over whether guilt is being fairly distributed among all complicit parties, we're actually letting ourselves off the hook for being overcome by the overly simplistic, sanitized power of technological 'progress.' again, we make the problem exclusively about the third act and whether or not is 'measures up' to the first... rather than interrogating whether the first act is good to begin with. the point is not that only tony is guilty, or that if steve simply broke off a bottle in his jugular, we'd have all been spared, we'd see 'real peace,' etc. i'll let dr. malcolm take it from here: Michael Crichton posted:"We can save ourselves a great deal of trouble," Malcolm said. "I'll explain it for you now."
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May 8, 2016 20:31
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Oh, we're talking about the book version of Jurassic Park? Yeah, I'm not interested in what a guy who invalidates his own premise at the end of his second novel by saying "science is always changing, don't listen to Ian Malcolm, his words have no meaning to us everyday folks" has to say about the ethics of progress.
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May 8, 2016 20:36
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doverhog posted:It's not that long ago that she was working with Ultron It's not that long ago he made Ultron. quote:and being able to control *things* with your mind is a step beyond a bow and arrow or a fancy shield. But about a million below getting bored and occasionally making a massive army of robot peacekeepers. TFRazorsaw posted:Tony Stark can leave his suit at home. But he never seems to, does he?
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May 8, 2016 20:37
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HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:Why is this treated as a loveable quirk, then? By his own reasoning and agreement to sign the accords, he should be imprisoned. Instead, he's deputized. Why is that? Slick shifting of the goalposts.
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May 8, 2016 20:37
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Boogaleeboo posted:But he never seems to, does he? We're talking about a mob of people who draw an arbitrary distinction and would derive poorly made decisions from it, thus creating a situation where they and Wanda are at risk. This happens in real life. Also by Wanda's own admission she's not 100 % on leaving OR staying. The fears she and Vision talk about are shared by both characters and it's strongly implied Vision is holding himself to the same standard he's trying to justify to Wanda. That conversation in the kitchen is as much about Vision as it is Wanda; he's confining himself as much as he is her.
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May 8, 2016 20:41
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PostNouveau posted:I'm looking forward to the Black Panther and Spider-Man movies. Civil War managed to explain the motivations of a dozen superheroes to fight one another than BvS could for only two. If even a couple of them were just going along because they're star-struck, the movie crammed a lot of character work in while still delivering some big set pieces. They want to fight each other because one side wants to get to an airplane and the other side wants to stop them (and also apprehend Bucky). It's easy to explain straightforward motivations. Batman wants to fight Superman because he sees him as a version of himself with the powers of a god and he knows what he would do with them. Superman doesn't want to fight Batman, though he does want him to stop. Even when he should have a reason to, he doesn't want to. In the end he only fights to protect himself. There's nothing wrong with the CW motivations being, for the most part, simple, but there's no need to pretend like they're better for being simple to understand. Boogaleeboo posted:The entire point of pretending a forum like this has any meaning is "Death of the author". But also, manifestly, the author is still around. We see them uncomfortable at press junkets and ComiCon and the like. Therefore the author, who is both dead and still existing, is some form of ghost. 
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