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Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

Just imagine that the Stark legacy is referring to like, the DuPonts. This is your hero? Some guy who inherited a fortune from raining ordinance on the third world? We're asked to care about his family legacy(???)

I don't actually know who the DuPonts are, but also no not really, I don't actually care about Tony Stark's Legacy; Ivan probably does, Tony presumably does but he also has stopped all weapon development and seems to want his legacy to have been create a better world than the one he started with hence the personal life risk of going out and being a superhero, as well as developing clean energy technologies and therapeutic holograms. I just think it's unfair to ascribe leftist motivation or ideology to Ivan Vanko, also don't think Tony deserves to be killed and have his life ripped apart for something his father did.

Tony isn't a particularly good person a lot of the time, but he's definitely trying and I have to appreciate the effort. Honestly I think the disapointing part of that movie is making Howard come across at all as a good person, considering he seems to have been a poo poo father and a very selfish individual in terms of his business practices. The movie probably should've done more to make Howard Stark a historical villain who Tony must wrangle with (whilst dealing with his own memories of his strenuous childhood with the man as a father).

Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:05 on May 5, 2021

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SuperMechagodzilla
Jun 9, 2007

NEWT REBORN

Lord_Magmar posted:

Whiplash wants to hurt Tony Stark because Tony Stark's father hurt his father

You keep depoliticizing conflicts with this "Billy got mad at Jimmy" stuff. What's up with that?

Lord_Magmar posted:

I guess, I feel like Tony categorically shutting down all weapon's development (except his personal suits) ... kind of makes him no longer part of the MIC or even the MIC itself,

"I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be."

Stark quietly resumed weapon production shortly after the events of Iron Man 1.

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


SuperMechagodzilla posted:

You keep depoliticizing conflicts with this "Billy got mad at Jimmy" stuff. What's up with that?


"I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be."

Stark quietly resumed weapon production shortly after the events of Iron Man 1.

I'm presenting what the movie presents, I am aware that there are political readings of it, but I don't want to discuss politics with you because you are an infuriating rear end in a top hat at the best of times regardless of if you're right or wrong.

Also I don't think we see any Stark weapons post Iron Man 1 except the suit of armour, which he literally only ever intends for personal use and control. Every other project we see is either Arc Reactor stuff (clean energy) or the therapy thing. Oh, I guess the Helicarrier engines in Winter Soldier too which is almost definitely on the edge of weapon production and it would have been nice to see how Stark felt about that after the fact.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
It feels like people are desperately reaching to find something they want to see when you start arguing that a member of the petit bourgeoisie who is upset that the government has not awarded him a lucrative contract is a leftist struggle.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Lord_Magmar posted:

Also I don't think we see any Stark weapons post Iron Man 1 except the suit of armour, which he literally only ever intends for personal use and control. Every other project we see is either Arc Reactor stuff (clean energy) or the therapy thing. Oh, I guess the Helicarrier engines in Winter Soldier too which is almost definitely on the edge of weapon production and it would have been nice to see how Stark felt about that after the fact.

He also has the peace keeping robots in Avengers 2 that Ultron takes over, and the much worse assassination drones in Far From Home. He effectively "let's" Rhodes have the War Machine armor and presumably upgrades it over the course of the movies, and Rhodes is directly using it in a military capacity (unless the idea is that they are still using the original armor he took and it's the military itself that just keeps upgrading the armor).

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Lord_Magmar posted:

I guess, I feel like Tony categorically shutting down all weapon's development (except his personal suits) and choosing to focus entirely on what I want to say is clean energy production (it never really comes up what Stark Tech actually sells, except the BARF thing which seems to be for helping with therapy) kind of makes him no longer part of the MIC or even the MIC itself, especially when he's actively denying the Army and other weapon's development companies access to his personal suit technology.
If Tony wasn't still part of the MIC, the Department of State wouldn't be constantly feting him and sending their liaison to pal around with him.

Tony shut down his munitions division to focus on building Iron Men. He is doing this because he wants to be in total control of how they're used. By Avengers 2, he has a small army of Iron Man drones, and his express goal is to metaphorically encase the world in an Iron Man. By Captain America 3 he's setting himself up to legitimize his corporate-funded, extremely illegal paramilitary activities through the UN and become the commander of a global drone police force.

quote:

Oh also doesn't Ivan basically use Hammer (who is definitely wanting to produce Iron Man suits for the American Military and his own immense profit) and his factories to make drone soldiers that he sells to Hammer as being superior operators than humans that can be sold to the military but intends to have them mass bomb the Stark expo out of a desire to hurt Strark's legacy, even though at that point he would believe that Tony is dead in a ditch?
Hammer breaks Vanko out of prison so that Vanko can build weapons for him. Vanko goes along with this because he's a destitute escaped convict and needs access to tools and materials. He transparently does not give a poo poo about Hammer and is not going to deliver on a marketable product.

At this point, you should really just rewatch the movie, if you care about this at all. Also,

SuperMechagodzilla posted:

You keep depoliticizing conflicts with this "Billy got mad at Jimmy" stuff. What's up with that?

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


Guy A. Person posted:

He also has the peace keeping robots in Avengers 2 that Ultron takes over, and the much worse assassination drones in Far From Home. He effectively "let's" Rhodes have the War Machine armor and presumably upgrades it over the course of the movies, and Rhodes is directly using it in a military capacity (unless the idea is that they are still using the original armor he took and it's the military itself that just keeps upgrading the armor).

This is also reasonable, the peace-keepers in Avengers 2 don't actually have combat capabilities beyond being robots though right, I only remember them flying (admittedly dangerous) and standing there as a mobile barricade, this doesn't make them not dangerous or not weapons but their intent is to act like traffic cones realistically. The drones in Far From Home are way worse, and indeed presented as the ultimate goal of the villain in that movie, although I'm blanking on if they were destroyed or not by Peter in the end.

Actually yeah, Tony is probably supplying Rhodes and the War Machine Armour with weapons because I distinctly remember one of the jokes in Iron Man 2 involves Rhodey using a Hammer missile and it failing so Tony makes him promise to come to Tony for his weapons. On the other hand War Machine's actual weapons never really seem anything specifically Stark inspired or required, they're just slightly better missiles or heavier weapons mounted on his effectively mobile platform, so nothing about his capabilities require Tony at all anyway. Maybe Stark vetoes and attaches them to the armour?

So he does make SOME weapons, but they're all clearly meant as extensions of his personal capabilities, not to be sold/handed out to the military at large. Maybe it's like someone getting a car for their best friend for his birthday but Tony makes you cool gadgets for fighting people.

Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:25 on May 5, 2021

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD
Sep 14, 2007

everything is yours

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

It feels like people are desperately reaching to find something they want to see when you start arguing that a member of the petit bourgeoisie who is upset that the government has not awarded him a lucrative contract is a leftist struggle.

I mean, these are the stories they choose to tell.

KVeezy3
Aug 18, 2005

Airport Music for Black Folk

Lord_Magmar posted:

I also admitted that I mis-spoke on that second bit, it's not a liberation movement, it's an outreach and life improvement initiative, which admittedly your actual valuation of it is up to yourself. My belief is that it's a strong step towards undoing inequality, and not a step towards global war (which I'd rather like to avoid regardless of the reason, which is not to say that violent revolution is never the answer).

It's not 'all subjective' - liberal interventionism has been a grand & ongoing global experiment for decades and I would characterize it as a big failure.

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


Halloween Jack posted:

Hammer breaks Vanko out of prison so that Vanko can build weapons for him. Vanko goes along with this because he's a destitute escaped convict and needs access to tools and materials. He transparently does not give a poo poo about Hammer and is not going to deliver on a marketable product.

At this point, you should really just rewatch the movie, if you care about this at all.

Vanko was in prison for attempted murder. Also I've honestly found this far more informative on what I forgot or misremembered rather than re-watching a movie that I don't particularly enjoy (and I don't think I have access to it regardless and I'm not spending money to win discussions on the internet I don't actually want to win. I'm here for furthering my understanding and knowledge whilst sharing what I remember (or as the case may be, misremember)).

I distinctly remember disliking the presentation of Whiplash (who at the time I found really cool in other Iron Man media, and in the movie he was kind of presented as one note and boring, although clearly that's not the case in hindsight given the discussion we've just had) and that I found Howard being "right" was fairly stupid considering the movie had a nice setup for Tony dealing with the demons of both his own making (poisoining=alcoholism) and those of his father (who definitely was presented as a far more ruthless businessman than Tony himself by that point, and definitely is implied to have been a very lovely father).

Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:38 on May 5, 2021

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Lord_Magmar posted:

This is also reasonable, the peace-keepers in Avengers 2 don't actually have combat capabilities beyond being robots though right, I only remember them flying (admittedly dangerous) and standing there as a mobile barricade, this doesn't make them not dangerous or not weapons but their intent is to act like traffic cones realistically.
I give up.

Lord_Magmar posted:

i'm here for furthering my understanding and knowledge whilst sharing what I remember (or as the case may be, misremember)).
Then we have both failed.

Guy A. Person
May 23, 2003

Lord_Magmar posted:

This is also reasonable, the peace-keepers in Avengers 2 don't actually have combat capabilities beyond being robots though right, I only remember them flying (admittedly dangerous) and standing there as a mobile barricade, this doesn't make them not dangerous or not weapons but their intent is to act like traffic cones realistically. The drones in Far From Home are way worse, and indeed presented as the ultimate goal of the villain in that movie, although I'm blanking on if they were destroyed or not by Peter in the end.

Actually yeah, Tony is probably supplying Rhodes and the War Machine Armour with weapons because I distinctly remember one of the jokes in Iron Man 2 involves Rhodey using a Hammer missile and it failing so Tony makes him promise to come to Tony for his weapons. On the other hand War Machine's actual weapons never really seem anything specifically Stark inspired or required, they're just slightly better missiles or heavier weapons mounted on his effectively mobile platform, so nothing about his capabilities require Tony at all anyway. Maybe Stark vetoes and attaches them to the armour?

So he does make SOME weapons, but they're all clearly meant as extensions of his personal capabilities, not to be sold/handed out to the military at large. Maybe it's like someone getting a car for their best friend for his birthday but Tony makes you cool gadgets for fighting people.

Well for the peace-keeper bots specifically, aside from super human strength from being machines, remember from IM1 that the repulsors are part of the flight system and are specifically built into the hands for control (Tony just quickly realized you could also use them as weapons). So minimum they have that, which still makes them highly combat capable although admittedly not nearly at the level of Tony's personal armor which is kitted out with a bunch of additional weapons.

The drones were not destroyed by Peter in Far From Home, which is a really weird oversight IMO, that should have been the obvious conclusion of the arc.

Lord_Magmar
Feb 24, 2015

"Welcome to pound town, Slifer slacker!"


Guy A. Person posted:

Well for the peace-keeper bots specifically, aside from super human strength from being machines, remember from IM1 that the repulsors are part of the flight system and are specifically built into the hands for control (Tony just quickly realized you could also use them as weapons). So minimum they have that, which still makes them highly combat capable although admittedly not nearly at the level of Tony's personal armor which is kitted out with a bunch of additional weapons.

The drones were not destroyed by Peter in Far From Home, which is a really weird oversight IMO, that should have been the obvious conclusion of the arc.

Agreed, the fact they weren't destroyed is weird. There's a lot of weird in the MCU along those lines, it's one of the more consistent disapointments. It's why I am actually disapointed with Falcon on the Winter Soldier on the Flagsmashers front, because even if Karli is intended to be irredeemable, and I sincerely don't think she is, her followers were repeatedly shown uncomfortable and pushing back against her until she re-aligned them through (shoddy) rhetoric.

Even if I was satisfied with the rest of the show and its writing.

Halloween Jack posted:

I give up.

Then we have both failed.

Sorry you feel this way, I was legitimately enjoying our discussion and you provided plenty of education and points I had not considered and that I did appreciate even if we continued to differ on interpretation and perspective.

Lord_Magmar fucked around with this message at 16:35 on May 5, 2021

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The American government agency that I find gets the weirdest treatment in the MCU is the FBI.
The FBI doesn't have expensive military hardware that can make your movie cheaper, nor a direct line on the world's best smack and coke. No reason to include them, really.

Mat Cauthon
Jan 2, 2006

The more tragic things get,
the more I feel like laughing.



Lord_Magmar posted:

I don't actually know who the DuPonts are, but also no not really, I don't actually care about Tony Stark's Legacy; Ivan probably does, Tony presumably does but he also has stopped all weapon development and seems to want his legacy to have been create a better world than the one he started with hence the personal life risk of going out and being a superhero, as well as developing clean energy technologies and therapeutic holograms. I just think it's unfair to ascribe leftist motivation or ideology to Ivan Vanko, also don't think Tony deserves to be killed and have his life ripped apart for something his father did.

You should really look up the Duponts - the stuff their company has done over a century plus to facilitate war and suffering only to turn around and present themselves as a just wanting to make the world a better place through technology is actually a pretty apt comparison here.

They have a bad rep now for poisoning vast swathes of the country wherever their factories are and also for being a bunch of (literally) inbred freaks with a penchant for violence but it's nowhere near as bad as it should be.

josh04
Oct 19, 2008


"THE FLASH IS THE REASON
TO RACE TO THE THEATRES"

This title contains sponsored content.

Chairman Capone posted:

Bridgerton and Meghan Markle showed us that monarchies are good as long as they have Black people in them.

Bad news about that second one!

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

Lord_Magmar posted:

Killmonger doesn't care about the Wakandan people or their culture (hence destroying the super-drugs of their cultural super hero who they believe to be their great protector). Which means he doesn't particularly intend for Wakanda to win the war, because he doesn't care about the liberation of black people he cares about destroying Wakanda. It's the same thing as Baron Zemo, he presents one thing whilst planning another to hurt the people he holds responsible for the destruction of his family and life (as his entire motivation is the death of his father at the hands of T'chaka).

Would he have won? The movie is presenting it, at the very least, as a real possibility--he's treated as a credible threat, enough so that I think a comparison to Baron Zemo's gotcha scheme is on shaky ground. More importantly: The dubious (internal) motivations of this one dude are wholly inconsequential compared to the vast system of cruelty he correctly identifies and declares to be his enemy, and his analysis, even if briefly sketched and even if just a public cover for more selfish ends, is more or less accurate. Which is a problem that the movie is unable to solve, if not in fact just flatly opposed to solving. The fictional character "Killmonger" was deliberately written this way, and making him the villain, for the reasons that he was made the villain, is a conscious strategy of the film. They're stacking the deck, clumsily. Marvel has Killmongered you, and this entire cultural conversation, because it's stolen the trappings of progressive politics to use as a shroud around its personal and ideological agenda.

This film is coming, perversely so, from the direct lineage of "I think this MLK fellow just goes too far." It's actively counter-productive "civil rights" pageantry for people who've never heard of Fred Hampton, boxed and sold at grotesque profit by the people that assassinated Fred Hampton, with a title bordering on sadistic in that light. It's sinister and evil to the degree that you almost have to admire the craftsmanship, the same way you'd admire Hannibal Lecter, or one of those spiders that lays eggs in people. How do we think the deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party would react to marvel's black panther? Which is the hate-name I've decided to use for this movie going forward. My one concern is that it's almost too mean.

Getting back to Killmonger: Let's say he's utterly wrong, both in intent and execution, everybody would die, so on like that. The movie still presents the only plausible, moral alternative as cooperating with and supporting the literal unreformed institutions that obliterated Africa, with a warm but paternal admonition not to shake the boat too much. And they made everyone forget about Blade. Goddamn, I hate this movie.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
My qualm with "they weren't true revolutionaries, they were evil angry monster men who dont care about the cause" is that we aren't talking about real people. They were written this way to undermine the case against the status quo. Killmonger, Bane, Fitzroy, these aren't based on actual people (insofar as the evil revenge monster man part), they exist to make the opposition Dumb And So Dang Crazy, so that you can feel better when the protagonist just builds an orphanage or a coding center or hugs their daughter.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

This film is coming, perversely so, from the direct lineage of "I think this MLK fellow just goes too far."

Martin Luther Killmonger

quote:

marvel's black panther? Which is the hate-name I've decided to use for this movie going forward. My one concern is that it's almost too mean.

Your hate name for the movie is just literally the name of the movie.

RBA Starblade fucked around with this message at 17:35 on May 5, 2021

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso
The Wakanda-Aligned Movement vs. Stark Industries Presents The Avengers could have been a much better movie than Infinity War.

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

RBA Starblade posted:

Your hate name for the movie is just literally the name of the movie.

That seems fundamentally accurate, yes.

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

That seems fundamentally accurate, yes.

I don't think you have to worry about how mean that is

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

RBA Starblade posted:

I don't think you have to worry about how mean that is

I mean, I was hoping that insisting on the marvel attachment and the deliberate lower-case would be, uh, stinging somehow. Like, as a point of comparison to the historical Black Panthers? Given how bad a desecration I feel the film is? Does that not read well? Now I kinda feel like I'm attached to it, too. poo poo. I guess I'll ride this, a bit, see how it feels. They can't all be winners.

marvel's black panther

RBA Starblade
Apr 28, 2008

Going Home.

Games Idiot Court Jester

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

I mean, I was hoping that insisting on the marvel attachment and the deliberate lower-case would be, uh, stinging somehow. Like, as a point of comparison to the historical Black Panthers? Given how bad a desecration I feel the film is? Does that not read well? Now I kinda feel like I'm attached to it, too. poo poo. I guess I'll ride this, a bit, see how it feels. They can't all be winners.

marvel's black panther

Maybe I'm just a way bigger rear end in a top hat than you lmao

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...

RBA Starblade posted:

Martin Luther Killmonger

:eyepop:

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

RBA Starblade posted:

Maybe I'm just a way bigger rear end in a top hat than you lmao

Not overly likely, so let's chalk this one up to me being unfunny. Martin Luther Killmonger blows any joke I've ever made out of the water.

Something about this goddamn movie just really makes my skin crawl. It feels insidious, in a calculated way, meant to cause actual harm. Michael B. Jordan is a loving Tom Clancy hero now, y'know? At least poo poo like the Transformers movies has the decency to say "gently caress you" straight to my face.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

Halloween Jack posted:

Okay, so The People Could Fly is an African-American myth about escaping slavery. Black Panther is similar to this, because it's also a myth, also created by people of African descent. (In the fictional universe of the film, anyway. It was actually created by two white Jewish immigrants.) But how is this more relevant to a movie about a coup in Africa, than anything that actually happened in Africa since the end of the Atlantic slave trade?
1) That's an oversimplification of The People Could Fly. Like I implied, the story is also about being robbed of culture and greatness. Flying means a lot of things.

2) Regardless of the comic book creators, we're discussing the Black Panther film with a Black director, writer, cast, and other crew members.

3) I don't disagree with MIC or CIA critiques iof BP although I think people become hyperbolic on Ross's actual role and arc. I was just arguing that there are reasons for why the movie appealed to people beyond people being thirsty for that CIA propaganda or whatever. You can view. a movie through more than one lens.

Timeless Appeal fucked around with this message at 20:05 on May 5, 2021

Alexander Hamilton
Dec 29, 2008

Guy A. Person posted:

He also has the peace keeping robots in Avengers 2 that Ultron takes over, and the much worse assassination drones in Far From Home. He effectively "let's" Rhodes have the War Machine armor and presumably upgrades it over the course of the movies, and Rhodes is directly using it in a military capacity (unless the idea is that they are still using the original armor he took and it's the military itself that just keeps upgrading the armor).

Never really thought about it but it's darkly hilarious that Stark steals Vanko's robots from Iron Man 2 and uses them to save himself in Iron Man 3 and then enforce American hegemony around the world in Avengers 2. Fuckin' Starks, always stealing from the Vankos.

Spacebump
Dec 24, 2003

Dallas Mavericks: Generations
I have two questions how much does an Ironman suit cost Stark to make? How many Ironman suits does Stark destroy in Ironman 3?

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

Timeless Appeal posted:

1) That's an oversimplification of The People Could Fly. Like I implied, the story is also about being robbed of culture and greatness. Flying means a lot of things.

2) Regardless of the comic book creators, we're discussing the Black Panther film with a Black director, writer, cast, and other crew members.

3) I don't disagree with MIC or CIA critiques in of BP although I think people become hyperbolic on Ross's actual role and arc. I was just arguing that there are reasons for why the movie appealed to people beyond people being thirsty for that CIA propaganda or whatever. You can view. a movie through more than one lens.

The issue with BP is precisely that it's using positive, aspirational black characters, and doing so to apologize for and support a system that actively exploits and murders actual black people by the millions--is responsible for doing so to pretty much every marginalized group in the world. I hate to keep saying "perverse". If you don't see something off about this particular film including a key secondary protagonist that's a relatable (white) CIA agent, well, uh, sure. But you acknowledge the criticism. So:

I think it's fair to say, someone correct me if I'm wrong, that the CIA is just about the most destructive force in Africa since Leopold II. Movies of this type and scale don't get made without the DoD, and I'll speculate wildly that this isn't an exception. Which means that either any objections to the material and ideological presence of the CIA were quashed, or, actually worse, nobody thought to make them, because outside the Fantasy Kingdom of Wakanda, Africa's suffering has been just that normalized as "the way it's always been". Blockbusters this big typically pretend Africa doesn't exist, or treat it as some kind of blank, violent, ~mysteriously ahistorical~ backdrop. marvel's black panther makes it both setting and subject, and uses this to argue...what? The Atlantic slave trade wasn't as bad as that Killmonger dude says? Colonialism Is Over? And we do it much more humanely, now, anyways. Any leftover problems can be solved with the occasional community center. Don't overthink!

I'm not trying to, like, attack you personally, for the record. Sorry if it feels that way. I get a little hot. It's fine to like a movie. But everything about this one, from conception to production to release, has served interests which have historically been Not Real Good for the marginalized. It's been merchandised and marketed as some kind of "empowerment narrative", to the tune of billions, and that's wildly disingenuous, and absolutely deserves to be called out. I'm not a comics guy, but I have to imagine you could open any given issue of Black Panther and have at least a 50/50 chance of finding a story to adapt that isn't this insulting and horrible. The bow on top is that they tied the very real issue of black depiction and participation in "the mainstream" to this bullshit, which is why this conversation keeps happening.

Mechafunkzilla
Sep 11, 2006

If you want a vision of the future...
If you're tired of saying "perverse", give "obscene" a test drive. Great word.

Timeless Appeal
May 28, 2006

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

I'm not trying to, like, attack you personally, for the record. Sorry if it feels that way. I get a little hot. It's fine to like a movie. But everything about this one, from conception to production to release, has served interests which have historically been Not Real Good for the marginalized...
Yeah, I get the critique, agree with the basic issue of the movie and don't take it personally. I think if anything annoys me, I think within this post there is a tendency to retreat to a position you're comfortable arguing with (IE How bad the CIA or MIC is which I get).

I don't really relate to your anger because do I think Black Panther hurt the real deal Civil Rights movement? No, not really. Do I think a bunch of people who I marched with this past year probably like Black Panther? Yep. Do I know people who love Black Panther who are also on the Killmonger is right train, agree with the CIA critique, and also care about real poo poo? Yep.

Because people can hold two thoughts in their heads and look through something through multiple lenses. And they can recognize a popcorn film as having value and still care about the real world. Which isn't to poo poo on your anger. I think Marvel has absolutely some weird poo poo around MIC that should be suspect.
The fact that heroes who cannot easily be folded into their militaristic view of superheroes easily get sidelined (Daredevil, Luke Cage basically don't count anymore) and Spider-Man has been made into Tony Stark, Jr is a sign of that. You're not a bad person for being mad about a movie supporting lovely things or at least making lovely people relatable.

But I think that sometimes critiques can be used as cudgel. Like the starting point of this line of thought wasn't that the critique is invalid like Halloween Jack was getting at, but that I don't think the critique adequately explains people having passion or liking the movie.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

POWELL CURES KIDS posted:

Blockbusters this big typically pretend Africa doesn't exist, or treat it as some kind of blank, violent, ~mysteriously ahistorical~ backdrop. marvel's black panther makes it both setting and subject, and uses this to argue...what?
BP treats the rest of Africa--that is, the Africa that actually exists--as a blank, violent, ahistorical backdrop for Wakanda.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Halloween Jack posted:

BP treats the rest of Africa--that is, the Africa that actually exists--as a blank, violent, ahistorical backdrop for Wakanda.

The film weaves all of this together to push a narrative that colonialism and racism is fine, actually, and that is as vile and close to the original sin of our world as it gets.

POWELL CURES KIDS
Aug 26, 2016

Timeless Appeal posted:

Yeah, I get the critique, agree with the basic issue of the movie and don't take it personally. I think if anything annoys me, I think within this post there is a tendency to retreat to a position you're comfortable arguing with (IE How bad the CIA or MIC is which I get).

I don't really relate to your anger because do I think Black Panther hurt the real deal Civil Rights movement? No, not really. Do I think a bunch of people who I marched with this past year probably like Black Panther? Yep. Do I know people who love Black Panther who are also on the Killmonger is right train, agree with the CIA critique, and also care about real poo poo? Yep.

Because people can hold two thoughts in their heads and look through something through multiple lenses. And they can recognize a popcorn film as having value and still care about the real world. Which isn't to poo poo on your anger. I think Marvel has absolutely some weird poo poo around MIC that should be suspect.
The fact that heroes who cannot easily be folded into their militaristic view of superheroes easily get sidelined (Daredevil, Luke Cage basically don't count anymore) and Spider-Man has been made into Tony Stark, Jr is a sign of that. You're not a bad person for being mad about a movie supporting lovely things or at least making lovely people relatable.

But I think that sometimes critiques can be used as cudgel. Like the starting point of this line of thought wasn't that the critique is invalid like Halloween Jack was getting at, but that I don't think the critique adequately explains people having passion or liking the movie.

Yeah, my tendency to beat dead horses has been frequently noted through my life, and I'm sorry, seriously, for the tedium. I can certainly understand, and respect, that the film is a product of contradictions. They're what I'm objecting to, after all, and the fact is that if I'd enjoyed it on at least some other level, I probably wouldn't be (over)reacting the way that I am. Tossing problematic media would mean tossing most media, and being able to enjoy something despite finding it objectionable is basic self-care in 2021.

My own estimation of the film's content and cultural impact going forward is different than yours, but stepping back, I think why it sticks with me so much is that the narrative surrounding it, at least the narrative that's received any airtime, is all in the vein of fawning admiration for the progressive elements, with no acknowledgment of what's damaging or cynical. I wanted to like it, I wanted to like its politics, I wanted to feel like it would have a legitimately positive legacy, even if marginal, even if I was skeptical going in--so when I didn't end up feeling that way, and when the hype train never stopped, I went all pissbaby. It's filling a necessary and deeply neglected role in American media. Something like it, and something much, much better than it, should've hit this kind of critical mass forever ago. But it only seems to exist to betray the values we've been told that it champions. And, dead horse, I feel it does so to an almost...obscene extent. Pernicious! There's another good one.

Still just as mad about the Blade erasure, for the record.

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
For what it's worth, a lot of the praise around [minority/disenfranchised superhero] tends to be along the lines of "my 0X year old kid has a hero who looks just like them!", and in that context I imagine you probably wouldn't want to be showing your eight year old Blade

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003

La morte non ha sesso

Timeless Appeal posted:

1) That's an oversimplification of The People Could Fly. Like I implied, the story is also about being robbed of culture and greatness. Flying means a lot of things.

2) Regardless of the comic book creators, we're discussing the Black Panther film with a Black director, writer, cast, and other crew members.

3) I don't disagree with MIC or CIA critiques iof BP although I think people become hyperbolic on Ross's actual role and arc. I was just arguing that there are reasons for why the movie appealed to people beyond people being thirsty for that CIA propaganda or whatever. You can view. a movie through more than one lens.
Oh sure, I understand that representation isn't nothing. I'm saying that this movie ultimately doesn't have better politics than, like, Rambo 3. So the culture war around it, like all kulturkampf, is very dumb and bad.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE
Aug 1, 2004

whoa, what just happened here?







College Slice

Halloween Jack posted:

Oh sure, I understand that representation isn't nothing. I'm saying that this movie ultimately doesn't have better politics than, like, Rambo 3. So the culture war around it, like all kulturkampf, is very dumb and bad.

Rambo 3 has way better politics than Black Panther, since up until 4 or 5 or whatever Rambo has always been about the futility and consequences of foreign adventurism. I'm not sure there's much meat on them bones to look at 4 or Final Blood.

If a modern movie merely stumbled into one of the 3 central pillars of justifications for colonialism, we would give it the side eye. Black Panther went there and made it a core part of the identity of the movie.

Black Panther literally presents the world view that the natives are dirty violent rabble who don't own or deserve anything so they should have someone go in and civilize them. In Black Panther, it's actually worse, because it's also all mixed up in that respectability politics poo poo so it basically says that black people EVERYWHERE needs someone to go in and civilize them.

VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 22:48 on May 5, 2021

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

ˇHola SEA!


LesterGroans posted:

It's very strange to me to paint the opinion "monarchies are bad" as pearl-clutching.

Particularly an African monarchy, clearly not ceremonial, in opposition to an anti imperialist challenger which is not a scenario you can divorce from its historical precedents. If the complaint is a vague “well what about other movies with heroic royalist characters”, it’s horseshit there too, in Star Wars, lord of the rings, whatever.

fatherboxx posted:

As long as their main audience cheers for the boot to crush dissent

The conservative ghoul Sonny Bunch is right (from the point of view of most of population, unfortunately)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/03/environmentalists-make-good-movie-villains-because-they-want-make-your-real-life-worse/

Ruling parties in India and China enjoy overwhelming broad popular support for ethnic cleansings under the guise of restoring law and order, millions of americans vote for concentration camps, frankly it is surprising that superhero blockbusters chasing more and more mass audience are not more vile in their preserving status quo narratives.

Modi has been struggling with perhaps the largest protests in history, and the US is caving on sars cov 2 vaccine patent protections is probably at least in part to help him stay in power

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Snowman_McK
Jan 31, 2010

Lord_Magmar posted:

Wakanda being a super power feels like it would be a shame up of global politics, and I think this argument is somewhat disengenuous because we so rarely get a look at the setting outside the superheroes until the most recent tv shows (which I would say does show a fairly different world from where we started. Honestly so far all of Phase 4 seems to be showcasing the ways the world has changed. Maybe we’ll see the results of Wakanda Outreach in the new Black Panther being a bunch of small Wakandas popping up around the world post-blip.

It should be, but it won't. Remember that 'half the world vanishing and then reappearing five years later' was handwaved with a gag about someone reappearing and getting hit with a baseball. "All of world history since 1945 being manipulated by an undead nazi supercomputer" has literally never been mentioned again. Neither has "they invented free energy" or "gods walk among us" or "magic is absolutely real" or "a rogue robot nearly wiped out the planet" (aside from 40 people dying or something) nothing ever matters or changes in the MCU. I would say it's just the old comic book canard of 'things can't change too much' but Tony Stark, with the literal power of creation, just reset the status quo as his final, heroic act. It's absolutely the franchise's ideology.

Grendels Dad posted:

Dangerous LivesHigh School High, but it's Shuritwo John Lovitz's instead of Michelle PfeifferJohn Lovitz

Actually is John Lovitz still alive?

Everyone posted:

trying to get Wakanda and the White Patriarchy to destroy each in a war he provoked.

You need to tell us what's wrong with doing this because, honestly, nothing leaps out. Wakanda isn't depicted as a good place. We only see its ruling class and, honestly, they're all really lovely and useless.

Lord_Magmar posted:

Killmonger doesn't care about the Wakandan people or their culture

Neither does the film. You keep bringing up the Wakandan people who, in the film do not exist. We don't meet them, hear from them, and aside from one street scene where the king walks the street with a small army of bodyguards, we don't see them. The only parts of Wakanda we see are the labs, armories and throne rooms of the royal family. Those are the only Wakandan people we meet: them and their inner circle. Stop bringing up the Wakandan people. The film cares even less about them than Killmonger does.

The idea that Wakanda would be destroyed, by the way, is entirely an invention of yours. It's not a concern for anyone in the film. If we're not allowed to read killmonger beyond the bounds of the film's footage, then Wakanda's imminent destruction's not really a thing either.

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