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Arist posted:What I was trying to get across there is 1. that I don't think comedy necessarily undercuts drama (and Thor: Ragnarok is honestly pretty good about this), and the one notable example where it does in that movie, the destruction of Asgard, fails less for that reason and more because the "punchline" is redundant, as the moment itself is successfully framed as both horrifying and comedic, so Korg's line immediately following actually kills the joke and the drama. It's just a bit too much. I'd say most of the third Act of Thor: Ragnarok uses humour to undercut drama and suspense. Loki betrays Thor? Played as a running gag, also with jokes immediately beforehand. The team is making their escape? Grandmaster party time fireworks and jokes. Thor confronts Hela for the first time after she's murdered her way through Asgard? Thor cracks a joke. Hela cuts out Thor's eye, marking the low point of the film for the heroes? Hela cracks a joke. Odin reaches out from beyond the grave to encourage Thor. Odin cracks a joke. After establishing he won't be able to turn back, Bruce Banner sacrifices himself to summon the Hulk. Physical injury gag. The civilians are saved from certain doom! Loki is grandstanding in a throwback to the opening play. Thor, Loki and Valkyrie face Hela on the bridge. Loki makes a joke. Thor decides to sacrifice Asgard. Hulk inadvertently makes a joke. The Asgardians watch on as they leave their home, and then it's destroyed. The director makes a joke. Thor: Ragnarok is more a comedy than an action film, so I don't begrudge it for doing that, but it totally uses humour to undercut almost every important scene that would otherwise be played straight for emotional impact.
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Feb 20, 2018 09:40
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Arist posted:That's really only true if you think the mere existence of jokes somehow undercuts drama, which I don't believe at all. Some of those are legitimately great moments in and of themselves. And yeah, some of them defuse the tension, sure, but only because that's the goal of the film in that moment--it's an absurd loving movie, and part of the reason it's so good is that it knows how to mine a moment for both drama and humor simultaneously instead of being boringly self-serious like the other Thor movies. I think these two paragraphs indicate the point. I didn't just pick out random plot points, but pretty much every significant plot progression moment of the third act. The fact that they don't seem to have any dramatic weight indicates just much the humour has undercut the emotional significance of the climax and resolution of the central conflict. I mean, Hela has murdered her way through Asgard, including the Warriors Three, and is hunting down its last remaining citizens. Thor knows this, and should be super pissed about this, to impart its significance to the audience. Instead he's making wise-cracks to Hela when he confronts her again. They aren't big jokes, but his lack of reverence for the situation imparts to the audience that they don't really need to care either. The Banner bridge bounce is another. It's an amusing moment, but the movie has established the Banner doesn't think he'll come back from another transformation into the Hulk. This is, on paper, a hero sacrifice moment where Bruce Banner dies, or at he least believes he will. The point wasn't that it could have been played as the Hulk making a hero landing on the bridge, but that the film could have acknowledged the seriousness and nobility of what Banner was doing, and impart Banner's understanding an acceptance of the consequences to the audience. But because the film chooses to make a joke instead, the audience is told not to believe they are seeing the end of Bruce Banner, despite the film spending time to set this up. This is the climax of the film, and the lack of suspense, tension or emotional gravity is the result of the constant humour. Again, I'm not saying this a bad thing. You can make direct parallels to Thor 2, where you get similar scenes the loss of a parental figure, Loki's betrayal, Thor being maimed, Loki's death, etc, and it's all played straight (though barring the first example, they are all undercut in turn by being ruses). Because the movie takes the plot points seriously, the audience does as well, allowing for one of the few good scenes in the movie; Loki trying to hide how distraught is is over his mother's death from Thor through the illusion in his cell, the ability to shine. But because nobody wants to watch Norse daytime TV melodrama, Thor Ragnarok keeps everything light and humorous, even when Thor is being disfigured, Asguard's population is being decimated, no-one can stop Hela, and the survivors are turned into refugees. I infinitely enjoyed Thor 3 more over Thor 1 and 2 (and pretty much all the other Marvel films as well), but I totally disagree that they used humour to undercut only one serious moment. The movie was a comedy, and they used humour from start to finish to suppress the seriousness of the situation. The tone wasn't fluctuating from moment to moment, because they were avoiding the tonal dissonance of Thor 2, and the movie was much stronger for it in my opinion.
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Feb 20, 2018 14:48
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temple posted:can you Fair enough, but let's not get all Doctor Strange in here.
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Feb 20, 2018 15:13
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:so this is an entertaining movie on its face that might literally have the worst politics of all time Isn't Wakanda basically an allegorical reflection of the US and the West in general, framed for Westerners? I mean, you have a country with massive resource, technological and quality of life advantages, that uses isolationist policy to protect its citizens and wall off their borders with out any concern for neighbouring nations (where Trump and other far-right groups wants to take the West). They also have to deal with a push to use this advantage to actively intervene in foreign nations, undermine their sovereignty, and further their advantage (the US now, which the rest of the West either actively supports or passively benefits from, probably why the CIA agent is from the CIA, and not a former SHIELD agent or something else). Because it's an African nation with this advantage, with cool sci-fi tech that Westerners would want, Western audiences can see that neither side is really acceptable. Just as Wakanda should be sharing its advantage with the West to make the world better in the MCU, so should the West be doing more to help the developing world to make the world better in the real world. If people take away the message is that the previous Wakandan governments were jerks, their current political conflict is a false dichotomy, and the real take away is that the rich and powerful nations should do more to help the weak and disadvantaged, and not just because they were told that, but because the movie put them in Africa's shoes and made them feel it, isn't that a good thing?
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Feb 20, 2018 18:25
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Darth Brooks posted:Vibranium absorbs impacts so I think it would just plop. How do you interact with something that you can't impart force on? How does The Flash pick up his suit if it's frictionless? Why is Kryptionian clothing indestructible? How do they sell people a second shirt? These are the important questions of our generation.
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Mar 1, 2018 07:39
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:And again, explaining how a giant rock that has the magic power to absorb impact crashed into something without a huge impact requires the least fan theory of anything ever to happen in fiction. It's pretty A to B But, but, but the vibranium only absorbs the impact imparted to it from the earth, so the earth is still going to suffer an extinction level event from the force it receives from the vibranium! Therefore Black Panther is the worst. Please hold while I enjoy my refined comic book about a white scientist who can make mass appear from nowhere when his mood changes.
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Mar 2, 2018 02:35
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themrguy posted:Jesus christ, yes, determining who leads your country via single combat is dumb. Portraying Wakanda as a place where the primary qualification for leadership is being able to gently caress another guy up with a knife is dumb, if you're trying to, as the movie clearly is, portray it as an aspirational place where Africa was able to reach it's full potential without being devastated by colonization. It's uncomfortably close to 'noble savage' racist tropes. I was going to side with temple for a second there, because I missed the “combat” part of that sentence, and was going to point out that while tribal chanting is has a slight whiff of orientalism, national anthems are a thing, and there’s normally a ton of tradition revolving around parliamentary functions. But yeah, ritual combat to determine leadership is hilariously backward. Seriously, what possible virtues are there to such a system? On a more general note, problem as I see it is there are two differing themes in the movie, and they aren’t really explored deeply enough to reconcile them. On one hand you have the wonders of Wakanda, the representation of an Africa untouched by colonialism. In isolation, Wakanda are a united people with great mineral wealth that they use to improve the lives of all of their citizens. They have harmonious groups of cultures and traditions, they respect their land, they aren’t aggressive to their neighbours, and so on. If the film was set entirely in Wakanda, then Wakanda would make for a good allegory of a Pan-African nation, and a representation what the West has taken from Africa. But then you have Wakanda's interactions with the outside world, and the central conflict about it's future, which is more of an allegory about how the West should act to the rest of the world, because they enjoy the advantages over the rest of the world that Wakanda enjoys over them. Wakanda no longer represents something that could have been, or an ideal to work towards, but a place that exists in a fictional world that’s a reasonably direct representation of our modern day. Suddenly the conveniences used to insert Wakanda into the MCU, such as Wakanda’s isolationism, begin to draw criticism because of the parallels they draw. Wakanda’s isolationism despite the instability and poverty on their borders, their greed with their natural resources, their prosperity without trade, their culture without exchange, are basically the core philosophies of the alt-right. Wakanda is becomes the least Pan-African nation possible, being racist to literally everyone else, and zero concept of a shared unity between other black people. They also descend into a coup and a civil war in a hilariously short amount of time, though given their election process involves murdering political rivals, I suppose a civil war is their version of a legal challenge. What Wakanda could represent does not mesh with an actual representation of Wakanda. This is why I think temple’s arguments fall flat quite a bit; the arguments are based on the former reading and ignoring the later. At one point the claim was made that it was racist to assume that the outreach centre was placed in Oakland because T'Challa felt sorry for the kids (because that would imply that blackness equates to pitiful), and not because he felt something similar in them. But then later he admitted that Wakandans and T'Challa would have no concept of blackness, so what similarity is he supposed to be relating to? Nevermind that these arguments rely on the assumption that the characters and viewer can only see this scene through purely racial lines, not through an economic advantage lens, or the literal stated reason of a symbolic location with nothing to do with race. Temple’s claims about the “Who are you?” line have a similar issue. Originally the claim was made that the kid asked the question because he didn’t know that black heroes existed in the MCU, though this was dropped for a statement about how the lack of Pan-Africanism makes black people strangers to each other (also probably because Falcon and Warmachine exist in the MCU), and this was the one true way to read that line. And not at all because it has multiple meanings; it starts as an earnest question from a kid seeing a person making a space ship materialise in front of him, the very foundation of the Doctor Who running gag, it relates to T'Challa on a deeper level, because of his journey and how his character will shape Wakanda and the world, and on a meta level, because while the kid inside the MCU has black heroes, the kid outside the MCU that the kid represents, does not. But if we only view the movie through a Pan-African lens, then I guess it’s about Pan-Africanism. The worst bit is, I feel like these two different aspects could have been merged with only slightly more effort. Play up the Wakandan Tribal Council more, and tone down how advanced Wakanda is and the role of the king. If Wakanda military is advanced but not functionally invulnerable, looking at the rest of Africa as to how the outside world deals with Africa’s natural resources, isolationism would be a natural survival response. However, isolationism would have drawbacks, like making them more vulnerable to droughts and other natural disasters, and the humanitarian cost of not helping neighbouring countries to maintain their advantage. Different council members want different outcomes for Wakanda, and have actual proper debate about real-life policies, but keeping the advanced and prosperous Wakanda. Killmonger is introduceed and becomes a disruption to the status quo; his challenge to ritual combat is based on some ancient law that’s never been used in millennia, but eeeevil isolationist councillors, who don’t like T'Challa’s humanitarian ideals, allow it. Evil councillors get their comeuppance when they become aware of Killmonger’s plan and confront him, and get killed with an accompanying villain line like “You want to keep Vibranium to yourselves? Here, take it” *vibranium spear stab*. Killmonger frames the West, creating an actual reason for a civil war. T'Challa has to save his people and the world from war, and doubles down on his belief that isolationism and economic disparity leads to too much hatred and misery, and vows to use his rule for the betterment of all. Instead we get the strange mashup of an inspirational fantastical land, but completely tone deaf situations, like the CIA agent helping to overthrow a foreign government and launching drone strikes while being one of the good guys.
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Mar 15, 2018 11:31
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You were defending the ritual combat one page ago, and now it's clearly undermining them? Ignoring the fact they actively use it and yet they have ended up with a prosperous space age civilisation. Yeah, it's really been biting them in the rear end. Also I have no idea where you're pulling this West emulation stuff from, especially since I've stated that a close-minded Wakanda is a critisim of the West, not a virtue. If you think the only possible illustration of African government is a murdertocracy, that's on you.
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Mar 15, 2018 12:56
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