The other night I was listening to the second avengers movie. As I’m sure most of y’all know better than me, the world-shattering Minnis this time around was Ultron, A nearly indestructible robot created in the comic books by hank Pym and in the movie by Tony Stark. While in theory I always enjoyed stories about This particular villain in the comics (“Ultron … we would have words with thee”) , on a meta level they bug me. It always seems to me that for a super-hero universe to be plausible at all, the world must be better off for the existence of super-heroes. Please note that I did not say that the world must be better off because of the existence of super-BEINGS. Clearly the normal-human population of the Marvel universe (comic book or cinematic) would benefit if all super-beings, both good and bad, disappeared. But super-heroes don’t create the situation that makes them necessary; in the MU, in fact, super-beings long pre-date norms. But tales in which the super-hero creates a menace, gets all angsty about the damage & deaths the menace creates, and finally defeats it (always at the cost of civilian lives) bother me. . They are no less destructive to the suspension of disbelief van Clark Kent’s glasses if used to often. And they are used A LOT.
But maybe that’s just me. Do stories like this bother anyone else? If not, why not, and whether you are bothered or not, what are your favorite sUch instances from comic books and/or comic book movies/TV shows?
ALL the problems? Super-Heroes didn’t create the problem of Loki and his Chitauri invasion, and they didn’t create Hydra. Really, Ultron is pretty much the ONLY one they bear any great degree of responsibility for. Well, maybe the Hulk’s rampages as well.
Clark Kent has many more things going for him that the glasses. He has a whole different way of speaking, mannerisms, even standing and walking. And of course, why should anyone assume that Superman has a alter-ego?
“Menace,” I suspect. Skald is now using voice-recognition software, as his vision is now extremely limited, and it has popped out a few odd words in his posts.
(Edit: ninjaed by Maggie, whose suggestion of “enemies” is more likely the right one.)
It was one of the themes going back to Iron Man; Obadiah Stane and the terrorists were using weapons that Stark had invented. It was Stark’s guilt over this (along with being held captive by the terrorists) that led him to develop the Iron Man suit. He was trying to defeat people who were using his own inventions for evil purposes.
The trope isn’t uncommon in comic books, but I don’t think that it’s pervasive, either. In particular, it’s usually used to illustrate the hubris of the creator (Stark, Pym, Brianiac, etc.), who doesn’t realize (or can’t accept) that his superior intelligence isn’t enough to foresee the flaws in his plans, or the consequences of his actions. I’d guess that the trope can be traced back to Frankenstein, if not earlier.
I don’t think it’s nearly as overused as some other comic tropes, like “normal people fear the heroes, even when the heroes save the world” (see: pretty much every X-Men book, ever).
Only now I have a mental image of a world filled with angry, swarming Minnie Mouses (Minnie Mice?) that must be defeated. Like if Mickey, as the Sorceror’s Apprentice, had chopped Minnie to bits because she wouldn’t stop delivering water, and then all the shards regenerated into full-size Minnies that still insist on carrying buckets of water.
I like stories were the heroes fuck it up. As long as it’s not EVERY time. Yeah, Tony fucked up and went too far, but lets not forget he was mind controlled at the time.
I suppose so, but he certainly didn’t (in that movie) create the actual evil people who used his inventions for evil purposes, he simply created the weapons themselves. At best, his guilt was in not paying enough attention to what Stane - put in position by his father, not by himself - was doing with his inventions.
Really, the only villains that the protagonists of any of the MCU movies can really be accused of creating are Ultron, Zemo in Cap:Civil War (because it was Ultron’s actions in Sokovia that caused him to go after the Avengers) and Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming (because the creation of the Department of Damage Control, which ruined Toomes’s business, was prompted by Tony Stark). Loki and Hela might have been Odin’s responsibility, but not Thor’s. Likewise, Killmonger was created by T’Challa’s father, not by him.
