What MCU movie has he been in, again?
While you can call an argument dumb, be advised you can’t call another poster dumb.
Captain America II, Winter Soldier.
From Wiki:
In 2014, Stephen Strange is named as a target in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, hinting a future appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
…I sure did come in to a Wonder Woman thread expecting a spoiler for Cap 2.
Oh, come off it. It’s an Easter Egg at best.
Heck, I assumed Doctor Strange existed in the same universe the original Spider-Man trilogy.
I know little to nothing about WW except the common stuff that’s been mentioned in this thread and I consider myself a comic fan.
To me, anybody doing this movie would have to take wild liberties with the character and fit her into the existing DC universe (fragmented such as it is). Marvel’s got their take already, and its not all grit and blood, there’s a huge element of fun in their movies. And despite some movies being darker than others, you can easily imagine them being in the same world.
One reason why Man of Steel didn’t “work” for me was that it was too grim, too dark. It works for Batman, but Superman’s not supposed to be that gritty. I don’t know what the general tone of WW is, but I imagine its difficult to imagine her in the same world as Batman. I can hardly picture Superman in Gotham either. I think they tried to be more light and comedic with Green Lantern, but we all know how that turned out.
One thing I think that’s sorely lacking in the 2 big DC franchises so far is any kind of end-of-credits crossover. Those are extremely important and I’ll explain why.
Before Thor came out, we got to see his hammer in the desert at the end of Iron Man. After Hulk, we got to see Tony Stark talking to the general. However little the screen time is, it sets a tone and it allows the viewer to be drawn in. It also establishes expectations and makes it just slightly less weird that you’d see a mystical hammer of a Norse god next to a besuited government agent.
Right now, there is absolutely no screentime between any Batman or Superman characters. Mostly this is DC’s fault for coming up with the idea much later than Marvel, but that means nobody knows how they will fit. Will Batman be less gritty and fit into Superman’s world, or will Superman be more dark and fit into Gotham? Fans’ imaginations are running wild, leading to people predicting doom. And add to that WW whom we haven’t seen onscreen for 35 years?
What DC needs to do is to take their next movie, whatever it is, and just have a tiny little cameo at the end. We need to see WW onscreen before we can judge, we need to see how the costume sorta looks like (though she can be talking from a dark corner or something), but most of all, we need to experience them all oncreen at once before the fan furor will die down. Otherwise, each of us will imagine the worst or best into the official version of WW and nitpick it to death.
Is it? Is it a plot point? Is it a story seed? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.
Don’t clues like that help build buzz, as it were? Somebody gets dragged along to the Iron Man movie, though knowing little or nothing about the comic character, sees the mysterious hammer, hears members of the audience around them going “ooh!” and subsequently finds out from them what it means along with a quick summary of the character, hence not going into the Thor movie completely blind?
Well, it’s DC’s fault for not getting the idea off the ground. They had George Miller’s Justice League movie cast and ready to go in 2007 before Marvel got things rolling with Iron Man. But it was ditched allegedly because of a rising budget and the writers’ strike.
Nick Fury: Strange, I want to know how you called a fire ball out of the sky and incinerated Paste Pot Pete.
Dr. Strange: I learned to call fire from the heavens from the Ancient One, my master in the arcane arts, who taught me the spells and incantations to manipulate the aetheric energies.
Bruce Banner: Well, from the readings we took during the fight, it appears that there is a previously unknown fifth fundamental force at work in the universe. While normally impossible to detect, this force appears to react in a variety of energetic ways to highly specific sonic stimuli.
Dr. Strange: Yes, that’s one way to put it.
Right, because that worked so well in the Star Wars prequels.
*Nothing *worked well in the Star Wars prequels. I don’t think they’re a particularly good metric for judging the worth of a concept.
I originally hated the idea when it came to me, but the fact of the matter is that part of the reason complicated origins work well in comics is because they get dozens or hundreds of issues over many years to tell the story and figure parts out to work together. In a cinematic universe, they get a handful of two hour films, and they can’t be too complicated or they’ll lose the casual audience.
So, the question is, how do you create the Amazons in a way that makes sense in the world that’s established in Man of Steel. This is a world that, as far as it looks, doesn’t seem any different than ours up until the Kryptonian invasion. All of the urban legends of Clark saving people would mix in just fine with all the random stuff we’ve heard.
As a comparison, look at Raimi’s Spider-Man vs. the Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man. In Raimi’s, each villain has a completely different origin. It works fine in an individual movie, but across all three, it looks repetitive and unoriginal. In the new ASM, it’s clear from the first one and the trailers for the new one coming out this summer that Oscorp is going to be the source of most or all of the villains (you can see Vulture’s wings and Doc Oc’s arms in the background during the trailer). This makes the similarity in origin look intentional and directed and it hints at a bigger problem in the end.
So, sure, it looks tacky from a comic book perspective, but film is a different medium and you need to have tighter storylines. Having common origins helps a lot in keeping tighter stories.
It’s actually a lot more connected than it looks, and I think Marvel has done an excellent job of tying the origins of their major heroes together so that you have a full picture there for the fan that wants to connect the dots, but you have the tight story for the casual fan and they just see SHIELD as the commonality.
Consider, in Captain America, he has the Super Soldier Serum created by ASR (or some similar acronym). ASR goes on to become the roots of SHIELD. Howard Stark was one of the founding members of SHIELD. He also picked up the Tesseract from the bottom of the ocean at the end of the film. Banner became Hulk when doing research trying to recreate the Super Soldier Serum (likely funded by SHIELD, hence why Gen Ross is after him and they create Abomination). Meanwhile, the Tesseract was clearly of Asgardian origins (presumably left behind during their war on Earth with the Frost Giants), as alluded to in Captain America and confirmed in The Avengers. All four of the heroes are already interwoven with eachother and with SHIELD as a common origin.
One thing that I’m not as sure about would be if the ARC reactor technology didn’t originate from Howard Stark studying the Tesseract. Both are touted as sources of seemingly unlimited energy, Stark has to create a new element to safely use the compact one in his chest, and in the Avengers they tie the two back together to create the portal.
So, I guess my point is, if Marvel is the Gold Standard for a super hero universe, and they’re tying all of the origins together in their origins, why is it bad when DC does it? Yes, canonically, Wonder Woman isn’t Kryptonian, she’s Amazonian, but I don’t see why adding a tidbit that the Amazons’ origin ties back to the Kryptonians is an unreasonable concession to make for the cinematic universe. The other realistic options they have are to just say the Greek Gods were real, which totally throws the whole grounded in reality part out the window, or the Greek Gods were aliens too, just not Kryptonian, but that would just stink too much of Thor in the Marvel universe.
Also, let’s consider the state at the end of Man of Steel, Kryptonians are feared and hated across the planet. They’re the source of a number of major villains in the DC universe, notably Brainiac and Doomsday, and likely they’ll tie other villains and heroes into technology gleaned from their invasion, perhaps Cyborg or Metallo if they go that direction, and obviously Lex Luthor will have his hands on it. It’s a logical point to give the DCU a commonality, and the idea that Kryptonians were around for thousands of years can help explain any legends or myths they want to latch onto, not just the Greek Gods but perhaps Atlantis, if they want to use Aquaman, or for the six mythological figures from which Shazam’s powers originate, if they go that way.
Now, that’s not to say that it’ll go off as well as Marvel’s common origins have gone, it’ll certainly appear shoe-horned in to fans familiar with the source material, but we have to realize that we’re in the minority. I think, in the end, as others have indicated, the origin is a necessity, but the film won’t be good or bad just because of the origin. Even the best origin doesn’t guarantee an awful film, and a merely passable one will work too. Hell, maybe the best way is to just sort of allude to it and let the hardcore fans piece it together and let the casual fans just see it as a self-contained story. Regardless, I think it can work just fine.
Shrug. And yet, here you are. In a thread that’s been discussing superhero movies in general for something like 100 posts. And griping about a single sentence about an Easter Egg in an upcoming movie.
If one wants to remain totally sheltered about any aspect of any media that they’re interested in, it would behoove them to stay off the internet and possibly swaddle themselves in bubble-wrap rather than hanging out in a thread about movies in the same genre.
Also?
Rosebud was his sled
Jesus died, but rose 3 days later
Darth was Luke’s dad
In the end, the whale takes out Ahab, but Ishmael lives to tell the tale
Kennedy gets shot in Nov, 1963
Krypton explodes, but baby Superman gets away safely.
Back to the real thread, in Thor, IMO, they’ve been tap-dancing around the “Is it magic or is it tech?” question. They did the dance better in the first movie than the second (the second clearly came down harder on the tech side), but there’s nothing that precludes magic.
For the most part I really like what Marvel has done with their films, but if there’s one thing I hate, it’s the end-credit scenes fad they’ve started. It’s fun as an occassional throw away gag, but when they do it in every film, it loses it’s novelty, and it just gets annoying. Sure, I usually sit through the credits anyway because I like seeing some of the roles and I like listening to the music, but I shouldn’t feel like I have to. Plus, really, if it’s a vital part of the story, put the little cameo in the film itself.
Using the Avenger’s film as an example, I think the Thanos scene is important to setting up some of the future of the story and builds anticipation, if for no other reason, people asking who it was, same with the scene with the Collector at the end of Thor 2, tying events into that same story and building anticipation for Guardians of the Galaxy. Of course, people have wised up to Marvel’s game by the end of the latter and probably didn’t miss that.
OTOH, the Shwarma scene, the scene at the end of Iron Man 3 with Tony Stark talking to Bruce Banner, the dog from Yodenheim chasing birds in Thor 2, I’m fine with those as after-credit scenes, because none of that adds to universe cohesiveness and they’re just little gags. So, sure, if people miss those, not a big deal, they just lose out on a snicker, which is a small nod to the audience for sitting through the credits.
So, please, DC and WB, please, don’t get into the after-credits fad. I’m all for giving other DC heroes cameos, but please try to fit it in more organically than just a random scene tacked onto the credits that half the audience will miss. And, looking at Man of Steel, I think they’ve done some of that, it’s difficult to miss the LexCorp signs multiple times in the film, but there’s also a reference to Wayne Enterprises, and nods to Green Lantern, Cyborg, and even Booster Gold. We’ll obviously see Diana Prince in MoS2, since they’ve cast the role, but I strongly suspect they’ll find a reason to show her in costume during the film in some way, even if briefly.
I think that we all agree on her being topless.
Here’s a thought.
- We’re an island of superhuman women, isolated for 2500 years. Greek gods isolated, evil world and so forth.
- Why would we venture forth. World’s still evil, we can see it. Plus, by Hades, there’s no one out there worth our time. Best to stay here and live our happy, idyllic, kangaroo-riding lives. Who wouldn’t?
- Kryptonians destory Metropolis and the end of Man of Steel
- Holy Hera! Who the hell’s the guy in the blue outfit with that cape? Diana! Go check him out! They’ve come up with something new…
Bang, movie. Plus, the solidly warrior Wonder Women gets that ‘first time supers meet they fight’ opportunity to kick Superman’s ass. She’s the trained warrior, he’s just a brawler who’s not really committed to it.
I like this one a lot. Throw in Ares provoking things (because, gotta have Greek Gods and so it’s not just a costumed slug-fest) and everything ties together well.
Plus, Kangas!
Bah! Just put unabashed magic and actual pantheons of gods onscreen already. I’m sick of fans and production companies shying away from The Fantastic in superhero movies. It’s not like anyone this side of Bill Donohue is going to be upset.
Instead of trying to work around a non-problem, embrace how Wonder Man makes the DCU a lot more interesting by bringing in more fantastical elements. Magic imbued Amazonian weapons hurt Superman! Picture that playing out. Imagine how infuriated Batman will be. This stuff needn’t be stuffed into a tidy box. It’s a big anything-is-possible universe for superhero movies. Or it should be.