Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase 2 General Discussion (Spoilers discussed for All Films -- Please Read First Post) (1 Viewer)

[Josh Dial]

I had a passing thought about Captain Marvel: If, as Kevin Feige says, she's the most powerful person in the Marvel Universe, how is that so? Her power derives from one infinity stone (which was in the Tesseract), while Thanos' power comes from all six infinity stones. So, of course, she's a tremendous asset against him, but more powerful?

Marvel released their "power scores" last week, and, honestly, they sort of fudged the math. In my opinion they downplayed Thor's ability to absorb the energy of a sun (rating Thor an A level, where S level is highest). I think they also simply miscalculated Thor's score. In addition, they absolutely messed up by giving Black Widow a a 3/10 for combat training (while Hawkeye scored a 9--I would even go so far as argue that Black Widow potentially has more combat training and overall combat knowledge than Captain America), and glossed over Doctor Strange's virtually unlimited energy score.

Here's the official link.

That said, Captain Marvel is certainly crazy powerful (and a legit S-tier hero), and a group with Doctor Strange, Thor, and the Hulk, are extremely formidable.

 

[Sean Bryan]

Yeah, I would imagine she wasn't thrilled about receiving his page. She was probably off living her life doing whatever she was doing, and having to come back to Earth to bail him out wasn't on her agenda.

I imagine it quite differently. Wherever she was and whatever she was doing, half of everyone around her started turning to ash. Just like everyone else, this would have a dramatic kick in the gut impact on her. And then she sees the page from Fury. She knows exactly why he's paging and getting to him would be the only thing she would want to do next (except for maybe checking on anyone she cared about to see if they were alive). She's not bailing him out, the nightmare affects her just as much as everyone else in the Universe. Now she knows where to focus her reaction to this. She NEEDS to get to Fury.

 

[Sean Bryan]

I think she's concern and perhaps pissed off. I wonder if wherever she's been, half of life has also vanished and wonders what happened?

This affects the entire Universe. So yes she'd have experienced the same thing everyone else in the Universe did. Unless she was in isolation somewhere.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think there's also this potential factor:

In "Captain Marvel," Carol doesn't really remember who she is or know a lot about the universe around her -- but she's familiar enough with the Kree, and knows who Ronan is, just as a starting point. She leaves Earth around 1995. In the time that follows, Thanos rises in the universe, and his quest for the Infinity Stones becomes a known piece of information. Ronan's involvement in pursuing an Infinity Stone on behalf of Thanos (the plot of the first "Guardians" film) is a known piece of information. As per Thor's declaration in "The Avengers," Loki using the Tesseract to open a portal in that first team-up film signals to the universe that the Earth is now ready for a higher form of war.

Now, it's completely possible that none of this ever makes it back to Carol, but... it's also completely possible that it does.

All I'm trying to say is this: when Carol leaves Earth in 1995, she leaves Fury with an Infinity Stone, but the implication is that she has no idea that she's leaving him with something so precious. I would venture to guess that by the time half of the people in the known universe started to disappear, that Carol caught onto the idea that someone named Thanos was collecting Infinity Stones, and that she happened to have left one on Earth. She probably knows enough to understand that when people started disappearing, that meant that Thanos had achieved his goal.

I'm not saying that she's coming into the picture believing that Fury sold them all out - I think it's probably more that she doesn't think anyone would have that Tesseract unless they had gotten it over Fury's dead body, and that she's concerned that that was what happened.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’ve been doing some very early spring cleaning and reorganizing these past couple weeks and as part of that, I decided there were enough Marvel movies now to justify having their own shelf, instead of being mixed in alphabetically.

I know I shouldn’t care, but I’m slightly annoyed that they couldn’t keep a consistent packaging design even within a single phase.

And this is even more petty - I’m missing a few of the slipcovers and I wish I wasn’t.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I know I shouldn’t care, but I’m slightly annoyed that they couldn’t keep a consistent packaging design even within a single phase.

The solution to this is simple. Just re-buy Disney's new reissues with that ugly matching cover art we were talking about in the Avengers thread, and those should all match. Then sell me some of your old copies to offset the cost.

But seriously, this is just another case of the studio not caring about what the fans want. Star Wars is the same way; I could understand the Disney titles not being uniform with the Fox titles, but it drives me nuts that The Last Jedi isn't even uniform with The Force Awakens, which were both released by the same studio and should be.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The solution to this is simple. Just re-buy Disney's new reissues with that ugly matching cover art we were talking about in the Avengers thread, and those should all match.

But those cases won’t say “3D” and that’ll set off a different set of petty neurosis.

My wife has the deluxe set for Phase One - Fury’s briefcase with the Tesseract. As far as box o’junk editions go, it’s pretty cool. Guardians 2 should come either on, inside or with a Zune.

 

[Robert Crawford]

I think there's also this potential factor:

In "Captain Marvel," Carol doesn't really remember who she is or know a lot about the universe around her -- but she's familiar enough with the Kree, and knows who Ronan is, just as a starting point. She leaves Earth around 1995. In the time that follows, Thanos rises in the universe, and his quest for the Infinity Stones becomes a known piece of information. Ronan's involvement in pursuing an Infinity Stone on behalf of Thanos (the plot of the first "Guardians" film) is a known piece of information. As per Thor's declaration in "The Avengers," Loki using the Tesseract to open a portal in that first team-up film signals to the universe that the Earth is now ready for a higher form of war.

Now, it's completely possible that none of this ever makes it back to Carol, but... it's also completely possible that it does.

All I'm trying to say is this: when Carol leaves Earth in 1995, she leaves Fury with an Infinity Stone, but the implication is that she has no idea that she's leaving him with something so precious. I would venture to guess that by the time half of the people in the known universe started to disappear, that Carol caught onto the idea that someone named Thanos was collecting Infinity Stones, and that she happened to have left one on Earth. She probably knows enough to understand that when people started disappearing, that meant that Thanos had achieved his goal.

I'm not saying that she's coming into the picture believing that Fury sold them all out - I think it's probably more that she doesn't think anyone would have that Tesseract unless they had gotten it over Fury's dead body, and that she's concerned that that was what happened.

So you think that Carol and Fury have not talked since 1995?

 

[Joe Wong]

Great thread!

Big fan of the MCU. It now has enough entries and actors that my wife and I think that it should be a replacement for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Imagine:

Six Degrees of MCU.

 

[Joe Wong]

Great thread!

Big fan of the MCU. It now has enough entries and actors that my wife and I think that it should be a replacement for Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Imagine:

Six Degrees of MCU.

How about Kevin Bacon, to start?

At first, I pretty much went the full 6 degrees:

Bacon was in

1. JFK with Kevin Costner, who’s in
2. Waterworld w Tina Majorino,
3. Napoleon Dynamite w John Heder,
4. Blades of Glory w Will Ferrell,
5. Step Brothers w John C Reilly,
6. Guardians of the Galaxy

But there are lower degrees:

Costner in Man of Steel -> Lawrence Fishburne in Ant Man and the Wasp

Or

Flatliners w Oliver Platt -> 2012 w Chiwetel Ejiofor -> Dr Strange

And so on ...

Anyway, just a bit of fun!

PS... just re-discovered Bacon and John C Reilly were both in The River Wild, so there you have it. And of course Bacon was in X-Men: First Class, which is not MCU but still Marvel.

 

[Sean Bryan]

So you think that Carol and Fury have not talked since 1995?

I think that could go either way. She surely didn’t have a “public” presence on Earth between ‘95 and the present. If she never returned during that time, they may still have had contact through the pager. He may have contacted her during the Chitari invasion or when Ultron was in Sokovia and then called her off when the Avengers handled it. Or there may have been no contact or return to Earth during that time.

It really could be either and just depends on whatever the writers involved want the story to be.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

According to what the Marvel people confirmed, half of all life in all the universe vanished everywhere - so by definition, that’s half of everyone that’s living wherever Carol is.

Based on the mid-credits scene in Captain Marvel, it's clear that quite a bit of time had gone by between Fury activating the pager when Decimation happened, and Carol suddenly appearing in Avengers HQ.

I think there's two possibilities, either or both of which could be true:

1. Carol was a really, really long way from Earth. It took a long time for the signal from the pager to reach her, and then it took her a long time to make the journey back.
   
   
2. Because the Decimation occurred everywhere, all at once, the whole cosmic side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in just as much disarray as Earth was. Carol spent a lot of time being a hero wherever she was Decimation happened, and she had a lot of people to save on the journey back to Earth that slowed down her progress.

Assuming she hasn't kept in touch with Fury since leaving Earth in 1995, she'd have no way of knowing that he'd put together a team of extraordinary individuals, and that they were the universe's best chance at stopping Thanos and reversing what he'd done.

Marvel released their "power scores" last week, and, honestly, they sort of fudged the math. In my opinion they downplayed Thor's ability to absorb the energy of a sun (rating Thor an A level, where S level is highest). I think they also simply miscalculated Thor's score. In addition, they absolutely messed up by giving Black Widow a a 3/10 for combat training (while Hawkeye scored a 9--I would even go so far as argue that Black Widow potentially has more combat training and overall combat knowledge than Captain America), and glossed over Doctor Strange's virtually unlimited energy score.

I also find it confusing that every qualifier has a different scale: Intelligence is a 1-7 scale, combat training uses military pay grade, speed is in miles per hour, energy is in joules emitted, durability is in joules survived, and strength is in pounds lifted. A 1-10 scale on the various categories would have been far less impenetrable.

But Thor has been fighting in combat for literally thousands of years. It's hard to argue anybody has more combat training than him.

And Black Widow, in addition to being a lethal hand-to-hand combatant, should have done better than 3/7 on the intelligence scale. She's a covert operative and master of espionage.

That said, Captain Marvel is certainly crazy powerful (and a legit S-tier hero), and a group with Doctor Strange, Thor, and the Hulk, are extremely formidable.

Captain Marvel is basically the Superman of the MCU. The dramatic tension isn't whether she'll succeed, it's how she'll succeed. The same is true of Thor.

Much of Doctor Strange's power comes from his accessories, so taking those away can handicap him significantly. Hulk's handicap is that he can turn into Banner, and Banner can be killed.

 

[Carabimero]

I’ve been doing some very early spring cleaning and reorganizing these past couple weeks and as part of that, I decided there were enough Marvel movies now to justify having their own shelf, instead of being mixed in alphabetically.

I know I shouldn’t care, but I’m slightly annoyed that they couldn’t keep a consistent packaging design even within a single phase.

And this is even more petty - I’m missing a few of the slipcovers and I wish I wasn’t.

I solved this problem, at least for myself (and made my wife happy at the same time) by buying BD cases that hold multiple discs. For example, I put all the Iron Man movies (BD and DVD) in one case with the BD case art insert of the first movie on the outside and the others underneath it. That way, if I someday wish to re-expand the sets, I can break them back into individual movie cases.

But I must say, having one BD case for all the Iron Man movies, one case for all The Avengers movies, one for all the Cap movies, and so on, is pretty darn sweet. Not only have I lost nothing, I'm saving tons of space. And best of all, the convenience of all the movies in one case is super nice.

I do the same thing with other movies; for example, with E.T. I have one six-disc BD case that holds all the BD and DVD releases of the movie. Super tight and convenient. And looks sane on the shelf.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The power scores didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either. I think based on the overall ratings, they put Iron Man in a higher tier than Captain America, and I just don’t buy that. Nevermind that we’ve seen Captain America defeat Iron Man in combat - Steve Rogers is inherently powerful and Tony Stark wears a suit that allows him to have powers as long as he’s wearing it.

 

[Carabimero]

Not only that, IMO, the Cap movies are in another league from Iron Man. The first two Cap movies are brilliant, the third one very very good. I rarely watch Iron Man II or III. As time passes, they seem more and more irrelevant to me.

The Cap trilogy is where it's at for this fan.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Iron Man 2, for me, commits one of those sequel sins that I really don't like: rather than pushing the returning characters forward, it forces them (and us, the audience) to go through almost the same journey as the first film.

In the first film, Tony Stark is a selfish man who thinks only of himself. His character arc is coming to understand that all of his money and his privilege are unfulfilling without being put to some larger purpose; he learns to think of people other than himself. He's not perfect when the movie ends, but he's finally moving in the right direction.

But when the second film begins, Tony is a jerk again. A jerk who suddenly can't control his drinking. And now the Iron Man suit, which he just made in the first film and which was shown in that film to have no adverse effects, is killing him and death is imminent.

I just think that's bad writing. "Star Trek Into Darkness" does a bit of this. The Star Trek '09 film that preceded it introduced Captain Kirk, and his story arc in the first film was overcoming the fact that he was too young and too inexperienced to be in command, and by the end of the film, he's demonstrated that he's right where he should be. And then the second film starts, and we're immediately told that he's too young and too inexperienced to be in command, and the character's story arc ends up being almost exactly the same.

Or "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" -- the first film in that series has a major subplot with Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy, and Peter coming to the conclusion that in order to be Spider-Man, he has to let Gwen go for her own safety. He battles with that through the film, but the movie ends with him firmly accepting that reality and understanding why things have to be that way. And then the sequel starts, and the exact same conflict plays out throughout the film, so that Peter's story arc is once again the same in both films.

Or "Quantum of Solace" -- the Bond reboot "Casino Royale" introduced us to a young and inexperienced Bond that maybe wasn't ready to be a secret agent just yet, but by the end of the film, he's learned and grown and demonstrated that he's ready for this job. And then Quantum begins, immediately picking up from the last film, and all of a sudden, it's back to everyone telling him how young and inexperienced and not ready he is, thus negating all of his character development from the first film and sending him on the same emotional arc yet again.

Fortunately, Marvel films have moved beyond this, and I don't think any other character's second film has made the same character play out the same story arc again. They've learned from their missteps. That's actually one of the more impressive things about the MCU for me. Not every film is perfect, but they're all made in good faith, and it seems that there's a genuine effort made to not make the same mistake twice.

What I like about Iron Man 3 is that it seems like an honest and genuine attempt to do two different but important things. The first is that it allows for consequences for the chaos from the previous film. Tony helped save the world in The Avengers, but it was a massive struggle and it's only natural that there would be an emotional toll to pay. Iron Man 3 isn't afraid to show that Tony is suffering from PTSD-like symptoms, and his arc in the film is finding his way back from that. The other thing that Iron Man 3 does, which I like, is that it shows the MCU won't be beholden to comic book interpretations as the only way to tell the story. In the comics, the Mandarin character is dated and perhaps uncomfortably close to a racist stereotype. I don't think the comic was was written with bad intentions, but times have changed, and the comic portrayal would have been a little off-kilter in this modern era. I like that the character is reframed as a red herring, and Ben Kingsley is amazing at selling both the performance of the terrorist and the ravings of the lunatic actor. The plot about the illegal privatized super soldier program gone wrong isn't that interesting to me, but the stuff about Tony struggling with and overcoming his demons is great. It showed, for the first time in the MCU, that actions in one film can have real consequences in how the characters develop from that point forward.

 

[Sam Favate]

Y'know what I would like to see them do at some point? A tale of the MCU set in the 1950s, like Agents of Atlas. Include Howard Stark and Peggy Carter.

I'm sure Marvel would never get to it, what with all the new possibilities open to them with the Fox merger, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Silver Surfer and so on. Maybe it could be a Disney+ miniseries.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I'm in for more Howard Stark and Peggy Carter (and Jarvis, for that matter) anytime they want to do it! I'd love to see something like that on Disney+.

 

[Sam Favate]

I'm in for more Howard Stark and Peggy Carter (and Jarvis, for that matter) anytime they want to do it! I'd love to see something like that on Disney+.

Okay, I'm sold: Season 3 of Agent Carter, set in the 50s, with the Agents of Atlas figuring into the season-long storyline.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

If I had a magic wand and could bring any Marvel project into being, it would be an early eighties "Agent Carter" Cold War thriller miniseries with Hayley Atwell back as Peggy and John Slattery reprising his role as older Howard Stark. Peggy would be looking into a covert genetics/eugenics program to breed superior humans. She discovers that they're using genetic material harvested from soldiers during World War II, and one of the babies -- designated Number 13 by the program, but named Sharon by the surrogate that gave birth to her -- was made using her late brother's genetic material.