Trying to change the status quo
Super villains are usually trying to take over the world or rob banks and shit. That’s like saying Jeffery Dahmer was just trying to have a snack.
Moonraker is about a guy who just wanted to save the trees
I went through all the comments here and I can’t find where someone said an example of the super villain just trying to change the status quo. Yet lots of arguing back and forth.
Anarky in Arkham Origins. No idea if he’s the same in the comics, and he still used shitty methods to achieve his goals, but the game does give him the space for a very long monologue explaining his position after he’s defeated, if you’re interested in what he’s got to say. Other villains in the game would get fist in the face.
Off the top of my head the villain in one of the Iron Man films was opposed to US war crimes and imperialism, New New Spider Man 1 had the Vulture as a villain whose deal was Stark and the wealthy were screwing people over.
In Batman Begins 3 Bane is a pastiche of anarchism/anti-capital ideas until revealed that that’s a play by Talia.
Well intentioned extremist is a pretty common villain trope in general.
Vulture was a victim, but he responded by selling alien tech weapons to criminals. His response has nothing to do with changing the status quo.
I thought he gave some villain speech about getting his gang and people like them what they deserved and bringing down Stark and Co. But I could well be mistaken or misremembering since I only saw it once, quite some time ago so you may very well be right.
Maybe he did, but is it for the sake of changing the status quo or for vengeance and making money? I also need to rewatch it to make sure, but he sure seem like the only thing he cares about is his own family.
Or maybe both?
As was detailed by someone else the Doylian reason why heroes don’t change the status quo is that people want to see our world in media, not a fantasy one and that this means only villains are allowed to want changes, but since the people funding the production of media tend to be invested in the status quo status quo changing ideas tend to be flanderised and done by people who do evil and selfish acts to reinforce standard morality.
Well intentioned extremist
Funny, that’s how people who want change is portrayed by liberal media in real life, too.
I wonder if it’s a coincidence?
It’s possible that well intentioned extremists really are more likely to have a negative impact and not cause any positive change.
How many mass shooters have a manifesto? Often they’re upset about how things are and feel like killing a bunch of people will change things. But they just wind up killing a bunch of people and don’t influence anyone to do anything. Well other than copy cats who also just kill people.
In real life wanting change isn’t bad. But using violence is bad and doesn’t result in any positive change. The use of violence makes people feel helpless and so they want to see movies about heroes with superpowers that can take on violent extremists.
Often they’re upset about how things are and feel like killing a bunch of people will change things.
Just like Batman, eh?
In real life wanting change isn’t bad. But using violence
So as long as your desire for change doesn’t actually threaten the people at the top, it’s all okay?
That is literally what the people creating this kind of propaganda wants you to believe.
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Is this a normal thing in comic book movies?
No, it’s not at all. This is total nonsense. If anything, superheroes are usually persecuted by the government.
Spider-Man specifically is literally an outlaw.
And look at the X-Men. Half the time the gov wants to wipe mutants out.
Maybe you can say that about Captain America, but he was created to defeat the Nazis. So yeah, who the fuck is not on the government side in this situation?
And when the gov became corrupt, Captain America became an outlaw.
So whoever is upvoting this and whoever created this doesn’t know much about Marvel or comics.
I mean I don’t know that much, but I know the bare minimum to know this is nonsense.
It’s a major driving force in Civil War even the watered down version in the MCU.
Tony Stark: I don’t have powers but made something that almost wiped out a nation so we should all register with the government that really hasn’t liked us all that much.
Captain America: That’s a massive invasion of privacy and I fought against those who catalogued people, so get bent.
Well, it’s more motivated than the comic version where Reed Richards and Tony Stark suddenly acted like super villians and cloned Thor without his consent as well as establishing a concentration camp for superheroes in the negative zone. Comic Civil War was wild.
Yeah this is my take too. Comic book writers aren’t very good at being subtle, so it ended up being Reed Richards and Tony Stark become supervillains for a while. The whole debate about the laws were rendered moot when they made a Thor clone and a negative zone gitmo.
The movie had put the debate over the laws a little more prominently, and it was more about the character’s differences in how they saw things. Cap favouring individual responsibility over instituitions made sense given the whole hydra infiltration. Stark not trusting his own judgment makes sense because his story started with almost being killed by a weapon he invented. Different experiences led to different conclusions and neither of these guys turned into super villains.
Nice little touch to have an actual villain manipulating things in the background and almost getting away with it because the heroes were too busy fighting each other to even notice him.
Yeah. The comic civil war had some of the best spin-offs, but the event itself ended up way too black and white. The movie version, I fell right at the knife’s edge when it came to whose side I favoured.
To be fair the motivating factor of that one is a bunch of teenage heroes accidentally get a school (and themselves) blown up because they were filming a reality TV show.
To be even more fair it was Nitro (a villain) that blew up the school, not the teenagers.
Only character I liked in that plotline was Wolverine because he didn’t bother with any of the bullshit and was just trying to track down Nitro and kill him.
Yeah, but the point of registration (from Stark’s point of view) was to train superheros how to engage villains safely. Not run blind into a situation with a villain who can level a square quarter mile at the speed of thought.
Nitro is gonna Nitro, the kids should have known better.
Sounds to me like kids shouldn’t be superheroes (looking at you, Xavier).
Sure but they instantly lost the thread by going after superheroes that didn’t sign on before going after Nitro. Dude’s still out there and could still blow up more schools, but let’s instead duke it out with Captain America because that’s more important right now. WTF?
Tony Stark is behaving way more irresponsibly than those teenagers were. But he’s heading up an initiative to train teenagers with super powers to be more responsible?
The movie did it better. They weren’t debating a law while Ultron was still out there doing his thing. The debate came after Ultron was taken care of. Immediate danger is taken care of, so now we can think about how we can do things better. Comic book version was just Tony Stark and Reed Richards become super villains for a while. Their actions don’t really make any sense.
Wolverine was literally pulverized down to his adamantium skeleton by Nitro and regenerated back from that in a matter of, what, 2 minutes? That part always annoyed me to no end
Also Civil War - Cap punches Iron Man, and Iron Man recoiled.
The same Iron Man that takes a tank round while airborne, has an uncontrolled landing, and stands back up with some scratches and scorch marks.
I loathe that film.
Since when has superhero logic ever held up to close inspection?
Sometimes?
Yeah, that take is beyond ridiculous. If unrealistic fiction movies get you that riled up, stick to other genres. There are some great documentaries, too.
Both are kinda weird considering just being in a suit of armor isn’t gonna save you from concussive forces turning your body into liquid inside that armor.
Just consider that Captain America is stronger than a tank shell.
He surely has stopped a tank shell with his shield at some point or another.
Also it’s pretty common for the strength of super heroes to vary wildly depending on the script’s need.
The thing is that the stories are nonsense and unrealistic. There is no way that real superheroes wouldnt be either under government control or spiral out of control like in “the boys”. What people hate about these movies is the naive belief that superheroes would be a force of good in the world and not just another tool of destruction like any other weapon.
The stories are just the evolution of the fables of gods walking the earth as men. Comics and fables have some pretty deep meanings. Yes, they are unrealistic. But they are not nonsense.
Superhero stories are usually well aware of how people might abuse super powers. Those people become supervillains. The only way this criticism makes sense is if you think that no one would ever try to use their powers for good.
Perhaps it is naive to tell stories of a powerful being who remains uncorrupted by power. But perhaps it is also naive to tell stories of a man who can fly like a bird. Suggesting that making up fantastical, magical human beings is sensible in itself, and that it is nonsense to then imagine them being both good and powerful seems like an insult to imagination altogether. But I suppose that it’s easier for some people to re-imagine the laws of physics than it is for them to temporarily quiet their lack of faith in humanity long enough to enjoy a movie.
It’s escapist fantasy lol, of course it couldn’t be real, you think radioactive spiderbites would give you any powers other than cancer?
The closest Marvel has to that position is Iron Man. But he still does his own thing, not the government bidding.
The second movie is literally him telling the government to shove it.
I first saw this on the ml equivalent community and a decent chunk of comments were pretty unhinged.
Yeah wasn’t marvel banned from using the army sometimes in phase 1 they were told they criticized it too much?
Yes it is, despite all the nay-sayers on here. The super-creep genre has always been reactionary and protective of the status quo.
Are you sure you’re not being reactionary? The target of the comic isn’t the corporation making the movies. It’s attacking the people that watch these movies… people who are largely working class. Seems like an elitist anti working class kind of comic to me.
I’d also put a little blame on lazy writers who want the villains to be relatable so they just make some extremists for otherwise good causes, look at posion ivy who could be easily just be in it for money and power but often push environmental aspects and that’s one thing I think the other guy might be getting at
Are you sure you’re not being reactionary?
Yes.
It’s attacking the people that watch these movies…
No, it doesn’t. It literally just demonstrates how we are swamped by this pro-status quo propaganda. That is most definitely not what an “elitist anti-working class” narrative looks like at all. If you want to see what an “elitist anti-working class” narrative looks like, go watch any Batman movie.
Yeah, sure, Doctor Octavius was creating a revolutionary nearly infinite source of power.
In the middle of fucking Manhattan in the form of an all consuming Miniature Sun.
Was there a reason it had to be in Manhattan and not like, fuckin Idaho or something?
I mean weren’t they in the middle of NYC when Captain America got microwaved in that tube?
That sort of whataboutism doesn’t excuse the actions of villains. Also, he was a volunteer and they probably didn’t know it would explode.
Based
This video is dumb. It’s making contradictory criticisms while having no alternative of its own to suggest.
The heroes don’t use their powers to radically alter the world because, first and foremost, then it wouldn’t be our world, it would be a very different one. Once you actually apply all the innovations that should be possible, the setting starts looking more like Star Trek, and it becomes a very different story. This is the same reason that Batman will never keep his villains off the street, whether he captures them or kills them. It’s the same reason the Doctor always makes his way back to current year earth somewhere in the UK. The status quo they are maintaining is the one that let’s us continue telling this kind of story.
Second, things like time travel and reality altering magic, things which can fundamentally change our world in an instant have to be kept limited, or we have no more stories. This goes beyond just the status quo of the setting and gets into the basics of storytelling and having tension. Make your heroes too powerful with no limitations, and you can’t maintain a conflict without gigantic plotholes.
Second and a half, fundamentally altering the world with time travel or super science or magic is a concept that should be terrifying in its implications. Maybe time travel could alter the timeline for the better, but who gets to decide what is better, and what trade offs are worth it? Who gets to decide that it’s worth unmaking millions of lives to alter history into something you think might be better? And how many ways can it go wrong? The world is a complicated place, you can’t make sudden drastic changes without inflicting a lot of harm, even if you think the good it does will outweigh the harm. And doing so with forces that we may not fully understand or control is reckless. I mean, fuck, Ultron is the example they give of something to change the world, and would you trust the people making AI today to put that in a self-aware army of iron man robots?
Third, what kind of message would it send if the heroes used some bullshit super science or magic solution that quickly and easily solved environmental issues or social problems? Is that really addressing the issues in a way that’s helpful for us in the real world? Is it setting an example for us to follow when they aren’t faced with any of the real difficulties that come with solving those problems? it seems like that would just be dismissing the problem and implicitly endorsing the kind of vaporware solutions that polluting industries often try to hype up to avoid real change.
Fourth, do you really think the world would end up better if a small group of super powered individuals tried to overthrow governments, destabilize economies, and transform civilization by force? We’re not just talking about intervening in a specific conflict like Ukraine or Palestine here, the video makes that clear. If at the end of the day, they aren’t radically altering society, they are just defending the status quo. But, how do you think that would actually play out, especially in a world where there are other super powered individuals who will oppose them? World domination by benevolent dictators imposing their will on society while tearing the current order down by force is not going to be pretty, it’s going to be a fucking nightmare. And let’s be honest, none of our heroes have shown the capacity for building back the world they would be destroying, which is the much harder part.
Well, actually, no, despite criticizing the heroes for not using their powers to single-handedly institute radical change the video goes on to argue that change would actually require larger movements lead by the public, and condemns the idea of an elite few hogging power (should iron man be flooding the streets with military hardware? And how the fuck is the hulk suppose to share his power?). So, what then is the right thing for them to do? I guess they should engage in peaceful activism and support the people when they aren’t called away to stop some murdering asshole from killing a bunch of innocent people. So, basically what we have now, but with a few more scenes of them making political statements and doing volunteer work that doesn’t actually contribute to the plot.
Fifth, the villains are sometimes given sympathetic motivations because we want some nuance and complexity. The world is complicated and most conflicts are not just black and white. The lesson isn’t that change is bad and evil, it’s that you can’t just view the world in such simplified terms. The alternative of making the villains all bad and the heroes all good is actually far more dangerous, because it reinforces the idea that we can just see the world in simple us vs them terms, with no need to understand other points of view or to question our own.
Sixth, they do fight the status quo, just not the parts that the video wants to address. Daredevil can’t solve all the world’s problems but he can and does fight both organized crime and corruption. Captain America isn’t going to overthrow the government, but he will fight SHIELD when it crosses the line. Iron Man changed his own company to address its role in the world, and uses it to innovate to make the world a better place, that’s just not the focus of the story.
I think you’ve said a lot that is in line with the video, tbh. Most of your points accurately spell out why a superhero movie involving a protagonist who disrupts the status quo wouldn’t work, mostly because we are living in the status quo and the general audience’s main frame of reference – that which they use to understand the story – is that status quo is overall good, that there are inevitable bad parts that must come with the good, and that mass change is inherently bad. You even note this last point yourself.
But it doesn’t change the fact that the superheros are still, for the most part, not proactively trying to
recognizereorganize society, but keep it the same and react to its threats, which sometimes have interesting intentions of reorganization, but ultimately all end up doing an irredeemable act in the eyes of the audience so to signal that they are in fact the bad guy.I don’t think this video is really meant to be taken as “superheros should change the status quo,” but more closely look at Graebers generalization and kinda jostle people out of their “the status quo is ultimately good, despite it’s necessary evils,” worldview. Graeber often said he’s not trying to provide an answer or solution to societal organization outside of hierarchical Nation-states, but just to allow people to break out of the traditional mental framework and ask the question, what else could work?
Why do hero stories need to be told?
Stories don’t need to be told, humans need to tell stories. That’s what makes us human, and is how we spread ideas like honor, justice, and even civilization itself.
Hero stories reinforce all of these ideas, and others besides.
Hero stories reinforce that “honour, justice and even civilisation itself” (as a placeholder for vaguely progressive ideas) would need to be installed by powerful individuals aka Great Man theory fiction.
That’s not what I’ve seen. The stories I’m familiar with usually involve defending those things where they already exist, not establishing them. Even in cases where that needs established, as often as not, they’re usually protecting someone else who embodies that ideal.
I’m sure there are stories similar to what you’ve described, but I don’t see that in the stories I’m familiar with.
No story needs to be told.
That was good, tnx
Supporting read arguing the superhero Ego versus villain Id: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/super-position/
This is great.
That’s the joke/point in many comics and comic book movies, too.
Subversive ideas can’t always be communicated openly in children’s media.
I think the world is a better place for having difficult disruptive ideas voiced in children’s movies, even when they’re only allowed to come out of the mouth of the bad guys.
That’s the joke/point in many comics and comic book movies, too.
No, it isn’t.
What the cartoonist is very accurately depicting is the super-creep genre’s typical practice of painting subversive ideas as inherently dangerous.
I’ve honestly begun to judge people that still watch and enjoy these comic movies.
Oh no! People enjoying something you don’t! It’s a travesty, and must be stopped!
Yeah! How dare they admit that they judge people for petty reasons. You’re supposed to keep that shit to yourself!
It is fucking brainwash tho.
Judging you right now.
And I’m sorry you have to worsen your life by doing so. It’s not healthy to be so negative.
I can guarantee virtually zero negative repercussions by holding this opinion. On the other hand, it seems to have really affected you and others.
It must really bug you to see so many people being happy while you stay depressed and despondent.
They’re “depressed and despondent” because they judge comic movie fans? This is some prime Dr. Phil level psychology right here.
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This recent poll is starting to make more and more sense, the more y’all talk.
Internet troll criticizes comic book fans with chart pointing out that women prefer comic book fans to internet trolls by a 3 to 1 margin.
Can you name one superhero movie that follows the plot of the OP comic?
The closest I can think of is Thanos killing half the people in the universe and the heroes trying to stop him. You’re on Thanos’s side?
It’s a bit stretched, but… Watchmen perhaps? Kind of? Nothing closer comes to mind.
Oh watchmen for sure but it’s also about how bullshit the status quo is and how a crazy man can still fuck up the smartest plans by keeping a diary.
None and all of them. The video has been posted before but the essence is that the overwhelming part of Marvel’s films deals with the folloing scenary:
Bad guy tries to change something, often for legitimate reasons. God guys stop bad guy and everything stays the same. Even when people try to change something in a good way there is always something that goes horribly wrong.
The hypothesis falls apart when the author ties the real world problems of poverty, injustice and ecological disasters to the superheroes negligence.
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The premises of the movies are that they are grounded in the real world. As such if superheroes transformed the world it would no longer be a recognizable setting for movie audiences.
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2 hours of showing Iron Man digging wells in Africa isn’t entertaining.
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The ability of an individual, even if superpowered, to change society is extremely limited. We have the example of Bill Gates having spent decades and tens of billions just to irradicate a single disease. What is Captain America going to do to control health care costs? Beat cancer cells in a petri dish?
2 hours of showing Iron Man digging wells in Africa isn’t entertaining.
It’s basically like that recurring criticism of Batman “Why doesn’t he just use his money to make the world a better place instead of putting on a costume and beating up poor people.”
The answer, of course, being that he does both, but the former doesn’t really make for fun storyline by itself, so it’s always a side-plot or passing reference instead of being the main story beat.
And then everyone making the criticism ignores that passing reference.
Nah, everyone making the reference has never consumed any media involving the character, and say as much repeatedly.
But they still make the criticism, because their favorite content creator made a longwinded video about it that was full of supposition and assumption (or flat out making shit up for the views).
Because if someone makes a 20 minute youtube video about it, it must be true.
- Grounded in the real world really stretches the trope when you consider there to be countless planets of hyper advanced beings and demi gods.
It’s always seemed strange to me that earth never made any sort of meaningfull technological progress despite having access to a galaxy full of new tech. The only progress we see is that the ~~ elites~~ heroes equipment is getting more fancy with each movie.
Secondly why should a more technological advanced setting be unrecognizable to the viewer? Especially if the progress stretches over as many movies as the MCU contains?
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No one is asking for painstaking detail. James Bond defeating a guy who tries to privatize the water supply of a whole country was overall a decent movie IMO, only implying the problem for everyday people that arose from evil guys plan. It’s all about the storytelling: Avengers find cool new tech that helps solve some earthly problem. Some people stand to lose a lot of money (think pharma industry becoming obsolete or similar) and plot against it. Avengers snuff out the plot, defeat evil mastermind and implement technology. Progress!
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Maybe there are certain problems that can’t be solved by punching things? Like for example finding a way to timetravel in order to collect the infinity stones, which Toni Stark seems to be able to do while sipping his afternoon coffee. Individual impact has never been a problem in the MCU. After all we are talking about a superhero movie. And what does Captain America do while Toni Stark eradicates Cancer? Deal with the backlash (see 2.).
Also, going back to your first remark: Superheroes dealing with poverty and injustice is the whole subplot of Black Panther.
It’s always seemed strange to me that earth never made any sort of meaningfull technological progress despite having access to a galaxy full of new tech.
This actually seemed reasonable to me - if alien tech is anything like ours, we lack the parts to make the parts to make the parts to make the tech, so we can’t mass produce any of it yet. And we’re a bit of a backwater - what resources we do have of galactic interest (vibranium, maybe?) isn’t for sale. So we make do with what scraps do find their way to earth.
Sure, jumping multiple levels on the technology tree is not easy, but a real world analog would be China, which has turned from a “backwater” to one of the biggest competitors.
… because they have access to the materials.
I feel like you just ignored the major factor in their statement because it conflicted with your point of view.
Some people stand to lose a lot of money (think pharma industry becoming obsolete or similar) and plot against it. Avengers snuff out the plot, defeat evil mastermind
That was the plot of Ironman. Stark wanted to end weapons development. Stain stood to loose money.
And nothing really changed. Yeah, Stark Industries doesn’t produce weapons anymore. But as we see in Iron Man 2 others are happily trying to fill the gap.
Secondly why should a more technological advanced setting be unrecognizable to the viewer
An Ironman cartoon addressed it a little by having Stark install his reactors everywhere for free clean energy.
But really it’s because people go to a Marvel movie to see their comic books as live action, not watch another Star Trek movie.
Because that’s the result of actual God level superhero intervention. Full Luxury Gay Space Communism. There’s nothing for a friendly neighborhood Spiderman to do. *
Yeah, except most of the Star Trek movies are more akin to the Marvel movies than they are the Star Trek shows.
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Black Panther
The bad guy in black panther had a point, but was also a fascist trying to start a race war. And in the end, the hero acknowledges the issues that the villain had raised and does make changes to address them.
“We should intervene in misbehaving countries” vs. “we must respect other countries sovereignty” is never such an easy decision as the cartoon puts it.
In the end of Black Panther, Wakanda becomes an imperialistic power.
… because they build outreach centers?
Have you seen things like that built around in your country?
Imperialism is about resource and labor extraction, unless they’re using those outreach centers to destroy local markets so the people have to work on the plantations for pennies to scrape by, so Wakanda can buy bananas for cheap, I don’t see how it’s imperialism.
Or is Wakanda gonna go back to Plan A and use those outreach centers to influence elections/organize a coup and put in a comprador government?
It was never clear whether he wanted a race war or how he planned to carry one out, he simply wanted to arm oppressed minorities all over the world.
But in any case, making the Bad Guy™ murder kittens doesn’t change whether he’s right.
See The Dark Knight Rises, where the Bad Guy™ neutralizes the police, and the people immediately band together to lynch the bankers and landlords (this is portrayed as a bad thing). Naturally, the Bad Guy™ then decides to nuke the city, for reasons.
Yes. Dark Night Rises was bad and that was one of the reasons.
I don’t watch them, because I don’t enjoy Disney spoonfeeding me low effort, regurgitated swill on the quarterly.
So you… object to the idea of what you think the movies are like, to the point that you have no idea what they’re like?
… And that sounds reasonable to you?
So you’d continue to watch snuff porn to be sure you’re well informed on the subject?
The issue isn’t that you’re not well informed.
The issue is that, when confronted with being wrong about something you’re uninformed about, you double down and act like an ass.
All I ever said was that I’ve begun judging people that enjoy these movies, and stated that I believe the movies are trash. These are all subjective statements, and just because they don’t agree with your opinions, doesn’t make them inherently wrong.
Get a grip on yourself.
I’ve begun judging people that enjoy these movies… I believe the movies are trash.
…just because they don’t agree with your opinions, doesn’t make them inherently wrong.
You are going to lose your mind in rage when you discover people enjoy Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Oh wow! You’re so much better than all of us!
You prefer doling your own out on internet forums?
It’s cool, because I’ve begun to judge people that judge people base on entertainment choices.
That’s the spirit!
Infinity War was the peak of MCU and it was downhill from there. And DC has been very inconsistent.
Yeah they are just not good. Same as star wars. I would maybe except the first Iron Man, Logan, and the original trilogy (before Lucas remade them with CGI).
The story telling is lazy, the characters undifferentiated, and there are no real consequences to anything. It’s just obvious money grabbing because media consumers have no taste or ability to distinguish good art from bad. T
They used to be good years ago. Then they mostly became like you said. It’s almost like the owners changed and promoted incompetent people to make bland, inoffensive movies with political messages
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