The Marvels , you know that new superhero movie

[gbaji]

This isn't just a space station, it's a quantum leap in humanity's tech level that now has them monitoring the jump network.

And why is this a problem? If anything, given the past interactions with alien technology, I was a bit unimpressed at how clunky the station was.

And monitoring the jump gate system? Like they were doing in Endgame when tracking down the energy emissions from Thanos to track down his garden planet? If you just don't like the idea of humans from earth having access to advanced tech, that ship has really already sailed. And heavily supported by past events in past films, and in this film by the presense of Captain Marvel actually helping Fury with this project in the first place (and like actual aliens helping them as well).

You seem to have difficulty with this whole "things need to be set up in the beginning, not the last five minutes" thing. We do, in fact, usually learn more about the villains than "they're the bad guys" in the first thirty minutes. Again, Infinity War begins with a monologue by Thanos to help establish who he is. The tell us what he's after very early on. Godzilla vs Kong is literally a movie that's as straight-forward as "giant monkey fights giant lizard" and they spend more time in the first five minutes establishing characters and plot points than The Marvels did in the first thirty.

I think maybe you and I are just going to have to disagree on what makes for good film writing. There's a difference between showing the audience *what* the bad guys are doing, and the characters (and often audience) learning *why* they are doing those things in the first place. And it is extremely commmon for that "why" to not be learned until later in the film.

You mention Thanos, and sure, he absolutely tells us what he's doing at the beginning (collecting infinity stones, which we've actually had like 4 films of backstory on). But IIRC, we don't actually learn what he intends to do with them until later in the film when Gamora tells us about the whole "wipe out half of all living things". And, even then, we don't learn *why* he's doing this until we get to his ruined home planet (about 3/4ths of the way through the film), where he talks about the ecological disaster on his planet and that he wants to spare the rest of the universe that fate.

I'm pretty sure that Space Balls, which this movie steals the main villain's plan from, explains it more than The Marvels does in the first 30 minutes.

I love a good Spaceballs comparison as much as the next guy (cause it's totally true!), but in Spaceballs that's literally all there is. We're never told why the air is missing, just that it is (there may have been a one liner in there maybe). I mean, it's a comedy, so we don't need more than that. Um... And as bad as I do think the overall plot of The Marvel's was, they did actually explain why the villain was doing what she was doing. May have been silly, and heavy handed, and a huge stretch, but it was at least consistent.

Did you actually need to have an explanation of the villain's motivation to follow the story?

Captain Marvel was supposed to be relocating them to somewhere where they'd be safe from the Kree, and yet the first thing we see is the Kree showing up like the Skrulls are in their back yard.

Yeah. Also been 30 years. Also <other stuff in secret invasion that changes things, but whatever>. But even if we only knew what was in the previous Captain Marvel film, the fact that after 30 years the Kree have tracked down the Skrulls on this world is not a stretch. We're also not specifically told that this is like the only Skrull colony, nor even that this is specifically where Carol took that one group of Skrulls to at the end of the first film. It's not unreasonable to assume that "The Kree are still hunting the Skrulls" is a thing, right? So why be so surprised when it's shown happening in this film as well?

It just seems like a really strange thing to complain about: "OMG. The Kree were hunting down and killing the Skrulls in the first film. And in this one, we have a Kree hunting down and killing Skrulls. That's such a complete continuity and consistency failure!!!". Or... Not at all.

Then how about get to that stuff to let me know why I should care about what I'm watching earlier than 1/3 of the way through what should be the standard length for a light adventure movie?

I can't speak to what level of information you require a film to give you in the first 30 minutes for you to enjoy the film.

Me personally? I like it when they don't reveal everything right out of the gate. But that's just me.

No, actually, that's not the standard sequence. It's not even close. Movies generally don't throw and ensemble cast together in the first sequence, let alone continue through the first 2-3 before getting to the characterization bits. Guardians of the Galaxy is a much more typical example, where we get an action sequence with Peter Quill, then things slow down as the other characters are introduced and we get some setup before they fight each other. Then, after they're taken prisoner, we get even more setup before we get the next action bit.

Wait. So you are complaining that we aren't fully informed about all of the characters in the film, their backstory, history, abilities, and motivations, in the first 30 minutes, and as a counter example, you talk about a film in which half of the main characters are barely even introduced in the first 30 minutes? GotG was a film in which the whole "we''re not going to tell you who these people are and have you find out along the way" was pretty much the whole point.

It's just funny to me, because when I was thinking about ensemble Marvel fiilms in which the main characters and their info is witheld from the audience until well into the film, I immediately thought of GotG. So you bringing is up is just strange. It's like we're using different definitions of base terms when having this discussion or something.

Can you provide an actual example of this supposed sequence in action? Because I'm seriously wondering what example you can come up with that isn't going to compare favorably to The Marvels in this department.

er... GotG? Seriously. We know almost nothing about any of the characters until well into the film. We know the objective of one of the main villains, but not the other (Thanos, amusingly enough). We don't know why Ronan is working for Thanos, just that he is. We don't know what the object is that Quill is hired to collect, nor why Ronan wants it (other than it'll allow him to continue the war with Xandar). We're told about halfway through what the infinity stones are and that it's one of them. The characters themselves are a mystery. Heck. We don't learn Rocket's history until the third film. We only learn Quill's in the second (other than, his mother was dying of cancer and he got abducted by aliens as a kid). The only characters we've given relatively complete information on are Gamora and Draxx, and even that is still somewhat shrouded in mystery since we still don't really know what Thanos's motivations are (as I mentioned above).

They initially meet and fight each other. Gamora is trying to get the stone from Quill for her father. Rocket and Groot have been hired to get it (can't actually remember by whom, or maybe they just get involved cause they like fighting). They literally get thrown into prison, and only work together (kinda) to break out. And, just like the progression I spoke of, they don't actually work fully together as a team until the very final fight with Ronan. And along the way learn a bit about the stone, and themselves, and make choices to work together.

It's a great film. It follows the progression almost to the letter (except that it takes a little longer for them to all get together). So I kinda don't get it...

[Eldan]

Humanity has arc reactors, space ships, vibranium, armour suits, and that's just the generally available parts. If they get some of the tech the supers have restricted, we get into the area of teleporters, miniaturization tech, etc. Heck, they have an entire celestial made of Adamantium stuck in the ocean.

It's weird that they even still need space stations at this point.

[gbaji]

Humanity has arc reactors, space ships, vibranium, armour suits, and that's just the generally available parts. If they get some of the tech the supers have restricted, we get into the area of teleporters, miniaturization tech, etc. Heck, they have an entire celestial made of Adamantium stuck in the ocean.

It's weird that they even still need space stations at this point.

To be fair to BloodSquirrel's position, I also thought it a bit odd that they were "monitoring the gate network". But it was less about whether they could be doing this (since it was clearly shown that they had the tech to do this), but a bit of a disconnect in terms of motivation/action. It just seems like an odd thing to be spending time/effort on when the entire planet apparently has one kinda dinky space station, and no ships of note to use (a couple small ones, that seem to be the personal property of other people).

The more realistic fallout from the previous films is that Earth should be on pretty much everyone's radar at this point. The Kree, the Xandarans, the Shi'ar... everyone. This is the world that defeated Thanos and figured out how to return everyone he blipped away (for good or bad). There should be introductions and ambassadors from every major galactic empire engaged in formal relations with Earth (which yeah, makes the events in Secret Invasion just silly as shown). There should be a significant amount of high tech advancement going on, and the need to build up actual defenses would seem to be super important (where the heck are the space cruisers?).

Yeah. I get it. It's a super hero focused universe, so that's the focus. But... I just expected the super secret space station to look a bit more like it was built by Stark Inc and Wakanda and less by Ikea and Northrop Grumman. And yeah, the film suffered significantliy from the stereotypical superhero story problem of "if this is really such a huge threat/problem, why are only these few folks involved?". Why is Earth the only world "monitoring the gate system?". Everyone in the galaxy/universe uses this, right? It's critically important for their interstellar empires to function. You'd think literally everyone would be converging their space armadas on whomever is causing this problem, and not just our three plucky heroes.

So yeah. Notable structural problems in the film. If you want your superhero film to just involve this one small group of heroes, you need to construct a threat that either only they are aware of, or only they care about, or only they have the time/ability to deal with. So no. I wasn't bothered by the fact that Earth is monitoring the jump gate system (it actually makes sense since they don't yet have a space armada, so detecting things going on "out there" so they can mobilize their heroes to deal with it seems like a decent idea), but that they seem to be the only ones doing this, and that appears to be pretty much the only thing they are doing with their space station. Which are all convenient plot contrivances for this specific film, but kinda don't stand up to scrutiny.


I also have my own kinda headcannon in terms of "why is Earth more or less left alone?". There are galactic empires out there, the Kree being just one. Why hasn't earth been conquered or otherwise been made part of someone else's domain, like, ages ago? I mean, even if they've been more or less left alone up until now (maybe cause they're too low tech), you'd think whomever claims control over the region of space Earth is in should have showed up and kinda said "hey. You guys are a thing now, and you're in our territory, so... er... welcome citizens to district 827 of the <whatever> empire!". My asssumption is that they have been part of a Galactic level and recognized power the whole time. The Asgard. They are one of 9 worlds the Asgard claim as part of their "9 realms", connected by their own gate network/bridge thingie that Odin and Heimdal built thousands of years ago. For this reason, the Kree stopped doing experiments on humans (which explains the Inhumans, despite that being mostly dropped at this point), thousands of years ago. For this reason, other races have left Earth alone (other than the occasional flyby and abduction of course).

With Both Odin and Heimdal dead now, and Asgard destroyed, that protection is gone. So yeah. You'd think the most important thing right now would be Earth building up allies "out there", and positioning itself so that they don't get attacked/destroyed/conquered/whatever. So yeah. A single dinky space station seems almost way way way not really enough. Now maybe we assume they're building other things, and have ships and regularly travel to and have relations with other races out there. And there's like other cool high tech stuff going on in the background maybe and we just haven't been shown this.

I just felt like what SWORD was doing was woefully not really enough or with the correct focus (lots of "observation, but their only "response" seemed to be "abandon ship!"). Maybe. Again, they didn't really spend a lot of time telling us what they were doing there in addition to monitoring the gate network. But, this was basically our first introduction to the station and organization (at least actually showing us them working), so... maybe more is to come. Again though. Just seemed strange that they didn't have like an array of Wakandan/Starktech style defense drones, or shields, or whatever that you'd expect if they wanted to meaningfully do... well... anything about an actual extraterrestrial threat. So the shock wasn't that they had a station, but that it was completely ineffective at what it presumably should have been built to do.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

I think gbaji just put into words why Cosmic Marvel has never sat right with me. It's always Earth-focused, without ever advancing Earth to an actual player on the interstellar stage. I get the reasoning behind it, you can't turn Earth into the Federation from Star Trek without upsetting every non-Cosmic storyline you have in place, but you also can't be blasting superpowered individuals and teams into space to deal with aliens and expect us to believe Earth and alien civilization remains separated. There's maybe a thin period of time where the superheroes can position themselves as the ambassadors and gatekeepers of the planet while also keeping Earth's populace unaware of the existence and scope of alien life; however, the moment a Skrull, Kree, Nova Corps, Celestial, etc. breaches that barrier, all the gloves come off.

Can you imagine how the governments of the world would react? "You call yourselves the French? Hi, we're the Kree. We've been dealing with your leader, Captain Marvel, for decades now." "Excuse me, she says she's OUR leader?" "Uh, well, she said she speaks for Earth so..."

Cosmic Marvel in the MCU makes even less sense. Everyone on the planet, post-Chitauri, knows that aliens exist. Advanced space flight is also a known technology. Every government and a ton of private enterprises should be in a race to blast off into the cosmos and see it for themselves. Yet, nobody seems particularly interested in space at all. Like you said, Earth has one dinky space station and that's it?

[warty goblin]

Advanced space flight is also a known technology. Every government and a ton of private enterprises should be in a race to blast off into the cosmos and see it for themselves. Yet, nobody seems particularly interested in space at all. Like you said, Earth has one dinky space station and that's it?

You've gotta remember, the only people in the MCU at this point are superheroes/villains. Literally nobody else has any meaningful agency or capability to do anything. You could honestly replace them all with kittens and it wouldn't functionally matter - all you need is something the audience finds instinctively appealing enough that they want the heroes to rescue them.

At this point, my conclusion is that the MCU operates on a Calvinist Nietzschian metaphysics. The universe consists of the Elect Ubermemsch, who matter, and everybody else, who does not. The Elect are split into Heroes and Villains, both of which are implicitly (or after GotG 3, explicitly) divinely chosen for ineffable reasons. Because the universe is divinely ordered, the heroes always eventually win, not because they are better, or smarter, or more capable, or even particularly virtuous, but simply because they are heroes. Hero isn't something you choose to do, it's something you are.

Moreover, these roles are vigorously enforced. An un-Elect may be ascended to Elect status through a quirk of fate, but if they actively try to do so they will fail and be destroyed, because trying to change anything is an affront to the divine ordering of the universe. If a villain attempts to reform, it's both rare and temporary, and the best they can hope for is to die saving somebody else. If the villain is ever correct about something, they immediately need to go murder like 50 people because they are the villain. The hero can then look soulful, and learn a valuable lesson that never matters because again, they are the good guys and good guys don't try to do stuff, they only react to stuff that is done. If the hero ever does something awful, its because they are mind controlled, or it's an accident, or they couldn't know and its the bad guys' fault really if you think about it, or they have a tragic backstory.

The thing is I don't think this is intentional. It's simply the inevitable consequence of an ongoing soap opera about the personal issues of a small, recurring cast, but with the stakes always blown up to cataclysmic scale yet with zero longterm consequence, and binary back hat/white hat morality.

[Prime32]

At this point, my conclusion is that the MCU operates on a Calvinist Nietzschian metaphysics. The universe consists of the Elect Ubermemsch, who matter, and everybody else, who does not. The Elect are split into Heroes and Villains, both of which are implicitly (or after GotG 3, explicitly) divinely chosen for ineffable reasons. Because the universe is divinely ordered, the heroes always eventually win, not because they are better, or smarter, or more capable, or even particularly virtuous, but simply because they are heroes. Hero isn't something you choose to do, it's something you are.

Worth a look on some of the odd logic of superhero movies in particular. Things like how Man of Steel's misanthropic Clark Kent who hates being Superman makes no sense because becoming Superman was Clark's own idea and no one forces him to do it.

[gbaji]

Cosmic Marvel in the MCU makes even less sense. Everyone on the planet, post-Chitauri, knows that aliens exist. Advanced space flight is also a known technology. Every government and a ton of private enterprises should be in a race to blast off into the cosmos and see it for themselves. Yet, nobody seems particularly interested in space at all. Like you said, Earth has one dinky space station and that's it?

Yup. And they've had enough stuff in the films (and the shorts) to show that humans on earth have adapted to this, to some degree. So yeah, it's really strange that they keep looping back to "space and aliens stuff is all secret and hidden and only exists in the context of heroes and villains" mentality.

And what's frustrating is that at least the base stories assume that's not actually the case. I'm assuming that when the folks fell down to earth in thier escape pods, no one paniced, but just accepted that "Hey. Must have been a problem on a space station, and they had to bail out". Heck. It was probably presented exactly this way on the evening news. No problem. These are people who have literally lived through two alien attacks on New York, an alien being responsible for blipping half of them out of existence, and then a whole host of humans and aliens and other super beings showing up to undo it. There's no valid reason for this actually being secret at all.

You've gotta remember, the only people in the MCU at this point are superheroes/villains. Literally nobody else has any meaningful agency or capability to do anything. You could honestly replace them all with kittens and it wouldn't functionally matter - all you need is something the audience finds instinctively appealing enough that they want the heroes to rescue them.

This is a valid perception. You are absolutely correct. Shield only creates massively powerful helicarriers capable of wiping out folks all over the planet so they can be hijacked by evil bad guys. They previously built other helicarriers, but they're only ever used as vehicles for carrying the plotlines of heroes when fighting against villains.

Same deal with Wakanda. They've got the tech to trivially involve themselves with space travel, and a host of other technological and medical improvements that could push the entire planet into "high tech paradise", but even within their own country, these things are only ever used as a plot device in a "hero vs villian" conflict.

Just once I'd like to see a Marvel film where in the background, there's a news broadcast showcasing the sales figures for the latest model flying cars, and discussion about traffic rules being built for managing them. Or, as pointed out above, have actual space travel and mining ventures in the asteroid belt just be "a thing that is happening" in the background of the setting, and not only existing when it's part of a hero based plotline. You don't have to change the entire world and culture, but put in even just a few things that should have changed along the way. In our own world history, we've seen new technologies appear and radically change the nature of travel, communication, and interaction world wide. It's not like human existence changes that much as a result, just how we do things. Show that. Show folks lining up for the latest holofilm release. Show folks going to the nearby teleportation transit hub when traveling somewhere instead of using an old fashioned airport. Show kids in classrooms being taught about alien races and planets, and having Xandaran pen pals or something similar. Would this really be a problem?

Show that the world has actually changed, and not just the heroes. And yeah. Even if you're going to restrict youself to telling the heroic stories (cause that's what the genre is about), at least put them in a setting that makes sense with what has occurred already. There should have been a dozen far more advanced space stations. There should have been some kind of defense grid set up to help protect Earth from alien attack. There should be alien allies we've made that we can call on when/if such an attack occurs (or at least, Earth based heroes who you'd think would all show up if someone was actually trying to destroy the freaking sun). It's particularly egregious in this film, since Fury has historically been the one who sits in the middle of these things. Why wasn't he in a conference call with Pepper Potts, and Spider Man, and the Hulk, and a host of other Avenger adjacent (or member) folks?

If the film had stuck to "threats to other folks, out there, connected to Captain Marvel", they could rationalize the events as they happened, and explain why just these three were involved. But the moment Earth itself comes under direct attack, and the freaking organization that exists entirely to deal with such things, basically sits on its hands and does nothing at all? That's where the whole "suspension of disbelief" becomes an issue for me. And no. I'm not demanding that they put every hero and powerful government/industry on Earth into every film. I'm saying that maybe the writers need to think about this kind of stuff and adjust their plots in ways so that they don't actually have to (or should have) to make it actually make sense. It's not actually that hard to do. Just don't have the threat come directly to Earth's doorstep and then have the one guy who should have vritually every powerful person and organization on Earth on speed dial spend his time literally herding cats instead.

[Eldan]

This just brings back the old discussion about how someone really should write a comic series where the timeline actually advances.

[Prime32]

This just brings back the old discussion about how someone really should write a comic series where the timeline actually advances.

You mean every comic that isn't published by DC or Marvel?

[Saph]

Just once I'd like to see a Marvel film where in the background, there's a news broadcast showcasing the sales figures for the latest model flying cars, and discussion about traffic rules being built for managing them. Or, as pointed out above, have actual space travel and mining ventures in the asteroid belt just be "a thing that is happening" in the background of the setting, and not only existing when it's part of a hero based plotline. You don't have to change the entire world and culture, but put in even just a few things that should have changed along the way. In our own world history, we've seen new technologies appear and radically change the nature of travel, communication, and interaction world wide. It's not like human existence changes that much as a result, just how we do things. Show that. Show folks lining up for the latest holofilm release. Show folks going to the nearby teleportation transit hub when traveling somewhere instead of using an old fashioned airport. Show kids in classrooms being taught about alien races and planets, and having Xandaran pen pals or something similar. Would this really be a problem?

The problem is that we already have a genre for stories like that – it's called science fiction. And Disney/Marvel isn't interested in doing science fiction. They're writing to a formula, and part of that formula is "status quo is god".

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with writing stories where status quo is god. The problem is when you have other writers on your team who don't get the memo, and so keep on ending their stories with earth-shattering changes. And then the next movie comes along, and the writers start off their story with the assumption that nothing's really changed except for the latest developments in the Hero Soap Opera, until someone points out "wait, didn't humanity just get open-source teleportation in that last movie?" at which point they go "no, that was only . . . uh . . . oh, ****, they did, didn't they . . . uh . . . well, no-one can use that in THIS movie because . . . reasons." Which gradually creates this weird disconnected feeling where it's harder and harder to tell if anything really matters.

The way you solve this is by giving writers an overarching narrative and an idea of where the larger meta-story is going . . . but that requires the guy making the decisions to HAVE an idea of where the story is going.

[gbaji]

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with writing stories where status quo is god. The problem is when you have other writers on your team who don't get the memo, and so keep on ending their stories with earth-shattering changes. And then the next movie comes along, and the writers start off their story with the assumption that nothing's really changed except for the latest developments in the Hero Soap Opera, until someone points out "wait, didn't humanity just get open-source teleportation in that last movie?" at which point they go "no, that was only . . . uh . . . oh, ****, they did, didn't they . . . uh . . . well, no-one can use that in THIS movie because . . . reasons." Which gradually creates this weird disconnected feeling where it's harder and harder to tell if anything really matters.

The way you solve this is by giving writers an overarching narrative and an idea of where the larger meta-story is going . . . but that requires the guy making the decisions to HAVE an idea of where the story is going.

Back in the day, in the actual comic's world, there was this thing call the Marvel Bullpen. The various authors of different books would all sit around the talk about and pass their story ideas back and forth. The more senior folks would listen to them, and make suggestions, but also keep an eye out for significant problems for the continuity of the entire setting. Didn't always prevent problems, but it kept one writer in one book from doing something that would radically change the world/setting that everyone else was writing in at the same time (unless said change was discussed and accepted, in which case it was "canon" and everyone adopted it).

What's strange is that the MCU seemed to have somewhat of a handle on this during phases 1-3. There was some what of a plan and direction and they seemed to be accepting what changes happened on Earth and integreating it into their stories across the board. One of the shorts actually details this, where Agent Coulson is tracking down a group of thieves who are committing robberies using alien tech they picked up during the battle of New York. This was a brilliant short because it showed that, yeah, this event happened, and the people living their were fully aware of it (and aliens) and there was real fallout as a result.

It's just strange that now that we're in phases 4-6, it seems like the writers want to roll everything back. It's just a jarring disconnect to me. Nope. The general population of Earth knows that aliens exist. They know that super heroes exist. They are well aware of advanced technology existing (and should, realistically, be demanding said tech be integrated into day to day consumer stuff at this point). Space travel? Check. Faster than light (jump gate stuff)? Check. Kids should be playing game consoles with holographic displays at this point. Teachers should be telepresencing in experts to give presentations for their classes (again, using holographic tech). We've been shown this technology existing since Winter Soldier in the private/GSE space, it's been like what 8-10 years since then? Should be well into the consumer space by now. Heck. A lot of this advanced tech would almost have to have been utilized (and opened up a fair bit) during the immediate aftermath of the blip (and this was shown to some degree in Endgame). But then we undo the blip and.... all of that just disappears?

Yeah. Strange.

[Ranxerox]

Back in the day, in the actual comic's world, there was this thing call the Marvel Bullpen. The various authors of different books would all sit around the talk about and pass their story ideas back and forth. The more senior folks would listen to them, and make suggestions, but also keep an eye out for significant problems for the continuity of the entire setting. Didn't always prevent problems, but it kept one writer in one book from doing something that would radically change the world/setting that everyone else was writing in at the same time (unless said change was discussed and accepted, in which case it was "canon" and everyone adopted it).
<snip>

It's just strange that now that we're in phases 4-6, it seems like the writers want to roll everything back. It's just a jarring disconnect to me. Nope. The general population of Earth knows that aliens exist. They know that super heroes exist. They are well aware of advanced technology existing (and should, realistically, be demanding said tech be integrated into day to day consumer stuff at this point). Space travel? Check. Faster than light (jump gate stuff)? Check. Kids should be playing game consoles with holographic displays at this point. Teachers should be telepresencing in experts to give presentations for their classes (again, using holographic tech). We've been shown this technology existing since Winter Soldier in the private/GSE space, it's been like what 8-10 years since then? Should be well into the consumer space by now. Heck. A lot of this advanced tech would almost have to have been utilized (and opened up a fair bit) during the immediate aftermath of the blip (and this was shown to some degree in Endgame). But then we undo the blip and.... all of that just disappears?

You point to the old Marvel bullpen as the an example of doing it right, but Marvel Comics has and has always had the the very problem that you are mentioning. All the aliens and space stuff and super technology has been part of Marvel since the beginning, but we still don't see holographic video conferencing at the Daily Planet or Quinjet inspired flying ambulances picking people up after natural or unnatural disasters. Status quo has always been the god of both Marvel and DC comics, and this goes on being the case despite alien invasions happening every other month and serial killers with triple and quadruple digit body counts. Readers just accept that now matter what unbelievably momentous thing happens in this month's issue, next month the world will be unchanged.

Superhero comic books (and most superhero movies),like the myths of yore, are larger than life morality tales and are not meant to taken literally. All the world shaking powers, astounding science and huge conflicts are just trappings and are not what the stories are actually about. What they are actually about is things like the importance of perseverance, bravery, tolerance, self-sacrifice and caring for others. Everything else is just fluff that you aren't suppose to take all that seriously.

[Lemmy]

The MCU actually had something similar to the "Marvel Bullpen".

It literally had a Marvel Creative Committee whose main function was coordinating the MCU, making sure everything connected and made sense between movies...

But Kevin Feige eventually approached Bob Iger, got himself promoted to head of the Marvel studio, disbanded the creative committee and got rid of Ike Pearlmutter... Luckily, when that happened... Most of phase 3 was already in produciton (except Black Panther and Capt. Marvl, IIRC)...

And then phase 4 happened... We know how the story goes after that.

[Ramza00]

it is a little more complicated than that, the whole Feige, Pearlmutter, and Iger stuff

I am not sure if its would be productive to hash out due to two things

1) board rules
2) we were not there so we are third hand people getting second hand info

regardless with 1 and 2 here is A and B with me being cryptic

A) Ike Pearlmutter was getting involved with some politic stuff in 2017 and 2018 that is kind of against board rules for me to go into depth. The short of it (I will let you google) is the House Started investigating in 2018 and fininished in 2021 and they also recommended the case for the Inspector General which is like Internal Affairs which also did a 2 year investigation. While all this as happening Disney decided to scale back Pearlmutter’s duties which you already mentioned Lemmy. We do not know why Disney did that but one can see it as Public Relations even if it was not literally the reason.

B) We do know for sure how Ike Pearlmutter was a penny pincher and people like that when Marvel was getting out of bankruptcy in the 90s and Ike at that time controlled the purse strings. Yet for years actors have complained about Ike and his austerity mindset such as turning off the air conditioning to try to speed up filming times. It was making it harder to retain talent, this penny wise pound foolish behavior. This was not a 2019 thing but was a 2012 to 2019 thing, aka Avengers movie 1 time.

[Lemmy]

Well... Yeah... I can't get into too much detail in a forum post...

But the bottom line is this: There was a creative committee. For reasons... They disbanded it and Feige was made head of the Marvel studios. This was reflected in the changes between phases 1~3 and phases 4 and 5.

Pearlmutter had his share of bad decisions... But none were so bad as what Feige has done in his absence. Creatively or commercially.

[gbaji]

You point to the old Marvel bullpen as the an example of doing it right, but Marvel Comics has and has always had the the very problem that you are mentioning. All the aliens and space stuff and super technology has been part of Marvel since the beginning, but we still don't see holographic video conferencing at the Daily Planet or Quinjet inspired flying ambulances picking people up after natural or unnatural disasters. Status quo has always been the god of both Marvel and DC comics, and this goes on being the case despite alien invasions happening every other month and serial killers with triple and quadruple digit body counts. Readers just accept that now matter what unbelievably momentous thing happens in this month's issue, next month the world will be unchanged.

Actually though, for the time period that this was going on (and certainly while Stan Lee was head guru there), they were very careful about *not* having massive alien invasions with space fleets showing up and battling over New York (or equivalent). There were super hero antics going on all the time, but aside from some pretty terrrestrial stuff (mole man or Namor attacks), they kept most of the big conflicts (and certainly the "big cosmic stuff") out of the mainstream public awareness. Xmen fought Magneto at a secret base (in space even!). Avengers traveled to various out of the way places to do battle with the villains as well. Fantastic Four were always travelling to some other dimension or whatever. It was very much more like Bond Villains in their secret lair kind of stuff that the mainstream public was only peripherally aware of. They were also very careful about the bad guys (and the good guys) cleaning this stuff up afterwards. Galactus may show up and hang out on Earth while battling the Fantastic Four (which mainly consisted of him ignoring them while assembling his planet eating machine), but when he left, he left and took all his stuff with him. The public could absolutely chalk that up to "big giant supervillain and now he's gone", and nothing about that would seem like useful stuff for them.

In that environment, it could be reasoned that the actual super tech was restricted to mostly private hands and a small number of government adjacent organizations. The Fantastic Four did not share their tech with anyone. The Xmen mostly got their stuff from friendly aliens who only worked with them. The Avengers had Stark (and there was a whole storyline about him realizing his tech was falling into other hands, which was mirrored in Iron Man 2) and Pym. Other stuff could be qualified as "big business or uber rich person with gobs of money to spend on science stuff", and still worked.

I kinda stopped reading sometime in the mid 90s, so I can't speak to what happened after that point in time. At that time though, there were shown some impacts of this tech leaking into the public (and certainly to some governments). High tech stuff was found on the markets in Madripoor, and were openly used in places like Genoshoa. I don't know how much was shown to have creeped into day to day life though.

You also have to remember that the viewpoint of technology as life changing in terms of experience was different prior to the late 90s anyway. Prior to that point in time, the idea of only governments and secret orgs having this stuff was not so strange. There was a whole lot of stuff "out there" in real life that didn't really creep into day to day life. That literally changed over the course of the 90s. We went from somewhere around 5% home computer ownership to 95% during that decade. Within another 5 years after that we went from something like 1% cell phone ownership to close to 100%. Prior to this period of time, the idea that there was a lot of technology that big businesses, governments, and the rich had, but that no one else could obtain or afford was pretty much accepted. Over the next couple decades though, this has significnantly changed. So the "quaint" portrayal of the Marvel Universe "back then" didn't seem so jarring as it does today.

Well... Yeah... I can't get into too much detail in a forum post...

But the bottom line is this: There was a creative committee. For reasons... They disbanded it and Feige was made head of the Marvel studios. This was reflected in the changes between phases 1~3 and phases 4 and 5.

Pearlmutter had his share of bad decisions... But none were so bad as what Feige has done in his absence. Creatively or commercially.

Yeah. I can't reallly speak to this. No. Literally. I don't tend to pay attention to the gossip and chit chat behind the scenes on stuff like this, so have no real knowledge or opinion. I can say, however, that regardless of cause, there was a noticable change in <something> behind the scenes at Marvel between phases 1-3 and now phases 4-6. And IMO, it was a change for the worse.

[Ramza00]

Actually though, for the time period that this was going on (and certainly while Stan Lee was head guru there), they were very careful about *not* having massive alien invasions with space fleets showing up and battling over New York (or equivalent). There were super hero antics going on all the time, but aside from some pretty terrrestrial stuff (mole man or Namor attacks), they kept most of the big conflicts (and certainly the "big cosmic stuff") out of the mainstream public awareness. Xmen fought Magneto at a secret base (in space even!). Avengers traveled to various out of the way places to do battle with the villains as well. Fantastic Four were always travelling to some other dimension or whatever. It was very much more like Bond Villains in their secret lair kind of stuff that the mainstream public was only peripherally aware of. They were also very careful about the bad guys (and the good guys) cleaning this stuff up afterwards. Galactus may show up and hang out on Earth while battling the Fantastic Four (which mainly consisted of him ignoring them while assembling his planet eating machine), but when he left, he left and took all his stuff with him. The public could absolutely chalk that up to "big giant supervillain and now he's gone", and nothing about that would seem like useful stuff for them.

100% correct. We do start seeing these big world shattering events in the 80s after the selling of things like Graphic Novel 1 the death of captain marvel, Graphic Novel 2 the new mutants both in 1982, DC’s Crisis of Infinite Earths in 1985 and 86, DC’s Watchmen in 1986 and 87, etc etc. What I am saying is the death of superman event in 1992 and 1993 had predecessors.

So the first big alien invasion with lasting effects I can think of is X-Men’s Inferno in 1988 and 1989 when we have an alien invasion and Chris Claremont recreates Jason and Medea of Greek Myth with Scott, Jean, and Maddie.

We start seeing alien invasions of cities and such in the 00s which is probably influenced by the September 11th, and also the disaster movies of the 90s like Independence Day. I am earnestly searching my mind of stuff before 1988 that was massive impacts on cities?

[gbaji]

So the first big alien invasion with lasting effects I can think of is X-Men’s Inferno in 1988 and 1989 when we have an alien invasion and Chris Claremont recreates Jason and Medea of Greek Myth with Scott, Jean, and Maddie.

Right the whole Goblin Queen thing. But even that was not really "alien invasion". It was "strange monsters running amok in the streets of New York". Not really much different than the classic "mole man attacks" from years of old.

And there wasn't like a bunch of alien tech left lying around, remnants of space ships, etc after the battle (at least not that I recall).

I think that's the big departure with the MCU, where not only was there alien tech left lying around (including weapons, ships, giant battle droid things, and whatnot), but that they actively leaned into it in terms of having civilians know all about this, and there being effforts for folks to get their hands the tech (all sorts of people).

So... strange to make a point of having this be what has happened, and then showing us over the course of the films that this is a new world and the people living in it are having to adjust to that fact, but then kinda back off of that in this film, by not even having the "super secret government orgs" seeming to have made much progress. Hence me being a bit underwhelmed with the space station and resources used by SWORD in this film.

[Wookieetank]

Hence me being a bit underwhelmed with the space station and resources used by SWORD in this film.

SHIELD and SWORD seem to run more on "is this cool" than "is this effective/useful".
-Helicarrier - cool in both concept and appearance, most useful thing it does it help evacuate Slovokia
-Secret underground Tesseract testing grounds - cool concept, ends up providing an arrival point for Loki, I'd mark this one up as negatively useful
-1970s Army Base - Tesseract and Pym particle research (cool), Cap and Iron man walk in and take what they want (not effective)

Really SHIELD just provides set pieces, so when SWORD just provided a singular space station of questionable usefulness, wasn't terribly surprised.

[gbaji]

SHIELD and SWORD seem to run more on "is this cool" than "is this effective/useful".
-Helicarrier - cool in both concept and appearance, most useful thing it does it help evacuate Slovokia
-Secret underground Tesseract testing grounds - cool concept, ends up providing an arrival point for Loki, I'd mark this one up as negatively useful
-1970s Army Base - Tesseract and Pym particle research (cool), Cap and Iron man walk in and take what they want (not effective)

I think there's a difference between "were they able to prevent people from infiltrating/attacking them?" and "were they capable of fulfilling their design function?".

The Shield helicarriers, were shown as cloakable flying platforms from which Shield could launch a varieity of intelligence operations. They were shown being quite capable of doing just that. And had a squadron of quinjets defending them if/when attacked. They were quite capable of doing what they were designed to do.

Both the underground teseract base and the 1970s army base, while capable of being snuck into/out of, both presumably were also capable of achieving their core function. Presumably lots of successful research was conducted by the military and shield (or whatever they were called at the time), in the 1970s base. And certainly also in the teseract base later on.

The equivalent would be if the helicarrier didn't have any intelligence or operations capabilities, and no quinjets, and never did anything at all other than fly around, so that folks could be on it, and have dialogue there rather than on the surface.

Ditto with the lab and base. Sure, they weren't shown having any specificly achieved purpose, but they were just "a lab" and "a base". There was no story expecation for them beyond what was shown in the films.

Really SHIELD just provides set pieces, so when SWORD just provided a singular space station of questionable usefulness, wasn't terribly surprised.

Eh.... I don't really agree. Replace the space station with a ground base instead. What would be different about the story? Was there a single plot related event in the film that was different because they were in space (I mean, other than them having to escape via pods that is). We already know from Endgame that they can monitor jump gate activity, and scan for distant planets, and communicate across the galaxy, all from the ground (cause they do it in that film). Fury can certainly communicate with Captain Marvel just as easiliy from the surface of the Earth as he can from a space station in orbit, right?

So... what did the space station actually do? Nothing.

And sure. We could argue the same about the lab and base, but they weren't supposed to be some super amazing pinnacle of technological achievement either. They were just "a lab" and "a base", where other things happened to occur.

We could technically argue that the events in the first Avengers film could have occurred on a ground base instead of a helicarrier. Maybe. But the helicarrier was cool. It cloaked. It flew. It launched attacks, and operations. It had the whole hulk prison thing that dropped out of the carrier if needed. It allowed us to have the whole "Stark getting a close look at their propulsion system" bit. There was a fair amount of the actual story and plot that actually took advantage of the fact that they were flying around on a helicarrier. As a setting, it was well integrated into the story.

The space station in Marvels? Not so much. I was expecting something actually cool, and that would seem to represent the same "pinnacle of technology" that the helicarrier represented in Avengers, and got... not a whole lot. Just some rooms. In space, but still just rooms. Rooms where they did the exact same things that they would have if they were in rooms that were not on a space station. On a space station that is supposed to be there for the purpose of protecting Earth from alien attack/invasion/infiltration/whatever.

Just felt like a real let down and lost opportunity to showcase how far Earth technology has developed since the first Avengers film. And made all the more jarring because we've literally been shown Earth based technology in previous films that is much much much more advanced than what was shown being used on that station in this one. It felt like watching a Star Trek film, set after the end of say Voyager, but for some reason it's showing us a Federation ship that has no warp drive, no shields, no photon torpedos or phases, no transporter, and no replicators or holodecks. And there isn't ever an explanation given for why this is the case. We didn't just set the film on some ancient pre-warp Earth ship that the characters are stuck on for some reason, but the actual setup is that "this is the most modern space ship the Federation can build", but it's missing all the technology that we've been prevously shown.

Yeah. Kinda felt like that. And no. I wasn't expecting like super crazy tech or anything. But, maybe shields? Defense drones? Some nano tech stuff? Space sharks with lazers on them? Something?

[Ramza00]

Right the whole Goblin Queen thing. But even that was not really "alien invasion". It was "strange monsters running amok in the streets of New York". Not really much different than the classic "mole man attacks" from years of old.

Sidenote X-Men 97, the animated series crammed 6 years of comics, and 44 issues of Maddie into a time allotment less than 30 minutes.

It was fine, but also it was not the thing it was adapting.