Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors is a sweet superhero tale where, yes, a group of younger heroes come together to battle an extremist group. But more importantly than that, it's a superhero tale with diversity oozing out of every animated frame.
...
Ms. Marvel, who idolizes Captain Marvel and is inspired by her, instead leads the Secret Warriors movie, showcasing her origin tale, her relationship with her mother and her struggle for acceptance in a culture that is adverse to the creation of the Inhumans -- the latter being people who gain superpowers after getting into contact with a gas substance called Terrigen Mists.What Secret Warriors is doing particularly well is that it isn't shying away from its focus on diversity in any part of its plot. In particular, the storyline aims at a brewing conflict between humans and an extremist group of Inhumans, the latter believing that a war between the two groups is inevitable. Khan ends up stuck in the middle, as an Inhuman herself who doesn't believe the conflict is needed.
Another refreshing carryover from Marvel comics is America Chavez. Her origin story, which sees Chavez's two mothers sacrificing themselves to protect their daughter, remains completely intact and sympathetic. Chavez herself demonstrates herself as a formidable ally, having super strength and the ability to fly. It's a nice start for LGBT representation on the animated side of the Marvel universe for now.
Wasn't Captain Marvel a man?
(Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Monday October 01 2018, @10:22PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @11:01PM
Shazam!
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 01 2018, @11:13PM
I'm thinking captain/sir/soldier/maggot ?
(Score: 1) by j-beda on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:16AM
As stated in the Wikipedia article, Mar-Vell died in 1982. Rambeau used the "Captain Marvel" name for a while but then changed to various other names while other people have use the "Captain Marvel" name. Rambeau was unrelated to Mar-Vell.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by archfeld on Monday October 01 2018, @10:27PM (58 children)
Having a wide variety of superheroes with differing lifestyles is great, as long as it fits the story. Having 'alternative' supers just to be PC is just more standard BS these days.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday October 01 2018, @10:44PM (18 children)
This looks no different from the endless shoddy superhero movies both DC and Marvel have been pouring out over the last 15 years or so, just aimed at a slightly different market.
I don't care about this, not because the cyphers in it are gay or trans or black or whatever, but because I'm an adult and prefer my entertainment to have an original story and characters who are more than paper thin.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Acabatag on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:12AM (12 children)
I'm just so tired of superheroes. They crowd out good SF that I'd rather be recognized as the really good stuff.
All the 'Marvel' stuff. I just turn away when I hear the 'M' word. There's a lot of other stuff that I think, personally, is better.
Stuff like Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation. Plenty of heroes involved, but not musty old pulp from the past.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:13AM
^^^^This
These superheros are just the modern vampires/witches/fairies and old greek Gods sold by other name and a fantasy without the susbtance and influence in people's lives as had the latter.
Most if not all real SF (and not only hard SF) keeps being influential, inspiring and driving real people's lives and humanity beyond where no man has gone before, despite the current studio's attempts.
Why they keep calling superheros stuff SF when the plot is pure fantasy?
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:19AM (10 children)
Have to say this -- superheros aren't sci-fi. They're fantasy, in almost all cases. EG, not based on any form of science that we recongise as valid.
Superman, getting enough power from the sun (with his small body surface size), to do *anything*? Sorry, sunlight doesn't have that much power pre square cm, superman would make more sense if his powers came from eating massive quantities of food, or somehow performing cold fusion in his stomach.
No matter what comic you look at, all most all of it falls into this category. And just because something is in outer space, doesn't mean it's science fiction either.
Comics are fantasy. Like LOTR, or most zombie movies / fiction.
(The only zombie fiction that "made sense" scientifically, was one based upon nanotech I read. Sure it wasn't perfect, but it at least explained the rapid expansion of the "plague", how it was 100% contagious, how the dead were able to live without a heartbeat, etc...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:39PM (5 children)
Iron Man and Batman.
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:26PM (4 children)
Iron Man and Batman are fantasy.
Iron Man isn't sci-fi. The movies have attempted to make it somewhat more plausible, but the science behind it is still... barely sane.
Then, consider that movies with Iron Man in it have wizards, people being mutated by being bit by a spider, people turning big and green because they irradiate themselves, people that are "gods", people shrinking themselves with little amulets and calling themselves ant-man, and on and on and on. It's fantasy, because the science is complete gibberish, bull, and half the realm is magic/etc.
On to DC/Batman, the guy has money -- and therefore has all manner of wondrous tools that simply appear without any real logic behind how they could possible do what they do. Not to mention that in real life, Batman would be dead 1000 times over from the falls/injuries, and on and on. Of course, Batman is in movies with Superman (which is pure fantasy), Ares (a freaking Greek god), Wonder Woman (made out of clay by another god), immortal women (amazons), green lantern (who's ring is powered by beings that have lived for billions of years, and his ring is powered up with enough juice to move PLANETS with one charge), and the list is endless.
Claiming one character is sorta-kinda-maybe almost "It feels like it might be sci-fi, almost!" isn't good enough, when the canon is all about fantasy.
I read sci-fi. I read fantasy. Read comics as a kid, watch DC and Marvel and other such fims, and frankly enjoy them. But none of these DC/Marvel films even remotely approach soft-scifi, let alone hard-scifi.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:55PM (3 children)
The Iron Man and Batman movies, specifically. I don't read the comics themselves, but the movies (the trilogies, not the Avengers/Superman crossovers) were pretty strictly no-fantasy-involved.
First movie, he's fighting another guy from the same company who built his own suit. Second movie, he's fighting a Russian dude who built his own suit. Third movie...okay, the bad guys actually have pyro-y superpowers due to some slightly-handwavy medical treatment. Which they fight with an army of autonomous suits, which, while rather ridiculous to watch, there isn't anything particularly implausible about. It's a question of just making *better* AI, not that AI isn't a thing that exists already.
Having just watched the first 2 Batman movies again, I recall they actually went out of their way to explain how they worked sometimes. Like the skyhook thing [wikipedia.org], and the universal mobile phone sonar hack. Obviously the sonar thing has bandwidth and latency problems, but hey.
The most magic-adjacent thing I can think of from those was the hallucinogenic flower from Tibet or whatever (and the subsequent panic gas based on it), but there are/were Native American tribes that use peyote etc. for a similar effect in religious ceremonies.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:16PM (2 children)
You can't take a movie, remove it from its canon, and just say "meh, this tiny story wasn't fantasy, because I'm ignoring the rest of the universe where ironman / batman live".
You watch Iron Man? That's the Marvel universe. Batman? DC. Both are fantasy, complete and total fantasy.
Attempts to take a little, tiny, isolated story out of that universe, and pretend that therefore "Batman" is sci-fi, is... well, you're not even remotely being honest.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday October 04 2018, @03:14PM (1 child)
The summary is talking about an animated show, so the movies are relevant, debatably more relevant than the comic books. No, it's not "dishonest."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Friday October 05 2018, @02:41PM
At no point did I say looking at the movies was dishonest. No where. Not in one place. Ever. At any time.
What I said is, you can't take movies by themselves, removed from their universe, their canon. And that to look ONLY at the movies was not honest.
And it's not. And by the fact that you're ignoring my point, and pretending I'm making another point, makes me believe you know it -- and are instead just arguing around that point.
You cannot take movies, remove them from the entire universe that is batman/dc, and then point to them in isolation and say "See! This one Batman movie is sci-fi!"
Nope. Nada. Can't do it. Never.
Because, Batman exists in a universe greater than that single movie. It's called *canon*, so understood that there's a specific word for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:56PM (1 child)
Why? Because it is internally consistent, it has rules for the 'technology' that it centers on, and it primarily depicts the social interactions and conflicts caused by that technology. In this case the Ring, and spread across the whole of the pantheon, magic, its corruptable influence on all forms of intelligent life, and its eventual quashing to leave a world of mystical neutrality with neither mystical boons nor banes available to the remaining inhabitants.
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:29PM
Something isn't sci-fi, because it has consistent rules. If that was the case, the bible would be sci-fi.
LOTR is fantasy.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)
Someone clearly didn't watch "I am Legend." The premise behind that was pretty solid as far as a scientific zombie movie is concerned.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:16PM
I am legend wasn't bad... but I did say "most".
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:15AM (2 children)
There are over 10 million Americans (160 million world wide) with an IQ of less than 70. When are these people going to have super power representation?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:42AM
Good news!
They always did.
That explains most superhero plots anyway.
Except for Batman. He's like ... 110. Pretty good stuff.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:13PM
I don't think you're *really* paying attention. Those 10 million retards are getting their representation right now!
(Score: 2) by schad on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:55PM (1 child)
I think we're going to see a greater split between "popcorn movies" and "good movies" as time goes on, with only the former surviving in big multi-screen theaters. The latter will end up on those single-screen specialty theaters, or simply go direct to e.g. Netflix or Amazon. (Didn't Annihilation go direct to Netflix everywhere except the US?) There's just not a big enough market for "good movies" to show them in cinema multiplexes.
Personally, as long as those "good movies" keep getting made and I can watch them reasonably cost-effectively and conveniently, I'm OK with this. I think that "good movies" do better in a smaller environment anyway; I think I watched Ex Machina on my computer with headphones, and I can't imagine what it would be like in a big movie theater. Suffice it to say that I don't think the theater would've contributed positively to the experience. But on the other hand, a movie like Disney's Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War 2: Part 7: Electric Boogaloo? That benefits from being in a theater, and the constant stream of explosions and witty banter will drown out the noises your fellow movie-goers are making. And if you have to pee because you drank that entire 128oz soda? No worries. The plot is so simple that missing 5 minutes of the movie is no big deal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:32PM
Well "good movies" have always been a problematic designation.
I have long observed that whenever some movie critic pans something as being low brow, it will show up as the new blockbuster.
Then again there is also a long long history of "direct to rental/sale" movies. Hell, some of the most acclaimed anime series are OVAs, or Original Video Anime. Meaning that they were released directly to VHS back in the day, rather than cinema or TV. Yet there have been produced crazy things like 110 episode scifi epics that way.
Sadly what seems to be going on is that some variant of the "movie" critic seems to be taking over the "social" world by abusing the internet to produce outrage mobs.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:22AM (28 children)
Funny, because back in the day when comic pages were full of exactly the kind of diversity character you’re talking about, nobody ever batted an eye. The female Captain Marvel goes back to this era, gaining her powers and eventually taking the mantle of Captain Marcel between the late 70s and early 90s. Not to mention the whole X-men metaphor.
Something has definitely changed about diversity in the last few years, and it’s not that there’s more of it shoe horned into everything. It’s that the long-feared cultural revolution is happening around us, and some people would like you to feel threatened by it.
So let me ask you, the reader: do you feel threatened? Who made you feel that way? The alleged SJW that made this story happen? Or the alt-right reactionary trying to turn your vague anxieties toward white supremacist rage?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:42AM (11 children)
BINGO. Comics and media have always been at the forefront of LGBT representation, both here and abroad. Why do you think little 15 year old me was so completely into Sailor Moon (subbed, not the awful dub?). Because in the early 2000s it was the single most lesbian thing you would ever see outside of an Indigo Girls concert...aaaand my first girlfriend got me into it but yeah. That's why. I had never, ever, anywhere, seen gay women represented like that before. I didn't even know where to look, being rather cut off from popular culture for many reasons...
You're spot on; the amount of "diversity" isn't changing, it's breached the mainstream now and the usual reactionary types are scared shitless.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:48AM (6 children)
Right. They're just quivering in their little booties, sobbing mantears of cake frosting and hotsauce, that run down their blubbery incel triple chins.
I mean, there must be one or two of them, right? Never met one of these scared shitless people, but they must be out there, somewhere? Guys?
Come on, quit hiding, we're all here to support you, who's feeling like, super-threatened by all this super-diversity?
Anybody?
I reckon they've all gone to their manly-man bunkers to hug their rifles and cans of spam, because I'm just not hearing a lot of panic-weeping.
But do keep telling yourself how scary you are. I'm sure it makes you feel great.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:03AM (1 child)
He writes and illustrates religious tracts that the faithful hand out to the unsaved
Jacks fear of LGBT people goes back decades
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:49PM
Oh, right.
I guess that's one.
Any others?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:01PM (1 child)
Come on, quit hiding, we're all here to support you, who's feeling like, super-threatened by all this super-diversity? Anybody?
Have you actually read SN before? They post on here all the time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:51PM
I've occasionally seen disgust, occasionally anger, once in a while annoyed bafflement.
Can't recall any fear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:39PM
Ah yes, incel, the latest scaretype label that gets flung around by the "diversity" warriors now that they have wrung all meaning out of nazi and racist.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:42PM
They sure as hell seem to be carpet-bombing this place with how much they're frightened...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:37PM (1 child)
The way it was done used to be much more refined though, now it feels downright hamfisted.
This movie for instance have some of the most annoying, downright ditzy, characters Marvel has produced in ages (one of them even started out as a joke character on their website no less!), but gets crammed into everything because "diversity".
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:32PM
I haven't watched TV or movies in like 14 years, so I'll have to take your word for it, but given the glimpses I've seen here and there you're almost certainly right. What a mess. No one's got any damn subtlety any longer, no one knows how to write a complex character in the mainstream. I've been percolating an idea for a sort of love letter to the JRPG that feels like "5 parts Xenogears, 2 parts Shin Megami Tensei, and a dash of Sailor Moon" that has one lesbian, one bisexual woman, and one transwoman in it. And those aspects of their character have very little impact on the actual plot at all aside from driving one weird transformation (the transwoman can fuse with her daughter, who's a sort of "negative ghost" due to never having actually existed), the possibility of losing the lesbian off your team if you don't separate her from the woman she's in love with for a while, and said lesbian and bi woman eventually pairing up and both of them gaining massive power boosts and some crazy dual techs from it. It's possible to do diversity right, but not for the sake of diversity; it needs to be for character development.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:39PM (1 child)
Do not dismiss that a sizable group of people are annoyed not by the message but by the hamfisted way it gets rammed into every "conversation" where it previously had no place.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:11PM
Oh, it bugs me too, but what can we do? And those people are free not to consume this media, the same way I choose not to.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:59AM (3 children)
Nope, afraid not. I'm neither Republican nor conservative and I've been reading comics since around X-Men Giant-Size #1when the second team of X-Men were introduced (In a big box from my uncle not fresh off the press. I could read early but not that early.). And you know what? I never had issue with what they put in comics until after 2K. The problem is not minority protagonists. The problem is putting agenda ahead of good storytelling, with a side of being insulting, self-righteous, antagonistic pricks about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:42PM (2 children)
Watch out, that spotlight shining will earn you a CoC smackdown.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)
Somehow I doubt it [github.com].
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:37PM
Touche.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:27AM
I never liked comic books, but cam across this a few years ago as discussed on redit:
http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=spiderwomans_ass [thebestpageintheuniverse.net]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:40AM (2 children)
Yes and no
I'm a lot more comfortable with telling a new friend that I'm schizoaffective than I am with telling them that I'm bisexual
One of my very best friends is an out bisexual and I haven't even told him
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:34PM (1 child)
I've never looked you up on google, but assuming you're using your real name, etc. Posting it here, is about as public as it gets. Though, I guess new friends shouldn't be so creepy as to be searching to see who you are on the internet? Or am I one of the few who still think that's creepy?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:31PM
-gton.
He was a registered sex offender who did time in Walla Walla starting in 2005, then went on to steal a car while wearing homemade body armor and a helmet with metal plates duct taped to it, lead the Lakewood Police on a high-speed chase, crashed the car then opened fire on the cops.
Despite that he died in 2012, the police still think I'm him.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:01PM (6 children)
Exactly.
Yes.
No, "diversity" became a double think style codeword for overt discrimination; The very thing it claims to be against. Telling the most diverse, tolerant and equal civilization in human history that they're racists and sexists and it's therefore fine to discriminate against them is obnoxious. I don't think I have a reactionary response, I'm just going to continue enjoying my "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity" while ignoring "diversity" and telling anyone who has a problem with myself or my family to "fuck off"! Do you think this is an unreasonable position to hold?
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:56PM (5 children)
I think your position is a lot more reasonable than the position of most people like you on the internet. Probably because most people on the internet are trolls crafting reactionary arguments to stir up shit.
I'm actually quite glad to see anyone, even someone positioned on the other side from me, expressing an opinion that doesn't seem carefully crafted to piss off as many people as possible.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:25PM (4 children)
My position is one of self-interested disinterest, I will not open my wallet to support the kind of discrimination I have always taken a principled stand against. I suspect this is the majority position, even among those who are annoyed that every fictional character and franchise in popular culture is being hijacked and reimagined through an SJW lens. We've long had black, female and gay characters in fiction and few cared - but it was never so politicized as it is now. Neither of us have to pick a side. Alienating the majority audience by appealing to ever more disparate minority groups is a losing strategy. A recent survey on the declining NFL ratings could be an interesting insight into the commercial viability of intersectional identity politics. [surveymonkey.com]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:04PM (3 children)
I am not seeing what you see about the NFL. Kneeling is a protest, so the extent to which it harms business is probably desirable to kneelers. It doesn’t tell us anything about running a successful business...other than “avoid controversies you can’t personally resolve”.
As for how long we’ve had diverse characters in fiction, you are technically correct only because you leave out how many. There are vastly more and diverse characters in English-language fiction now than ever before, and these characters are in more central roles than ever before.
Any quality issues with these new characters are probably just growing pains. There is a lot about representation that has little to do with story quality that authors want to accomplish right now. I can see how writing a character specifically to represent one ethnic group alienated others, especially any ethnic groups that are not accustomed to characters that explicitly represent someone else. Some would say “welcome to the not-being-represented club”.
I suspect it will pass. Once each community feels better represented by the mainstream, representation will naturally become less of a storytelling goal. Whether things ever go back to “normal” depends on what “normal” means to everyone. If your normal requires that you be exclusively pandered to as the majority identity, you will be sorely disappointed and your frustration will only contribute to the things you love devolving into identity politics.
If however your normal just requires a level of quality and relevance, then as long as you don’t let yourself be distracted by identity politics, things will get better. Give minority writers time and identity will become less important than identity-specific themes, and everyone will get better at exploring those themes.
But if you’re an asshole about it, you will get kicked out. And if every straight writer is an asshole about it, you’ll have to get used to all romance being queer. When that happens...well we can all look forward to a new counter movement of straight people shoe-horning straight romance where it doesn’t serve the story because nobody will give them the representation they desire.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:51PM (2 children)
That they're in a no win situation which they could have avoided.
While the receipts will say welcome to bankruptcy protection and the media blames Russia [theverge.com] despite corroborating data. [cosmicbooknews.com]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:39PM (1 child)
The NFL is in a no win situation: yes.
They (the organization) could have avoided it: no.
Players are protesting something outside the NFL's control. The NFL itself doesn't care and can't really address police brutality. Meanwhile, comic book companies are trying to reach different demographics, a social issue that they are uniquely situated to address. The two may be related politically, but they are not comparable as business decisions. Especially because the players aren't making business decisions and aren't likely to face market consequences even if NFL viewership goes down.
Those that avoid the NFL because of Trump are doing it because of Trump. Not because of SJWs. Which I think is pretty indicative of the whole situation we're talking about: certain people want to stoke white rage in order to bolster their own goals, and without those people, we'd all be more likely to criticize things based on their own merits instead of the identities of the people involved.
As for The Last Jedi...from my perspective, that movie's biggest problem was pacing and that has nothing to do with social issues. The whole casino world subplot was pointlessly pointless, and I get the sense that it's only there to set up future movies. But what do you expect? They're just following the MCU forever-series formula, which until now at least has been pretty much entirely about white men in costumes.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:09PM
To be fair, they've been doing this since the seventies but the difference was that those titled sold.
They are making business decisions, even if they don't know it. The NFL could have exercised "editorial" control over the narrative from the outset.
I agree with you but there were social issues on display, not least the Asian girl bringing The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the pointless subplot you mentioned.
A movie that plays to universal human archetypes instead of deconstructionist dogma. A movie that honors the characters in the mythos. If the director wanted to "subvert expectations", he should have killed his protagonist. Obviously too much to expect, just as me bothering with any further Star Wars outings is too much for Disney to expect.
(Score: 1) by Blymie on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:40PM
People get upset about revisionist history. In this case, it may not be (I haven't looked into your historical statements), but the thought of such things, and the external appearance to the OP, apparently causes the same distress many feel -- when history is changed to help with the current political climate.
Do you know how many horror/drama tales are written around regime changes happening in countries, and after the "past" is changed because it is inconvenient for the current regime? History books changed, books burned, lies told about the past, the list goes on an on. So yes, when people change "what was", and pretend it was actually something different -- it can greatly annoy people. It can even scare people.
Because the most evil and totalitarian regimes in the history of this world, have changed history too. You never change history. You leave it as it was. You move forward.
I don't get why people can't simply invent new stories. What's the point of taking what someone fondly recalls as a child, and changing it entirely? One feels cheated! I'd feel the same way, if Wonder Woman became Wonder Man -- I have fond memories of those comics, and of that TV show from the 70s/80s. It was the same with the Ghostbusters... all I saw was people all excited it was an all-female cast?!
Make your own movie! Its own premise!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:37AM (9 children)
Let's say that you have been in an accident. You're hauled off to the body shop - errrr - emergency room. The doctor waltzes in, and spends minutes informing you of his "alternative lifestyle". And, as you bleed out, you're wondering WTF does his lifestyle have to do with any_fucking_thing. Oh - the car. Ditto, it's in the shop, and the "auto technician" waltzes in, proclaiming for his favorite "lifestyle". The car cares as much as you do about the deviant's sexual preferences, or his racial heritage, or whatever the hell.
None of that crap contributes to The Story. Unless, of course, this so-called Diversity is the story being told.
Of course, most of us realize that few new stories are being written, or told, or acted. Pretty much all of us have bemoaned the lack of originality in music, movies, writing, or whatever other media we prefer. So, most of these "artists" have nothing to contribute, aside from rewriting old material, but making the protagonists female, or gay, or whatever the hell.
The age of mediocrity has arrived.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:33AM (3 children)
Maybe this is when civilizations die. When they've fully explored their "civilization space". I've read similar ideas from historians who stdy these things. ...when the greeks had fully explored the human condition for example through their art (plays and literature).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:50AM (1 child)
The focus of my writing as of late is on how ancient history led to the world we have today
For example The Third Reich regarded itself as the third Roman Empire.
The Second was the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:57AM
Spengler, Decline of the West
Glibb, THE FATE OF EMPIRES and SEARCH FOR SURVIVAL
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:23PM
We're headed the way of that mysterious "Elder Race" - the elves.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:43AM (1 child)
You must not know any LGBT people
For many of coming to accept our sexuality is a story that consumes decades of our luves
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:20PM
How well do I have to know a peter puffer, before I can claim to know him? I mean, I know some, but I'm not on intimate terms with them. They don't like a lot of the same things I like, and vicey versy. Someone will mouth off here about bigotry - screw 'em. I'm not best buds with Buzzard, because he spends ungodly amounts of time, sitting on or beside the water, trying to drown a monofilament. And, I'm not best buds with Mud Duck Crawford, because I can't be assed to keep up with all his schizo shitzls. There are LOTS of people I can't be bothered with, not just gays. Asocial Asshole, remember? I just can't be bothered.
Now, if you want to talk about ships, or big trucks (no, a Dodge Ram doesn't cut it, even if it has six wheels) or motorcycles, I'm interested. At least until I'm not interested any more. I can be social for short periods of time.
Or, if you need that in shorter words, I don't need to be around someone who talks about his boyfriend all the time. Again, equal opportunity - I don't need to be around some chick who talks about her boyfreind all the time either. Now, guys who talk about their GIRLfreinds might get a little of my time. Maybe. Depending on what kinda looker she is, and how juicy the details get. And, depending on the weather, and the stars, and how much cosmic dust is falling, and whether I have something important to do, like washing the windshield.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:04PM (1 child)
I'm sure you complain just as loudly when the author mentions Peter Parker's relationship to Mary Jane Watson, Cyclops and Jean Grey, etc. Why do they feel the need to constantly declare their sexual orientation? Oh wait, that's called character development and it's a part of good storytelling... (Psst, your fear of those who are different from you is showing!)
As to why articles are being written about it, it's less to do with jamming it down anyone's throat (you'd like that, wouldn't you?) than celebrating the fact that something representing a minority positively made it past the people like you who constantly try to shut it down and that more in society are learning to appreciate diversity of experience and opinions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:21PM
See my response to Mud Duck above.
(Score: 1) by Dr. Manhattan on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:29PM
How old is Sturgeon's Law [wikipedia.org] again? Huh - 60 years. And it was true for a few millennia before that.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 01 2018, @10:38PM
Here's the Captain Marvel trailer [youtube.com]. Release date is March 8, 2019.
1. Are you seeing it? I'm more interested in this standalone Joker film [youtube.com].
2. What do you think about the "de-aging"? Marvel has done this before, for example in both of the Ant-Man films, but it's more prominent here.
Between Marvel and Star Wars, Disney has been doing a lot of de-aging lately. Out with the Old!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @10:44PM
If you were truly heroic, you would use your superpowers to rid the world of SJWs and get women back in the kitchen where they belong.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @10:47PM (3 children)
More forced diversity and identity politics aka commercial suicide. [wordpress.com] We closed our insane asylums only for the inmates to take over our institutions.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 01 2018, @11:30PM (1 child)
I'd take half of the MCU's "commercial failure". Even a tenth, or a measly hundredth.
Cash, check, your call.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:04AM
It's currently the Marvel comics, the MCU fails next.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:46AM
There is good reason to believe both Hitler and Stalin had paranoid personality disorder
Yet they took over their own institutions well before the mentally ill were deinstitutionaluzed in the sixties
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 01 2018, @11:18PM (2 children)
The original one was. There have been more than half a dozen though if I remember correctly. About half of them were women.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:54AM (1 child)
Got it, so basically the same thing as what they did with Thor and Iron Man.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:38AM
Nope. They didn't hit you in the face with a brick then call you a piece of shit for not enjoying it. They pretty much just made it a job title rather than a persona after the first one and the subsequent holders of the position respected the previous holders rather than shitting all over them. So, more like Green Lantern or The Flash.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 01 2018, @11:20PM
This short run [adultswim.com] sets the bar for truly, truly diverse representation in a superhero series. Also for cartoon villainy and awful animation that somehow got greenlit for tv.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Captival on Monday October 01 2018, @11:32PM (2 children)
Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors is a collection of all the failed SJW heroes whose own books were either cancelled due to horrible sales or deep into cancellation territory. Never one to take a hint, Marvel changed nothing and just collected them all in one place, hoping their combined audiences would be enough to keep one title going.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Monday October 01 2018, @11:48PM (1 child)
Get used to disappointment.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Captival on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:29AM
Yes, that's the official Marvel Comics slogan these days.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:35AM (2 children)
There's nothing wrong with diversity, but a friend just went to a supposed tech conference where all the presentations were about diversity and global warming.
That just isnt the place for that. Especially when shitty/scammy web development is growing into one of the biggest wasters of electricity and cause of "fear of people not like you" in the world due to the incompetence and lack of ethical thought of the web devs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:45AM
Isnt there quite a lot wrong with 'Diversity' that is not representative of demographics?
Isnt it just as wrong as no 'Diversity'?
But no, apparently 'Diversity' means nothing but protected classes, and as we know, that is pretty much anything but white males.
'Diversity' is the exclusion of white males, as they are apparently now by definition bad.
And people wonder why the white male suicide rate is growing fast - must be endless fun being told continuously how lucky
you are, and how bad that makes you - when your life is no easier than those around you who are 'protected'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:40AM
Sounds like some once upon a time highly popular websites.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:35AM (2 children)
Calling you out baby, the rare New York misogynerd hard at work fighting against those jerks trying to tear down the patriarchy!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:48AM
Shooting the messenger, for LULZ, right? Phoenix didn't write the story, Oh, Witless Wonder.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:16PM
I usually refrain from submitting articles like this one. I never touched the gamergate topic.
This one showed up in the RSS feed, and I know how much some Soylentils enjoy discussing such things.
Also, it has rather seemed like Hollywood has been needlessly, ham-fistedly remaking story universes and characters and franchises not to tell new stories, or to address flaws in the originals, but to force-feed an agenda to audiences. Re-making Ghostbusters with an all-female cast was unnecessary. I like the actresses in it, and thought Bridesmaids, which starred most of the same people, was the funniest movie I've seen in the last decade. No, i disliked the remake because it was badly done, because it made those actresses look unfunny, and because it both insulted them and the fans.
Star Wars, also, has been utterly destroyed by the same dynamic.
Ultimately it's lazy film-making. They can't be bothered to come up with anything new, or to source new material from the many excellent amateurs out there. Instead, they remake everything with a new screed because it has a built-in audience they can sucker into buying a movie ticket at least once, not giving a damn if those fans get pissed off and walk away afterward. It is a sort of strip-mining of the popular culture.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:07AM
The Captan Marvel referenced in the article is Col. Danvers. The Ms. Marvel under discussion is Kamala Khan.
This has been the case for over five years now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CZB on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:07AM
Under what conditions should we care?
Its annoying that parts of our culture want to stick their values into various media and insist we like it, but there's plenty of other media to consume, we don't have to watch movies or whatever we don't find interesting.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:35AM (3 children)
Well not exactly.
The name has been stomped on several times, used to refer to several very different characters.
The first, as far as I know, and certainly the first in my memory, was Billy Batson. He's the original and probably the most famous. He was the lead character for an old comics publisher that went out of business or got bought out or something, they disappeared, and he did with them. He was a man in the broader sense but some would say he was a boy instead, whatever.
Then Marvel comics saw an opportunity to grab the name (which they predictably think they should control) and created Mar-Vell, who wasn't a man, but an alien. Well, he's a sentient alien so maybe that's a man too.
Anyway I didn't really follow it but I gather Marvel has re-used the name for new characters several times. Where they might have just let another character die, they make a point to keep this one legally alive, just to hold onto the trademark on the name.
Also I think D.C. acquired the original Captain Marvel at some point and they've tried to bring it back several times, but I think they had to call him 'Shazam' instead of 'Captain Marvel' because of Marvel's trademark.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:42AM (2 children)
Wasn't Shazam! a 70's kid's program with Jim Neighbors?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:14AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:09PM
Right vintage, wrong show
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lost_Saucer [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:32AM (2 children)
She was filled with despair as she told me of all the pain he endured
Surely something or someone could help him. The Mayo Clinic? UC San Francisco? Stanford?
I found myself puzzled over something she said, I don't recall what it was
Then a slowly growing realization dawned within me that she was speaking of one of the x-men
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:03PM (1 child)
Lemme guess, she just saw Logan? Or was this a decade ago?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:45PM
She was heavily into the original comic books.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]