Can we talk about marvel movies?
This is going to yuck some yum, so if you don't want to read negative things about these movies then maybe skip this post. I'm not looking for anyone to defend these movies -- the box office has done that. This'll also contain spoilers.
On a plane, I watched a couple.
Namely, Dr Strange and Avengers: Ultron. Being the sort of nerd I am, I knew the plot for each and the comic book characters they are based on, at least a smidge.
My principle problem is the same with both of these: glorification of the destruction of, usually, NYC. In Ultron, we've even got Tony smashing Hulk into a skyscraper, and we see people fleeing. Those people don't survive, and this is ignored by the narrative. In Dr Strange, this is usually done in the "mirror dimension", allow for consequence free destruction of cities. Until the end, of course, and that is mitigated by Strange reversing time and sacrificing himself -- which is almost exactly the same ending as when Stark takes a nuke into asgard.
But, this isn't about rehashed plots.
I really disliked the glorification, fascination, and fetishistic destruction of major cities. I remember 9/11, and I lived in OKC when the bombing occurred. I was three miles away. These are major events in my life, done by madmen best erased from the historical narrative, not by super heroes.
The juxtaposition of similar imagery to those events with the idealization of the men (and it's always men, black widow doesn't destroy cities) is, at best, intentionally moronic and, at worst, a desecration. And is probably a simple alignment of hollywood movies with the military industrial complex, ensuring that we continue to see war as valuable and keep fresh the memory of these attacks on the US.
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No argument here.
ReplyDeleteWinter Soldier and Civil War are in part about these things specifically. It seems Our Heroes(tm) are just as good at making enemies through carelessness as defeating them. That said, I agree that it's an annoying fricking trope and it'd be nice if they just THOUGHT enough in the first place not to do it.
ReplyDeleteYes, and I have a follow-up question: How much is it about who's doing the destroying, and the quality of glorification?
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking the distinction between (1) Tony "Bad Life Decisions" Stark, (2) Loki + army, and (3) Godzilla.
It's like they can't think of any other stakes a movie could be about. Totally agree.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I always thought Godzilla was a metaphor for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasake?
ReplyDeleteRabbit Stoddard I have not seen those, so I don't really know and can't speak to it. Do they destroy buildings?
ReplyDeleteCivil War, though formally a Cap movie, is in a lot of ways more a sequel to Age of Ultron, just as Iron Man 3 is really about the fallout of Avengers 1. Civil War goes deep on guilt-tripping Stark for Age of Ultron's collateral damage, AND it opens with another big piece of collateral damage. (None of which are NYC.) The whole conflict of the movie is about accountability for collateral damage.
ReplyDeleteIn Avengers 1, and in Sokovia in AoU, we do see the characters put a lot of energy into minimizing casualties before or during the fight.
Godzilla movies in a nutshell: Props guys spend weeks building 1/500 scale model of Tokyo, and stringing model fighter planes on wires, arranging tanks and artillery pieces, etc. Guy gets in rubber Godzilla suit that radically reduces both vision and mobility, and flails around until everything is wreckage. Extra points for backhanding any of the little planes.
ReplyDeleteLike, yeah, every human character in the movies is unified on trying to stop Godzillas rampage... but still, part of the fun of the films is watching the model buildings get trashed. But there is very little sense of Godzilla as moral agent.
William Nichols as Brandes Stoddard, more they get punished for destroying buildings, and more than that, for killing people who were in those buildings. Whether the degree of punishment is sufficient is another question.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch It for sure makes it worse that it's Tony Stark destroying NYC, as this puts him on the same level as actual terrorists. The enormity of the disaster that is him and Hulk running into a half-complete skyscraper is completely ignored, while it would be devastating for the nation.
ReplyDeleteRabbit Stoddard: But the prevalence of "conflict drives me to destroy, guilt about destruction leads me to conflict" as a narrative engine is still a big thing.
ReplyDeleteI think there are plenty-good reasons for it that aren't (just) authorial laziness, but it's definitely something that needs to be wrestled with.
I always thought the Avengers specifically took quite good care of saving civilians and avoiding property damage if possible.
ReplyDeleteWonder Woman might destroy a building, but then the building is full of nazis.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of tension between the long-standing tradition that superhero stories happen in a "world next door" vs. the natural sense that their world is so much more terrorized and helpless than (even) ours that everyone would be constantly shell-shocked.
ReplyDeleteJust a minor nitpick, the Hulk/Iron Man fight happens on the 'African Coast' not New York. This has its own set of huge problems, of course.
ReplyDeleteRemi Treuer Thanks. That's what I get for watching on a plane, I suppose. I still wandered the entire time why in the world Tony didn't try to get OUT of the city.
ReplyDeleteAnd realized: the city is a weapon. And then I shuddered.
I thought Tony was trying to get out of the city. But Hulk was smashing the suit too fast so he needed to find a place to land him. Tony buys the abandoned skyscraper and crashes there.
ReplyDeleteBtw, this doesn't blunt your point about there definitely being casualties.
ReplyDeleteYou're probably right, and I def remember Tony saying something about buying it.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, all those people we see running -- and thousands of others -- are dead.
Orion Cooper And I have substantially less of a problem with that, but I have been taught from an early age that it is OK to kill nazis.
ReplyDeletecomment to remind me to revisit this
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch RIGHT?
ReplyDeleteThe first Iron Man movie gets away with it, as there hasn't been a lot before. So a billionaire gets kidnapped by terrorists. OK. Then he murders them. Awesome. And then ... wait, what, he's become a vigilante going around the world killing terrorists? Cool.
And then it gets weird.
There's really a ton of good discussion to be had on many threads connected to this (e.g. "How ethical is it to permit Bruce Banner to ever get within one hundred miles of an urban center? How ethical is it to forbid him?"), but an awful lot of it starts to spin off fairly seriously from the specific movies you're using to ground things here. If you're up for specific tangents, give some guidance.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of those specific movies: Yes, if you want to extrapolate fictional reality through implications, it's awfully hard to answer "Nobody" to the question of "How many people die because the Hulk flips out in an urban center" (in the same way it's hard to think that the Ewoks survive the cataclysmic de-orbiting of the second Death Star). The writers choose to touch only on the bits of that which make for exciting action cinema ... and that's certainly a choice with consequences that I have judgey feels about.
But I'm not so sure that I feel judgey about their choice to have the Hulk flip out in the first place. Banner is Chekov's gun. It would be deeply weird to have a movie in which he features, where the Hulk is a positive, restrained force from start to finish.
Likewise, putting big mystic loci in city centers is a part of the Dr. Strange mythos that is just rife with foreshadowed disaster. I can see ways to sidestep it (for instance, a battle where people's literal heels are pushed back to the gateway between some mystic hell-scape and our own world, and the fight all happens there with a constant hovering sense of the stakes just inches away), but it's not flatly lazy to cash in on that foreshadowing and show people the promised catastrophe.
Well, I'd be more likely to watch a movie in which Tony and Bruce have a reasoned discussion with Cap about the future history of humanity and their responsibilities thereof. But, I think I am no longer the target demographic.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Uh ... have you seen Civil War?
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly, much of the reasoned discussion is held in the International Language of Fisticuffs, but it's a movie in which the Avengers sit around a conference room table and actually have a debate about "How much do we need to be reined in? Where do we fit in a system of social order? What are the implications (vis-a-vis freedom) of the existence of Persons of Mass Destruction?"
Spoiler: Even when Tony Stark is right, he's still wrong.
Spoiler: everyone in that debate is wrong, and looking at the world and their place in it facilely.
ReplyDeleteAnd no, I have not seen Civil War. I for sure remember, about a million years ago, Cap getting shot while leaving a courthouse. And it being for real.
ReplyDeleteMan, I hated that scene. Fuck both Tony and his guilt trip and General Ross and his dick wagging bullshit. Collateral damage is a horrible cost, but letting the things they were fighting against go would have just been even worse. Plus, it was the fucking government that was going to NUKE NYC, the avengers stopped that from happening.
ReplyDeleteMo Jave: Right? I was like "Hey, Tony, remember how in the first movie you became an expert in nuclear physics overnight? Take an afternoon and swot up on Theory of Political Change, with an emphasis on Incrementalism, 'kay-love-ya-bye!"
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch yeah, but not just Tony. The whole discussion is designed to make you feel like you can take a side with one team or the other but not actually make you do any of the work.
ReplyDeleteEverybody's wrong, and frankly that framing is actively harmful.
Funny, I watched the black smoke rise from out of my window on 9/11, and I live in Manhattan now, but I don't feel this way.
ReplyDeleteI feel like some fun was taken away from city destruction for most people, though, because 9/11 taught us how many people die in those circumstances, and our tech has gotten good enough to model this destruction realistically.
This kind of massive destruction has a long history in movies, not just in superhero movies but in everything from Independence Day to Titanic to Towering Inferno to Paint Your Wagon. And not just movies. It goes back to the story of Noah and other flood stories--nearly every culture has one. "It won't be water, it'll be fire next time."
ReplyDeletePart of why it's popular is a belief that the modern world is somehow corrupt and needs to be swept away so that something more natural can arise. I've got some sympathy for that point of view, but I also see how toxic it is, how it's tied up with suspicion of the other, of the cosmopolitan.
And another part of disaster porn is the thrill of vicariously experiencing that much destruction and still being able to walk out of the theater and go get some Cold Stone Creamery.
NPCs get blown away all the time in action movies, and they are rarely mourned. No consequences attach to their deaths. We have become inured to it. That is not a good thing.
(the wonder woman movie was set during the first world war; i.e., they weren't nazis in those buildings)
ReplyDelete