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The Runaways (Marvel/Hulu)

grendelsbayne said:
Runaways n. 4, G. wilder walks into Alex's room with the ceremonial knife. His wife tells him to put it down. He says 'I'm not going to hurt him, I just want to explain what he saw us doing with it.' Mrs. Minoru later says 'This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you' and 'I'll discipline my own child'. The Yorkes explicitly say 'We have no intention of hurting any of you.'

R. n. 5 opens with the entire Pride discussing whether or not the children will fall for the *bluff* the pride is making about killing Molly. The Yorkes accidentally cut Nico and immediately regret it, even before the Staff of One appears (and no, they don't know the staff is coming because they're shocked when they see it). Mrs. Hayes shows nothing but love and concern for Molly.

N. 6 'We control this entire city. But that doesn't mean we're despots. We're just concerned citizens who've made great sacrifices to make the world a better place for you.'

N. 7 Mr. Dean is half insane with worry about his daughter being missing. He also refuses to believe when the others say the kids think they're no different from supervillains. 'We ARE different. We're... We're heroes! We've dedicated our lives to making the world a better place for those kids.'

N. 8 'If the children have decided to start playing crime-fighter, it's more imperative than ever that we find them quickly... before some two-bit hood decides to make an example out of them.'

N. 13, they align with the Gibborim because the end of the world 'is inevitable' anyway. Mrs. Stein is pregnant and responds to a suggestion of abortion with 'I'm not some kind of monster.'

N. 14 Mr. Stein pretends to be ambivalent about still giving the spots in paradise to their 'ungrateful brats', Mr. Wilder absolutely explodes on him for even thinking it. 'I have done terrible things in my life. But for the last 16 years I have been confident that I've been doing them for a noble reason. I am going to find Alex and give him what is rightfully his and I'll destroy anyone who gets in my way.' Stein agrees. (He was testing Wilder's motivations)

N. 16 'Don't lose faith, Janet. Remember when we used to spend hours just watching our boys play in the sand? We can't forget that we're doing this for them.'

'Are you still willing to help destroy the entire planet?' - 'Oh, yes.... We visited thousands of possible futures, each worse than the last.' - 'and all of these timelines were overrun by the same thing: super heroes' - 'The x-men, the Avengers, the Fantastic bloody Four, their kind dominated every era ensuring that people like us never challenged the mundane status quo. Believe me, a world filled with fifty year old men punching each other is no place for children. The next generation deserves something new... and that's exactly what we're going to give them.'

N. 17 Alex: 'I learned about the Gibborim and what our parents sacrificed to make this world a better place for us. I couldn't believe it... My mum and dad were Heroes!' The Gibborim declare their intention to kill the Pride AND their children - the immediate reaction from the Pride is 'Get out of here, we'll hold them off'.

So, over the course of their definitive storyline, they absolutely did literally call themselves heroes, and called themselves noble far more often. They repeatedly showed care and concern for their own children (every bit as fiercely as any normal parent) - the idea that they would ever just murder their own children just for an advantage is blatantly ridiculous - and despite their unsavory backgrounds none of them were even willing to kill the other children
(except for the Deans and the Hayes's who had already decided to double cross everyone and steal the six spots in paradise for themselves, anyway).

Regarding their few later appearances -
time traveling Geoffrey Wilder blamed the Runaways for killing his wife and son. Literally his entire rampage was because of family. And the time traveling Yorkes were devastated when they found out about Gertrude's future.

As for the average villain considering them evil to the core? When did we even see the average villain encounter them at all? The Kingpin is the only instance I know of, and he simply considered them efficient, intelligent and ruthless. I understand they showed up at some point in an Iron Man story and a Daken story - I haven't read those - but as far as I know they only ever encountered cheap low lifes like the Wrecking Crew.

You're right that they're basically mob bosses with powers, and that that's why Kingpin respects them, but they absolutely do love their children. And it's kind of funny that you think 'mob bosses with powers' qualifies for 'most foul, violently disturbed people in the Marvel universe'. A universe that includes Apocalypse, Mr Sinister, the Brood, Mojo, Ultron, Killgrave, Red Skull, Galactus, etc, etc, etc.
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I completely disagree with everything you say. When it comes to Mob Bosses in the MCU I don't recall Kingpin engaging in human sacrifice or trying to murder his child, both things the Pride very specifically did. Both of those things are vile. Basically, they're a group of violent sociopaths with a huge amount of power. Comparing them to Mojo is, quite frankly, stupid because they're much worse then he is. Galactus isn't even evil, he's basically forced to do what he does and even then a good herald can help make him less destructive.

Kilgrave himself has almost certainly killed and messed with less people then the Pride, and honestly as bad as he is any individual member of the Pride has probably done just as bad things as he has. Which isn't to take away from how much of a vile villain Kilgrave is, it just shows how bad the Pride are.

In the end, the Pride was trying to kill their kids after the kids saw the human sacrifice. maybe not right after, I think the original plan was to wipe the memory from their minds, but with the possible exception of Molly (because of her age) and one other person (which I won't mention because its a huge spoiler) within a few issues it was obvious that killing the kids was basically the goal. Now, brainwashing might still have been on the table, but they'd have killed their kids in a second with absolutely no hesitation at basically any point. At best, they wanted the kids brainwashed (probably to either sacrifice them eventually or brainwash them into mindless lackeys, they sure as hell didn't care about them in any normal way). But mostly they just wanted to stop the kids by any means necessary. Since every member of the Pride is a violent sociopath, killing the kids was the most likely outcome if they had managed to catch them.

The Pride is a foul group of villains. If you don't try to hyperbolically compare them to Galactus or sentient genocide machines like Ultron, they're some of the most vile villains of the MCU. They were both as immoral then people like Kilgrave and more dangerous then him or people like Red Skull (even including Skull's time as a powerful telepath, although I suppose the Pride not being Nazis gives them the only bit of moral high ground they ever had when it comes to comparing them to other villains, although would be surprised if they had worked with Nazis at some point).

To show any shade of gray about them is an insult. Its almost as bad as, for example, trying to pretend HYDRA is anything but literal Nazi's with a name change to avoid censorship in countries that don't allow Nazis in stories. Sometimes shit isn't gray, its black and white. The Pride are violent, sociopathic villains with no morals or anything approaching humanity. That's not a bad thing to have in a story. I like a complex villain, but sometimes bad guys can just be evil. Heck, a character can be irredeemably evil and still complex.
 
kirk55555 said:
I don't recall Kingpin engaging in human sacrifice or trying to murder his child, both things the Pride very specifically did.
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Perhaps not knowingly, but he and Richard had their "problems". And Mrs. Fisk certainly had no qualms about doing so.
 
Christopher said:
Seems odd to put Galactus on that list. He's never been defined as foul or disturbed, just as a force of nature acting on his need to consume in order to survive. Indeed, I gather that recent comics have reworked him into a heroic figure, leading a team that deals with cosmic threats or something. (Plus he's buds with Squirrel Girl.)
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I haven't read the story, but I've picked up most of the story with Galactus in the Ultimates series from sites like CBR. Apparently a new team called The Ultimates (not the Avengers from the Ultimate comics, but a new 616 team that uses the name) were able to change him from the devourer of worlds, to the life bringer. So I believe instead of eating inhabited worlds, he now either brings new life to uninhabited worlds, or brings back life to worlds that had been wiped out. For a while they were dealing with a whole bunch of big cosmic level stories with a bunch of the ancient entities and this change was one of the big story points.
kirk55555 said:
To show any shade of gray about them is an insult. Its almost as bad as, for example, trying to pretend HYDRA is anything but literal Nazi's with a name change to avoid censorship in countries that don't allow Nazis in stories. Sometimes shit isn't gray, its black and white.
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I thought the comics Hydra were thousands of years older than the Nazis?
 
JD said:
I thought the comics Hydra were thousands of years older than the Nazis?
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That's a retcon. And whatever its origins, the modern incarnation of Hydra is inseparably connected to the Nazis. In Agents of SHIELD, basically every subset of Hydra other than Gideon Malick's was an outgrowth of the Red Skull's Hydra.
 
kirk55555 said:
I completely disagree with everything you say. When it comes to Mob Bosses in the MCU I don't recall Kingpin engaging in human sacrifice or trying to murder his child, both things the Pride very specifically did. Both of those things are vile. Basically, they're a group of violent sociopaths with a huge amount of power. Comparing them to Mojo is, quite frankly, stupid because they're much worse then he is. Galactus isn't even evil, he's basically forced to do what he does and even then a good herald can help make him less destructive.

Kilgrave himself has almost certainly killed and messed with less people then the Pride, and honestly as bad as he is any individual member of the Pride has probably done just as bad things as he has. Which isn't to take away from how much of a vile villain Kilgrave is, it just shows how bad the Pride are.

In the end, the Pride was trying to kill their kids after the kids saw the human sacrifice. maybe not right after, I think the original plan was to wipe the memory from their minds, but with the possible exception of Molly (because of her age) and one other person (which I won't mention because its a huge spoiler) within a few issues it was obvious that killing the kids was basically the goal. Now, brainwashing might still have been on the table, but they'd have killed their kids in a second with absolutely no hesitation at basically any point. At best, they wanted the kids brainwashed (probably to either sacrifice them eventually or brainwash them into mindless lackeys, they sure as hell didn't care about them in any normal way). But mostly they just wanted to stop the kids by any means necessary. Since every member of the Pride is a violent sociopath, killing the kids was the most likely outcome if they had managed to catch them.

The Pride is a foul group of villains. If you don't try to hyperbolically compare them to Galactus or sentient genocide machines like Ultron, they're some of the most vile villains of the MCU. They were both as immoral then people like Kilgrave and more dangerous then him or people like Red Skull (even including Skull's time as a powerful telepath, although I suppose the Pride not being Nazis gives them the only bit of moral high ground they ever had when it comes to comparing them to other villains, although would be surprised if they had worked with Nazis at some point).

To show any shade of gray about them is an insult. Its almost as bad as, for example, trying to pretend HYDRA is anything but literal Nazi's with a name change to avoid censorship in countries that don't allow Nazis in stories. Sometimes shit isn't gray, its black and white. The Pride are violent, sociopathic villains with no morals or anything approaching humanity. That's not a bad thing to have in a story. I like a complex villain, but sometimes bad guys can just be evil. Heck, a character can be irredeemably evil and still complex.
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You can keep repeating yourself all you want, but the Pride never tried to kill their own kids. It is not in the story, period. I triple checked before I wrote that post.
The only ones that were ever even willing to kill the OTHER members' kids were the Deans and the Hayes's, who were betraying the entire pride to keep the reward for themselves.

As for everything else, the human sacrifice is disturbing enough, but it's also one death a year vs the hundreds or thousands caused by the typical supervillain. Galactus isn't forced to do anything - he has free will, therefore he can choose to sacrifice himself to stop destroying things (if he couldn't, there wouldn't be so many stories about him making deals to skip planets). Mojo kills people right and left and he does it purely for entertainment. Killgrave is the kind of guy who probably kills almost anyone he meets unless they're too interesting (like JJ) or he's in a hurry. Considering how few people ever even encountered the Pride, I HIGHLY doubt they've killed more people than him. He also does things to you that are far worse than anything the pride were shown to do. Red Skull is a nazi, as you say, and one that's been murdering for decades for his ideology. Mr Sinister is Dr Mengele with powers and his own evil agenda. And the list of other possible mentions goes on and on. Proteus. Sabretooth. Arcade. Madcap. Venom. Carnage. Green Goblin. Mephisto. Apocalypse.
 
Whatever. I completely disagree. The Pride are some of the most vile villains, and the comic was fairly clear about the fact that they were pretty much ready to kill any of their kids if it was even slightly advantageous for them to do so.

Plus, you can't pretend that the human sacrifice is the only person they killed. Its all they killed in that one ritual, but that doesn't count all the people killed during their supervillain activities, and that number had to be pretty high just for their more mob style stuff, not to mention the time traveling, magic, aliens, and other weird evil stuff they had going on. They sure as hell killed more people probably in a month then, say, Arcade or green Goblin ever killed in his entire careers, even if The Pride's kills were mostly from their actions and not with their bare hands.

Anyway, I guess there is no point arguing. I've read the comics several times, and its pretty clear, to me at least. The villains have no "shades of gray" in the comics, and rying to make them nicer both ruins the story and feels really gross, like trying to make, say, Red Skull a sympathetic character. Some villains are just that, villains. Irredeemably evil people. But, I suppose that concept is too difficult for people that made vacuous shit like The OC and Gossip Girl. With them at the helm, The Pride will probably just be a bunch of PTA members who just want their kids to get good grades, at which point the kids get all angsty and runaway. :rolleyes:
 
When were the Pride ever willing to kill their own kids?? It was an explicit point in the story that they weren't willing to do that, that for all their sins they genuinely loved their children. Their whole original supervillain master plan was for themselves to die while their children inherited the omnipotence they achieved.
 
YLu said:
When were the Pride ever willing to kill their own kids?? It was an explicit point in the story that they weren't willing to do that, that for all their sins they genuinely loved their children. Their whole original supervillain master plan was for themselves to die while their children inherited the omnipotence they achieved.
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Reading the story right now, they certainly didn't have a problem with killing at least some of them. Granted, I haven't finished the story yet. Their plan was for their children to inherit it, but that was before the story started.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
Reading the story right now, they certainly didn't have a problem with killing at least some of them. Granted, I haven't finished the story yet. Their plan was for their children to inherit it, but that was before the story started.
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There are a few moments where the story is designed to look that way, but again and again they're revealed to be bluffing. With one major exception that I already mentioned - but I won't spoil that for you as its a big part of the story.
 
Christopher said:
And they wouldn't even need to use CGI to pull it off:

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That just made me think of this :lol:
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^Yeah, that suit isn't fooling anyone outside of a prank scenario.
They can use a puppet or something if it's just standing still or only the head & body are in shot, but wide shots and any time it has to move for than a few feet, they're going to have to CG it.
Realistically though, that would probably cost more than using CG in every shot. These kind of puppets are expensive to build, difficult to maintain and require a team of specialists to operate convincingly. Add to that all the times it breaks down and holds up shooting and it'd probably not be worth it.
 
^Yeah, for something smaller like a raptor, the operator's legs would be visible, so you'd need to have them wear green tights or something so their legs could be digitally erased. But that would still be less expensive and time-consuming than creating the whole dinosaur with CGI. The smart move would be to use the same techniques from those videos (maybe even hire the same creators) to create a lifelike puppet/animatronic Old Lace, and only use CGI for leg removal or for shots where the dinosaur had to be more lively than the puppet could achieve. That's how they did it in Jurassic Park -- people tend to assume the dinosaurs there were all CGI, but in fact maybe 3/4 or more of the dinosaur shots were live animatronics, since the original plan was to use stop motion, which was never entirely convincing, so Spielberg tried to do as much of it live as possible.
 
It would most assuredly *not* be less expensive or time consuming at all. Quite the opposite in fact. Those puppets cost upwards of several hundred thousand just for the build, never mind running and maintaining. You'd have to lump the cost of the CG on top of that, plus the added complication of having to seamlessly match the live action parts. More time, more effort, more money.

Just plopping in a fully CG raptor is way less complicated and probably cost about as much per shot, if not cheaper. The only advantage a puppet has over CG in this scenario is if it needs to interact with the physical world, which is the kind of thing they'll try and write and edit around as much as possible to keep the costs down.
 
Yeah, at this point I think CGI is easier and probably cheaper or at least very close to the same price as a puppet. The only downside to CGI is not having a physical presence to interact with, but any decent actor should be able to overcome that.
Isn't Lockjaw 100% CGI in Inhumans?
 
JD said:
Yeah, at this point I think CGI is easier and probably cheaper or at least very close to the same price as a puppet.
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How could it be cheaper? If you watched that Japanese video I linked to, the creature effect was entirely mechanical, with no electronics or robotics, just pure puppetry. So the only expenses are building and maintaining it and the salary of the performer. Shooting something that's already built and physically there on set has got to be less expensive than creating and animating a lifelike digital construct every single episode.

The only downside to CGI is not having a physical presence to interact with, but any decent actor should be able to overcome that.
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That's far from the only downside. Only the very best, well-made, expensive CGI is really convincing. The medium has many intrinsic limitations that it takes great skill and hard work to overcome convincingly. There are many different ways CGI can be done badly, for instance, by animators who don't really understand the movement or weight of solid objects. The best way to depict a physical object is always going to be to film a physical object. CGI should only be used when you can't do it live, and as those videos prove, this is an effect that could easily and convincingly be done live, with only minimal digital enhancement.


Isn't Lockjaw 100% CGI in Inhumans?
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Yes, because that's the most practical way to achieve that effect in that instance. A quadrupedal canine is harder for a human in a suit to simulate than a bipedal therapod dinosaur. I'm sure the Henson Studios could've pulled it off animatronically given the chance, but it might've been more limiting than CGI.
 
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