I took the Ant-Man reference to represent their lack of faith in Scott more than their views on the Avengers.
Batman with Ben Affleck-- Rumors, pic, etc;
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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Not "cold-blooded killers," just people who use deadly force in combat, like soldiers. Or like most movie action heroes, which is the point.
Fine. But my point remains - the quote quite clearly has nothing to do with the expectation that Falcon would actually kill Scott. It's an expression of shock that Scott could actually match an Avenger in combat.
I don't think so. That was actually the second of two lines that suggested Scott's life had been in danger. The first was before the fight, when Hank told Scott to abort the mission and Scott went in anyway. Hank said "He's gonna lose the suit," and Hope replied, "He's gonna lose his life." She didn't seem to be joking.
To be fair, the Falcon initially intended to bring him in for questioning, though some of his attacks later (like stepping on Ant-Man) seemed like they could easily have been lethal.
I found a Tumblr post listing onscreen kill counts for MCU characters, though it doesn't give specifics, and it's only a link to an original post that shows up all-black on my browser. And some of them are bound to be judgment calls, but here are the results:
And that's from August 2014, before Age of Ultron. Even then, Iron Man, Thor, and Cap all had pretty sizeable body counts, and all the Avengers had some kills to their name.
I love the fact that in two out of the three Iron Man movies, it was the hero's girlfriend who killed the bad guy.
So when are we redubbing "The House of Marvel" to "The House of Murder"? No? I guess it's only okay to say something as ridiculous as "Murderverse" if Zack Snyder is involved.
I have no issues with how the Marvel heroes are portrayed, incidentally. And I quite enjoy MCU movies and TV. But I do find the hypocrisy of some commentators re: the respective properties a bit annoying.
I have no issues with how the Marvel heroes are portrayed, incidentally. And I quite enjoy MCU movies and TV. But I do find the hypocrisy of some commentators re: the respective properties a bit annoying.
I'm not crazy about the heroes' willingness to use deadly force in either franchise, but at least Marvel ameliorates it by having the heroes actually give a damn about protecting innocents, which is more than Snyder can be bothered to pay more than lip service to. The characters' own history makes a difference too. While most Silver Age Marvel heroes preferred to avoid deadly force, and many have continued that practice further on, it's a policy that's more strongly associated with some characters than others. It's understandable for a soldier like Cap or a SHIELD agent like Black Widow (though I do find it hypocritical that Iron Man swears off selling weapons and then keeps using deadly weapons on his own armor). But I'd be rather more upset if they had Spider-Man killing people, because his inviolable no-kill policy is a fundamental part of his character. And it is for Superman and Batman as well, a few anomalous portrayals aside.
And it's as much a matter of attitude as of raw statistics and facts. The Marvel filmmakers may fall short on some aspects, but for the most part they understand and respect the characters and are trying to do right by them. The violence is a flaw in what's otherwise a pretty good interpretation. Snyder, on the other hand, has made it pretty clear that he has a fundamental contempt for the concepts of Superman and Batman and is approaching their films in exactly the same way he approached Watchmen, as a dark, cynical deconstruction and critique of the very idea of heroism -- and he specifically uses the violence as a blunt instrument to convey that idea, as well as a fetishistic element that he indulges in to excess. The "Murderverse" label is not about the characters' actions so much as the filmmakers' mindsets.
I agree with this...@Christopher is taking the expression too literally. It's like a kid saying "My mom's gonna kill me!"
Arrgh. To be fair to Supes, in BvS he is clearly shown to care about people and tries to take the fight away from where innocents can get hurt. In that film, it is Batman who is okay with killing.
You mean the Snyder whose film devoted its whole opening sequence to the concept, as it relates to Batman's motivation?
Also, killing Zod was about protecting innocents.
Snyder has been put in the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" box.
Yes, I gather there's some lip service paid to Superman protecting people, but it doesn't sound like it's something Snyder was invested in. As I already said, it's not about the facts of what happened, it's about the attitude and mindset of the execution. Superman is just a character. Snyder is the one making the decisions, and it's his decisions and approach that draw down the "Murderverse" label.
You may not like the label, but leaving that aside, I've tried to explain that it's not hypocritical to find the violence in the DC movies more objectionable than that in the Marvel movies, because there are substantive differences. If you ignore my attempt to clarify those differences in detail because you'd rather just fixate on one label, then you're the one choosing to reject intelligent discussion in favor of simplistic kneejerk negativity.
I wasn't quoting anyone specifically and even a quick perusal of various threads shows the term in use with little by way of nuance. Your points are more nuanced than most, though ultimately I find them largely unpersuasive. And regardless of nuance, falling into the use of such inane labels as "Murderverse" and the like weakens the persuasiveness of whatever argument is being made.
I think you're taking it a little too seriously. The person who coined the term, Rob Bricken on io9, is known for his snarky, comic posting style. He actually does a Q&A column where he pretends to be a postman from a post-apocalyptic future like in the Kevin Costner movie. So it's not like the nickname is meant in dead earnest. It's a joke. No, it's not exactly a friendly joke, but it's a joke that, I feel, expresses a legitimate criticism of the tone and attitude of Zack Snyder's movies, as well as the frustration that many Superman fans feel about them.
If you heard that line as 100% serious, then you have a very different ear than I do. I detected more than a little snark in that scene.
Plus, 'he's going to get himself killed' and similar variants is still an extremely common expression that very rarely actually indicates a reasonable expectation of death, even when it's entirely serious.
I never said that any of those characters were entirely non-lethal over the course of their whole careers. I said I find it unfair to label all (non-ant-man) movies as trigger happy, as I don't think they are. Captain America's kill record, for instance, presumably comes primarily from his service in WWII, which is a situation in which in would be rather ridiculous if he wasn't using the same level of force as everyone else in the conflict.
In general, I think most of the current Marvel characters are characters who automatically should not be held to the same no killing standard as the 'classic' superman style hero. Thor is a child of norse (warlike) mythology. Iron Man is a weapons manufacturer. Cap is a soldier. Hulk is a rage monster. Widow and Hawkeye are super spies. The idea that these characters accept the need to kill in certain situations is perfectly logical, and does not in any way mean that they view killing far too lightly/easily, and use it as a routine rather than an 'only when necessary' practice.
Sure, you can rationalize it, but I don't agree that you should. I don't like the movie mentality that heroes who kill are something that we need to have. I like the fact that most comic-book superheroes value life, even the lives of their enemies, and go to great lengths to avoid killing. Heck, I grew up in an era (the '70s and '80s) when most TV heroes avoided lethal force, and of course the cartoon heroes I liked as a child always did as well. (Heck, even the A-Team almost never killed people, despite all the bullets they fired.) So to me, that's part of the definition of heroism. And I regret that we've lost that in our modern culture, that we've become so much more callous and casual about our heroes taking lives. I wish we had more screen heroes like the ones of my youth. (Heck, the one thing I actually liked about the climax of Man of Steel is that Superman reacted to his killing of Zod as a tragedy rather than a triumph.)
And Iron Man is supposed to be a reformed weapons manufacturer. He's supposed to be someone who renounced making deadly things when he realized how much harm it did. So it would make more sense for him to refuse to kill. That inconsistency has bugged me throughout the entire movie series.
As for the Hulk... I don't know. I'm used to the Bill Bixby version where he was a doctor and had a deeply ingrained moral code against killing that constrained the Hulk as well. But I've recently read the early Hulk comics, and they're kind of inconsistent on that score. On the one hand, they paint Bruce Banner as a good and compassionate man whose innate morality constrains the Hulk from using lethal force. On the other hand... the dude's whole job was building bigger and deadlier nukes and WMDs for the military. The bombs and superweapons he kept pulling out of his hat -- or that he'd already invented before he became the Hulk, presumably, given how little time he had to actually invent them after becoming the Hulk and being constantly in peril -- were so destructive and horrific that they make Banner come off as kind of a monster to modern eyes. The idea that he was inventing these hideously deadly doomsday weapons "for peace" doesn't quite cut it today, and it makes the claims about what a good and gentle man he was come off as kind of hypocritical.
If you accept the idea that the A-Team was shooting the hell out of people without actually killing anyone, then I have to wonder exactly what scenes you're counting in MCU movies that show them 'routinely' killing the bad guys. I just watched AoU last night and I couldn't actually see a confirmed kill anywhere, outside of Ultron himself. You can argue that they probably killed people in the opening sequence, but the only thing we ever actually see is people falling down after being hit with entirely fictional weapons that clearly don't follow normal rules of physics. So are you just assuming they killed them all? And if so, why does the A-Team get the benefit of the doubt despite using obviously lethal weapons, but Captain America, who is repeatedly shown to use non-lethal force as a matter of course, doesn't?
As for your desire to see more old school heroics, I think that's great. I'd love to see more of it, too. But I highly disagree with your desire that that should be the only standard for superheroes. I want to see Superman and Wolverine, not one or the other, and I want every hero to act in the way that makes the most sense for them, not to be twisted around in ways that don't fit their story at all just so they can meet an arbitrary definition of heroism.
I think that the no-killing rule has a lot of great stories in it, but if you force everyone to follow it you are inevitably destroying the creative process and guaranteeing an explosion of bad stories that only accomplish their no-killing by inserting completely unbelievable Deus ex Machinas, trying to set up a pushover villain as a major threat, or making the hero look like an idiot for not seeing an obvious possibility much earlier in the story.
There are no-win scenarios. No matter how cool it is to have characters that don't believe in them, that fight them every step of the way, that doesn't mean that all characters have to be like that.
I can see that theoretically as an inconsistency, but again, definitely not the fault of the movies. In so far as it is inconsistent, it's built into the character from the start. A reformed weapons manufacturer of the kind you're thinking shouldn't be building a missile equipped battlesuit in the first place.
So it's much easier to say that he's just reformed in the sense that he doesn't just sell his weapons on the market and assume they'll be used responsibly. He now takes personal responsibility for seeing that his technology isn't being used against innocent people.
Personally, I don't see how any kind of standard moral code could ever have too much effect on the Hulk part of the character (with the exception of those periods of time in which Banner actually could maintain his own personality and intelligence through the transformation - something I do hope we see someday in the MCU). He's fairly consistently portrayed as an almost unthinking, reactive force. He hurts people who hurt him. Like a two-year old, but without the possesiveness/jealousy issues. In that sense, I would say he probably doesn't go out of his way to kill his enemies, but also wouldn't go out of his way to not kill them, either.
In any case, I'll be curious to see how the Vision is portrayed moving forward, as I would say he's the first MCU character we've seen with the right kind of philosophy and capabilities to actually show that more heavily restrained side of superheroes.
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