Batman with Ben Affleck-- Rumors, pic, etc;

[Christopher]

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.

There are plenty of them in IM3, and I'm not the only one to notice. And I believe you've already acknowledged the terrorist-fighting scene in the first Iron Man. Plus I gave you the link to that "kill count" thread. This is a fact of the MCU that a number of people before me have criticized, so I'm bewildered we're even having this conversation.

And The A-Team is not a valid comparison, precisely because it was made in another age, when TV shows were under greater censorship and greater pressure to avoid the use of deadly force by their heroes, whether it made sense or not. That doesn't apply to modern-day movies -- as evidenced by the fact that the movie-remake A-Team did explicitly kill people.

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 never said the only standard. I just wish it weren't so rarely the standard for movie heroes. As I've said, the problem with movies as a whole is that they tend to default to killing. Even movies whose heroes nominally have a code against killing still end up with hypocritical lines like "I don't have to save you" or "You are no ape" and break their codes at the end, because movies are addicted to "kill the bad guy" endings. The Dark Knight is one of the only superhero feature films to break that pattern, and that's only because they didn't want to kill off the Joker (they did have Two-Face die, with Batman playing a hand in his fate). I don't want anything to be the only standard, but killing pretty much is. And I'm sick of it. Okay? I resent your attempt to twist my words into a straw man that has nothing to do with what I'm actually saying.

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.

Exactly my point. It shouldn't have missiles. In the comics, Iron Man's weapons are mostly nonlethal -- repulsor beams and such. The inconsistency was built in from the start of the movies, and that is exactly the problem, the fact that movies insist on forcing comic-book characters who traditionally don't kill into the cliched mode of movie heroes who do kill.

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.

That's not really true. I recently read a collection of the earliest Hulk comics, and though there were two initial issues that attempted to portray the Hulk as a Mr. Hyde-type villain, it quickly settled into a mode where Bruce retained his personality and intelligence in Hulk form, aside from being more aggressive and ill-tempered. Later, when he was trapped in Hulk form for long enough, his intellect faded to the "Hulk smash" level, but Banner's mind, morals, and affinities were still at the root of the Hulk's, despite the Hulk's tendency to forget that he and Banner were the same person. This actually happened twice, with Banner trapped in a fully intelligent Hulk form and slowly getting dumber, until they changed it so that the dimwitted persona was the default for the Hulk. But the idea was rooted from very early on that the Hulk does have Banner's personality, just not his mental clarity. The Hulk doesn't just lash out at what Banner fears, he protects what Banner cares about. The Bixby TV series portrayed it the same way, and the pilot stressed explicitly that the Hulk could never be a killer because Banner was not a killer. (Again, this was '70s TV, so nonlethality was required.)

And maybe it's changed in recent years, but for a long time, the comics were the same way, keeping the Hulk's rampages nonlethal no matter how little sense it made. I once heard that some Hulk story in the comics offered a convoluted excuse about how Banner's genius was subconsciously calculating exactly how the Hulk could apply force to smash things without killing anyone, which was silly, but at least they tried.

 

[Taylirious]

The Batman - Arkham Unleashed!

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

Even movies whose heroes nominally have a code against killing still end up with hypocritical lines like "I don't have to save you" or "You are no ape" and break their codes at the end, because movies are addicted to "kill the bad guy" endings. The Dark Knight is one of the only superhero feature films to break that pattern, and that's only because they didn't want to kill off the Joker (they did have Two-Face die, with Batman playing a hand in his fate).

Ironically, regarding the modern wave of movies, Hulk let the Abomination live in a movie where the hero has been known to let others die.

Thor, too, but Avengers needed Loki. Same goes for Magneto in the X-Men world. But most other heroes don't seem to have that no killing code like Superman or Spider-Man should. Or at least are more flexible in their beliefs.

Maybe the arc for Batman in the next movie, much like the Affleck Daredevil, is to go from killing machine to a hero that will show mercy and put them in Arkham instead.

 

[Set Harth]

The Dark Knight is one of the only superhero feature films to break that pattern, and that's only because they didn't want to kill off the Joker (they did have Two-Face die, with Batman playing a hand in his fate).

The Dark Knight in no way "broke that pattern" just because the Joker lived. The Joker's explicit intent in that film was to get Batman to break his no-killing rule, and that's exactly how it played out when Batman killed Dent.

If you're looking for a better example there's

Spoiler

Civil War.

 

[Christopher]

Thor, too, but Avengers needed Loki.

Except that movie ended in the other way that movies usually "cheat" around heroes' codes against killing -- by having the villain die by his own actions or refusal to accept the hero's help. There's still an ingrained assumption that every movie has to end with the hero dying, or at least seeming to die until the sequel, even if the hero tries to prevent it. Which is a pretty crummy way to end a story, because it basically means the hero fails. The assumption that the audience will only be satisfied by death ends up undermining the hero in what should be their moment of triumph, and that's screwed up.

But most other heroes don't seem to have that no killing code like Superman or Spider-Man should. Or at least are more flexible in their beliefs.

In movies, no -- but most of those characters who have "flexible" codes in movies have historically had no-kill policies in the comics. That is my point -- that the movies change them to fit the more bloodthirsty mindset of American action cinema.

Heck, there was even a point in the '80s when the comics rode so hard on Captain America's refusal to kill that they retconned his WWII record to say he'd somehow gone through the whole war without killing anyone. It didn't make sense, but it illustrated the mentality of the comics of the time that superheroes, as a rule, were not killers, with certain exceptions like Wolverine (or the Punisher, if you count him as a hero, which I don't).

Maybe the arc for Batman in the next movie, much like the Affleck Daredevil, is to go from killing machine to a hero that will show mercy and put them in Arkham instead.

But that would still play into the bizarre Snyder mentality that you can't believe a hero wouldn't kill unless you first show him killing and deciding he doesn't like it. As far as I'm concerned, once a character kills, the damage is done. I enjoy a good repentance story as much as the next guy, but you don't have to be a reformed murderer in order to be a good guy. Plenty of people manage to go their entire lives without ever killing anyone.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

The whole "murderer" thing doesn't seem quite appropriate to me, Batman isn't out killing young women in the park. If the police went to apprehend one of these guys and they didn't throw their weapons aside and lay on the ground when ordered they'd get murdered as well.

 

[Christopher]

If the police went to apprehend one of these guys and they didn't throw their weapons aside and lay on the ground when ordered they'd get murdered as well.

Pretty bad example, considering how often the police do murder unarmed people just for having dark skin. Including one particularly egregious and well-documented example that happened only a few hundred meters from where I'm sitting. As much as I might wish for reform in the fictional defenders of law and order, the need is far more urgent where the real ones are concerned.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

What other real-world example is there when criminals are brought to order? If you ignore the (yes, terrible) abuses, even in legitimate situations when a criminal is brought to justice things aren't going to go well if they fight back. Are there cases where Batman has murdered some Joe in the street or even some criminal that has passively given up? Well, I suppose the latter opens stuff up like Ra's Al Ghul but he had just tried to poison an entire city. Then again, in Batman's world these killers aren't likely to be neutralized by the justice system. It's just the murder word doesn't seem to ring quite true.

 

[Ovation]

That's because it isn't applicable. It's just "shorthand" to vent on things people disagree with when it comes to the depiction of, apparently, sacrosanct characters.

Killing someone is homicide, but murder requires a degree of intent NOT on display, despite the gnashing of teeth.

Questioning the filmmakers' decisions to have the characters behave in ways not usually associated with them is fine. Disagree with having characters kill when they traditionally don't--sure. But stoop to the level of pointless exaggeration, laziness comes to the fore and the objection loses its persuasiveness to a considerable (and needless) degree.

 

[Christopher]

Killing someone is homicide, but murder requires a degree of intent NOT on display, despite the gnashing of teeth.

I gather that BvS makes it clear that Batman brands criminals (child molesters, I think) with the full prior knowledge that the brand will prompt their fellow prisoners to murder them. So I'd call that malice aforethought and premeditation.

Questioning the filmmakers' decisions to have the characters behave in ways not usually associated with them is fine. Disagree with having characters kill when they traditionally don't--sure. But stoop to the level of pointless exaggeration, laziness comes to the fore and the objection loses its persuasiveness to a considerable (and needless) degree.

Or maybe it's just snarky humor. We're not debating actual homicides here, so there's room to bring some wit into it. Obviously "Murderverse" is an exaggeration, so it's assumed that the listener will have enough of a sense of humor to realize it's not meant in absolute earnest.

 

[dahj]

I gather that BvS makes it clear that Batman brands criminals (child molesters, I think) with the full prior knowledge that the brand will prompt their fellow prisoners to murder them. So I'd call that malice aforethought and premeditation.

He branded a grand total of 2 guys. 1 off screen, 1 on screen.
The first, offscreen, the child molester, was beaten(not killed) in prison, likely simply because he's a child molester.
The whole "mark that's a death sentence" was a media spin(maybe planted by Lex) after the second one, before anyone died. Batman did not brand anyone after that.
It is implied Lex then had the second guy killed and sent pictures to Clark to make him go after Batman.

 

[Ovation]

He branded a grand total of 2 guys. 1 off screen, 1 on screen.
The first, offscreen, the child molester, was beaten(not killed) in prison, likely simply because he's a child molester.
The whole "mark that's a death sentence" was a media spin(maybe planted by Lex) after the second one, before anyone died. Batman did not brand anyone after that.
It is implied Lex then had the second guy killed and sent pictures to Clark to make him go after Batman.

This is all easy to follow if one has seen the movie.

 

[theenglish]

The branding was actually used as a symbol of how far Batman had fallen. The entire point of the end scene was that he realized that he didn't have to do that to remain the scary and intimidating "Batman".

This was one of the great things of the film. It hinted at that great Batman Superman dynamic where each inspires the other. Superman, in the end, reminded Batman of the hero he was supposed to be.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But the idea was rooted from very early on that the Hulk does have Banner's personality, just not his mental clarity. The Hulk doesn't just lash out at what Banner fears, he protects what Banner cares about.

And yet...HULK HATE PUNY BANNER!!!!!

 

[Christopher]

The branding was actually used as a symbol of how far Batman had fallen. The entire point of the end scene was that he realized that he didn't have to do that to remain the scary and intimidating "Batman".

Yes, but that's beside the point of whether his actions constitute premeditation. I was addressing the specific question of whether Batman displayed the intent to cause death, not any larger questions of character evolution.

And yet...HULK HATE PUNY BANNER!!!!!

Don't we all resent our own weaknesses? The Hulk embodies Banner's anger and frustration, and who do we get more frustrated with than ourselves?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Seriously, though, in the '70s Doc Samson literally got inside the Hulk's head and came to the professional conclusion that the Hulk had become a completely separate persona from Banner, and thus there was no psychological cure for the Hulk.

 

[Skywalker]

The branding was actually used as a symbol of how far Batman had fallen. The entire point of the end scene was that he realized that he didn't have to do that to remain the scary and intimidating "Batman".

This was one of the great things of the film. It hinted at that great Batman Superman dynamic where each inspires the other. Superman, in the end, reminded Batman of the hero he was supposed to be.

Bingo. It's very easy to understand if you've actually seen the movie.

 

[Christopher]

Seriously, though, in the '70s Doc Samson literally got inside the Hulk's head and came to the professional conclusion that the Hulk had become a completely separate persona from Banner, and thus there was no psychological cure for the Hulk.

Yes, of course. I'm hardly unaware of the great work my colleague Peter David did with the Hulk, and I saw the Ang Lee movie. But that was a retcon. What I'm saying is that there's a long, long history in the comics of the Hulk being portrayed as a character who does not kill. To say otherwise is at best ignorant of that history.

Besides, the idea that "split personalities" are like totally separate people is a complete misunderstanding of the disorder. There's a lot of controversy over just how dissociative identity disorder works and whether it's even real or a construct of irresponsible therapeutic methods, but as we now understand it, it's a form of dissociation and memory compartmentalization in which a single individual constructs multiple personas for oneself from one's imagination and dissociates from the actions one performs while adopting those personas, probably as a defense mechanism in response to trauma. It's not like there are actually unconnected personalities somehow possessing a single brain. However many compartmentalized personality states Banner may have manufactured in his mind, they're all aspects of the same man.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I wasn't talking about Peter David...I was talking about what he was evidently building upon, from a decade earlier...specifically The Incredible Hulk #227, Sept. 1978, written by Roger Stern ("with an assist from Peter Gillis"):

Banner and the Hulk are not just two sides of one mind...they are actually two separate beings. They're opposites at war--Banner's intelligence and reason constantly fighting the personified ignorance of the Hulk.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

There are plenty of them in IM3, and I'm not the only one to notice. And I believe you've already acknowledged the terrorist-fighting scene in the first Iron Man. Plus I gave you the link to that "kill count" thread. This is a fact of the MCU that a number of people before me have criticized, so I'm bewildered we're even having this conversation.

The kill count didn't come with any kind of source description on what exactly they're even talking about. And the fact that I might have misremembered Iron Man 3 doesn't come anywhere close to proving that the MCU as a whole is built on a foundation of all the heroes killing as a matter of routine.

I never said the only standard. I just wish it weren't so rarely the standard for movie heroes. As I've said, the problem with movies as a whole is that they tend to default to killing. Even movies whose heroes nominally have a code against killing still end up with hypocritical lines like "I don't have to save you" or "You are no ape" and break their codes at the end, because movies are addicted to "kill the bad guy" endings. The Dark Knight is one of the only superhero feature films to break that pattern, and that's only because they didn't want to kill off the Joker (they did have Two-Face die, with Batman playing a hand in his fate). I don't want anything to be the only standard, but killing pretty much is. And I'm sick of it. Okay? I resent your attempt to twist my words into a straw man that has nothing to do with what I'm actually saying.

I'm not attempting to twist anything. The comments you've made so far have seemed, imo, very black and white and somewhat over the top and I have replied to them as such. But if I've misconstrued your position in any way, then I apologize.

Certainly this argument seems very different from what I thought we were talking about. You're not just concerned with heroes killing, you dislike the very inclusion of death in these movies in the first place. I suppose in general, you do have a point that hollywood loves a fatal ending. It certainly wouldn't kill them to try a different tack every once in a while. But the MCU actually has brought some variety in that regard. Abomination survived. Loki survived (the second time). Kingpin survived. Whitney Frost survived.

Exactly my point. It shouldn't have missiles. In the comics, Iron Man's weapons are mostly nonlethal -- repulsor beams and such. The inconsistency was built in from the start of the movies, and that is exactly the problem, the fact that movies insist on forcing comic-book characters who traditionally don't kill into the cliched mode of movie heroes who do kill.

The entire concept of Iron Man is a flying battlesuit with enough destructive power to smash the hell out of everything. Claiming that that's a logical invention for a 'reformed weapons manufacturer' of the type you're talking about is seriously disingenuous, even if most of its weapons have the potential to be non-lethal. (Incidentally, MCU Iron Man's missiles also have the potential to be non-lethal, as seen in AoU.)

And maybe it's changed in recent years, but for a long time, the comics were the same way, keeping the Hulk's rampages nonlethal no matter how little sense it made. I once heard that some Hulk story in the comics offered a convoluted excuse about how Banner's genius was subconsciously calculating exactly how the Hulk could apply force to smash things without killing anyone, which was silly, but at least they tried.

Heck, there was even a point in the '80s when the comics rode so hard on Captain America's refusal to kill that they retconned his WWII record to say he'd somehow gone through the whole war without killing anyone. It didn't make sense, but it illustrated the mentality of the comics of the time that superheroes, as a rule, were not killers, with certain exceptions like Wolverine (or the Punisher, if you count him as a hero, which I don't).

This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that forcing characters into a no-killing mold kills the creative process. You look at these and say 'Sure, it's dumb as hell, but at least they tried'. I say, 'Who cares what they were trying to do when what they actually did was so idiotic that it's basically unreadable?'