Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[M'rk son of Mogh]

"I was talking to Bob Hoskins when we were making Unleashed together. We were talking about the joy of doing bad guys. And he confirmed exactly what I was thinking. With bad guys you get to let it all out. All those dark places in your psyche? You can let 'em go. When you play good guys, it's kind of boring. It's one note."
- Morgan Freeman

 

[Christopher]

Yes, we all know the generalization. It's true that many good guys are written fairly one-dimensionally. What I'm saying is that it's not a universal law, that it is possible to make a hero more interesting than a villain. Instead of just taking that as a given, writers and actors should see it as a challenge to do better, to make heroes more interesting and rich.

Because good heroes should be rich and complex. It's enormously harder to be good and selfless than it is to be greedy, cruel, and selfish. If you look at the most awful people in real life (and there have been abundant high-profile examples in recent years), they're pretty shallow, limited, and predictable, with nothing like the richness and nuance of fictional villains. Because being bad is easy and unidirectional. Being good means fighting your own fears and weaknesses, and that's much more complex. More fiction should reflect that. If heroes aren't as interesting to play as villains, that's a fault of the writing, not an inevitable law of nature.

I think in many cases, it's a conscious standard to make heroes simple and generic in the belief that the audience should be able to project themselves into the role. A lot of the time, the powers that be don't want to risk alienating anyone in their audience by giving the heroes any particular standout qualities. I think that's less the case these days, though, given how much more popular flawed antiheroes have become. So the old saw doesn't stand up as well as it used to.

 

[Timelord Victorious]

Stark *was* a villain in Civil War.

He was in conflict with Steve on how to solve accountability for superheroes and ended up being antagonistic to the title character because of that, same as Black Panther. He was not the villain. That was Zemo, and Zemo alone.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

He was in conflict with Steve on how to solve accountability for superheroes and ended up being antagonistic to the title character because of that, same as Black Panther. He was not the villain. That was Zemo, and Zemo alone.

I didn't say he was the villain. Such an asshole is certainly not one of the good guys, not in that film.

 

[Timelord Victorious]

I didn't say he was the villain. Such an asshole is certainly not one of the good guys, not in that film.

He was not a villain at all.
Antagonists don’t equal villains.
It means they have opposing goals to the protagonist’s but that is entirely a framing issue.
If you rewrite Civil War from Tony’s point of view with him as the protagonist Steve would be the Antagonist.
Wouldn’t be hard to make the audience root more for him.

thinking about it, how much of a master gambit would it have been if Marvel had released two movies at the same time? One titled as a Captain America and the other as an Iron Man movie, both subtitled Civil war with heavily overlapping footage and tweaks to cuts and character focus.
Could have made movie history there.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

He was not a villain at all.
Antagonists don’t equal villains.
It means they have opposing goals to the protagonist’s but that is entirely a framing issue.
If you rewrite Civil War from Tony’s point of view with him as the protagonist Steve would be the Antagonist.
Wouldn’t be hard to make the audience root more for him.

thinking about it, how much of a master gambit would it have been if Marvel had released two movies at the same time? One titled as a Captain America and the other as an Iron Man movie, both subtitled Civil war with heavily overlapping footage and tweaks to cuts and character focus.
Could have made movie history there.

But it was, after all, a Captain America movie, and Tony was selfish, arrogant, and cruel.

So, hard disagree.

In any case, to the main point here, RDJ got to act outside of the box of a straight vanilla hero.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Yes, we all know the generalization.

So with casting decisions we're supposed to trust that the professionals know what they're doing but we're free to challenge the actors?

 

[Christopher]

thinking about it, how much of a master gambit would it have been if Marvel had released two movies at the same time? One titled as a Captain America and the other as an Iron Man movie, both subtitled Civil war with heavily overlapping footage and tweaks to cuts and character focus.
Could have made movie history there.

Not quite, because Clint Eastwood beat them to it in 2006 with Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, which respectively told the American and Japanese sides of the Battle of Iwo Jima in their respective languages, and were released just two months apart (with the latter film debuting in Japan a couple of weeks before its US release). However, the two films have no scenes or cast members in common and can be watched entirely independently of each other, so it's not quite the same thing.

 

[fireproof78]

"I was talking to Bob Hoskins when we were making Unleashed together. We were talking about the joy of doing bad guys. And he confirmed exactly what I was thinking. With bad guys you get to let it all out. All those dark places in your psyche? You can let 'em go. When you play good guys, it's kind of boring. It's one note."
- Morgan Freeman

It is deeply disturbing for me to let out the dark parts of my psyche. I appreciate the idea being expressed by Mr. Freeman but it feels off to me.

But it was, after all, a Captain America movie, and Tony was selfish, arrogant, and cruel.

So, hard disagree.

In any case, to the main point here, RDJ got to act outside of the box of a straight vanilla hero.

And it was an awful film as a result, a straight up teen feeling drama of "you said up, I say down."

 

[Anwar]

That makes me think, whoever they hire as Dr. Doom better be willing to wear that mask (or at least stick to voicing over a body double) all the time. None of this 2000s Fantastic Four BS where Doom spends maybe about 5 minutes under his mask total (not counting a few action scenes). Of course the Fant4stic Doom didn't take off any mask after he had his accident, but that guy looked like a melted action figure and really had nothing to remove at that point.

You need someone like Edward Norton or Karl Urban, who were willing to hide themselves behind masks and now feel the need to show off their faces. Like in Kingdom of Heaven and Dredd.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I've become so mistrustful of interviews I'm always analyzing them. Like he never mentions Mr. Sinister. He talks about stories like "Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom" with an assumed link between them rather than maybe just being two things. He could just as well be talking about playing Mr. Fantastic. Or maybe it does mean exactly what they say, he's interested in Sinister and Doom, I'm just wary.

But that's because Mr. Sinister was the role was up for previously (before the Fox sale) and in his interest is echoed in his comments. I imagine in the whole interview that's made clearer than the snippet shared in that article.

I lost count of all the times actors saying they'd love to play the villain.

"It's just more fun! More scenery to chew!"

Bond Villains and Superhero villains are just some of the archetypes.

Yup, exactly. I was just reacting to the irony of him having a hero chin and wanting to be a villain.

 

[Turtletrekker]

You dare infer that Doom's motives are less than heroic, honorable, noble and what's best for the planet? He would have you executed for such an affront on his character.

 

[UssGlenn]

thinking about it, how much of a master gambit would it have been if Marvel had released two movies at the same time? One titled as a Captain America and the other as an Iron Man movie, both subtitled Civil war with heavily overlapping footage and tweaks to cuts and character focus.
Could have made movie history there.

that's a great idea, it would have been only slightly more expensive than making one movie, and you almost guarantee everyone goes to both. Just have to make sure the audience understand they will be seeing the same overall story both times. you would have to make sure Cap seems like the villain in the Iron Man movie and vice versa.

 

[Gaith]

thinking about it, how much of a master gambit would it have been if Marvel had released two movies at the same time? One titled as a Captain America and the other as an Iron Man movie, both subtitled Civil war with heavily overlapping footage and tweaks to cuts and character focus.
Could have made movie history there.

The three-movie project The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby got there first.

 

[The Knappos]

One word: Rashomon

 

[MikHutch]

that's a great idea, it would have been only slightly more expensive than making one movie, and you almost guarantee everyone goes to both. Just have to make sure the audience understand they will be seeing the same overall story both times. you would have to make sure Cap seems like the villain in the Iron Man movie and vice versa.

Tbh I found Team IM to generally ne right anyways

 

[Set Harth]

And it was an awful film

 

[fireproof78]

They can't all be winners.

 

[JD]

You're just restating the boilerplate assumption, but as I already said, that isn't always true, particularly in the MCU. Oh, the villain actors have generally tried to "cut loose," but few have done so as memorably as Downey's Stark or Jackson's Fury or Hemsworth's Thor.

And I've never bought the assumption that villains are more interesting or complex than heroes. Villains are generally simpler than heroes. Pure villains just act on their selfish and negative urges, a straight line from cause to effect, no ambiguity or doubt. Heroes feel those same urges, but they struggle against them. They wrestle with themselves over the right thing to do, struggle with the personal sacrifices they have to make for the sake of helping others. There's more complexity there. Okay, a nuanced villain can be interesting -- someone like Thanos who's convinced they're doing the wrong thing for the right reasons -- but such villains essentially consider themselves the heroes of their own stories anyway, so I still say it shows that heroes can be more interesting.

Yes, we all know the generalization. It's true that many good guys are written fairly one-dimensionally. What I'm saying is that it's not a universal law, that it is possible to make a hero more interesting than a villain. Instead of just taking that as a given, writers and actors should see it as a challenge to do better, to make heroes more interesting and rich.

Because good heroes should be rich and complex. It's enormously harder to be good and selfless than it is to be greedy, cruel, and selfish. If you look at the most awful people in real life (and there have been abundant high-profile examples in recent years), they're pretty shallow, limited, and predictable, with nothing like the richness and nuance of fictional villains. Because being bad is easy and unidirectional. Being good means fighting your own fears and weaknesses, and that's much more complex. More fiction should reflect that. If heroes aren't as interesting to play as villains, that's a fault of the writing, not an inevitable law of nature.

I think in many cases, it's a conscious standard to make heroes simple and generic in the belief that the audience should be able to project themselves into the role. A lot of the time, the powers that be don't want to risk alienating anyone in their audience by giving the heroes any particular standout qualities. I think that's less the case these days, though, given how much more popular flawed antiheroes have become. So the old saw doesn't stand up as well as it used to.

You're looking at this from a storytelling and character standpoint, and that's not really what makes playing a bad guy fun for actors.
Now, I'm not a professional actor but for a long time I wanted to be, and a lot of my childhood taking acting classes both during and outside of school, so I have some insight. The thing that draws actors to bad isn't really the dept of the characters, it's just about playing a character that is about as far from your daily life as possibly get and you get to really just let loose and go places you wouldn't really go playing more heroic characters.
And in some movies it can really let you go more broad and over the top than the heroes tend to be, which can be really fun for actors.

It is deeply disturbing for me to let out the dark parts of my psyche. I appreciate the idea being expressed by Mr. Freeman but it feels off to me.

Yeah, actors really do have to be careful they don't get to deep into the character. I've been under the impression for a while now that the impact of playing the Joker was part of what lead to Heath Ledger's death.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I've been under the impression for a while now that the impact of playing the Joker was part of what lead to Heath Ledger's death.

I don't want to comment on whether the rumors are true that Ledger was emotionally impacted in a negative way by playing the Joker, rumors that as I recall began circulating immediately after his death — because, since I did not know him personally, how would I know? — but I will relay what's posted on Wikipedia, with citations [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Ledger#Posthumous_films_and_awards]:

Attempting to dispel widespread speculations that Ledger's performance as the Joker had in any way led to his death (as Denby and others suggest), Ledger's co-star and friend Christian Bale, who played opposite him as Batman, has stressed that, as an actor, Ledger greatly enjoyed meeting the challenges of creating that role, an experience that Ledger himself described as "the most fun I've ever had, or probably ever will have, playing a character".[12] Terry Gilliam also refuted the claims that playing the Joker made him crazy, calling it "absolute nonsense" and going on to say, "Heath was so solid. His feet were on the ground and he was the least neurotic person I've ever met."[160]

[...]

12. Halbfinger, David M. (9 March 2008). "Batman's Burden: A Director Confronts Darkness and Death". The New York Times. pp. 1, 16. Archived from the original on 29 June 2019. Retrieved 1 January 2021.

[...]

160. "Terry Gilliam – The Talks". the-talks.com. 7 March 2012. Archived from the original on 23 January 2016. Retrieved 5 April 2017.​