Captain Marvel

Mike S

Well-Known Member
It didn’t break the record for highest grossing opening for a female lead in the states- that still belongs to Beauty and the Beast. It did pass Wonder Woman’s opening by like $50M though- I think that’s the power of the MCU.

I’m with you about BP- to me, that’s still one of the best films in the MCU. However, I really enjoyed Captain Marvel. Yes, I have seen plenty of women who kicked butt in movies before (my name on this site is Princess Leia for a reason; I grew up loving her). However, I really like Carol. She’s fun, she’s caring, she’s not afraid to put herself in danger if that means saving others.

One thing that I wish the film showed us was more of her past with Maria. We saw glimpses of it, but I left wanting more.

That being said, I am really excited to see where her story goes in Endgame. The rumored pairing of her and Thor is an interesting dynamic.

Well it’s getting my money again at least two more times ;)

I’m kind of shocked at the average user score for Ant-Man & the Wasp??
Ooooooooooo. Her and Thor could be very interesting.

If she holds Stormbreaker though I’ll riot 🤣

If anyone does it...
dJTG2.jpg
 

LieutLaww

Hello There
Premium Member
In the Parks
No
Captain Marvel is enjoying a better than expected box office return, with today’s international (not North American market) numbers at $302 million, making it the 5th highest film opening of all time (oversees), according to Box Office Mojo.

Domestically, the good Captain brought in $153 million in the North American markets, bringing her weekend opening total to an astounding $455 million (when added together with the international totals).
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
Coulson weighs in...


Except, the fact that she’s a woman alone isn’t the reason for the brunt of the outrage. Otherwise every other woman in the MCU would’ve faced the same thing. Wonder Woman would have as well. Generalizing and misrepresenting people’s viewpoints only gets them madder. This exact thing is what’s been happening with Star Wars.
 
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flynnibus

Premium Member
For martial arts Black Widow trained under the Russians to be a killer, Gamora was forced to fight her adopted sister under Thanos for the same reasons as BW, and while not MCU Nolan’s Batman trained with the League of Shadows. I don’t think Captain America was really an “expert” in his first appearance but in later movies it’s not unreasonable to think he trained a bit with Black Widow while at SHEILD considering how close they seem to be in WS. Spider-Man is always shown practicing his swinging except in the MCU to save on showing his origin once again. His enhanced senses likely help with that. Hawkeye, yeah. We don’t really get anything and it’s mostly assumed how he trained

You just outlined the story elements of 'how' they got to be.. while not really addressing the degree or credibility of what they achieve in said amount of time.
Iron Man - he gets a battery pack, and tech.. and somehow he can turn into this amazing fighter, stuntman, etc. It takes more than one scene of wobbly flying before making it credible that they can now outfly virtually anything.
Capt America goes from wimp to pumped - and somehow evolves into this super fighter in no time.. including amazing shield throwing skills
Loki is more a mage - yet somehow has all these h2h fighting/combat skills
Ant Man - goes from zero to hero by just picking up tech
killmonger - just accept it.. we don't even bother
every demi-god in the universe - hela, thor, etc..
red skull - again.. somehow energy/power gives you everything else you've been lacking in life...
Peter Parker is still a kid - yes enhanced senses, strength - but all this agility, movement, everything else.. again it's the usual 'comic book powers make you into a bad- trope' that permuates almost every comic book story.

People want to bust on something like Rye or Danvers... Peter Parker should be exhibit A!

Detective I mean... who solves and decodes all these 'masterminds plans'? It's always our heros in the story. And what makes them qualified to do so?? Uhh.. they saw some stuff and they are the hero of course!

And I never said Carol was a Mary Sue if you thought I did.

And I say it's a ridiculous argument to have in a comic universe story to even begin with. Comics by their very nature were always skimping on the 'build up' and history. They explicitly use extremes to enhance the idea of danger or uniqueness. 'extreme' and 'impossible' are nearly synonymous with comic book super hero stories.

Notice virtually every villian is just somehow... evil and advanced. Do we really know why or how? No.. Why is it every villain can somehow create a standoff in a fight against our 'best of the world' heroes at least to some degree? Because if they just got wiped out without any struggle it would be a quick and boring story.

And lets not forget these superheros largely are supposed to exist in OUR universe with our baseline of understandings. They make heroes unique by building up their abilities. Not justifying them or qualifying why they deserve to be that level.

We always get a story about the hero for 'how' they got there, but it rarely justifies the outcome.. it just gives us something for history and progression for the character.. and to give ourselves some ideas of what their powers should be able to do. We need some structure for our brains to accept this character as believable in some sense.

Where characters like Rey stick out is because we were conditioned by every element of the story before that made it seem like these Jedi were super special.. it takes tons of training and sacrafice to harness these things.. you need people guiding you.. and even then, our main story people are supposed to be the creame of the crop. So we build up all these 'rules of the universe' so to speak in how things operate. Now, here comes a character that breaks virtually EVERY ONE of those rules and stands toe to toe with what are supposed to be the creame of the crop. That's why she stands out so bad. She's a conflict in her own story universe.

That's not really the case here with superhero comic stories.. because its generally the INVERSE of complexity or challenges to get where they are. That's why its pretty lame to even throw that label around here in these stories. IMHO
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
You just outlined the story elements of 'how' they got to be.. while not really addressing the degree or credibility of what they achieve in said amount of time.
Iron Man - he gets a battery pack, and tech.. and somehow he can turn into this amazing fighter, stuntman, etc. It takes more than one scene of wobbly flying before making it credible that they can now outfly virtually anything.
Capt America goes from wimp to pumped - and somehow evolves into this super fighter in no time.. including amazing shield throwing skills
Loki is more a mage - yet somehow has all these h2h fighting/combat skills
Ant Man - goes from zero to hero by just picking up tech
killmonger - just accept it.. we don't even bother
every demi-god in the universe - hela, thor, etc..
red skull - again.. somehow energy/power gives you everything else you've been lacking in life...
Peter Parker is still a kid - yes enhanced senses, strength - but all this agility, movement, everything else.. again it's the usual 'comic book powers make you into a bad-*** trope' that permuates almost every comic book story.

People want to bust on something like Rye or Danvers... Peter Parker should be exhibit A!

Detective I mean... who solves and decodes all these 'masterminds plans'? It's always our heros in the story. And what makes them qualified to do so?? Uhh.. they saw some stuff and they are the hero of course!



And I say it's a ridiculous argument to have in a comic universe story to even begin with. Comics by their very nature were always skimping on the 'build up' and history. They explicitly use extremes to enhance the idea of danger or uniqueness. 'extreme' and 'impossible' are nearly synonymous with comic book super hero stories.

Notice virtually every villian is just somehow... evil and advanced. Do we really know why or how? No.. Why is it every villain can somehow create a standoff in a fight against our 'best of the world' heroes at least to some degree? Because if they just got wiped out without any struggle it would be a quick and boring story.

And lets not forget these superheros largely are supposed to exist in OUR universe with our baseline of understandings. They make heroes unique by building up their abilities. Not justifying them or qualifying why they deserve to be that level.

We always get a story about the hero for 'how' they got there, but it rarely justifies the outcome.. it just gives us something for history and progression for the character.. and to give ourselves some ideas of what their powers should be able to do. We need some structure for our brains to accept this character as believable in some sense.

Where characters like Rey stick out is because we were conditioned by every element of the story before that made it seem like these Jedi were super special.. it takes tons of training and sacrafice to harness these things.. you need people guiding you.. and even then, our main story people are supposed to be the creame of the crop. So we build up all these 'rules of the universe' so to speak in how things operate. Now, here comes a character that breaks virtually EVERY ONE of those rules and stands toe to toe with what are supposed to be the creame of the crop. That's why she stands out so bad. She's a conflict in her own story universe.

That's not really the case here with superhero comic stories.. because its generally the INVERSE of complexity or challenges to get where they are. That's why its pretty lame to even throw that label around here in these stories. IMHO
There’s really nothing I can add here except a few minor tidbits. Having just watched the first Iron Man last night it’s not really Tony doing a lot of the flying. The way he talks to Jarvis makes it seem like the AI is doing a lot of work. For Peter Parker, he has the senses of a spider. This is one very interesting video showing how a human with those abilities wouldn't really be that far off from what we’ve seen him do.


Of course this is just about Spider Sense and not the acrobatics but real life Spiders aren’t exactly slow.

For Superheros I think a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) could still enter the equation. This is the exact complaint people have about Superman in the Justice League movie after all. He’s so powerful and amazing it’s like the rest of the team doesn’t even need to be there.
 
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LSLS

Well-Known Member
You just outlined the story elements of 'how' they got to be.. while not really addressing the degree or credibility of what they achieve in said amount of time.
Iron Man - he gets a battery pack, and tech.. and somehow he can turn into this amazing fighter, stuntman, etc. It takes more than one scene of wobbly flying before making it credible that they can now outfly virtually anything.
Capt America goes from wimp to pumped - and somehow evolves into this super fighter in no time.. including amazing shield throwing skills
Loki is more a mage - yet somehow has all these h2h fighting/combat skills
Ant Man - goes from zero to hero by just picking up tech
killmonger - just accept it.. we don't even bother
every demi-god in the universe - hela, thor, etc..
red skull - again.. somehow energy/power gives you everything else you've been lacking in life...
Peter Parker is still a kid - yes enhanced senses, strength - but all this agility, movement, everything else.. again it's the usual 'comic book powers make you into a bad-*** trope' that permuates almost every comic book story.

People want to bust on something like Rye or Danvers... Peter Parker should be exhibit A!

Detective I mean... who solves and decodes all these 'masterminds plans'? It's always our heros in the story. And what makes them qualified to do so?? Uhh.. they saw some stuff and they are the hero of course!



And I say it's a ridiculous argument to have in a comic universe story to even begin with. Comics by their very nature were always skimping on the 'build up' and history. They explicitly use extremes to enhance the idea of danger or uniqueness. 'extreme' and 'impossible' are nearly synonymous with comic book super hero stories.

Notice virtually every villian is just somehow... evil and advanced. Do we really know why or how? No.. Why is it every villain can somehow create a standoff in a fight against our 'best of the world' heroes at least to some degree? Because if they just got wiped out without any struggle it would be a quick and boring story.

And lets not forget these superheros largely are supposed to exist in OUR universe with our baseline of understandings. They make heroes unique by building up their abilities. Not justifying them or qualifying why they deserve to be that level.

We always get a story about the hero for 'how' they got there, but it rarely justifies the outcome.. it just gives us something for history and progression for the character.. and to give ourselves some ideas of what their powers should be able to do. We need some structure for our brains to accept this character as believable in some sense.

Where characters like Rey stick out is because we were conditioned by every element of the story before that made it seem like these Jedi were super special.. it takes tons of training and sacrafice to harness these things.. you need people guiding you.. and even then, our main story people are supposed to be the creame of the crop. So we build up all these 'rules of the universe' so to speak in how things operate. Now, here comes a character that breaks virtually EVERY ONE of those rules and stands toe to toe with what are supposed to be the creame of the crop. That's why she stands out so bad. She's a conflict in her own story universe.

That's not really the case here with superhero comic stories.. because its generally the INVERSE of complexity or challenges to get where they are. That's why its pretty lame to even throw that label around here in these stories. IMHO

Not going to lie. I never have questioned fighting in a movie. But I always wondered in iron man, they said the arc reactor was some technology that was never economically feasible, yet somehow tony not only knew how to do it cheaply, he knew how to miniaturize it and create it out of spare parts in a random cave. I mean. Doesnt really bother me, but people get so mad at so much, I'm surprised that's just widely accepted as fine.
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
Not going to lie. I never have questioned fighting in a movie. But I always wondered in iron man, they said the arc reactor was some technology that was never economically feasible, yet somehow tony not only knew how to do it cheaply, he knew how to miniaturize it and create it out of spare parts in a random cave. I mean. Doesnt really bother me, but people get so mad at so much, I'm surprised that's just widely accepted as fine.
I think it’s because the movie just builds up how smart he is in the very beginning and then also plays that bit off as a nice joke later in the movie (I’m not Tony Stark). It might also be that like how @flynnibus pointed out with his Star Wars comparison there isn’t a huge amount of lore that Tony being able to do this is throwing aside. Discovering a “new element” in Iron Man 2 is a bit much though lol.
 
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flynnibus

Premium Member
There’s really nothing I can add here except a few minor tidbits. Having just watched the first Iron Man last night it’s not really Tony doing a lot of the flying. The way he talks to Jarvis makes it seem like the AI is doing a lot of work. For Peter Parker, he has the senses of a spider. This is one very interesting video showing how a human with those abilities wouldn't really be that far off from what we’ve seen him do.


Of course this is just about Spider Sense and not the acrobatics but real life Spiders aren’t exactly slow.

For Superheros I think a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) could still enter the equation. This is the exact complaint people have about Superman in the Justice League movie after all. He’s so powerful and amazing it’s like the rest of the team doesn’t even need to be there.


Ok but imbalance (like your justice league example) is not Mary Sue... it's just bad. It's not like Spider-Man is inserted with those powers for that very purpose. His history and abilities are pretty much expected with that role. He is consistent with the character and universe to a large degree.

As much as people use the label to highlight what they think is lazy or bad writing I think it's become a cliche label to just throw on things lately that the person doesn't like
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
Ok but imbalance (like your justice league example) is not Mary Sue... it's just bad. It's not like Spider-Man is inserted with those powers for that very purpose. His history and abilities are pretty much expected with that role. He is consistent with the character and universe to a large degree.

As much as people use the label to highlight what they think is lazy or bad writing I think it's become a cliche label to just throw on things lately that the person doesn't like
Isn’t the argument that a Mary Sue is the result of bad and lazy writing though? At least that’s how I’ve understood it. To use Superman again he’s totally a Gary Stu in Justice League (2017), but not in the better written Superman stories.
 

LSLS

Well-Known Member
I think it’s because the movie just builds up how smart he is in the very beginning and then also plays that bit off as a nice joke later in the movie (I’m not Tony Stark). It might also be that like how @flynnibus pointed out with his Star Wars comparison there isn’t a huge amount of lore that Tony being able to do this is throwing aside. Discovering a “new element” in Iron Man 2 is a bit much though lol.

But if he is so smart that he can solve the next advancement in energy for the world, the one his dad started that he wanted to finish, why did he never take the one night to do it? I don't know. Like I said, I always find the entire argument dumb anyways (this is actually the most I've ever thought about this, and I find it making me dislike myself for wasting energy on it). I'm entertained by iron man (and most likely marvel when I get to see it). I don't find a need to scrutinize to that degree I guess. But there is definitely a selective scrutiny out there that does annoy me (not pointing at you obviously, you have never come close to that train from everything I have seen you write here).
 

Mike S

Well-Known Member
But if he is so smart that he can solve the next advancement in energy for the world, the one his dad started that he wanted to finish, why did he never take the one night to do it? I don't know. Like I said, I always find the entire argument dumb anyways (this is actually the most I've ever thought about this, and I find it making me dislike myself for wasting energy on it). I'm entertained by iron man (and most likely marvel when I get to see it). I don't find a need to scrutinize to that degree I guess. But there is definitely a selective scrutiny out there that does annoy me (not pointing at you obviously, you have never come close to that train from everything I have seen you write here).
Yeah. The only character I’ve ever had such a scrutinizing problem with is Rey.

To answer your actual first question though he did start attempting to do that after when he toned down being so selfish and self absorbed after the first movie lol.
 
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MisterPenguin

President of Animal Kingdom
Premium Member
Until then she’s the ultimate Mary Sue

More than Thor who can hang out in space until rescued and survive the heat of a sun?

Or Superman who took on the entire Justice League and is as fast as Flash?

Until Thanos, Hulk was invincible and Loki could get out of any scrape by faking his death.

Bunch of Gary Stus.
 

EricsBiscuit

Well-Known Member
I’d like to believe the Russo’s are not dumb enough to Superman this.
Unless there’s some weakness we don’t know about, she’s invincible.
More than Thor who can hang out in space until rescued and survive the heat of a sun?

Or Superman who took on the entire Justice League and is as fast as Flash?

Until Thanos, Hulk was invincible and Loki could get out of any scrape by faking his death.

Bunch of Gary Stus.
Thor is a god and I’d suggest even a little underpowered for that status. Even then, he’s showed struggles against peers (his sister and Loki). CM on the other hand flies around shooting lasers wherever she damn well pleases and nothing anyone can do causes any significant damage to her.
 

flynnibus

Premium Member
She’s basically invincible by the end of the movie. Literally nothing can beat her.

You mean like Thor once he regains his hammer?
Or Superman once his one anti-thing is gone?
Or Doomsday?
etc etc etc

Simply being the untouchable is a really poor criteria to hang the label of Mary Sue on.

She still very much has struggles. Her new powers haven't wiped away her past problems or clarified her real purpose.

She's not invincible at all... Ironically she's pretty weak in the direct combat scenarios compared to the power she's discovered.. where she's basically destroying entire ships by sheer movement. That was kind of weird to me that she's reached this epiphany and is going nuts... yet can't dispatch this group of 20 or so kree soliders on the ship without some major effort?

She's only 'invincible' in that at the time, the Kree have no way to defend against this new threat and chose to flee. Do you notice ronan etc don't even fight back? They are in the 'this shouldn't be possible paralysis' and instead chose to flee the field to regroup.

She's 'invincible' only in that no one knows how to deal with this new 'threat'
 

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