You know what I actually really loved about Spider-Man 2 that makes it worth watching to me in spite of its occasional flaws? In the end, the fighting was all worthless and Spider-Man had to save the day by convincing Dr. Octopus to help him fix the problem they'd created. The problem was resolved not by beating the bad guy, but by reminding the bad guy of what it was they were really living for and that some things are more important than your own personal desires. In short, Spider-Man saves the day by talking out his problems with the bad guy. You NEVER see that! And it is my favorite moment in any superhero movie I've ever watched. Edit: Another I just thought of right now, though less impressive than Dr. Octopus: in the first movie, when the Green Goblin pisses Spider-Man off by threatening MJ, he seems like he's about to kill him, but then stops as soon as the goblin starts begging for his life. That scene, Spider-Man looks absolutely horrified at the thought that he'd been about to murder someone who he found out was his best friend's dad. And when the goblin accidentally kills himself, Spider-Man looks even more horrified as he contemplates what the consequences of that will be in the future. And even in Spider-Man 3, for all it's problems, Spider-Man first tries to save Eddie Brock from the symbiote and then is horrified when he realizes that Eddie has just thrown himself back into it after Spider-Man chucked a bomb into the thing and still tries to save hime even though it's too late. Say what you want about Raimi's tendency towards camp, Raimi UNDERSTOOD what a hero is.
There is another superhero movie that you would appreciate based on your point here, which I agree with by the way. Unfortunately, telling you what it is would inherently ruin the movie, and the joy and surprise of seeing a conflict resolved with words and logic as opposed to fists.
The first time I saw a similar moment was in Shrek 3 when all the villains refused to fight and threw their weapons on the floor. I still think that moment is so touching and human, it reminds us that the bad guys aren't just bad because they were born evil but because they have a goal and motivation, and that can be changed.
"It's all okay." Somehow, the repetition & tone of voice used in "It's all okay" is actually more than a little creepy - almost full-on 'HAL'-level creepy! But..."It's all okay."
To anyone arguing that fictional events are justified by fictional circumstances, you're missing the point. This video is a criticism of authors choosing to create those circumstances time and again. By trying to justify those circumstances in-universe, you're just responding to Foldy's sarcastic comments by repeating them verbatim, except that you believe those words and he doesn't.
What could the writers say? Every action comes with a cost. I'm fighting for man of steel here to clarify. He praises Spiderman 2 for showing that people are getting affected by the dropping rubble when hes fighting but doesn't Man of Steel clearly show the people caught in the gravity well of the world engine? He also points out that "Things would get damaged in Spiderman's own hands but it was in the process of preventing further damage" when peter breaks buildings to help people, it okay but when Superman has the exact same logic when it comes to a couple of buildings might come down in the process of me stopping a nuke proof being, its problematic. There is also a way of saving people through the act of stopping someone else. I'm not a fan of the idea of someone saying there's only one way to help people or be a hero. Also, sometimes protection comes to some degree from prevention. This is the flaw he points out in these guys and SOMETIMES it will take saying there is bigger fish to fry. I think the movie is an art form and critism on how the painting is made is kinda useless when you still have a masterpiece on the other side. Yes Hippocracy is displayed by Batman but I think its important to show that people are only good dependent on your view and that heroes are villains to some people. The world isn't perfect and I think some storytellers should be able to say that
Superman was a character created to be perfect, and a character everyone reveres and looks up to for being perfect. Spiderman was a worthless dork who's still in high school. I'm not saying you can't tell that story, but you shouldn't tell that story with Superman, where the cultural context will fly in the face of your narrative. And to argue over fictional circumstances a bit: Spiderman's heroism causing property damage and casualties is OK because that's the best he can do. Superman can do better, and we expect him to do better. If you want to write a story where he can't do better, don't call him Superman. Maybe you can tell that story with Batman instead.
@@DSzaks I think its more in the line of "authors shouldnt embelish the loss of personal liberties and countries sovereignty as something that is cool and necesary." There are plenty of super hero stories where that doesnt happen, its perfectly doable.
No, *he* (and you) are missing the point. It's fiction; this is how this type of fiction works. If you create a hero with super powers then put him in a mundane story, then what the fuck are you doing? Why give him super powers in the first place? Why isn't Clark just a lawyer who prosecutes criminals, never once using his super powers? Because that's not how this fiction fucking works! You don't create a super powered being from another planet simply to relegate him to a mundane life. You create a villain who requires him to use his powers in order to combat said villain. You can take apart certain elements of specific stories of these characters (I thought his takedown of Man of Steel was fantastic - that specific video, not his throwaway lines in this one), but here he's just taking down comic heroes in general. Acting like a superhero in a comic book or comic book movie is okay, because it's fiction: we, the audience, are presented with the inner monologue of these characters and we know their motivations. We are properly equipped to evaluate their actions. If somebody did this in real life, it wouldn't work because we can't trust that their judgement is sound, because we won't be able to read stories about their origin nor read thought bubbles that explains their inner monologue to us. He even addresses something like that in his three-parter about Fifty Shades of Grey, how it's okay to explore taboo subjects in fiction, that that can be a really healthy way to explore touchy themes and ideas. If he wants to explore a specific element then I'm all for it, but here he's just broadly painting all these characters as fascistic because of one story element in a specific story about the main character (or, in the case of Man of Steel, a story loosely based on the name of a character from another medium). What's the point? It's just stupid and frustrating.
"existing power structures are incompetent and what we really need is a small group of people with unlimited power and resources making all of the decisions with no practical oversight"
@@obscure.reference Not almost, it is. Year by year, piece by piece, movies stopped holding super heroes accountable. At times we don't even see super heroes interact with their own families or the public anymore. Keeping up appearances. Keeping their identity a secret. It's not all bad and uncritical, but movies like "Watchmen" or the series "The Boys" that are more critical towards heroes are comparatively rare and less economically successful.
@@lagg1e is "The Boys" critical though? It portrays itself as that and is often mentioned as different but in the end super people are terrible and what about it? They live their life, sometimes they die but so do avengers. The Boys is more self conscious but Isn't critical, it embraces the problem as part of it.
Or... shouldn't have stood so close to a disintegrating fucking building maybe? Go ahead and make this argument about 9/11 why don't you? Same thing right? Tall building/s, people underneath. Go ahead. Make that argument. Sounds stupid now doesn't it.
I like how Independence Day was criticized at release as being mindless, nationalistic entertainment, and now several youtube channels are noting how nuanced it is compared to some more modern movies 🙈
not nuanced, just different in tone to Americas power and role in the world. Back then, extreme violence was a regrettable action later deemed incorrect, not a moraly grey issue to swat away with "it helped us win tho"
Independence Day is a heavily idealistic movie created by a German-born director who's more interested in ideas than in facts. Might have something to do with that 😂
I love the fact that in Civil War when Ross is showing the footage of destructions and all, you can see how in New York footage the one who's recording is clearly smashed by building that Hulk jumps through. It's like Russo brothers are poking fun of us - Oh remember when you were cheering for Hulk when he was jumping all around? Well, people died during that awesome spectacle, how do you feel now?
@@obscure.reference calling a movie with mass murders and massive destruction of property without consequences "for kids" is already as subjective as it can get. It is also wrong by every official measure but if it is easier to dismiss problems by saying that then go for it
@@obscure.referenceThat's the weakest use of subjectivity to force yourself into not engaging with a point. Just say you don't like thinking about things and let the rest of the people do the thinking for you.
Incredibly, incredibly small point: The other thing with nuking Houston in Independence Day is it's a coastal city so there's a good chance the radiation was carried on the tide and did a lot of damage to health and the environment elsewhere (like the alien destruction wasn't bad enough ...) That's what President Bill Pullman was most likely referring to with the "may our children forgive us" line. But yeah ... I hadn't even thought of even though that's also a dumb action movie, they showed the reasonable authority figure being very pained over the collateral damage of a very justified action and now they just handwave it. Yikes.
It's shocking to see the jump from Batman at least acknowledging that spying on everyone was bad, to the scene in The Avengers where SHIELD hack everyone's devices while looking for Loki, which was treated so casually that it was ages before I even really noticed it.
It almost seems like 'Age of Ultron' and 'Civil War' were made in response to this video... "Ultron thinks we're monsters. That we're what's wrong with the world. This isn't just about beating him... It's about whether he's right". "If we don't accept limitations, we're bounder-less, we're no better than the bad guys".
Case in point, Captain America in Civil War. He points out that governments (see: HYDRA) can be corrupt, and that this ragtag bunch of misfits (arguably all with blood on their hands) is morally better. Even if we somehow agree with that, Cap shows he's hypocrite the moment Bucky's name is voiced. Yeah, how your utter devotion to your childhood friend is less of a bias if you are willing to use all of your considerable superhero abilities to save him no matter the cost?
+Ганс Андроид That's the great thing about 'Civil War', though - because the movie has two opposing protagonists (Steve and Tony), we no longer have to agree with the hero. Steve IS being a hypocrite in that movie, but the movie doesn't make you agree with him if you don't want to - you can just side with Tony. And Tony makes tons of mistakes too! This structure of having two opposing, flawed protagonists makes the audience criticize the superheroes. Hell, in that scene you mentioned, Rhodey says point blank that Steve is "dangerously arrogant". Which is true. And the movie ends with both protagonists being exposed as hypocrites: Steve spent the whole movie claiming to be an idealist who doesn't compromise his morals, but in the end we find out that he compromised by keeping Bucky's secret from Tony (As Zemo says, "How nice to finally find a flaw"), and Tony spent the entire movie claiming to fight for the greater good ("I'm doing what has to be done, to stave off something worse"), but in the end we see Tony going after Bucky for pointless revenge, which has nothing to do with the greater good ("I don't care. He killed my mom"). 'Civil War', more than any other big superhero movie, condemns its superheroes as hypocrites who are not capable of impartial decisions (I mean, other movies kinda TRIED to do it, like BvS, but they completely failed in the execution). I think it's obvious that we're not gonna see a superhero movie set in courtrooms - I mean, that's just not exciting to watch, and these movies are supposed to be exciting. But the setting isn't that important - *accountability* is important, and AOU and CW had gallons of accountability. "Worthy... No. How could you be worthy? You're all killers".
Powerade600 Throughout the movie, Cap claims to do the right thing with no compromise. "Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say 'No, you move'". When Tony says that "I'm doing what has to be done, to stave off something worse", Cap says "keep telling yourself that", implying that he (Cap) doesn't believe in compromising for the greater good. That's Cap's philosophy. It all goes back to what Erskine told him: "No matter what happens, you must promise me - never forget what you are. Not a perfect soldier... But a good man". And yet, in the Siberian base, we discover that Cap DID compromise his morality, by not telling Tony about Bucky killing his parents. That makes Cap a hypocrite, because he acted against his philosophy of no compromises. And I'm not saying that Cap should have let Tony kill Bucky. I'm saying that the idealistic action (which is what Cap claimed to do in this movie) would have been to tell Tony about Bucky killing his parents, and then STILL defending Bucky. Cap was a hypocrite for not telling Tony. He even admits his mistake, in the end: "I know I hurt you, Tony. I guess I thought by not telling you about your parents, I was sparing you. But... I can see now that I was really sparing myself. And I'm sorry."
Guy R and this is what is most important about the movie - admission by Cap that he is not perfect. I can't wait to see how it evolves in regards to Sokovia accords and restrictions
I really like this critique of Superman and superheroes. You make a lot of good points. And it eerily sounds so familiar to how the US deals with problems today. Especially after President Trump approved to bomb Syria, it's so eerie.
This is why actually SHOWING superheroes helping people without violence, or where their powers aren't relevant, is essential to somewhat disarming the implications of the violence. You can do all the tell you like, but unless we see your superhero helping people, preventing accidents, talking to people, all we see is violence. Violence becomes the end itself, not a means; it can even create the troubling implication that this hero either seeks out problems that must be solved with violence to justify the violence, or worse that they see non-violent tasks as unworthy of them. This is why as much as every Superman story has him helping people sooner or later, all of the good ones show him helping people in entirely mundane ways. If there's a jumper he could use his power to stop them, but he will instead listen to them, understand, actually help. When there's a fire or a sinking ship or a crashing plane, he doesn't just end the disaster, he also reassures and comforts those involved. When he has to fight someone, he also tries to make them do better. We know that his goal is to help people and that he thinks his powers are a good fortune that lets him help even more people, because when someone around him can be helped in a way that someone else could, he does that too. This could be done by a friend or a therapist or just a kind stranger, but they aren't here, and he is. That's the biggest difference between Donner's Superman and Man of Steel, the scene where he literally saves the cat. After that, the little girl scolds the cat for not obeying, and he stops her says say 'we all get a little scared of heights sometimes'. A man who can fly and is nearly invincible says he is scared of heights, because he wants the girl to be more empathetic with a cat. It is impossible to imagine that scene in any of the modern alleged Superman films; not just because the idea of small stakes would offend the grandiose posturing of the plot, but the idea of putting himself on the same height as a child would there only be 'lowering' him and undignified.
Funny enough, medieval knights were basically nigh-invulnerable (their armour had gaps and lances and blunt weapons could do quite some damage, but they were still very difficult to bring down) and when they had to resort to hand-to-hand combat, they grappled. They grappled their opponents to the ground so they could either capture them alive for ransom or shove a dagger into one of the gaps in the armour.
Superman's character arc culminates in him learning how to grapple. His big NOOOOO is actually him realising that he could have used his wrestling knowledge all along, saving countless lives.
I don't think this was explained well, but it's a matter of "the values and intent of the creators" vs "the values and intent of the characters in the story". Since the authors can write anything they want, the circumstances they create and the resolutions they use reflect the values they want to show. Batman is probably the best example because it is shown as the least moral option of everything in here, yet still the thing that "needed to be done." Even during the movie it was an attitude of "screw it, it's not right, but just this once." It actually addressed the problem. It would make an interesting court case, it's beyond current tech, but maybe in another decade. And that's the problem. Anton Scalia, Supreme Court Justice, has in the past cited the television show 24 as support for enhanced interrogation techniques working and being valid. The way we write these movies does inform not just the general public but the entire public. They watch these things and it's not just a show, but it's a What if, it's an example of how things might go. And if it tells us things we want to here, we're more likely to believe it. Marvel movies have been doing a fairly good job as a whole of showing consequences and fall out. The battle for New York looks so weird and unnecessary because we've never actually had to fight a battle on our own soil. The stakes of that fight were the world, New York just had to bear the brunt of it. That feels weird to look at from an American point of view, it probably doesn't look as weird to people in Europe and Japan who have that in living memory. Tony Stark is responsible for most of his own problems, and most of the avengers as well. It's not clear to the people in the movie, but it is to the audience. It's become a motif that when superheroes fight, people die often in great numbers. Even the new Spider man screws up and has to be bailed out by Stark, who really failed him by not following up on all his reports. Superman is worse about it. Zod is planning to everything on the Earth, so diplomacy is out for the people of Earth, although Superman could easily join him. Any fight between them is going to be like a fight between nuclear superpowers, and it's represented that way. Honestly, to be an American in Superman must be what it feels like to be a citizen of small country next to an oil rich country that's being fought over by America and another Superpower along with a civil war breaking out. Helpless and terrifying. It's not told from that point of view, but it should be. Supergirl the TV show manages to deal with it a lot better, the character doesn't have to live up to perfect, which means which means it can show consequences and growth and multiple view points being valid. In fact if it's not the Wonder Woman just pretend the DC cinimatic universe is on TV.
I think most people on the comments are missing the point. The point is not how those heroes could do they job without collateral damage, but how the characters see the damage. The problem is not the existence of the damage, but how the film/text show/think the damage. On those examples they actually ignore.. so it's a valid criticism. They ignore the damage even showing that there was damage!! It's the most impressive detail. They know, but they build a negligent point of view. I remember the last Harry Potter movie, Hogwarts got really ruined, even knowing that it's not hard to rebuild everything with their magic, they showed that! The difference is: Hogwarts was also an important character of the text. It's visible that New York and Manhattan aren't.
This is probably one of the best youtube videos there is. I'd really like to see you take on the latent ur-fascist themes in modern American media in your more recent style. Actually, a take from someone with your grasp of media analysis on the ur-fascist themes running through the entire history of American cinema - I'm sure you know it, but to people that would take this part of a comment as a hot take, Himmler was of the opinion that Americans were the only people with enough imagination and mastery of the medium to make convincing fascist propaganda in film, because at the time it was true and America were the first to do it - would be incredible. Like...I'd do it if I thought for a second I had your insight into this sort of thing. Drawing a line from that movie from the 30s where the American president gets a head injury and suddenly becomes an incredibly 'decisive' leader that takes total control of the American government and personally leads the executions of thousands of 'gangsters' while leading America into a new golden age to Man of Steel and Batman is both obviously doable and something I don't think anyone has done in a way that's accessible to the masses.
fox CLEARLY lays out EXACTLY why what batman is doing is wrong WITHOUT hinging it upon whether or not it's successful. his ultimatum is simple, 'if the machine stays, I go'. Fox isn't satisfied when the mission is accomplished. he's not proud or happy, he has a scowl on his face, he's only happy when the machine self-destructs. marking an end to batman (i feel there shouldn't have been a third installment) likewise batman isn't totally sold on whether or not what he's doing is justified. recall early in the film, the whole "some men just want to watch the world burn" monologue by My Cocaine. the entire point of that scene was to demonstrate the moral quandary presented by questionably rational actors. the only solution they could find was to burn the whole forest down. this is clearly a warning from My Cocaine to Bruce, and foreshadowing for the audience. that there will be a price to pay if you want to stand a chance at catching the joker, and it won't be a solely personal sacrifice. It will be a sacrifice that comes at some level at the expense of others without their consent, and thus will be, itself, morally dubious. and that's the point. batman wants to do the right thing, stay true to his personal code of morality, and the joker is fucking that all up. it's the primary theme of the movie, but you're acting like the movie doesn't want the audience to think about it. which is frankly absurd. and while the joker IS eventually 'defeated', it's a Pyrrhic victory, the dark knight survived, but the white knight was lost, soul and all. and the dark knight only survived by partially compromising his morals; as a result the dark knight hangs up his cape, determined to do no more harm and perhaps at some point in the future, find a new white knight to right his wrongs. (again, i feel there shouldn't have been a third installment) throughout the film, batman goes on and on about how his way ISN'T the right way, and that not only is it unsustainable, it may not even be justifiable in the short-term, as such he's desperately seeking a morally unquestionable solution, namely his white knight, Harvey Dent. a solution where all law-abiding parties are complicate in the implementation. a way to fix the issues within the city of Gotham, from within it's pre-existing orderly structures. but the joker just won't let him have this fairy tale ending. and according to Gordon at the end of the first film, batman is to blame for the joker even existing. where does justice end and vengeance begin? when is the deliberate implementation of fear as a tool acceptable? do the ends justify the means? the good of the many or the good of the individual? blah blah blah the two movies do a phenomenal job of questioning where that ephemeral line of morality ought to be drawn. because it's a very difficult question, one that very well might not have any satisfying answer despite how ever-pertinent it is.
I don't think there is a movie that both nails the deconstruction of the superhero genre so well and is so grossly misunderstood by all the people who take it at face value without understanding the deeper meaning, ie the "The Joker was right !" crowd who do not understand that the Joker is not right, he's just highly convincing and his aim is to trick you into sabotaging yourself, every character that deals with the Joker is broken by his elaborate traps. He's not just some guy who saw the light and "fights the system", he is the devil who tricks into damning yourself by making it all sound so sensible. Now the downside is that while Nolan is a great filmmaker who understands drama and story extremely well, Zack Snyder is a great filmmaker who is mentally a 13-year edgelord who repaints his action figures with blood because it's so much cooler that way.
The batman movies are more of an exception to the rule in that sense. Also, while in the movie they question the morality of vigilantism, the movie as a whole still frames Batman as a hero. Ultimately, if he's the good person in the movie, then his actions seem like good actions to the audience. I thoroughly enjoyed how The Dark Knight questioned its own morality. But in order to tell a superhero story, you usually have to validate the superhero fantasy.
"batman wants to do the right thing, stay true to his personal code of morality" - by doing wrong things even before joker and even though fox points that out he still uses the thing because as video says "it is justified". You are not supposed to think how bad that thing is when they spent 10 seconds saying it is bad and 5 minutes showing how good it is and then 10 seconds showing how cool it looks when it is destroyed (even though nothing stops him from creating another one again, why wouldn't he). In the next part you can see that he is capable of fixing autopilot without fox, so he is still working without asking anyone, why would you assume he sticks to "moral code" that he already doesn't stick to. Overall your point is hold up mostly by the fact that you don't want to consider what happens in 3rd part (and you underline that quite a lot) but just because you don't think it shouldn't happen doesn't mean it didn't. Sure it doesn't fit the point that somehow batman is different but that's exactly why it is important. Problems in TDK were not mistakes if they continue forward
This is why I hope WB one day adapts the _Captain Atom: Armeggedon Agency_ since it deals with unchecked power and how the "heroes" frightened common people.
One of the things I enjoy about the web serial Worm is that it treats a world of superheroes as the disaster it really would be. Granted, in addition to the superpowered people, there's also the Endbringers, which are non-human apocalyptic threats, but in effect the clashes with them are not so different from the Avengers taking on the supervillain of the week. But it sucks. The world sucks. The city that provides the setting for most of the story gets wrecked, it's practically post apocalyptic after the first third of the story. The main characters end up as superpowered warlords, and sure they keep the peace, or try to, but noone in their right mind would consider it a desirable outcome. It's not just that buildings getting wrecked is expensive, it's a much deeper theme where the fact that the world has these people who are above everyone else is a giant problem. And on the hero side, they do have the PRT, which places emphasis on being led by non super powered individuals, but even that is easily usurped by a supervillain whose power isn't obvious, but who uses it and his many connections to essentially set himself up as a dictator controlling both the hero and villain sides of the city, and it was damn close to working, too. And I'll admit, I enjoy the occasional Marvel movie. They're movies designed by clever people to be fun and satisfying. But it's refreshing to see some conflicting takes on the nature of them. TL:DR Read Worm
I'm a little confused about the Avengers part. The entire time during the final fight, they were trying to minimize damage and casualties as much as they could. They were trying to redirect all of the fighting towards themselves and keep it contained within a small enough area that could be reasonably evacuated in a short amount of time, and it shows them actively helping in evacuation when they weren't directly engaged in combat (Cap didn't just let the aliens blow up that bank with all the people inside). They were operating well within the confines of the situation presented, and were actually restricting themselves further in an attempt to minimize collateral damage. The ones who didn't care about the cost were the Council when they launched a nuclear warhead at Manhattan, which Iron Man risked his life to save Manhattan from. And when Nick tried to stop the plane from taking off, he made sure he did so without killing the pilot: disabling the plane before it left the runway. And as for the "incompetent" law enforcement, the Avengers were the only ones who knew about the alien invasion in the first place. Reasonably assuming the National Guard had shown up, they would've had to focus on evacuation first anyway, which is probably what they and the NYPD were doing for the rest of the city while the Avengers were busy tanking all the damage in what was about 4 city blocks. Just because we aren't explicitly shown or told that, that doesn't mean we can't intuit it, and two cops in the middle of an alien invasion are hardly representative of the competence of a thousand-strong law enforcement infrastructure.
Yeah. Most of these arguments make sense until there's a one-sided war against an inter-dimensional army of aliens determined to destroy everything to the point where the US is ready to just nuke the city to protect the rest, I don't think it's the right time to complain about collateral damage when that is literally what they're there to mitigate. Some smashed buildings are better than all the buildings gone.
Yeah the avengers example is where the video kinda falls flat. Especially because it goes against a lot of examples in the previous part of the video. Like earlier in the video Dan criticizes the choice to have the government nuke a city in Independence Day, but then fails to bring up the avengers prevented the government from nuking New York. Also most members of the avengers arnt actually apart of shield (at least in a military way). Tony doesn’t officially join, Thor is only their to get Loki and the tessrac back, banner is technically working for shield but only as a scientist and not apart of the avengers (officially). Only cap, black widow and Hawkeye are officially apart of shield. Also both the avengers and later mcu movies critics the government and their actions
"1 trillion dollars could give clean water, social security, functional roads and all this stuff for everyone on earth" what? this isn't even wrong. for how long? for how many? this is utter nonsense and against every rule of economics
Oh my god. I know this is a super old post, but I just had an epiphany and I want to share it. I was like "come on, these are just dumb movies, nobody would want batman/superman in real life". Then I realized something. As italian, I grew up with a certain mistrust versus the government, police and army. I'm not an anarchist or anything, but it's in our past. I'm talking about dictatorship, civil war, military occupation and....propaganda. It's ancient stuff, granted (for me, born in the early 80's). But it's there. So when I watch a movie, it's just a movie. It's entertainment. I see batman on screen and get excited. I enjoy playing as batman in arkham city. But then the idea of a real batman sends a shiver down my spine. When I see soldiers in the street I get anxious. I think as italian (dare I say european?) I have a net separation between fiction and reality. But for the US hollywood still acts as a propaganda tool. I remember some politician justifying torture citing JACK BAUER from 24. My first thought was "jesus the americans are like children" but now I get it. I get why the superhero concept can be dangerous in reality. Just a disclamer. I do not think italian or europeans are superior or anything, just that our not so distant past taught us (through our grandparents and parents) to be veeeery careful and suspicious of governments, police, army and quite aware of propaganda. Of course that's just, you know, my opinion, man.
Arkham Asylum bothered me so much for this. Given the treatment of the patients, Joker was absolutely justified to rebel. The greater crime would have been in NOT rebelling. And Batman just goes around hurting a lot of mentally ill people rather than doing anything to provide them with better treatment that might improve their lives.
I enjoy superhero movies, cartoons, shows, etc. My friends laugh at the fact that I cringe and mutter about property damage and the impact on the economy and livelihoods of people during a smashing our action figures together scene. I love the action, but regularly wonder why the heroes don’t make more of an effort to get out of populated areas when possible. Of course, taking the time to assay the situation and have a more productive action is much less dramatic or glorious, and frankly less fun to watch. OMG. I am part of the problem.
Gee I'm sure all of this has absolutely nothing to do with the direct oversight of Hollywood war movies by the Department of Defense, more specifically the explicit deals Marvel and DC have with the Pentagon concerning access to shooting locations and props.
One of the things that annoyed me most about Man of Steel (which I think is an all-around bad, sometimes truly terrible movie) is the fight scenes involving Superman. Every goddamn second I was asking myself: what's the point of his actions? What's the point of grabbing and throwing/dragging the enemy through miles of concrete for the tenth fucking time when it obviously has no effect on them? These fight scenes are devoid of any logic or even understanding of physics. Just holding Zod against the ground and punching him repeatedly would be a thousand times more effective tactic. Then again, I deeply hate throwing-in-the-wall-instead-of-holding-and-punching in all action that involve inhumanly strong characters.
That's the thing about it. Art reflects society. If this is the message in our entertainment what we are really seeing is ourselves in out current place in time.
The way "It's always worth the cost" is said is really nice here. Thanks for that! I see a lot of these kinds of statements underlined with an unnecessary tone to make the sarcasm clear (like " Uhu... It's ALLLWAYAS worth the cost" with big goofy head movements). For some reason, that really annoys me and it looks forced to me. I feel like it is unnecessary if the sarcasm is through the statement itself (the absolution of the word "always" in a morality context), the context the statement is present (examples given) in or the form it is presented (repeating the statement after given examples with increasingly question the validity of the statement). Sorry for my rant! It had just been bugging me for a while and it is really just my personal tast!
The more I see people comparing Amazing Spider-Man to the original Trilogy, the more I'm understanding that despite being much more competently CONSTRUCTED, the new series is far less true to heart. It's less human and more market.
Not really. The characters were much better written in tasm. If you look at them through the lens of character pieces, raimi's movies are power fantasies: Peter is a barely defined put upon nerd who the audience can project on, he's entirely useless before getting powers, his first big act of heroism is beating up a bunch of one dimensional sexual predators, for which he is rewarded with a kiss from his crush (which is kinda creepy given she almost just got raped.) His personal pursuit of his uncle's killer is treated as heroic. He ends up inadvertently causing the death of the villian who is suffering from mental illness, for which he is hailed by new York as a hero. The web version introduces himself sticking up for a kid to a guy twice his size and getting hit for it, with the implication that it's not the first time he's done this. His relationship with Gwen is established as forming long before he gets powers, and he actually gets his powers thru active agency instead of random chance. While he starts out using his powers for personal, power fantasy reasons, these actions actually have consequences and lead to the argument that gets his uncle shot. He starts out on a vendetta against his uncle's killer, which while comedic, isn't treated as heroic. Then captain Stacy points out that he isn't a hero, he's just a guy out for revenge. While in the raimi movies anyone insulting spiderman was a minor antagonist, the webb film actually takes this to heart. His first real act of heroism is not fighting the lizard but actively saving the people he's endangering. The cops violent confrontation with the lizard is treated as reckless by the film. At the end he ends up redeeming conners instead of killing him and ends the film having lost more than he gained, dealing with the consequences of his actions and with only a small population of new Yorkers even knowing he's a hero. I really like this channel but that criticism was total bullshit and ignores the lens the film presents the action in.
+Shining Cat there's a difference between being well written and being realistic. Raimi's characters occupy a more fantasyish New York but the motivations and psychology of the characters is more nuanced. Besides TASM's version of peter couldn't even settle on a consistent personality trait until the sequel. This is evident in their movitations. Raimi's spiderman 2 has an ethical dilemma about honoring his guilt ridden promise to his uncle ben or give up spiderman because it's negatively effecting his relationship with his loved ones. In TASM 2, his motivation could be boiled down to whether or not he should have a girlfriend despite how obvious it is that he should move on.
Shining Cat the character of peter parker is a nerd power fantasy, yes. that is not an original thought, nor is it a criticism of the raimi trilogy. they’re not really “character pieces”, they’re very well made, engaging popcorn films. they do have good characters and conflicts between them or internally, but they’re primarily action/adventure. peter parker is a put upon character, which comes through strong in the raimi trilogy. he constantly doubts himself until it culminates in an overcorrection in the form of an inflated ego in sm3. the garfield films do not do any of these things as well. the characters are far less interesting and enjoyable, the conflicts tread on a surface level, and most importantly the character of peter parker has lost even internal consistency.
@@ShiningCatProductions Those are great criticisms. One thing I will add is that the criticisms in Dan's video are certainly not always entirely fair - he's a human who, I think we'd both agree, made questionable calls in his desire for more content for the video - but that I think we could both agree that _overall_ his message is sound. Overall, Batman takes it upon himself to violate basic ethical principles in pursuit of justice. Overall, Superman pursues everything from petty acts of extreme violence against the property of people who vaguely annoyed him, to the calculated pursuit of a terrorist cell while disregarding civilian casualties. Overall, the Iron Man movie (the first one) is about an arrogant rich man who learns the true cost of his weapons dealing, and then proceeds to become a weapon and deal that cost himself without considering that he's acting similarly to one of his own smart bombs. Spiderman was, I think, a poor example. I also think that there were dimensions to all of those that can be explored, and it's a little annoying that Dan didn't explore them. For example, in the Avengers movie, the collateral damage is largely done by the MASSIVE INVADING ALIEN LIFEFORMS, not the Avengers themselves. THAT, though, *in itself* is worth critical exploration. We also have to consider that, yes, the Avengers broadly did not do a trillion dollars of damage. They did a few hundred million and the alien invasion did the rest. However, this is where we start talking about why did the movie set it up that way? When the movie was created... did the aliens *have* to come in over Manhattan? Yes, there are in-universe justifications for that, but I mean... those justifications could've been changed. Ultimately, the aliens came in over Manhattan because it's a visual spectacle for audiences, who enjoy seeing things destroyed in CGI. But... why? And what is that training the audience to like, approve, think about? I think a fantastic middleground could've been having the heroes do everything they could to move the aliens OUT of Manhattan. Lead them on a chase (very engaging for the audience!), set up clever gambits, you name it. Do everything possible to limit damage, even the damage from actions they themselves didn't take. But no. They steered the aliens INTO buildings, as if that's a good thing and not at all going to kill thousands. You think 9/11 was traumatising for America; the death toll from the Avengers would be so, so, so much worse. And they could have at least mitigated it. But they didn't.
Very Interesting and thought provoking video! WIt hthe superman example, the only problem is that they had no other choice except let themselves be extinguished. But Still, very interesting thoughts.
This whole talk reminds me of the Division. Essentially, you're an agent given free reign to do what needs to be done to rebuild New York. Do you ever rebuild infrastructure? Do you ever help bring an area under control? Maybe a bit, but it seems most of apocalyptic New York's problems are solved by shooting young people in hoodies. Aside from one character seeming to have beef with the Division in a few cutscenes, this isn't mentioned at all. The agents in the Division are portrayed as the good guys, even though they are going around, murdering civilians (who also happen to be US citizens, at least i would assume this is the case) without consequence.
I don't think the comparison to Iron Man stands. In the scene where he takes out that village full of soldiers they go out of their way to show him protecting civilians and minimising collateral damage.
Plus, he's mainly out to destroy his own weapons that were sold to them illegally, and that village in question was Yincent's hometown; he was repaying the man that got him out of the cave (both literally and metaphorically).
Isn´t 1 trillion dollars divided the number of people on earth (7 billion) less than 200$? How would one provide even a year´s worth of food for everyone with "just" that amount of money?
To be completely fair, what were the Avengers *supposed* to do in the situation that New York is suddenly assaulted by an endless swarm of trigger happy aliens? Unlike Superman who really should have just flown Zod up to space and did all in his power to keep the fight there so no more collateral would be suffered, the Avengers were fairly rag tag. Hell, two of them are regular humans and one is just "peak" human with an indestructible shield. There's only 3 super mobile and super powerful people on their team. How were they supposed to handle the situation better than they did? I'm not saying "oh you're stupid", I legitimately want to hear some ideas for how a scrappy team with no time to really prepare once the portal opens are supposed to handle such a crazy and dangerous situation. This is not the same as saying "how they could have prevented Loki from opening the portal in the first place", which is an entirely different discussion full of coming up with how they could have avoided terrible circumstances and losing control of that situation. But I'm more interested in the Battle of New York. How is one supposed to prevent collateral in the Battle of New York?
This video ultimately isn't a criticism of the diegetic scenarios as much as it's a criticism of the way that we have, culturally, chosen to approach these stories, the underlying values that are expressed through our commonly embraced art. The scenario in Avengers exists because it was written that way. I cover this notion in greater detail in the video "How Much Power Does the Author Have?" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ikJ_b2SCycU.html
expect superman is just a farmer boy of kansas that has never been in a fight before , he doesn't know the extension of his powers , has no idea what he is doing and during the whole he has no control of the fight ..zod is beating his butt the avaneger on the other hand.. Have combat experience .. most of them are trained soldiers, they know exactly what their limitation of their powers are, they got a pretty good idea of what they are doing ... and they are not loosing the fight
So, what do you think about the attempts to approach this issue, specifically in Captain America: Civil War and Batman V Superman? To a lesser degree Iron Man 3 and some of the TV shows as well, I suppose.
alexander Aubert civil war is all about the united states being the world police i mean.. captain america (a soldier ) leading his forces into stoping terrorist in other countries and people gets kill in the prosses then the united nations tell them to stop with help of ironman . now the film does a great job exploring every side of this problem but there is a legit problem here captain america is a Pro army Propaganda tool ... thats just what he is..it part if how the chracter was designed ..its in it nature ..and the problem with this is the film has bais toward the army side of the argument becouse we give as a given that captain america is Good as good people can get .. making him a flaw representation of the Usa army and the people pointing that army toward a particular direction .. becouse it take the moral ambiguty out of them
alexander Aubert batman v superman (a veary bad film) ... is more about - how we percive this superheores, who they really are and the mask they use hide themselves .. - this argument of lex luthor that power cant be innocent, only monster rule the world - and the continuation of this idea from the dark knight that either you die a hero or you live long enought to become the villian .. though this is more .. in the sense of .. heros cant hold the weight of the world on their own we see this represented on superman , batman and woder woman .. superman is failing deal coop with the world ..and weight he is try to carry batman has already loose his path becoming a murders vigilanty and wonder woman gave up on the world .. basically what the film is doing is giving an argument why the justice Lague NEEDs to exist
The trouble I have with your Man of Steel argument is the fact that Zod and Clark were evenly matched - Zod might be a little superior with his military training in consideration. This coupled with Clark's relative inexperience with his role as Superman really undercuts this idea that you're going for. There's really no basis for the argument that "there must have been another way" and the film "glorifies unchecked abuse of power". I think you would have been better served arguing that MoS glorifies power in of itself - whether military power or superhero power. But then, that's always been a key aspect of comic book superheroes since the beginning.
+ThatDopeChannel Superman refusing to be held accountable and resisting any attempt to even keep an eye on him is pretty similar to the US military's attitudes. The parallels don't work one to one, but if you view the country the film takes place in as anywhere but the USA then its easier to see where Folding Ideas comparison works. The US military has the power to seal records indefinitely, to hold prisoners for decades without a trial in places where US laws don't exist, to hire military contractors who are almost impossible to hold accountable for crimes, and the power to legally fudge statistics to hide most civilian casualties. Tell me that the US military invading your country wouldn't feel like being an American in Man of Steel.
Or, that he just won't be held captive and experimented on. Which - don't delude yourself - would be the case. For Superman it's actually more logical to be independent than to be used by somebody else, he is pretty much a living nuke and he can't stop being one.
+Folding Ideas That's a solid video... but it doesn't address +Jedi Marhwini's post. Yes, the author has complete control over the story, but story is nothing without conflict and struggle. Superman was inexperienced, and didn't stop Zod from destroying part of Metropolis. Saying the author of that story could have done it another way is by no means a reasonable critique on the story. That would be like critiquing A Tale of Two City's as bad because the opening line could have been simply, "It was the best of times."
If there had been even one scene in Man of Steel where Superman, like, looked at civilians and intentionally hit Zod away from them, or said "No!" to something Zod did besides the very blatant laser eyes to a single family (instead of the damage done to an entire city), I would be with you. But it's important to note the VERY FIRST PUNCH Superman throws at Zod: he tackles him across a corn field, and the two hurtle into a gas station, resulting in a ball of fire, and the fight then proceeds in the heart of a small town where the civilians simply hide in their shops than can be leveled in SECONDS.
Some of what you say EXACTLY crosses over into the whole objectivism philosophy of Aryn Rand that all of his works follow. A lot of food for thought Dan. The American imperialist idea and what the heroes we have say about it. Someday we'll get Morbeius the film, and we'll find out the other old adage, when the cure is worse than the disease. The means justify the ends. it's all okay it's always worth the cost. Stark words.
He must have been pleasantly surprised by Age of Ultron and Civil War. Speaking of, I love how the MCU doesn't hide from giving heroes moments to "show remorse or doubt the value of their own existence, or suspect that they just might be part of the problem"
Most, if not all, superhero fiction is at least somewhat inherently fascist in its showcasing that those with the most power should be allowed total autonomy over people and governments without oversight. A lot of these stories take a good look at the positives and negatives of this approach. I agree that the issue here isn't one of internal story logic but not all of these kinds of stories are meant to be viewed primarily through a political lens. I think The Avengers is one such example where its Ok to dismiss this because the perspective being shown is that the Avengers win because they are doing what they do for the right reasons not because they have the most power. I do agree that Man of Steel is an example of what you're talking about because it so blatantly comes right out and says that Superman should be allowed to take charge and do whatever he wants because he is the only one who can save them.
Would love a part two of this, as I find that a lot of superhero movies/shows has a hero who constantly has inner fights as to what is right and what is not.
no. in fact, the blind cynicism espoused by videos like this is exactly the kind of blind cynicism that the political centrists subscribed to to justify not voting, costing Clinton the electoral college.
Hollywood often hates what America is supposed to be. And many writers have lost what "Truth, Justice, and the American Way (freedom and self determination, under the guidance of God/proper morals)" really means. That's why Man of Steel is a big dumb action movie of dubious morals. Also, movies have gotten dumb. More importantly, I really don't agree with your assessment here. A LOT of the issues superhero movies/comics are caused by forgetting that they're HEROES.
Dan is pro-tony in civil war confirmed. Also could you not view heroes as a proxy for humanity? Like how do you justify direct action/anti-fascist action without acknowledging the current systems are broken and don’t actually solve the problems. The cops in the avengers are pretty accurate to the cops in our world no? Incompetent and not actually fighting for the people? Isn’t the take away, that good people should rise up together and do what’s right for the betterment of humanity? If we’re specifically talking about the actions that hurt average people like the plowing through buildings and shit and that this is necessarily bound to the criticism of the other ideas then okay I agree
You're absolutely right. Superman should have just let Zod exterminate all life on Earth, the Avengers should have let Loki and his alien army enslave us, and Batman should have put the Joker's fate in the hands of the Gotham police department. Oh wait. Batman tried that, and the result was that the Joker broke out of jail and killed a bunch more people. BTW, turning cell phones into sonar emitters has nothing to do with listening in on people's phone conversations. Also, on what planet is powered armor considered a weapon of mass destruction? Do you even know what a weapon of mass destruction is?
Okay so I'm not trying to say that "oh whatever Superman did in man of steel is justified" but I do feel it worth considering the costs, if we are saying the direct cost of supermans actions was $2 trillion and 1.5 million dead, the outcome of Zod's place was total population death for humans so: 7 billion dead and a loss to the economy of $107.5 trillion (not that it really makes sense to count at that point) So like I do definitely think it's a bad message to send that you should just accept any loss but there was a direct threat and the suffered loss was much smaller.
i’m watching this video today, for the first time. a child born on the day this video was released could be in third grade right now. im watching this while knowing thousands of miles away, american and israeli soldiers are slaughtering palestinians like animals. however relevant this video is im still hit with a wave of sickness when i remember the biggest films on the market are arranged just so to exonerate the genocide of hundreds of thousands of living breathing people, and the fact that im just trying to ignore it. i doubt i’ll take any more action than i already have just from watching this, but i will say im at least glad this video was made.
Interesting watch in 2016, where Civil War and Batman punches Superman have both tried to deal with these issues in their own ways. I think using Raimi's Spiderman is a good way of exposing the DC films lack of humanity, both in the protagonists and the bystanders I would say that the MCU also does this well(although I actually think DC does Antagonists better than Marvel).
Just here to strongly recommend the online superhero comic Strong Female Protagonist. I'm not full current on it, but it actively addresses many, if not all, of these issues! Also, it's very well written and well illustrated. strongfemaleprotagonist.com
Batman is a flawed Anitihero, this is where adfred and in other media the batfamily comes in. He is barely human, a vigilante driven by his one goal, preventing the death of his parents to happening to other people again. He needs Alfred and possibly the batfamily, because they function as his humanity. And if they have a fallout, bad things are bound to happen. He is an somehow realistic superhero, because he is on the border to becoming a monster. And superman is a hero that should never be treated like an actulal person in our world, but a Man with powers no one has, that has chose to bear the burden of society on his shoulders. He is basically jesus, a mythos with a man with superpowers behind it . And Batman versus superman stripped him of the last rest of the larger than life bit. Superheroes are Ideas anyway. Put them in superrealistic scenareos and they stop being superheroes. Batman is different, because he is very adaptable as Character.
I can't help but feel that the acknowledgement of wrongdoing in batman and the other movies is intentionally trying to make the point that he isn't respecting anyone's privacy and that's not ok. the movies could have just cut the scenes and it would have worked the same in the end, I think the directors aren't ignorant to the idea that these superheroes are from one perspective, a menace. until marvel comes along and just stops questioning or thinking about anything.
citizens having weapons of mass destruction that they use to wage a one man extra judicial war of concience regardless of the sovereinty of other nations is not a problem in the iron man movies and it's not one iron man every tries to address... the reason iron man goes to the middle East to fight the ten rings and subbsiquently joins the avengers is because he himself has been a victim of the ten rings and emphisises with the civillians who might and are ending up as casualties in the comflict!!! more over, the reason he goes in as one man ignoring sovereinty is obviously because he doesn't want his weapons of mass destruction ending up in the wrong hands like the rest of the weapons did... and he doesn't destroy his weapons because he thinks the bad guys don't deserve them, he destroys his weapons because he doesn't want weapons he created to be out there killing people especially civillians and innocent women and children... that was a terrible example on your part!
A big problem with the superhero genre these days is that a lot of fans seem to care more about believability and realism than they do about character and theme. Spider-Man 2 is an expertly crafted, wildly entertaining movie all about a man overcoming depression and learning the value of self-sacrifice, but many comic book geeks will decry it for being too darn silly. The same goes for the original 1978 Superman. Here's a crazy thought: maybe superhero movies don't have to be a perfect imitation of the dark, cynical reality we live in. Maybe they can create a world of colourful optimism that's not real life, but is something a real-life person can strive toward. Just a suggestion.
I dislike "believably and realism" in certain franchise like DC comics or Star Wars because their characters weren't created or built around being believable or realistic.
Ok, I'm with you for 99% of the video, but this part really irked me: 7:04 - "One trillion dollars is enough to provide clean water, basic education, functional roads, high speed internet, basic health care, and apprentice training to just about everybody." That seems like quite the stretch. One trillion dollars divided by eight billion people is $125 per person. I'm sure everybody could use $125 but that's just not enough to provide all of those things, much less sustain them for any meaningful length of time. I mean, the US spends like 20 times that number *each year,* with a lot of it going to services like social security and medicare/medicaid, and there's still massive problems with all those things just in this country. I'm not saying that the US' priorities are totally straight, but still.
Tbh, the majority of people in wealthy nations already have most of those things (even in the US). If you employed some form of means-testing, and exclusively spent that $1 trillion on the world's most impoverished countries, then you could hypothetically make it go much further. Only 2 billion people lack access to clean water, for example. Your average western citizen also generally demands a much higher quality of care from programmes like Medicaid than what people in the global south might consider "basic healthcare". Ditto with "high speed internet", "basic education", or "functional roads". Also, consider that this video was made a decade ago, so you have to take inflation and population growth into account. Plus a dollar goes much further in impoverished countries. So while I ultimately agree that this quote was something of a stretch even back then, but you could certainly provide one or two of those things for a trillion dollars. The current estimated cost of ending world hunger is apparently only like $330 billion. www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/oct/13/ending-world-hunger-by-2030-would-cost-330bn-study-finds
I don't get the the argument you're trying to convey here. The basic formula you're playing with here is hero meets villain -> villain is being stopped by hero from doing evil villain stuff -> hero saves the day but destroys lots of property and people in the process. You're framing this issue within the superhero world without acknowledging the mere definition of superhero film. Such is the equation and yes, it could be considered idiotic when counting the actual damage that's being done by these heroes, but it is in the very core of what superhero movies are. It's like criticizing ice skating for being slippery. It is part of the entire whole of this particular story type. a hero must go through a great of suffering, he must be willing to sacrifice his life in order to save the day. Destruction and chaos is always brought up by the bad guy of the story. Stakes are high. Not really sure where you're going with this. Yes. Superhero films could be a bit better and not as spoon - feeding and simple in their execution of the central problem resolution of the story. But there is a deeper broader topic that lies here. It pertains to the whole epidemic of passable movies that Nerdwriter talks about. These decisions within the stories, of mass destruction of the setting the hero finds himself in, are ultimately brought up to increase the chances of making most money. Not making the best quality film it can be. Framing Batman from perspective you described is also really one sided and unwelcoming of the entire situation the hero finds himself in. You can't apply same real-world rules to a superhero movie. Beucase it's a SUPERHERO movie. We expected to suspend disbelieve on these things. Because the viewer knows that these kind of films are not of the real world. The realistic factor is only applied from the film makers side, so the viewer associates the world of the superhero as close enough to the real world without really delving too deep in the particulars. I can't find the proper word of what your argument actually is here. But it's definitely nonsensical. I still like your channel though. put a thumbs up either way)
"It's always worth the cost." Yeah, it is. That's kind of the point of superhero movies. The threat always is large enough to merit the inevitable consequences of combat and conflict. But that's also because the villains are larger than life and certain. Doomsday isn't threatening that he maybe has weapons that he might hurt people with only to find out that he has no power and that Superman blew up a country to kill someone who was just using bluffs. The Avengers don't fight protesters on the street with extreme prejudice because they might have become violent. Honestly this is just putting the cart before the horse.
The Iron Man movies work because not it's not just brown people who can't have the weapons. His uncle or whatever can't have them, the US military can't have them, the Russians, other arms dealers, and so on. When it finally gets to the Civil War movie, we start to wonder if maybe no one should have the suit, not even Tony. Oh and SHIELD turned out to be facist, which is more or less what you were saying. This is one of those videos that was good when it was made, but now is just pointless, such is the passage of time and context.
