Marvel Cinematic Universe

I was gonna say "does he have a secret?"

But wait that has a h at the end.

My actual superhero hot take is that I kinda miss the days when a character's villain name or superhero name was cheekily hinted at as opposed to being literally their name.

I need more "We're iron mongers, Tony." and "The result could be an abomination."

That second one becoming literally a character's name hurts me because I just don't buy that Blonsky would call himself "Abomination" as like a proper noun moniker with a capital A.

Edited by GNinja on Apr 30th 2024 at 3:40:37 PM

Nimrod has a bit of a silly looking design with it being way shorter than expected which 90s Xmen has Wolverine say. Then it attacks, all the jokes about it stop forever. Thats a small way to give dignity for an audience to understand the weight of everything.

Also Nimrod is named after something Biblical and all jokes kinda lose meaning if thats what the first people see when looking it up.

I do feel that is why Bastion was made as I said before. They wanted the leader of the sentinels to not be you know a giant cheesy talking robot or a well Nimrod.

I mean. Using it as their name is cheesy but these are comic characters and it is okay to be silly.

I mean, a man named Stephen Strange becoming a weird wizard superhero is slightly silly, and while there is the odd lampshade, they still give him the name and he's not a comedic character. This isn't a complaint, I like that they do that.

Edited by king15 on Apr 30th 2024 at 5:55:20 PM

I would love for that to happen.

Someone makes a dumb make fun of name joke and they get knocked flat on their ass and almost killed. And Nimrod is a Goddamn demon.

I dunno, as the resident "guy who really likes superhero movies but finds comic books impenetrable" I feel like a lot of comic fans underestimate that to a bunch of people there's a sliding scale of "comic shit" that people can be ok with.

Like, I know when I hear that a character is the time travelling offspring of a guy and the clone of another person created by a scientist named Mr Sinister, who was infected by a techno virus, my mind kinda touches the void for a second. Is that a me problem? yes.

There are layers between being ok with Spider-Man and Bat-Man and being like "Here's an alien that looks like a fantasy dragon and his name is Fing Fang Foom."

Edited by GNinja on Apr 30th 2024 at 6:12:45 PM

What I'm imagining:

• Master Mold as a god-machine endlessly pumping out Sentinels. Made from reverse-engineered Ultron tech possessed by the consciousness of the Singerverse Sentinel program.
• Nimrod as the avatar of MM, eliminating any threats to MM while it builds itself and prepares to go live.
• Bastion as the Nimrod of another timeline, who grew so advanced that it began infiltrating other universes to effect MM's creation.

Almost 9 decades of collective comics stories have made fans used to this kind of thing.

It is a gradual thing; the universe starts with a simple premise: a boy is bitten by a radioactive spider and get powers, or an alien comes from a destroyed world and starts fighting crimes.

Then you introduce one supervillain, then another, then a super ally, then a team of supers, then a multiverse, and suddenly you find your "  time travelling offspring of a guy and the clone of another person created by a scientist named Mr Sinister, who was infected by a techno virus,"

For fans of the comics, the escalation is gradual, and they don't notice it. and see nothing strange with it.

For someone who is entering that world for the first time and is faced with those contrived and insane scenarios at once, they will have your reaction, and understandably so.

Edited by jawal on Apr 30th 2024 at 7:19:50 PM

It definitely helps if you're introduced to the comics wackiness at a younger age, thus making it easier to acclimate to it all, at least from my experience. I started reading comics around eight or nine and my brain was malleable enough to look at all the crazy stuff and go "yeah, that makes sense".

@G Ninja. It’s weird, I used to be like that, but gradually as I got more into comic books I got used to the convoluted bullshit and now see the appeal in a lot of cases.

I would love if we manage to do some of the other crazy soap opera aspect of comics like family reveals.

Like Cyclops alone has a family that can support their own franchise.

We got his brother Alex Summers/Havok.

We got his other brother Gabriel/Vulcan who is an Omega Level Mutant with Godlike power and serves under the Shi'ar Empire.

We got his father Christopher/Corsair who is a space pirate leading the Starjammers (who are most likley the basis for Gunn's Guardians films)

His half-brother Adam-X The X-Treme, the most 90's character ever created

His son Nathan/Cable a grizzled war veteran from the future trapped in an endless forever war to save the future from Apocalypse

Him and Jean are like the royal family of the X-Men.

Don't forget Sinister as the soap opera chessmaster villain meddling with the entire damn bloodline.

Ehh I perfer 97's Sinister who you can take a little more seriously.

That is Sinister for most of his history.

His more campy personality is a very recent invention from Hickman's X-Men stuff which was like only 5 years ago.

Having finally gotten through the Animated Series and occasionally watching '97 when I have the time, I will say that the idea of a live-action Mr. Sinister does seem really neat, but I'm not sure how Marvel would go about it.

Oh… Mc Donald’s put out the Brave New World toys way too early. It’s like the Marvels all over again.

It must be Sylvie's doing. She wants to troll us because she hates how soulless McDonalds has become in the modern day.

Among other characters, it seems to be our first confirmation that Red Hulk is in the movie after all.

I would have assumed they were keeping that more of a secret, since it hasn't been officially announced yet.

I don't really blame the MCU for going for Fox Cartoon nostalgia and it's theme tune but the live action Fox-men tune is also really good even the version from X-Men: Apocalypse in my spotify playlist.

Likewise Iron Man 3's cheerful bombastic theme is one of it's redeeming features for me.

Edited by dcutter2 on Apr 30th 2024 at 10:03:46 AM

The MCU has a smattering of really good themes and leitmotifs, but often seems unwilling to use many beyond the initial film they appear in (other than the Avengers theme). Surely a great way of making use of a cinematic universe and a multiverse bridging continuities would also be to bring back leitmotifs when relevant?

Edited by king15 on Apr 30th 2024 at 9:18:57 AM

I still remember the Mysterio motif.

How they use that thing in like a million different ways.

You get heroic Mysterio, sad Mysterio, Evil Mysterio, all using the same riff.

The DCAU for example was really great at bringing back leitmotifs appropriately.

I think the best enduring leitmotif they have is the Ant-Man theme. It's appeared in several movies and is one of their best distinctive and indicative pieces of music for the character it's attached to.

Their best leitmotif in general imo, however, is Mysterio's. It's so damn good.

One of the many ways Mysterio ended up being one of the MCU's best villains.

Meanwhile, the best leitmotif ever in any Marvel superhero movie MCU or not is Electro's, and it's a goddamn crime they didn't use it in No Way Home.

It's a toss up. One the one hand, they're usually willing to maintain silly names. On the other hand, the last time they used a character whose character design was silly, they ended up deciding they were too silly for anyone to take seriously and made them into a joke character instead.

In general, though they're not as bad about it as - say - Fox was, Marvel Studios generally tries to sand off the comic book weirdness when it comes to character designs and concepts. Generally, the one franchise they really allow themselves to get weird with is GOTG.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 30th 2024 at 3:52:54 AM

Now that I recall I think Nimrod's goody apperance is intentional. He was partly designed as a propaganda hero to appeal to humans.

It's why he has a goofy childish personality and a cuddly appearance, cause he's supposed to act as a hero to humans when in reality he's a genocidal warmachine.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 30th 2024 at 3:59:48 AM