I don't even mean a bad thing, necessarily. I mean a thing that is made to normalize the status quo, pave over inherent contradictions in late stage neoliberal capitalism, make even the idea of changing society somewhat seem evil or impossible, and have lots of performative gestures that hide the stench of affluent arrogance. :zizek-preference:

I know it came out well before 2020, but I finally got around to seeing Iron Man 2 and I stopped at the instant Tony Stark said "I've successfully privatized world peace." It was bad. Very bad. The original movie was entertaining even if it had some painful deliberate adjustments to the comic book character to make him more like :my-hero: but the sequel played out like Ayn Rand fanfiction, especially the big smart awesome genius giving a speech about how the evil government and the ungrateful moochers were taking the sweat from his brow and so on and so on. :zizek:

The flood of MCU movies wore me out to the point that I stopped watching them and because of that I have only seen maybe half of them by now. Maybe it was a mistake returning to try watching Iron Man 2 because I now have even less interest in seeing anything MCU ever again. :zizek-fuck:

  • Circra [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I think my favourite bit is at the end where everything just pops back to normal. There's just zero understanding of any deeper reason behind what happened aside from 'the silly poors voted in a bad person.'

    If you twisted my arm, the refugee subplot with that guy's boyfriend trying to get to safety wasn't terrible in a couple of places.

    • JuneFall [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      If you twisted my arm, the refugee subplot with that guy’s boyfriend trying to get to safety wasn’t terrible in a couple of places.

      Yes, but we ought to skip over the power dynamics in the beginning and the lack of agency of "the boyfriend" for large sways (their perspective is mostly shown through the eyes of the middle class brits".

      I think my favourite bit is at the end where everything just pops back to normal

      During that time I really liked when the dad got three years in prison "cause of the gun" - but he used that time to learn Spanish - and is now teaching English to little kids in fascist ("communist") Spain. How is that supposed to be a good arc or sympathetic? He was a "banker" darn and learning Spanish is enough to get a job in a country adjacent to or part of the imperialist core to teach?