we have to clarify that "don't worry guys I know the MCU is soy shit haha-ha buuuuut ..."? We should be better than this.

As a committed communist I "disdain to conceal [my] views " and I've said it a few times that the "MCU is good actually" and I've made it known a few times. 80% of the MCU dunks on the "left" I see are lazy garbage and honestly at this point are insulting to the fellow proles working on it. Lazy takes are much worse than dumb takes.

Same as Imperialism is the "Highest Stage of Capitalism", I've said that the MCU is the highest form of moviemaking. Notice I said moviemaking and not filmmaking.

Anyone here daring to give a lazy "haha lib MCU amIrite folx?" should be forced to read Ryan Coogler's eulogy:
https://www.marvel.com/articles/movies/marvel-studios-black-panther-director-ryan-coogler-on-the-legacy-of-chadwick-boseman

In my meeting after watching the film, I asked Nate Moore, one of the producers of the film, about the language. “Did you guys make it up?” Nate replied, “that’s Xhosa, John Kani’s native language. He and Chad decided to do the scene like that on set, and we rolled with it.” I thought to myself. “He just learned lines in another language, that day?” I couldn’t conceive how difficult that must have been, and even though I hadn’t met Chad, I was already in awe of his capacity as actor.

I can't imagine something like that happening in the Snyderverse that some of us hold up as a more "authentic" and interesting if mideocer movie making exercise.

Anyway, the amount of criticism the MCU gets only betrays your impotence: theoretical, for not coming up with better targets for your ire as well as practical, for not being able take any action to further your liberation.

PS if I should post to c/movies instead let me know

Edit: Nah. This isn't fun. Just downvoting arguments instead of a constructive rebuttal and engagements on bad faith isn't what I expected.

  • Bob [he/him,he/him]
    1·
    4 years ago

    As someone else said superhero movies are reactionary as fuck but side note: dam if it was amazing when i finally watched black panther that it was so fukn reactionary. The bad guy is almost literally a real life black panther. Ie, someone who wanted to arm black rebels. Like god dam if that isn't the most whitewashed shit. The bad guy wants to arm literal black panthers and the good guys are a hereditary monarchy that keeps the peace in the movie by essentially not helping out any other black struggles in the world at all. They even mention that they could help, but don't. Amazin stuff. The effective message is "the black struggle is real but the bad guys are the ones who want to do any of the struggling, instead we should all just be friends." Like they literally end it at a UN meeting. Amazing.

    • snackage [he/him]
      2·
      4 years ago

      I read all of the think pieces, I listened to the podcasts and I agree with most of the points. That aspect left a bad taste in my mouth while leaving the theater. I'm not blind to it. I'm not in the mood to argue the Black Panther point at this point. Edit: Yes I know that the movie has the CIA getting their hands on rare African minerals. I fucking know.
      But I'll ask you this about the "Superheros are inherently reactionary because they are an Over Man" crowed: what about Spider-Man? The everyman superhero whose life is shit even after getting powers? Who's still poor and can't afford rent? What about Spider-Man stories where he is saved by his friends? What about the themes of responsibility and empathy in Spider-Man's canon?

      • Bob [he/him,he/him]
        1·
        4 years ago

        It's not about the literal person the superhero is, it's about the world portrayed. Superheros defend society from an external threat. It's inherently always a conservative vision. There are undoubtedly superheroes that are rebels to a society, but most "super heroes" are people who save people from a calamity caused by some personalized external threat. I.e, our society needs to be defended from an external threat that we aren't prepared for and thus we need to centralize a lot of power and authority into one defensive thing in order to stop it.

        EDIT: I remembered that some people have done the "well the external threat is climate change!!!" or the "external threat is fascism!!!!" thing and even that is more libshit. In the case of climate change (a lot of people say Thanos is this) you're still in hot water because either Thanos is those fighting climate change via some conservative caricature, or he himself is climate change in which case you end up with the idea that climate change is an external threat to society rather than a feature of society as it's constructed. In the case of fascism, if you can present me with superheroes from the soviets who stopped invading nazis, that'd be neat, but there's still be an air of nationalism there. Still it'd be vastly preferable to the current configuration in the west, where you can pretend it's fascism but again like with climate change, fascism is a feature here not a bug so it's not an external threat. Realistically it's just gonna be Russia/China/etc (edit: or mexicans/refugees if you're conservative) in most people's minds

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Spider-man is a class traitor who spends most of his time fighting low level street crime and not using his power to fight for the liberation of the people.