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MCU Reflection Time! Spoilers (obviously) inside

Elcid

Banned
I just want to talk about some of the good/bad decisions that the MCU has made over the past decade with their movies.
Curious to hear everyone else's!
For me, complaints:
1) Swapping out Ed Norton from Incredible Hulk - Sorry I loved Norton and thought he did a great job
2) Swapping out Terrence Howard - Preferred over Don Cheadle, and I never felt like he was 100% in the character
3) Killing Quicksilver - One of the best characters and you just wasted him!
4) Making the Hulk a bitch in Endgame - Snapping his fingers and that's it, he's useless the entire battle? Almost crushed by rubble? What the fuck. Hulk finally established himself as a badass character in Ragnarok and then he's just scrubbed away by this pussy Professor Hulk.
5) Killing interesting villains - Crossbones, Klaw, Mandarin (Yes I saw the Dark World special on the disc that they gave us hope and then proceeded to completely waste the character)
6) Never merging in the Netflix characters - Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, the Punisher, imagine had they been there in Civil War or Infinity War?
7) Captain America's ending. What the fuck. Stupidest ending to the character in my opinion.
8) A shit ton of bad boss fights. Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, stand out the worst in my opinion, Antman's was probably the best one in the universe.
9) Never calling "Clint" Hawkeye. Most upsetting thing in every movie.
10) Wasted characters like implying Adam Warlock is a thing in GotG Vol. 2 then proceeding not to use him

Love!
1) Spider-Man is on point, one of the best casting and characters currently in the universe.
2) Team dynamics are always on point. Look at Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy or the Wakandans (Black Panther is meh without Shuri and Okoye)
3) Despite a bunch of origin movies, they always do a good job of telling the story and making me care.
4) Visuals are always awesome. Especially movies like Ragnarok are just really damn pretty and spot on.
5) For the most part, holds true to a lot of the original lore in a modern sense, granted they took a lot of liberties, but it's still nice that they capture the essence of the original lore in most cases.
6) OSTs are always fun for the MCU movies.
7) Managed different heroes from all over the world and managed to bring them together in an awesome ending spectacle, not perfect by any means, but it was a good movie.

I definitely can't wait till my kids are a little bit older and can appreciate these movies so I can rewatch all of them with them, but in looking back at them, they really are just superhero movies. A few years ago I didn't understand how someone could write a movie off as a "superhero" movie, but now I kind of get it.
What do you all think?
 
Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Ed Norton not want to come back? I thought I remembered reading that he hated the role or something like that.

Good thread, though, and I will think about some things I would like to share later.
 

sol_bad

Member
Ed Norton tried to take control of production, rewriting parts of the script and what not. Marvel didn't want him back as he was difficult to work with.
He isn't really a super hero kind of actor anyway and Mark Ruffalo comes across much better as Banner. Sorry to say but Norton didn't come across as "intelligent" as he should. Although that is probably the scrips fault as he didn't have much to work with in that area.
 

bitbydeath

Member
I thought Eric Bana was better than Norton.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the best thing to come out of the MCU.

Captain Marvel is the worst casting decision.
 

sol_bad

Member
I don’t count Nortons movie as part of it either. :messenger_smiling_with_eyes:

Despite what Disney say.

It very clearly is part of it though. Tony Stark is in the end of it and the experiment that Banner was working on was based off Steve Rogers super soldier serum.
You also see the SHIELD logo in parts of it and the air wave weapons used by the military are from Stark's company.

 

bitbydeath

Member
It very clearly is part of it though. Tony Stark is in the end of it and the experiment that Banner was working on was based off Steve Rogers super soldier serum.
You also see the SHIELD logo in parts of it and the air wave weapons used by the military are from Stark's company.


Edwards Hulk is a direct sequel to Eric’s Hulk and the former isn’t counted so they can both cancel each other out.
 

sol_bad

Member
Edwards Hulk is a direct sequel to Eric’s Hulk and the former isn’t counted so they can both cancel each other out.

This is not true.
Edward Norton's Hulk is essentially a reboot. The reason for Bruce Banner taking on the experiment is completely different in both films.
The experiments take place in 2 separate places as well. The Hulk in Berkeley (West coast) and Incredible Hulk in Virginia (East coast)

Via Wikipedia.

Hulk:
Years later, Bruce is a geneticist working with colleague and girlfriend Betty Ross, within the Berkeley Biotechnology Institute on nanomed research to achieve instantaneous cell repair by using low-level gamma radiation exposure to turn on the nanomeds once they are introduced into a living organism, planning to use it to cure all from sicknesses such as cancer and Alzheimer's. They get harassed by Major Glenn Talbot who plans to use the research to forge supersoldiers. During routine maintenance of their appropriated gamma-ray spectrometer, a circuit shorts and triggers the experiment's program sequence. Unable to prevent the machine from firing, Bruce throws himself in front of a colleague named Harper to shield the man and is exposed to a massive amount of gamma radiation.

The Incredible Hulk:
At Culver University in Virginia, General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross meets with Dr. Bruce Banner, the colleague and boyfriend of his daughter Betty, regarding an experiment that Ross claims is meant to make humans immune to gamma radiation. The experiment—part of a World War II-era "super soldier" program that Ross hopes to recreate—fails, and the exposure to gamma radiation causes Banner to transform into the Hulk for brief periods of time, whenever his heart rate rises above 200 beats per minute. The Hulk destroys the lab and surrounding area, killing several people inside, and injuring the General and Betty, along with others outside. Banner becomes a fugitive from the U.S. military and Ross in particular, who wants to weaponize the Hulk.

*EDIT*
I forgot to mention that Bruce in Banner's Hulk doesn't turn in to Hulk straight away after being exposed to gamma, whereas Bruce in Norton's Incredible Hulk does turn in to Hulk straight away after being exposed to gamma.
 
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sol_bad

Member
They provide a flashback of the events from Erics movie at the beginning of Incredible Hulk. Hulk remains as the origin movie.

I assume you didn't read anything I wrote. If you want to write your own headcannon that is fine. But Hulk and Incredible Hulk are unrelated.
 

kunonabi

Member
I'm just going to list my major gripes movie by movie. It's hard to qualify things as bad decisions considering how successful everything has been so these are just personal issues. This isn't everything that bugged just the big stuff.

Iron Man: none
The Incredible Hulk: Pretty much everything.

Tying the Hulk to his heartrate kind of sucks all the drama and mystery out his hulking out.
Norton played himself like he tends to do
He had no chemistry with Tyler
comic relief didn't land at all
Hulk design was terrible

Iron Man 2: Didn't care for treating the drinking like a joke, peeing in the suit was completely childish, villains didn't work
Thor: none aside from the excessive dutch angles
Captain America: none
The Avengers: none

Iron Man 3: The twist and super Pepper
Thor 2: naked selvig, third act that felt like it was written on a napkin before shooting, Malekith
Winter Soldier: none
Guardians of the Galaxy: none
Avengers: Age of Ultron: opening action scene never really worked, Thor's bath
Ant-Man: none

Civil War: Sharon giving the speech. It could have worked coming from Atwell but VanCamp is a mediocre tv actress that really didn't have the chops to make it work, how the Russos write "Spider-Man".
Doctor Strange: wasting Mads
Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2: Taserface
Ragnarok - everything aside from Hela and the more dramatic bits with Thor, Loki, and Odin and the audio and visual design
Black Panther - that third act especially the train fight
Infinity War - The Black Order being such scrubs, Banner
Ant-Man and the Wasp - too stuffed with antagonists, Ghost sucked and her big sob story just brings the movie to a dead stop
Captain Marvel - pretty much everything but primarily the stripping of everything that made Carol such an interesting character in the comics is what sinks it for me.
Avengers: Endgame: I hate to say everthing again so I'll go with completely botching Thor and Hulk, Ronin was pointless, past-Thanos as the villain, execution of Cap wielding the hammer and Avengers assemble, the ending.

As for favorite bits:

hard to pick one thing in Iron Man, but probably Tony and Pepper
Loki meeting with Thor in captivity, Loki and Odin in the vault
Nailing Captain America's origin as well as they did. That first act is practically perfection, the sacrifice
Hulk being treated like a real monster, especially his introduction in the helicarrier
Frigga and Loki in TDW, Frigga's funeral
Mackie's Falcon, Cap visiting Peggy
the prison sequence in the GotG, Gamora
AOU: the party, the farm, the korea sequence, Vision's origin, Vision and Ultron in the forest, Hawkeye, Quicksilver
Scott Lang and his daughter's interactions, the theme
Vision and Wanda's relationship
Gamora and Nebula's relationship, Yondu wrecking house, Yondu's funeral
Blanchett's Hela
Wakanda, Black Panther's score
Gamora and Thanos, the fight on Titan, Rocket's heart-to-heart with Thor
More Cassie and Scot Lang, the Wasp, Pfeiffer, the lab/quantum realm

There is a ton more but these are the first things that come to mind

"Spider-Man", Captain Marvel, and Endgame have soured me on the franchise so I probably won't be adding much to either of these lists.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
I assume you didn't read anything I wrote. If you want to write your own headcannon that is fine. But Hulk and Incredible Hulk are unrelated.

It’s addressed that Incredible Hulk isn’t his first change. Hulk served that purpose which carried over.

Not only that but at the end of Hulk Banner goes in hiding in South America which is exactly where the sequel ‘The Incredible Hulk’ continues from.
 

VAL0R

Banned
I agree with almost everything OP said. Also, not only do I prefer Norton, but I think Ruffalo is a so-so actor with some pretty weak scenes.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
They are fine for what they are. My main problem is the collateral damage, I don’t see these people as heroes, they are constantly putting the world in jeopardy and then flippantly “fixing” things. The whole Thanos Endgame thing left a sour taste in my mouth, especially Cap’s line about “we may as well have let him kill everyone”. There is something elitist and fascist about all these “heroes” who don’t seem to be battling for any beliefs or morals just an unending struggle for power. I dunno once you have done time travel and death is no longer meaningful it’s gonna be hard for me to care about any future stakes they try to set up.
 
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