Continuing my MCU rewatch

For what it’s worth, Tony’s specifically-stated reasons for wanting/creating the Iron Legion and Ultron are where I went from “this guy’s a bullying dick” to “oh wow he’s a fascist, yikes and yuck”.
 
Got to finish the next movie quicker than usual, so I'm going to roll right into...

Ant-Man

For the record, I am a huge, old school Ant-Man fan. I'm talking Hank Pym's scientist adventurer days with a ditzy sidekick and a stable of goofy villains. Having said that, basing this movie on the current Ant-Man, Scott Lang, and using his history as a thief to make it a heist movie was the right call.

  1. Cool, another flashback intro and time jump. I know I keep going on about these, but we don't learn anything we wouldn't relearn later. It's so aggravating that this is such a common schtick.

  2. As much as I hate that painful Baskin Robbins scene with the supernaturally stupid customer and the weirdo boss, I have to say the boss' surprising appreciation of Scott's crimes was a way better intro to his past than Luis' exposition info dump to the other two wombats in the very next scene. Seriously, you could just have Dale go a little deeper into why he thought Scott's crimes were cool and skip Luis' biography recital.

  3. Paul Rudd is a national treasure and I'm so glad he got a role in the MCU. I think we all accepted the movie would be played for laughs with him in it, but he did a wonderful job of really selling his situation, his love for his daughter, and why he finally agrees to hear Luis' tip. Michael Pena was a lot of fun as Luis. I could have lived a long, happy life without the other two guys whose names I don't feel like looking up. They seem to just be their to triple the amount of comic relief characters and solve problems that were written into the story because they needed something for these guys to solve. For some reason my wife is the biggest David Dastmalchian fan. I'm not sure why, and it's not enough for me to rethink my thoughts on them. If they'd made Luis appear more competent at crimes, we could've skipped the other two characters entirely.

  4. Michael Douglas does a decent job with Hank Pym. I can't *quite* see him as a genius inventor, but I can definitely buy him as an adventurer. He's fine. Evangeline Lilly as Hope Pym was also fine. She was a little too Mary Sue for my tastes, being a great fighter and able to control ants and blah blah blah. But if her and Douglas' only jobs here were to sell the drama of a family that lost the mother for secret reasons, they both would get Oscars. All of their scenes on the topic leading up to the final reveal were amazing. Finally, Corey Stoll as Darren Cross was...fine. He also didn't give genius inventor vibes so much as slimy exec vibes. Which would've worked as someone who was stealing other people's ideas to sell, but they kept talking about how he was Hank's protégé and such.

  5. I feel like a lot of questions about Ant-Man could've been ended if Cross hadn't described the Pym particle's effect as "increasing density." It clearly doesn't. Yeah they show that he's a little stronger and tougher at tiny size, but he only weighs as much as an ant. I can chalk it up to Cross being kind of an idiot and would have loved for a scene where Hank gives the correct explanation.

  6. How is there no perceived value in a gun that instantly kills its target and disposes of the body?

  7. Luis' world-famous voice-over expositions. I'm not so bold to say they were invented here, but the style was new to me and it made those scenes sing. I love them so much.

  8. The Ant-Man suit looks great. I love the exposed tubing and visible mechanics of the helmet. Big buttons on the knuckles. It just feels like something from the 80s but still looks cool in use. And the shrinking effect is picture perfect. Using macro lenses and distorting the depth of field really sells it. And I appreciate the shrinking effect using outlines that mimic how it was drawn in the comics. It's really great. While I'm at it, the Yellowjacket suit looks awesome too. A sleeker, deadlier looking design than Hank's 1980s suit. I miss the big back-fin wings from the comics, but the articulated laser arms are almost as good.

  9. Something that has always bugged me about this movie was that it was Hank who set up Scott to steal the suit and draw him into his plan. For being the lead character, Scott seems to have made no decisions for himself. I would much rather have him steal the suit on his own initiative and then have Hank realize "hey, this guy's a really good thief, maybe *that's* what I need to solve my Cross problem." Then Scott is an active participant in creating a solution to the movie's conflict and not just otherwise following Hank's orders as a passenger.

  10. I like how they combined a training montage with the ant lessons and the heist planning scenes. Efficient use of time and it breaks up each segment while still maintaining the flow. Also, who knew there were that many types of ants?

  11. I love the Falcon. So neat that he got a cameo here after getting sent home early in Age of Ultron. It also makes sense that his goggles are designed to detect small things moving at a distance, so they're a good match. I have to ask, though, what kind of security sensors trip at an ant landing on the roof?

  12. You know, I thought it was a joke that Luis was the only person to ever knock out Peachy, but he really does one-shot everybody he swings at.

  13. The final fight in Cassie's room was a lot of fun. At first. The toy setting really played to the scale of the combatants. It got a little old after a while, though, with Cross just shooting a bunch of lasers and Scott just doing a bunch of flips to avoid them. It's hard for me to remember how obvious the breadcrumbs were leading up to Scott's decision to go microscopic. On re-watch, I feel like they could've been massaged a bit more to lean into hinting how that's what happened to Hope's mom, but I don't remember if it was as glaring a Chekhov's Gun on initial viewings. Still a fun bit visually, a horrific ending for Cross, and a good lead in to the next movie.
I like this movie a lot. Partly because I'm already an Ant-Man fan, but also because they did such a good job of realizing the shrinking effects and made a movie that played to its strengths. This isn't a save the world from a skybeam movie, it's a heist with some personal stakes for the main character(s) who just wants to reconnect with (their) daughter(s). I think they could've made Darren a *little* more unhinged just to give him some character and I would've liked to have seen Hope be less good at everything, but otherwise this movie's pretty top notch.
 
AceofKnaves said:
For what it’s worth, Tony’s specifically-stated reasons for wanting/creating the Iron Legion and Ultron are where I went from “this guy’s a bullying dick” to “oh wow he’s a fascist, yikes and yuck”.
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Intentional or otherwise, I always felt like Tony's journey was great for showing how an otherwise well-meaning person can become a fascist authoritarian - often without even realizing that's what's happened to them. Tony started as an arms manufacturer that literally didn't care about any of this shit. Then he seemed to become pretty hardcore antifascist. But all it took was his sense of security being shattered and a slight mental break for him to go full-blown 'let's just control the planet to keep everyone safe.' And that really IS all it takes.
 
I'll defend Tony here in that he did see that huge armada prepared to come through the wormhole during the Battle of NY, and had that vision of everyone dead in AoU and was well aware of what could happen. And he saw Hammer try to build drones for the US military in IM2, and he saw how having the "House Party" protocol was somewhat successful in IM3, and may also have been thinking if I don't do this, who will - kind of at the heart of arms escalation from Armor Wars. So I didn't see it as him wanting to take control, but feeling he needed the option to take control be able to protect against a threat that seemed insurmountable. And it should be noted that threat won and the good guys lost during Thanos first foray to Earth. There is a fine line between having a strong defense/security and overstepping once the power of that strong defense is in hand...I am not sure we ever saw Tony go over that line.
 
“I serve at the pleasure of myself” was the “oop he is over the line” moment for me. He *might* have been well-meaning at one point (or at least wanted to see himself as well-meaning), but the dude is a narcissist and while he sometimes acknowledged that, he never treated it, and it continued to get worse.

I think a lot of the “fine line“ is a Rorschach test for whether one is willing to accept fascism from a person (admittedly fictional in this case) that one finds “cool” (and “cool” in this case is its own Rorschach test, which involves being willing to overlook some of the shockingly awful shit that comes out of Stark’s mouth).

I hate to make comparisons to modern politics, but I don’t see how that can be avoided.
 
fac said:
I'll defend Tony here in that he did see that huge armada prepared to come through the wormhole during the Battle of NY, and had that vision of everyone dead in AoU and was well aware of what could happen.
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Oh definitely. The problem is when you start driving towards authoritarianism as a solution. Even today we can look around at a potentially very dangerous, hostile world and 50% of us are capable of saying 'the answer isn't unfettered power for a military force.'


fac said:
So I didn't see it as him wanting to take control, but feeling he needed the option to take control be able to protect against a threat that seemed insurmountable.
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Which is literally the tag-line for authoritarian regimes. "It's for your safety that I am in complete control."


fac said:
And it should be noted that threat won and the good guys lost during Thanos first foray to Earth. There is a fine line between having a strong defense/security and overstepping once the power of that strong defense is in hand...I am not sure we ever saw Tony go over that line.
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But in the end, they won with teamwork and self-sacrifice in service of others, rather than through sheer force of arms and a completely controlled, militarily walled off population. I actually think Disney/Marvel could have done a way better job with Tony's atonement here, in showing that he recognized what he wanted to do wasn't just wrong, but was bordering on evil. They sort've dance around it a bit, but that's it.
 
I don't see at all how Tony was approaching fascism/authoritarianism. He was trying to make auto-Avengers. I mean, you have to accept a world where there's a privatized cadre of super-powered people policing the world, but that's your buy in when watching super-hero shows.

In the context of the movie, though, he's just trying to make the Avengers infinitely bigger so they can handle the next invasion fleet. There's no expected or even implied impact on people's lives. Bruce even points out that, with Ultron, the only ones threatening the people of Earth would be the people of Earth. As pitched by Tony, it was an entirely outward facing force.
 
Fletch said:
I don't see at all how Tony was approaching fascism/authoritarianism. He was trying to make auto-Avengers. I mean, you have to accept a world where there's a privatized cadre of super-powered people policing the world, but that's your buy in when watching super-hero shows.
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Except a single man doesn't have full automated control over the cadre of super-powered people. We literally got a superhero civil war over them disagreeing about how to do things. Tony couldn't just point Thor at someone he disagrees with and say 'kill.' That's what makes it authoritarian; when he actually can do that. Tony's entire idea, boiled down, was near infinite power answerable only to one person. That's the definition of authoritarian.


Fletch said:
In the context of the movie, though, he's just trying to make the Avengers infinitely bigger so they can handle the next invasion fleet.
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Except he wasn't trying to make the Avengers bigger - because the Avengers are, by their very nature, individuals capable of making moral judgements. Tony was making an automated army big enough to defend an entire planet from any threat.
To be clear, I'm not saying Tony was a villain and was doing this because he just wanted power for himself. But that would have been the -result- of what he was doing, had it worked.


Fletch said:
As pitched by Tony, it was an entirely outward facing force.
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As an American, would you be comfortable with any man having mind-control-level complete authority over a military force that can destroy all the military of the rest of the world combined at the same time as long as he said he pinky-promised to only use it on outside threats? Just as a thought experiment.
"Trust me, I'll protect you from all outside threats" pretty quickly becomes "I'll make sure to protect you from criminals and dangerous people at home" pretty quickly becomes "I'll protect you even from yourself."

I mean, it's not all that different from why we got Civil War; Cap and crew didn't want even a single government to have Avengers-level power at their disposal because it breeds authoritarianism. Tony wanted something even more powerful concentrated under the authority of just a single person.
 
Damien said:
As an American, would you be comfortable with any man having mind-control-level complete authority over a military force that can destroy all the military of the rest of the world combined at the same time as long as he said he pinky-promised to only use it on outside threats? Just as a thought experiment.
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That's exactly the assumption you have to make if you're going to watch a super-hero movie. The Avengers themselves are ungoverned, internationally-operating, high-powered interventionalists. The argument in Civil War was all about who gets to pick their targets, not that they were taking over the world.

I think you're projecting too many hypotheticals ahead. Sure, with an unstoppable robot army, Tony could take over a country and impose his will on the people, but that's not part of this plan. Just as easily say Thor loves Midgard so much that he wants to protect it in the only way he knows how, by setting himself up as the immortal monarch of the planet.

I just think that, as flawed as Tony's plan is to put an alien AI in charge of a fleet of super weapons, he's not walking the line of fascism any more than any other comic book superhero is.
 
I think a lot of this boils down to whether he *means* to be a fascist or not, not whether he *is* one.
[he is]

I think we are coming up against a philosophy that wants to see superhero stories as power fantasies vs a philosophy that wants to see superhero stories as altruism fantasies.

I’m decidedly in the latter category.
 
AceofKnaves said:
I think we are coming up against a philosophy that wants to see superhero stories as power fantasies vs a philosophy that wants to see superhero stories as altruism fantasies.
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I can't say I agree with your categories, but this does seem like an agree to disagree kind of thing. I also prefer a "might for right" story, but just don't see anything in Tony's behavior that speaks of fascism beyond what you'd get from any other superhero story. I reject that something that could some day become fascist means that that person is on a path to becoming a fascist.
 
Fletch said:
"might for right"
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Philosophical difference here as well.

I’m a “right AGAINST might” guy, not “might FOR right”.

I’d contend MCU-Tony Stark is a perfect example of “power inevitably corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Dante described those in Hell as having “lost the good of intellect”. That’s movie-Stark to a “t”. He loses more and more of the “good” of his great intellect (from a moral/ethical standpoint) until all he’s left with is swaggering, genocidal “power” moves. Even his final line is self-aggrandizement.
 
I think just because authoritarian regimes build extensive military power to control people and to get what they want, doesn't mean that having extensive military power makes one authoritarian by default - a person can always chose not to use it that way. The mere idea, or existence of, the Iron Legion may have potential to be either good or bad. I don't think Tony would have built that system just to have that potential power for himself without that triggering events, so I don't see him as a being corrupted as much as not knowing what to do in the face of such a unique threat. Accuse him of hubris, sure, but I think to say he would inevitably gone the authoritarian route is a stretch.

Also, most authoritarian and fascist regimes create, exaggerate and fear monger threats of questionable and/or non-existent reality. Not the case here, because in this fictional scenario, Tony actually saw (and experienced) an existential threat to the Earth, beyond the likely capacity of the Avengers or anyone to defend against it, and was devising a plan that could potentially be used to protect against said threat.

I don't actually see how his arc - where he went from an arms manufacturer who didn't seem to care too much about where the weapons were being used (in that he never bothered to check it out, given it happened under his nose), to mocking/dismissing Steve for his willingness of self-sacrifice (in part because Tony knew he wouldn't instinctively jump on a grenade), to someone who focused on building what was meant to be a purely defensive system and who both in NYC and later with the final snap proved he could put others ahead of himself - is anything but some significant moral growth, not the other way around.
 
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