The hypothesis falls apart when the author ties the real world problems of poverty, injustice and ecological disasters to the superheroes negligence.
The premises of the movies are that they are grounded in the real world. As such if superheroes transformed the world it would no longer be a recognizable setting for movie audiences.
2 hours of showing Iron Man digging wells in Africa isn’t entertaining.
The ability of an individual, even if superpowered, to change society is extremely limited. We have the example of Bill Gates having spent decades and tens of billions just to irradicate a single disease. What is Captain America going to do to control health care costs? Beat cancer cells in a petri dish?
2 hours of showing Iron Man digging wells in Africa isn’t entertaining.
It’s basically like that recurring criticism of Batman “Why doesn’t he just use his money to make the world a better place instead of putting on a costume and beating up poor people.”
The answer, of course, being that he does both, but the former doesn’t really make for fun storyline by itself, so it’s always a side-plot or passing reference instead of being the main story beat.
Nah, everyone making the reference has never consumed any media involving the character, and say as much repeatedly.
But they still make the criticism, because their favorite content creator made a longwinded video about it that was full of supposition and assumption (or flat out making shit up for the views).
Because if someone makes a 20 minute youtube video about it, it must be true.
Grounded in the real world really stretches the trope when you consider there to be countless planets of hyper advanced beings and demi gods.
It’s always seemed strange to me that earth never made any sort of meaningfull technological progress despite having access to a galaxy full of new tech. The only progress we see is that the ~~ elites~~ heroes equipment is getting more fancy with each movie.
Secondly why should a more technological advanced setting be unrecognizable to the viewer? Especially if the progress stretches over as many movies as the MCU contains?
No one is asking for painstaking detail. James Bond defeating a guy who tries to privatize the water supply of a whole country was overall a decent movie IMO, only implying the problem for everyday people that arose from evil guys plan. It’s all about the storytelling: Avengers find cool new tech that helps solve some earthly problem. Some people stand to lose a lot of money (think pharma industry becoming obsolete or similar) and plot against it. Avengers snuff out the plot, defeat evil mastermind and implement technology. Progress!
Maybe there are certain problems that can’t be solved by punching things? Like for example finding a way to timetravel in order to collect the infinity stones, which Toni Stark seems to be able to do while sipping his afternoon coffee. Individual impact has never been a problem in the MCU. After all we are talking about a superhero movie. And what does Captain America do while Toni Stark eradicates Cancer? Deal with the backlash (see 2.).
Also, going back to your first remark: Superheroes dealing with poverty and injustice is the whole subplot of Black Panther.
It’s always seemed strange to me that earth never made any sort of meaningfull technological progress despite having access to a galaxy full of new tech.
This actually seemed reasonable to me - if alien tech is anything like ours, we lack the parts to make the parts to make the parts to make the tech, so we can’t mass produce any of it yet. And we’re a bit of a backwater - what resources we do have of galactic interest (vibranium, maybe?) isn’t for sale. So we make do with what scraps do find their way to earth.
Sure, jumping multiple levels on the technology tree is not easy, but a real world analog would be China, which has turned from a “backwater” to one of the biggest competitors.
Their point is, that we can’t make super awesome tech X because it requires awesome tech Y, and we can’t make Y because it requires cool tech Z.
My counterpoint to that is that yes, we may not have the technology, YET. But knowing it exists, we can acquire it a lot faster, than having to invent it ourselves. For example, China hasn’t started by building world leading electric vehicles, either. They started out as a cheap manufacturer of simple items and gradually accumulated more expertise in more and more advanced fields.
In case you are talking about raw materials? Let’s give Toni Stark a bit more sophisticated equipment than a stack of books to balance his particle accelerator on and I bet you he can fix that problem too.
Some people stand to lose a lot of money (think pharma industry becoming obsolete or similar) and plot against it. Avengers snuff out the plot, defeat evil mastermind
That was the plot of Ironman. Stark wanted to end weapons development. Stain stood to loose money.
And nothing really changed. Yeah, Stark Industries doesn’t produce weapons anymore. But as we see in Iron Man 2 others are happily trying to fill the gap.
Secondly why should a more technological advanced setting be unrecognizable to the viewer
An Ironman cartoon addressed it a little by having Stark install his reactors everywhere for free clean energy.
But really it’s because people go to a Marvel movie to see their comic books as live action, not watch another Star Trek movie.
Because that’s the result of actual God level superhero intervention. Full Luxury Gay Space Communism. There’s nothing for a friendly neighborhood Spiderman to do.
*
![Marvel [Tyler Hendrix]](https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/2c9c1796-73ea-4ae0-8325-0809abede939.webp){kind=link}
The hypothesis falls apart when the author ties the real world problems of poverty, injustice and ecological disasters to the superheroes negligence.
The premises of the movies are that they are grounded in the real world. As such if superheroes transformed the world it would no longer be a recognizable setting for movie audiences.
2 hours of showing Iron Man digging wells in Africa isn’t entertaining.
The ability of an individual, even if superpowered, to change society is extremely limited. We have the example of Bill Gates having spent decades and tens of billions just to irradicate a single disease. What is Captain America going to do to control health care costs? Beat cancer cells in a petri dish?
It’s basically like that recurring criticism of Batman “Why doesn’t he just use his money to make the world a better place instead of putting on a costume and beating up poor people.”
The answer, of course, being that he does both, but the former doesn’t really make for fun storyline by itself, so it’s always a side-plot or passing reference instead of being the main story beat.
And then everyone making the criticism ignores that passing reference.
Nah, everyone making the reference has never consumed any media involving the character, and say as much repeatedly.
But they still make the criticism, because their favorite content creator made a longwinded video about it that was full of supposition and assumption (or flat out making shit up for the views).
Because if someone makes a 20 minute youtube video about it, it must be true.
It’s always seemed strange to me that earth never made any sort of meaningfull technological progress despite having access to a galaxy full of new tech. The only progress we see is that the ~~ elites~~ heroes equipment is getting more fancy with each movie.
Secondly why should a more technological advanced setting be unrecognizable to the viewer? Especially if the progress stretches over as many movies as the MCU contains?
No one is asking for painstaking detail. James Bond defeating a guy who tries to privatize the water supply of a whole country was overall a decent movie IMO, only implying the problem for everyday people that arose from evil guys plan. It’s all about the storytelling: Avengers find cool new tech that helps solve some earthly problem. Some people stand to lose a lot of money (think pharma industry becoming obsolete or similar) and plot against it. Avengers snuff out the plot, defeat evil mastermind and implement technology. Progress!
Maybe there are certain problems that can’t be solved by punching things? Like for example finding a way to timetravel in order to collect the infinity stones, which Toni Stark seems to be able to do while sipping his afternoon coffee. Individual impact has never been a problem in the MCU. After all we are talking about a superhero movie. And what does Captain America do while Toni Stark eradicates Cancer? Deal with the backlash (see 2.).
Also, going back to your first remark: Superheroes dealing with poverty and injustice is the whole subplot of Black Panther.
This actually seemed reasonable to me - if alien tech is anything like ours, we lack the parts to make the parts to make the parts to make the tech, so we can’t mass produce any of it yet. And we’re a bit of a backwater - what resources we do have of galactic interest (vibranium, maybe?) isn’t for sale. So we make do with what scraps do find their way to earth.
Sure, jumping multiple levels on the technology tree is not easy, but a real world analog would be China, which has turned from a “backwater” to one of the biggest competitors.
… because they have access to the materials.
I feel like you just ignored the major factor in their statement because it conflicted with your point of view.
I am not sure why you think I skipped something.
Their point is, that we can’t make super awesome tech X because it requires awesome tech Y, and we can’t make Y because it requires cool tech Z.
My counterpoint to that is that yes, we may not have the technology, YET. But knowing it exists, we can acquire it a lot faster, than having to invent it ourselves. For example, China hasn’t started by building world leading electric vehicles, either. They started out as a cheap manufacturer of simple items and gradually accumulated more expertise in more and more advanced fields.
In case you are talking about raw materials? Let’s give Toni Stark a bit more sophisticated equipment than a stack of books to balance his particle accelerator on and I bet you he can fix that problem too.
That was the plot of Ironman. Stark wanted to end weapons development. Stain stood to loose money.
And nothing really changed. Yeah, Stark Industries doesn’t produce weapons anymore. But as we see in Iron Man 2 others are happily trying to fill the gap.
An Ironman cartoon addressed it a little by having Stark install his reactors everywhere for free clean energy.
But really it’s because people go to a Marvel movie to see their comic books as live action, not watch another Star Trek movie.
Because that’s the result of actual God level superhero intervention. Full Luxury Gay Space Communism. There’s nothing for a friendly neighborhood Spiderman to do. *
Yeah, except most of the Star Trek movies are more akin to the Marvel movies than they are the Star Trek shows.