The Official "Marvel" Thread (Movies,Comics etc)

[drowland]

3 hours ago, Momma There Goes That Man said:

 

I wish they had ended the movie on the first post credits scene. That was important and part of the message of the movie and should have been part of the full movie, not buried under 5 minutes of credits. That was probably my biggest flaw with the movie 

 

It was originally supposed to be the end but Coogler said he thought the UN scene and the final scene in Oakland with T’Challa and Shuri was just repeating the same message.  And it was kinda fitting that the movie started and ended in the same location.  That’s why he moved the UN one the mid-credits.  I thought it would have been cool if some other faces had been the audience.

[RonArtest15]

Saw BP last night.  I thought the movie itself was OK, but it's overall importance in the landscape of minority filmmaking is going to be groundbreaking.  It was a distant 3rd for me (in raking Coogler's films) behind Creed and Fruitvale Station.  The acting was meh, and the CGI towards the end was laughable, however, what really drew my attention was the detail placed on the costumes.  Absolutely stunning.  Anyways, I'm 100000% happy to have supported this film.

[Fresh8686]

I was surprised how much BP, affected me. I teared up to see a socially and technologically advanced African society. I didn't know how much it hurt, that that wasn't a reality, and how I've been avoiding taking on the pain and responsibility for my mother's homeland and the state it's in. We can't turn our back on our brothers and sisters across the world.

I loved the themes of the movie, and how the ones you leave behind, are mistakes that eventually come home to roost. We are all one people, and the purpose of a sanctuary isn't to hide from the world and build walls to keep people out, but to provide a place from which to build a bridge, so others can have a home and sanctuary as well.

The end result is to have the whole world become a sanctuary, rather than turn it into a war-zone.

 

[Going Commando]

19 hours ago, RonArtest15 said:

Saw BP last night.  I thought the movie itself was OK, but it's overall importance in the landscape of minority filmmaking is going to be groundbreaking.  It was a distant 3rd for me (in raking Coogler's films) behind Creed and Fruitvale Station.  The acting was meh, and the CGI towards the end was laughable, however, what really drew my attention was the detail placed on the costumes.  Absolutely stunning.  Anyways, I'm 100000% happy to have supported this film.

 

Check out this interview with the costume designer: https://www.npr.org/2018/02/16/586513016/black-panther-costume-designer-draws-on-the-sacred-geometry-of-africa

 

She talks about the various sources of African art and culture that she used in the design elements.

[Going Commando]

16 hours ago, Fresh8686 said:

I teared up to see a socially and technologically advanced African society.

 

Don't let the Euro-centric view of the world that is dominant in this country fool you into believing that African civilizations aren't cosmopolitan and advanced just because they didn't industrialize as quickly as the European great powers.  For most of the history of human civilization, African and Southwest Asian civilizations were the most advanced on the planet.  And for most of human history, Europe was a parochial backwater.  After the fall of Rome, this was certainly true up until the point that Europeans began exploring and settling the Americas.

 

It was contact with Africa and the Americas that allowed European societies to explode into industrialization.  Pre-Columbian Europe was relatively poor, had small populations, had spent centuries in ruinous religious conflicts, had poor nutrition, had poor growing climates relative to other African and Asian societies, and had their access to the riches of the East cut off by the fall of Constantinople.

 

That's the reason they turned West.  They were shut out of the richest and most cosmopolitan markets of the Old World by the geopolitical supremacy and centrality of the Islamic world.

 

Contact with sub-Saharan Africa and India after the onset of the Age of Discovery opened up tremendous wealth for the Iberians, and subsequently the rest of Europe.  It gave them access to super valuable tropical crops like cacao, coffee, rice, chiles, citrus, sugarcane, tea, etc. that helped to improve their nutrition and make them rich.  It also gave them access to the mineral wealth of the continent.  But just as important, it gave them access to export markets that had huge populations--numbers that dwarfed European societies.

 

European populations exploded because of gaining access to crops and lands with better nutritional value and agricultural efficiency.  And this population increase is what enabled their rapid development and eventual geopolitical dominance.

 

Africans have very old and complex multi-ethnic cultures.  We're just largely ignorant of them here in the United States.  And this despite the fact they're a pillar of our own development.  Africans Americans lost so much of their cultural, institutional, and personal historical memory due to the nature of their immigration to the Americas as slaves, and the subsequent subjugation they faced in a society that invented militant White Supremacy.  We're poorer for that.  Just like we're poorer for the utter destruction of Native American peoples and cultures.  What survived was fragmented.  And yet it's amazing how big and broad the African influence in American culture is.  It's a testament to the vigor of their cultures.

 

Anyway, I'm proud of the way Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created and portrayed Wakanda and the Black Panther in those early Fantastic Four comics.  It took real vision to see the value and potential of African civilizations in the early 60's.  I love that they envisioned a society that hadn't been stunted by the one-sided exchange of European Colonization.  I think it's really cool for black people to have a great comic that reflects and portrays the potential of their ancestral lands in the way that white Americans of European descent have taken for granted with our own.  I wouldn't get hung up on the fact that there is no real Wakanda.  There is no real Baxter Building.  Or Stark Tower.  And Norway definitely doesn't look like Asgard.

[Fresh8686]

@stevemcqueen1

 

awesome post, thanks for the re-frame and expanded context. I appreciate it.

[justice98]

T'Challa showing a lot of mercy on these villains. He has a fondness for sitting and having polite chit chat with folks after he bests them. If he'd actually captured Winter Soldier in Civil War, he'd probably have been like "Let's talk about all this."

[Bozo the kKklown]

The Egyptians taught the Greeks.

 

Great post @stevemcqueen1, the world has been Europeanized to forget all of that. 

 

Latin America, Africa, and Asia had very advanced societies that are still being stripped away.

 

edit: And the Indigenous people of this continent.

Edited February 21, 2018 by BenningRoadSkin

[Going Commando]

2 minutes ago, BenningRoadSkin said:

The Egyptians taught the Greeks.

 

Great post @stevemcqueen1, the world has been Europeanized to forget all of that. 

 

Latin America, Africa, and Asia had very advanced societies that are still being stripped away.

 

Very true.  As did the African societies to the South of Egypt that the Egyptians had contact with.  As did the Mesopotamians and Anatolians and peoples of the Iranian plains like the Persians and Medes and Bactrians.  And ultimately the people of the Indus river valleys.

 

Europeans have been a part of a cultural and population exchange with the peoples of Africa and Asia that was of great benefit to them since antiquity.  America has stamped out recognition of this heritage.  Probably because of how central White Supremacy became to our society, and how it has persisted.  And I think the Christian world is still very hostile to the Islamic world (and pre-Islamic middle East and Africa), and that we remain profoundly ignorant of its history.

[Renegade7]

1 hour ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

And I think the Christian world is still very hostile to the Islamic world

Don't mean to derail the thread, but are you comparing this to Christian-Islamic relations during the Crusades? Francis was in Egypt just last year.  Pretty much everything else you said I agree with, but curious what you meant by this.

[Going Commando]

19 hours ago, Renegade7 said:

Don't mean to derail the thread, but are you comparing this to Christian-Islamic relations during the Crusades? Francis was in Egypt just last year.  Pretty much everything else you said I agree with, but curious what you meant by this.

 

It's not like the Middle Ages, but Christianity and Islam are the world's two great expansionist faiths.  They've been competing for souls and turf since the 600s and they still are.  And Western Christian nations are still warring with Muslim nations

 

Francis is a Catholic multiculturalist liberal with socialist sympathies.  He represents the thinking of like 10% of Christians.  We're a liberal secular democracy and we're still very hostile to our own Muslim population, not to mention foreign Muslims.  And our Muslim population is mostly black Muslims who've been citizens for generations and recent immigrants who've obtained fairly high economic and educational status, not a desperate underclass prone to radicalization and fundamentalism.  I have no doubt that a significant portion of Christian conservatives in this country would opt for nuking the Middle East in the wake of terror attacks if they were in charge of pushing the button.  To them, the Muslim world is this threatening, unknowable, subhuman other, and war with them is our natural state.

[Going Commando]

I was thinking about Black Panther yesterday, and it seems to me that seeing a portrayal of a noble black comic book hero from a vibrant, idyllic African society is just as important for white children as black children.  Particularly in this climate where whites are emboldened to embrace white supremacy by the GoP.

 

This country does not value black people or view their potential equitably to whites.  Comic books/super hero movies are very influential on children.  A movie like Black Panther could be a great vehicle for cultural exposure to white children.  Who knows, maybe it will help a whole lot of young people value black lives more than their ****ing Trump-voting parents do.

[Renegade7]

9 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

 

I have no doubt that a significant portion of Christian conservatives in this country would opt for nuking the Middle East in the wake of terror attacks if they were in charge of pushing the button.  To them, the Muslim world is this threatening, unknowable, subhuman other, and war with them is our natural state.

It exists, but that's not enough to speak for most other Christians nor the secular direction of the country.  There are also Muslim Organizations in the south helping to rebuild some of the black churches that have been getting set on fire last couple years. Again, I'm the optimist here, but that's not just from what I'm reading, either.  You got your history right, might not agree 100% on your assessment of the present.

[Renegade7]

[Mr. Sinister]

I admit, I wasn't expecting white America to embrace this as much as they have.

[88Comrade2000]

Season 2 of Jessica Jones, drops Thurs: 3/8.  Season 2 of Luke Cage, drops on June 22.

 

Sweet Christmas! Marvel's Luke Cage season 2 premiere date and teaser trailer revealed

 

 

[BRAVEONAWARPATH]

[88Comrade2000]

Started watching Season 2 of Jessica Jones. Seen the first 3 episodes. It's slowly building up to something. Definitely different from Season 1. The slower pace may not be for some. 

Spoiler

What I've seen so far, it's further exploring Jessica's backstory.

 

.  

Edited March 8, 2018 by Rdskns2000

[Going Commando]

The character Trish is awful.  Jeez.  The show would be better without her.

[88Comrade2000]

6 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

The character Trish is awful.  Jeez.  The show would be better without her.

She is one of the weaker characters. Up to episode 7, should have it done by end of weekend.

[TK]

20 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

The character Trish is awful.  Jeez.  The show would be better without her.

 

13 hours ago, Rdskns2000 said:

She is one of the weaker characters. Up to episode 7, should have it done by end of weekend.

 

She's Patsy Walker who is aka Hellcat.

 

And holy **** they actually got the ****ing Whizzer on here.

[Going Commando]

On Episode 9.  This season kind of sucks.

[88Comrade2000]

2 hours ago, stevemcqueen1 said:

On Episode 9.  This season kind of sucks.

Finished watching Season 2.

 

Season 1 is better but I did like Season 2 for what it was.

 

Spoiler

Season 2 has no real villian whereas Season 1 had the excellent Killgrave.  I didn't really see the point for his cameo in Season 2 though.  The pacing was slower this season.  I liked the Journey that Jessica went on this season; especially after finding out what made her and finding out her mom was alive.  Trish was irritating this season.  Didn't care that she was the one who ended up killing Jessica's mom.  If there's a Season 3, it will be interesting to see where it goes.  They need to have a real villain again though.  While I liked Season 2, I can see why many won't.  I liked the exploration of the character of Jessica this season.  

 

[Going Commando]

The show goes full blown teen drama by episode 10.  This season was awful.  Trish and Malcolm are terrible characters, lifted from The OC, and their scenes are a slog to get through.

[Spaceman Spiff]

I actually really liked 2nd season of Jessica Jones.