Marvel Supers Aren't Really Heroes. Tony Stark Knows That and You Should, Too.

As my old blog from 2013 set forth, I have a problem with people being called heroes when they don't show proper regard for the collateral damages their actions cause. Marvel's Cinematic Universe understands this is an issue. Tony Stark says outright that he is not a hero. And parts of the continuing plotlines in the MCU deal with the issues which arise from supers causing damages and even death. I mean, that's really the entire premise of of the Accords trying to control the Avengers after the incidents in New York and Wachovia.

But, even though the issue is up front and center at times, it's not really dealt with in a way that makes me think of the core of the Marvel characters as being heroic. Maybe, that's because I'm a simple guy from simpler times or maybe that's just because Marvel used to try harder to be heroic, at least in my early exposure to it.

That exposure came from two primary sources. Comics, most particularly Spider-Man comics in the late seventies. And TSR's Marvel Super Heroes roleplaying game in the eighties. (Yes, I'm old enough to make casual references to things close to half a century ago.)

Now, I'll confess, that, being a student and a relatively under-powered super compared to some, Peter Parker is not exactly the troubled, brooding type, unless he is brooding about Gwen Stacey--you know, his long-time girlfriend the MCU seems to have forgotten entirely about. (I once heard that when Kirsten Dunst was brought in at the last minute to audition for the first Tobey Maguire movie, she had never read the comics, but there were a bunch of old ones in the waiting room outside the audition, so she quickly skimmed through them and had decided that she would kick ass as Gwen Stacey, only to find out she was auditioning to play MJ/Mary Jane.)

Spidey mostly swung around trussing up common criminals, saving kids from burning buildings, and battling assorted evil guys. Collateral damage was just not a big issue. Most of the bad guys either were turned over to the cops or disappeared so they could reappear in later issues, alive and well.

As for the TSR roleplaying game, it had two core features which set it apart from all other rpgs at the time. The first was its bizarre and confusing action table, which always left me trying to remember if Amazing was better or worse than Monstrous or Incredible or Unearthly--at least Shift X, Shift Y, and Shift Z were in alphabetical order.

The second, and more relevant to this discussion was Marvel's karma rules. Karma could be used to modify die rolls and, so, was a really handy thing to have a lot of if you wanted your PC to be successful at doing the heroic things they were supposed to do. And, your PC could gain karma points by doing useful, in character, things, like stopping crimes and rescuing people. Your PC could also gain karma by doing day-to-day things, like meeting personal commitments and giving to charity.

On the other hand, you could lose karma by doing bad things--unheroic things--like committing crimes, permitting crimes to occur, and destroying property. (And, yes, for failing to meet commitments, even a promise to get together with someone to watch a movie.) But, the Number 1 (with a bullet) way to lose karma--all of your karma--was for a PC (a Marvel Super Hero, after all) to kill someone or allow them to die. It didn't matter if it was an innocent bystander or the most villainous of villains out there. They die, your PC's karma goes to zero.

While occasionally frustrating (especially when you know the bad guy will simply escape and need to be caught again), the karma rule was critical to making the game feel like it had a true comic book vibe. You could make a tough decision and take the karma hit, but you would only do so for reasons which made sense in the Marvel universe the game was set in.

Sorry, but the MCU doesn't play by those rules. Even the most paladin-like, goody-two-shoes (a phrase which, I understand, derives from a 1765 children's story) Marvel Super, Captain America, does plenty of things which cause substantial destruction of property and likely plenty of death--not just of random Nazis and Hydra sleepers, but innocent civilians. Yes, I understand that makes the character more realistic and the moral dilemmas imposed upon the character more interesting, but it still undercuts classic "heroism." And, of course, the less moral and intentional characters, like Iron Man and Hulk and Black Widow, cause mass mayhem wherever they go.

Worse yet, the MCU has reached the point where the Avengers and their allies not only cause collateral damage, but they inflict death and injury on others in order to save themselves. For all of the vaunted statements in Infinity War about not trading lives, Wakandan warriors are killed by the droves in order to give Wanda more time in order to try to save Vision, despite Vision's reasonable and moral protests.

In short, the Marvel Supers may be amazing, incredible, and even Shift X-ian, and they may be necessary and even desirable to keep around, but they aren't heroes. And that's just a little sad.

My Review of WandaVision

Wanda, of course, is anything but heroic in WandaVision, but let's set aside that topic (and how it might feed into the future of the MCU) and instead deal with how WandaVision worked or didn't work imho as a series television event.

In short, it didn't work for me at all. I'd give it 2 out of 5 stars, and one of those stars is simply for the costume and set design.

While hazing has been abolished at most colleges, fraternities, scout troops, and secret societies, viewers of WandaVision were subjected to hours of pointless hazing during the series, most particularly during the first mind-numbingly tedious four episodes (supposedly four hours, but it seemed much longer). But even later episodes were filled with exposition and tedious explanations of things which had already occurred and weren't hard to figure out.

It's not that I have a short attention-span, it's that I don't like being asked to sit through the equivalent of two full-length movies of alleged spoofs of classic sitcoms (which were neither effective at being good sitcoms nor effective at being parodies of classic sitcoms) and their tedious credits and theme songs for no real purpose except for Marvel to prove they could make their fans do it. Everything that was conveyed in those episodes could have been conveyed much more quickly and much more entertainingly.

Worse yet, the series touches on one of the most interesting aspects of the MCU post-Endgame, the return of half of humanity (an enormously disruptive event, logistically and emotionally), and breezes past it in about five minutes. Why? I don't know. Not enough time to deal with something interesting?

Ten hours about characters I didn't care about, except Darcy and Jimmy. A waste of time, as far as I'm concerned.