fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2082 ]

[ SECRET POST #2082 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2082 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Fate/Zero]

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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

05. [SPOILERS for Journey Into Mystery/Everything Burns]

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06. [SPOILERS for Avengers]

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07. [SPOILERS for Sweeney Todd]

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08. [SPOILERS]

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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]

09. [WARNING for depression/suicide]

[Wilby Wonderful (2004)]

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10. [WARNING for abuse]

[True Blood]

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11. [WARNING for rape]

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12. [WARNING for suicide/self-harm]

[Alex Gaskarth/All Time Low]

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13. [WARNING for abuse]

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14. [WARNING for abuse/bullying]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #297.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ],.
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

But in what way should a superhero need a guy whose name they know dying to realize that close to a hundred civilians dying is something they need to stop at all costs, fuck Fury? I mean, I know that the Avengers aren't saints and they've got a pair of assassins in their midst, but this is a team that includes Captain "I Hate Bullies" Goddamned America and the movie even made Hitler analogues with the guy who's killing all these people.

I just wish the writers could have found a different way to the obligatory getting-over-their-differences resolution. Also, that still doesn't explain why Coulson was so confident that he could do to motivate 6 superheroes what 80 other equally innocent people could not. Left a bad taste in my mouth.

Because they HAD stopped it. They already caught Loki and were just trying to recover the tesseract before something else happened.

What exactly did you want them to do? Say "lol no, instead of using all this state-of-the-art advanced technology to find the tesseract, lets randomly do...something else?"

Maybe the writers could have not had Coulson say that and not had a character point out how many people Loki had murdered and then had the characters only truly feel emotional about it when that one guy died?

It's not about what I want "them", the characters, to do. They are not real. Writers control everything they do and every corner they're backed into is entirely made up. I thought it would have been more meaningful and done more service to the characters if written differently.

Except that's kind of realistic. If a hundred nameless people die, you'll willingly drop everything to try and track down the guy who murdered them and be pissed at him and do your best to make sure no one else gets hurt, but no one's gonna cry over them.

But...from this comment, I take it that you mean you didn't like the actual plot of the movie and wanted it to be written differently? That's a perfectly valid complaint, but it doesn't hinge on one incident.

No, not the entire plot. Only that aspect, which, due to how pivotal it was, would require some changes. I only would have liked the emotional upheaval that caused the whole story to come together not to have hinged on a single guy who met the same fate as a bunch of other people earlier in the movie. And then not have that guy acknowledge that in the story.

They wouldn't even have had to not have Coulson die or whatever, they could have just not established that so many people were killed and have it not come up later as sufficient reason to stop having an Angry Beavers slapfight about S.H.I.E.L.D. and be a team. It's the motivation coming from one and not the other -- of course you'd be more sad if a friend died, but if you're a superhero, it shouldn't matter when you have powers you have devoted to protecting people.

I understand what you mean, but I think that would kind of destroy the whole point of the movie. The Avengers' "fatal flaw", so to speak, was that their friction briefly outweighed their heroism (and not without aggravation from Loki's scepter, btw) and they really, really paid for that. It's a very classic Divided We Fall/Apple Of Discord trope that's as old as time and very, very, very much rooted in real life. But they're human, they make mistakes and aren't always perfect. And after failing so horribly, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and resolved to do it right this time.

And I think you keep assuming they wouldn't have teamed up if Coulson hadn't died, which I think it completely untrue. They would have teamed up with or without Coulson's death -- the attack on the Helicarrier was definitely enough to force them to work together, but that alone had no emotional dimension whatsoever and their teamwork would've been functional, not awesome and cheer-worthy and emotional. It would have no soul. Can you imagine them having an epic badass heroic team-up moment because someone said "remember! 80 people (who the audience never saw) died!"? The audience would never have given a single fuck, and the characters wouldn't have had any strong emotions about it either. Just dutiful dullness.

Also, I think this movie is what made them into real superheroes. It's not like they all had years of experience fighting on a superhero team with other superheroes before this movie, so I would've been unconvinced if they had been all "teamwork! duty! Yay!"

You make good points. I still find the dichotomy between bringing up how many people died and the Coulson thing to be odd, but I think that could have been averted by having one and not the other. That is probably because Joss Whedon breaks out in hives if he doesn't have a joke every so often and dead people just ended up being a casualty.

I'm still ticked about that line though.

*shrugs* I guess different people notice certain things more sharply and immediately than other people?

Like, I thought Maria Hill was an awesome badass, but that's probably because I'm a big How I Met Your Mother fan and was therefore noticing her a lot more than most viewers, who thought she was boring.

Or perceive different things entirely!

I think it did pretty decent service by the characters.

The running theory is "Coulson's death galvanized EVERYONE!" But what really happened is Coulson's death fixed Tony.

Tony was the cog that wasn't fitting into place, the guy who constantly piped up with his (legitimate) trust issues, his authority issues, etc. He played superhero, but he never wanted to be a soldier--part of a group of people, having to listen, take directions, teamwork, yay. And because Tony was as smart as he was, his being the constant voice of dissent was reeeeeaaally getting in the way of teamwork.

Coulson died.

Tony's really got this thing about average people giving up their lives to give other folks a chance at living. It kind of hits a nerve for him.

He had his little freak-out moment after that, but he fell in line.

One could use the Thor/Cap/Tony fight in the woods as a good demonstrate of pre-Coulson Avenger attitudes, as compared to what came later.

You know, on another note, I would have liked them to have the characters reflect on how that fight was going. They had to have them fight because LOL WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT CHUN LI OR GOKU and whatnot, but how about having Thor surprised that a little guy in a tin can is presenting a challenge or something. We never really did get to see who is THE STRONGEST AVENGER WHO WOULD WIN IN A FIGHT because they just kept getting up and hitting each other (obviously hulk is the strongest but i mean)

...I swear I liked this movie, that's why I criticize it so much.

I have two kinds of movie criticism. Type one is where I absolutely loathe a film's lack of internal logic and want to pull it to pieces so I can stop on the ashes. Type two is where I love it so much that I analyze it to death and beyond and see all its tiny flaws after I've put it under the microscope to analyze it further.

Exactly. It's like, I watched it and went HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME WOW I STILL CAN'T SEE OUT OF MY RIGHT EYE BOOOMMGOGMFFMFM!! Then, over time, I saw problems, but then I loved it more.

But, Fury was lying to them. Tony's problem was basically with Fury and his lies and with Steve because those two would naturally butt heads. They're so different. He and Thor didn't have an issue after the fight in the woods. He got along great with Bruce. I didn't see Tony as being the only one keeping them from gelling as a team. Fury and SHIELD were the ones lying to all of them.

Tony was being difficult, no question. But, he was not their only problem.

Fury was lying to them. Fury will continue to lie to them. Fury is a lying liar who lies. And his posing, threats, and fibs were all done for the express purpose of saving the world. Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn't.

Tony has a specific problem with Fury and his lies. Tony has a general problem with people telling him what to do, which makes him pretty useless in a team setting if he isn't the leader (and even then, might not be so good at it). Tony and Steve more than any of the others kept them from gelling as a team, but it's pretty much mostly on Tony. Steve is a soldier, he knows how to work in a unit, he just expect that unit to be comprised of other soldiers. Thor is a soldier. Nat and Clint are soldiers. Bruce is the guy who will stand back until he absolutely can't. And Tony...Tony will fight, pick, derail, bicker, and basically start problems.

SHIELD's lies weren't really the problem in this movie. The exacerbated other problems, namely, trust, but SHIELD itself isn't the biggest problem in teamwork. Next movie, when more of Fury's lies get exposed there will probably be a huge rift between the Avengers and SHIELD. For now...it's a background problem. And it's still one that the Avengers had to get over. With Coulson's death, as with any big, showy tragedy, the point was made that yes, there's a lot of shady crap going down, no one likes each other much, but hey, there's a distraction, let's put our issues with each other (Avengers and SHIELD) aside and deal with the biggest problem first.

If anything, doesn't that just make Coulson's death more of a turning point in the story? It's not just the Avengers working together, but also putting aside their distrust of SHIELD long enough to take on Loki.

I'm getting this feeling that it still comes to you wanting the good guys to be Very Good, instead of people trying their best who are still kind of crap people.

I'm getting this feeling that it still comes to you wanting the good guys to be Very Good, instead of people trying their best who are still kind of crap people.

I don't think anyone wants that.

Er, I'm gonna have to respectfully disagree. You've got Tony's role down pat, but everyone was not fitting into place, not just Tony.

Thor was obsessing over Loki and standing around moodily not talking to anyone, dismissing their arguments as "petty". Natasha not only also not talking to anyone, but was also actively helping Fury manipulate them, especially Bruce, for SHIELD's purposes. Steve was alternating between bossing people around and blindly trusting Fury because he was a fish out of water and felt completely lost in the future. Tony was...exactly what you said. Bruce was clashing with Fury and Natasha over the Hulk and adamantly refusing to do anything beyond his scientific consulting. They all pretty much sucked, really badly, and I loved how much they all sucked and how there was a giant fucking vacuum where the Only Sane Man should have been. Because omg. They suuuuuuucked. Almost gleefully so.

But Coulson's death galvanized both Tony and Steve. Pretty equally, I think. The moment where Steve looks at the cards, you can tell that he was thinking that he had betrayed his old ideals and let a fellow soldier down, and you can tell he's pretty much resolving to lead again like he did in the '40s, like the man whose picture was on the cards. And Tony...exactly what you said.

And Loki's The Reason You Suck Speech galvanized Natasha, as she explicitly admitted to Clint ("you're a spy, not a soldier"). Being de-brainwashed galvanized Clint (No duh. Eye-stabbing = massive underreaction.). Loki killing Coulson right in front of him while Coulson was trying to stop Loki from killing him (not Coulson's death per se -- but the fact that Loki showed himself to be so cruel and far gone and that Coulson trying to save him) galvanized Thor. One can assume that a combination of personal morality and Tony's encouragement galvanized Bruce (although according to the deleted scene, Old Security Guard had a big role in getting Bruce to go, which is why I was glad that scene was cut -- too disconnected from the rest of the movie).

And I'm sure Coulson also had some impact on Natasha and (if Natasha even told him) Clint, seeing as he was their boss.

But you're right that they definitely did not just all just simultaneously pull a Cobie Smulders and go "omg Coulson you will be avennnnnged!" and decide to just work together for his sake. It was far more complex and organic than that.

You're right. I was kind of going fast-and-dirty with my focus on Tony and that really loses all the nuance of how the death worked story-wise. Honestly, that's what keeps it from feeling like a cheap fridging or something--the fact that it worked on multiple levels.

I just think Tony was the one who knew Coulson most (if not best) out of the four main guys, so he probably took the loss itself more personally, while for, say, Cap, it was symbolic. And your point about Thor is my favorite--the loss of so bold a warrior as the Son of Coul was indeed a grievous one, but it's actually the moment of seeing his brother murder a friend of his, instead of just hearing about Loki Doing Bad Things.

Organic's a good word for it.

YES YES I loved how different the reactions were for different people. There was no unrealistic groupthink going on where everyone's emotions get lumped together and get appropriated by one character's normative statement -- each person's reaction was different depending on their character.

Like, Bruce had no reaction, since he definitely couldn't have found out what happened until after the battle, and he didn't know Coulson at all and might not even remember who he was. Whereas Tony's reaction was always gonna be the most emotive and hysterical, partly because he knew Coulson longer and better than all the non-SHIELD members, but partly because he's just a guy. He's not a spy or a soldier or a warrior, he's never trained for or lived or worked in an environment that taught him how to deal with people he knew getting killed. Which led to that fantastic exchange where he and Steve have completely different yet absolutely equally valid understandings of what losing a soldier means and you can almost see their minds operating on totally unconnected planes of thought.

Also I think RDJ killed me a little with his face in that scene :( Still haven't recovered, tbqh. Can't even look at the gifsets, which makes me feel all kinds of silly but damn, this movie. It just begs for emotional investment.

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[ SECRET POST #2082 ]

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