war, children, it's just a shot away
Noah Syndergaard hit TWO home runs in last night's game against the Dodgers AND he pitched 8 innings and won the game. ♥THOR♥
The Mets' pitching staff is on a hot streak! From the same link above: "Since Saturday, Mets pitchers have gone 6-for-13 with three home runs and two doubles."
I mean, they still have problems but I love that these guys help themselves both at the plate and in the field, not just on the mound.
***
Okay, now that I've had a couple nights' decent sleep, I figured I would post my long post about Captain America: Civil War, even though it's mostly a bunch of links from smart people surrounded by my rambling about it (the links mostly go to my tumblr where I reblogged things, so I could find them again). Really, you'd be better served by reading their links than my ranting. *hands*
Anyway. CACW is an enjoyable summer blockbuster that does not stand up to much scrutiny, even if, like me, you are mostly in it for Steve and Bucky (is that enough to disclaim my bias here?) and also willing to accept the limitations and cognitive dissonance of the superhero genre and the ishy political subtext it often brings along with it.[1]
I mean, most of it is the writing, and the way the situation is contrived - things like the ability of the UN - THE UNITED NATIONS - being able to spring a surprise bunch of accords on anyone and pull together a special conference in a month's time is unbelievable to me even in a world of supersoldiers and Norse alien/gods etc. Even the idea that it was a closed-door negotiation (there's meta on this on tumblr, how it is analogous to those bills that get worked on/voted on while half of Congress is out of town and are stuffed with riders and pork here) - there was no back channel communication that Natasha would have heard about? I mean, you can argue that Tony was in on it from the beginning and he allows his teammates to be ambushed, but I don't know. I also don't understand how Tony - who seemingly has accepted Bruce into his inner circle of friends with Rhodey and Pepper - can work so closely with General Secretary Ross.
The fact that NOT ONE AVENGER said, "Hey let's get a lawyer in here" in also unbelievable[2], as is the idea that none of them have been doing ANY PR since the Battle of New York? Really? No publicized VA hospital visits for Steve or trips to pediatric wards in costume? No Sesame Street for Iron Man? I find that unbelievable as well, given how Tony and Pepper at least (and Steve!!!) should understand how to leverage celebrity into popular goodwill.
The movie also suffers from Age of Ultron in various ways - nobody really wants to acknowledge that Wanda is responsible for Johannesburg (it doesn't even get a mention in the montage of alleged Avenger carnage, and the montage was a little ridiculous to begin with, since NY and DC both happened UNDER SHIELD OVERSIGHT [whatever that's worth when SHIELD = HYDRA and also when the WSC nuked NYC, which also had to be stopped by the Avengers] so wtf is Ross on about?), and nobody really wants to acknowledge that Tony was responsible for Ultron, even though he mentions it blithely in passing, like the entire thing wasn't his fault and everyone else said TONY NO.
Plus, it tries to do a thing that AoU did, which is ignore previous individual movies. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to make Thunderbolt Ross Secretary of State? When he asked Steve where Thor and Bruce were, someone should have answered, "I thought it was your job to keep track of the Hulk." (And also, Thor must have some sort of diplomatic immunity as a prince of Asgard; either way, Thor and Bruce are both people, not weapons.) Were we just supposed to forget about that part of canon? I mean, I've never seen any of the Hulk movies but they certainly seemed to include the Norton one as canon for Avengers so the fact that now Ross has had a change of perspective isn't as comforting as maybe they want it to be, given that he's still referring to Thor and Bruce as "megaton warheads" instead of, you know, people (see also here).
And Steve's argument against signing the Accords (without negotiating) in the first place would have been much stronger if he'd said, "So this panel of UN analysts and risk assessors - would they drop a nuke on NYC if aliens invaded, the way the World Security Council did, despite the Avengers being able to salvage the situation without killing 8 million civilians? Is there a way to tell if the people chosen for the panel are HYDRA or AIM or Ten Rings prior to them building helicarriers targeting 3 million people for death at one time? Can we screen out the ones who want to murder the President (or other world leader) the way the Vice President did a couple of Christmases ago?" Like, without even taking into account real world arguments you could make[3], WITHIN THE MOVIES THEMSELVES THERE ARE ENOUGH REASONS TO NEVER TRUST "THE GOVERNMENT." ANY GOVERNMENT. I mean, WTF?
I get that the movie wanted Steve to come off as unreasonable/arrogant so it wasn't like the comics where Tony was clearly in the wrong (you can't register people just for being different [and round up those who choose not to reveal themselves]! I mean, you can, but if you do, you can't pretend you're the good guys while you do it), so he says shit like, "The safest hands are still our own" before he acts in a way that might be considered emotional by going on the run, but he only does that once it's clear that something hinky is going on. As far as he knows, Ross et al. brought in someone who triggered the Winter Soldier. How can he trust that that wasn't intentional? Given how Ross used the Hulk in the past, maybe he wanted a Winter Soldier in his arsenal too? And then they discover that it was Zemo and not the actual psychiatrist ordered in by...whoever was actually in charge there. It was kind of unclear. Was Ross in charge or was he reporting to someone higher up? We just don't know!
So I don't see it as personal/emotional so much as "what the fuck, are people trying to kill us again?" vigilance on Steve's part.
I mean, at first Steve's plan is to bring Bucky in. He accepts that Bucky will be imprisoned (and he hopes, tried[4]) and he doesn't fight that. He just wants Bucky to get due process and not be shot on sight. It's only when Bucky is triggered by Zemo and Steve questions him afterward that he realizes there's a larger threat and goes full-on vigilante. So I don't see how he's any more emotional than Tony "I created Ultron but didn't feel bad till Alfre Woodard yelled at me" Stark?
And Tony felt so guilty about dead (American) kids in Sokovia that he...recruited a 15yo boy? Is Peter an honorary Avenger now? He's not of age to sign a contract, so do the Accords not apply to him? Or will he just be in trouble at some later point? Or is Tony in loco parentis of him, which...yeah, no. Because Scott Lang is also not an Avenger, but he sure got tossed into the Raft with the others despite not being officially on the team. (Again, see here.)
I mean, I am obviously inherently biased in Steve's favor, but if you look at this movie too closely, 'both sides were reasonable' falls apart, because while oversight and accountability are highly desirable when dealing with enhanced individuals (and non-enhanced but highly trained individuals with a lot of fancy and lethal tech), nothing in the way Team Iron Man went about doing things supported their argument. As soon as Tony didn't like what Ross's decisions were, he acted unilaterally to join Steve and Bucky in Siberia. Does that mean he broke the Accords? Are they still in effect? I mean, Steve et al. are on the run because they didn't sign and so were vigilantes, not legal agents of the UN or whoever, and then because they broke out of prison; Natasha's in the wind because she let them go and thus broke the Accords despite signing them; but Tony just gets to go home and help Rhodey rehab? The consequences don't directly redound on him, but on Rhodey! (Don't even get me started on how he shoots Sam point blank when Sam was a pararescue and could have helped while they were waiting for emergency services.)
And I didn't even get into the WTF logistics of Zemo's plan. Like, he asks Karpov for the mission report from December 16, 1991 and to me, that means he knows what happened. I mean, I guess everybody knows that's when the Starks died, but the fact that Zemo is pursuing that lead, and the fact that Steve cops to knowing about it when Tony asks, means it had to have been included in the Hydra files! Because otherwise, I can't see why Steve would feel bad about not telling Tony. Like, it's strongly hinted at by Zola in CATWS but it seems to me that that's not enough for Steve to actually tell Tony - or feel bad about not telling him - you know? "Well, this computerized version of Zola implied that Hydra killed your dad and I'm extrapolating from that that they used the Winter Soldier to do it." I mean, if that's the case, then I wouldn't have told Tony either!
But if it was included in the file dump by Natasha, then in order for Zemo's endgame to work, I have to believe that TONY STARK didn't go over that data with a fine-tooth comb and find out for himself. Which. Really? But if it wasn't included, how did Zemo know? He wasn't Hydra himself, and he does say he spent a lot of time decoding the files. So if he didn't know, he certainly hinged a lot of his plan on a guess. Of course, if he did know, he hinges a lot of his plan on Tony not knowing, which also seems kind of foolish, though I guess you could make a good guess that Tony would react poorly with the guy who killed his parents standing right there.
I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore!
So yeah, I enjoyed the movie a lot, but it could have been so much better in terms of writing, which I could easily say about most movies, so I'm not knocking it, per se. But the way the MCU prioritizes Tony's stories over everyone else's - such that it warps the narrative (Avengers should have been about Thor's emotional journey, as the villain was his brother. AOU skates over Tony's culpability entirely, and now he's taking over Captain America's movies, too!) - irritates the hell out of me.
[1] (I feel like this could be its own post all by itself? But in brief, this is not Watchmen, and it's not aiming to be Watchmen, despite some superficial stabs at some deeper political themes. That is not the business Marvel/Disney is in, and if it were, it certainly wouldn't be with beloved and money-making characters that will continue to appear in stories ad infinitum; that is why you invent a whole bunch of expies who can kill innocents/die fighting each other/be effectively useless in a crisis/turn to supervillainy without an eventual face-turn etc. Should superhero movies be better than this? Maybe? But then I don't think they're really superhero movies? Deconstructing a genre is fine but not everything needs to be a deconstruction. Sometimes I just want to see a guy with a metal arm punch a guy in a metal suit. For a smart analysis from someone with a lot less willingness to let these things slide, see here.)
[2] (and the fact that Martin Freeman laughed at the idea of a lawyer/trial for Bucky was also a point against everything he and the other Ross stood for, though of course that is the actual closest to real world implementation of these sorts of prisons; the fact that Sam and Clint, who have no superpowers whatsoever, are locked up in the same sorts of cells as Wanda, who does, is also ridiculous. Otoh, lending credence to that "Zemo is the real Manchurian Candidate in this scenario" theory is the fact that he was locked up in a cell meant for the Winter Soldier and he was like, "Did I fail? Did I?" (though obviously breaking up the band worked). Like, why is that guy being kept in a cell meant for a supersoldier with a bionic arm?)
[3] See this link (hat tip to
minim_calibre) and also here.
[4] Bucky is not guilty of his crimes (apparently the writers said he was? I haven't seen a source of this though; I can't believe they believe that since T'Challa actually calls Bucky a victim in the movie! And maybe he just meant of Zemo, but I can't believe anyone who wrote either Winter Soldier or this movie would really believe that Bucky is responsible for crimes committed while he was brainwashed. He is very clearly shown not wanting to submit to it and he actively chooses to take himself off the board at the end while there is still a possibility it could be done to him again. So. If they did say that, I reject it entirely. The Russos seem to know what's up anyway.) though he could certainly still be found guilty in a trial, and then if Steve busted him out and went on the run, I'd say he was acting emotionally. I'd still root for him, though.
So. That was a lot that maybe didn't even say anything. idk.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/841321.html.
people have commented there.
The Mets' pitching staff is on a hot streak! From the same link above: "Since Saturday, Mets pitchers have gone 6-for-13 with three home runs and two doubles."
I mean, they still have problems but I love that these guys help themselves both at the plate and in the field, not just on the mound.
***
Okay, now that I've had a couple nights' decent sleep, I figured I would post my long post about Captain America: Civil War, even though it's mostly a bunch of links from smart people surrounded by my rambling about it (the links mostly go to my tumblr where I reblogged things, so I could find them again). Really, you'd be better served by reading their links than my ranting. *hands*
Anyway. CACW is an enjoyable summer blockbuster that does not stand up to much scrutiny, even if, like me, you are mostly in it for Steve and Bucky (is that enough to disclaim my bias here?) and also willing to accept the limitations and cognitive dissonance of the superhero genre and the ishy political subtext it often brings along with it.[1]
I mean, most of it is the writing, and the way the situation is contrived - things like the ability of the UN - THE UNITED NATIONS - being able to spring a surprise bunch of accords on anyone and pull together a special conference in a month's time is unbelievable to me even in a world of supersoldiers and Norse alien/gods etc. Even the idea that it was a closed-door negotiation (there's meta on this on tumblr, how it is analogous to those bills that get worked on/voted on while half of Congress is out of town and are stuffed with riders and pork here) - there was no back channel communication that Natasha would have heard about? I mean, you can argue that Tony was in on it from the beginning and he allows his teammates to be ambushed, but I don't know. I also don't understand how Tony - who seemingly has accepted Bruce into his inner circle of friends with Rhodey and Pepper - can work so closely with General Secretary Ross.
The fact that NOT ONE AVENGER said, "Hey let's get a lawyer in here" in also unbelievable[2], as is the idea that none of them have been doing ANY PR since the Battle of New York? Really? No publicized VA hospital visits for Steve or trips to pediatric wards in costume? No Sesame Street for Iron Man? I find that unbelievable as well, given how Tony and Pepper at least (and Steve!!!) should understand how to leverage celebrity into popular goodwill.
The movie also suffers from Age of Ultron in various ways - nobody really wants to acknowledge that Wanda is responsible for Johannesburg (it doesn't even get a mention in the montage of alleged Avenger carnage, and the montage was a little ridiculous to begin with, since NY and DC both happened UNDER SHIELD OVERSIGHT [whatever that's worth when SHIELD = HYDRA and also when the WSC nuked NYC, which also had to be stopped by the Avengers] so wtf is Ross on about?), and nobody really wants to acknowledge that Tony was responsible for Ultron, even though he mentions it blithely in passing, like the entire thing wasn't his fault and everyone else said TONY NO.
Plus, it tries to do a thing that AoU did, which is ignore previous individual movies. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to make Thunderbolt Ross Secretary of State? When he asked Steve where Thor and Bruce were, someone should have answered, "I thought it was your job to keep track of the Hulk." (And also, Thor must have some sort of diplomatic immunity as a prince of Asgard; either way, Thor and Bruce are both people, not weapons.) Were we just supposed to forget about that part of canon? I mean, I've never seen any of the Hulk movies but they certainly seemed to include the Norton one as canon for Avengers so the fact that now Ross has had a change of perspective isn't as comforting as maybe they want it to be, given that he's still referring to Thor and Bruce as "megaton warheads" instead of, you know, people (see also here).
And Steve's argument against signing the Accords (without negotiating) in the first place would have been much stronger if he'd said, "So this panel of UN analysts and risk assessors - would they drop a nuke on NYC if aliens invaded, the way the World Security Council did, despite the Avengers being able to salvage the situation without killing 8 million civilians? Is there a way to tell if the people chosen for the panel are HYDRA or AIM or Ten Rings prior to them building helicarriers targeting 3 million people for death at one time? Can we screen out the ones who want to murder the President (or other world leader) the way the Vice President did a couple of Christmases ago?" Like, without even taking into account real world arguments you could make[3], WITHIN THE MOVIES THEMSELVES THERE ARE ENOUGH REASONS TO NEVER TRUST "THE GOVERNMENT." ANY GOVERNMENT. I mean, WTF?
I get that the movie wanted Steve to come off as unreasonable/arrogant so it wasn't like the comics where Tony was clearly in the wrong (you can't register people just for being different [and round up those who choose not to reveal themselves]! I mean, you can, but if you do, you can't pretend you're the good guys while you do it), so he says shit like, "The safest hands are still our own" before he acts in a way that might be considered emotional by going on the run, but he only does that once it's clear that something hinky is going on. As far as he knows, Ross et al. brought in someone who triggered the Winter Soldier. How can he trust that that wasn't intentional? Given how Ross used the Hulk in the past, maybe he wanted a Winter Soldier in his arsenal too? And then they discover that it was Zemo and not the actual psychiatrist ordered in by...whoever was actually in charge there. It was kind of unclear. Was Ross in charge or was he reporting to someone higher up? We just don't know!
So I don't see it as personal/emotional so much as "what the fuck, are people trying to kill us again?" vigilance on Steve's part.
I mean, at first Steve's plan is to bring Bucky in. He accepts that Bucky will be imprisoned (and he hopes, tried[4]) and he doesn't fight that. He just wants Bucky to get due process and not be shot on sight. It's only when Bucky is triggered by Zemo and Steve questions him afterward that he realizes there's a larger threat and goes full-on vigilante. So I don't see how he's any more emotional than Tony "I created Ultron but didn't feel bad till Alfre Woodard yelled at me" Stark?
And Tony felt so guilty about dead (American) kids in Sokovia that he...recruited a 15yo boy? Is Peter an honorary Avenger now? He's not of age to sign a contract, so do the Accords not apply to him? Or will he just be in trouble at some later point? Or is Tony in loco parentis of him, which...yeah, no. Because Scott Lang is also not an Avenger, but he sure got tossed into the Raft with the others despite not being officially on the team. (Again, see here.)
I mean, I am obviously inherently biased in Steve's favor, but if you look at this movie too closely, 'both sides were reasonable' falls apart, because while oversight and accountability are highly desirable when dealing with enhanced individuals (and non-enhanced but highly trained individuals with a lot of fancy and lethal tech), nothing in the way Team Iron Man went about doing things supported their argument. As soon as Tony didn't like what Ross's decisions were, he acted unilaterally to join Steve and Bucky in Siberia. Does that mean he broke the Accords? Are they still in effect? I mean, Steve et al. are on the run because they didn't sign and so were vigilantes, not legal agents of the UN or whoever, and then because they broke out of prison; Natasha's in the wind because she let them go and thus broke the Accords despite signing them; but Tony just gets to go home and help Rhodey rehab? The consequences don't directly redound on him, but on Rhodey! (Don't even get me started on how he shoots Sam point blank when Sam was a pararescue and could have helped while they were waiting for emergency services.)
And I didn't even get into the WTF logistics of Zemo's plan. Like, he asks Karpov for the mission report from December 16, 1991 and to me, that means he knows what happened. I mean, I guess everybody knows that's when the Starks died, but the fact that Zemo is pursuing that lead, and the fact that Steve cops to knowing about it when Tony asks, means it had to have been included in the Hydra files! Because otherwise, I can't see why Steve would feel bad about not telling Tony. Like, it's strongly hinted at by Zola in CATWS but it seems to me that that's not enough for Steve to actually tell Tony - or feel bad about not telling him - you know? "Well, this computerized version of Zola implied that Hydra killed your dad and I'm extrapolating from that that they used the Winter Soldier to do it." I mean, if that's the case, then I wouldn't have told Tony either!
But if it was included in the file dump by Natasha, then in order for Zemo's endgame to work, I have to believe that TONY STARK didn't go over that data with a fine-tooth comb and find out for himself. Which. Really? But if it wasn't included, how did Zemo know? He wasn't Hydra himself, and he does say he spent a lot of time decoding the files. So if he didn't know, he certainly hinged a lot of his plan on a guess. Of course, if he did know, he hinges a lot of his plan on Tony not knowing, which also seems kind of foolish, though I guess you could make a good guess that Tony would react poorly with the guy who killed his parents standing right there.
I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore!
So yeah, I enjoyed the movie a lot, but it could have been so much better in terms of writing, which I could easily say about most movies, so I'm not knocking it, per se. But the way the MCU prioritizes Tony's stories over everyone else's - such that it warps the narrative (Avengers should have been about Thor's emotional journey, as the villain was his brother. AOU skates over Tony's culpability entirely, and now he's taking over Captain America's movies, too!) - irritates the hell out of me.
[1] (I feel like this could be its own post all by itself? But in brief, this is not Watchmen, and it's not aiming to be Watchmen, despite some superficial stabs at some deeper political themes. That is not the business Marvel/Disney is in, and if it were, it certainly wouldn't be with beloved and money-making characters that will continue to appear in stories ad infinitum; that is why you invent a whole bunch of expies who can kill innocents/die fighting each other/be effectively useless in a crisis/turn to supervillainy without an eventual face-turn etc. Should superhero movies be better than this? Maybe? But then I don't think they're really superhero movies? Deconstructing a genre is fine but not everything needs to be a deconstruction. Sometimes I just want to see a guy with a metal arm punch a guy in a metal suit. For a smart analysis from someone with a lot less willingness to let these things slide, see here.)
[2] (and the fact that Martin Freeman laughed at the idea of a lawyer/trial for Bucky was also a point against everything he and the other Ross stood for, though of course that is the actual closest to real world implementation of these sorts of prisons; the fact that Sam and Clint, who have no superpowers whatsoever, are locked up in the same sorts of cells as Wanda, who does, is also ridiculous. Otoh, lending credence to that "Zemo is the real Manchurian Candidate in this scenario" theory is the fact that he was locked up in a cell meant for the Winter Soldier and he was like, "Did I fail? Did I?" (though obviously breaking up the band worked). Like, why is that guy being kept in a cell meant for a supersoldier with a bionic arm?)
[3] See this link (hat tip to
minim_calibre) and also here.
[4] Bucky is not guilty of his crimes (apparently the writers said he was? I haven't seen a source of this though; I can't believe they believe that since T'Challa actually calls Bucky a victim in the movie! And maybe he just meant of Zemo, but I can't believe anyone who wrote either Winter Soldier or this movie would really believe that Bucky is responsible for crimes committed while he was brainwashed. He is very clearly shown not wanting to submit to it and he actively chooses to take himself off the board at the end while there is still a possibility it could be done to him again. So. If they did say that, I reject it entirely. The Russos seem to know what's up anyway.) though he could certainly still be found guilty in a trial, and then if Steve busted him out and went on the run, I'd say he was acting emotionally. I'd still root for him, though.
So. That was a lot that maybe didn't even say anything. idk.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/841321.html.
people have commented there.