“Every time there is a change in the Metaverse, the Multiverse grows. To preserve every era of Superman.”
-Geoff Johns, Doomsday Clock
To understand the implications of that sentiment, we must first understand what, exactly, the Marvel Cinematic Universe[1] is. Previously within this article, we have gone on tangents about related texts via exploring their thematic implications alongside the Spider-Man movies they parallel. However, given the size, scope, and implication of the MCU, it is perhaps best to briefly discuss the individual films that led to Spider-Man’s first appearance in Captain America: Civil War. Which is to say the first two phases of the MCU.
The MCU began on May 2, 2008 with the release of Jon Favreau’s Iron Man. A perfectly middle of the road movie that inexplicably kickstarted a new wave in action cinema. Politically speaking, it’s far more mask off than its successors would be. Iron Man actively engages with the Islamophobia of its premise in such a way as to fetishize exterminating those foreign barbarians who couldn’t even speak English properly. Indeed, Obadiah Stane, the ultimate villain of the film, cements his villainy by being the only white person who speaks more than one language. But true villain of the film, as will be emphasized in its direct sequel, are those who would dare limit Tony Stark’s freedoms. Those incompetent scientists who couldn’t do in a high tech lab what Tony did in a cave with a box of scraps. Those government agents who can’t let Tony do his extrajudicial murdering of terrorists and end up harming themselves[2]. Those reporters who have to be fucked straight. That what is essentially a libertarian, if not fascist, wet dream is the starting point for the MCU bodes poorly on what is to come.
It continued on June 13th with Louis Leterrier’s The Incredible Hulk. In many regards the template for the MCU going forward: an empty calories set of moving pictures that has only the barest resemblance of cinema. Its ultimate driving function is less silly things like character arcs[3], themes, or visual splendor, and more nostalgia for older properties. Where the MCU at large would opt to have nostalgia for itself, The Incredible Hulk, being the second film within the MCU, has to settle for the 1978 Kenneth Johnson series of the same name[4]. In practice, this serves to erase the only recently critically reappraised 2003 Ang Lee movie, Hulk. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the sheer banality and lack of ambition in the visual storytelling, always depicting what is happening as it happens, in contrast to Lee’s stylized approach to cinematography and scene transition. And while it’s not as flat and uninteresting on a cinematographic level as later films in the MCU[5], The Incredible Hulk remains easily skippable even without the first of many casting changes within the MCU.
After this came Iron Man 2, also directed by Favreau and released on May 7, 2010. In many regards the first failure of the MCU[6], Iron Man 2 marks the point where Tony Stark goes even further into his core role within the universe: the man who is always right and fuck you if you think otherwise. Though later films will deemphasize the political implications of this, Iron Man 2 remains shockingly blunt about just what kind of hero Tony Stark is, not the least which helped by a cameo from his modern equivalent: Elon Musk[7]. In many regards, Stark is a romanticized version of Musk. Not in the sense that his worst instincts are hammered out, but rather we’re supposed to love him as he says shit like “I have privatized world peace” and “I don’t care about the liberal agenda any more. It’s boring. Boring. I’m giving you a boring alert.[8]” We’re supposed to align with Tony as he rejects any degree of oversight on the grounds that the rest of the world is decades away from his Iron Man technology. His technology is his and his alone to do with as he pleases[9]. In the words of Jack Graham, Tony Stark is “everything we need to tear down, ruthlessly demolish, trample on and bury, presented to us as the best of humanity.[10]” I could go on into the degrees of contempt the film oozes while failing to deliver upon said contempt in any meaningful way, but then this would stop being a Spider-Man article.
As such, let us instead contend with Kenneth Branagh’s debut as an action film director: Thor (released on May 6, 2011). Being the first film within the MCU directed by an actual filmmaker, Branagh brings an air of gravitas and weight to this fish out of water story of a man learning humility. There are actual character arcs and thematic implications. The problem, however, is the core of the film. As is the case with two of the six good films within the MCU[11], Thor deals in the nature of what makes a good king[12]. Politically speaking, this has implications. Around the time the MCU birthed itself into reality, a reactionary philosopher[13] by the name of Curtis Yarvin (working under the pen name Mencius Moldbug) released An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives. In it, Moldbug examines the benefits of rejecting modern notions of progressive thought and returning to a monarchy[14]. At around the midpoint of the letter, he, without a shred of irony, suggested that Steve Jobs should be given “undivided control over budget, policy and personnel.[15]” While never explicitly believing in the ideas that would ultimately fuel the attempted coup on January 6th, 2021 and the loss of Roe V Wade, the MCU will, time and time again, feel a pull towards this neoreactionary undercurrent.
It is at this point that many will point to Joe Johnston’s Captain America: The First Avenger, released July 22, which places its main hero, the titular Captain America, against literal, actual Nazis. And it’s certainly fair that the Captain America films are among the more liberal aspects of the MCU. However, they all hinge on a nostalgia for the Second World War. How that age was a period of innocence for America, where right was right, wrong was wrong. Everyone knew the Nazis were bad, so that’s why we fought. Said nostalgia, fueled by a 90s full of movies about WWII, ultimately allowed cretins with vile and insidious intents to compare 9/11 to Pearl Harbor. In truth, World War II is full of tales of men—ostensibly on the side against the Nazis— doing horrifying, downright genocidal actions[16]. But for many Americans, “World War 2 is a rollercoaster. Quite exciting and sometimes frightening, but ultimately a very good experience.[17]” In many regards, Captain America: The First Avenger echoes those 90s movies of old. Quoting Christopher Hayes, “The WWII that emerges from accounts of the late ’90s is one scrubbed clean of its moral complexity. There is no mention of American big business financing the build-up of the Nazi war machine, no America First campaign determined not to shed American blood for European Jews, no firebombing of civilians in Dresden. The war was difficult, yes, and bloody, but pure and just: a battle, not to put too fine a point on it, between good and evil.[18]” Tellingly, Steve’s ultimate motivation for fighting in World War II isn’t the fact that the Jews are being exterminated, an anger at the destruction of Pearl Harbor, or even the desire to look good in front of his lady. It’s because he hates bullies. As the films go on, Steve will present himself as exhibiting traits of many a soldier of his age. “Humble and stoic. Refusing to talk about the war. Personal responsibility. Honesty. All virtues that—like the flag itself—conservatives claim as their own.[19]” In short, the politics of the war are rejected in favor of a vague sense of anti-Americanism. The Nazis are nothing more than another Saturday Morning Cartoon villain[20].
Concluding the first of so far four phases of the MCU on May 4, 2012 was the highly anticipated Marvel Studios’ The Avengers[21], directed by Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog’s Joss Whedon. It is here where the MCU cements itself away from any possibility of embracing a liberal (or even neoliberal) identity and firmly embraces every single ideal of post 9/11 conservative propaganda. It is a movie whose main villain, Loki, explicitly hates freedom, does everything in his power to steal freedom from people, leads a faceless horde to destroy one of the great cities of America, and claims to be a God[22]. The film declares superheroes to be soldiers. Big government figures are literally shadowy overlords who have no military experience and whose solutions to problems make things worse, and especially for the soldiers on the streets fighting the evil of the world. It ends with Tony Stark committing a genocide of an entire species before glibly taking the rest of the Avengers out for shawarma. But perhaps most crucially is the very setting of the film’s climax: New York City. In the previous two Iron Man movies, Tony Stark has been demonstrated to be a citizen of Los Angeles. However, for The Avengers, Stark jumped coast to New York City. While it’s plausible that a billionaire, playboy, philanthropist would have houses, apartments, and condos all around the world, there’s something inherently sexy about post-9/11 New York being invaded by an alien army out to take away our freedom. As if the very city was fighting back against this barbaric force. Of course, that would be the case if the MCU generally gave a shit about civilians the way the Sam Rami and Marc Webb Spider-Man films did. Unfortunately, the people exist to either die or be saved. The question of their agency isn’t even considered, let alone rejected. “Humans have absolutely no agency beyond serving as faceless swarms running from one disaster to the next, hoping not to die.[23]” The sole exception is the police, who are told by Captain America to do vaguely helpful shit. Because we need men in uniforms to save us from the evils of the world, be they soldiers or cops. We can’t be trusted to save ourselves. In many regards, this was the inevitable consequence of the Rami Spider-Man movies. The stories of an American Jesus who refused to fight the system, who showed that the people were always subservient to their heroes, was always going to end with the hero siding with the system of power. Becoming explicitly more and more subservient to the way things are. Any challenges to the system are nothing more than rejecting changes to it. Especially if those changes challenge the heroes’ power with oversight.
Phase 2 began on May 3, 2013 with the third and final Iron Man film, Iron Man Three, directed by Shane Black. And it would begin with confronting the implications of Tony Stark having committed a mass genocide on an entire species. Or, rather, it’s a movie about confronting Tony almost dying after committing mass genocide on an entire species without ever once acknowledging that Tony committed mass genocide. The film is certainly critical of Tony’s behavior and the politics of the previous Iron Man films. It’s a movie where Tony’s arrogance, ego, and xenophobia are used against him in a plot about a dweebish nerd turned tech mogul who uses a terrorist he designed to gain power and wealth and also treats women as disposable prizes to be owned. It’s certainly one of the more liberal leaning films within the MCU. And yet, it comes off as a half measure. It doesn’t ruminate on Tony Stark’s xenophobia. The conspiracy at the heart of the film has the hawkish President of the United States completely absent from its machinations, save for as a sacrificial lamb to push America into a forever war. His Vice President, who is in on the plan, is only complicit because he wishes to use the technology that the baddies have to heal his crippled daughter. And, you know, the film hinges Tony’s emotional arc on the fact he survived committing mass genocide on an entire species! In some regards, a movie as good and largely liberal as Iron Man Three is more insidious than the previous two more conservative Iron Man films. It sells the modern War on Terror as the product of individuals rather than decades, if not centuries, of cruelty committed by both reactionary conservatives who see America as a shining city on a hill and cool liberals who play the saxophone. As something that can easily be defeated with clear goodies and baddies. Which works for an action movie. And this is a good movie, probably the first one in the entirety of the MCU. Its script is cleverly written, utilizing the narrative substitution form that The Last Jedi would later hone masterfully. It has a charming cast, spectacular and inventive action scenes, and its heart in the right place. In many regards, Iron Man Three presents us with an alternative vision of what the MCU could have been. One where heroism is based not on how many lives you can take, what battles are won, but on what can be fixed. Tony Stark: The Man Who Fixes Things. Alas, it would be a vision that, ultimately, was immediately rejected by the MCU at large[24]. And that rejection highlights the failure of its vision.
Alan Taylor’s Thor: The Dark World would come out on November 8 and mark the first movie within the MCU to be solely distributed by the Walt Disney Corporation as opposed to Paramount or Universal.
April 4, 2014 would mark the MCU debut of its core directorial voice in the form of Anthony and Joe Russo with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As a standalone movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a rather lesser (but not terrible or even mediocre) text within the paranoid thriller genre. It explores a conspiracy conducted by a splinter group from the Nazis to basically take over the world via the systems created by America. While this could be read through the lens of presentism as akin to Qanon[25], the film is able to make it abundantly clear that the conspiracy is tied to the Nazis time and time again. The problem comes from the fact that this is a Disney movie. While previous films within the MCU were able to flaunt their reactionary politics freely and with barely a mask to speak of, Captain America: The Winter Soldier opts to avoid the political implications of a reactionary force having taken seats of power within an American institution (and, indeed, several American institutions including congress). As such, the film claims that Hydra, the aforementioned reactionary force, is out to take away freedom from the people. Because freedom gets in the way of absolute control. Further muddying the waters is the fact that one of the agents of Hydra that has been implanted into the government to shape the history of the world to their knees… is Senator Stern from Iron Man 2. For those who don’t remember, Senator Stern was the main person speaking out against Tony Stark for having a weapon of mass destruction 100% under his control. That he has no oversight whatsoever and is free to do whatever he wants with a flying metal suit that can shoot a death beam. This is the man who is revealed to be a Nazi. In essence, this move disavows any and all criticisms laid at the feet of Tony Stark as nothing more than lies told to gain more power. Further emphasizing this is Robert Redford’s Alexander Pierce, a character who is frequently noted as being extremely liberal in his politics such that he rejected the Nobel Peace Prize because “peace isn’t an achievement, but a responsibility” and the fact that they cast Robert Redford to play him[26]. He’s also a Nazi. Outside of the largely conservative vision of the MCU, this could easily be forgiven as a means of playing our expectations against us. But within the MCU, it’s hard not to see this as claiming that liberal politics should be met with suspicion[27]. And, of course, there are two other elements to consider. Firstly, and rather minorly but nevertheless importantly, this is the first MCU movie where the heroes decide to get information out of someone by torturing them. Specifically, they capture a Hydra agent, push him off a building, and make glib remarks about Captain America’s love life while doing it. The second, more crucial aspect of the film’s political aspects lies in the ending of the film. The paranoid thriller genre is often considered one of the bleaker subgenres of thriller. It explores the ways in which our systems are horrific, evil, and functioning perfectly. Often, victory against it is, at best, pyrrhic. To use one relevant example, The Manchurian Candidate explores a conspiracy involving liberal and leftist figures (including an explicit and sympathetic socialist) being assassinated by a mind controlled soldier. While the film initially claims that the responsible party is a group of Russian agents, it ultimately reveals that the true evil behind the assassinations is a conservative figurehead using the power given to them by Russian agents to get themselves into the White House. This alliance is but a stepping stone to greater and greater power, and the conservative villain will sacrifice anything, even their children, for power. Ultimately, the conspiracy is overturned, but at a heavy cost. None of the people responsible will see prison bars and it’s heavily implied that such a fate was never going to happen. And the machine called America keeps churning along. By contrast, Captain America: The Winter Soldier ends with Natasha Romanov, the secondary lead, delivering a monologue about how she’s never going to prison for her crimes because “we helped make [the world a more vulnerable place], but we’re also the ones best qualified to defend it.” This is further emphasized by a montage prior to this speech wherein two minor characters aligned with Captain America are seen doing their part in the good fight… by joining the CIA and agencies in the private sector. In essence, the film hammers in the point that to question the authority of those with power is, at best, naïve. It’s only right to question power when the wrong people are in charge. It is once again a sign that rejecting politics in favor of vague gesturing towards politics will always bend the knee to conservatism and, subsequently, reactionary thought. For what could be more cruel and unjust than a paranoid thriller that declares, “The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.”
August 1 would see the release of James Gunn’s Hugo Award winning feature, Guardians of the Galaxy. Within the context of this article, there isn’t much to note about the film itself. It very much places itself largely outside of the context of the wider world being both set in space and its sole engagement with Earth culture[28] is in 80s nostalgia. And while there’s a lot to mine out of said nostalgia and its political relevance, the Peter Parker of the MCU is characterized as being very out of step with 80s and 90s nostalgia and so the only way to properly engage with Guardians of the Galaxy through that lens is if I watched Stranger Thingsalongside it[29]. Indeed, the sociopaths that make up the Guardians[30] largely don’t interact with Peter Parker, often spending their time with Thor. But it is worth noting the implications of that Hugo Award it won. In 2013, conservative science fiction writer Larry Correia tried to get his novel Monster Hunter Legion nominated for a Hugo Award. He jokingly referred to this campaign as the Sad Puppies, after the SPCA ad that makes everyone cry. In 2014, Correia tried again with a slightly larger list of nominees to a slightly more successful, but still failed, campaign. Then, 2015 rolls around and things start to get a bit more mask off. Brad Torgersen, another conservative sci-fi writer, contributed a rather unique blog post about the trend of science fiction to favor more progressive politics and that you can’t judge books by their covers anymore[31]. And then there was Teddy Beale. Beale, under the pen name Vox Day, edits for the minor publishing company Castalia House. He is also what you might call an alt-right weirdo who is the sort to live outside of the United States for tax reasons[32]. The sort of fundamentalist Christian who has heard the voice of God and “believes that the best possible thing he can do with his magical genetic access to Divine Truth is to try to disrupt the Hugo Awards.[33]” To this end, he created a splinter cell of the Sad Puppies called the Rabid Puppies, wherein he nominated entire slates of books, editors, and zines for his GamerGate accrued fanbase[34] to hijack the awards with works that fit a more conservative world view. Many of these works were published by Castalia House, including Tom Kratman’s Big Boys Don’t Cry in Best Novella, Beale himself for Best Editor (both Long and Short Form), and six separate Hugos for John C Wright[35], including Best Related Work with Transhumanism and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth[36]. And Day’s campaign turned out to be a massive success, filling the final ballots of five awards with his nominees and having the majority in six others, and ultimately causing a shift in the rules such that the half measure placed as a standby before the real one could start was enough to stop the 2016 campaign from being as successful[37]. Among the ones he got the majority within was Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. This category was predominantly filled with typical blockbuster cinema such that any pick was a mixture of fascist aesthetics and poison pills[38]. The one that won, which was the sole Puppy win in the entire slate, was Guardians of the Galaxy. That isn’t to say that Guardians of the Galaxy is an inherently fascist or even reactionary film[39]. Like many films in the MCU, it’s more libertarian than anything else. But the saga of the Puppies, both Rabid and Sad, acts as a good barometer for what is to come.
The second Avengers movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, would come out on May 1, 2015 and would be directed by Whedon. In many regards Avengers: Age of Ultron would be overwritten by the movie that would introduce Spider-Man to the MCU. It is, after all, a middle film in a set wherein things get dark and serious and members of the Avengers fuck off for one reason or another. But it’s also… weightless in how it splits them up. A half-measure of a break up rather than the whole thing to come. Of course, there’s one element of note within Avengers: Age of Ultron and that’s Tony’s motivation. In the first act, Tony Stark is given a vision of his failure: the Avengers are dead and the evil alien horde from the end of The Avengers has come to kill humanity. In many regards, it’s a consequence of Iron Man Three failing to actually engage with the whole mass genocide aspect of Tony’s trauma. However, what results from this vision is… Tony deciding to build a weapon that will save the world. A weapon built in his own image that decides the best course of action is to exterminate everyone. Because that is the ultimate endpoint of the genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist archetype placed onto Tony Stark, a weapons manufacturer who decided that too many American troops were being killed with his weapons and decided to make a weapon to kill the brown people. It was always going to end up like this. Don’t go worshiping billionaire heroes. They will kill us all[40].
You would think Phase 2 would end with another Avengers movie, but it would instead end on July 17 with Peyton Reed’s controversial Ant-Man. Perhaps the most notable aspect of this rather enjoyable, if somewhat disposable, film is the fact that it was supposed to be directed by Edgar Wright. But for… reasons[41], he ended up not making the film. The implications of this cannot be clearer: the nature of the MCU was shifting away from auteur based filmmakers like Branagh, Black, and Gunn and focusing its energies on more journeyman creators. That isn’t to say the later MCU would lack a flavorful spirit[42]. But rather it was beginning to desire a house style.
Which leads us, at last, to the beginning of Phase 3 on May 6, 2016 with the Russo Brothers returning to direct Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Civil War.
[1] Hereon referred to as the MCU.
[2] Be they men in black from an organization with a stupidly long name or Air Force pilots.
[3] Perhaps best highlighted by the decision to change the Hulk not speaking throughout the film until the end to giving him lines where like “LEAVE ME ALONE” and “HULK SMASH” solely, to appease the fans who had always wanted the Hulk to say the things he said in the comics.
ign.com/articles/2008/06/09/exclusive-hulk-director-speaks?page=2
[4] Best highlighted in the sampling of the television series’ leitmotif The Lonely Man by Joe Harnell.
[5] The visual style would, ultimately, take its cues from Jon Favreau’s Iron Man films, even as its ultimate architects would not be Favreau himself.
[6] The Incredible Hulk being too mediocre to be something as notable as a failure.
[7] Bill O’Reilly also cameos because of course he does. Why the fuck wouldn’t one of the men responsible for the mania of post 9/11 America be here.
[8] This is in regards to his decision not to work on any more clean fuel projects.
[9] Making him not only akin to the Oscorp of the Amazing Spider-Man films, who have world altering technologies just lying around in the background, but also—more aptly—Howard Roark, who destroyed his own building just because someone wanted to add a few safety measures. Oh, and while we’re at it, Stark has access to NSA level spy craft that he uses flippantly, making him even more conservative than Nolan’s Batman, whose archnemesis is a literal anarchist.
[11] Neither of which will be covered in this article, as they postdate Captain America: Civil War, but for the record: Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther. The other one not to be covered in this article is Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2.
[12] Specifically, while it’s a faux pas to commit a genocide without a long term plan beyond “And then they’ll all be dead,” a good king would kidnap a baby to make a foreign nation more amenable to his ambitions. Anything’s permissible as long as it’s part of the plan.
[13] The word “philosopher” should be read in much the same way Joshua Norton was an emperor.
[14] It should be noted that said return includes the practice of slavery and how black people make particularly good slaves.
inc.com/tess-townsend/why-it-matters-that-an-obscure-programming-conference-is-hosting-mencius-moldbug.html
[20] In many regards, Captain America highlights the failure of liberal ideas in the popular culture. Liberal thought, in its best form, thrives on specificity. It needs to detail exactly who the enemy is. Otherwise you could end up with a text like They Live where a blatant satire of Reganomics is twisted into antisemitism. More on this when we talk about Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
[21] Hereon referred to as The Avengers.
[22] And, as Captain America affirms, we all know there’s only one God.
[24] It should be noted that the central twist that the yellow peril villain The Mandarin is, in fact, a propaganda tool used to justify imperialistic actions for fun and profit was immediately rejected not even one movie later, but in a fucking DVD extra.
[25] What with every single atrocity committed by America being caused by an outside cabal. On the other hand, Eternals basically reveals that the Atom Bomb was created by aliens, so…
[26] gaystarnews.com/article/screen-icon-robert-redford-says-it-un-american-discriminate-against-gays190913/
[27] Quoting Scout Tafoya, “Patriotism becomes a purity test that prevents studios from ever trying to depict what’s with anything resembling a progressive point of view. And by the time anyone could be in a position to sort through the facts of the Iraq War, there wasn’t a studio in town who would bankroll a movie that was honest about it.” vimeo.com/695987074/e7e748b894
[28] And while talking about its sympathies with the police could yield some results, it’s too minor a point to be relevant. The cops are just another army. Also, depressingly, Ronan the Accuser, while having potential to be interesting in an article on Superhero Cinema in a Post-9/11 world with his contempt for other cultures and using his religion to justify his xenophobia, is simply too dull to engage with in-depth.
[29] No.
[30] Peter Quill literally dances in the opening credits while gleefully kicking small animals to catchy music, Rocket needs to have “the universe is going to end if we do nothing” explained to him as if the obvious reasons why that’s a bad thing aren’t self-evident, Gamora is casually homicidal, Drax gets off on doing horrible things while also not being cognizant of why calling a woman a whore is a bad thing, and Groot is Groot and gleefully homicidal.
[31] “A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.
These days, you can’t be sure.
The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?”
bradrtorgersen.blog/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/
[32] Or, to be less coy, his dad’s a noted tax evader and the apple probably didn’t fall far from the tree.
[33] eruditorumpress.com/blog/guided-by-the-beauty-of-their-weapons-an-analysis-of-theodore-beale-and-his-supporters
[34] Indeed, one could sensibly argue that the Rabid Puppies were one of the many direct to video sequels to Gamergate, alongside Comicsgate, the abuse hurled at Kelly Marie Tran for being a supporting character in a Star Wars movie, and the 2016 Presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
[35] Among his works is Orphans of Chaos, a Harry Potter knock-off that asks the question “Just how many times do we need to rape you, little girl, before you obey?” Sometimes, you write footnotes as revenge for your childhood self.
[37] Though it’s worth noting, if for no other reason than I find it hilarious, that among their poison pill choices was Neil Gaiman and JH Williams III’s Sandman: Overture, which, based on after the fact statistics, was what got it both the nomination and the win.
[38] Which makes one of the non-puppy choices to get nominated (the other being Captain America: The Winter Soldier) interesting. Edge of Tomorrow, for all intents and purposes, is the kind of science fiction that Correia, Torgersen, and Vox Day claim to want. A no-nonsense military story about a man who learns how to be a soldier and defeat an oncoming horde of alien monsters who want to kill all of humanity. I guess Vox Day didn’t care much for Emily Blunt telling Tom Cruise what to do.
[39] It is reactionary, but that’s beside the point.
[40] Also, because I don’t want another 900 word paragraph (see also why I’m not talking about drones… yet), the Maximoff twins are very much in the villainous mold of misguided leftists who need to understand that American imperialism knows what’s best for them.
[42] Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, and the episodes of Moon Knight directed by Moorhead/Benson prove that if nothing else.
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