Comic Strips

That's the problem with superhero stories. The story needs to begin and end with the world in a state similar to our own (for relatabilitiy and sequel potential) despite the vast power of its protagonist, so the hero must ultimately be concerned with preserving the status quo.

It's one of the reasons why superhero movies are in decline now that all the most famous storylines have already been adapted, and why comic book sales have been going downhill ever since they started taking themselves seriously.

Sam Raimi Spider-man spent most of his time saving people from imminent harm and stopping armed robberies. He fought the CEO of a company that developed military technology who was killing people to hang onto his position of power and wealth. He then fought a mad scientist that spent the entire movie putting innocent people in danger, attacking Spider-man and ultimately risking the deaths of millions out of an obsession and the influence his technology had over him. In the third one... he turns into a bit of a dick for a while because he's being partially controlled by an alien, and the theme for all three villains is revenge. At no point in the trilogy does he target anyone who is trying to make a political or social change, just people that are attacking him personally and/or putting innocent bystanders in harm's way.

In the Amazing Spider-Man movies he pretty much just fights a guy who is trying to turn everyone into lizards, his own stalker who just happens to get electricity powers, and the rich brat that blames him for not giving him blood samples which he thinks will cure his disease (they won't, but the reason for the refusal is still poorly defined).

MCU Spider-man gets recruited to fight half the avengers, which might play into this if the civil war was about a larger societal issue, but it wasn't. As far as the movie presents it, the entire issue is about the rules governing the avengers themselves and the fate of Bucky. Arguably the Captain America side is presented more favorably, but that too would go against the point the comic is making because they are the ones resisting the status quo and sticking it to the man.

And in his actual movies, MCU spider-man fights a guy who is flooding the streets with high tech weapons just for the money, a con man that's willing to kill innocent people to make himself look like a superhero, and all those villains from the previous continuities who is actually just trying to send home.

Maybe spider-man was a bad example. Surely the rest of the MCU must be pro-government propaganda, right?

Iron Man 1: Rich selfish asshole has a wake up call, realizes that harm he's done by filling the world with weapons, immediately exits the arms industry and dedicates his company to developing peaceful technologies to help the world. Uses the technology he developed to intervene in conflicts where civilians are getting massacred and no one is willing to do anything about it. Defies the US military to do it. The villain is a greedy executive that tries to kill Tony to seize control of the company and continue building weapons.

Iron Man 2: Tony is continuing his policy of protecting people in war zones, in defiance of an angry US government. The government tries to steal his suit for the military, and works with a rival company to develop drone versions which Tony destroys.

Iron Man 3: Wouldn't you know it, another company developing military tech is run by an evil guy and is killing innocent people.

Captain America: Literally fighting Nazis.

Captain America 2: Fighting the Nazis that have infiltrated the US government.

Captain America 3: Fighting to save his friend in defiance of a government that would rather kill him than bring him in peacefully.

Thor: Shakespeare in space, plus Thor learns humility.

Thor 2: Blowing up the universe is bad.

Thor 3: Thor literally helps start a revolution to overthrow a dictator.

Thor 4: The gods are assholes who should care more about people.

The Incredible Hulk: Science man good, military guy bad. Smashy smashy.

Ant Man: An ex con who went to jail for hacking a corrupt corporation gets recruited by a scientist who helps him take and an evil CEO of a corrupt corporation.

Alright, I'm not listing any more, there's a million of these things, you get the idea.

The super hero genre is an individualist power fantasy. It's about giving power to individuals, whereas in real life power rests in groups and systems. That includes the power to effect social change.

It's an escapist response to living in an impossibly complicated world where we want to do good, but we feel powerless and unable to.

The story of a character organizing a series of protests wouldn't really benefit from that character having super powers. Using super powers (physical force) to push political beliefs is terrorism.

So the constraints of the genre mean that social messages have to exist alongside the A-plot power struggle. And they frequently do.

Black Panther is about abandoning isolationism and using a government's power and wealth to help people.

The Avengers have an unmissable theme of not supporting the military-industrial complex. Same with Iron Man.

Common Marvel villains include fascists, bigots, businessmen, and corrupt law enforcement, in addition to the madmen and evil gods.

I've seen this point made a few times, and it just reeks of someone backfilling a reason to hate something popular without actually spending a moment to, you know, watch that thing.

There's like two way it could end when a superhuman being try to change the status quo for the good, one is through the courtroom, which is slow and boring, another one is to forcefully take over the "bad" government and force the "good" on people, which we have seen in something like Injustice.

Metal Gear Solid 2 plays out like this. Spoilers below but it came out in 2001 so whatever

The bad guy is a former President that knew his job was just as a figurehead, nothing more. He found out the hard way that even his orders came from a cutout.

He recruited "terrorists" to take the sitting President "hostage" so they could "force him" to detonate an EMP over the east coast. The plan is to dismantle the AI actually running the government/censoring public opinion and hopefully free the country

You play as the wide eyed idealistic special forces infiltrator, trained heavily through VR and sent to "rescue" the sitting President from the "terrorist leader" and learn that everything you know is wrong and you were given orders by the AI all along

I haven't watched those films in a while but isn't one of spiderman's things "fuck the police, help the poor"? I know he runs a food bank in the new games

which movie is this referring to? I've been plugging away at the mcu movies and most of the time the enemy is the nazi spinoff faction seeking to subjugate all of humanity that embedded itself in multiple parts of the government. I only watched one of the other spider man movies and don't remember anything about it

This reminds me of a reel on Instagram where the singer Aurora said something along the lines of "Isn't it weird how the «villains» want to break the status quo while the «heroes» seek to restore it?" and in the comments there were ones that said "For this nonsense people become leftist" and exactly right below that another one said "For this nonsense people become right-wing".

Tbh they only really swerved into it that hard with this Falcon movie.

You know, the movie with themes of black empowerment where they engage in relentless apologia for General President Ross turning a man he did medical experiments on into a slave.

Marvel is copaganda.

dc is more guilty of this than marvel, but yeah.

Great. So we're going to be seeing this meme 8 times every month?