Remember that time that Marvel Studios whitewashed and genderswapped a prominent Tibetan monk just so that they could market to China since the CCP doesn’t recognize Tibet?
Remember that time that Marvel Studios erased the existence of Steve Rogers’s gay and Jewish childhood friend and instead decided to age up his teen sidekick to replace him?
Remember that time that Marvel Studios decided to make Peter Parker a whitewashed version of Miles Morales instead of either using Miles in the MCU or staying more faithful to Peter Parker’s character?
In the same vein, remember that time that Marvel Studios erased the Parker family’s poverty and talked down about the historical Aunt May for not being a “real” breadwinner unlike their version?
Remember that time that Marvel Studios completely erased Wanda and Pietro Maximoff’s Romani and Jewish heritage and turned them into literal HYDRA agents?
Remember that time Marvel Studios erased Sam Wilson’s canonical superpowers because they weren’t “grounded” enough and yet made every excuse to incorporate the superpowers of other characters that were much more far-fetched?
Remember that time that Marvel erased Clint Barton’s deafness and took nearly a decade to finally release anything that even alluded to him being deaf in the MCU?
Remember that time that Marvel Studios more or less erased the history of one of the founding Avengers and only included her as a minor side character with a brief cameo to distance themselves from something in the comics that never should have happened in the first place?
Because I do.
@flyingrabidfurbie No, no you’re right and I’ve expressed similar things myself. I think the point of my post and it’s intent has been very misconstrued over time because I made this in a very short amount of time as a vent post at Marvel Studios for wanting to have their cake and eat it too while erasing certain things from the comics from their movies and did not expect it to get more than like thirty notes. It’s gone so far out of my circle that people who don’t know where I’m coming from are all finding and reading and reblogging it and because of that the original meaning has been lost. I have made posts about the Arnie Roth/Bucky Barnes thing before and how MCU fans are very misinformed about it which is a post I know you’ve read and reblogged so there’s no point in me linking it, but I will elaborate a bit more here.
The issue is mainly that Marvel originally said they were taking more from Ultimates, but then went around and started taking from 616, but because they originally started taking from Ultimates, it erased so much of the important nuance that was necessary for these things to work well in 616. What resulted was a poor Frankenstein of characters and themes that ultimately ends up erasing important details in the comics. Some of it ends up looking like the above.
The issue with point number two isn’t that “they made Bucky into Arnie” but that they “got rid of Arnie, but still consulted that comic for elements of Steve’s past, and since they only had their Bucky OC to work with, that ended up falling on him.” Meanwhile, at the same time, completely changing the relationship and characters of Steve and Bucky in 616 thereby undermining so much of the thematic strength and purpose of the Winter Soldier entirely when they adapted that. Arnie exists in the MCU in so much as they took aspects of Steve’s childhood from those comics specifically, but since there is no character with his name in the MCU, they had their Bucky act as a stand-in and that gets transferred onto him. So what we have now is MCU fans who know little to nothing about the comics claiming that MCU Bucky was “based off Arnie Roth” when that is entirely untrue and all of the comparison points were retroactively added by the Russos in the second Cap movie. Ultimately, Bucky in The First Avenger is a combination of his Ultimates counterpart, the original Nick Fury, and a bit of 616 Bucky. So retroactively what that ends up meaning is that, yes, they actually did erase Arnie from Steve’s story, but ultimately it was the Russo’s who did that because they were the ones who borrowed from those comics in the Winter Soldier movie. This is what Frankensteining does and why they should never have done it.
As for the Hawkeye thing I’ve adressed this in previous reblogs, but this goes along with what I was just saying before: they pick and choose what they take from Ultimates and 616 so they can stand back and say, “Well we were borrowing from Ultimates!” when fans call them out on it. At this point I see it as a poor and tired excuse both because it is mainly used as just that and also because of the fact that they also said the MCU would have no effect on the main comics universe and look at all the stupid changes they’ve been making over the years to make the 616 Universe line up with the MCU movies in different ways. The MCU-ification of the comics is real and I don’t want to hear, “But Ultimates!” ever again considering what they’ve been pulling, and fans would do well to stop perpetuating that excuse for them. It’s just enabling them.
Now that Marvel is trying to claim that the MCU is the 616, it makes all of the above rant even worse because fans have been dealing with seeing their favorite characters butchered on screen for years and anytime we raised complaints we had to deal with Marvel/MCU stans always falling back on the “It’s a different universe and so it’s an ADAPTATION. You shouldn’t be upset because it’s not 616.” So now they want to claim the 616? It’s adding insult to injury. Not to mention all the comic creators Marvel/MCU/Disney don’t pay for the use of their comic imagery/storylines while they make billions on their work.
1)Wanda and Pietro Maximoff in the MCU were whitewashed.They’ve been Romani in the comics for the last 42 years. If you don’t understand the nuances of Romani culture vs. Romani ethnicity vs. Romani genetics, you can read my original post on itright here. Or, if you don’t trust me as a source, the Roma Culture Centre discusses it right here.
2) MCU Wanda and Pietro willingly work with HYDRA (the ACTUAL NAZIS), and allow HYDRA to run experiments on them both. The most famous Romani superheroes in comic book history join the ACTUAL NAZIS in the MCU.
(ETA: Yes, they joined HYDRA willingly. They volunteered. That’s according to Marvel’s own website, found right here. “Years later, they both volunteered to undergo genetic experimentation overseen by HYDRA’s Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, using Loki’s scepter, to potentially give them powers.”)
Why would they do this? Wanda’s brief tenure in HYDRA in the comics (Secret Empirerun) only happened because she was possessed by the Elder God Chthon; she never joined them willingly. If you’re unfamiliar with the Romani Holocaust, you can read about it right here.
3) The MCU draws most of its inspiration from The Ultimates.Writer Jeph Loeb made Wanda and Pietro’s relationship incestuousinThe Ultimates, and the MCU decided, for some bizarre reason, to make this part of the films.Elizabeth Olsen admitted in interviews that they intentionally hinted at incest between the twins in Avengers: Age of Ultron. If you’re unfamiliar with incest as a Romani stereotype, that’s awfully lucky for you, but you can read about it right here.
4)Elizabeth Olsen is also an unrepentant racist.OnThe Graham Norton Show, all the way back in 2015, she used the word “Gypsy” to describe Wanda and was corrected by the host. The actress has never apologized. (Mark Ruffalo was also on the show, and apologized on Twitter for repeating the slur after Olsen said it.) Olsen didn’t apologize because she wasn’t sorry; it wasn’t the first or last time she’d done it. Elizabeth Olsen keeps using slurs and stereotypes in interviews, as recently as last month. If you don’t know the history of the word “Gypsy” in English, you can read about that right here.
If you went into the MCU with no prior knowledge of the comics, or with limited knowledge of the Romani people, I understand that. I even wrote a post about it that you can read right here.
If you are mad about the whitewashing of Wanda Maximoff, which you should definitely be, then have that same energy for Pietro Maximoff being whitewashed, both in the MCU and XMCU. People will call out O*sen for taking the role and using repeated slurs, which she should not be excused for in anyway at all since she knows full well what she is doing, but that doesn’t mean ATJ and Evan Peters get a pat on the head either.
I could not have articulated this but it is SO GOOD
This is such an insightful critique of how capitalism, in its relentless pursuit of limitless profit above all else, not only stifles creativity and cages artistic expression but also actively promotes regressive social values as a means of safeguarding the security of those obscene profit margins.
In an effort to appear more “grounded” Marvel Studios missed a grand opportunity to throw a feral child at Chris Evans’s Steve. Could you imagine? The power? The chaos? The feels? Marvel Studios really looked at Steve and Bucky’s relationship and said “fuck no” and the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been paying for it ever since.
5 years ago, and 4 years ago, and even 3 years ago, I would’ve been over the moon about the announcement that Loki was getting his own show. I would’ve been floating on air, the kind of excited where you could hardly eat or sleep because of the anticipation. I don’t feel any of that now. What I actually feel right now is…dread? Marvel has changed, drastically, and the franchise that enchanted me, that I fell in love with, looks nothing like it did before. It has become something of an unkind stranger, harsh and unwelcoming. My favorite character was made to look weak, turned into a laughing stock, robbed of all his powers and reduced to throwaway plot device in the cruelest, most brutal way they could think of. Marvel just not only allowed him to be tarred and feathered, they…revelled in it. They plotted his demise to make sure it was the most horrible and the most hurtful and they were… so proud of it. The way they bragged, the way they trolled fans. They make me sick. I felt so disillusioned and disenchanted. I felt like an idiot for caring way more about this than I evidently ever should have. I can never believe another word that comes out of their mouths, and I can’t trust them anymore. So you can understand why I feel the way I do about the Loki series.
I think the biggest mistake Marvel made (narratively, evidently non economically) is to have so many people writing the story. Of course it is impossible to have one director and one group of writers if you want to get three or four movies out every year, but they could have least have the same for a whole trilogy, and at least people with similar ideas, so that the characters we see in the avengers movies are almost treated the same as in their trilogies.
to be fair, they did offer Ragnarok’s direction to the director of Thor 2 first, but he said no
apparently they gave him a lot of freedom in directing Thor 2 but changed his work so much in the editing room that it was irrecognizable to him and he didn’t want to go through that again
(they also offered Thor 2 to Thor 1′s director but he also said no because he felt he would not be able to do the film justice vOv)
I’m a bit more unsure on what happened with Whedon other than the reported stress of working on AoU pushing him out of filming the next one
5 years ago, and 4 years ago, and even 3 years ago, I would’ve been over the moon about the announcement that Loki was getting his own show. I would’ve been floating on air, the kind of excited where you could hardly eat or sleep because of the anticipation. I don’t feel any of that now. What I actually feel right now is…dread? Marvel has changed, drastically, and the franchise that enchanted me, that I fell in love with, looks nothing like it did before. It has become something of an unkind stranger, harsh and unwelcoming. My favorite character was made to look weak, turned into a laughing stock, robbed of all his powers and reduced to throwaway plot device in the cruelest, most brutal way they could think of. Marvel just not only allowed him to be tarred and feathered, they…revelled in it. They plotted his demise to make sure it was the most horrible and the most hurtful and they were… so proud of it. The way they bragged, the way they trolled fans. They make me sick. I felt so disillusioned and disenchanted. I felt like an idiot for caring way more about this than I evidently ever should have. I can never believe another word that comes out of their mouths, and I can’t trust them anymore. So you can understand why I feel the way I do about the Loki series.
