scriggle

That's more on Whedon than the Russos. He's the one who wrote them as snarky and seemingly barely tolerating each other.

I could make the obvious (political) joke. Instead, let's go with HYDRA. (Which is pretty much what's happening in the U.S. right now.)?

Spoilers:

I think practically any fight scene from any of Donnie Yen's movies would have a place on the list. Hero with Jet Li & Donnie Yen Ip Man SPL: Kill Zone Special ID Legend of the Fist

Currently, I'm crushing pretty hard on Donnie Yen and Jiang Wen. (I blame Rogue One.) I have watched more Chinese films in the last few months. I'd pretty much been limited to Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon prior to that. I've seen about a dozen of Donnie Yen's movies. I highly recommend Ip Man 1 & 2, Dragon (Wu Xia), and Painted Skin (if only for the weirdness). For solid action SPL: Kill Zone, Kung Fu Killer, and Special ID. Jiang Wen's films are a bit more difficult to find. I've seen a half dozen of his films and damn he is good. Really do yourself a favor and track down Let the Bullets Fly. JW wrote, directed, and starred in it and it is fabulous. I've also watched Gone with the Bullets, Black Snow, The Lost Bladesman (co-starring Donnie Yen), The Missing Gun, and A Woman for Two. I am so obsessed with him that I've even watched non-subtitled episodes of A Native of Beijing in New York on youtube. I also find him incredibly attractive. There's just something about him; he exudes charisma. I mean look at him:

Today a local news anchor informed me about the contents of the letter President Obama left for his predecessor. So apparently Obama can time travel.

I have a confession to make. I have never watched this all the way through. Once they get to Bolivia, I lose interest maybe because I know how it ends and don't want to see that. I absolutely love the first half though.

Robin Hood Men in Tights "I would have brought a bottle but I gave it up. It didn't agree with me. Well, it did agree with me, but on all the wrong stuff."

God please no. Leave the Starsky and Hutch of my tween years alone. I still haven't gotten over the abomination that was the S&H movie.

Grease @Cobalt Stargazer beat me by a millisecond.

THIS! Their universe set-up always seems to come at the expense of whatever story they're trying to tell for a particular hero(s). Especially trying to set-up the next decade or two worth of movies AND new characters; that is insane. My list is: IM1, Cap1, Cap2, GotG1, Avengers1, and probably unpopular opinion Thor1. Those I'll watch whenever they're on TV, commercials and all, despite having the dvds.

If Steve found out the authorities had issued a "shoot on sight" order on any person, I believe he would intervene to the bring the person in to face justice thru the legal system and not let the person be summarily executed without a trial. To do otherwise would be betraying his morals.

And in context, Sharon had just informed him that the authorities had issued a "shoot on sight" order. Which is a) a pretty extreme thing to do based on some grainy security footage and b) illegal. Steve's intent was to bring Bucky in alive and protect those sent to kill him. And I believe that is something Steve would do for anyone.

No it's not. Like I said Howard was a shitty father. But that's on Howard not Steve. Tony needs a boatload of therapy to deal his issues caused by Howard. All the fault and blames lies with Howard. I understand Tony displacing his resentment of Howard towards Steve but that doesn't mean it's fair to Steve. As @Vera noted, Steve had been out of the ice for 2 weeks. Fury finds him in the middle of the night, punching the shit out of heavy bags. And he appears to be fighting off flashbacks. PTSD, anyone? Fury tells him they need him to fight because they lost the tesseract. Steve died to save the world from that. He pointedly tells Fury they should've left it at the bottom of the ocean. All Steve knows about the others is from the files SHIELD gave him. Steve is reading them on the plane with Coulson. The info from SHIELD most likely does not paint Tony in the most favorable light per IM2. Tony has far more information about Steve than vice versa but it's all colored by Howard's veneration. Calling Steve a "capsicle" is a jibe. It's passive aggressive and insensitive. I'd say the same if someone had made a similar jibe making light of Tony's ordeal in IM1 two weeks after he'd been rescued.

Ted Williams Tunnel - part of the Big Dig. How about Yaz Way for Carl Yastrzemski?

I vote for Luis Tiant Avenue.

We obviously interpret this scene differently. To me Tony is in control of himself and not under any outside influence. Yes, he references his nightmare but he also states he's been working on his Ultron defense thing for a while because alien invasion. Tony says he didn't create Ultron(tm) but what can't be denied is that he was working on his Ultron defense thing and messing with Loki's scepter, alien tech he did not understand, and trying to integrate the two. It integrated on its own because of what he was attempting to do. If he hadn't been trying to use the scepter to upgrade his Ultron defense thing, it Ultron(tm) never would have happened. A hypothetical: Take the twins out of the equation. They are not there. They do not exist. Would that change the main plot of AoU? The Avengers take down Strucker's Hydra base. The Avengers get back Loki's scepter. Does Tony let Thor take it back to Asgard immediately? Or does Tony still prevail upon Thor to stay a few days for a celebration and ask to be allowed to study the scepter? IMHO Tony would still see the oh so shiny alien tech and be itching to get his hands on it to study it, take it apart, etc. And it would still go down just like in AoU: he'd see it's an AI of some sort and think "oooh I can use this for my Ultron defense thing" and Ultron(tm) would still be born. Tony's so obsessed with creating something to save/protect the world that he will always go down that route. Just as Tony will always think he's the smartest person in the room and his way is always the right way to the point where he doesn't even want to hear any objections his teammate might have. That's Tony's character.

Let's go directly to the source on how/why Tony created Ultron: To me it's pretty clear Tony had been working on "Ultron" for quite a while and was stymied. Suddenly he has the scepter and sees a shortcut. He is not under any outside influence. He's doing the typical Tony thing of thinking he knows best and damn what anyone else thinks. And later after Ultron comes to life at the party: Thor: You think this is funny? This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand... Tony Stark: I'm sorry... I think it's funny, I think it's a hoot that YOU don't get why we need this! Bruce Banner: Tony, maybe this might not be the time... Tony Stark: Really? That's it? You just roll over and show your belly, every time somebody snarls? Bruce Banner: Only when I've created a murder-bot! Tony Stark: We didn't, we weren't even close! Were we close to an interface? Steve Rogers: Well, you did something right, and you did it right here! To quote Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: …the problem with the scientific power that you're [Tony's] using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it…<snip>You [Tony] didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it…<snip> [Tony] were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should. ETA: I'll just leave this article http://www.syfy.com/syfywire/why-tony-stark-real-villain-avengers-age-ultron

They're in Saugus.Well worth stopping by if you're in the area.

YES! Preferably from Kane's (if you're from north of Boston you know what I mean). Or a Buttercrunch.

That may be. But this is the first time in some 20+ years of being involved in fandom on the internet that I have encountered it ratcheted up to 11 like this. I dunno, maybe I've just been hanging out in smaller fandoms or simply fandoms that inspired less wank.

How does Bucky get away with shit? He was captured by HYDRA, spent 70 years as a POW. The mind wipes in the chair. the brainwashing, the cryo-freezing. The man didn't even know his own name. He had no agency, no self-determination. HYDRA turned him into a weapon. The weapon HYDRA pointed at the Starks and pulled the trigger. Tony did not owe him "tea and dumplings" but he knew what Bucky had been through. He called him "Manchurian Candidate"; that's explicit acknowledgement that he knew Bucky was not in control of his actions. Tony can feel angry. He can yell, scream, punch him in the face. What he cannot do is commit murder. So cool motive, still murder. As I said in a different forum, the MCU has not shown that Tony and Steve were good friends. I know it's different in the comics, but in the MCU it seems to me as if they are friendly work colleagues at best. I can't recall a single instance where Tony refers to Steve as Steve and not Cap. To me that illustrates that Tony doesn't see the difference between Steve Rogers and Captain America. So Steve choosing his childhood best friend, the person he had even when he nothing, the person he feels he failed and let fall to his death only to find out it was a fate worse than death, makes sense to me. You mention that fandom has turned you off Bucky as a character. For me, fandom has turned me off Tony as a character. In some corners of the internet there is such a rabid defense of all Tony's actions, excusing every mistake he's made, demonizing all other characters to prop up Tony, that I can no longer abide by Tony.

All of this. I want to give this post a million likes. Plus "Everything special about you came out of a bottle." Tony constantly makes jibes at everyone. And it's always given a pass as Tony being Tony. When in fact Tony's an entitled ass. That's one of the major problems with CW, in the MCU Steve and Tony are never shown to be close friends. I can't think of one instance where Tony calls Steve by his name; he always calls Steve "Cap". To me that shows Tony doesn't know the difference between Steve Rogers and Captain America.

I agree. Oversight is good. If the UN had approached the Avengers and said "we need to work something out here in the way you operate," I think all the Avengers would have been on board with that. Instead they were handed an ultimatum.