Jump to content

Type keyword(s) to search

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers, etc.


vb68
  • Reply
  • Start Topic

Recommended Posts

47 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

Just a few thoughts. I get that this was a right wing attack. I hate that Pizzagate guy managed to get Gunn fired and, that's annoying in and of itself. I also get that Gunn made these tweets years ago and like the recent attack on Joy Reid people dug something up from years ago and this is not who Joy/Gunn is now.  At the very least, I hope Gunn is NOT like this. I really hope that he was simply being provocative to get attention and, not something he really believes deep down.

At the same time this IS Disney. Their entire brand is about Kids/Family, even their sub-companies (Lucas Film, Marvel, etc) are subject to Disney's over all brand.  Any other company and and Gunn's apology may have been granted a stay of Execution but, not Disney.

While, this is unfortunate and, I do feel bad for Gunn and worry about GoTG3 I don't blame Disney for the firing, they had to do this. 

It doesn't matter if its Disney. They already knew about this. They knew about this when they hired him. This is his second apology years apart. Not his first. This is why people aren't just accepting the well it's Disney side of it.

But it's a new world we are living in where dirt dragged up in the past can't just be worked through anymore or apologies mean nothing. Truth be damned.

Guardians of the galaxy will be okay through this I think. I think marvel, in general, has seeped so much of the guardians type humor into their brand and the heart has always been there. It will be fine. I just don't like the circumstances around this, whether or not Disney is justified.

  • Love 4
Link to comment
2 hours ago, Racj82 said:

Mark Walberg committed a vicious hate crime in his youth that nearly killed a man. It's open information but many people still dont know about it. He has never done anything like that since then and has apologized for his misdeeds. Should he be fired from movies years later because someone basically did a smear campaign about him years later? Yes, a business can do this. They have the right. But, should people keep getting written off for these bad deeds? At a certain point, the answer has to be no or at least no given that every situation is different.

Mark Wahlberg attacked a neighbor of his 4 years after the assault you mention (for which he only served 45 days). It's on his wikipedia.

I could understand if Gunn had told one or two off-color jokes, things happen, we all say and do inappropriate things. But he chose to repeatedly tweet over years about some of the most vile things. Why are we more upset by the reaction to the act as opposed to the act itself?

  • Love 10
Link to comment
18 minutes ago, JessePinkman said:

Mark Wahlberg attacked a neighbor of his 4 years after the assault you mention (for which he only served 45 days). It's on his wikipedia.

I could understand if Gunn had told one or two off-color jokes, things happen, we all say and do inappropriate things. But he chose to repeatedly tweet over years about some of the most vile things. Why are we more upset by the reaction to the act as opposed to the act itself?

The Gunn tweets were public knowledge. It wasn't a hidden situation.

Never mind. The jokes were terrible. If you want to call him that. Disney has every right to shit can him. The bigger narrative is beyond him just getting fired. That's what people are talking about. It's not about not being upset about the tweets. But, I've said my peace for too long. I can't explain my thoughts any other way. Everyone has differing opinions. Gunn wrote some terrible stuff. It came to light while being hired by Disney. He apologized. Never did anything like that again. The tweets remained out there. Years later those tweets were used to target Gunn to get back at Disney and to make a statement. Not because they were offensive. Either way, Gunn is gone, the A hole won and its story has just sparked a larger discussion is all. So did the Roseanne incident honestly. Difference being that while in both cases the bad words put out by both these people were out there before being hired. One didn't do anything like that again and one did. That's why people are upset. The big opinion was that Disney knew what they were getting with Roseanne but she dug her own grave by continuing to do it. Gunn didn't do that. That's why people have a problem with the he did something terrible, now he gets fired issue.

  • Love 4
Link to comment
11 hours ago, Racj82 said:

No it's not like the example you said.

These are people targeting Gunn to make a point.

And sometimes a criminal snitches on another out of spite. The source being a bad person or having a bad motivation only matters if the veracity of the information is in question.

If these tweets had, instead, come back into focus because someone with no axe to grind had simply stumbled upon them while learning about the guy who directed their favorite film and been genuinely horrified (because the things he says are pretty f'd up) would it change anything about whether Gunn should be fired or not?

Quote

Whether or not his tweets were reprehensible isn't the point. They obviously are joke or not.

These tweets already came to light. It was addressed when he first came to Disney by all parties. It was not buried. This isn't new information. He apologized for his actions and took responsibility for them.

Now people who want to lash back after things like the Roseanne incident to make a point.

And this shouldn't be a treated like Roseanne incident. This isn't someone actively saying bad things. This is a guy who said bad things in jest at one point in his life, apologized and seemed to learn from it.

If people aren't allowed to learn and change anymore, we have a huge problem.

Whether they're reprehensible or not is a huge part of the point, how can it not be? GotG is one of my favorite films ever (not just MCU or comic films either), and I'd never heard about any of this. I'm sure a lot of people out there were in the same boat as me before this broke the other day.

People need to be allowed to change, and I'm not sure if firing Gunn was the right move or not, but, at the same time I'd like to think that this is a sign that a company like Disney has changed enough to realize that maybe they shouldn't have given a 40 year old man a pass for making jokes about molesting children and anally raping women in the first place.

  • Love 9
Link to comment
(edited)
On 7/20/2018 at 6:03 PM, JessePinkman said:

Who makes one joke about child rape for the world to see much less dozens?

 

First thing that comes to mind, "a pedophile."

Edited by SimoneS
  • Love 4
Link to comment
(edited)
6 hours ago, SimoneS said:

First thing that comes to mind, "a pedophile."

 

And I would have gone with "asshole". Assholes make shitty gross jokes. A racist makes out and out racist remarks. A pedophile wouldn't even talk about kids and tries to look like a saint. It seems what Cernovich's plan is already working. He isn't just satisfied  getting Gunn fired but spreading false rumors about the FBI investigating him and even well meaning people who aren't even alt-right are starting to believe it. He's also attacking comedians Michael Ian Black and Patton Oswalt, with the latter's old tweets posted completely out of context to make him look bad. Comedians make edgy, dark jokes to shock. We're at the point in society where those jokes are no longer acceptable but that doesn't make the people who made them actually pedos.

Edited by VCRTracking
  • Love 12
Link to comment
On 22/07/2018 at 1:40 PM, Racj82 said:

Why bother? They were already out there meaning someone was always going to drag them back up. It wouldn't delete them from the world. And people often delete to hide from what they did or said. He never did. Not to make him out to be a saint but him not deleting the tweets doesn't mean he didn't care or didn't learn in itself. Why Disney let them stay up is a bigger question i have.

Yea i am not even sure there is a point deleting them. How many times has it been said that stuff on the internet is out there forever.

Selma Blair also had some interesting comments, and i kind of get what she was saying. If people get punished for this kind of thing after they have tried to make things right, all it does is encourage people to delete posts and deny any wrong doing, rather than owning it and trying to improve themselves.

  • Love 6
Link to comment

So it only makes sense to own up to mistakes and try to do better if you're going to get something for it, other than being a better human? 

And I don't really see where he did much to try and 'make it right', even his most recent apology was pretty weak and full 'I didn't mean it, I was only joking' excuses.  I keep thinking of all the people who have survived that kind of abuse having to see this outpouring of support for someone who thought what they went through was funny.  

I don't fault any of his friends for supporting him, he sounds like he is a good guy and supportive of his friends, particularly from what Selma Blair said, and I hope he continues to be that person and not the person he was.  I guess I would have liked to have seen something more proactive from him when this first came up to show he understood the magnitude of what he'd been doing, like publicly show some kind of support for victims of that kind of abuse? (if he did something like that, I couldn't find it)  It's possible if he had, and it was more common knowledge that he truly had worked to make amends for his actions, this attack might have ended a lot differently.     

I do think this would have been a non-issue though, even without him doing anything else, if the posts had been racist or sexist 'jokes' because literally every one has made racist, sexist, or ableist comments at some point since we're pretty terrible at respecting differences, but 'joking' about abusing children is just in a completely different category for me.  Obviously mileage varies widely.  

  • Love 4
Link to comment

I actually do think Gunn would have been smarter to delete the tweets years ago. Yes, everything on the Internet is permanent and never really goes away, but equally, these days we do kind of expect people to delete tweets/statements/photos/whatever that they're ashamed of. (Just look at that pitcher from the Brewers who immediately locked down his twitter the moment his offensive teenage tweets got out.) Fairly or unfairly, if you don't delete, imo you look less apologetic/truly regretful/whatever. Gunn--and certainly the suits at Disney--ought to have known that and insisted he delete them as part of owning up to them the first time. It's just a lot easier to spin an "I understand the error of my ways! Really!" narrative if one has done so.

  • Love 7
Link to comment
On 7/22/2018 at 7:59 AM, JessePinkman said:

I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone. Who cares if he apologized before? Who cares if he apologized at all? Who cares if Disney knew about it in 2011 or 14 or whatever? They also knew Roseanne was making racist tweets before they revived her show. What matters is their actions right now.

Actions have consequences, whether those consequences came 6, 7, 8 years ago (people seem really stuck on the amount of time here and it baffles me, this was a 41 year old man who thought the height of comedy was to talk about peeing on and having sex with children, it’s fucking unsettling and the dismissive reaction to it due to the source or because you don’t like the optics of it or agree with Gunn’s politics is making me sick) or now.

Meanwhile, Ted "Donald Trump is the greatest" Cruz is saying that Gunn should be prosecuted if those tweets have anything to do with something that actually happened. Which he should, sure, but.....maybe Cruz shouldn't be the one saying it given his public support (in Time magazine, no less) of President Grab Her By The Pussy.

He's not wrong, but.......yeah.

  • Love 15
Link to comment

Surely it goes without saying that Ginn, or anyone else for that matter, should be prosecuted IF they've engaged in paedophilia.

 

As for "something that actually happened", I'm sure I read that the thing that happened was that Ginn turned up and walked out on a speaking engagement when he found out that a convicted paedophile was on the panel. If what I read was accurate, then no, Gunn should not be prosecuted.

  • Love 2
Link to comment
19 hours ago, Wynterwolf said:

I do think this would have been a non-issue though, even without him doing anything else, if the posts had been racist or sexist 'jokes' because literally every one has made racist, sexist, or ableist comments at some point since we're pretty terrible at respecting differences, but 'joking' about abusing children is just in a completely different category for me.  Obviously mileage varies widely.  

I think it would have been an even bigger issue now, because of today's culture. I don't think James Gunn is a pedophile for making those jokes(for reasons I've stated) but it would be hard convincing people you're not racist or sexist if you've made jokes in that vein.

Link to comment
28 minutes ago, VCRTracking said:

I think it would have been an even bigger issue now, because of today's culture. I don't think James Gunn is a pedophile for making those jokes(for reasons I've stated) but it would be hard convincing people you're not racist or sexist if you've made jokes in that vein.

I wonder if people would be harsher on this if the comments were racist or sexist. Like if he had hundreds of tweets against black people or women written as jokes, would people be as readily forgiving? Would his friends leap to his defense?  

  • Love 1
Link to comment

I think there's a pretty wide range for racist/queer-phobic/sexist/ableist comments from casual to intense.  Making a 'joke' about a stereotype related to someone's ethnic heritage (or like the 'joke' that was made by an actor at this past Comic Con about ISIS) would be on the casual end that people don't always realize is racist, up to Rosanne-level racist which there's no doubt about.  I was thinking more of the casual joke end of that spectrum, rather than the Rosanne end.  Towards the casual end, I think the lines of what's funny/acceptable are a lot less clear.  

There was an interesting article linked recently about 'unfunny jokes' that kind of illustrates what I was thinking.  

  • Love 3
Link to comment
(edited)
35 minutes ago, JessePinkman said:

I wonder if people would be harsher on this if the comments were racist or sexist. Like if he had hundreds of tweets against black people or women written as jokes, would people be as readily forgiving? Would his friends leap to his defense?  

Definitely not. They would distance themselves. But really racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes are meant to slander someone and put them down. Gunn didn't think that he was actually making fun of victims, just shocking people.  Yeah that means he was an inconsiderate jerk who should have thought about people who actually went through things he jokes about would feel and now he knows better. It's not something you should make light of. If I thought he had deliberately insulted victims then I would completely on the anti-Gunn side and that Disney made the right decision.

Edited by VCRTracking
Link to comment

I'm wondering how viewers are supposed to tell the new actor is playing the same character if they hired someone with boatloads of charisma. Does Mackie have to dampen that down and pretend he can't emote?

  • Love 5
Link to comment
3 minutes ago, Bruinsfan said:

I'm wondering how viewers are supposed to tell the new actor is playing the same character if they hired someone with boatloads of charisma. Does Mackie have to dampen that down and pretend he can't emote?

Heh.  I really loved Will Yun Lee in the flashbacks, so I'm just gonna headcanon that there are limitations in the transfers, and that there are inherent 'physical personality' traits in each body and hope they let AM put his own spin on the character.  

Link to comment
2 hours ago, Silver Raven said:

The Disney takeover of Fox has been approved.  Welcome the FF4 to the MCU.

 The best internet casting idea I ever saw was John Krasinski as Reed Richards and Emily Blunt as Sue Storm. Not sure where I read it but can we have that please?

  • Love 7
Link to comment
4 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

 The best internet casting idea I ever saw was John Krasinski as Reed Richards and Emily Blunt as Sue Storm. Not sure where I read it but can we have that please?

Honestly, I'll be happy as long as they can make me forget about Jessica Alba's creepy fake blue-eyed blonde look from the original film. But, man, how much would I love if they could somehow have Erik Killmonger and Steve Rogers meet the new Human Torch.

  • Love 6
Link to comment
2 hours ago, starri said:

I just want Galactus as the Big Bad for the next phase.

And for God's sake, don't jump directly to Doom for your first FF movie.

Yeah, they really need to do another FF villain. After 3 movies it would appear Doom is their ONLY villain.

Marvel has earned my trust with FF and X-Men (FOX screwed them up so badly). I hope Dark Phoenix is totally scrapped and MCU reboots everything save Deadpool.

That being said I would love a Cap/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) WW 2 movie or a Cap/Wolverine/Deadpool rescue/revenge movie ala The Good The Bad and The Ugly (Deadpool Comic).

  • Love 2
Link to comment
9 minutes ago, Morrigan2575 said:

I hope Dark Phoenix is totally scrapped and MCU reboots everything save Deadpool.

As I said in one of the threads in the sub-forum, they are likely to bury New Mutants at least.  Although now I'm morbidly curious about how bad it is/was/will be.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
18 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

 The best internet casting idea I ever saw was John Krasinski as Reed Richards and Emily Blunt as Sue Storm. Not sure where I read it but can we have that please?

I was hoping they'd be Green Arrow and Black Canary in the DCEU(which would be cool since she was unable to play Black Widow for Iron Man 2 because she was still shooting that Jack Black Gulliver's Travels). Just read this recent Krasinksi interview in Variety:
 

Quote

 

Such injuries come with the action-hero territory, which Krasinski claims he never really sought. He recalls finding out eight years ago on Blunt’s birthday that Marvel had passed on him for “Captain America.”

“My agent called and said, ‘They’re going to go with Chris Evans,’” he says. “And I remember I said, ‘Yeah, look at him. He’s Captain America.’” His wife offered to cancel their evening plans, but he demurred. “I said, ‘It’s Chris Evans. Of course we’re going to dinner.’”

 

  • Love 2
Link to comment
On 7/28/2018 at 8:24 AM, starri said:

I just want Galactus as the Big Bad for the next phase.

And for God's sake, don't jump directly to Doom for your first FF movie.

Also, don't give Doom super powers, and don't involve him in their origin.

Link to comment

I'm not sure what to say about the issue itself. I'd like to think that the stupid things I did 10 years ago wouldn't come back to haunt me but I also didn't do anything like that. That said, it's definitely a bold statement by the cast and it's a brave one. If this misfires some of them do stand to lose their careers. Chris Pratt and Bradley Cooper and Zoe Saldana are pretty solid A-listers at this point but I don't know that you can say the same about Michael Rooker or Pom K. There must definitely be some sort of tight bond for them all to be on board. And I'd imagine that everyone else even remotely connected to Marvel is frantically scrubbing through their social media if they hadn't done it already. Because if Disney is willing to go to the mat and let James Gunn go then it's clear that they have a pretty zero-tolerance policy. And honestly I don't see Disney walking back from this anyway. I think the flack they'd catch would outweigh the benefits.

  • Love 4
Link to comment

As long as someone isn't an actual rapist or pedophile I don't have any problem with someone standing up for their friend. I would if it was my friend and I would hope my friends would for me because while I've never made those kind of jokes, I've done some dumb shit in my life. While I do think actions should have consequences, I side-eye this firing because apparently these tweets were known about when he was hired and he apologized for them then and seems to have changed. I think people should really be more careful in these days of social media but I do not like witch-hunts.

  • Love 7
Link to comment

The problem is Disney just fired Rosanne from her own show for the racist tweets that she made. The show's been renamed and retooled to remove her completely. I don't think Disney can walk back this firing without igniting a storm of epic proportions. Quite frankly the tweets the Gunn made are worse. Yes it was 10 years ago and yes he apologized when it came up the first time but this is several years later and Disney cannot set a precedent where they're going to fire a woman for what is nasty act and then rehire a guy for quite frankly doing something worse. I'm wouldn't hold it against Gunn forever, he didn't rape anyone and he isn't a pedophile but those jokes are in horrible taste and if Disney is going to come down on one person then they're going to have to come down on everybody. 

  • Love 1
Link to comment
50 minutes ago, anna0852 said:

The problem is Disney just fired Rosanne from her own show for the racist tweets that she made.

Which she'd had a long history of, and they hired her anyway.  The Tweet Heard Round The World wasn't even the first time she'd used that particular slur towards a woman of color.  ABC had forced her to agree to turn her social media over to her kids, which she did, but then regained control very shortly thereafter.  And that final tweet was the last straw, but it wasn't the first.  She'd put out another four in between the show coming back and her firing.  They had an agreement with her, and she broke it, and she finally went too far.

  • Love 10
Link to comment

Those are all good poins. I think part of the problem is these two incidents just happened too close together. And that at a time when sexual harassement, rape culture and Hollywood misbehavior are at the forefront of the news cycle I think Disney probably didn't feel they had much choice. And I just can't imagine they would reverse course. Right now James Gunn being let go from the MCU is a fairly small event. In another couple of weeks it probably fades completely. Rehiring him will lead to a *far* greater outcry. You're going to have the #MeToo activists up in arms due to the nature of the tweets (and I think they are disgusting!) AND you're going to have the right-wing MAGA crowd getting the pitchforks because Roseanne got fired but James was taken back. I'm sure the last thing Marvel/Disney wants to is have protesters outside their next film premire.

Either way it's a mess but holding firm will probably be a smaller mess.

  • Love 2
Link to comment
2 hours ago, anna0852 said:

And I'd imagine that everyone else even remotely connected to Marvel is frantically scrubbing through their social media if they hadn't done it already. Because if Disney is willing to go to the mat and let James Gunn go then it's clear that they have a pretty zero-tolerance policy. And honestly I don't see Disney walking back from this anyway. I think the flack they'd catch would outweigh the benefits.

For anyone behind the camera, sure.  You can always hire another director/producer/writer and there's a chance it won't have any measurable effect on the finished project.  However, I'd be stunned if a major actor gets axed unless they actually commit a (major) crime as opposed to just saying/tweeting something incredibly stupid.  I think they'll go over any new hire's past with a fine-toothed comb (no way they'd hire someone like RDJ nowadays) but the current bunch is set.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
3 hours ago, anna0852 said:

Disney cannot set a precedent where they're going to fire a woman for what is nasty act and then rehire a guy for quite frankly doing something worse.

I can see a difference between firing someone over something gross they said yesterday and firing someone over something gross they said 10 years ago.  Is Gunn a better person now than he was then?  I don't know.  He's a better-behaved person, at least.

  • Love 8
Link to comment
(edited)

You can also have two different situations that have a similar outcome, but for different reasons.  

I also find it disheartening how little a cis het middle-aged white dude has to do to be considered "redeemed" after actions like that.  

Edited by Wynterwolf
  • Love 1
Link to comment

I've been looking for Gunn's previous apology that I've seen referenced numerous times since all this came out.

I've seen one from 2012 that is about a blog post he made (superheroes you want to have sex with) that contained him calling male superheroes "fruits" and suggesting that Lesbian heroes could be "turned" by having sex with a man, and he specifically apologizes to LGTBQ people.

I don't see anything about him apologizing for these tweets (or any tweets), am I just missing it, or is this what people are referring to when they say he already apologized?

  • Love 5
Link to comment

So I just had a thought. With Disney owning the whole Marvel Universe now. Stinger for Infinity War 2. Nick Fury is talking to someone, trying to get them on side. The camera swings around. We see Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman! Audience goes mental. Everyone wins.

Assuming that they can stop the leaks. Jackman doesn't even need to go to the gym, just wear long sleeves.

OTOH, it might distract from what we've just seen. But it would still be cool.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
7 hours ago, anna0852 said:

 Disney cannot set a precedent where they're going to fire a woman for what is nasty act and then rehire a guy for quite frankly doing something worse.

Alternately, Disney owns ABC, which produces The View. Of the three people who have said gross and/or racist things while working for the Mouse House, Whoopi Goldberg is still employed. I don't think they'd hire either Roseanne or James Gunn back,, but Goldberg managed to not make the wrong enemy.

  • Love 1
Link to comment
4 hours ago, Perfect Xero said:

I've been looking for Gunn's previous apology that I've seen referenced numerous times since all this came out.

I've seen one from 2012 that is about a blog post he made (superheroes you want to have sex with) that contained him calling male superheroes "fruits" and suggesting that Lesbian heroes could be "turned" by having sex with a man, and he specifically apologizes to LGTBQ people.

I don't see anything about him apologizing for these tweets (or any tweets), am I just missing it, or is this what people are referring to when they say he already apologized?

That's the apology. He has talked openly over the years about his former asshole persona on Twitter, and owned up to it, and about how he's changed thanks, ironically, to Disney. His old output was never a secret; Disney definitely knew about it. This is a guy who used to work for Troma, so they knew who they were getting in bed with. He said this last year in his Buzzfeed profile before Vol. 2 came out:

"I protect myself by writing scenes where people shoot people in the face," Gunn said, chuckling. "And if I have to think around shooting someone in the face, it's harder, but I think it's more rewarding for me." He cleared his throat. "I felt like Guardians forced me into a much deeper way of thinking about, you know, my relationship to people, I suppose. I was a very nasty guy on Twitter. It was a lot fucking edgy, in-your-face, dirty stuff. I suddenly was working for Marvel and Disney, and that didn't seem like something I could do anymore. I thought that that would be a hindrance on my life. But the truth was it was a big, huge opening for me. I realized, a lot of that stuff is a way that I push away people. When I was forced into being this" — he moved his hand over his chest — "I felt more fully myself."

And what's "this"?

"Sensitive, I guess?" he said. "Positive. I mean, I really do love people. And by not having jokes to make about whatever was that offensive topic of the week, that forced me into just being who I really was, which was a pretty positive person. It felt like a relief."

  • Love 3
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...