What movie is this even referencing? Almost every depiction of spiderman has him as a man of and for the people. Admittedly I haven't watched more recent marvel movies. Has that changed, somehow?
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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No, nothing has changed. You could make the argument in the comic about Spider-Man's appearance in Captain America: Civil War, but nothing else.
Homecoming: Spider-Man is fighting criminals trying to steal hyper advanced technology to weaponize it and sell to other criminals.
Far From Home: Spider-Man is fighting a guy who is using advanced tech to stage destructive attacks with elaborate illusions in order to set himself up as a hero, despite the large amount of destruction and harm he's causing without care.
No Way Home: Spider-Man is trying to redeem and prevent from dying some inter-dimensional villains he inadvertently caused to be dragged into his universe.
Infinity War/Endgame: Spider-Man joins other heroes to fight a galactic tyrant with Malthusian ideas of population control, hell-bent on eliminating half of all life in the universe.
In none of these movies was he fighting for the government to maintain the status quo.
Most Marvel movies suck.
They didn't use to.
The problem is the studios have gotten lazy and risk adverse.
The reason why Endgame was so huge was because the studio took some risks and did the work to set everything up for that payoff.
There were movies in the first few phases that fell flat, like Thor 2, but even that movie pushed the plotlines forward.
Post Endgame, marvel hasn't really had a unified plan. They've also become so risk adverse that if any given movie underperforms, it kills the entire plotline.
Which leads to movies that don't have meaningful character growth, so who cares about those characters? Or those movies?
Ironically and not, that's exactly what Iron Man brought Nu-Spiderman to do in the CW movie. Government is crying about control, so a war profiteer recruits, illegally extricates from the country, arms and indoctrinates a kid to collaborate in a paramilitary action to oppress the following groups represented: war veterans, the elderly, women, foreigners, scientists, disabled, performance athletes, amputees and people seeking asylum.
Geez. Considering the previous movie was about a nazi takeover of the US, seems like someone shoud have seen things coming!
In the comics he's originally on Iron Man's side of registration due to his personal guilt, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap's side. But yeah in the MCU he's literally a child soldier who doesn't know what he's fighting for.
, but then he realizes what a bad idea it is and changes to Cap’s side
No he doesn't; he just realizes that it personally inconveniences him because it gets his (only) moral tether killed, and decides to walk back that support to restore his own benefit, at the cost and harm of everyone else.
Don’t forget the paroled convict
True, how could I!
They made Spiderman rich in the movies because the writers a rich and think writing about a poor beneath them.
Other assholes include: Thor who is a dumb over privlaged fratboy who causes interndimentonal wars by acting like a dumb frat boy.
Ironman who was not only a war profiter who gave one the most powerful weapons platforms in the world to some teenager without any kind of oversight whose main story arc involves him fucking over poor people
Captain marvel is a brutal space pig who uses their powers to intimidate indigenous people on whatever planet she is on. Uses a weapon that can level city blocks and her character progression is that she needs to be more emotional. Plus she was fine committing genocide on the skrulls until she found out they had women.
Wakanda is a monarchist enthnostate presented as a utopia that tortures and murders outsiders and is presented in such a way that if it was the US the movie would be labeled as propaganda. Plus using 'colonizer' as a slur to call the people helping them even though they were never colonized
The eternals are boring
Wonda is everything that justifies the hate of mutants. But it's not her fault so she gets an pass. But it highlights everything stupid about the gay and minority parallel. No hates black or lbgtq people because they can think a hundred peope to death.
Almost all of these people are sone kind of aristocrat.
Black Widow spends all of her movie rescuing like 12 people while letting and entire gulag of men die in an avalanche without even flinching. Not to mention the fact that her and Hawkeye worked for the CIA and probably overthrow countless democracies.
The guardians of the galaxy employ a dangerous psychopathic racoon who thinks nothing of murder.
The least aggregous is Captain America, a living propaganda poster. Antman, one of the only poor person appearing in End Game is treated like a joke even though he should be the most dangerous one among them.
USAgent was treated like crap before he did anything wrong to the point I kind of felt bad for him
Getting rid of Zemos direct Nazi ties makes him almost a hero. And those ties are less then SHIELD's and less then that of most countries
Also, do not forget the beef between Disney and DeSantis only started when people saw they were working together. And only do scenes involving any kind of homosexuality in such away as to edit them out for whatever dictatorship they want to impress.
Also the original MCU Quicksilver was a thousand times better then yet another quipy hero that we don't need. Plus asshole Quicksilver is closer source material.
Edit: wtf am i getting down voted for?
When did they make Spider-Man rich?
He got a lot of money from the arms dealer
From Stark? When?
We see him get a bunch of tech from Stark, but we never see him get money. Then, at the end of No Way Home he gives up literally everything, including his identity as Peter Parker, and is shown living in an extremely cheap apartment.
Edit: wtf am i getting down voted for?
I can't imagine why a long-winded, dripping-with-cynicism, not-funny effort-post ridiculing and attacking the entire marvel universe and all the characters that some people might like, won't get you those precious, precious upvotes.
Truly, I have outgrown marvel, but this is the kind of brain-dead karma-whoring and social-brain-death that I don't miss on reddit. Not everyone thinks this deep about kid's movies or cares about upvotes.
Sure doesn't sound like you are over it.
Come on, you could have done better than that. I thought you were here for karma?
Not really, I was just wondering. But don't worry Disney will be alright
eternals wasn't just boring, it was built on the idea of "ancient aliens", which is horribly racist conspiracy theory that effectively claims that brown people cannot build cool shit. Pyramids? Aliens. Nazca Lines? Aliens. Nobody questions the Colosseum though.
You must have found the eternals fan lmao
I always think back to this one quote, something like
You can tell the morals of a society by the myths they tell themselves. We tell stories of heroes who save the world then quietly go back to their day job until they're needed again
I read that and I actually think positively on it. To me, i read it as the good person doesnt stand by and do nothing, they fight evil as it crops up, even at the cost of their peaceful life they desire. Im not sure I can agree to any one type of story them we tell though. Its pretty varied.
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superheroes are "benign" fascists, it's fiction that would never work. Even in the gooest, saccharine interpretations I would be the one criticizing superman lol
I question how many comics you have read then since many of these characters were created as anti-fascist figures. Captain America, Superman, and The X-Men for example were all vocally against fascism, bigotry, racism, and more.
Captain America for instance has a history of being in opposition to his government on issues around civil rights. He has always been an icon of anti-fascism.
Of course non-media literate people and just people who only know the character from posters and t shirts see the stars and stripes and think he's simply a "patriotic" hero.
As far as whether it would "work" in reality, well I think that is beside the point. These are about fantasy, myth making and legends. They are not supposed to be real. They explore ideas around what makes a hero with layers of fantasy and unreality that make the stories unpractical for our real world and to dismiss the ideas they explore because of that misses the point of the art. But...
The moral questions that would arise if they were to exist the real world have also been handled really well by the comic book medium, books like The Watchmen, Rising Stars, V for Vendetta, Miracleman (pretty much anything by Alan Moore tbh), and more.
Comics and superheroes are modern day myth making, and the value of that shouldn't be dismissed. Captain America, Spider-Man, The X-Men and more have inspired generations to view altruistic acts as things to be admired and aspired to. And the value of that should not be underestimated.
I agree. When the heroes are vigilantes, they're only acting as vigilantes because either the police are corrupt, or the police are overwhelmed.
I am not a Batman fan, and love to joke that if he and the other Gotham billionaires paid a reasonable tax, Gotham wouldn't be such a hellscape. But, the Batman theme is that the police are frequently corrupt and always overwhelmed, so a civilian needs to step up and protect the people.
Spiderman's whole deal is "with great power comes great responsibility." He puts his life on the line to protect people, and mostly from small-scale disasters like a run-away train.
What this comic gets absolutely wrong is that comic book heroes never try to stop someone from changing the status quo if they're doing it peacefully. The only ones they try to stop are the ones trying to do it by force. And mostly the change they're trying to make is to bring literal Nazis back to power. I think most sane people would have preferred status quo to Nazi takeover, though obviously the USA is getting there on its own without supervillains today.
Also it bleeds into other media. Like the kid's show Paw Patrol. I am obviously far too old to watch the show and while I have enjoyed watching kids stuff from time to time I just haven't been able to spare rhe time for that one.
However based on a cursory knowledge of it and reviews from youtubers the show has some really bad ideas in the subtext.
Firstly the shows basic services in the community are fully privatized. They even have some scenes where outsiders want to call the cops or some other local service only to be reminded by locals that in that community they are done by this kid and his dogs.
Also that kid who commands paw patrol? He is like the avengers in that he lives quite apart from the community he is supposed to be serving.
This is akin to how billionaires don't just live far away... they live REALLY far away and secluded from most people and don't interact with them directly. This is despite the fact that they control extremely critical assets to the community, they are not just isolated from the community, they are also unaccountable to them.
Ironically Superman is one of the least fascy superheroes, at least when written by anyone who understands the character.
Tbh they're just misrepresenting the argument. Most (famous) superheros aren't fascists. They spend a lot of time punching imperialists in the face at a minimum.
What they represent is a social desire for the hero-figure, the strong-man, to fix society's problems instead of collective and democratic action. That's the dilemma people like Alan Moore are pointing out when they talk about how comics can enable fascism.
On the one hand, you're right and I know it. It's the power fantasy over structural and social solutions/cooperation.
On the other hand, some are more fascy than Superman:
- Batman (general ignoring of structural issues, the even heavier glorification of vigiliantism over most capes)
- X-Men (if the gay, persecuted minority stuff gets occluded, and possibly due to those a lot of the villains)
- Green Lantern (might be wrong here, but seems to be space cops with a strong link to US military. I'll assume Nazi-coded villains to make them seem more heroic.)
Yeah the Green Lantern Corps in particular actually sucks pretty hard. The human members spend a lot of time chastising them for either not doing enough or doing fashy space cop shit, and then doing genocides themselves.
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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.
Also, often, the status quo they're trying to preserve is "Earth is not being invaded by aliens", or "this supervillain is not currently on a rampage".
As for movies about changing the status quo, that's really what the whole X-Men comic has been about since it came out in the 1960s. The whole theme there is "mutants aren't accepted by society, but they want to be, so they put their lives on the line to try to prove mutants are good". Over the years mutants have stood in for jews, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc.
Sometimes the X-Men are fighting off supervillains or aliens. But, often they're fighting off an oppressive government that is trying to wipe them out. So, the status quo they're trying to change is "the people hate mutants and the government wants to wipe them out".
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Some versions do try to tell a more complex story, like The Boys and Invincible. My Hero Academia is also there as an anime
I like One Punch Man. While he is a hero. The fact that he does it for fun and is frustrated at being so powerful makes it really stand out.
I love OPM, however I think it’s more about shonen anime stereotypes rather than western superhero stereotypes
Saitama is hilarious in the driest way possible, which is a humor that not everyone can appreciate
The pilot episode where he meets a crazed villain who loses his shit when Saitama tells him 'I am a hero for fun', and goes on a rant on what a stupid backstory that is... before he gets blown to bits with one single punch.
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