Why is there that knee-jerk rejection of any effort to “overthink” pop culture?
Maybe the social signaling sensitive unconsciously translate it into “I thought up this unobvious thing about this thing because I am smarter than you”, and then file it off as being an asshole about stuff that’s supposed to be communal fun?
It is not healthy to believe that every curtain hides an Evil Genius (I speak here as a person who lived in the USSR). Given the high failure rate of EVERY human work, I’d say that most secrets in the movie industry have to do with saving bad writing and poor execution with clever marketing and setting up other conflicts people could watch besides the pretty explosions. It’s not about selling Imperialism and Decadance to a country that’s been accused of both practically since its formation(sorry if you’re American and noticed these accusations exist only now in the 21st century), or trying to force people into some new world order-style government where a dictator takes care of every need. Though, I must admit that I wonder about Michael Bay’s agenda sometimes...
Tony Stark isn’t JUST a rich guy with a WMD. He messes up. He fails his friends and loved ones. He is in some way the lowest point in each of our lives, given some nobility. In spite of all those troubles, the fellow stands up and goes on with his life, gets better and tries to improve the world. David Wong seems to have missed the POINT of a couple of movies (how about the message of empowerment-through-determination in Captain America? The fellow must still earn his power as a “runt”), and even worse tries to raise conspiracy theory thinking up as rationality.
So, maybe, the knee-jerk reaction is wise, because overanalizing something made to entertain tends to be somewhat similar to seeing shapes in the clouds. Sometimes, Iron Man is just Iron Man.
Hopefully, the positive values are greater in number than the negative ones, if one is not certain which ones are which—and I see quite a few positive values in recent superhero movies.
Maybe the social signaling sensitive unconsciously translate it into “I thought up this unobvious thing about this thing because I am smarter than you”, and then file it off as being an asshole about stuff that’s supposed to be communal fun?
It is not healthy to believe that every curtain hides an Evil Genius (I speak here as a person who lived in the USSR). Given the high failure rate of EVERY human work, I’d say that most secrets in the movie industry have to do with saving bad writing and poor execution with clever marketing and setting up other conflicts people could watch besides the pretty explosions. It’s not about selling Imperialism and Decadance to a country that’s been accused of both practically since its formation(sorry if you’re American and noticed these accusations exist only now in the 21st century), or trying to force people into some new world order-style government where a dictator takes care of every need. Though, I must admit that I wonder about Michael Bay’s agenda sometimes...
Tony Stark isn’t JUST a rich guy with a WMD. He messes up. He fails his friends and loved ones. He is in some way the lowest point in each of our lives, given some nobility. In spite of all those troubles, the fellow stands up and goes on with his life, gets better and tries to improve the world. David Wong seems to have missed the POINT of a couple of movies (how about the message of empowerment-through-determination in Captain America? The fellow must still earn his power as a “runt”), and even worse tries to raise conspiracy theory thinking up as rationality.
So, maybe, the knee-jerk reaction is wise, because overanalizing something made to entertain tends to be somewhat similar to seeing shapes in the clouds. Sometimes, Iron Man is just Iron Man.
You don’t need to believe in intent to spread negative values to analyse that spreading negative values is bad.
Hopefully, the positive values are greater in number than the negative ones, if one is not certain which ones are which—and I see quite a few positive values in recent superhero movies.