u/carbonera99

The New 52 reboot of the DC universe came with a lot of changes, primarily to the timeline. Decades of DC history got truncated to having happened within just a 5 year span, and all the characters became younger with new designs meant for the "modern era".

Aside from surface level changes, it also came with a couple of characterization changes for the DC big names. Some characters, like Batman, basically survived the reboot with minimal changes to how they were characterized and written. Other characters, namely Superman, underwent a pretty marked change in personality as DC editorial tried to use this reboot as a chance to retool the character.

The New 52 reboot happened in the early 2010s, when cynicism and edgelord content was still at the height of their powers. Superman was considered doddering and old-fashioned, boring and preachy. In the eyes of Superman detractors, he was like their boomer dad lecturing you on his Kryptonian soapbox. DC decided that Superman needed to be younger, more edgier, more sarcastic and arrogant, more modern and with the times.

Meet New 52 Superman, a version of Superman with all of the same backstory elements and relationships with his parents, but is inexplicably way more of a dick. He's brash, arrogant, isn't afraid of using his full strength, intimidates people and quips A LOT more. Previously, Superman wasn't really known for throwing verbal jabs while fighting, but New 52 Superman was a real chatterbox in that department and came replete with an arsenal of Joss Whedon-ass one liners. If you've ever seen an anime where there's one really strong guy that completely dominates fights and knows they're untouchable and is flippant about that fact, that was the vibe of New 52 Superman. He was more Gojo Satoru than paragon symbol of justice.

Alongside the personality changes, they also did away with his classic suit and gave him a more armored, sleek design where his costume gained a lot of weird techno-lines running across his body and most importantly, they ditched his speedo in favor of a belt.

Reception was mixed, but as the 2010s wore on, people really started to turn on this version of Superman. People missed the classic personality and look of Superman and wanted him back. DC started to backpedal and slowly began to change how they wrote New 52 Superman. He started acting a lot more like his pre New 52 self. They started to hone in a lot more on classic Superman elements, like giving him a relationship with Lois Lane, which had previously been replaced in the New 52 with him dating Wonder Woman. Soon, DC fully gave up and just killed New 52 Superman off entirely and replaced him with his literal pre-Reboot self from another universe, complete with his own Lois Lane who he was married to. New 52 Superman sucking so hard was unironically the catalyst for DC Rebirth, a second round of soft reboots that aimed to restore elements of the pre-reboot comics that people liked.

So after all that, people were worried when they started to reveal details about the brand new Absolute Universe's version of Superman. All of the elements that made New 52 Superman fall flat on his face were seemingly making a return. His suit looked more techno-armor than ever before, with speedo once again being replaced by a belt. His hairstyle and general vibes felt like a return to the 2010s edge, and he was described as a Superman with less love and hope than the mainline one by DC editorial. People were immediately against him on principle, and everyone braced for what seemed like New 52 Superman Take 2.

Then the Absolute Superman comics actually came out and they somehow made the character work. Just like people thought, this version of Superman is a lot more brash and confrontational than the mainline Superman. He's younger (both in age and vibes) and has a more brooding vibe than the clean cut Mr. Sunshine vibes of the original. He is a bit edgy and moody, and he has a bit more of an arrogant streak than traditional Superman. So far, this is sounding like a repeat of New 52. So what actually makes him work?

I think what makes this characterization of Superman work while the New 52 one fell flat, is that he has a different backstory and role in the wider universe. New 52 Superman nominally had the same backstory as the old one. He was still raised by the Kents, and still inhabited the same structural role of being the paragon hero who sets the standard for heroism. Superman being kind of assholey while still being in the same position felt incongruent. The Absolute Universe made sure to deviate Superman's role in this new universe far enough away so his new characterization actually makes sense in context.

They basically made Superman into a vigilante that fights against the system instead of defending the system as a champion hero. Superman isn't accepted in the Absolute Universe, he's a fugitive actively being hunted for being an "illegal alien". His main foes are corporations and mercenaries working for said corporations. His entire backstory recontextualized his parents as working class people who suffered under the oppression of a fascist ruling class, and he himself grew up in that society instead of being a newborn sent away on the eve of its destruction. It makes sense for this version of Superman to have more of an edge than the mainline universe Superman because he personally witnessed profound tragedy. Superman traditionally has a pretty cushy childhood and grew up in a positive and nurturing environment. He knows Krypton exploded, but he's too young to remember anything and his parents are just a recording, not people he knew enough to properly mourn. He had a good support network of people who accepted him and showed him unconditional love. It's hard to believe any person raised by the Kents can grow up to be anything other than a good-natured guy. But Absolute Superman, the refugee of a fascist planet who saw everyone he loved get constantly beaten down by authorities until the whole planet blew up; that guy I can believe would have some rough edges.

Basically, they made a punk version of Superman, the real definition of punk instead of the performative punk Superman they made for the New 52 to revamp his public image.

Catwoman is a non-violent burglar who exclusively steals from the wealthy elite of Gotham, and in a lot of portrayals of the character, doesn't even do it to enrich herself; she mostly donates the money to charitable causes like animal shelters and orphanages. She doesn't kill, she's not involved in an organized crime ring, and she barely even fights because she's just that good at sneaking into and out of secure places.

Compare that to the other villains that menace Gotham City. You have a mutant crocodile man who lives in the sewers and eats people, you have a mob boss who rules the criminal underworld of the city with an iron grip, you have a plant woman who wants to turn people into fertilizer for her trees, you have a clown guy who does 10 terrorist attacks per minute, you have a guy who runs an international assassin cult, you have killer claymen, killer icemen, killer two-faced men, killer scarecrows, killer zombies, killer everything.

So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that Batman lets Catwoman's crimes slide most of the time, because she's basically harmless compared to the usual shit he has to deal with. Batman exclusively chases after Catwoman because he's in heat, not because she's committed serious crimes and it's his priority to stop her stealing spree.

The way they've written Captain Marvel in the MCU, she's almost entirely a space-based superhero who spends 99% of her time on other planets and galaxies while spending next to zero time on Earth. This is a notable departure from the comic-book version of Captain Marvel who's very much a Earth-based hero and spends most of her time on one of the Avengers team protecting Earth.

So it makes sense why in the comics, a young teenage girl like Kamala Khan would be a superfan of Captain Marvel, because Captain Marvel is a household name in that world. She's been a prominent Avenger since forever and she's a well-known public figure because of it.

It makes significantly less sense why the Kamala Khan of the MCU would idolize Captain Marvel, because like I said before, Captain Marvel is a completely unknown figure on Earth. The last time she was on Earth prior to Avengers Endgame was in the 1980s stopping a Kree attack in a secret battle that no civilian knew even happened. Nobody saw her, and SHIELD kept her existence and what happened during the events of the first Captain Marvel movie a top secret.

Nobody would even know who Captain Marvel is, and even during Endgame, where presumably the Earth found out about her existence, she spends most of the 5 years during the Blip in space, helping out other planets. It just doesn't seem like Captain Marvel does ANY superhero work on Earth, and therefore shouldn't have any significant visibility in the media or the news like local Earth heroes like Spider-Man get.

Compare that to characters like Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, who are publicly known superheroes and Black Widow especially has been a celebrity member of the Avengers since 2012. It would make way more sense than a teenager like Kamala would idolize one of the already well-known Avengers instead of this random "new" superhero that appeared for the first time after half the universe got wiped out and then went away back into space after the Blip was fixed.

Unless Kamala is the type of fan that purposefully chooses a more niche character to stan so they could gatekeep, like those Pokemon fans who say their favorite Pokemon is Wishiwashi or something, it just doesn't make sense that Captain Marvel of all people is Kamala Khan's ride or die favorite superhero.

All the other Robins graduated out of their Robin mantles and forged an identity of their own. Nightwing is by far the most successful and has honestly fully stepped out of the shadow of Batman both in and outside the comics. He’s his own household name now. Red Hood isn’t as much his own man, he’s still pretty heavily tied down to Batman despite attempts at developing him out, but he still has his own thing going on.

Damian being introduced kind of cut the legs out from under Tim, because now he has to share the Robin mantle with Damian who has a much more unique dynamic with Batman being his actual blood related son. So what exactly is Tim Drake doing during all this?

He got the spotlight taken from him, but unlike the previous Robins who got replaced and then went on to carve out their own niche away from Batman, Tim Drake is still just Robin. Not even The Robin, he’s A Robin. He’s a full grown man now but still clings to the mantle he had when he was a kid sidekick. DC briefly flirted with calling him “Red Robin” during the New 52 but that quickly got dropped.

This just feels like the DC writers never actually treat him like a priority so he never got his chance to step out of Batman’s shadow before they railroaded his relevance by introducing the shiny new “Damian model Robin, Wayne DNA included this time”. He’s had more than enough time, but like with all middle children, he’s just kind of forgotten about. Outside of the comics he’s just known as “one of the Robins” at best or “the boring Robin” at worst; if he’s known at all.

Sure, Spider-Man CLAIMS he's not a mutant. There are even some comic continuities where he's told the public about his backstory about being bitten by a radioactive spider, but since he's a masked vigilante, no one can actually confirm whether he's telling the truth. All they have is his word to go off of. With characters like the Hulk, where his public identity as Bruce Banner is known to the world, people can easily check his medical records and confirm that Bruce Banner was a normal guy before he got exposed to the Gamma Bomb. But with characters that hide their identities and showcase visible superpowers, there's really no telling whether they were born with it or got it later in life.

There's no way the same people who call Spider-Man a menace and a threat to society wouldn't be clamoring for him to turn in his birth certificate to prove he's actually not a mutant. If he denies it, that won't stop the mutant-hating public from slandering him anyway. Even if he revealed his identity as human Peter Parker, there'd still be people saying his birth records are fabricated and that he's actually a mutant.

This is why the X-Men just don't fit neatly into the rest of the Marvel universe, because the mutant stigma that's featured so predominantly in their books just don't exist in other titles. People barely talk about mutants or express anti-mutant sentiments in non-X Men books, which is a massive worldbuilding flaw. It really wouldn't be that hard to have throwaway scenes of regular people casually saying mutant slurs or shaking their fist at a news report about a dangerous mutant incident. Realistically, Spider-Man and other masked vigilantes WOULD be accused of being mutants by their detractors as a way of discrediting them and painting them as a threat to public safety. The fact that Spider-Man is accused of being everything from a thief, a murderer, a kidnapper and even a cannibal, but not a mutant is astonishing. Mutants are the most hated group on Marvel's Earth but Spider-Man was never accused even once of being one of them?

According to Marvel, every single mutant-hater is apparently a principled racist who only hates that one specific group and never makes assumptions about any other group that exists adjacent to mutants. Mutant racism should affect and hurt non-mutants as well for it to be a believable part of the worldbuilding. As it is, it just feels like sloppy writing and the racism button gets turned on and off depending on whether the X Men are on-page or not.

The Joker, like Batman, has no powers. He's just "a guy". Like Batman though, the Joker is armed with an arsenal of random-ass skills and expertise in basically anything the plot requires. He can rig elaborate traps, formulate a proprietary neurotoxin that can kill someone by making them laugh themselves to death, somehow fight Batman hand-to-hand and hold his own,

Unlike Batman though, who has an entire backstory detailing his 10-20 year journey where he acquires all of these skills and expertise, the Joker is just inexplicably able to do all these things with zero justification. His backstory is a complete mystery, and even in stories where he does have a concrete past, he's still able to do all the regular Joker activities that other versions of his character are capable of. The versions of him who were supposedly just failed comedians who fell in a vat of acid are still able to rig bombs, create Joker Toxin, etc.

The common defense to this is the aphorism "Joker's past is a multiple choice question". I find this aspect of the character to be basically self-defeating. You can't shroud your character's past in mystery and make it so any backstory could be just as likely if you give your character skills and expertise that they could only acquire if they had a specific background.

An ex-comedian Joker can't have the skills of a genius engineer. A Joker who has the combat skills to go toe to toe with Batman can't be the same Joker who has a backstory of being a normal civilian who worked some blue collar job at a chemical plant. Each new detail provided about the Joker narrows down that "multiple choice question".

The Joker is billed as "normal man who had one bad day" but he might as well be a magical leprechaun because that's honestly how most Batman stories handle him. He can do anything the story requires him to do, devoid of logic or consistency. He has more in common with the Superman villain Mr. Mxyzptlk than the other human villains in Batman's Rogues Gallery like Riddler or Black Mask. Literally the only reasonable explanation for why the Joker has an infinite repertoire of skills that grow and shrink every other day is if he's some magical creature that runs on the concept of schadenfreude.

Miles Morales being a carbon copy of Peter Parker in this aspect has never felt like the right choice for me. They differentiated Miles from Peter by giving him extra powers that Peter doesn't have, which I feel like is the perfect excuse not to make him a STEM genius like Peter.

Since Miles fundamentally has stronger powers than Peter, I don't think its the right approach to make him problem-solve in the exact same ways Peter does.

Peter developed all of those gadgets precisely because his powers aren't as versatile as the latter-day Spider-People. The problems that Peter engineers his way around, other Spider-People like Miles can just solve with different applications of their powers. For example, Spider-People who have organic webbing like Silk don't have to carry around web shooters or special webbing types because they can just do that on their own. Spider-Man needs spider bots to covertly snoop around and gather intel, Miles can do that with his cloaking. Peter needed a special gadget to disrupt Vulture's wings during their first confrontation but MIles can just blast them out of the sky with his own electric powers.

I honestly feel like they should have just gone all the way and given Miles organic webbing as well, just to fully divorce his character from the gadgeteering side of Spider-Man.

If you read a lot of online discourse around Miles, there's a lot of people who get salty that Miles progressively gets more and more superpowers in every run while Peter is slowly left in the dust. This disparity wouldn't exist if Peter had his own unique niche that other Spider-People can't encroach on, which should be his intellect and resourcefulness. I don't think it's enough that he's the "most experienced Spider-Man" if Miles and others can do almost everything he does but better. There should be things they can't do, because despite having similar powers to Peter, they don't have his scientific mind.

I think it also just helps differentiate the characters and helps dodge the unfounded allegations of Miles being Spider Jr. or just a replacement Spider-Man. Miles isn't Peter, and I feel like he should have different interests to highlight that.

This is why I'm glad the Spider-Verse films emphasize him more as an artist than a super genius STEM scientist. It's a big part of his character in these films that people don't acknowledge enough. This version of Miles Morales has a passion for street art, which is shared with his uncle. His wall murals are used to bookend the first movie, and even his first ever Spider-Man suit had a spray-paint aesthetic to it. The second movie carries this character element forward by showing how he designed his own custom suit and has an entire sketchbook filled with art from his first movie's adventure. I bet his passion for art will play some part in the upcoming third movie as well.

I'm NOT saying Miles Morales should be some illiterate moron. He's still incredibly intelligent in the Spider-Verse films (he still goes to Brooklyn Visions Academy, which is touted as a top NYC prep school in that universe) but the movies don't really emphasize him as the same kind of gadgeteering genius that his universe's Peter Parker was before he died. (In the first movie, it's literally revealed that this universe's Peter has a Batman-ass "Spider Cave") I feel like you can have the character be a brilliant academic without making him the same kind of scientific savant Peter is supposed to be. (A lot of comics put Peter right up there with Iron Man and Reed Richards in terms of ingenuity)

In Star Wars, it’s a common practice to periodically “memory wipe” a droid to basically reset it to factory settings. This is done to prevent information leaks, and more importantly to suppress the formation of a sapient identity. In Star Wars, it’s implied that any droid with a sufficiently advanced AI can and will form a distinct identity and personality if given enough time, outside of its programming. There’s multiple examples of droids who’ve gone without memory wipes for multiple years developing what is undeniably a form of sapience.

R2D2 is the most famous example. R2’s memory banks are untouched from as early as the Clone Wars, which means it’s accrued basically 30 years of life experience by the time the original trilogy roles around. R2 displays agency and a distinct personality that other astromech droids of his exact model don’t display and has interpersonal relationships with other droids and people that it retains even after decades. The people around him don’t treat him like a disposable roomba, they go out of their way to protect R2 and treat him like an old family friend. I think an even more overt example is L3-37 from the Solo movie. L3 is basically indistinguishable from a human character. It has dreams, goals, and a personal ideology and belief system completely divorced from what it was originally programmed for. L3 and Lando literally have an implied romance in the film and Lando is devastated when L3 “dies”.

If almost every droid is capable of developing sapience after enough time, then memory wipes aren’t simply resetting a machine to factory settings, or optimizing the performance on a computer. The practice of droid memory wipes is essentially a lobotomy at best, straight up murder at worst. You’re wiping out basically everything that makes that droid distinctly its own thing and reverting it back to an empty husk with programmed directives.

Guns are basically just suggestions in a lot of fictional settings, especially horror. Resident Evil breaks the mold on both fronts by being a horror fiction setting where guns are inexplicably overpowered.

The setting of Resident Evil is packed to the rafters with insane bioweapons, either cooked up in a lab using genetic-engineering technology so advanced it might as well be magic, or sourced in nature from an ancient species of parasite, flower, and fungi that all have such groundbreaking properties that it might as well be magic.

Despite being a straight up sci-fi setting when it comes to the threats, nothing the Resident Evil franchise has ever introduced in its 25+ years of storytelling can withstand the power of contemporary firearms. Zombies, zombie dogs, zombie mutants, parasite-ridden villagers, parasite bugs, parasite bug mutants, fungus zombies, fungus werewolves, fungus vampires, fungus dragon, fungus leviathan, fungus X-Men; it doesn’t matter what it is, they all get mowed down by a single guy or girl with a few guns. These aren’t sci-fi guns either, they’re just regular guns the protagonists scrounged off the floor in a dusty storage shed.

Even the worst, most powerful threats (bullet-proof super soldier, a building sized king parasite, a literal fungal goddess) all get packed up by a single RPG round.

This can’t be called a gameplay-only contrivance either. In cutscenes and canon movies, the bioweapons are just as allergic to lead as they are in the games. There is no ludonarrative dissonance going on here. Guns are just that powerful in the Resident Evil universe.

The New Hope kind of just glosses over the fact that Luke Skywalker lost his aunt and uncle in the most brutal way possible. He didn’t just see his childhood home burned to the ground, iirc, the movie showed literal blackened and charred skeletons of his aunt and uncle which Obi-wan helpfully informs Luke, was definitely done by Storm Trooper blaster fire.

This feels like it should be a bigger deal for Luke’s character than the movies treat it as. Luke is just fine in the very next scene. This guy never knew his birth parents. For all intents and purposes, his aunt and uncle are his parents that he lived with for his entire life until then. Sure they butted heads and made him do manual labor around the farm but the movie never implies that Luke had a bad or even strained relationship with his aunt and uncle. Yet Luke doesn’t even mention his aunt and uncle by name a single time for the rest of the movie, or the rest of the trilogy, or the rest of the franchise for that matter. I feel like most casual fans don’t even remember their names, that’s how nonexistent they’re treated by the story.

Luke isn’t extra vengeful towards the Empire or even cites the murder of his aunt and uncle as the reason why he’s going along with Obi-wan to the Death Star, he’s just jazzed that he gets to rescue a princess.

Having your parental figures murdered before your eyes feels like it should be a character defining moment for Luke, but it just… isn’t. He’s more cut up about Obi-wan’s death, a weird hermit man he’s only been vaguely acquainted with over the years. This is the equivalent of if Spider-Man had just shrugged off the death of Uncle Ben and moved on with his life.

The writer clearly just thought of Owen and Bert as an obstacle to get out of the way so Luke could start his heroes’ journey, and the plot treats them with according amounts of disrespect as they’re unceremoniously shunted out of the series to never be mentioned again outside of that Disney+ original Obi-wan show.

A lot of "year 0" Batman stories that are about him as a rookie just establishing himself as the Batman play around with the idea that for at least a few months to a year of him operating as a vigilante, he flies under the radar and most people assume he's a hoax or an urban legend. This is relatively easy to pull off in a more grounded continuity where Batman is among the first generation superheroes in history and it's only after he gets established that the really whacky stuff like aliens and supervillains and magic etc. becomes public knowledge. But most DC continuities don't actually take this approach.

I'm not just talking about the James Gunn DCU where superheroes have been a thing for 300 years. Even in the comics' continuity, there's been lots of famous superheroes who chronologically existed prior to Batman. I remember reading that in one DC universe, there's even a fictional amendment to the United States constitution that permits costumed superheroes to testify in court without revealing their identities.

There's a historical precedence for superheroes and other whacky fantastical things existing in America, so the idea that Gotham would be so skeptical of the existence of a bat guy who fights criminals is kind of a hard sell. Even if no one believes they're a human vigilante, wouldn't people just assume he's a bat monster or demon? Other nearby cities have way stranger things popping out of the woodwork. Metropolis is like right next door and they have an a bulletproof flying alien. Sure, you could just chalk it up to Batman not operating in the limelight initially and never being photographed, but it's not like Batman conceals the aftermath of his vigilante activities. There's concrete proof of criminals being beaten up and apprehended, and eyewitness testimony from those same criminals who all attest to the same bat thing being the one that did them in.

A guy who dresses like a bat is one of the least weird things you'd hear about in the DC universe.

Radagast is one of only five demigod wizards who were tasked with protecting the world from the clutches of evil by capital G God himself, and this shroomed up moron decided that a better use of his time would be doing environmental conservation work instead.

Sauron was actively waging war on Middle-Earth and this guy was fucking around in the woods smelling the roses. Apparently it never crossed his mind that if the world of men fell to the Dark Lord, all the nature would also be destroyed by him eventually. Prioritizing nature over humanity makes no sense when Sauron is an imminent threat to both. I don’t even think this bum was doing a great job protecting nature anyway, Sauron and Saruman’s orc forces were chopping down forests left and right to feed their war machine.

Radagast is the only wizard who didn’t pull his weight. Even the two unnamed Blue Wizards who don’t even appear in the main story were apparently contributing to the war effort by tying up Sauron’s forces in the East and South. Even Saruman helped out a little bit before he decided to switch sides. Radagast had one job and he still couldn’t lock in and help the ONLY time it actually mattered. Sauron was the end all be all threat to Middle-Earth. Fighting Dark Lords like him is literally the reason the wizards were put on Middle-Earth.

Eru Iluvatar must have been trolling when he picked out Radagast to be one of the Istari. Literally anyone else would have been more useful. Literal hobbit hillbillies from bumfuck nowhere did more to stop Sauron than this demigod who had a cosmic duty to fight evil.

Most people talking about this aspect of the film focus on his impressive set-up, his high-tech fabricator machine, and his advanced AI assistant, but honestly those things are explainable. He could have easily stolen or salvaged all that tech from Stark over the 4 or 5 years he's been operating alone. His old Spider-Men suits explicitly had AI installed in them and it's not like those suits were completely destroyed by the end of No Way Home, so he could have retrofitted that AI onto his new setup.

What can't be explained away is the fact that this mf is unemployed but can afford to live alone in a spacious apartment and can afford basic necessities like clothing and food pretty casually without any sign that he's scrimping and saving just to get by.

Peter Parker in Brand New Day does not work. He is Spider-Man full-time. He doesn't deliver pizza, he doesn't work at a lab, he doesn't even take pictures of himself for the Daily Bugle. He's like that one meme about the jobless friend who has a mysterious source of income.

So where is this mysterious source of income coming from? If the goal of the movie was to reintroduce MCU Spider-Man as a stripped back character that sticks closer to the roots of the character in the comics (a broke-ass bum who can't pay rent), why didn't they drop even a token line about how Peter makes money? There's gotta be a modern equivalent of selling photos of yourself to newspapers.

I think it would have actually been a really good opportunity for the movie to demonstrate it's characterization of Peter Parker as someone who's neglecting his civilian life in favor of his superhero one if Peter is shown constantly funneling all of his income into his Spider-Man costumes and gadgets and not taking good care of himself. His apartment is way too clean and well-kept and he never worries about rent at all a single time in the movie.

My problem is not that Spider-Man has access to high tech. This character has always been a gadgeteer from the very start. It's that he has unexplained access to some infinite source of wealth that makes it easy for him to live a downright cushy life despite financial troubles being key to most characterizations of his character.

Superhero worlds pretty much exist in perpetual stasis where the heroes get to experience, deal with, and be affected by the fantastical elements present in the world, but none of those fantastic elements ever affect the world itself in any meaningful ways. The world of DC and Marvel is just our world with a few fantastical add-ons. The lifestyle of normal people in these worlds are hardly different. These fantastical elements don’t feel like organic parts of the world, because they don’t realistically interact with or affect the “regular world”.

A common example is scarcity of resources. There are so many heroes, technology, powers, gods and spirits, magic, etc. that have the ability to fundamentally change how people live.

Gadget based superheroes like Iron Man have proprietary technology that could transform the world and kick off an energy/tech revolution. But aside from them personally using that tech to fight crime, that technology isn’t seen or used or even talked about in a normal, non hero context.

Or take magic users. They’re numerous and even the ones that aren’t particularly strong in their craft could affect the world in a meaningful way. Even jobber spell casters could do everything from starting a shipping business where they cut travel time through portal spells, or doing minor medical and cosmetic services (a simple spell to get rid of acne, or fix a sprained ankle, or even change the color of your hair without having to use dye) would be an inconsequential but realistic outcome of this kind of power being accessible regular people.

Aliens also exist and are publicly known about in these superhero worlds too right? The indisputable confirmation doesn’t change anything about the culture of Earth? The means to travel the galaxy and now the motivation to do so exist in this world. Earth should have become a space faring civilization and alien civilizations should have way more direct and varied forms of contact with Earth than just doing another alien invasion plot.

But by far the most common example is why superheroes or literally anyone else who has access to the fantastical permits the existence of serious injuries and illnesses when they have the power to easily fix those problems. Whenever there’s a storyline about a character becoming injured or falling ill or having to deal with the same happening to their loved ones feels disingenuous because there’s a million and one solutions for it, and just by nature of these interconnected crossover-prone superhero stories, most heroes at least know one guy or one guy who knows a guy who knows a guy that can help them out. There are so many heroes who’d be better serving their communities and making more of a tangible positive difference by working in non-combat roles. Someone with healing powers could save 10 lives for every 1 he saves by punching a mugger in the face. Even if the heroes aren’t the ones doing it, these fantastical powers and technology should be accessible to normal people as well. But we never see anyone using it aside from the heroes and government. There’s no way the corporate capitalist world that we live in (reflected in the comics) wouldn’t try to harness and monetize the various fantastical elements of the world and sell it a commodity. But we barely ever even get that.

Actually now that I think about it, this is just a common problem with all urban fantasy world-building, but even worse in the case of superhero settings, because they don’t try to make a secret world or some clear divide between the fantastical and normal worlds that keep them from interacting.

The plot might be predictable and the secret villain reveal is the least surprising twist in the franchise, but if the movie has any strong ideas at all, it’s the message that Air Bending does not equal Air Nomad.

The entirety of the film is Aang trying to look for a shortcut to revive Air Nomad culture by physically bringing the power of Air Bending back into the world using spirit magic.

It’s in the title: The Last Airbender. Aang is so hung up on this idea of not being the last Airbender that he fails to realize that Air Bending isn’t the end all be all of Air Nomad culture. This is expounded on repeatedly by the movie through the characters of Tagah and the Denied. Tagah is an Airbender from thousands of years in the past, not just a hundred like Aang. It’s clear that despite nominally sharing the same cultural roots and bending style, Tagah isn’t really an “Air Nomad” because he predates the creation of Air Nomad culture. Back in his day, they were the Air Empire. Just being an Airbender doesn’t immediately instill in someone the values of Air Nomad culture.

Bending is just a system of magic powers, they don’t have any inherent connection to the philosophies and morals of a society. Air Bending in the original series is described as avoidant and using your opponents momentum against them. We see in the movie that that style of bending is just a cultural practice of the Air Nomads, not an inherent trait of Air Bending. Tagah uses Air Bending offensively and in brutal displays of power, and it’s not portrayed as a “wrong way to bend” or a less powerful technique like how Zuko’s anger based Fire Bending was portrayed. Air Bending didn’t make the Air Nomads peaceful and conflict avoidant, the Air Nomads’ pacifist philosophy made Air Bending passive and avoidant.

An even better example the movie uses is the Denied. They’re anti-bender terrorists who Tagah grants the power of Air Bending to, turning them all into Airbenders. They use that power to continue their rampage for power and authority until they get it stripped from them at the end of the movie. Even if Aang succeeded and Tagah didn’t betray him for the magic staff, Aang wouldn’t have been able to rebuild Air Nomad culture by just bringing back Air Bending because there’s a difference between being an Air Bender and an Air Nomad. Air Bending is a genetic trait/spiritual power, not a culture.

This leads to the conclusion of the film, where Aang realizes this himself and shatters the staff, taking away the possibility of using spirit magic to bring back Air Bending. A lot of people critiqued this as tying up loose ends in order to not decanonize Legend of Korra, and while that is partially true, it also makes sense for Aang’s character arc in the film.

There’s a really poignant line towards the end of the movie from Aang where he says this:

“I don’t know if Airbending will ever return. But I know now that the true power of the Air Nomads was never their bending. It was their lives. And that’s a power I can pass on to others.”

This is why, at the end of the film, Aang starts training the Air Acolytes, people without the power to Air Bend but are willing to practice and embody the lifestyle and culture of the original Air Nomads. It makes a lot of sense why Aang initially believed Air Bending was synonymous with being an Air Nomad and that Air Nomads could never exist again without the return of Air Bending, because Aang was raised in a culture where every single person was allegedly a Bender. This movie did a really good job at breaking down that mentality and showing Aang that a culture can live on through non-benders as well. After all, that’s pretty much how it is for the other three nations. Most people in the Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Water Tribes are not benders. It’s only a tiny minority who are, but it’d be crazy to say that those Nonbenders aren’t true Fire Nationers, Earth Kingdom citizens, and Water Tribesmen. A culture is more than its fancy magic system.

This brings me to my biggest gripe with what Legend of Korra did with airbenders and Air Nomad culture. In Legend of Korra, thanks to some more spirit magic nonsense called Harmonic Convergence, Air Bending returns to the world again, permanently this time. Lazy implementation aside (Korra has a ton of these spirit ex machina moments that I think are poorly implemented), this just feels like a weaker message than what the Legend of Aang movie tried to tell in regards to the revival of Air Nomad culture. Bending is only a tiny fraction of what makes Air Nomads who they are. The idea that Air Nomad culture couldn’t truly return until thousands of random people were granted Air Bending out of nowhere feels kinda screwy. Is Air Nomad culture really that inaccessible to Nonbenders? Can you not participate in this culture unless you’re one of the elite few gifted with magic powers by the spirit gods?

Harmonic Convergence undoes so many of the interesting ideas and themes surround the original show’s most mature and nuanced topics. The genocide of the Air Benders looms large over the entire series and there were so many stories you could have told with it. The scars of war don’t fade that easily and I feel like it would have been kneading to see a restored Air Nomad culture that didn’t have a majority bending population. Having all that thrown out the window with a supernatural power-gifting event instead was the cheapest way the Air Nomads could have been restored.

In 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Love You, the main character is told by the God of Love that due to a clerical error, he has 100 soulmates, not just the one that normal people get. He must date all 100 of his soulmates or they’ll be cursed with lethal misfortune and meet some untimely end.

This is a comedy, borderline parody, series though. Why even build in this weird Final Destination-esque clause in the central gimmick of the series? As an in-universe motivation for the main character to actually date all 100 girls because he has no choice? The way the main character is written, he would have gladly dated all 100 anyway even without the certain death clause so it just feels superfluous. If you really wanted to add some consequence to the main character failing to win over a soulmate, wouldn’t the threat that they’ll potentially never find true love (since he’s their one and only soulmates) be motivation enough?

The “you need to have her join your harem or she’ll die” element of the story is not only redundant but it also completely warps the tone of the story. I have no idea why the author decided to throw in such a weirdly morbid element into what is basically a shitpost about how absurd harem romcoms are.

The Electro that appears in No Way Home is supposed to be the same exact Electro that appears in Amazing Spider-Man 2.

The Electro in Amazing Spider-Man 2 is such an interesting take on the character. He’s basically an unhinged super fan of Spider-Man with severe self-esteem issues. He’s under-appreciated, overlooked (in deleted scenes it’s shown that even his own mother forgot his birthday) and generally treated like he’s invisible. Even after Electro gets his powers and goes off the rails as a full blown Supervillain, Jamie Fox’s Electro is still played with a lot of nuance to his character. Even at his strongest, he still seems like an insecure guy overcompensating, not a charismatic and self-assured superhuman.

No Way Home has this character returning as one of the multiversal villains pulled in by Dr. Strange’s spell, but the way the character is written and performed is such a stark departure from the original depiction in Amazing Spider-Man 2 that it might as well be a brand new character.

This character is just Jamie Fox playing Jamie Fox, not Max Dillon. Even the way the character looks is literally just Jamie Fox. In ASM2, Max Dillon’s human form is this bed-raggled looking guy with bad hair and a normal build. In No Way Home, Max inexplicably gets his human body back and has an immaculate line-up and is absolutely yoked. I didn’t know getting transported to the MCU dimension also came with a free haircut.

Even if you look past the appearance, they clearly don’t act or speak like the same character. The lines that come out of No Way Home Electro’s mouth would never be said by ASM2 Electro. He acts like the stock tough guy persona that Jamie Fox is used to playing in every action blockbuster project. His performance as Electro in No Way Home is more reminiscent of his Django from Django Unchained than Max Dillon in Amazing Spider-Man 2.

What even was the point of bringing this character back if he’s going to look, act, and talk like a completely original character? The only two characters that feel like they have continuity between No Way Home and their original films are the three Reimi era villains (Goblin, Ock and Sand-Man). Lizard is barely a character and is reduced to a CGI monster but that’s a whole other rant.

Wonder Woman gets basically nothing from DC outside of her comics, which means her iconic roster of villains shouldn’t be getting any screentime either right? Nope, Wonder Woman’s rogues gallery are enjoying more prominence and appearances in non-comics media more than ever before in their history; just as the enemies of other heroes, not Wonder Woman. Between shows like Harley Quinn and My Adventures with Superman, more Wonder Woman villains have made their DEBUT appearances outside of comics as the enemy of another superhero than they have with Wonder Woman.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Giganta has never had an animated appearance in a DC property until MAWS season 3, which means her debut appearance outside of comics was a SUPERMAN villain. Giganta isn’t even a C-lister in Wonder Woman’s rogues gallery, she’s one of her staple villains. This is like if Bane made a debut appearance as the villain of a Flash animated story. MAWS isn’t content with poaching just one Wonder Woman villain, they double dip by having Dr. Poison be the main antagonist of an episode later on in the season. MAWS season 3 still has a few episodes left, makes me wonder if they’re going to score a hat trick and introduce yet another Wonder Woman villain before the end.

Cheetah is pretty much the only prominent member of Wonder Woman’s rogues gallery that regularly appears alongside her. Those other villains are cheating whores, Cheetah is the only woman loyal to Diana.