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#52 Oct 16 2013 at 4:10 AM Rating: Good
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TherealLogros wrote:
Thor and the other Asgardians have powers that would be rather difficult to explain with science.


Which is funny considering their powers originate from a highly advanced science created by their race.
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#53 Oct 16 2013 at 6:42 AM Rating: Good
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Shaowstrike the Shady wrote:
TherealLogros wrote:
Thor and the other Asgardians have powers that would be rather difficult to explain with science.


Which is funny considering their powers originate from a highly advanced science created by their race.


Which is what I thought. Thor and his buddies aren't magic. Iron Man isn't magic. Captain America isn't magic. Hulk isn't magic. Black Widow and Hawkeye... ha, they aren't anything. And telepathy hasn't existed in the films, and has been tested for extensively (according to them in Agents) and never found. So I didn't think it would be that unreasonable for a small group of people who work for an organization which knows about all this stuff and has never found, after looking for, any proof of telepathy or the like, to be very skeptical of its existence.
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#54 Oct 16 2013 at 7:28 AM Rating: Good
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They've definitely been trying to get away from the magic aspect of things. Which I'm inclined to say is a good thing, because unbridled magic can be really detrimental to a plot. Once literally anything is possible, things stop mattering a lot, because the causal changes get thrown out of whack.

And a plot point of Thor was to stress that the human perception of magic was just science. They explain the Bifrost as a wormhole, Loki opens the Tesseract gate with science, energy weapons are "Tesseratic" energy (or whatever).

And you have more aggressive dismissals of Magic. Very notably, the changes to the Mandarin.

To be honest, I'm 100% okay with this. The magic stuff is my least favorite in the comics universes. I mean, think about how freaking often the conflict would have just not existed if Scarlet Witch just decided it didn't need to.

Which is also why I'm REALLY excited to see what they do with her. She's probably not going to have the ability to change events, use chaos magic, affect probability, or any of the many other descriptions her powers have had. I want to see what she DOES have.

Right now, I'm guessing both she and her brother will be people with a gene that gave them a unique reaction to Extremis, which keeps the basic story of their powers being genetic (and the product of a scientific attempt to create superhumans), but also makes them unique enough to warrant a spot in the Avengers.

That said, I really hope they heavily alter their powers, Quicksilver included.
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#55 Oct 16 2013 at 8:32 AM Rating: Good
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
Which is also why I'm REALLY excited to see what they do with her. She's probably not going to have the ability to change events, use chaos magic, affect probability, or any of the many other descriptions her powers have had. I want to see what she DOES have.


They'll probably merge her and Polaris together so the Scarlet Witch winds up having magnetism as well. Quicksilver will probably have enhanced durability and higher adrenaline production which will somehow allow him to run at faster than normal (not super) speeds.
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#56 Oct 16 2013 at 8:56 AM Rating: Good
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I think the point I'm struggling with right now is figuring out how to justify having Black Widow, Captain America, and Quicksilver on the team. He'd kind of just be a hybrid between the two of them.

And yeah, I really hope he doesn't have super speed. I've always thought it was a SUPER gimmicky power, and it's frankly way too powerful. Give him a gun and there's absolutely no reason a non-super could survive. I just don't like it.

I like my super heroes to be flawed and vulnerable. Smiley: lol
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#57 Oct 16 2013 at 9:31 AM Rating: Excellent
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And a plot point of Thor was to stress that the human perception of magic was just science. They explain the Bifrost as a wormhole, Loki opens the Tesseract gate with science, energy weapons are "Tesseratic" energy (or whatever).

And you have more aggressive dismissals of Magic. Very notably, the changes to the Mandarin.

To be honest, I'm 100% okay with this.


I agree they did that and to a degree it certainly worked. And I also think it is a good change. But some things don't make much sense to me if they happened completely without magic. It's been a while since I watched Thor so it could just be a product of my flawed memory. Also I didn't see the second movie yet.

But doesn't Mjölnir resist Thors attempts to pick it up when he still is too proud/not worthy/whatever and after he has learned his lesson he can command it at his will again? Of course, you could argue that that was just Odin flipping a switch as soon as he sees fit but that would be a rather silly explanation.
Speaking of Mjölnir, Thor surely is stronger than Loki but when he uses his hammer to tack Loki to Bifrost Loki should have been able to get the hammer of his chest because when you look at them struggling (for example in the Avengers movie) the discrepancy of their respective muscle strength does not seem to be this vast.
The Odinsleep appears to be rather magical in nature too.

That's not to argue that magic should exist in the Marvel movieverse. It just seemed to me it does occur from time to time albeit in a toned down version, compared to the comics.
#58 Oct 16 2013 at 9:38 AM Rating: Good
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TherealLogros wrote:
But doesn't Mjölnir resist Thors attempts to pick it up when he still is too proud/not worthy/whatever and after he has learned his lesson he can command it at his will again? Of course, you could argue that that was just Odin flipping a switch as soon as he sees fit but that would be a rather silly explanation.
Speaking of Mjölnir, Thor surely is stronger than Loki but when he uses his hammer to tack Loki to Bifrost Loki should have been able to get the hammer of his chest because when you look at them struggling (for example in the Avengers movie) the discrepancy of their respective muscle strength does not seem to be this vast.


I think Mjolnir is able to create localized gravity fields around itself and it's wielder, which allows it to negate the local gravity and allow it "flight". It could have also created a gravity well while it was touching Loki, so instead of Mjolnir pushing into Loki it's actually dragging him into itself.
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#59 Oct 16 2013 at 11:08 AM Rating: Good
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You don't even need Odin, really. Why couldn't Mjolnir be "programmed" to only let a "worthy" person access its "technologies" (quotes for the fact that I'm not necessarily saying Mjolnir should be equated to a computer).

And yeah, from my understanding, Mjolnir weighs a lot. There's that whole "forged in the heart of a dying star" bit that suggests it's extremely dense. But if it had the ability to manipulate spacetime around itself (which it has in the comics, in various ways), which could be scientific, it could definitely "choose" whether or not it could be picked up.

I don't think it would manipulate gravity, per se, because that would have made its presence on the helicarrier difficult. It's more like I think Mjolnir controls its own location in spacetime, and it's only going to allow itself to be wielded by someone it has deemed worthy according to the parameters set. What the judging/monitoring mechanism is, who knows, but no reason it has to be magic.

And the Odinsleep isn't incapable of being scientific. In the comics, it's about replenishing the Odinforce (a magical energy that flows through the Tree of Life). But it can pretty much be the same thing in the movies. It's a form of energy that is abundant and flows through the Tree of Life (which includes Earth), that Odin is able to control, but only if he periodically hibernates to rest his mind and body. And because he's always connected to this energy network, he's able to monitor what goes on within its reach (an ability that is only heightened when he's in his Odinsleep).
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#60 Oct 16 2013 at 7:35 PM Rating: Good
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My biggest issue was that SHIELD employs precogs. Smiley: motz

The movieverse really finds ways to make me grumble.
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#61 Oct 16 2013 at 7:52 PM Rating: Good
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Was it Mystique's wife, Destiny? She was the most powerful precog of that universe. If I remember there was an entire storyline about finding her journals which detail all the major events up to the end of the universe.

Edited, Oct 16th 2013 9:53pm by Shaowstrike
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#62 Oct 16 2013 at 9:31 PM Rating: Good
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And a plot point of Thor was to stress that the human perception of magic was just science. They explain the Bifrost as a wormhole, Loki opens the Tesseract gate with science, energy weapons are "Tesseratic" energy (or whatever).


Thor wrote:
Thor: Your ancestors called it magic...
Thor: ...but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same.


The way I understand it, he's saying that magic is science, and science is magic. Much of the "science" taking place in Thor would fall into the magic category, because we cannot explain it with science. Yes, the Bifrost could be a wormhole generator, but trying to justify such a machine's function with science would be impossible. As such, the Bifrost is both magic and science at the same time, which is what Thor means with "they are one and the same."
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#63 Oct 17 2013 at 4:43 PM Rating: Good
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Mazra wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And a plot point of Thor was to stress that the human perception of magic was just science. They explain the Bifrost as a wormhole, Loki opens the Tesseract gate with science, energy weapons are "Tesseratic" energy (or whatever).


Thor wrote:
Thor: Your ancestors called it magic...
Thor: ...but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same.


The way I understand it, he's saying that magic is science, and science is magic. Much of the "science" taking place in Thor would fall into the magic category, because we cannot explain it with science. Yes, the Bifrost could be a wormhole generator, but trying to justify such a machine's function with science would be impossible. As such, the Bifrost is both magic and science at the same time, which is what Thor means with "they are one and the same."


If magic is science and science is magic, everything that is one is the other. So following from that, there cannot be something "magical" that science cannot explain, because they're just two words for the same thing. It's just not possible, logically.

Think about another quote "How much dark energy did the Allfather need to muster up to conjure you here?"

Even though it's using magical language in the term "conjure," the gist is understandable. Odin needed to harvest a whole lot of dark energy to transport Thor to Earth, since the Bifrost is still broken.

I don't believe this meant Odin called upon dark forces he didn't understand. I think it means he literally had to harvest dark energy, a somewhat understood (or at least somewhat defined) term in human science, and use that to open a gate to send Thor.

Is it possible Odin did that by meditating, just sat there and syphoned dark energy until Thor poofed to Earth? Sure. Because it's absolutely possible that Asgardian technologies are such that Odin could do that. Or maybe it's more like the lightning harvesters from Stardust, and then he used an artifact designed to create portals to send Thor.

What I don't believe is that Odin could do that at random. I think it would be possible because Odin built a world where those mechanisms would be available.

Ultimately, I think the point is that human!Magic is seen as that which is unexplainable from Science - it is essentially the antithesis to science.

Asgardian!Magic, however, is the same thing as Asgardian!Science. Magic is just what they call it, and it's completely explainable. It's just that humans don't understand it yet. Or, hell, maybe they can't understand it yet. Maybe their culture and their thought patterns and their language just haven't evolved to a point where that information could be translated into a coherent thought.

And the last point I'd make is that a floating building is to Thor as a computer is to Jane. They're both unique to their own race's technologies, and neither understands the other. The difference is that Thor sees no problem believing the computer to be possible, because of his cultural understanding of science, where Jane has a lot of problems with the former, because of her own cultural belief in the limits of science.
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#64 Oct 17 2013 at 6:12 PM Rating: Good
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So I really liked this episode.

I'm not quite sure what they intend to do with Mae, right now. Because they don't seem interested in actually fleshing out her story. We get the character development with none of the substance.

And of the two science geeks, only Fitz seems to be getting any development. I appreciate WHY they are both there, but they really need to get some attention. Wade and hacker girl are getting too much of it right now - they need to spread out the development more.

That said, I do find myself more interested with each episode. Not as much with this one as the last one, but I like the general direction they're headed in. I think they need to give whedon more room to do the character development he's famous for, and spend less time trying to make it a superhero cop drama. Then I'll be happy.
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#65 Oct 19 2013 at 8:36 AM Rating: Good
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idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
If magic is science and science is magic, everything that is one is the other. So following from that, there cannot be something "magical" that science cannot explain, because they're just two words for the same thing. It's just not possible, logically.

I know, and Thor's point is that magic is what we humans call technology that we cannot explain. That's why I included a "we" in my sentence: Obviously, if we assume that magic and science is the same thing, the all-knowing person would be able to explain all magic with science.

Mazra wrote:
Much of the "science" taking place in Thor would fall into the magic category, because we cannot explain it with science.

Interestingly, I was reminded of this thread when I watched a Let's Play of Outlast the other day. One of the inhabitants of the insane asylum there says:

Quote:
"The doctor told me once that if you showed a caveman our technology, he would think it was magic. And if you showed modern man magic, he would think it was technology."
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#66 Oct 23 2013 at 9:24 AM Rating: Good
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Did anyone get a kick out of the minecraft reference in last nights show?

What do you think about Skye. Is she a good guy a bad guy or a neutral guy? The parent story at the end was very predictable.

I kinda hoped Scorch would survive and stay on, but I think superheros are not going to be part of this show.
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#67 Oct 23 2013 at 8:48 PM Rating: Good
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Last night's episode was a lot more dark than I thought the show would get.
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#68 Oct 24 2013 at 9:51 AM Rating: Good
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Maybe I'll try it again. I couldn't get through all of the first episode, it was so bland. Apparently I missed out on SL Jackson goodness. And darkness sounds better than blandness.
#69 Nov 07 2013 at 10:16 AM Rating: Good
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I enjoyed this episode. I was happy to see character development for May, and some more realistic development for the science geeks. Was a nice change of pace from the show focusing so heavily on Skye and Agent pretty boy.
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#70 Nov 13 2013 at 1:52 PM Rating: Good
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Haven't seen this week's episode yet, but I read this anyway.

I think it's a solid argument. The show definitely needs an overarching plot. Mission-of-the-week series rarely interest me. I think the most successful ones, for me, have been Criminal Minds and Supernatural. Both of which are still airing, and neither of which I watch. Supernatural has always been best when they're driving the central plot, though.

Criminal Minds managed it just because each case managed to be innately interesting enough I was willing to watch it. But the novelty wore off as the cases got crazier.


The nice thing IS that these are solvable problems. The more I see of the show, the more confident I get that the cast can carry it. But they need to get the chance to have real, overarching development in the context of a plot.
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#71 Nov 13 2013 at 3:27 PM Rating: Decent
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I have to say though. That was one awesome sounding sandwich!
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#72 Nov 13 2013 at 7:46 PM Rating: Good
I don't care about Skye or her parents. I care about Coulson. It was cool as a recovery comic fanboy to see Victoria Hand, though. They should also probably focus on May a bit, as she's pretty fantastic.
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#73 Nov 13 2013 at 8:25 PM Rating: Good
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I care, but I don't care as much as I should. And I mean that relative to how much one should care about such a plot point, not relative to the actual amount of support they've given it for us to care.

They'll likely be turning Skye's past into the central plot point for this season or next. We'll care once there's actually a stake in the plot for that detail. We obviously won't care until then.

But the development of these points has been uneven. I care about Coulson's past, and his future, and it's getting teased nonstop. But it's not getting developed at all. The plot point remains "Coulson thinks something's up" and each episode reminds us of that without meaningfully moving anything along.

I sorta care about Skye's past, but I have no reason to want it to be explored further, because the reward for that is only relevant to Skye, and Skye isn't an integral part of the whole system that makes their team work. So her satisfaction does little for me. It needs to be relevant to other characters, or relevant to the whole story, until she as a character can carry it. And until then, it shouldn't be such a focus.

What I don't care about is the random super weapon in Sibera or whatever. I don't care about some old Hydra weapon.

These, too, are things that I COULD care about, if they were driving the core story forward.

But what the hell is the story? Project Centipede? Cool, make it a real story.

Do you want to continue exploring the "Is SHIELD in the right?" I think you can make it work, but you can't use Coulson as the exclusive liaison there. Because all actual interaction with SHIELD go through him, the value of the team is only relative to their ability to influence him. And that's a bad plot structure - it turns a character into a plot device.

Plus, it's more interesting to think about that question by forcing the team to be making those calls. Coulson deciding to detonate Torch, good. Random "SHIELD thinks your agents are less important than the super weapon that can blow up airplanes from across the world," bad.

I remain hopeful for the series. I can see the gems, but the writers need to grow some balls, or the producers need to back off on the episodic crap. If it doesn't get the luxury of a plot sometime soon, it's just not going to work.
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#74 Nov 13 2013 at 9:17 PM Rating: Good
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It was cool as a recovery comic fanboy to see Victoria Hand, though.
I enjoyed that, too. Though it is kind of a shame the chances of them fleshing her out to coincide with her 616 version are slim considering which characters would need to be involved. Also nice to see a shout out to Agent Jasper Sitwell.
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#75 Mar 04 2014 at 8:09 PM Rating: Good
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Dr. Manhattan's corpse saves the day!

Pure speculation, step by step I'd say that was a Kree, which means it could be Mar-Vell. Which leads us to Skye now being a Kree/Human hybrid. That leads me to hope beyond hope and will probably be disappointed that Skye's real name is Carol Danvers.

This spoiler is necessary. If that comes to pass I'll take back any and all doubt I had about this show.
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#76 Mar 05 2014 at 7:40 AM Rating: Good
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I'm SO FAR behind, but this definitely adds quite a bit of incentive to catch up. Even if they don't take a route that's quite so great, I'm still hopeful about where the show is going.

And literally every gay/female comic geek I know has been screaming for them to give us Ms. Marvel for some time now.
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