[Quora Answer] Tony Stark vs Bruce Wayne (Compare and Contrast)

I swear I occasionally write about things that aren't comic books. Trust me. It happens. Very, very rarely, but it does happen.

Some spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War ahead.

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Is Iron Man Now a More Depressing Character than Batman?

While Tony’s certainly lost a lot (his parents, his mentor figure, the closest thing he had to a son, etc), he still has had a much better support network than Batman tends to have. Tony’s closer to the remaining members of the Avengers than Batman tends to be to the Justice League, or even the Bat Family.

Now, as of Infinity War, you could make an argument either way. I think a lot of it will revolve around how Tony reacts to these losses. Typically, when Tony loses something, he attempts to fix things, not break things.

This could be pretty important, because Batman, as we’ve seen, tends to deal with loss by punching it away.

He’s got a lot more anger in his system than Tony’s really ever had (with the possible exception of that one scene in Civil War). While Batman focuses on destroying and intimidating the criminal element in Gotham, Tony tends to focus on building suits, designing drones, AI, armor, support equipment, what have you. Batman needs to take out his anger and guilt issues on the criminal element. Tony needs to atone for his mistakes by building something better.

With Spider-Man, we see this take another form. He essentially views Peter Parker as his next project, as well as a surrogate son. He wants to make Peter a better version of himself, so Peter won’t make the same mistake, but also so that Peter will be able to do the job better than Tony ever could.

Batman cannot rest as long as there is crime, because he feels he is needed. Tony is trying to create a world where he, himself, is no longer needed.

With Peter gone, Tony could very well sink into a mire of depression and misery.

Or.

He could try to fix things.

Build something better.

Make it so no one will ever have to go through what he just endured.

Batman’s character is, to a certain extent, based around pessimism. Batman can’t really win. Not finally. He can’t rest or retire. It’s heavily implied that Batman is a destructive force, not only to crime in Gotham, but to Bruce Wayne as well, and everyone he cares about. Because Batman is working out his anger and guilt on all the individual petty criminals in his path, as well as the supervillains. And each act of violence he commits tends to create or inspire a new antagonist. Most of Batman’s villains exist because of Batman’s own obsessions. He essentially creates his own monsters. And so the cycle continues.

While Tony has created his own fair share of monsters, I think he’s got a hopeful streak that Bruce never really had. He believes he can make something better, so long as he just keeps trying.

As long as he keeps trying in Avengers 4, I don’t think Tony will ever be quite as depressing as Batman. Because Batman knows he’s going to die alone, having either driven away or ruined the lives of the people that he cares about. But Iron Man truly believes he can fix anything.

[Quora Answer] Thanos on Xandar

Spoilers ahead...

Someone on Quora was asking how various Quorans would write a scene of Thanos's arrival on Xandar. Given that this involves writing, writing villains specifically, and Marvel, I figured this fit pretty perfectly in my wheelhouse.

Very minor spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War ahead, but this is how I would have handled such a scene.

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The Fall of Xandar

If such a thing had to be done (presumably as a Marvel one-shot), I’d do it from the perspective of an ordinary Xandarian on the ground. Have it open with Thanos’s ship having just appeared overhead. Panic in the streets. What remains of the Nova Corps fleet rushing to meet the enemy head-on, but the end is clear. Everyone knows those pilots won’t be coming back.

A PA drones in the background, echoing hauntingly through the streets, notifying residents not to panic, to retreat to their designated shelters in an orderly fashion, that the Nova Corps is prepared. The Nova Corps will save them.

No one listens. The PA fades further and further into the background the longer the film goes on. We see civilians fleeing in every direction. Even a few Nova Corps soldiers are joining them, looking terrified. Our POV character is rooted in place, staring up at the massive warship overhead. Just in time, we see Cull Obsidian kicking a Nova Corps tank away with a lazy push of his foot, seemingly unaffected by the blaster fire striking him repeatedly from all sides. He notices us. A Nova Corps fighter swings by overhead, distracting Cull Obsidian just long enough for our POV character to scramble away, but before the fighter can do anything, there is a flash of blue light as Proxima Midnight’s spear tears the fighter in half.

From our hiding place, we see Ebony Maw tearing open a set of heavy security doors from a distance, using only the power of his mind, as he gleefully announces to Xandar that the Savior of the Universe has come.

“Thanos is here, dear children! Worry not! For the Titan shall set you free!”

We get distracted by Nova Corps reinforcements arriving, but Corvus Glaive appears and makes short work of them, dispatching them with ruthless efficiency and ease. Once, he comes within inches of discovering our hiding spot, but he, too, has his attention drawn.

As we see Thanos emerging from the smoke. A terrified Nova Corpsman, just a kid, maybe a cadet, is clutching the orb, trying desperately to keep it from the Mad Titan’s grasp. The city around him is burning, and his uniform is in tatters. He must have barely escaped some sort of slaughter in the vault where the Orb was being kept. Only for Thanos to pursue him.

The Children of Thanos form up behind their leader. Corvus Glaive makes a move towards the Corpsman, but Thanos holds up a hand. His expression is soft, almost gentle. He moves slowly towards the kid.

“There now, child,” he says softly. “I don’t want to hurt you. All I want is the Orb.”

“You can’t have it! Y-you can’t! You…killed…”

“I want to save you, boy,” whispers Thanos, getting down on one knee to look the boy in the eye. “I want to save all of you.”

He reaches out, stretching forth his hand to take the Orb. For a second, it looks like the boy will relent and give it to him. But at the last second, the boy scrambles back, tears streaking down his face. He can’t back away far. There’s a wall behind him that impedes his progress. He’s trapped.

Thanos’s expression is one of regret. Mixed with respect.

“I understand,” says Thanos, reaching for the Orb. “You are a brave man.”

He crushes the boy’s head in his fist with hardly an effort, and the body crumples to the ground as Thanos scoops up the orb. As he turns, he sees us. But his expression remains soft.

“I want to save you all,” whispers Thanos. “And I promise you, I will. No matter the cost.”

As Thanos and the Children of Thanos vanish into the smoke, the camera zooms in on our terrified POV character, and pans around to show the scope of the destruction.

The screen slowly fades to black, taking all the background sound with it.

Only the endless loop of the PA remains.

“Please remain calm…The Nova Corps is on the way…the situation will be resolved soon…please remain calm…”

[Quora Answer] Vision's Powers in Infinity War

Another day, another Quora answer in place of an actual post. This one has some spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War, so read at your own risk.

Spoilers...

Seriously, don't even read the title if you haven't seen the movie.

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Why Do Vision's Powers Fluctuate in Infinity War?

I believe the in-universe answer is that Corvus Glaive’s…well…glaive, was designed to pierce anything. The glaive “disrupts my phasing” he says. Since Vision’s powers mostly revolve around “hardening” or “softening” his body, the glaive effectively makes the bulk of Vision’s abilities unreliable at best. He’s still got the space laser thing going for him, but that’s pretty much always had a slightcollateral damage issue.

In a crowded city, like at the beginning, he probably didn’t want to risk it, even at the cost of his own life, until it was absolutely necessary.

Most likely, Corvus’s attempts to remove the stone directly with his glaive interfered even with that. I’m guessing Thanos didn’t send Corvus specifically after Vision just because he thought it would be a fun match-up. Pretty much all the Children of Thanos have some sort of advantage during their initial showing. Maw can hold his own against Strange. Corvus can overpower Vision.

Towards the end of the movie, Vision seems like he still hasn’t fully recovered from Corvus’s attack on him. He acts like he’s injured pretty consistently. It’s also possible, too, that whatever Shuri was doing to attempt to remove the stone from him was also weakening him, as it effectively would involve slowly cutting off his access to the source of his powers.

The out-of-universe reason is that Vision and Wanda needed to be in danger, and Thanos and the Children of Thanos needed to seem like a credible threat. Hard to threaten a guy who can make himself intangible at will. So give Corvus the ability to cancel out that power.

Problem solved.

[Quora Answer] Why Marvel's Films Do Better than DC's

I was pretty active on Quora a few weeks back, and I thought it might be fun to share a few of my answers here, starting with a question of "Why Marvel's Films Do Better Than DC's".

https://www.quora.com/profile/Joseph-Rose-33

Why Do Marvel's Films Do Better than DC's?

A couple reasons.

First, Marvel was working from a position of weakness, whereas DC has been working from a position of strength. At least as far as characters go. When the MCU started, they didn’t have the movie rights to any of their top-tier characters. What they had were the B- and C-listers (as far as popularity goes, at least…Cap will always be #1 for me). This is actually pretty similar to the position Marvel was in when they created the Avengers way back in the day. Rather than choosing to take their bestsellers and stick them on a team together (like DC did with the Justice League), Marvel chose to revitalize some of their less popular characters by teaming them up. It worked like a dream back in the day.

But anyway, back to the movies. Marvel knew they wouldn’t be able to bank on brand recognition alone. They had to think, they had to plan, they had to get it right on the first try. So that’s what they did.

DC, on the other hand, had all their characters. Especially the best ones. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman. They had the rights to everyone. They had the brand recognition that Marvel could only dream about. This meant that when it came time to make each movie, they banked a lot more on “Everyone knows Superman!” than Marvel could. Look at it this way, if you’ve got a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons, you probably won’t feel a burning need to spend time lining up your shot before you push the big red button. But if all you’ve got is a bow and a handful of arrows, you’d better make sure you make your shots count.

The only thing they didn’t have was time. Marvel had beaten them to the punch with the whole “cinematic universe” idea, and now whatever DC did, they would get compared to Marvel. So they decided to distance themselves from Marvel tonally, with…mixed success, shall we say.

However, this created another problem. DC didn’t want to risk Marvel getting further ahead of them than they already were, so they rushed a few things. Whereas Marvel released The Avengers as the sixth movie in a series, DC only really had three movies leading up to Justice League (Suicide Squad was in there too, but didn’t really contribute much to the mix).

The other main issue is that Marvel hires fans. Kevin Feige won’t bring on a director or a writer if they don’t love the source material. Look at Winter Soldier. Look at how cool the Russo brothers clearly think Captain America is. And they give him a lot of moments to show it off. Look at how cool Favreau thinks Iron Man is. Or how much James Gunn cares about the Guardians. They love these characters and want to share that love with the audience. As a result, we love them too. Even more impressive is the fact that Marvel tends to hire up-and-coming directors who love comics. The Russos, for example, had hardly done anything big budget before Winter Soldier.

DC hires people with pedigree. Zack Snyder has done some visually impressive movies before, but he clearly doesn’t get Superman. In my personal opinion, I think Snyder doesn’t even like Superman, not because of his character, but because Snyder has a hard time with what Superman stands for. This becomes pretty evident in Batman v. Superman when everyone but Superman gets to tell the audience their side of the story. But that’s another conversation for another day.

Yet another reason is more deeply ingrained in the characters. There’s a meme that goes “DC heroes are gods trying to be men; Marvel heroes are men trying to be gods.” It’s pretty close to true. Your average member of the Justice League could probably take down most of the Avengers on their best day, but this cosmic level of power tends to make DC heroes a bit harder to relate to. Effectively, DC tends to go for the power fantasy route (even Batman and Catwoman can somehow take out three Flashes at the same time nowadays), while Marvel tends to make more down-to-earth heroes (the “anyone can be a hero” route). This is a lot of the reason why DC’s big three (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) are two godlike immortals and one supergenius, while Marvel’s main heroes (Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Spidey) are three mortals (one scrawny kid turned Super Soldier, one messed up recovering alcoholic supergenius, and a kid from Queens who got bit by a spider) and one godlike immortal. As a result, it’s slightly easier for Marvel to get us to relate to these characters on the big screen. I have friends who still have a hard time relating to Wonder Woman or Superman, even after seeing the movies.

Another reason is the visual effects (this is a tiny one, but it contributes). Marvel is owned by Disney, and Disney owned Industrial Light and Magic, one of the best visual effects companies in the world. As a result, Marvel and Disney get first dibs on ILM, and it shows. DC, unfortunately, tends to have to find someone else to be their main VFX company.

But the main reason, the #1 reason for Marvel finding greater success than DC…

Is this guy.

Kevin Feige. Perhaps the greatest superhero of them all.

If the MCU were a TV show, Feige would be the showrunner, the lead writer, the head honcho. He created a plan for the MCU early on (most likely he planned out Phase 1 by itself, with a few dangling plot threads, and then planned phases 2 and 3 together), and Marvel gave him the power to enforce that plan. Various directors have mentioned that Marvel gives them 2 or 3 mandates (this event needs to happen, this character needs to be introduced, this character absolutely cannot die, etc). These mandates all come from Feige. From his plan for the universe. And on top of everything else he does, he hires people who get along, so that James Gunn can work with the Russo Brothers just fine, without egos getting in the way.

After Infinity War, people are still finding bits of foreshadowing in previous Marvel movies (especially Age of Ultron). While some of this is probably the usual comics thing of one writer leaving a hint of things to come, and the next trying desperately to work out a plot that fits that hint later, but a lot of this is definitely Feige. He’s a master planner, and he’s a superfan to boot.

DC doesn’t have anyone to match Feige. Snyder was their best bet, initially, but we know how that turned out. And, later in his run, DC lost faith in Snyder and started undercutting him (again, with mixed results). Marvel has pretty much always backed Feige 100%.

Avengers: Infinity War - How to Kill Your Characters

So I saw Avengers: Infinity War a week ago, and just had a few quick thoughts. In short, it's awesome, but I find it's harder to learn good lessons from good movies. Generally, you just learn how to do what that movie (or book) already did. Still, there are a couple things that Infinity War helped me put into words, so here we go.

Now, I'm hoping most people will have seen the movie by the time this goes live, but just in case...

Y'all have been warned

Killing characters seems to be the latest writing trend. After Game of Thrones, it seems to be understood that, if you don't kill off at least one character in your story, you're doing something wrong. This has also led to a general belief that if you want to raise the stakes or take your story in a more serious direction, killing off your characters is the best way to do it.

Now, for full disclosure, I kill off a fair number of my characters too. It's one of the first things I work out, you know: what's the beginning, what's the ending, who are the characters, and how many of them die, that sort of thing. So, you'd probably think that I'm a fan of this trend.

Not really, actually. It started out pretty well, with more and more writers taking a few pages from the Joss Whedon book of murder (still not over Wash, by the way), but recently I feel like writers have been going a bit overboard.

See, I think that killing characters is sort like the nuclear option. Sure, it's shocking. Sure, there are situations when it's necessary. And, when you do use it, it makes for a cool story, but only if you do it right, and put a lot of thought into why you're doing it. Because, let's face it, a character death that results from the writers seemingly pulling a name out of a hat, it feels really, really cheap and unsatisfying. It might be shocking in the short term, but long term, it doesn't sit right.

I used to think that the best way around this was to have each character death be some sort of noble sacrifice, but that didn't quite fit either. Some character deaths stick with us and have meaning, even if it's just a random murder. The death of Maes Hughes in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is heartbreaking, but doesn't feel cheap, because, even if he didn't sacrifice himself, his death still means something. And without his death, the plot couldn't move forward at all.

Avengers: Infinity War very much subscribes to this methodology when it comes to killing characters. None of them are the result of a sacrifice that leads to the villain's downfall. All of them, however, are the result of Thanos having them outsmarted, and outgunned. And all of them are the conclusion of a character's arc, and serve to drive the plot forward.

By having the movie open with Thanos brutally murdering Heimdall and Loki (with Loki arguably being one of the most popular characters in the MCU), Infinity War establishes the stakes. No one is safe anymore. The characters even point out that Loki won't be coming back multiple times. But each of them gets something to do, some point where they can make a choice and take a stand. Heimdall has been largely ignored, but he draws attention to himself by using the last of his power to open the Bifrost and sent Bruce Banner to safety. And Thanos kills him for it. Loki can talk his way out of just about anything, and while Thanos clearly doesn't trust him, it seems as though Loki could talk his way out of this one as well. All he needs to do is stand by and give Thanos the Tesseract. Instead, he takes a stand, making a desperate play to assassinate the Mad Titan. And Thanos kills him for it. For both Heimdall and Loki, their deaths had meaning, and the plot was planned around that. Heimdall has always done what he perceived to be his duty, and in that moment his duty was to help Banner escape and warn the Avengers of what was coming for them. That sense of duty leads to his death. Loki has always been a trickster, but Thor has always maintained that there was a better man inside him. He proved it in Thor: Ragnarok and he proved it again here. His last act of defiance, his willingness to endanger himself to protect his brother, is the conclusion of his character arc. Without Heimdall, the Avengers wouldn't know what was coming for them until it was too late. Without Loki's sacrifice, Thor might never truly know whether that better man was just a part of his imagination. Both of these deaths not only drive the plot, but also serve as Thor's motivation to take down Thanos once and for all.

Later in the movie, we get our third character death, when Thanos is told that the Soul Stone can only be obtained by someone willing to sacrifice what is most important to him. Gamora's expression is one of vindication. The universe, she thinks, has finally played its last trick on Thanos. His plans have fallen into ruin, because she knows he can't care about anything. But she never expected how much he cared about her, in his own twisted way. Without Gamora, Thanos would never obtain the Soul Stone. But more importantly, this is a conclusion to Gamora's arc as well. We've been told constantly how Gamora is the favored daughter of Thanos, how he treated her much better than Nebula, how he hoped that she would sit in his throne one day. Her death serves not only to define their relationship once and for all, but also to define Thanos, and to show us that the Mad Titan is not just some conqueror or tyrant. He legitimately believes he is the hero of his own story. He really believes he is saving the world. But the world cannot be saved without sacrifice. And this is what Thanos must sacrifice. In a way, this is the part of the movie where Thanos proves that he is actually the protagonist of Infinity War, even if he is the villain. More than any other character, he willingly gives up what is most important to him in order to save the world.

But Gamora's death is also the result of her own choices. She rashly attempts to kill Thanos on Knowhere in spite of Star-Lord's objections, which leads to her capture. When Thanos is torturing Nebula, she willingly gives up the location of the Soul Stone in an attempt to stop him. When he tries to tell her how much he cares about her, she refuses to listen. When he tells her to take him to the stone, she goes. When Thanos is told what he must sacrifice, she spends time lording his failure over him, rather than making any attempt to escape, because she refused to see what the audience knew all along. That what Thanos held most dear to him, was her.

At first, Vision's death looks to be the sacrifice play we had been waiting for the whole movie. Until Thanos uses the Time Stone to undo his sacrifice entirely, and takes the Mind Stone by force, killing Vision a second time. Vision attempted to sacrifice himself for humanity, and though that sacrifice ultimately failed, it was not without meaning. Because Vision's death, like the others, is the conclusion of his arc. In that moment, he embraced what a hero needed to do, and he did what he needed to do to protect the woman he loved. Vision, an AI given a vibranium-laced body, capable of phasing through any danger or blasting anything dangerous with the Mind Stone from a distance, has never truly had to face the idea of death before. But he willingly accepts it here, in an attempt to foil Thanos once and for all and protect what's dear to him. Though his sacrifice failed to stop Thanos's master plan, his death was still a noble one.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on writing and on character deaths in particular. Let me know if you have any thoughts about this one!