10 Problems With The Marvel Cinematic Universe Nobody Seems To Acknowledge

1. Plot-Induced Stupidity

In the comic book world, plot-induced stupidity occurs when characters are degraded to make their situations seem more perilous than they should be, and this is what irks most about the MCU, because so many powerful narratives have been constructed over the years for these characters, and yet because the producers don't really care for the source material, they deliberately ignore it in favor of their own contrived ideas.

In The Avengers, for example, Bruce Banner claims to be in control of the monster after having spent years in isolation and meditation (as seen in the end-credits scene of The Incredible Hulk), yet during Hawkeye's attack on the helicarrier, he somehow loses control and goes on a rampage. But then he regains control in time for the Chitauri invasion later on?

In Iron Man 3, Tony is suffering from panic attacks after falling through a wormhole in space... why? In the first Iron Man film he was kidnapped, tortured, and permanently (at the time, anyway) fused to a machine in order to be kept alive. That seems a lot more traumatic than anything he experienced in The Avengers, which was actually kind of tame by the depicted standards. At the end of Captain America, how is it that it was easier to find the Tesseract at the bottom of the ocean, over Rogers' plane in the arctic?

When Stan Lee was writing all these stories, they were targeted towards kids who were growing up in the counterculture movement and experiencing the harshness of real life. They weren't meant to be escapist outlets as much as they were ways to experience life's difficulties through the eyes of a superhero. When the producers in charge of the Marvel Cinematic Universe tell you that the source material doesn't matter, they're only fooling themselves, simply because that same counterculture has only grown since the 1960s.

Dumbing down superhero films as mere child's fare signals just how much the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been disappointing us under Disney's leadership. As a result, it's actually surprising how successful it's all been since 2008.

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