Captain America: Brave New World - Official Trailer (2025)

[Gradine]

I haven't seen the film yet (probably won't see it in theaters, anyway) but I do think it might be worth remembering that when Steve first met him, Sam Wilson was basically serving as a clinical social worker.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I haven't seen the film yet (probably won't see it in theaters, anyway) but I do think it might be worth remembering that when Steve first met him, Sam Wilson was basically serving as a clinical social worker.

There's some suggestions he may be still possibly leading trauma groups on the side, though probably not being paid for it.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can very much argue that's not realistic, but so are any number of things in superhero settings.

It's unrealistic in a way that's more damaging, more likely to pull the audience out of the movie, though, that's kind of the issue. You have to keep the whole issue off-screen, because the average mildly intelligent person today knows that's complete nonsense, that there's no such thing as technology only one individual could replicate. We all know if you had the plans and full details of how it was manufactured, anyone with the money/equipment could do it. Whereas none of us know how magic works, or telepathy or whatever, because they're more fundamentally unreal than technology, so they don't tend to cause the same problem.

I feel like that understanding of technology as completely replicable was a less common/prevalent, say, 50 or 60 years ago, before we were fully in the information age, when a lot of these characters and their equipment got conceptualized.

Honestly I think Marvel and to a lesser extent DC's universes beyond the heroes just aren't well-conceptualized, and this is kind of problematic for the TV shows more than the movies.

This is partly why Marvel has sort of leant in to "unobtainium"-type materials as the excuse, because that's an easy one - if the materials needed for a super-suit or w/e are basically extremely hard to obtain, it explains why such things might be very rare AND why governments might not be able to field them.

 

[Gradine]

There's some suggestions he may be still possibly leading trauma groups on the side, though probably not being paid for it.

I always wondered if he was Steve's inspiration for leading groups himself post-snap

 

[jian]

It's unrealistic in a way that's more damaging, more likely to pull the audience out of the movie, though, that's kind of the issue. You have to keep the whole issue off-screen, because the average mildly intelligent person today knows that's complete nonsense, that there's no such thing as technology only one individual could replicate. We all know if you had the plans and full details of how it was manufactured, anyone with the money/equipment could do it. Whereas none of us know how magic works, or telepathy or whatever, because they're more fundamentally unreal than technology, so they don't tend to cause the same problem.

I feel like that understanding of technology as completely replicable was a less common/prevalent, say, 50 or 60 years ago, before we were fully in the information age, when a lot of these characters and their equipment got conceptualized.

Honestly I think Marvel and to a lesser extent DC's universes beyond the heroes just aren't well-conceptualized, and this is kind of problematic for the TV shows more than the movies.

This is partly why Marvel has sort of leant in to "unobtainium"-type materials as the excuse, because that's an easy one - if the materials needed for a super-suit or w/e are basically extremely hard to obtain, it explains why such things might be very rare AND why governments might not be able to field them.

Yes, exactly. And while the IM films for instance have a certain amount of this, it’s really best that we don’t regard money, science, technological development, or techbros as somehow magical in that Objectivist way. They’re very real and affect us directly, we can’t pretend they’re magical.

For instance, IRL billionaires often use some version of a financial strategy known as “buy borrow die”. You first buy a lot of stock (usually in your own company) and then use it as collateral to borrow money from the bank, rather than spend any money of your own. This also means that the borrowings can be offset against any taxes for your heirs when you die.

(It’s more complicated than that, but bear with me.)

Thus, assuming Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne are similar to IRL billionaires, they don’t have much cash lying around, Scrooge McDuck style - their net worth is based on the value of Stark or Wayne stock* and they just borrow money from banks when they want it. It’s generally estimated that even Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can’t borrow more than half a billion a year or so this way for non-business purposes** (which building Iron Man suits or Batmobiles would definitely count as) and they can’t reasonably embezzle much money from their companies (which, as publicly traded companies, have massive amounts of oversight which prevents this).

*They can of course sell stock to make money but that devalues the stock and annoys the board so they generally won’t.

**They can borrow more for business purposes - expanding or starting new businesses etc - but that usually requires partners and oversight and you have to show something for it.

This means that Tony can’t match the defence development budget of even a single new fighter for his suits. No doubt his genius can make up a lot of the gap, but that also means his IM suits will generally cost less than a modern fighter to make and sell. If he wanted to sell it and if the USAF wanted to buy it, they would.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

and they can’t reasonably embezzle much money from their companies (which, as publicly traded companies, have massive amounts of oversight which prevents this)

Yeah I note they portrayed Batman as essentially straight-up stealing prototype vehicles which Wayne Industries had developed for the military in the Nolan Batman, which seemed more plausible, given the billions that get spent by the US on various dead-end test vehicles which then end up on scrapheaps or out in the desert or sometimes turning up in every stranger places. Not hard to envision one that was supposed to be scrapped ending up being scrapped only on a balance sheet. And Nirvana Batman (goddamit can't remember the director's name) has a normal if very souped-up car as his Batmobile, rather than anything military, which presumably could be done for tens of thousands, perhaps low hundreds of thousands.

Marvel never managed to reach even Nolan Batman levels of plausibility with Iron Man's suits, but did at least manage to push the issue off-screen enough that it's not a question that naturally comes up in the movies.

 

[Rabulias]

And Nirvana Batman (goddamit can't remember the director's name) has a normal...

You mean Matt Reeves? 2022's The Batman with Robert Pattinson?

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's unrealistic in a way that's more damaging, more likely to pull the audience out of the movie, though, that's kind of the issue.

I don't think there's more people bothered by that than by an avowedly normal person taking some hits they do and not having at least a broken bone. And I don't think either are common in people who go to see superhero movies.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Marvel never managed to reach even Nolan Batman levels of plausibility with Iron Man's suits, but did at least manage to push the issue off-screen enough that it's not a question that naturally comes up in the movies.

I'm not sure that's entirely true in the light of Iron Man 2.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think there's more people bothered by that than by an avowedly normal person taking some hits they do and not having at least a broken bone. And I don't think either are common in people who go to see superhero movies.

I absolutely think there are more people bothered by that. Like, a lot more.

They're completely different categories of issue. One is a world-building issue of the kind that people often think about in the shower or whatever, or discuss on messageboards. The other is basically just artistic/dramatic licence in an action scene. Conflating them is so strange to me I genuinely wonder what might lead one to doing so.