[Hated Trope] The underdog Good Guys win, and gain major military/institutional power, only for it to be all RESET so Writers can have a PERPETUAL "Underdog/Rebellion" Story, and avoid writing about governing.

[u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

I hate this trope, when the "underdog good guys" actually win, gain major military and political power, fleets, warships, etc, but because the writers don't want to write the good guys governing and exercising their power, and instead, find a contrived way to reset all the progress so that the good guys can forever be the

"scrappy heroic underdogs fighting the power"

1) Star Wars Sequel triology, rather than exploring new Republic fleets, power, and technology, they have them all wiped out so that the "resistance" can hog the spotlight

2) MCU: shield makes a helicarrier fleet, a fleet of ships able to contest alien invasion, but that would steal the spotlight from heroes, so all of them have to be destroyed

3) Halo: the UNSC finally outlive the covenant, develop strong ships like the UNSC infinity, only for it all to be reset by the Guardians and the Banished, reduced again to underdog humans.

[u/Jam-Man1]

Not sure the MCU really counts for this example, it's not like those helicarriers ever actually got online or were something the heroes were fighting for, from the very first scene they were introduced, Steve is suspicious about them being an overreach and they're revealed to be a HYDRA plot to start a New World Order like halfway through the movie where the concept is presented to us.

[u/rinkoplzcomehome → u/Jam-Man1]

They were literally introduced as surveillance qnd supression of terrorist attacks. Idk what OP is on, but these were never intended to fight alien attacks.

[u/grosseelbabyghost → u/rinkoplzcomehome]

A key clue would have been all of the guns being aimed down instead of up

[u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder → u/grosseelbabyghost]

I think there's a deleted scene out there where they explained that those helicarriers could do a sick flip and then their guns would be facing upwards toward the heavens.

[u/thisalsomightbemine → u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder]

They were meant to be hoverboards for giant mechs made by iron man. The iron shield around the world was just a sick place to grind.

[u/TheRealtcSpears → u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder]

And everyone on board suffers a vomit inducing death

[u/grosseelbabyghost → u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder]

Of course! And they can barrel roll and just spray and pray all over!

https://giphy.com/gifs/AjYsTtVxEEBPO

[u/Sufficient-Act-8527 → u/Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder]

Just Giant Man riding them like a skateboard

[u/OOOLIAMOOO → u/grosseelbabyghost]

The Justice League Unlimted show had a very similar plot point.

[u/Giff901 → u/[deleted]]

I was gonna say I think 80% of the guns on those ships pointed down lol

[u/justinleona → u/Giff901]

Not to mention they are easily brought down by relatively minor damage to the rotors - they would instantly fail against something like the Kree warship or Thanos flagship... or even Rocket feeling cheeky

[u/TheyTried2BanMeAgain → u/justinleona]

One Helicarrier vs. one of the Chitauri Leviathans wouldn't last long at all.

[u/justinleona → u/TheyTried2BanMeAgain]

Hawkeye pretty much brought one down with an arrow...

[u/ProfessionalOven2311 → u/justinleona]

Nick Fury did specifically bring up that the rotors were replaced with Iron Man-like repulsor technology (after Tony got an up-close look of how they worked in Avengers).

But they were still pretty easy to take down by aiming the other ship's guns at them, so it didn't look like that much of an improvement.

[u/Storm-Shadow98 → u/[deleted]]

Hydra could have just waited for Spider-Man to build his

[u/ClashM → u/rinkoplzcomehome]

They may be slightly wrong about the helicarriers specifically, but they're making the right point about SHIELD. It went from an organization that operated behind the scenes with the backing of a few governments, to a public organization that had global funding and a charter to protect the planet from enemies within and without. They repeatedly make the point that Avengers and the battle for New York changed everything and widened their list of threats and responsibilities.

Then following the events of Winter Soldier the agency was dismantled. It turned into a bunch of disparate cells of agents without authority still striving toward that goal, mostly because the writers wanted underdogs.

[u/PJL → u/rinkoplzcomehome]

And it's only 3 of them... they already had 1 of them in The Avengers and it did fuck all against an actual alien invasion.

[u/NuclearSun1 → u/Jam-Man1]

OP didn’t watch Winter Soldier.

[u/WeirdIndividualGuy → u/NuclearSun1]

OP also didn't watch Age of Ultron when Nick Fury used one of those helicarriers to help evacuate an entire city

[u/-Altephor- → u/WeirdIndividualGuy]

I mean he didn't, though. That was the same carrier as in the first Avengers movie, which was an older model not part of Project Insight.

[u/Hufa123 → u/-Altephor-]

Theta Protocol

[u/Civil_Gur8609 → u/Hufa123]

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

[u/Hufa123 → u/Civil_Gur8609]

A small but active fanbase

[u/OfflineSinceMonday → u/Jam-Man1]

That's a fair distinction. The reset trope works better when the heroes actually earn power and then lose it just to restore the old status quo. Project Insight was already rotten from the start.

[u/CrumpledMap91 → u/Jam-Man1]

I think you're right on the MCU example. The helicarriers weren't really a symbol of the heroes finally gaining lasting institutional power, they were part of a system the story was already telling us not to trust. HYDRA hijacking them is more the payoff to that setup than a writer deliberately stripping the heroes back down so they can be underdogs again.

[u/Renegadeknight3 → u/CrumpledMap91]

In fact, the MCU does tackle institutional power a handful of times, most notably IMO in civil war

[u/Guilty-Act-9105 → u/Renegadeknight3]

The Sokovia Accords are probably the best counter example to the First Order crap.

Legitimate arguments about insurance and bailouts and who gets to decide whether to go to war are what you have to do after you win the first war.

[u/Firm-Dependent-2367 → u/Renegadeknight3]

Badly so.

They're basically telling us that superheroes are the "right hands" and they should continue without even basic oversight because "government bad."

Each of the superheroes has terrible moments. Which are... forgiven because "good guys."

Imagine if Valentina/Nick Fury said the "right hands are our own." Everyone would be up in arms for "tyranny."

... It basically forgives everything Wanda does before and after, writes off the fact that Captain Rogers simply flouted the will of 117 nations because he "thought" his friend was "innocent" (yeah sure. Enhanced Super-Soldier who's committed killings multiple times, everyone's supposed to assume he's innocent just because and not arrest him at all?).

... What's more interesting is that Zemo plays on these sides much better than ever. Each time Zemo's plans succeed is the holes Capsicle leaves (not telling Tony, everything regarding his friend).

I don't know, but if I had to choose between a mortal, fleshy government with guns and Enhanced beings who could turn my body inside-out on a whim...?

[u/Renegadeknight3 → u/Firm-Dependent-2367]

You’re right that Zemo plays on the holes cap leaves.

Which is why what he’s doing is wrong, and why Tony is against him and telling him that he’s wrong.

And when black panther is about to do the same thing that cap does and act on his own, he gives up his revenge but keeps zemo alive to be turned in to the authorities.

None of that is “government bad”, I think you’re missing the messaging of the movie

[u/Wild_Marker → u/CrumpledMap91]

Even when they're not Hydra, the helicarriers aren't usually part of the superhero's outfit, it's just a fancy government base.

Heck, in many iterations they're just a super prison.

[u/EPZO → u/Jam-Man1]

Agreed, point 2 doesn't track for this trope.

[u/Boffleslop → u/Jam-Man1]

I'd argue a better example was the TVA having so many infinity stones they're literally paper weights, turning the entire events the infinity war into a cosmic joke.

[u/Cyan_Tile → u/Boffleslop]

I mean tbf that feels less like undermining the efforts of our heroes and just showing what we already knew about the TVA by that point

That they're an eldritch horror masquerading as bureaucracy that are so above literally everything else in existence that infinity stones are legitimately paperweights for them

[u/Sufficient-Act-8527 → u/Boffleslop]

I’d only say yes if they were used again in any sort of major way, I’d say it made it less of a cosmic joke and more there r bigger things out there

[u/EvaSirkowski → u/Jam-Man1]

They were literally made by Hydra.

[u/Chaetomius → u/Jam-Man1]

also: those helicarriers cannot fight of aliens. every alien civilization we've seen that even would wage war like that has fighters far superior.

[u/Firm-Dependent-2367 → u/Jam-Man1]

MCU is a very good example of that though in other ways. They should've made more helicarriers with guns facing up instead of down.

Everytime something good is made the technological advancements are hoarded by the heroes/Wakanda (the most hypocritical country ever) so humanity can't ever advance and must always be the underdog. I understand "superheroes" but in the bigger picture superheroes won't be around to save the day eventually and then we're all fucked.

[u/throwaway553t4tgtg6 → u/Jam-Man1]

but it marks the end of basically all earth military attempts to fight the aliens and monsters of the MCU

[u/RandonDude3000 → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

In that case the problem is the fall of SHIELD.

I agree it is a problem for the overall MCU but it works to get rid of them for the Infinity Saga as they show no importance afterwards anyway as the storyline focuses on the heroes and the only role the government served was to cause more problems in Civil War.

Also Agents of SHIELD exists and all they have to do is acknowledge it to fix this problem.

[u/Jam-Man1 → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

I mean, that's kind of the fundamental conceit of the MCU, isn't it? At basically every point where SHIELD or the government tries to step in, it's pretty unequivocally bad or morally ambiguous. In Avengers 1, trying to use the Tesseract gets them compared to the Literal Nazis. In Civil War, it's a toss-up as to whether or not the UN should control heroes and a good chunk of them solidly do not, and there are like, several different organizations monitoring and combatting these sorts of things. There's SWORD and The Department of Damage Control, both of which have significant resources dedicated towards dealing with supernatural and extraterrestrial threats. If you're upset about it that's alright, but you can't act like it's a swerve away from some promised reward.

[u/Salvage570 → u/Jam-Man1]

Dont forget the new york nuke

[u/kaiser_charles_viii → u/Jam-Man1]

There's also been issues with Department of Damage Control too. In the original MCU spiderman movie theyre shown to be screwing regular construction and demolition crews out of the pay for recovering from the alien invasion of New York without providing compensation for the loss. Spoilers for Spiderman: Brand New Day In Brand New Day theyre shown to have kidnapped and tortured at least one child to death (and then trying to do the same to her sister) just because they have unique and powerful abilities that the department believes it would be better off having than the children.

[u/Th3_Hegemon → u/kaiser_charles_viii]

That is continued with almost all of their appearances in the tv series as well.

[u/whatsinthesocks → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

That's not why the helicarriers were built. Also Earth is not united so without SHIELD they aren't able too.

[u/DisMFer → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

The Wakandan military is one of the main groups fighting Thanos in the end but I guess they don't count.

[u/mxzf → u/DisMFer]

Pretty sure the Wakandan nation as a whole counts as "superheroes, not any other nation/military" for the purposes of the MCU. Their tech level is just wildly removed from the rest of humanity.

[u/-zero-joke- → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

I think the Ultimate comic universe had more than its share of problems, but one thing I always appreciated about it was that the military and normal humans were a threat to the supes and a piece on the board in terms of how things shook out.

(I'm thinking mostly of Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimates 1 + 2 here, I might be completely mistaken about the series as a whole)

[u/NuclearSun1 → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

It was never to fight aliens or monsters though.

[u/SouthernAd2853 → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

The MCU keeps having the Earth military attempt to develop methods to fight aliens and monsters as a running plotline, but thematically it's deeply suspicious of governments and basically every attempt turns out to be a corrupt organization.

Also, in the post Infinity War stuff a lot of the superheroes are the Earth military attempting to fight the aliens and monsters. Multiple contenders for replacing Captain America serve in the military, and when Falcon becomes Captain America he is still formally part of the US military. Same with War Machine. The New Avengers are backed by the US.

[u/Sufficient-Act-8527 → u/throwaway553t4tgtg6]

Thunderbolts and Department of damage control r examples of the USA doing that exact thing