Spider-Man: Homecoming (sp)
I rewatched this with Phen's family yesterday; it surprisingly held up to a second viewing for me far more than others in the genre, probably because it's a smaller-scale story built around its characters' everyday lives.
Phen's brother pointed out the film's acknowledgement of the Vulture as a small business owner wronged by a multibillionaire; the fact that none of that reaches Stark himself reveals it as pure audience manipulation, in an accidentally prescient way.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (sp, economics)
@Lobst Stark is a corporate goon from beginning to end; substituting minute-long lectures for actual mentorship, delegating critical, dangerous tasks to powersuitless subordinates, not caring about the damage his actions have caused until after his own property is messed with -- yet the film insists on depicting him as suave, charming, and competent, because the media industry still lives and dies at the whim of thieves at his level of wealth and status
Spider-Man: Homecoming (sp, economics)
@Lobst Generally speaking, the Tony Stark of the MCU is one of the villains, as far as I'm concerned. The rest of the Avengers and the director just haven't figured that out yet.
Spider-Man: Homecoming (sp, economics)
@literorrery @Lobst He's often very villain-like in the comics too. Some writers are able to convey that, some aren't.