Fantasy vs the Status Quo
I can tell you the exact moment I started to dislike the MCU and what it represents. It was in 2021 and it was specifically when the finale of Falcon and the Winter Soldier released on Disney+.
I had before talked a lot with people about this thing with the MCU and how it stuck to its status quo, and how almost all movies in the end were about someone wanting to shake up the status quo, while the heroes usually tried to fight to maintain that same status quo. This was before most notable in the first Black Panther movies. While this movie is definitely still among my favorite MCU movies, and one of the few that I actually rewatch, it was probably the entry into the MCU before Falcon and the Winter Soldier that showed this the most. Because while you can definitely argue that Killmonger is an ass, he is also not... wrong, is he?
And this was more apparent in Falcon and the Winter Soldiers, because frankly: the Flag Smashers did nothing wrong. Oh, they killed a couple of workers? Oh no, that is clearly soooooo much worse than the established order letting hundreds of refugees die each day! /s It felt especially troublesome of course with the fact that generally speaking their bombing of this one building coming out of nowhere and feeling quite OoC. It felt like: "Just to make clear, the Flag Smashers are evil actually!" While for anyone who actually thinks of the context... the Flag Smashers did create some collateral damage, sure. But so do the heroes in the MCU. There was a whole movie about that being an issue (Civil War).
But in the end the MCU, like all mass media that is trying so hard to manufacture consent, goes about this in one clear way: the status quo might not be perfect, but it is good. It is alright. No need to be crazy and change things too much.
I thought about this because of having thoughts about Dragon Age of course. I talked about this before: After I got into Dragon Age I noted one thing that is almost funny to me. Solas' arc, Solas' end goal, is the same as the end goal of Loki in my Urban Fantasy series. In my Urban Fantasy series there is a veil that restricts magic in a way, and Loki wants to destroy it. He is quite aware that this will lead to some deaths, possibly even a lot of deaths, partially because how it might affect the Otherworld, but he is willing to take that risk, because he also is very certain that the alternative - the Veil staying intact - will also lead to mass death and misery.
The difference between Loki and Solas? Loki is the good guy. The protagonists in my Urban Fantasy work with Loki to destroy the Veil, because they do agree with his assessment: the Veil staying up will ultimately create a worse outcome.
Dragon Age is similar to the MCU in this regard. In the end everything is about fighting to maintain the status quo. Sure, this is somewhat valid in regards to the main plot of Origins, Inquisition and Veilguard, the main evil wants to change the world in regards of literally wanting to destroy the world. Not in way where we can argue that it might be possibly better, but in the "kill everyone" kind of way, more or less.
But there is of course the two other aspects. First everything in the main plot of DA2, and then, again, there is Solas.
Dragon Age 2 is the one game where the main plot is fully about the status quo and how everyone relates to this status quo. With both the second and third act being about people who want to change the status quo. The qunari want to change it, and of course Anders does.
The qunari in the end are never even considered to be right. You can have them leave and take Isabela, that is a valid option in the game, but any thought of Thedas accepting the Qun is never considered as a valid outcome or a possible positive outcome.
And then there is Anders. Here, too, Hawke can obviously forgive him for what he has done. However, this does not mean that the story at any point even considers it as a possibility that you would ever approve of his action in blowing up the Chantry. And this is very much very similar to the way the MCU portrays the Flash Smashers.
And the issue with this is the framing. Which is similar for Solas and Anders. Because whenever we look at both their actions, the story is framed about how many non-magic humans got killed (in regards to Anders) or might be killed (in regards to Solas), while never considering the opposite: how many non-humans/mages will die if the system continues this way? This is very, very obvious in regards to Anders. Like, sure, people died in that explosion. Maybe even a lot of people. But how many mages die every day because of the system he is trying to destroy?
It should be noted, that this framing issue is also very much true for the qunari in Trespasser. There it is especially notable because their violence is very explicitly targeting the leaders of the status quo. While Anders clearly was targeting the Chantry, you could argue whether it was right to just target the Chantry here, rather than some place that is more actively targeting mages, but the qunari in Trespasser do technically very specifically the people who are responsible for the things they take offense at.
In leftist circles we talk a lot about "manufactured consent". You know, Noam Chomsky and all of how especially capitalism does manufacture the consent of people with the system exploiting them, by making all media framed in a way that makes the status quo of capitalism seem good, or at least "the least bad option". Framing it as the comfortable center between fascism and communism, with communism being portrayed as authoritarian and cruel as fascism. You know, good old horseshoe theory. This idea that the status quo tries to manufacture (or rather has successfully manufactured) that the left is as bad as the right, and only the center can be okay. And the center by this logic is of course the right ones, the ones who do not want things to change too much and if they want change want it to be slow and right. To be had through reform.
As I said, the MCU is probably right now the biggest example for this, where this is happening again and again. And generally Marvel had this happen a whole lot of times, in the comics as well. Look also at the X-Men and how Magneto is framed in that story.
And in the MCU I always come back to the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and how the Flag Smashers die, while in the later MCU John Walker - who is a lot more right wing - gets redeemed. (And I say that as someone who liked the Thunderbolts movie.)
And there is a bunch of other media where this holds true. Especially in the west. Because generally western fantasy and scifi media tends to come in two flavors: a) the bad guys are some evil that has a full on evil nature and just wants to destroy/kill everything, or b) the bad guys are somewhat sympathetic and do make some sense, but of course they are too extreme, and either will have to get convinced to stop, or have a tragic death. Like, there is a couple of pieces of media where we also have like very cliché Nazi stand-in as a bad guy, while the story never really questions why Nazism is a thing, they just are random Hitler-a-likes to be punched.
There is a lot of examples. Many people have talked about how much Harry Potter in the end goes: "Oh look, all those problems the status quo has caused. Anyway, we should absolutely be all willing to protect the status quo and everyone who does want to change the status quo is a dangerous radical." Something similar happened in the Game of Thrones show, which very much ends on: "Hmm, okay, the status quo has created a lot of misery. But we should not end it too much!"
And this just holds true for so much Western media in Fantasy and SciFi.
Heck, I remember when the YA dystopian novels were a big thing, this was also such a topic discussed in a lot of YouTube Video Essays, because so many of those explicitly dystopian novels went: "Okay, yes, the status quo is dystopian, but changing it too much would be bad as well!"
And this is speaking, isn't it?
Anime is interesting in this Context
As I was thinking about this I also noticed another thing: anime is surprisingly different on this quite often. While there obviously are some western pieces of media, where the protagonists are very actively fighting a status quo that can be somewhat considered to be similar or paralleled to our current situation, the biggest media tends to not. (I will note in this point that I actually do want to point towards Powerhouse animation, where they several times actually made stories about changing a status quo - the newest Tomb Rider season being a good example.)
But when it comes to big name anime? A bunch of them are very, very clearly against the status quo. One Piece is currently the probably clearest example. I am not even very active in regards to reading One Piece, mostly knowing just summaries of what happened after Terror Bark. But I know that the ultimate goal of One Piece is to fight the government, with there being no doubt that the Status Quo is bad, and the Strawhat pirates being the good guys for fighting back.
Pretty much every Gundam series is in the end about how the status quo often creates misery and how the people who hold onto it are complicit in the bad things happening. Several of the YGO series also deal with this topic. A bunch of Shonen anime also have stuff like this as a topic. They do not always deliver on it properly in their respective finales (heck, as someone who does not read a lot of Shonen Jump, the main reason I am aware of how many Shonen Jump manga have these themes is because I get very aware of how they often do not deliver on this in their respective finales, rowing back into a: "Oh, well, but we do not need to dismantle everything" position), but there is no doubt that there is a whole lot more big anime franchises that are very centrally dealing with the idea of "the status quo is wrong and needs to be dismantled" in comparison to western media.
Sure, a big point in this regard is still very much the topic of executive influence. There is a bunch of executive meddling in anime and manga, but let's face it: the fact that your average anime episode costs between 200 000 and 400 000 if translated into USD makes a difference to when we talk about MCU movies with a 200 million budget, or even western shows, that still often cost a million bucks or more in comparison. (And of course, manga tends to be dirt cheap to be produced. Due to the exploitation of everyone, but still...)
Something that people who know me also know is how much I love the quote: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time for monsters". This quote is by Antonio Gramsci, who was a prisoner under the fascist government of Mussolini. And it feels very... topical today.
Because the old world is dying, and people have put it on life support, because a slowly, miserably dying world seems preferable to a new world to them.
The big issue is that so many people are very much willing to accept that this is for the better. And it shows in so many things, especially how we frame any kind of revolution. Revolution is decried as a bad thing. As a thing that speaks of poor character, of evil radicals. It is shown in how we frame terrorism vs heroism. If the American military kills a bunch of civilians in the Arab world, it is regrettable but happened for the greater good. If some Muslims kill Americans, it is terrorism and speaks of the supposed inherent evil of Islam. It is okay to kill people to uphold the status quo. It is evil to kill people to change it.
Thousands of people dying because they do not have health insurance is sad, but the United Healthcare CEO being killed is a crime.
The hundreds being tied to the rail being run over by the trolley are sad, but expected. If you switch the rails and run over one, it is murder.
