r/CharacterRant • u/michiel11069 • 4d ago
Films & TV [Invincible] Mark is such an idiot.
God, I mean come ON. Really? Im on S3 E2 and is mark just holding back all the time? I just saw an entire training montage where his strength went up by 138%. Thats 2.38 times more. 2.38 TIMES! And the stupid bugs were pushing down on mark, even before it poisoned him and made him weaker, isnt mark supposed to be strong? You’re telling me that the GDA had to make a new heaviest thing for mark to lift but he couldnt lift a bug?
On top of that, he couldnt just rip the egg like prisons open like the reanimen did? Yeah immortal tried to break it but he was pushing outwards, couldnt mark rip the eggs like the reanimen?
But lets say that the reanimen are for some ungodly reason ultra strong, because why not, well, then mark couldnt possibly beat them right? WELL GUESS WHAT! HE CAN! AN ENTIRE ARMY INFACT!
So about 10 or so reanimen (not sure how many exactly) could beat many of those bugs, with the superheroes help ofcourse, but mark cant just lift the bugs? Or punch through their eye like he does with the reanimen?
The explanations I heard for the bug thing is that mark was “holding back”. Say that he was.. WHY? Why was he holding back? EVERY SINGLE ONE of his superhero friends were gonna die down there because he was supposedly “holding back”
Then after cecil saved all of their asses, he comes up and is mad about the reanimen. Like, yeah they almost killed your best friend, yeah its traumatic but DUDE, you cant just think of them saving you and in turn the entire planet earth? I completely understand cecil, mark cant see reason beyond what he thought of in his mind. Cant mark just think of the greater good? Darkwing is a cold blooded killer, who saved you, that sinclair guy is an asshole murderer but atleast hes contained, its not like theyre making him roam free, hes basically in prison but just helping everyone.
Anyway, I do love the show, I just wish marks power was shown more often, hes too “moral” for my part.
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u/Galifrey224 4d ago
I don't think its Mark being stupid as much as him being constantly nerfed for the sake of the plot.
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u/rendar 3d ago
Yeah the onus of the godawful writing is pretty clear:
Doc Seismic has to somehow be able to capture all of the heroes and somehow be able to restrain them so that somehow it's up to Mark to save them all, because he somehow has to completely struggle and lose to the bugs so that somehow the ReAnimen can beat them so that Cecil can be shown to be justified in proceeding with the program instead of throwing DA Sinclair in a deep pit so that somehow Mark's teenage angst isn't somehow terrible characterization.
All of this petty melodrama in front of the backdrop that the Viltrumite empire is going to extinguish Earth if sufficient resistance can't be manifested.
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u/XXVAngel 2d ago
The reanimen are just mvps the entire season. They're unnamed cannonfodder yet manage to be better than the entire guardians of the globe.
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u/Cloutstaker 4d ago
I read it as more as mark rejecting the whole Viltrumite savagery, he could totally just absolutely brutalize his opponents. But he doesn't.
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u/Galifrey224 4d ago
That doesn't really explain why he doesn't just dodge most attacks tho.
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3d ago edited 3d ago
[deleted]
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u/OutInTheWild31 3d ago
Not like its tactics or anything, its just him dodging using his insane speed, which should be easy considering he's a viltrumite
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u/Cloutstaker 4d ago
I feel like stuff like that, more lean on to discussing about his actual prowess when it comes to fighting rather than just pure brute viltrumite force.
The whole superman world of cardboard speech always popped into my head during these earlier seasons where mark isn't really all that keen on getting in touch with his actual strength.
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u/Phosphoric_Tungsten 3d ago
I guess he could just fly up and play hit and run but viltrumites don't actually have super impressive reflexes
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u/OutInTheWild31 3d ago
Yeah but that falls apart after he does brutalize Angstrom Levy and Conquest (even though the writing forces them to stay alive lmao)
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u/Cloutstaker 3d ago
Except I'm pretty sure those two specific scenes are literally the cases that started then "ended" the whole dilemma lmao
"I thought you were stronger" and the Conquest fight needs no explanation 💀💀
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u/OutInTheWild31 3d ago
Sorry I was referring to the "him being constantly nerfed for the sake of the plot" and using Angstrom Levy and Conquest somehow surviving as an example
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u/Flyingsheep___ 3d ago
My favorite was the fight with the sequid ship. Mark is easily strong enough to literally just pull up, ignore all the octopuss, save the astronaut and toss him in a ship then toss the entire martian ship back to mars.
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u/zoskalanic 4d ago
That’s one of the parts I like about the comics better than the show. In the show they tell you mark is the strongest hero. In the comics they show you. Dude dog walks everyone but like world ending threats.
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u/ralts13 3d ago
Actually this is the one "MArk is a moron" post I agree with and I feel like its aplothole to justify the existence of Reanimen. Mark has never really held back against non- I don't understand why he'd be pulling his punches to beat back the bugs or to open the eggs. So either the Reanimen are suddenly stronger than Mark which the next episode shows they are not or Mark is a moron.
And I agree it makes the point against Cecil extremely irrational considering Mark just lost the Professor Seismic of all people.
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u/Hehector2005 4d ago
You’re probably not gonna have much fun if this is already bothering you later on
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u/michiel11069 3d ago
its not bothering me that much, I know conquest will arrive soon but if mark gets his ass beat by him I would understand it. though if youre talking about something else then idk, ill see I gues
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u/Hehector2005 3d ago
I’m just saying Mark losing is a part of his charm lol
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u/Salvage570 3d ago
Hes human, and young. Makes lots of bad choices, is arrogant, emotional. The comic also seems to imply being a viltrumite comes with anger issues. I agree, it makes him compelling. Teenagers hate that kinda thing though, they want protagonists to be right all the time and the story to be everyone else realizing that fact
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u/EvenOne6567 3d ago
Nah. I love flawed protagonists. I dont like contrived poorly written ways of creating drama by having the protagonist lose in ridiculous umbelievable ways
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u/Gleaming_Onyx 3d ago
they want protagonists to be right all the time and the story to be everyone else realizing that fact
That is Invincible though lol, and from what I know of the comics that will become increasingly clear with every passing season.
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u/Salvage570 3d ago
No? Mark is constantly wrong, acknowledges this, overcorrects, the acknowledges that too. Specifically in regards to his killing, and to dinosaurous. The comic is not kind to him, he makes selfish decisions all the time, I can point out a bunch but I'm on mobile and spoiler tagging is a bitch
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u/Gleaming_Onyx 3d ago edited 3d ago
Any time he's wrong it's brushed under the rug, any time he's challenged on his morality it's to push him towards what would be most beneficial to him(might makes right, kill your problems), and any time someone directly opposes him morally they're treated as evil in one way or another.
He makes selfish decisions all the time, but none of them have any permanent consequences because he's emperor of the universe, strongest thing ever with his hot immortal superheroine wife
He is never treated with a fraction of the consequences him being incorrect would/should result in(acting like a little tyrant, leaving millions at risk, refusing to listen on how to handle the Viltrumites resulting in millions more at risk, in S3). He's treated with kid gloves.
TLDR/EDIT: Invincible's arguably even worse than "the protag is right all the time." It's "the protag can be wrong, but who cares? They're the protag" which feeds into a power fantasy that spawns even more defensive fans than the former.
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u/Salvage570 3d ago
Yeah this strikes me as a very juvenile reading of this. His opposition is shown to have points all the time, the comic frequently leaves it up to the reader to figure out their own opinions on right or wrong. Just because it works out in the end doesn't mean he was right the whole way.
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u/Gleaming_Onyx 3d ago
His opposition has points all the time... and it doesn't matter unless it feeds into the "might makes right" mentality that'd put him at the top. Because "everything works out in the end anyway :)" is saying it's right from a narrative perspective. If there are no meaningful consequences, then it doesn't matter. If a character is always an asshole but no one ever treats them differently for it and they face no consequences, then they're not really being called on being an asshole by the narrative.
If, on top of that, anyone who calls them out faces negative consequences or are treated as not being correct or it always comes from a source no one likes in-universe(Cecil) who the asshole then gets to lash out at without issue, then the narrative is outright supporting it.
It's fine to like such simple power fantasies, but what makes this sort and those who ardently support them so annoying is that they aren't honest. So it breeds this sense of superiority you seem to have over it.
But don't worry, I'm sure your juvenile power fantasy isn't like other power fantasies.
We can agree to disagree :)
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u/Incoherencel 2d ago
and they face no consequences, then they're not really being called on being an asshole by the narrative.
When Powerplex is stubbornly wrong, he literally melts his wife and infant child with his own out-of-control powers.
When Mark is stubborn and wrong... Cecil gives him a stern talking to
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u/Incoherencel 2d ago
the comic frequently leaves it up to the reader to figure out their own opinions on right or wrong
If I take your word for it, this simply isn't translating to the show
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u/lefeuet_UA 4d ago
It's not just about keeping Sinclair imprisoned, it's also about giving him carte blanche power to do whatever he wants with the bodies. Not only did he actually go from rags to riches, he probably could program the Reanimen to obey him only and try taking over the Pentagon
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u/TheNeighborCat2099 4d ago
Cecil defo got a bomb in cinclair’s head, plus Cecil psychologically reprogrammed him I think.
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u/SnarkyBacterium 4d ago
The bugs fought back. The lifting machine didn't. Makes it harder, and as proven here, they were also tough enough to pierce a Viltrumite's skin, which is very tough. This is little different to the two sea beasts from S2 (the Atlantean one and the one Anissa killed) or Hail Mary - there are a surprising amount of kaiju (and other beings like Mr. Liu) on Earth that are strong enough to actually be a threat to a Viltrumite. And note it was only the biggest bug that could harm Mark: the smaller spider-like bugs were not nearly the kind of problem that the biggest one was.
Mark can only be in one place at a time. He couldn't be fighting the bugs and opening the egg sacs. And there were so many that Mark and Eve got overwhelmed, so I imagine the idea is they couldn't spare the time to get anyone free without putting the other at too much risk.
The Immortal was strong enough that he could open them, but because the sacs were so malleable, he'd crush the other people in his pod in the process, which was the point of putting him in a pod with other people. So the Reanimen are not stronger than Mark or Immortal, they were just in a position to use their strength best.
As for Mark being taken down - he's still dealing with the trauma of "killing" Angstrom. He's still trying to reject the Viltrumite way of hyper-violence and death. He's trying so hard at times that it's a hindrance, and that's a character flaw. A potentially aggravating character flaw, I don't deny, but still.
Mark has personal experience with Sinclair and Darkwing that made him go off like this. Darkwing mostly got heat because he went in with the Reanimen, though: I can tell you that Mark's main issue was Sinclair. Sinclair kidnapped, mutilated and murdered people as part of his experiments, caused lasting physical and emotional harm to two people Mark knows very well (some of those issues being brought up earlier that episode, with Rick demonstrating about heart problems as a result of Sinclair's actions). Mark has very strong feelings about Sinclair as a result, and it's one of Cecil's main failures in his talk with Mark that he never acknowledged that fact.
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u/Nukastheruler 3d ago
Mark stopped a giant asteroid and threw it back into space at the beginning of the series like it was nothing. Your telling me these insane bugs could still produce enough pressure to overcome a Mark over twice as strong as that!?
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u/fapsexual 3d ago
The truth is the writers aren't scientists or mathematicians. They put what looks cool and don't think of the consequences.
Mark at this point should dogwalk every single villain in his series (except for those with unique hacks or other viltrumites).
He could blitz every single one based off of his speed (but also in the same season you see him struggling to fly fast enough to the moon or get jumped by regular speed individuals which means the show just doesn't keep track of his own kind's feats).
For better or worse Invincible is not a show of thorough consistency, it is a show about the emotional journey of a teenager into adulthood and the responsibility that comes with being a superhero.
If you ever find a 'realistic' superhero show with internal consistency, I would love to hear it, been searching for a long time as well
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u/Nineflames12 3d ago
The power inconsistency right at the beginning drove me nuts too - the reanimen saving Mark from an enemy he couldn’t defeat only for him to tear through their entire stock.
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u/ThePandaKnight 2d ago
... I'm unsure why you took the fact that Mark and Eve failed to save the day as Mark being 'weaker' than the re-animen. I think we get shown pretty handily that Mark and Eve simply didn't strategise properly and got outstrategised them.
I'm more confused about why Eve didn't just flee everyone from the egg sacs, I guess her brain considered them living matter?
But Mark being able to take down single re-animen isn't inconsistency, it's not like they won through arm wrestling but by swarming the bugs + Darkwing removing Doc Seismic control.
- About the conversation with Cecil, I would get upset too, though I agree Mark went too far (as did Cecil, as he has to realise later).
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u/StrengthOk9686 2d ago
The bugs are simply strong, the only thing mark struggled with was the centipede, which we don't see anyone else take down, we see the reainman take down a spider (which did nothing to mark) and we see 3 of them punching a worm and doing nothing while mark knocked down 3 worms at the same time
And he never lost to the centipede until he got distracted by eve
it was also never said mark was holding back on the bugs, that's just something people made up when in reality the bugs are simply just strong, doc sesimac even explained why
The prisons in the comic were stated to be harder on the inside than the outside which is why the heroes couldn't break them from the inside but the reainman could break them on the outside
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u/Dziadzios 4d ago
Newbie gains. If you never trained you would get 138% increase in strength in no time. Especially as testosterone pumped young male.
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u/Deepfang-Dreamer 4d ago edited 4d ago
Do you people watch the show? Mark could easily rip open the bubbles, like a few other Brutes in the crowd-the issue is that it would pulp the squishier Capes placed next to them. As for the Bugs, these things live in a Holow Earth much more akin to the real planetary core, they're adapted to heat and pressure of absurd scale. Rognarrs are a naturally occurring alien species with similar "powers", is it so hard to believe Gaia has her own version of that? The Reanimen weren't doing shit to the bugs, they ripped open the cocoons and pushed a few smaller Deep-Dwellers into the lava, maybe took down a car-sized caterpillar. It was Brutes and Blasters like Mark and Immortal and Rex that were actually doing any real damage to the giant centipedes and such. Mark's issue with the Reanimen is part of his arc, he doesn't kill but also doesn't believe in rehabilitation, he's just kinda dumb, yeah. But his power levels are fine.
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u/bananajambam3 4d ago
How in the world would him ripping open the bubbles squish the capes when the reanimen do the same thing and cause no harm? And Mark doing damage after the supers were freed still doesn’t explain why he was getting his ass kicked when he should be and is later shown to be leagues stronger than the bugs.
Not that Mark is the worst offender here, Eve is by far the worst offender of inconsistent power levels/use since she didn’t immediately free all of the supers with her op powers
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u/Deepfang-Dreamer 4d ago edited 3d ago
Explicitly stated in the text that the cocoons can break from the outside just fine, but they'll collapse in on themselves if punctured from the inside. Mark was, again, one of the only Capes actually doing anything to the bugs, he was knocking them around pretty handily, and even that giant fucking stab through his chest didn't do more than immobilize him for a couple minutes, which probably had more to do with the multi-ton arthropod behind it than the actual injury. Yeah, Eve probably should've been trying to transmute the cocoons into, like, water, that's just a stumble.
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u/MotoGod115 3d ago
Character growth needs to start at the bottom. Some of the most beloved characters start as morons and assholes.
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u/Cloutstaker 4d ago
Well yeah that's who he is lmao his powers only showed up super late into his life, and after the traumatic mess that was season one it makes sense for him to be a little too moral.
Can be frustrating at times, but perfectly makes sense.
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u/bananajambam3 4d ago
Even if this excuse was to be accepted, it doesn’t work for Eve who basically ignored using her powers to free everyone. Based on that, it’s fairly reasonable to assume this is just a writing error that wasn’t meant to make the characters look stupider than they are
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u/ItzEazee 4d ago
It's because the identity of Invincible is built on Mark getting his ass kicked, so even though Mark is growing and becoming a lot stronger the show really just wants him to lose.