Stole is such a harsh word but it can’t denied, especially by Kevin Feige, that Marvel took a little something from Star Trek. Thankfully it’s a tactic that doesn’t involve a lawsuit since no trademark exists when it comes to blowing up something vital in a movie to close out a trilogy or a single film. If you need a little more to go on than that, what they stole, or borrowed, or copied, was the idea of destroying something that was of great importance to the main characters and thus set them back a few paces in terms of how they were supposed to function.
In Iron Man 3 the Mandarin sent his forces to blow up Tony Stark’s house, doing enough damage to send it cascading into the ocean below. In Captain America: Civil War, the Avengers are shattered as they take sides against one another. In Thor: Ragnarok the entirety of Asgard is leveled as the displaced Asgardians take their leave. Yeah, it’s a big enough parallel that Star Trek could put that down as sneaky but legal move from Marvel. What keeps the MCU out of trouble however is the circumstances that lead up to each cataclysmic attack.
In Star Trek the crew is either forced to abandon and blow up the ship because they have no other option. In Star Trek: Beyond the ship was being systematically destroyed by the Krall. It’s not as though they were simply abandoning ship like a bunch of fleeing rats, they really had no other choice. That’s pretty much the case in the other films as well.
In Captain America: Civil War, the battle lines are drawn when the Avengers are about to be made accountable for their actions and the fallout that’s been caused by it. The act of being under the control of the government and being regulated, in other words at the beck and call of the government like regular agents, is not a desired position that some of the Avengers want. Unfortunately Tony and a few of the others seem to think that they do need to be held accountable for the things they do. Ironically it is Iron Man that seems to cause the most damage, and yet he seems not pay not a bit for the things that happen on his watch. The dissolution of the Avengers is something that shocked the comic world when it first happened, but was obviously a long time in coming.
Iron Man 3 was pretty much a response to Tony calling out the Mandarin. He had so many suits built, so much tech, and yet when he needed them they were about as useless as could be since his house was falling down around him and he just barely managed to get his armor in time to avoid being crushed. Even then he had to work his way back to a place where he could do anything.
In Thor: Ragnarok, it is discovered that in order to save his people, Asgard must be razed to the ground. Ragnarok must come in an effort to stop Hela, who has for the most part wrecked the fabled city already.
It’s a little thing, but yes, Marvel did happen to use the idea of destroying something important to further the goals of their characters.
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