#clint watch

[bobbimorses]

this month, on clint watch:

clint dons incredibly combed hair and the throwback team jacket in avengers assemble v3 #4:

and in scarlet witch v4 #7, we once again get another portrayal of clint's second consecutive disassembled aka house of m death:

classic tetris blocks disassembling.

and of course, sue remarked on clint's lack of family in marvel holiday tales to astonish #1:

little did she know she's been beaten to the punch before by his very own beloved ex-wife, thank you very much

tbf sue also doesn't know he technically has a brother, but again,

"nobody knew he existed etc etc"

anyways clint's family is the avengers and that's why he's the greatest member of its roster and integral to many a successful team portrayal. in this essay i will-

this concludes this month's clint watch.

[fossillad123]

" Titanoboa, The Best Pet Snake? "

[joelsknees]

[theonethatyoudreamon]

the mans with no names.... who are they fighting...

[xivdl]

just a few cowboys

[xenocorner]

Now Izzy put images in my mind. Y’all don’t let me fucking rest istg-

[togrowoldinv]

*Everyone getting together for a Thanksgiving celebration*

Y/n: Natasha, do you want to play football?

Nat: Um, Yelena and I aren’t supposed to play football

Clint: Says who, your mom?

Nat and Yelena after a long pause: …yeah

[inneffablysleepy]

i am terry

terry is me

[pyersiki]

high plains drifter studies but with John Marston instead

[vonlipvig]

Juror #2 (2024) - Dir. Clint Eastwood

[bobbimorses]

in a room full of divorcees and orphans....

[melon-official]

wh plane sketches

[luvrloki]

father daughter duos that will make me cry uncontrollably and be the only thing i think about for the rest of my life? sign me up!!!!

[gaylisp420]

i drew cunt eastwood uh huh i sure did

🚬👨🏽‍🌾🫶🏽 luv u pardners

[malenjoyer]

Watching cartoons + banh mi = +1 reason to live

[aj-lenoire]

i’m rewatching avengers assemble for the first time in years and y’know what it holds up much much better than i thought it would!! it’s given me a wistful nostalgia for the early MCU.

this is probably natasha’s second-best film (after winter soldier, obviously; maybe third after the solo film, but definitely up there) because she is minimally ‘exasperated mom to her all-male teammates’ and has several really cool scenes.

i’d also say this is the best thor we ever got, nicely expanding and reinforcing the characterisation of his solo film. plus it’s the best thor ever looked. i really like the slightly longer and messier hair, and the physicality of his costume—before it was all CGI and hemsworth was ludicrously, dehydratedly muscular. and sue me, i love the style of his and loki’s dialogue! i love how they sound so grand and fantastical, you can always tell they’re from a very different world to the rest of the cast.

and banner. the later MCU films just didn’t seem to bother with the inner conflict of the hulk, but this one you can feel the weight and desperation of it, ruffalo does a great job.

that being said, this film is not perfect. and my main gripe is how tony and especially steve are (mis)characterised.

almost all of tony’s actions/dialogue, and almost every line of steve’s after he and tony first meet, feel really wonky and out of character. especially towards each other. you can really see joss whedon didn’t care for steve, thought tony was the Coolest Guy Ever and didn’t really care to actually understand either character

case in point, i refuse to believe tony stark could plant a bug in front of dozens of spies, including natasha and hill, and no one noticed. if he wanted to plant the bug maybe put it in his lab once he’s away from everyone? or even manually access stuff once in the lab so banner or steve can ask what he’s doing, rather than him just telling them, ready-player-one-style, because oh he’s already done it because he’s just that clever!

tony’s interactions with banner are great until he just ruins them with a stupid joke about how banner goes green. the whole bit where tony pokes banner with a needle and steve chews him out about it is particularly weird—especially since it gets off to a really good start with tony inviting banner to the tower to do science-y stuff! it comes off as so mean spirited? especially given how they later have a heart to heart about the hulk being like tony’s chest arc reactor.

still, the tony stuff i can kinda forgive because A) he’s meeting the guy his dad was obsessed with, and that’s a sore issue for various reasons, and B) while the smug genius persona is not the real tony, these are all people he doesn’t know very well, so it makes sense for him to be playing that role in front of them—but what’s steve’s excuse??

steve says several astute, accurate things, like loki’s spear being like a HYDRA weapon and his plan to fracture the team. but then he pointlessly butts heads with tony. he just met the guy?? it’s like he completely forgot his own dynamic with howard stark. he learned howard would put himself in danger to help others, and further “the footage” steve has allegedly seen of tony as iron man would surely only prove that tony is even more selfless.

that “take off the suit, what are you?” line is just. so out of character. like even pepper wasn’t done that dirty (she was pretty normal when speaking with coulson, booty shorts aside 🙄) and she spends her only major scene making sexual jokes/promises(?) to tony!!

i was literally going “good line!”/“bad line.” because it was they obvious which were whedon’s version of the character and which were the guy we saw in first avenger. case in point, steve follows banner and tony’s suspicions up with “we have orders, we should follow them” which is the #1 Steve Rogers Would Not Say This line.

but then we have the narrative redundancy of him searching anyway. why not just have steve agree with tony that fury is being cagey?? i think it would’ve been more interesting and a more economical use of time to just have them agree. they can still disagree on methods; steve is always more tactile and brute force than tony, and that itself serves to contrast them without a weird OOC rivalry.

like you can pinpoint the exact line where they’re all arguing with fury about SHIELD building weapons, and it turns from steve, tony and thor being more or less themselves into three flanderised, bickering caricatures.

fury remarks “remind me how you made your fortune, stark?” (as if that fortune was entirely tony’s doing, and as if tony didn’t shut down stark industries’ weapons’ program two whole films ago) and steve gets halfway through a line that might be a defence of tony, might be a dig, but we don’t find out because tony interrupts “how is this about me?” and steve decides to snipe back “i’m sorry, isn’t everything?”

and sure okay i know loki’s using the spear to raise tensions but that scene would’ve been way more effective if tony and steve hadn’t been weirdly sniping at one another already for twenty minutes!! (not least because they were the only ones behaving out of character, suggesting it wasn’t loki yet!)

i will say this though—i do really like how “put on the suit” turns from steve and tony butting heads to teaming up for the first time. i like that they are still shown to put petty stuff aside when it really matters. i wish it was more consistent!

(also—and this is 100% me just being petty—what the hell was steve on about, asking natasha “can you fly one of those jets?” like he hadn’t been in a jet flown by natasha twice in the past twenty-four hours??)

(other than that though i think i’d say their dynamic is one of my favourites in the film. maybe it comes from johansson and evans being irl friends for years already, but they have a really fun rapport basically from the get-go)

rewatching has also given me new appreciation for the natasha/banner “romance” attempted in age of ultron. like setting aside how atrociously it was actually executed, i see the appeal of exploring a dynamic between “genius manipulator who you can never be sure of her thoughts/feelings” and “guy who you can literally always be sure of his thoughts feelings” especially given how scarlett johansson is playing natasha as being quite obviously terrified of the hulk—a creature of pure rage, self-defence made manifest, that no amount of manipulation can calm down. hulk requires, at minimum, sincerity, and that’s an interesting dynamic to completely goddamn waste.

this film is definitely still a product of its time (and cough cough of joss whedon). there’s like, three whole women (five if you count the shadowy council member and ashley johnson?) and i don’t think they ever directly speak to one another?? natasha seems to be having romantic teases with banner, clint and steve, and pepper is reduced down to a hot girlfriend.

and if you ever needed more proof that whedon lowkey hates captain america, you needn’t look any further than the godawful halloween-pyjamas suit steve wore in this film. easily the most atrocious cap suit, aside from the one he wore on the uso tour. i honestly don’t know why the costume dept didn’t just keep/remake the one he was wearing in the ice—it had a great tactical vibe and actually looked like body armour.

but still, i’d give this film a solid 7/10. It’s still a hell of a fun time.

closing out with a list of things that actually do hold up as genuinely funny and/or awesome:

when the scientist tells fury it’s gamma radiation and he’s like “ಠ_ಠ that can be harmful”

natasha easily breaking out of her restraints while coulson just sits in the phone listening to her beat the shit out of those guys

thor: now listen, brother! [gets slammed out of frame by tony] loki: …i’m listening?

the bit where thor strikes his hammer into steve’s shield and it levels the trees

thor: take care how you speak, loki is still my brother. natasha: he killed eighty people in two days. thor: he’s adopted.

tony pointing out one of the SHIELD techs is playing galaga

natasha tricking the literal god of trickery into revealing his plan

tony and steve working together to fix the helicarrier engine (minus the “speak english!” line 🙄)

coulson blasting loki with the prototype gun

loki trying to mind-control tony but it doesn’t work because of his arc reactor

clint’s delivery of you and i remember budapest very differently 😐

steve stepping up as leader after the cool panning roto-shot of them as a team for the first time

hulk body-slamming loki on the middle of his “i’m a god” monologue, followed by loki’s high-pitched groan

the schwarma post-credit scene. no petty rivalries. no stupid jokes. just the six of them hanging out.