#Thor can never change the narrative no matter how hard his writer tries because Thor is not the god of stories

[dr-doomsduck]

At the risk of rubbing some fans the wrong way:

It makes me feel some sort of way that Thor abandoning the Throne he was always meant to sit in for an ordinary life he wanted led to a sequence of catastrophes for him. His absence at various points led to Odin disappearing, Odin dying, Asgard destroyed, Gorr targeting New Asgard and finally, Jane dying for using Mjolnir to stop him.

Thor, tragically, walked away from his purpose and lost everything that was dear to him.

And now there's Loki, who honestly committed outrageous crimes in order to get that same throne, was denied it, and then ended up finding loved ones and friends and an ordinary life he could live. But when his throne presented itself, when he had to sacrifice it all for his (glorious) purpose, he accepted the burden and saved the TVA, Mobius, Sylvie and everyone else.

Loki fought for his purpose, tragically sacrificed his ordinary life, and got to live with the knowledge that those he loved were safe and taken care of.

There is something extraordinarily Shakespearean about that. The 'horrible' brother accepting his destiny and becoming the hero and the 'heroic' brother failing to be the big hero because he rejected his destiny.

[iamanartichoke]

I wasn't sure if I was going to post this, but I may as well.

I keep starting to reply to things and then stopping bc the words just aren't there, and I suppose I figured out the core of what bothers me so much (and is making me have such a rollercoaster of a fan experience) about the show.

(cut for length)

It's not well-written. My opinion is my opinion, so I'm saying this subjectively, take it or leave it, but ... I feel that it's not well-written. The overall story is fine, and the plot is fine, but I don't know if it's because of the limited number of episodes not being enough to house the story, or because of the relative inexperience of the writer/showrunner+director, or both, or something else, but -

In an earlier reaction post to episode 4, I mentioned really wanting to sink my teeth into all of the subtext I picked up on. That was what made me initially enjoy the episode so much - there were a lot of little moments that I initially felt revealed so much about the characters and about Loki, and I wanted to analyze them. But at some point, as I gathered more information, my perspective changed and now I no longer want to analyze the subtext bc ... subtext = good. Subtext w/out payoff = not as good.

I'll go into more detail in a moment, but I think the tl;dr of it is that I feel like the narrative requires the audience to work way too hard to put together all of the moving pieces here and, like, I kinda just don't want to do that work? Not so much of it, and not in vain. A lot of the enjoyment of Loki's characterization is coming from fans who are rationalizing why he's behaving as he is, but the narrative never actually confirms those rationalizations. It's asking us to figure it out and maybe our conclusions will be correct but maybe they won't, though. At some point, subtext isn't enough without explicit follow-through.

I thought my issue was with the lack of character development - that is, not having enough narrative space to really earn the big things that are happening now, like Loki/Sylvie or Mobius turning against the TVA. And that's still true, to an extent; I still feel like the pacing is all very off and it seems like most of these things kinda came out of nowhere (but are not unbelievable - just undeveloped).

But, yknow, it is what it is, it's a limited series, and I can excuse some things. Ultimately, my issue isn't a problem with what the narrative isn't doing, it's a problem with what the narrative already failed to do and probably cannot recover from at this point.

The narrative has left out significant details that should at least help us do some of the work here. If a person turned on Loki and started episode 1 and had no background knowledge of the character besides that he tried to take over New York - how would that person interpret Loki? Would that person say, oh, well, he's been through X, Y, and Z, and plus A happened, not to mention B, C, and D, so really, it makes sense that he seems off-the-rails, or that he'd want to get ridiculously drunk at the worst time ever.

Maybe we'd like to believe they would, but how would they be getting to that conclusion? The narrative hasn't led them in that direction so, no, they would not say well we have to consider this, this, and that. It would be impossible to really understand Loki as a character from just what we've gotten in the series. The general audience would probably interpret Loki as being out of his element and so it becomes, I wonder how this character is going to get the upper hand here. And, while that's not wrong, it's just so limited.

The narrative at face value does not address Loki's identity crisis from Thor 2011. It does not address his hurt and devastation at being lied to, nor does it address how complicated his self-image is (bc it sucked to begin with and that was before he found out he was part of a race of "monsters," as he'd been taught his entire life). It does not reference Loki being so broken at the end of Thor 2011 that he deliberately let himself fall into the void of space (aka tried to kill himself). It does not reference that he was tortured by Thanos or even that he went through a seriously dark time in between Thor and Avengers, and it absolutely does not reference or address any influence or control of the mind stone.

These are all things that we, the fan audience, know because we've already invested our time into this character's story. But tons of people, the general audience, wouldn't know these things. Or if they did, bc they saw Thor and Avengers, they wouldn't be thinking about them as deeply as we would, nor contextualizing them with how Loki is behaving now, or why it would make sense that he needed to get drunk, or why it's understandable that he needs to keep going-going-going in order to not have a spare second to think or feel.

They'd probably look at Loki, again, as a character who was a villain and is now getting his comeuppance in a place where he has no power or control, and no literal powers, and even when he manages to escape and catch up to the variant, he proceeds to fuck up their plan for seemingly no real reason except that he wanted to get drunk bc he's hedonistic. Which Sylvie even berates him for! I mean. This is not exactly a complex character breakdown, nor a very flattering one, but that's what the narrative has given us.

(If the narrative has addressed Loki's mind control, his torture, his mental breakdown, his suicide attempt, and his general shitty self-esteem as a result of his upbringing, please point it out to me. If the narrative has explicitly acknowledged and referenced these things anywhere and I am missing it, please show me where. Please explain to me how the casual viewer would know any of these things that they need to know in order to actually understand what's happening in this story.)

So I mean, okay, we have a narrative that doesn't paint a full, accurate picture of Loki. Fine, sure. But because the general audience starts out on the wrong footing, they're not going to get out of the overall story what the writers probably intended them to. For example, in episode 3, a lot of us theorized that Loki had some kind of plan - that he broke the timepad on purpose, for some reason, bc otherwise it wasn't believable that he'd be such a failure. But episode 4 revealed that no, there was no bigger plan, Loki just plain old messed up. Which is fine if, again, one is only considering the surface-level portrayal here, but it's not true to Loki's actual characterization.

I mean. Loki is not perfect and Loki actually fails a lot, this is true. He fails for a lot of reasons, but incompetence has never been one of them. Usually it's that either things grew beyond his control, or there ended up being too many moving parts, or he had to change his plan at the last minute due to some roadblock or another being thrown his way, or even that he got in his own way - whatever the case may be for his plans' failures, he was always at least shown to know what he was doing.

That wasn't the case here. The "plan" to fix the Timepad failed as a direct result of Loki's actions, which were careless and made him seem incompetent, like he couldn't even handle this mission. "You had one job," etc. And there were pretty big consequences for this; they were not able to get off-world in time and would have been killed had the TVA not shown up at the last second.

And maybe none of these things matter bc the writers never intended any of this to be a reflection on Loki's character, positive or negative. The situation exists solely because the writers needed to put Loki and Sylvie together in some kind of hopeless scenario so that they could get closer, and thus the narrative could set up their romance. I get that - but, there were other ways to do it that didn't require Loki to look foolish.

Furthermore, the whole reason they needed to set up the romance is to show Loki eventually learning to love himself (like, figuratively but also literally). The audience is supposed to gather that Loki and Sylvie fell for one another, possibly due to the high emotional aspect of, yknow, being about to die (in addition to the variant-bond). The intent is clear: Loki and Sylvie almost die but get rescued at the last minute, having now created an emotional bond --> Loki and Sylvie team up and the narrative further establishes that Loki, at least, has caught feelings --> Loki might confess them but is pruned before he gets the chance --> he somehow survives, he and Sylvie are reunited and don't want to lose one another again, and the combined power of their love is enough to break the sacred timeline and spawn the multiverse, and the reason that the power of their love is so, well, powerful is because it's about self-love and self-acceptance as much as it is about having the capacity to love someone else. The end.

I get all that. The writers more or less said all that. And, I mean, it's certainly not the way I would have chosen to go about it, but it's a fair enough arc to explore. I don't really have an issue with the intent - but my question, however, is this: if the narrative has so far not addressed Loki's background issues (as outlined above), and has furthermore kinda gone out of its way to portray Loki as hedonistic and narcissistic, among other things (like kinda incompetent), and the context the audience starts with is that Loki's this villain who deserves what he gets -

- my question is 1, why should the audience care whether or not Loki gets to a point of loving and accepting himself (thus to make the theme of self-love, via the romance, hold weight) if they don't know that he hates himself to begin with and 2, why should the audience root for Loki to reach that point when so far the perception of him is that he's "kind of an asshole"? if he's a hedonistic narcissist, he probably already has a pretty inflated sense of himself, right? A misplaced inflated sense of himself, at that, because, again, the narrative has made him out to be not that capable of much of anything. (And it didn't start out that way! It seemed to start out with Loki being capable and intelligent but it's like episode 3, in trying to set up the romance, just jumbled it all up somewhere. I think this is why I'm harping on the Loki/Sylvie aspect so much - it's frustrating bc it kinda messes up the whole story and can't even accomplish what it's supposed to anyway.)

Anyway, that's beside the point. What I'm ultimately getting at is, at what point is the audience supposed to get invested in Loki's personal growth journey?

They can't, not really. Without understanding and having the context of everything Loki has been through up until now, and why he hates himself, and why it's so important that he learn to love himself, then the "payoff" becomes kinda pointless bc the significance of it is lost in translation. So suddenly we're left with this romance that comes off as either "Loki loves Sylvie bc of Reasons" (best-case scenario) or "Loki loves Sylvie bc he's vain, narcissistic, and kinda twisted" (worst-case scenario). Neither of these conclusions are what the writers intended or were going for, I'm positive, but there we are, regardless.

In order for the writers' intent in these storylines to land, they need to address the context of what makes these particular stakes high for Loki. So far, they haven't done that. They're asking the audience to pick up on all of these things, and they're showing things that subtextually make sense and are relatively in-character - but only if you realize there's subtext in the first place.

But you can't expect the audience to do all of the work for you. If you don't want the audience to think that Loki is a narcissistic asshole and instead you are trying to convey that, worst-case scenario, he thinks he's a narcissist but is an unreliable narrator, then you have to address that. If you need the audience to understand why you're going the selfcest route and why it's important to explore Loki's capacity to love himself and others, you have to address where that exploration is starting from and why it matters. Etc etc etc.

The narrative isn't doing any of that. And it isn't like it'd be that hard to do it. They don't need to reinvent the wheel here; a lot of the pieces are already there. A few lines of dialogue for context, a brief scene here or there addressing the issues, a little more care and consistency in how Loki handles things - these are all little things that could go a long fucking way in making the narrative stronger.

I'm rambling. My basic point is that my rollercoaster of emotions with this show is because

- as a part of the fan audience, not the general one, I can contextualize and analyze the subtext and come to the conclusions the show wants me to, and thus find the story and the characters more or less enjoyable,

- but I am also going to be using the subtext to come to conclusions that aren't there but probably should be (I think it would be a better story, for example, for Loki to confuse platonic love with romantic love bc it would pave the way to explore just how fucked up Loki's understanding of love - whether of other people or of himself, and the different forms it can take - actually is)

- and when they're ultimately not there, then I think, okay why am I bothering doing all this work just to ultimately feel very unfulfilled? They don't even have to write it the way I would, I'm not saying that, but they do have to do something to make the story feel rewarding.

If we don't get some confirmation of what Loki's been through, and where his headspace is, and why it matters for him to love himself, then the story remains pretty shallow and, for me, it's not fulfilling enough. It's not engaging enough. There isn't actually anything to sink my teeth into, so it becomes kind of boring. Maybe it's rewarding to other people, and that's great for them, but like - I need more than whatever this is.

So I'm just like - well, I had a lot of worries about this show, but my being bored wasn't one of them and now there's only two episodes left and am I really not going to get anything out of this, in the long run? No new canons, no new depths or layers, no new information on Loki's experiences? This is it?

I don't dislike it. I didn't start out disliking it, and I probably wont end up disliking it. I mean, there are a lot of good moments, and good things, and fan service-y things that I appreciate. As far as inspiration for fic goes, it's a goldmine, both plot-wise as well as aesthetic-wise. All of that is great. I don't dislike this show.

But I am disappointed in it, and I feel like I'll be watching the next two episodes lacking the sense of anticipation that would make it exciting. I'll still enjoy them, probably, if for nothing else just the sheer Loki content, but whatever it was I felt watching episodes 1 and 2 is gone and I'm sad about that, too. Because I really wanted to feel fulfilled by this series; I wanted it to fill up the void that Loki's death in IW created three years ago. And I just ... don't feel it. Maybe, maybe that'll change over the course of episodes 5 and 6. I don't know.

Everything that I end up enjoying long-term, I think, will come about as a result of my own interpretations and analysis and while theoretically there's nothing wrong with that, if I had known all I'd get out of this series was more headcanons or support for my current headcanons then, well - that's fine, I suppose, but I'll definitely a little bit robbed.

[natashasbanner]

Endgame should have been Natasha’s movie. Period. 

And if there was at least one woman on the creative team (screenwriters/directors) I think the narrative of the entire movie would be different. 

*Spoilers ahead*

You have been warned. 

Now I will admit that I am a huge Natasha fan and would like to see her live at any cost but that doesn’t take away from the fact that her death feels empty and purely for shock value alone. Newsflash, if you have to kill off someone to get a reaction out of your audience you need to reassess your script. 

Natasha has never really be given the treatment she deserved. Her character was the second Avenger introduced in the MCU and she’s the first female hero we get to see. She is IMPORTANT. She’s just as much a part of the team as the guys, if not more so because if you all remember correctly, Fury sent her to assess Tony’s ability to fit on the team. They have this rich background to play with and explore but more often than not she’s used as eye candy or Cap’s sidekick. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Russos don’t care about Natasha, or anyone who isn’t Steve for that matter. 

Endgame should have been her time to shine, but of course she gets the ax right before the final showdown. And the writers had the audacity to say that a big funeral would have been a disservice to the character. FUCK YOU!! Yes, she might have started in the shadows, but our girl has come a long way since IM2 and was the only one trying to keep the team together even when everyone else had moved on. 

And you wanna know the worst part, is they’ve been setting her up to take Steve’s place for years. Since the end of Age of Ultron. (Sidenote: Remember when everyone said that was the worst Avengers. Y’all can kiss my ass on that one because Endgame takes that title.) She was his right hand and the voice of reason in Civil War, but no one wanted to listen to her. She wanted to do good and if that meant compromising with the governments of the world, so be it. As long as they were together and kicking ass she was fine. But no. 

If you watch closely in Endgame, she’s not even the focus of her own death scene. When Red Skull appears, she’s shadowed and slightly out of focus, while Clint is crystal clear. God, men are frustrating. If you’re gonna kill her, do it right. But it wasn’t necessary or treated with the respect the character deserved. Which is why everyone is so pissed. 

They could have very easily have centered the movie around her and still have the emotional wrap up they were almost trying too hard to achieve. I watched Endgame for the fifth time tonight and cleaned up the whole plot in my head. 

Here’s how:

The first act remains virtually unchanged. Nat’s still the only one at the compound, doing her best to keep it together and be the leader of what’s left of the team. (What really pisses me off is that once Scott shows up Steve just takes charge again like he hadn’t spent the last five years lying to civilians while she was doing all the work alone. Ridiculous.) 

When it comes time to figure out when and who should go after the stones that’s when shit starts shifting. You’ve gotta be shitting me if you think Nebula didn’t put two and two together or that some of the smartest people in the world in one room couldn’t figure out that maybe there’s an exchange factor for the stone. And she would not keep that info to herself. Yes, she’s new here, but she also spent the last five years helping Nat make sure everything was going smoothly. You expect me to believe she let them go in blind. Horse SHIT!

No, instead of Scott’s “not it”, joke, you have the team have a real talk about the stone. They need it to bring everyone back, but are they willing to lose one of the few they have left for a plan that might not work. Natasha volunteers of course because that’s who she is. She’s put in the work for the last five years, but if her life means bringing back everyone else, she’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s who she is, giving it her all for the greater good. 

But it’s Steve who says it’ll be him. It has to be. The team argues of course, because they can’t lose Captain America, but Steve silences their protests. He always talked about making the sacrifice play and now it’s his turn to step up. He missed his chance at the life he wanted, with Peggy. She’s gone. But everyone else still had a chance at that if they pulled this off. Tony had his family, Nat had the team to lead, etc. He was always the man out of time and it was him who would do this for the team. Nat is the one who goes with him. She still tries to go instead but he won’t have it. They share a heartfelt goodbye and Steve passes the torch so to speak, but she was always the one in charge. And then he goes over the cliff. No gratuitous scene of his brain matter on the rocks. Just his shield in Nat’s hands as the sky goes white. Natasha wakes up with the stone, heartbroken, but determined to see this through. For Steve. 

They rest of the team mourns when Nat returns alone with the shield, but they all agree that Steve would have wanted them to keep moving forward. 

BOOM. The entire theater is in tears. Emotional pay off complete, let’s get to the action. 

They get the stones into the new gauntlet and Bruce still is the one to do the snap and bring everyone back. But it drains the gamma radiation from him leaving him as just Banner once more. (Because me and everyone I’ve talked to irl fucking hates Hulk/Banner and I want that shit reversed). 

Back on track. Clint gets the call from Laura and then Thanos bombs the place. Nat ends up in Steve’s place facing off with Thanos alongside Thor and Tony. She has the shield and is ready for this to be over. Whatever it takes. The fighting is the same and when it comes time to lift the hammer it’s Natasha who does it. The theater still gets that awed silence because literally no one saw that coming. 

But Macenzie, how is Nat worthy, she was an assassin you ask. She was, but ever since Clint brought her in, she’s tried to be better. She’s fought on the good side and been willing to lay down her life to save others. She encompasses what it means to be a hero even if she doesn’t believe so herself. Natasha Romanoff can lift the hammer and we finally get an answer to the question they left hanging in AoU. (I’d really like to see Nat get some lightning armor, but that might be pushing it since it didn’t happen for Cap). 

Boom the plot thickens. And just when you think she can’t take any more, Sam’s voice crackles in her ear. 

“Widow? It’s Sam. Did you miss me?” 

AAAAAND PORTALS!!!! Avengers freaking Assemble around the best Avenger, Natasha and whop some alien ass. And my all female scene is complete it the OG. 

Natasha lives to see Tony die and the audience again gets that emotional character ending. 

The funeral at the end is for both Tony and Steve, they send off a piece of his shield with the arc reactor. AND THE THEATER IS SOBBING!

Nat is the one to take the stones back, because duh and she makes a detour to the moment after Steve decided to give his life for the stone. She tells him they won and that she loves him and they hug. She offers to bring him to the future, but he can’t do that to the current reality. Natasha returns to the future and is seen at the sight of the old compound, looking over blueprints. She’s in charge and the rest of the team rallies around her.

The camera pans to the sky and fades to black. Before the credits role, the music changes to the song they had Peggy and Steve dance to and we see Steve and Peggy finally getting their dance together. 

Credits role. The theater is wrecked. Goodnight. 

But in all seriousness, there are so many better ways to do this movie that actually do the characters justice. 

[zmediaoutlet]

you saw endgame! please share with the class! assemble!

haha, okay, well–here’s some thoughts, since we’re far enough out that I don’t think this will be too spoilery for people – but it’s gonna be super long, so it’s under a cut, either way:

Well, it was–spectacular! In that it was literally a spectacle, for one thing. I had pretty lowered expectations after not particularly enjoying Captain Marvel (it was fine, but boring) or Infinity War for that matter (better-made, but the stakes were obviously nonexistent because we knew something was going to be done). Here, though… I just really, thoroughly enjoyed it. It was thoughtfully done, well-executed, and just as a moment of payoff for those of us who have been here all ten years… It was just really something. I saw Iron Man on opening weekend in 2008 and fell in love, and even if I haven’t loved every single movie since then, I feel like Marvel just sent me a love letter, and I was so–glad. What a good movie-going experience it was.

I say all that having seen SO MUCH rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from the !stans and shippers, but all of that’s so very much missing the point. This is the story of *this series*, this great arc that led to this point. The thing to remember is that the MCU is fanfiction itself–it’s based off of characters who are based off of characters from a canon that’s been rebooted and re-blended about a billion times. This is the story this group of fic-writers, essentially, chose to tell, and I think they did it pretty damn well. You can write your own fic where Steve weeps into Bucky’s hair for 70 years if you want to. This story isn’t that, and that’s okay. (Genuinely, if fandomites could take like half a step back they’d be much happier people. I know it’s hard–I’ve been in a process of letting go with SPN that I haven’t really managed to do well–but c’mon. Don’t get so het up about it.)

Some things:

1) I was genuinely impressed with the time travel mechanism, especially as it bounced meta-ly off of other examples we’ve seen in pop culture. Finally, a story that allows ACTUAL alternate-universe time travel instead of boring-ass time loops. I’ve always thought it was spectacularly dumb when the worry is “but if I kill myself in the past, I’ll die now!” Nope! Avoided! Thank you, folks. It’s kind of weirding me out that so many people online seem confused about how the time travel worked, but it was incredibly clean and I just want to high five the people involved. The one thing that seemed like a plot hole was Old Steve at the end, with the implication that he was co-existent in this timeline for 70 years (and did nothing about Hydra??)–but then the Russos said that they assume he went to an alternate timeline, and then came back to this one to give Sam the shield. It wasn’t on screen either way so you can make your own headcanon, but I’m good with that. So: successful time travel. Hoo-fucking-rah.

2) Thor. This was the one real spoiler I had going in, that Thor Got Fat. All this weeping about how he’d been mistreated by the narrative. So, I was pre-emptively worried… and then ended up not thinking it was that bad. Look, I’m a chubster, I’m well-aware of how sensitive that can be for people. What I found interesting about it was that it was, yes, kind of a visual joke, just because The God of Abs was a pudge, but it was actually treated remarkably kindly by every character for whom that would be in-character. Meaning, sure, Rocket makes fun of him, and Rhodey’s kind of a dick (because Rhodey’s like that with Tony, even)–but Bruce, Steve, and even Tony all deal with him quite gently. That scene where he tries to volunteer for the gauntlet and Tony carefully holds him back was so sweet and sad. Poor guy. It was a good exploration of the depths that the last ~10 years of his life have pummeled him into. It wasn’t that he was fat, it’s that he was broken. People will make up their own minds about the equivalencies there and what’s being implied, but it was a good visual metaphor as far as I was concerned. If he were “just” a sad drunk no one would have believed that he wasn’t ready for what was coming, and he wasn’t. But he got better, because his friends really were there for him. (Also, Korg was wearing Taika’s pineapple shirt! I hope there are nice fics where Korg and Maik gently just play XBox with Thor because that’s all they can do for him.) 

Also on Thor, re: Thor/Loki – more rending of garments about how he didn’t go see Loki. Let’s think about this: you’re on a top-secret time mission to save the universe (Time Heist!), and you go see your trickster god little brother who, yes, you miss, but who also hates you at this point in his life. That’ll go well. I completely understand why there wasn’t a scene. The scene with Frigga was all I needed there.

3) Steeb: I’ve never been the… biggest fan of Steve. I mean, he’s fine. His character is caught awkwardly between the man, Steve Rogers, who abhors bullies and will break rules to do what’s right, and between The Man, Captain America, who kinda Is Rules and needs to do what’s right but also represents an idea greater than himself. There’s a lot of wonderful tension there, but the movies haven’t particularly capitalized on it, and when they’ve tried it’s been in a lip-servicey way.

That said, this movie deals with it really, really well, I think. At the beginning he’s trying to live, and isn’t doing a great job of it. The plan they come up with is simple, perfect heroism – he’s not representing an Ideal, but he is one: he’s the man and the ideal simultaneously, that striving toward right will eventually create a more just, fairer world. If sacrifice is required he’s willing to make it. That scene of him standing alone against the massed forces of Thanos with his broken shield strapped tight to his arm is like a distillation of who Captain America should be. I’m so glad we got that, at the end.

As someone who doesn’t invest in Steve/Bucky but who completely understands it, I also see no issue with the thing where he goes back to Peggy. Bucky understands, too. That moment where they hug and he tells Steve, so-softly, “I’ll miss you,” oh man, oof. Bucky knows. I hope there’s a lot of pining!Bucky in that fandom, y’all are missing out on a STELLAR opportunity if not. Especially pining!Bucky where Steve knows and can only do his best to be Bucky’s friend. Steve going back isn’t out of character, either, despite the clamoring. He misses Peggy, he misses peace. Who knows what they got up to in that alternate timeline–maybe he and Peg went and routed Hydra early, maybe they saved Bucky, maybe they had a WWThreesome with Buck, whatever. But Natasha and Tony both told Steve to “get a life,” and he finally got to. He’d done enough. He earned it.

4) OH MY GOD, NATASHA. What a character arc. I friggin’ adore the mirroring of her and Clint’s stories. The brutal assassin who gained a family and learned what it meant to love something so much she wanted to sacrifice herself for it–those scenes on Vormire were heartbreaking. I’m also super glad that the movie paused, after that. Someone called her death “fridging” – wow. No. She was a hero, as much as Tony was. Whatever it takes.

5) Tony. Holy shit. In a lot of ways this was his movie–in a more meta way, it was RDJ’s movie, and Favreau’s, and Feige’s. It all started with Iron Man, and that’s where it ended. There wasn’t a stinger scene because we got that funeral and then the moment in the credits with the originals signing the screen, and of course they saved Robert for last. The success of this movie is really a testament to the risk everyone took, way back then. It sure as hell paid off.

“You wouldn’t lay down on a grenade to save your men,” Steve said. How many different ways can Tony prove him wrong? At least once more. ;-;  I’m just super emotional about the whole thing. So many good moments all leading up to what happened. Little Morgan in his helmet, Pepper’s faith. Steve’s faith, for that matter. (I still have a tiny pocket of my heart reserved for Steve/Tony, no matter how non-canon it is. What a great relationship they have.) The panic and misery when Carol brought them back, calling Steve a liar, and Steve just–gentle with him, again, and how there was no anger there anymore. Argh. 

That’s the thing that I think I appreciated about the movie most, in the end. Despite all the craziness, the spectacle, the easter eggs slinging at you left and right (”Hail Hydra.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!), what I loved most is that in the face of this ultimate goal, this literally universe-saving moment, the stakes were actually felt because the characters (and actors, and script) sold how unimaginably important it was. Interpersonal bickering fell by the wayside; any dumb conflicts just washed away. No drama for its own sake, or manufactured arguments. Just–working together. The Avengers we hoped to get in the aftermath of the first team movie. We got ‘em, finally, even if we lost a lot too.

This all sounds super elegiac, I guess. It sort of is. It wasn’t a perfect movie by any means, but it might be perfect for what it meant to do, and what it set out to do. There were a couple of little nitpicky things that I might change, but they’re so small so as not even to be mentioned. And so many more tiny moments that I loved, loved, loved. It’s the first one of these movies that I’ve wanted to rewatch in literal years, and that’s making me really happy all on its own. I’m just left with this utter… satisfaction. Not sad, just happy that they made it worth my while.

Put another way: when I was leaving Shazam I felt like I’d spent about 4 hours wasting my time. When I was leaving Endgame, I felt like it had been an instant. Just yay, all ‘round. I loved it three thousand.

What did you think?

[hellyeahheroes]

Secret Empire: Top Ten DUMBEST Moments

As far as events go, Secret Empire is probably one of the worst. And considering both Civil Wars, Ultimatum, Amazons’ Attack and Countdown are events, that bar has been set pretty low. So as it finally comes to an end, seven months too late, let us showcase some of the worst decisions made during the creation of this story. They made it into such colossal trainwreck.

Honorable Mention: Dress Like a Nazi To Work Day

Out of all moronic decisions in this event, this was the one that irks me the most because it slipped into real life. Marvel tried to get their retailers to not only dress in Hydra shirts the day the book premieres but also dress their entire store in Hydra symbols. At least one store owner told them they hire LGBTQ and Jewish people and will be dropping Marvel. Hard to blame that person. Who in their right mind tells people selling his product to dress like a Nazi?! And don’t tell me the old “Hydra isn't Nazis” crap. First of all, even if they’re not, they’re still a fascist death cult that had absolutely no moral qualms about working with the Nazis during World War II, copying from their style and being effectively taken over by remnants of Nazi Germany multiple times. At this point, it’s splitting hair. And two, Marvel, you had Steve Rogers say Hail Hydrand a whole year before. Since then you were constantly trying to tell people Hydra isn’t a Nazi organization and NOBODY BOUGHT IT! At this point, you should have looked at the “Hydra Takeover” idea and realize it might backfire. That this wasn’t recalled but went through only proves that Marvel’s head is so deep up its very ass they no longer see the reality.

Number Ten: Captain America Walking Out Of Himself and Standing Nearby

It is undeniable that Marvel did horrible damage to Captain America in this story, basically twisting the guy into everything he wasn’t. I was honestly afraid how, if ever, they manage to fix the character. But I was not expecting them to pull out the good, old-fashioned chickening out by having an identical copy of the character before he was ruined appear to take over. While seeing real Captain America beat the shit out of Captain Nazi is really cathartic, one cannot forget it came to be through rather...ridiculous means.

Number Nine: Tony Stark

Okay, this one is simple. Tony Stark is in this story. Despite being in a coma. Tony Stark holographic A.I. from Brian Bendis’ Invincible Iron Man is filling in for him. Only here he parades around in Tony’s old armor all the time without anyone commenting on it, recalibrated his personality to be constantly drunk and at one point Steve Rogers tries to decapitate him, a hologram, talking some technobabble about how Hydra made it possible for Tony to die this way.

He’s just Tony Stark. He is Tony Stark because Spencer had scenes requiring Tony Stark to be there and instead of killing his darlings like a good writer, he just wrote clearly human Tony Stark and threw some half-assed explanations and lampshades. It’s silly and makes every scene with him impossible to take seriously.

Number Eight: All the Fucking Quislings!

This one is bad. And I mean, just simply bad. Okay, it’s multiple problems, not a singular one. But it makes my very insides turn at the thought. Nick Spencer asked how can he threw some moral ambiguity IN AN EVENT ABOUT HEROES FIGHTING LITERALLY NAZIS and the best idea he had was to have some random heroes join Hydra. I’m not talking here about those who were brainwashed, like Wanda and Vision, although that is a conversation to also be had by their fans about how often this treatment occurs. Although I wonder - if they are too powerful to let them roam freely, why even HAVE them in this event? It’s not like every superhero was there, currently, heroic Victor Von Doom could probably break Hydra at day one and he was nowhere to be seen.

No, the real problem is with the fact they made some heroes join Hydra willingly. Sometimes they tried to throw flimsy reasons in. Punisher joined to get his family back...even though in previous stories he refused the same offer from less evil people. I feel it’s kinda funny they did this with Frank, considering the man who more or less defined him, Chuck Dixon, has thrown in with real-life Nazis like Milo Yiannopolus. Meanwhile, Deadpool and Thor just go along with letting Nazis rule the States because....Steve Rogers said so and Steve Rogers is always right. That’s just a plain stupidity and total lack of compassion on their side. I’m sure don’t feel like buying any book starring them ever now.

But the worst one is, by far, the Hulk. Who also comes back to life for this event, only to smash for Hydra and immediately die.But that is not the worst part. The worst part is how they build up to it. By having Hydra Steve give Bruce Banner long speech over how Avengers and everyone mistreated him over the years and with Hydra he will finally be accepted for who he is. And Banner calls him a Nazi and tells to go fuck himself. And it is a very powerful moment, Bruce Banner symbolizes everyone disfranchised by the society being offered hand by Nazis and heroically rejecting it... Nah, turns out Rogers was talking to Hulk who felt like changing his catchphrase to Sig Heil. I don’t think Spencer even realized what message he sent by this one moment. He basically said that everyone who has been screwed over by the system secretly agrees with the Nazis, but are “too PC” or “too weak” to say it out loud. It’s stupid AND extremely insulting, two for the price of one.

Number Seven: BARF!

How to properly seed a classic Chekov’s Gunman and yet STILL make him feel like a Deus Ex Machina? Make him ridiculously fucking stupid, that’s how!

Enter Barf, a random Inhuman with the power to vomit up things he needs. He shows up in the first issue, is absent through the entire story only to reappear in Captain America #25 and vomit out a fragment of Cosmic Cube. Because why let people work for their victory and earn their happy ending when you can just have all their efforts blow in their faces and just have means of victory handled to them on a silver platter in the most blatant way possible! If Nick Spencer knew he’s going to write himself into a corner, couldn’t he simply change the plot to avoid it instead of setting up something so stupid?

Number Six: Thou Shalt Not Kill, Miles

After Civil War II we were left with a vision of the future where Miles Morales kills Captain America. Once Secret Empire rolled around and we saw Rogers go full Alt-Right on the country, many were hoping this will actually happen. And Miles, with a handful of friends, does join Black Widow in her efforts to off Captain Nazi. And she spends most of the series training them to be more like her....then talking how she doesn’t actually want them to be more like her and how her generation screwed things up....then taking them on the assassination day anyway only to lock Miles up to kill Rogers herself and when that fails, give up her life trying to stop their fight. Which, in the classic refrigerator fashion, pushes Miles hard enough to actually do this. Only to be given one of the most hollow, lazy-written speeches about how killing is wrong. It hits all the old, tired notes. “Heroes should be better than villains”. “If you kill him, you will be just like him!” (a reminder that “you” in this situation is a Black-Latino and “him” is A FUCKING NAZI FOR CHRIST”S SAKE...). “Natasha wouldn’t want this for you.” (she showed it in the strangest way).... It’s especially bad when you have a character who has a backstory of being trained to kill but rejecting those ways, like Nadia Van Dyne, delivering this speech. Despite her background and personality none of this sounds like her words. It reads like she was going through a checklist of tired cliches.

This is why I came to hate this Aesop that superheroes shouldn’t kill. Because nine times out of ten this isn’t done to actually be a piece of a character driven narrative. It’s done to give a bunch of excuses to let villain live when he deserves to die.

Also, that entire plot point dragged since the previous event, in the end, amounted to BUG FUCKING NOTHING!

Number Five: Who Cares About the Civilians, Right?

So okay, the day is saved, villains are defeated, Captain Nazi got his ass kicked by Steve Rogers and Kobik, a sentient cosmic cube, undoes all this damage. EXCEPT FOR FUCKING VEGAS, WHICH HYDRA LEVELED AND LEFT NOT SURVIVORS! Seriously, I don’t care about the explanations given. Someone should have asked her to do it. And no, some “leave it as a reminder” excuse doesn’t work, Kobik is mentally three years old, she isn’t some wise all-powerful being like Odin or the Stranger from whom we could buy this shit. This is pretty much done only so that Nick Spencer can claim he kept his promise to not undo everything by the cosmic cube. He didn’t undo EVERYTHING, that counts, right? It makes all the heroes look like morons and assholes. Even Z Fighters in Dragon Ball have enough decency to ask the dragon to resurrect all dead civilians when they undo everything after every arc. Marvel heroes, for all the “lessons” this even taught them, couldn’t be assed to do even that.

Number Four: Ultron the Centrist

I’ll be honest with you, Pymltron wearing “Kiss the Overlord” apron, forcing Avengers and Hydra to sit and roasting all of them was one of the best parts of the event. But then it also comes off as paying lip service to the “both sides are as bad” mentality that we saw being used by people of today to desperately try to equate alt-right and those opposing them in real life. It’s pretty much justifying this approach in this story and it doesn’t matter one saying that is a fusion of mentally unstable man and a genocidal robot - he never gets challenged on this position because, for all his talk otherwise on twitter, Nick Spencer apparently cannot think of a compelling argument against it. I guess he secretly agrees with him...

And it doesn’t help that while Ultron ends up aiding the good guys, he does say it’s because Hydra became too strong and might pose a threat to him. Sending a message that any outside powers that show support to those opposing Nazis, in reality, wants America’s destruction...

Number Three: Nazi Pandering

Do I really need to explain this one? The entire event does nothing but bends over to kiss Hydra, and by the extension, Nazi ass at every possible opportunity. They beat up all superheroes because the plot says so, while the narrator goes on and on about how NAZI STRONK! We’re told they were supposed to win the World War II and that Allies “cheated” by rewriting reality...but for some reason let the Holocaust in?! Their rule is shown as being the strongest, which is water to the mill of real-life Nazis as their philosophy is based on “might makes right” and they beat up pretty much everyone, even Wakanda. Every victory heroes have against them must be immediately undermined by giving Nazis another win for consolidation. And while the heroes win at the end, this comes after several issues portraying them as absolutely pathetic losers who didn’t really earn their happy ending but it was handed to them by a random inhuman and Deus Ex Machina device. Which brings us to the next point...

Number Two: Cosmic Cubes

All the dumb shit going in this event can be tracked back to Cosmic Cube, be it as Kobik or the shards. She causes Crazy Steve to emerge, launching this story. And she fixes this mess at the end. Shards of Cosmic Cube serve as a distraction to put both good and bad guys on a wild goose chase because Spencer couldn’t think of any actually interesting plotline for this event. All dumb shit evil Steve pulls out can be explained by them. When it’s time for heroes to win, Barf vomits out a shard. And It undermines everything. A story that entirely revolves around this crap doesn’t have any time to actually show things it’s talking about. Maybe instead of running after Dragon Balls, more time should be developed to show how lack of trust and resentments between the good guys gets in the way? You know, something the narration keeps talking on and on and on but never is reflected in the book? Or show more of them acting like an actual resistance would? Worse, thanks to them heroes no longer win because they’re heroic but because they’ve been handed the I Win Button. Any easy win of the villains can be explained by them holding the Fuck You That’s Why Button. Making you wonder why even care if everybody wins only by writer’s fiat?

Number One: Bown Down To the Gary Stu

Most of the problems in this entire story can really boil down to just this. Steve Rogers is a gary stu. He wins because Nick Spencer wants to show how cool and badass he is. His plans always go without a hitch and he never has to adapt or improvise, under him, Hydra wrecks everyone's shit, even if he loses he still wins and in the end, the only man allowed to beat him is...another Steve Rogers. All other problems in the story can be traced back to Spencer’s desperate need to make him look strong. And believe me, he tried soo damn hard. Up to have him go full Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan Four Madara Uchicha with Cosmic Cube Dojustsu on everyone’s ass at the finale. I don’t think we’d see a guy being shoved down our throats so hard if Roman Reigns joined Ultramarines! This is where the book truly falls. Nick Spencer could not let go of his fanboyism over the character and it twisted everything he supposedly wanted to say into a parody of itself, often sending the exact opposite message to accommodate the need to make evil Steve Rogers look good.

So, these are ten dumbest moments in the series. As far as events go, this was one of the worst. It looks like it might have ruined Nick Spencer’s career at Marvel and maybe in general, and will probably make it very hard to look at certain characters for years to come. The only good thing you could say is that it finally ended.

Fuck this book.

- Admin