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streets-in-paradise · 4 years ago

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Let’s talk about the amazingly on spot social commentary on The Boys

Warning: This post contains spoilers from Season 1 and the first three episodes of season 2 of The Boys

Tags: @nehoymenyoy asked to be tagged. I don’t know if my tags are working well but if they don’t i will send you the link of the post.

I decided to make this post because i finished all the avaliable episodes of the series two days ago and, having a long talk with my sister about this topic, i tought this is too awesome to not discuss it here. We are both studying in careers of the social field, i'm in sociology and she is in social work. We watched the show together and talking with her inspired my own ideas i would like to share here.

This show was a wonderfull surprise in terms of social commentary. I haven't watched one with such a great commentary since American Gods. In that case i was expecting some degree of progressive commentary because i had read the book previously and i was aware the source material had some, the one added for the series is even better and it was great, but it wasn't a shock to find it. For The Boys i haven't read the comics first and , even when i loved the show for lots of reasons, the amazing on spot social commentary was a hell of a surprise. I have been frustrated lately in terms of the messages in entertaiment products because, even when there is a lot of intention for part of the makers to make more progressive points in their stuff, everything becomes bland marketing to me most of the time. I remember that some years ago media used to came out unintentionally with some really cool progressive messages ( like, for example, " a bug's life" and its anti capitalist message). That stuff seemed soo genuine and today i feel that everytime a product targets my demographic in that sense what they deliver it's soo bland and fake that the progressive intention of the message gets lost in the absolutely obvious intention of selling something to me using my ideals as catch. Precisely this is an important point of critic in this show. I didn't expected at all to get a genuine feeling in the social commentary of a superhero show. I'm not saying that this means i think the makers believe in this (after all, it's amazon), what i praise here is how good they did it. In a time when most productions claim to have a social commentary behind to come out as cool but result in shallow fake bullshit this series has provided me with something that feels autentic. Like American Gods, what i feel the show is trying to tell me actually gets me.

Before starting with the proper talk i want to dedicate a few línes to recommend a few scenes of the show i just mentioned. I was super dissapointed after finding out they will probably end up turning it into more bland fake bullshit for season 3 but, to anyone who likes well delivered social commentary, check on Orlando Jones's scenes as Anansi. He is my favourite character from the show and all his scenes are a blessing.

I would also want to clarify that this post and the opinions displayed on it are from an anti capitalist, intersectional feminist and latin american perspective. I know the show is very american, the issues it discusses are most of the time worlwide but it has particularities of the american context so i will try to talk only of what i feel i know enough to have a word. I'm argentinian and we have our local versions of some of this problems but i will stay in the series territory trying to be as faithfull as i can to the american reality it gets inspiration from. Also, forgive me for any mistakes on my writing and expresions. English is not my native language.

Superheros are modern mythology. How would this work in real life?

This is the basic premise of the show’s worldbuilding. The great thing is that this concept is not developed in an edgy, pretentious way. It is serious and painfully real because it’s not only a subversion of tropes, it says a lot of what superheros are to us as a modern times myth. In a superficial view, the world of The Boys feels like what the MCU could have become after the Sokovia accords if they would have been efficiently followed on a worldwide scale.

In that particular universe i use as reference, our superheros are noble and morally heroic individuals.State intervention is the factor threatening to corrupt their actions making them follow the interests of the system. The risk there, along with some very shady violations of human rights to powered people, is having superheros tied to something as unstable as political power. You can fear, for example, what a Trump-like president could do if he had power over the Avengers because, again, the heros are not corrupt, their line of command is. Now, if we strip away all the idealization we had putted on this bunch of powered persons and see them as what they truly are at the end of the day, people like everyone else. Why are we supposed to believe they are immune to corruption? If we also consider the phenomenon of strong privatization of security that has been growing worldwide . Wouldn’t they be more like security workers working for a private contractor? Less like heros and more like private military / security officers? Now, this is what we are talking about.

What feels so different from this show is that it assumes a surprisingly realistic point of view on a modern fantasy we are very used to consuming and still constructs a new power fantasy that empowers the viewer. I’ m saying this as an MCU fan, I had grown too comfortable with this optimistic fantasy and this twist from it is brilliant. To put some context on what i want to say here i will try to explain myself first on why i think that superhero fiction have this enormous popularity today and it has become such a huge thing in entertainment. Besides of the obvious reason of big companies producing big exciting action blockbusters for the genre, it’s curious to think on how much these stories gathered a lot of progressive audiences. In past decades action blockbusters didn’t felt progressive, today’s superhero blockbusters were embraced by progressive audiences and this was the start of a twist in general for the media. I think that there is a contextual social reason for this, not the only factor but one i feel is considerable.

Late Stage Capitalism crushed us, we are so used to injustice and the control the system has over us is so big that we have slowly stopped dreaming of changing it ourselves. Instead, the fantasy of a superhuman who has the power we don’t have saving us from oppression feels really comforting. Captain America becoming such a huge icon in the middle of a time where extreme facism is rising again all over the world, for example. I don’t know much about his comic counterpart but, at least from what i see in the movies, Steve’s ideals feel to me like all those aspects from French Revolution’s Enlightenment that capitalism dropped away once bourgeois defeated their feudal rivals and capitalism got consolidated, the freedom and equality that feudal lower classes fought for. Today, we feel too small to make a difference so we enjoy the fantasy of powerful persons leading the fight for us. Capitalism feels more unstoppable than ever, it is the only thing who seems strong to remain in a terribly chaotic world. The suffering this cruel system brings to this world is overwhelming, we feel only a miracle can save us now. This is what feeds the narrative of the superhero as modern myth and saviour of humanity.

The Boys tosses aside all our hopes and dreams, presenting us with the most realistic escenario. Superheros are not the miracle we are waiting for, they are humans like everyone else. They are not sacred entities existing beyond our societies, they are part of the system and they insert on it as part of the security industries. They can be corrupted and they work in corrupt institutions in benefit of the ruling class like every other security provider in capitalist societies. They become a new face of the security forces in constant tension with police and military because the myth of the superhero provides them with the public trust those other two forces lost. People lost their trust in cops but they trust sups because they are supposed to be this noble individuals mobilized by their personal feelings of injustice trying to make the world a better place … right? Police are the forces of the ruling class but superheros are supposed to be with us, or at least this is what common sense and propaganda claim, having our hopes as a base to work on.

For someone so used to the typical superhero fantasy this felt like a slap on my face back to reality. It soo accurate , the system tends to capture any revolutionary input and turn it into profit. Even if the sups could had been a revolutionary factor at the beginning, the most likely thing to happen is for them to become a profitable industry. If we add to this what we already know of the actions of police and military in our real world we have a combo for disaster. The realistic twist is so fresh and painfully real, i can totally see this happening in real life if superheros were a thing.

We have already introduced ourselves in the world of this story, let’s check on the first main character this series introduces to us. Hughie Campbell, a college age guy who works in an electronics store, lives with his dad and has the most boring average life you can imagine. This guy who is too afraid to ask his boss for a pay raise changes overnight when a superhero kills his girlfriend in front of him and the big corporation the asshole works for covers up the whole thing. The “average guy becomes a hero” trope is not new at all, but the use it has here feels fresh because it is not there only to feed the male geek power fantasy. Hughie is not a geeky average guy only so geeky average guys can identify with him in an action series full of geeky references,he is not there to be the nerdy guy from Robot Chicken. Hughie’s characterization makes a point for everyone. The smallest most unimportant person, the one who can't even stand up for themselves in everyday situations, can make a change. Remember Samwise Gamgee fighting Shelob in Lord of the Rings? Hughie killing Translucent gives me that vibe. If we consider the point i already stated about superheroes being there when we feel too small to fight back injustice, this is the exact opposite. This is a fantasy that gives us the power, makes us think in our own strengths. Hughie is standing up for himself for the first time in his life and he inspires us to fight for our rights.

Pharmaceutical,Security and Entertainment industries and their business system : Superheros as lab rats,elite security forces and celebrities.

This part of the post is the hardest to write and the most exquisite. There is so much to talk about about this system Vought shaped tying these three billionaire industries together. The first thing i want to mention, as a point to start, is Butcher’s ramble over the teddy bear with a camera inside in his meeting with Hughie. Perfect introduction for the character with a delightful moment of commentary. In our current societies people live in constant fear for hundreds of reasons. Fears over street crime had skyrocketed all over the world even when crime is not growing uniformly in every country and that accelerated the privatization of security, fears of parents over the strangers they leave they kids with when they are not home inspired products like the one mentioned in the series’s moment, fears on the effects of processed foods are an impulse for the diet industry and i could keep naming lots of other examples. Fears, and the emotional response they trigger , are the base of profitable businesses.

I had been reading some authors that describe this stage of capitalism as an emotional one. Capitalism preached science and rationality during the past century but today its base of support is an emotional one. To excite the sensations of the people as consumers, to eliminate rational criticism, to push anti popular agendas through emotional excitement and mass hysteria. To cite another example that you can consider bounded to the series, Right Realism in Criminology is now almost common sense and there are people who keep asking for harsher punitive systems. This ideology, with the help of media panic, goes straight after their feelings and fears of being victims of violent crimes. Rational thinking is not the area of discussion, the base of the argument is on fear and pain. Fear of being potential victims, pain shared with the victims thinking in solutions that sound more like revenge than justice.

Going back to my point, in the world of The Boys this type of punitivism seems to have succeeded even in a greater way than in our current world because it has superheros as backup. If real life harsh punitivism feeds on fear and a wish for social revenge, in this world it has the positive emotions supes inspire on people as a trust certificate for the persons who may not feel that way. They are loved and worshipped celebrities, their faces are everywhere, they have thousands of fans… who would see flaws in what they do? Can you imagine a world in which we worshipped cops and soldiers like we worship celebrities? This is it, people put their blind faith in them because most of them seem to be their fans. Even the people who are against brutality in the actions of security forces would end up trusting them because they are famous people. Our culture has taught us to make ourselves blind to the bullshit we see on the celebrities we love. Fans have a strong emotional attachment to their favourite celebs and this can turn into emotional manipulation in this context. If actors or singers in real life can have a fanbase that forgets to see them as human people how would these actual superhumans not end up being worshipped as gods?

There has always been military propaganda in entertainment but this marriage between the industries through superheros is far more sinister than that. It makes you think about the unfair amount of credibility we put in celebrities. The plane crash scene of Homelander and Maeve it’s even more devastating looking at it from that perspective. Those persons had their full trust in them and they were safer with the terrorists. Can you imagine being a Homelander fan and dying there? That’s horrible, the last thing you get in your life is the biggest disappointment ever from someone you trusted and stanned.

Speaking of Homelander, he is a right wing wet dream and one of the best villians i had ever seen, he makes me feel sick with how fucking despicable he is. His character is an excellent point to start the ramble on the third wheel of this corporate nightmare. Superheros are products of the pharmaceutical industry, injected with a drug since they were babies. In his particular case, he was raised like a lab rat and the series is realistic even in this detail. The lab rat kid with superpowers is another common trope that we see pretty often and here it also gets twisted. I’m thinking for example on Eleven from Stranger Things, she has been raised by abusive scientists who treated her as an experiment, yet she is this sweet kiddo who has a hard time socializing. Instead, Homelander is a monster without conscience or mercy and seems to be severely affected by his abnormal childhood. Brilliant, he is the ultimate product of this corporative triangle and depicts everything that's wrong with it.

The cycle is pretty clear: drugs create them, they play their role in security and their media notoriety justifies their actions. As it is shown in season one, the security aspect of the corporate complex represented mostly in Homelander’s actions craves to grow bigger and get supes into the military since, in the startpoint of the series, they only work with cops. Since the industry feeds on fear and Vought seems to have a monopoly in the production of powered persons there were no threats big enough to justify the intervention of superhumans in wars. Dismissing the importance of this monopoly for the company, Homelander suministrates the drug to terrorist groups in an attempt to create the first super villains. This is a perfect analogy of how the american war machine works. There is no way for terrorist groups from Third World countries to get access to sophisticated war technology without help from the ones who wield that power better than anyone. The first mentions of the supe terrorists reminded me of when i was in my course of worldwide history in college and i learned there how most of those famous names in middle eastern terrorism were actually friends with the CIA before at some point. Here in South America we have other history regarding the style of USA intervention, the Plan Condor dictatorships in the 70’s and early 80’s. I was just starting my career when I had a month of history classes about the Middle East and, being pretty ignorant on the matter, it shocked me the way in which the US villainized people they used to work with. I think the series makes a great point with this part of the plot because it hints something of this war mechanics.

Gender politics of the series: a surprisingly complex approach on the topic of sexual assault ,a realistic critic to bland white feminism and the empty cashgrabbing ways in which mainstream media adapts feminist discourse.

This topic was even a bigger surprise for me. I wasn't expecting such an interesting approach of gender issues, mostly because this is the area in which media wannabe woke messages had become more dissapointing to me lately. Specially in a show about superheros, i wasn't expecting to get very interesting points.

I will start talking of the portrayals of sexual assault. We have two sexually assaulted characters in the series, Starlight and Becca. First, i think it is great that they didn't used the "rape as character development" trope. Actually, it's cool how they mock this conceptions. When Starlight saves a woman from being raped on the streets or when she makes a public statement about her sexual assault it's the people behind her, building her public image as a character, the ones who push that trope. In the first time their great character development idea is to sexualize her outfit, after the second event mentioned they literally push her sexual assault as development. I love how the public relationships team acts oftenly in a men writing women way, serving as mirror for the most common mistakes of writers on pop culture products when they write female characters.

Going back to my point, i like the effort they putted into portraying differences in both cases. Homelander is the typical portrayal of a rapist, a narcisistic monster without remorse, a deranged son of a bitch. The Deep is also a piece of shit, but of a different kind. There is a phrase that feminists of my country had popularized " los violadores son hijos sanos del patriarcado" ( it means, the rapists are healthy sons of the patriarchy. It tries to explain they are not crazy individuals who act outside societal circunstancies), the Deep reminded me of that.

He is not crazy, he is an insecure guy with a super fragile ego who abuses women for power. Insecurity on men under patriarchy tends to become bashing of women. This is not a black and white portrayal of a sex criminal, it is surprisingly complex. Of course,his actions were unexcusable. He will never repay what he did to Starlight and other women before her but he has chances of working on his issues and, eventually if he trully wants to get better, stop being the scumbag he is. He is not a deranged criminal whose only fate is to be neutralized for the safety of others.

I think this is important because, at least in my country, i had seen people using sex offenders as an example of why countries without death penalty should implement it. I don't support extreme autoritarian security measures and it makes me sick to hear that there are people claiming those as solutions in the name of women's safety. I like the approach they took to portray The Deep as the piece of shit he is but still showing the complexity of this issue instead of going for a more traditional dichotomic way.

Back to the mocking of mainstream media's attempts of adopting a feminist approach i mentioned, the season two got even better at this commentary on the "Strong Female Character" trope with the introduction of Stormfront. She is the literal embodiment of what shitty marketing says an empowered female character must be and has the biggest "I'm not like other girls" complex ever. That interaction she had with Starlight in "pink = bad, pants = cool" mood was super annoying and blaming her for the assault?? Freaking disgusting.

Honestly, i hated her soo much even before she showed her true colours completely. Stormfront represents everything i hate in Hollywood's feminism and the crappy meaningless messages it's pushing lately. She reminds me to all the fake "woke" advertisements i had seen on tv, like a Carefree (pads brand) advertisement that pissed me off last week because with the slogan " self trust is beauty" it portrayed girls who wear make up as fake and insecure.

Now, speaking of that particular scene of her killing Kimiko's brother. I felt literally sick, even sicker than in every Homelander scene. This bitch is worst than Homelander because at least he gathers a public that serves to his views. If you ever need to provide someone with a proof of why intersectionality in feminism matters use this racist bitch. Horryfying racism hidden behind the progressive mask of a bullshit privileged version of feminism, the thing i hate the most. She has a strong nazi terf vibe. I think she absolutely applies as mirror of critic to stuff like Rowling's terf nonsense.

The introspective look this series has regarding the multiple issues on today’s attempts of gender approach on media entertainment surprised me. It’s everything i would had wished something to point out but nobody seemed to have the guts to make it happen because, as i already said, the current trend is what it’s being focus of critic here.

I will end this now, i feel there is plenty of more stuff to talk about but this post is getting very long and, if i get more ideas i want to discuss, i can always make a second post. As i said before, this expresses my humble opinions and i’m open to hear different interpretations that can enrich my views.

Thanks for reading this extra long ramble.

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gywair · 5 years ago

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I finally watched Endgame. I’d put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral. This series has been part of my life for a decade. Going to see the cumulation of over twenty films felt too heavy to see. Putting it off only made the tension build though. Finally, bite the Infinity Stone and ordered tickets.

First, I watched it in “4DX”. This is similar to the theme park rides that started popping up that are a mixed medium experience. So the seats move, air blasts at you, there are water effects, lights flash, and even smells get pumped into the room. In theory, this seems really interesting but usually, I go to movies I don’t care about to try out new gimmicks. My first 3D film was My Bloody Valentine. It was silly and fun. It also helped me adjust to what a 3D movie would be.

My first 4DX-like experience was the Empire State Building ride as narrated by Kevin Bacon. A sentence that makes me feel like I suffered a stroke while writing but is a real thing that exists that I have experienced. It’s been a few years since that and I think it lasted less than 20 minutes (probably less). Sitting for an entire movie seemed like a whole different worm can.

For me, I didn’t really like it. The water, lights, and smells were cool. The smoke was nice too. The seat, however, is made for someone slightly smaller. So when Iron Man gets kicked in his kidneys, oh spoilers BTW, the seat hits you too like a demented message chair. I think normally it would softly strike you in the back on your rib cage. For me, it went straight to my soft organs. This made the fights are to concentrate on (a problem for a movie about fighting). Likewise, little jets of compressed air go off just above your head. For me, they were pointed directly into my ears. So each time they fired off, I couldn’t hear and had the painful sensation of a ghost giving me a wet willy (I’m also blessed with ear problems so your experience may vary).

Anyway, big thoughts:

The Good:

The job of wrapping up 20+ movies was a big task. This film does that. It has a large cast of characters and several errant storylines to wrap up in a short timeframe. Cause even with 3-hours, this felt like there was still more to say. Which isn’t bad cause that means there can still be more films but for a chapter closer it was ambitious.

I was satisfied by the investment I’ve made into the franchise. This was a fitting close to this chapter. Each film contributed in ways that made the complete journey feel fluid and necessary.

It makes several subversions of expectations. Not just for characters but for narrative design. It kept me guessing the entire time. Even with seeing a handful of tiny spoilers, I was never sure what was going to happen.

Avengers served up heaping mounds of gratuitous fan service in the best ways possible. Sometimes this can be very bad like in animes when the whole episode is about boys spying on girls in a hot tub. Here, it’s Captain America fighting a copy of himself or Professor Hulk half-assing some smashing. One of the best parts of the film is about time travel. Here they show off fan-favorite Loki popping up at different points in history.

One important aspect to me for a story of any kind is how much foreknowledge a viewer needs before starting the work. If you watch Pirates of the Carribean 3 or Return of the Jedi, you will be pretty confused. However, you can pick up just about any Marvel movie anywhere in the series and have a fair idea of what is going on. This continues in this installment. Some context is lost or hidden but anything you need to know is shown/told/explained to you. This, for me, is what makes a story stand on its own legs.

See?! This scene just makes sense all on its own.

The Bad:

With so many cooks in the kitchen, there are still weird dangling problems in the continuity. Things still feel left open to interpretation. Even the filmmakers didn’t agree on how elements in the film worked which is something that should have been determined before the first Avengers movie was written. It feels haphazard with how certain things were written off or ignored. This plays well into feeling like a comic book where different creators retrofit things to fit their narrative but it still felt jarring.

For example, in Captain Marvel, the cat has a stone. Well… so does Thanos… but also now Loki… There is a lot going on and even a whole (if well delivered) exposition still didn’t completely cover all their bases. It feels like they slapped it together at random at times. I get that they can play with the timeline literally but I feel like there were still a lot of open questions that should have been answered that weren’t.

I could rewatch all the movies (read as: will eventually) to get the full context. This makes the act of enjoying these films more academic though than just for pleasure viewing. It’s not that I don’t want to do this but for casual viewers, there was a lot of backstories to keep up with to get each nod.

The Ugly:

After years of hearing that fans want more women characters, the film tried to give them the limelight for an action sequence. The rest of the film is mostly about a boys’ club rushing around doing action hero stuff. Yes, Nebula and Black Widow make important contributions to the plot but they feel sidelined or overshadowed by the boys. The problem here is that the women are treated more like set dressing than people important to the plot to move ahead. If Spiderman had finished running the Infinity Glove to the van it would have served the same device. Instead, they made a big show of having the girls team up for a few seconds.

Supposedly this movie was gonna have a “Big Gay Film Moment” TM that would make people happen. Instead, it just suggested that gay people do actually exist. IDK man, like that, is a pretty cold take. If Warmachine and Bucky had started making out after the big fight I would have been cheering my head off. I’m not upset by any means. This is more of a missed opportunity for the filmmakers to do something and instead, they took the safest path.

Hope you weren’t invested in Starlord and Gamora cause that entire trio of films is pretty much null now so far as character development for Gammy. She had an awesome arc. Then they killed her off. Then she comes back but now she doesn’t know Quill. Okay, well this means that other dead people come back… right? Oh, no? Vision and Black Widow are still gone? Weird… I heard this is cause they were killed pre-Snap BUT so was Gamora and they got her back. I think they were just running out of time. I hope Scarlet Witch gets to go back to her robo-boyfriend.

Was that all just a wild middle finger to Gunn? That’d be drama.

The funeral… why isn’t anyone crying? Everyone seems so calm. Is this like when you have already been to like six superhero funerals that week and five are already back on their feet?

I told myself I wasn’t gonna cry.

Characters:

Alright, so this film had way too many characters to really cover perfectly as a group. I have some stray thoughts on several, however.

Hulk is my new boyfriend and I will fight you for him. Banner has made peace with himself and created a half-way point between Hulk and himself. Now he is permanently strong and smart. This is wonderful for character development as he finally finds the peace and belonging that he has wanted since Edward Norton tore up downtown as the rage-y green giant. His new hipster persona felt satisfying and fresh for the film universe. Something of a reversal of the Ragnarok Hulk.

Captain America finally bangs and accepts his position as “America’s Ass”. I’m so proud of my boy. He’s all grown up.

It took Iron Man a decade but Tony Stark finally discovered how to care about something other than himself. His character arc is the film universe’s arc to this point. He was the foundation for everything that came after. This film serves as much an Iron Man movie as it is an Avengers’.

Black Widow kind of gets the shaft here. She began as a coldhearted assassin and ends up as the corporate mom leading the heroes’ home base. There is so much to still unpack for her. Her character has so much potential just under the surface but no one seems to be interested digging into it. I mean Scarlett Johansson “kills” in the role but this movie doesn’t really give her anything to do except talk to Hawkeye…

Hawkeye tried to be the Marvel Aquaman comeback kid and he just comes off as edgy but not in a good way. More like a midlife crisis day buys a motorcycle than the Crow. Like, he tries to make it sound like his entire career of being an assassin was more good than being an assassin now. He does get a brutal back story but I feel like he falls short of reaching his character potential here. He does get some cool scenes and then just gets shoved to the back of the movie.

Thor is bae. He has a brutal journey to this movie but he gets a lot of character work here. His beer belly hermit hijinks provide a much needed comedic break. I also cried like a baby over him.

Rocket has finally gotten some growth as a person. In this movie, he gets to interact with the core team more. This was a lot of fun because of his sass with characters like Iron Man. Also, he finally dons his iconic blue flight suit and red scarf–not important but it was a fun Easter egg.

It only took two Guardians and an Avengers but they finally let Karen Gillan really make Nebula rule. Gillan is a fabulous actor so it was always painful that Nebula just ran around screaming. In Endgame, she finally gets to have some real personal moments that don’t feel weird. Paper football was the best scene honestly for the emotion and narrative. I mean, her whole career as a sour rage junky comes to a boiling point and then she FINALLY gets to open up the tiniest bit with Tony. I really hope there is something… anything in the future where she gets to be this new fun Nebula. It’s like your weird aunt went on vacation and actually had some personal growth and brings you back some neat shells and a guy named Desmond for herself.

Ant-Man got some funny moments in but nothing to really write home about. He was our Joe McEverydude here and it worked fine. I’m baffled at the taco scene but it was worth it for Hipster Hulk to share with him. Like, I know Scott Lang as a character isn’t super bright. That’s his whole thing. But, I just can’t understand what would drive him to go outside the fancy building to eat tacos on a bench facing the jet landing pad.

Warmachine got some interesting developments here. I’m sad now that he didn’t get to build a romance with Nebula (that is just barely suggested here). He felt like a full member of the team rather than just a sidekick from movies past.

The Falcon & Bucky were there. I really wish there had been some kind of closure or growth moment for them. In Winter Soldier, they were at each other’s neck. Now they seem cool. A friendly word or a high five could have sold me on their growth but they kind of get forgotten instead. I was never gonna see my Falcon-Bucky slash make it to the silver screen but would it have killed the Russos to have one heated kiss between these two obviously boyfriend material lads.

**EDIT** —–> THERE IS A SPIN OF THESE DORKS. OMG.

Alright. I’m psyched for this.

Captain Marvel comes in at the end of this list just like she did in the movie. That’s right, she shows up as a Deus ex Machina and looks cool but really got burned here. She deserved better. She just drops in for a minute to help and then jets. Still cool but she gets no development here. Her movie rules though so I’m gonna forgive it. Mostly. That said, it was wild to see basically an Amy Dangerous on screen and that was special for me.

Closing Thoughts:

It was a really fun movie. I may never watch it again. Just like the other Avengers, it’s a good time but it feels more like a spectacle than a great film. That’s not bad but when I watch a film, I wanna see characters grown in new unexpected ways. I want to see hard choices and emotions. Those moments were there but as little islands between big budget action scenes. I really enjoyed it but for the same amount of time, I might just watch Ragnorok again or Detective Pikachu. Finishing this movie felt like the end of a long (20 movie) hike. It was a great adventure. The fun of it was the friends we made along the way. I don’t regret a minute of it.

But it feels good to be at the end.

For now.

Endgame Thoughts I finally watched Endgame. I'd put it off a week since its release. It felt like planning to attend a funeral.

#film #movies

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