#i love them and i love mcfeely for confirming their love

[valkyrieandstrangeridingaragorn]

Theres a rumor that waldron is no longer working on the two next avengers movies. Yay for the strikes!

Unless it's confirmed, I won't believe a thing. If true, it would be wonderful news, though. To be frank, it wouldn't surprise me if this was no more than an attempt to test the waters and check how the fans react to this news. I haven't seen Quantumania but when it comes to Waldron it's obvious he doesn't have the experience or the talent to write anything Avengers-related.

I gotta say though, it's kind of ironic to hear so many fans say Loveness and Waldron are not good enough while at the same time they claim the best we've had in the MCU were Markus and McFeely. They nailed TWS but these guys ruined every single character in EG. And don't get me started on CW.

At the end of the day, we need experienced writers but most of all we need people who care about the work they put in. I don't need them to like the stories or the characters or the universe they're writing for, I just want them to be professionals who take their work seriously and do their homework to keep the characterization on point and the consistency between movies.

Yay for the strikes and I sincerely hope they get what they're owed and then some, but I also want Marvel and Disney to stop it with the Rick & Morty writers and go back to experienced and professional guys/gals. Please.

Not to mention... I really want Waldron away from Stephen.

[sersi]

steve rogers, natasha romanoff, and sam wilson spent the last two years together, having sex in shitty hotel rooms, and arguing over who gets to do an extreme on the run makeover next 💖.

[musette22]

Hi Minnie! Hope you can help me settle an argument my brother and I are having about EG!Steve. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this with shipping goggles off, looking at it purely in terms of characterization, narrative, and good writing. Better hang on though, it's going to be a long ask! (sorry in advance for spamming you!) 1/7

So my brother and I were watching FatWS and once again got into a debate about whether Steve's last actions were a disservice or in line with his characterization and narrative, given that the Russos confirmed (and therefore it's Word of God/canon, even if it did sound reactionary to the immediate backlash after EG) that Steve created an alternate reality when he went back, and didn't just live in hiding in the past of the OG timeline. 2/7

Because of this, my bro argued that: 1) the total character assassination that is the idea of Steve just sitting back and letting all the shit happen happen is no longer a problem - for all we know, the alternate reality oldman!Steve came from might have become utopic already due to his presence and foresight. He played coy when talking to Sam so we don't know for certain he didn't save Bucky, get rid of Hydra, and enact social reform when he had the chance. 3/7

Likewise, 2) the accusation that Steve would rob Peggy of her husband and children is a non-issue as Steve went back to a time before Peggy and Daniel got together - I argued here that it was still wrong for him to do given that he KNEW for a fact that Peggy lived a happy life, whereas it was a gamble if he could give her the same. My bro shot back when you truly loved someone, you want them to be happy and to have what's best for them. 4/7

So if Steve chose to go back to Peggy, he had to have believed that he could give her the best life. That Steve based that decision purely on his own assessment is pretty in character (e.g. pushing to become a soldier because he thought that was how he could do his part, even though at the time, he'd have just been a danger to himself and other soldiers; not signing the Accords because he believed in his team's judgment in crises above gov't oversight that might be influenced by politics). 5/7

And lastly 3) he might have settled into the past and started to move on, but what was wrong with him choosing to be selfish and going to the past when given a chance? Why was it wrong for him to go back to a time he knew, where he was beloved by both Peggy and the public, and when he could also save Bucky early? In terms of character growth, wouldn't it be fair for him to finally learn he could be a bit selfish and choose happiness, after a lifetime of nearly suicidal selflessness? 6/7

Our debate was based on confirmed canon with shipping put aside. So I put forth the sin of leaving a traumatized Bucky, Sam, and world behind, that Steve's actions were surely the result of a man broken by grief again and again, and that choosing the past was him running away - which, I argued, was a horrible way to end his character arc. But my brother asked me why I thought so, because wasn't this the so-called 'soft epilogue' that Steve deserved, one that was most in line with canon? 7/7

***************

Hey love! Very interesting argument you and your brother are having here… I’m sure he’s a great guy but I have to say that I vehemently disagree with him (as you probably already guessed lol). Soooo many people have done an excellent job at explaining why, shipping aside, Steve’s ending in EG was absolute bollocks, and I’m certain I could never argue this case as well as all of them have. Nevertheless, I’ll do my best to explain why, in my opinion, your brother is wrong :p I’m going to put my reply under the keep reading tag, because it is long.

1.      The Russos and Markus & McFeely (the writers) never managed to agree on whether Steve really did go back to an alternate timeline, and if so, how that would have worked, exactly. When they were asked, after EG had been released, about whether Steve would have just sat back and let everything he knew was happening/going to happen in the decades to come, both to Bucky and to the world at large, they came up with this ‘alternate timeline’ solution, but they kept contradicting each other on the logistics and technicalities of it (like how would old man Steve suddenly be able to jump timelines to come back to give Sam the shield in EG? And how did EG Steve attend Peggy’s funeral, like they also suggested, which would technically have been in a different timeline?). Which makes it pretty clear that this wasn’t something they’d considered beforehand or even all agree on afterwards, and therefore it can’t technically allowed to play a role in judging the rightness of Steve’s ending in EG if we’re looking at it from a ‘the creator’s word is law’ perspective. Moreover, there is nothing to indicate in EG itself that Steve knew he’d be able to create alternate timelines, so that would’ve been a crazy gamble on his part. Also, him ‘playing coy’ in that final scene with Sam really isn’t a convincing indication that he was actually, canonically, talking about anything besides marrying Peggy.

2.      Which bring us to point two: Peggy had literally told Steve she’d lived a happy life with her family, and told him in no uncertain terms to move on. If Steve really loved her, he would have accepted her wishes and allowed her the dignity of her choice (something Peggy herself, in CA:TFA, had told Steve was important to do when you care about someone) to move on from him once she believed him dead. Steve deciding that he would be better for Peggy because he believed was a better man than the person she ended up marrying originally would be the most un-like Steve thing to do, ever. Steve has never once shown that he thinks of himself as the hero or better than other people – he simply wants to do the best he can to help make the world a better place. He would never say “Peggy deserves the best and I believe I am the best, therefore she will have me, regardless of what she thinks or wants.” Steve drinks respect women juice, that’s clear from all of his movies, and deciding the course of her entire life for her, taking away her agency, whether in his own timeline or another, would be utterly disrespectful to Peggy.

3.      As for the next point: of course there’s nothing wrong with Steve being selfish for once – Steve is human, and all humans are selfish sometimes, and that’s okay. But, as Chris Evans already explained multiple times prior to Endgame, Steve had already made selfish decisions in the past, namely when it came to getting Bucky back and keeping him safe. Shipping aside, Bucky was presented in all the Cap movies as Steve’s very best friend, and was even called his ‘soulmate’ (platonically or otherwise) by M&M (the writers). So when, in Civil War, Steve was presented with a choice between duty/what was expected of him by the government versus saving Bucky/keeping Bucky safe, Steve was selfish and chose Bucky. That, canonically, made sense. Peggy being presented as the ultimate love of Steve’s life, who he loved and valued more than anyone or anything else in the world (which is what happened in EG), canonically does not make sense. 

In CA:TWS, Peggy told Steve to move on. When Peggy died, Steve buried her and mourned her, and then not long after, he canonically kissed Peggy’s niece. Then, in Infinity War, Steve saw Bucky turn to dust before his very eyes in the “Blip” (a conscious decision on the writers’/directors’ part to show how Steve once again lost what was most important to him while helplessly standing by) – and the next thing we know, Steve is leading a support group for other people who lost loved ones in the Blip, and starts talking about losing… Peggy? Huh. Also, Steve going back to a time which your brother calls “a time when he was beloved the public” doesn’t add up, either: technically, Steve went back to a time where people loved an idea of him, but also believed him to be dead. So either he would have had to have found a way to convincingly stage his own resurrection (meanwhile possibly leaving the other version to vegetate in the ice..? depending on how this timeline malarkey was supposed to work), or he would have lived his whole life hidden behind some fake persona – which does not sound like Steve at all, does it?

4.      Finally, let’s talk about Bucky some more, because I think we need to to be able to assess the situation properly. I understand that your brother may believe that shippers are often delusional and only see what they want to see etc, but there is ample evidence, canonically, of Bucky being the most important person in Steve’s life – the person he would give up the shield for, the person he would give up his other friendships for, the person he would give up his life for. Peggy may have been a recurring character in character in the three Cap movies, but she was never presented as the principal motivator of his actions, or as the love of Steve’s life. You know who was? Bucky. Sure, that love wasn’t canonically romantic in nature, but there can’t be any doubt that Bucky meant more than anything to Steve. Therefore, Steve choosing to have a ‘soft epilogue’ that entails him spending the rest of his life without Bucky – and, more importantly, Bucky to spend the rest of his life without Steve – contradicts everything we’ve learned about their relationship (platonic or otherwise) in the rest of the movies, does it not? 

Also, the Russos have said something to the effect that Bucky and Steve were now both mentally ‘well enough’ to not ‘need’ each other anymore (because as we all know, that’s exactly how friendships work…), but it’s pretty clear from EG that Steve was still traumatized by everything he’d been through, and going back to the 50s would have meant he would never be able to get proper help with that and in fact could only talk about any of it with Peggy and Peggy alone. Moreover, M&M have literally said in interviews that Bucky wasn’t all that well yet, mentally, and TFAWTS also shows convincingly that Bucky was not actually in a good place when Steve left him. So that would have meant that Steve either did not see this (unlikely, given how close they were) or did not care (unlikely, given how close they were). 

It would have meant that for the first time in all these movies, Steve decided “to hell with Bucky’s needs, I’m gonna just be selfish because I’ve earned it and claim my trophy wife because actually I am the best man for her, despite the fact that she’s already lived a happy life that I will be negating against her wishes, but that’s fine because maybe I’ll be able to create a different timeline, and maybe I’ll be able to save Bucky from all his trauma anyway, but then again maybe not, but that brings me back to my first point of to hell with Bucky’s needs” - which does not make a lot of sense to me, personally. Not to mention that, in exchange for his ‘soft epilogue’, Steve would also leave the world to sort out the post-Blip mess without him, and leave all the other friends he still had left and clearly cared about a lot to boot. I would not call that character growth, I would call that character disintegration. If your brother insists on taking the creator’s word as gospel and that we have to accept that Steve really did do what he did at the end of Endgame, and that wasn’t just a case of bad, lazy writing fuelled by greed, then to make a decision like this, Steve would have been either an asshole in disguise all along, or mentally extremely unstable.

There you have it, my two cents! I hope this helps a little in settling the argument with your brother, anon! Lots of love ❤️

[sparkliingdust]

Marvel fans have effectively ruined one of the most beautiful and best endings of the series by over-reacting to every little comment by the Russos and Markus/McFeely. This post will probably self-destruct. But I just needed to get it off my chest. I’m tired.

After waiting two years from the pressure of Infinity War to blow off and totally accepting Cap was going to die, I couldn’t believe how Endgame ended. Steve finally got his happy ending and Peggy got a second happy ending (depending on what you believe about the time loop or alternative timeline). I was on cloud nine, sobbing tears of pure joy. I saw the movie three times, mainly for the ending and Cap getting what he wanted (and Peggy choosing to be with him). I thought it was what the hardcore fans had been expecting too considering most of the fanbase (no matter who they shipped) moped about Steve and Peggy not being able to have their dance. And then at every turn, people have been overly criticizing and toxic, and I feel like Steggy’s ending is ruined for me.

And it’s not because of the Russos or the writers. 

Our generation and the younger generation have completely forgotten that characters can mean whatever we want them to mean. We don’t need the directors or writers approval or post-movie “headcanon” at conventions for them to matter to us in their own unique way. And just because we have a different vision than the directors doesn’t mean that their whole career deserves to be cancelled (especially when there are more important people in the real world who deserved to be cancelled more aka vote in 2020.)

The directors only direct the freaking films. They have a vision for how it looks and what’s laid out in the stories. Their post-film comments don’t have to matter, and I’m amazed by how many fans actually give their opinions merit or value unless it’s something constructive related to film-making. How many times do we have to hear directors or actors not understand their own character arcs or demean other characters before we realize that they’re just human / doing their job / don’t invest in the characters as much as we do outside of what is in the script? They’re not there to answer and confirm our every whim and curiosity. I don’t understand why we continue to blow-up over every single comment that happens after a movie is finished when the only proof of true canon is what we see on-screen.

The Russos talking about what Steve would do with Peggy after they reunited was cool, but it was mostly a ‘choose your own adventure’ answer. Joe saying that Steve could save Bucky or blow the roof of Hydra infiltrating SHIELD was exactly what fans have been wanting to hear. The haters said they couldn’t believe Steve wouldn’t want to save Bucky, and then the directors said he could, and they’re still pissed off. Now fans say they don’t want Steve to save Bucky because it ruins his arc as the Winter Soldier - but if it’s an alternative timeline, Bucky gets to be happy too!!!! Joe said that Steve and Peggy could have children - which again is what most fans wanted or imagined - and fans are mad. It doesn’t mean that Peggy being a mom makes her leave SHIELD or stop working. In most AU fics before Endgame, Steve takes care of the homefront while Peggy is still kicking ass. Again, a part of the fanbase get what they want and it’s not enough. (His comment about Steve taking turns spending time with Peggy was just a freaking joke btw - no harm, no foul.). BESIDES DYING, WHAT DO YOU WANT STEVE TO DO. STAY IN A LIFE THAT HE COULD NEVER FEEL TOTALLY FULFILLED BY?

The writers had a bunch of bogus ideas that weren’t filmed and were turned down in the drafting process. It’s why they’re called drafts. To refine the story as much as possible. I’d love for fans to write seven screenplays and not come up with plots that didn’t please everyone or weren’t crazy when they popped up. But this generation is just obsessed with canceling everyone and everything, and putting themselves on a pedestal of having perfect beliefs, acting perfectly, and everything they do is ~*can’t touch me I’m perfect*~. It’s an extremely dangerous and damaging mindset to have not only for themselves but everyone around them. They have a measuring stick of expectations, and then they keep raising the bar.

Nobody owes us anything for being a third-party participant of their work. The reward of being a part of a fandom is that someone creates something for us to enjoy, analyze, discuss, escape, etc. Being a fan isn’t about being defensive, entitled and tearing other people’s love of something down. So our headcanons aren’t apart of the final movie that we had nothing to do with creatively. Okay. Keep writing headcanons and believing what you want. It’s cool to be upset about what makes us upset, but stop projecting hate onto everyone else and making everyone else feel like they have to believe what you believe. I’m so tired of the hateful asks by Sousa and Stucky and Stony and every other ship out there criticizing us for enjoying this ending because our ship miraculously worked out. It didn’t have to end this way, but it did, and to me, it works. And I’m sorry other fans aren’t as positive as we can be, but stop sending the rest of us hate.

I’m trying to hold onto Steggy, but the negativity on every freaking social media and website is making it so freaking hard.

[jayleeg]

So, I’ve seen Endgame... thoughts under cut.

Things that I liked:

They co-credited Jack Kirby as creator. And at the end of the credits they listed each and every comic writer who had even a little piece of the story, even in minor ways.

Steve wielding Mjolnir and Thor’s “I knew it”, confirming that Steve could lift it all along but didn’t during Ultron to spare everyone else’s feelings. The theater went absolutely WILD here. Everyone was so excited.

Steve finally saying “Avengers Assemble”. That was satisfying. Same about the theater going wild here, too.

“America’s ass”. Earth-19999 Tony is a bisexual, confirmed (and he ogles Steve’s ass... surprising no one ever, so does Scott).

Hope calling Steve “Cap” during battle. Throw back to Ant-Man and the Wasp’s: “Cap. That’s what we call him if you’re a friend.”

The shot of all the Marvel ladies grouping together and kicking major butt. Million dollar shot, right there.

Steve calling Peter “Queens”. 

Professor Hulk was great.

Frigga!!!!! She is such a delight. I’ve missed her.

Wow, I can’t believe they actually got Natalie Portman to agree to a cameo, neat that they did.

I love Rocket, he was great throughout. Had some terrific lines.

Steve and Natasha’s heart-to-heart.

Steve’s support group.

Steve was wonderful in this movie right up to the final ten minutes. “I can do this all day!” “Yeah, I know.”

My girl Nebula was AMAZING in this and anyone who says Karen Gillan can’t act her little heart out is a liar. I loved her and Rhodey on their mission together. I want a team-up movie of just those two now.

Nebula and past!Gamora being sisters. And also, this exchange:

Gamora: (of Quill) “That’s him, huh?” 

Nebula: “Your choices were either him or a tree.”

T’Challa, Shuri and Okoye showing up to the battle all majestic, like the god and goddesses they are. Then T’Challa making eye contact with Steve and the two of them exchanging a look of perfect understanding without words, their gazes saying “let’s fuck Thanos up”.

Things I hated with a fiery passion:

Natasha’s death was cruel, and deeply disrespectful. I’m mad. Also, I cried like a baby. It hit me really, really hard.

Although parts of it were funny (Fortnite!), Marvel DEEPLY disrespected Thor. Like, wow. The entire growth Thor experienced in the first Thor movie went completely down the shitter. Thor was mostly just used as comic relief. That said, the scene between him and Frigga was wonderful.

This movie was filled with comic easter eggs, and as a comic fan, I appreciate that. Of course I do. BUT the one person in all of comics who did NOT deserve a nod is Nick Spencer and that they gave him one pisses me off. i.e. Steve pretends to be Hydra to get the scepter with the mind stone in it from Sitwell and Rumlow back in 2012 (following the battle of New York). It left me a bad taste in my mouth.

Tony’s death also felt unnecessarily cruel. I cried here, as well. I mean, he did get a heroic death, and that’s good, but it just seems rather terrible to give him a wife and a child and then kill him. He was happy, he got involved again because he couldn’t not, and then he dies saving everyone. Very sad.

And lastly...

STEVE ROGERS WOULD NOT OPT TO RETURN TO THE PAST. HE WOULD NOT.

Okay, I’m about to rant, so buckle up.

Steve, in the comics has TRIED to do the normal domestic thing. He was engaged to Bernie Rosenthal, a glassblower turned lawyer. He moved out of Avengers Mansion and into a Brooklyn Heights apartment to gain a sense of normalcy. And he loved Bernie very much. But do you know what happened? He discovered that he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t live outside of the thick of things. 

The night Bernie was to leave for law school? Steve was fighting crime, because he got suckered into a battle he absolutely couldn’t turn away from because STEVE ROGERS CANNOT BE INACTIVE WHEN THERE ARE PEOPLE TO SAVE. THAT IS A STAPLE OF THE CHARACTER.

Moreover, Kang has sent Steve back to the past before. Steve HATED it. 

And, he came right on back to the future, again, because the Avengers needed saving and he couldn’t let that go.

This is what Steve had to say about moving on from the past:

“It’s tempting to want to live in the past. It’s familiar. It’s comfortable. But it is where fossils come from.”

“My job is to make tomorrow’s world better. Always has been. Once, long ago, I asked Bucky what purpose Captain America served outside of combat. It was a foolish question. There’ll always be something to fight for.”

Granted, they said in the movie, pretty clearly, that changing the past did not effect the future, it creates an alternative reality. So the life with Peggy that Steve established in the past was an alternate reality (how old!Steve got back to the regular reality at the end there is anyone’s guess - the writers created a plot hole using their own rules that they established) but regardless, the decision to go back in time is not something Steve Roger would do in any reality. It goes against the very fabric of his character. 

So needless to say Steve’s ending in the movie was bullshit and the Russos and Markus and McFeely have very little understanding of a character they claim to love and want to do right by. As I said before, I’m mad. Can’t believe they did my man dirty like that. Thank god for comics.

[elrondsscribe]

ENDGAME SPOILERS and Peggy Carter.

SERIOUSLY. ENDGAME SPOILERS BELOW. DO NOT WATCH IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN ALL OF ENDGAME. (Also spoilers for both seasons of Agent Carter, as if anyone cares about that lil’ show.)

Thesis statement: I’m not sold on Steve/Peggy as told in Endgame.

QUICK PRELIMINARY NOTE: All of what I’m going to say pertains to these characters strictly as their characters have been set up by the MCU films. I’m not familiar with the comics, and therefore all the different comics storylines for the characters don’t factor into my understanding of these people.

Let me begin by saying that I have no personal stake in the movie-canonization of Stucky. I know that probably makes me a bad queer MCU fan, but I can’t help it. I say this because I’ve observed that some of the hate toward Endgame centers around “I didn’t get my Stucky ending! Cowardly, homophobe-pandering Marvel!” and while I both like shipping Stucky in fanfic and sympathize with where the Stucky-stans coming from, I just don’t share the sentiment.

Let me also say that I like Steggy, with caveats. What do I mean by that? I mean that I loved and appreciated their relationship in CA:TFA, but don’t think that a marriage between them would have worked. I feel about Steggy the same way I feel about Romanogers: I see both pairs as great lifelong friends, and absolutely kickass working partners, but not necessarily as happy domestic partnerships. While Nat’s entire personal code is different from Steve’s, Peggy is too like Steve in her combination of mastery and stubbornness. So, while I do ship Steggy, I do not necessarily ship Steggy-as-Endgame.

And, perhaps most importantly of all, I like Peggy Carter herself; I consider myself something of a Peggy Carter fan. And the reason I’m so neutral on Steggy-as-Endgame is precisely because I like and respect Peggy. See, some of the Peggy stans around here dislike Steggy-as-Endgame because it robs Peggy of narrative agency. See, in the original timeline, Peggy eventually had a husband - who wasn’t Steve. I know that there weren’t a lot of people who watched Agent Carter, but I did, and Season 1 ended with . . . well, with Peggy closing the door on the romance-with-Steve chapter of her life.

We even got a hint of who her eventual husband might have been in Season 2. (You dozen other people who watched the show: Remember Daniel Sousa?)

And Steggy-as-Endgame snatches all of this away from her.

I say all this because I’ve seen an accusation that people who don’t like Steggy-as-Endgame simply resent and disrespect Peggy for ‘breaking up my Stucky ship,’ which is manifestly not the case.

And okay: this next point adds another layer of Nuance (ugh), but think about the long-term emotional implications of this version of Steve going back in time and living with Peggy. Either he would try to hide his extra decade of 21st century life from her, which she’d see through, or he might try to tell her about it, which she probably wouldn’t believe, both of which would lead to eventual distance and even estrangement. And either way, a Steve with all the experiences and memories of time-traveled-Steve would himself be too changed to easily return to the same emotional rapport with Peggy that he had before going under the ice - again, I imagine eventual estrangement or at best a growing distance.

In other words, as emotionally riveting as that last Steggy dance scene was in the film, and as blissfully as CGI-old-Steve may have said “It was beautiful” about his life with Peggy . . . I just don’t see Steggy-as-Endgame ending happily.

Now I do realize that one of Endgame’s most prominent themes was that of ‘we don’t move on.’ I realize that the long-term confirmation of Steggy was an important motif within this theme (on my second viewing of Endgame, I noticed the near-constant cinematic attention that the film kept drawing to Steggy). However, I don’t necessarily think that, for the characters of Peggy and Steve, this version of their story was the best outcome for them. In short, I think that the characters of both Peggy and Steve were sacrificed on the altar of the ‘we don’t move on’ theme that drove Endgame.

Now I’ve mentioned Bucky before, but I do also want to say that, as Steve’s friend, I’m not sure why Messrs. Markus and McFeely saw fit to keep him separated from Steve. If Steve was going to return to the ‘40s, why would Bucky not return with him? The Steve-Bucky friendship was one of the most hyped-up motifs of the MCU - by previous Russo films! (”I’m with you to the end of the line - oh wait, I’m actually not!”) Why couldn’t they decently finish off one of their own themes?

And yeah, okay, you can argue that Bucky going back to the ‘40s creates a plot-hole because ‘Bucky-in-secret-HYDRA-captivity and post-torture-time-traveled Bucky in the same decades!’ but that sort of applies to Steve too - like, how did time-traveled-Steve explain to Peggy, and the rest of the world, how he got off that doomed plane??

To clarify: I loved almost everything else about Endgame. The “oh-so-cringe feminist moments,” the going-out-with-a-bang end of Tony’s hero arc, the incredible journey of Nebula in particular, the emotional highs of the Great Battle, the Avengers-passing-the-torch motif - I’m not kidding, I really loved most of the film. I just didn’t love the way that Peggy and Steve (and Bucky) got sacrificed for Overall Movie Theme-ing (theming?).

And I feel like that’s subpar theme-ing.

[marvelthismarvelthat]

Honestly I didn’t mind Natasha’s death until M&M opened their big fat mouths. Just watching it I felt it was totally in character for her to sacrifice herself to save the universe but the way they made it sound 😡😡😡

i can’t say that i didn’t mind it, but i was less mad about it than i am now after reading what the writers had to say.

bc the truth is you’re right, making the sacrifice play definitely falls in line with natasha’s character. and making that sacrifice so clint doesn’t die? it’s something nat would’ve done in a heart beat in any universe, whether he had children or not. but here’s the thing that upset me even before markus and mcfeely opened their mouths: AoU is a thing that exists in the MCU.

we all know natasha’s sterile bc whedon made it a huge plot point in her storyline for that movie. and bc of the way the scene was written, there’s an implication that nat considers herself a monster bc she’s infertile. or that she thinks that having been forcefully sterilized is justified by the horrors the red room forced her to commit. either way. it’s A Big Thing that caused a lot of uproar in both fandom and the media. nobody liked how that scene played out. marvel knew about that, they’re not blind to critical reception.

so here we are– a man with children and a woman who was made to be infertile by her abusers are the two candidates to sacrifice themselves for the cause. you can imagine why it left a sour taste in my mouth when natasha was the one to die, instead of clint. to me it immediately felt like they were saying that women that can’t bring children into the world are less important than people with children.

now, i’m not saying that the writers wanted to send this message about infertility. sometimes writers will write things without realizing how the audience will interpret it.  but you know, one would hope that knowing how badly the implications infertility scene had been received somebody at marvel would’ve gone “hmmm maybe we shouldn’t pick the man with the biological family above the woman who found one bc it might not send the right message.”

then markus and mcfeely really had to go open their mouths and essentially confirm that natasha was worth less to them bc clint had children–that it would’ve been melodramatic to kill him without letting him get his family back. then i was enraged.

(and let’s be real, even if AoU hadn’t done nat dirty the way it did, i would’ve still been upset bc natasha worked so hard for redemption even though she didn’t need it. she’s not responsible for what the red room made her do. the first time she ever truly had a choice, she chose to be good. since then she’s worked tirelessly to make sure she earned that second chance. and when the world came crashing down around her, taking most of the people she called family with it? she still tried to be better for those she’d lost, despite how much it hurt to forge ahead. meanwhile what did clint do the second the world came crashing down? he didn’t go to the avengers, he didn’t seek out his best friend, he didn’t join the cause. he chose to become ronin. nat didn’t deserve for all her hard work to culminate in sacrificing herself for someone who didn’t deserve her love.)

(and yeah yeah yeah i get it. nat was providing clint with the same chance he provided her. that’s very brave and valiant of her but it’s fucking bullshit)

[comicbookuniversity]

Ten Thoughts on Avengers: Infinity War

I’m writing this the day after my second viewing, but by the time you’re seeing this, I’m hoping the majority of you have seen this.

So if you haven’t seen it yet, SPOILERS.

1. This was easily one of Marvel’s better films. The scale of it all could have easily collapsed this into a mess, but McFeely, Markus, and the Russo Brothers kept this film moving along at an exciting and steady pace that built into an intense climax- insert sex pun. I loved this film and loved it more the second time around. I don’t think it was as good as Black Panther or Civil War, but neither of those films operate in the same way as this one. This film was a rollercoaster experience, and a fantastic one. I think this film has to be judged in a different manner, because even Black Panther and Civil War still operate by relatively conventional film standars. Infinity War is a different beast; one must be fluent in the language and conventions of the MCU to really understand it. There has never been another film quite like this; the closest examples don’t operate on the same scale. Never has it been more true to think of the MCU as the world’s biggest and most expensive TV show than it is when you’re watching Infinity War. I will need more time to think upon where it lands on my list of Best Marvel films.

2. Between this film and Ragnarok, Marvel has made an excellent case for Thor traveling around the stars in a similar to the Guardians of the Galaxy. I would love to see Thor and Valkyrie gather up a crew and bring the fight to whatever cosmic asshole is trying to threaten the innocents of the universe. They should be called the Thor Corps. I am surprised at how Thor had somehow become the protagonist after Thanos, if you don’t want to consider the bad guy the protagonist, even though he functionally is whether you like it or not. Until Ragnarok, Thor had been more muscle than heart, and when you consider how much more focus and success has been built out of the characters of and the relationship between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers, its surprising to think that Thor would be given so much screentime. It makes sense that he is the Avenger with the best chance of actually beating Thanos in single combat, but you don’t build stories around military tactics- you build them around emotional journeys. Thor has lost nearly everything, whereas Steve and Tony still have more to lose. When that is considered, it makes sense to focus on the building rage of a god while you build towards the ultimate loss of the great leaders of men. And Thor with his new hammer was freaking great.

3. I’ve seen a few critics argue that there were few characters arcs and that humor was used as a substitue. Plenty of great comedies have used humor as character work, and I think Infinity War also substantively used humor to efficently establish and advance character development in between the dramatic moments of the film from wherever the last time we saw them. This film had so many moving pieces to balance and it did so artfully.

4. Dr. Strange might have jumped significantly higher up my list of favorites thanks to Cumberbatch’s effective performance and the incredible fight sequences the movie utilized him in. Holy crap, you guys, Dr. Strange was fucking awesome in this film. Speaking of the weilder of the Time Stone, I decided to rewatch the Dr. Strange film the next night, and something occurred to me. I’m still debating whether this is just a common factor or a deciding influence, but I looked up the run times to all the Marvel films and had my hypothesis mostly confirmed. Generally speaking, the longer over 2 hours (including credits) the film goes, the better it has been recieved both financially and critically. This makes sense, because Marvel has even more time to develop all the relationships between characters; and the greater we are invested in these relationships, the greater the payoff. I think the Dr. Strange film would have been better if it had an extra 10-15 minutes to develop all the relationships at Kamar-Taj and a little extra for Rachel McAdams. I say only a little for McAdams, because I don’t think the film really needed that much more time in that arc since it was about him leaving her and the world she represents. My larger point is that Marvel should embrace two hours as the new minimum for their films.

5. Thanos is definitely one of Marvel’s better villains and that’s largely thanks to the brillaint performance of Josh Brolin, who commits to seeing and bringing the vulnerbility under all of Thanos’ power and evil plan. He’s still not Marvel’s greatest villain as that honor belongs to Killmonger, who will likely hold the honor until the next Black Panther film. Despite Thanos’ plan, Brolin, the writers, and directors of the film really give him certain amount of sympathy in seeing his commitment to his cause and the fear that ultimately drives him to act as he does. And it is fear that ultimately drives Thanos to act, because he sees the injustice in Life’s capacity for growth at the expense of the living. Thanos is someone who cannot and will not accept that Life is unjust and rages against this existintial condition with all his strength, and by the end of the film, the strength of the universe itself. But despite the great work of Brolin, what really helps Thanos is the sheer amount of screentime that the studio was willing to give him. With so many characters, many of of whom anchor their own franchises, it makes sense center the film on the least well-known character and force others to react to them, because it’s not about them in this moment. It’s all about their lives being interupted and forced to react to this almost natural disaster like situation, where winning doesn’t feel like an option and losing less feels like the only prudent mindset to have. Against the threat of Thanos, the superheroes are reminded of their own vulnerablity and mortality, and they feel more human than ever in this dark moment.

6. As introduced by Jonathan Hickman, my favorite members of the Black Order were Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight; look they all had wonderful names, Black Dwarf, Supergiant, Ebony Maw, and then they had the other name for their group- The Cull Obsidian. Damn those are wonderful freaking names, so I’m a little disappointed that the members of the Black Order didn’t even get named, outside of Thanos’ passing reference to Ebony Maw simply as “The Maw.” Also, this Ebony Maw has a different power set than his comic counterpart, but damn was he great; easily the creepiest and best member of the Black Order. Black Dwarf did have a weapon that kept changing into different modes that I thought was awesome. I wasn’t ever expecting them to be big and I was never certain if they would last beyond this film, but would it have added that much time for the Black Order to have gotten called by their names?

7. I thought Vision would have recieved a more significant arc in this than he did; Peter Quill did and all he did was lose his girlfriend, whereas Vision litterally has an Infinity Stone in his head and is willing to sacrafice his life to destory it. Vision spent most of his time being stabbed instead of being a hero. He would have made a good point of contrast to Doctor Strange; they’re each the weilders of Infinity Stones, but have radically different ideas of how deal with the stones when presented with the threat of Thanos. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense, due to the fact that he he is a Thor class fighter and that he hasn’t had much of a chance to develop as a character. To me, Vision is a low-key Superman figure of the MCU (or more accurately Martian Manhunter in direct compairson, but he’s just a more stoic version of Superman), and he suffers from the projections of Superman as tedious and boring figure being placed upon him. I think Vision suffers from the same problem that Star Trek does when compared to Star Wars; instead of treating the intellectual and philosophical pursuits with respect and excitement, the filmmakers assume that the audience is going to find it boring and treat it as boring instead of finding away to actually make it exciting. I think the best examples of the superhero genre are essentailly philosophical and ethical works that present the issues in a dynamic, colorful, and charming story, but because of what can be best called an attitude of anti-intellectualism based from ignorance, rather than something worse, the philosophy is often overlooked in favor of the simpler steps that would tie the character arcs and themes to larger philosophical concerns. I know it is not the most well liked of the MCU, but Vision’s scenes in Age of Ultron are some of the most earnestly poignant on the fragile beauty and duty of and to life itself. And these scenes also speak pretty directly to the core of Avengers philosophy, which has now been summed into a single line thanks to this film: “We don’t trade lives.” I just think Marvel missed an oppurtunity to really sell Vision as being more than a secondary figure and someone who is a product of the moral core of the MCU.

8. Considering how thoroughly representative of nearly every tone and narrative aspect of the MCU this film is, it only serves to highlight how underrepresented women and people of color are in the MCU. None of the Avengers or other characters who would typically hold franchises of their own are given nearly the same amount of screentime or material to work with in this film, because of it’s epic scope and the relatively simple nature of the conflict; but that being said, the women of the MCU are still given very little to do overall. They are supporting players while the men are off leading the charge or creating strategy that determines the fates of hundreds of trillions. The first person to die on screen is a black man, and there’s only one black man who is in a real position of power. Marvel still has trouble of thinking beyond America’s history of slavery and a segregated citizenery with African-Americans to see America’s other troubled relationships with national, ethnic, and religous groups and also give them some kind of positive representation. The only woman or person of color given a significant role similar to the signifcane of say Iron Man or Dr. Strange fighting Thanos on Titan is Scarlet Witch. This is a film where Scarlet Witch really gets to unleash her full power, and it’s seen in a tragic moment of where she is forced to kill her lover for the sake of the universe while holding back a nearly omnipotent being who defeated the Sorcerer Supreme just moments ago. Before I go on with this analysis, HOLY CRAP that’s kinda crazy to think how powerful she must really be, so I 1000% agree with Okoye when she asked why Scarlet Witch was not on the field of battle the whole time in Wakanda. Like, damn, she must be so powerful, so can we please get a film where Elizabeth Olsen is given more to do than play rookie and wear a sexy corest? And while there admittedly is a certain value to seeing her power arise from her love to Vision in this tragic moment, the fact that we have seen so very little of Wanda compared to her many male peers and her moment of great power is defined in part by her romantic relationship is not the most progressive choice. Had we had more time with Wanda in previous films, I don’t think I would find this choice as anything other than a sad moment in a star-crossed relationship, but because she has had so little time by comparison (and even without comparison) to her male counterparts this moment loses a little bit of the power it could have had as a symbol of female power equaling male power.

9. I’ve seen a few people complain about how the drama and value of the deaths of half the universe is undercut by the knowledge that these characters will be back in their own films within the next year or two. But I call bullshit on this complaint because it is based in cynicism and ignorance. There are three parts to this complaint: the first two problems are tied together in that the characters don’t know they’re going to come back, so if the film had botched its execution of setting up the emotional beats in this film to continue and progress our attachment to the characters, then it would have all fallen apart. But the film didn’t botch it, every line and edit is proposeful and effective in engaging and reminding us of why we love these characters in the first place, so since the film was executed well, we can sympathize and empathize with the characters in their sadness and shock at all these deaths. Second, even if we didn’t know from announcements made by Marvel or somehow guess from Marvel’s previous works that these characters would be coming back, the film establishes that its not over. Dr. Strange clearly knows what is going to happen (or at least something extremely close to the victory he searched for in all the possible futures). And even if Dr. Strange didn’t know, do we really believe these characters who we just watched try so valiently to fight Thanos from achieving his goal would allow him to go unpunished for his crime? Let’s assume for a split secon that there is not some way to fix what Thanos did, do we really believe that the film would spend so much time on all these different characters for it to just end on the one guy sitting on a hill when all their emotional threads are just left unfinished? The answer to all of these scenarios is no. There was never a version of this film that was a single part or the final film; this is clearly the first half of a story, so the audience value of all the deaths comes from thinking about and then later finding out how it all be fixed to as much as the heroes can fix it. People who compalin about the deaths as having no value or drama are just being babies about having to wait.

10. After having seen this twice and considering how well Marvel has been doing since the release of Civil War, I really think Marvel has found it’s groove and I am so excited for the future. While I would understand if they want time to do other projects, I would hope that the Russo Brothers, Stephen McFeely, and Christopher Markus always have one hand on driving the MCU. Feige has been there since the begining, but I feel like working with these four has really helped him focus overall and loosen his grip to trust the filmmakers he hires to execute their visions within the MCU. Gunn, Watts, Waititi, and Coogler all breathed new life into Marvel with their style and emotional honesty, and it’s this trend Marvel should continue to follow if they want to keep their success going. Infinity War is representative of many of the best elements of Marvel, and everyone involed in it should be proud of the work they’ve accomplished with it. That being said, Marvel still has progress that needs to be made, and it looks like it is going to be able to effectively do this by closing one chapter of the MCU and starting the next. I am so very excited for the journey we’ve all got ahead of us.

[tfnationltd]

Thank you from Mary's Meals

In 2017, TFNation was lucky enough to be asked to play host to a new piece of Transformers fan fiction. Set in the Transformers Animated universe, "Trial and Error!" set out to give Transformers Animated the climactic ending it deserved! "Trial and Error!" was published by TFNation Ltd on a not-for-profit basis. The book proved to be incredibly popular, so much so that a second run was produced shortly after the convention. After all overheads, sales of "Trial and Error!" raised £866.61 which was donated to MarysMeals.org Mary's Meals is a fully registered charity which sets out to provide food and education to children living in poverty. Each year, some incredibly generous Mary's Meals sponsors run a scheme called "Double the Love" wherein they agree to double every pound donated in the month of December. We were able to take advantage of this and accordingly, have received confirmation that your donations will be doubled, resulting in over £1,733.00 being donated to charity from the proceeds of the book. We would like to take this opportunity to thank some people, without whom this fundraising would not have been possible. Firstly, the talented and dedicated creative team who allowed TFNation to be a part of this project. "Trial and Error!" was written by Chris Mcfeely and Jim Sorenson, with artwork by Ed Pirrie, Gavin Spence and Herzspalter and letters by Andrew Turnbull. Secondly, Toy-Fu. Toy-Fu has been trading at Transformers fan conventions for many years, but you may not realise that all of their proceeds are donated to charity. We want to thank Toy-Fu for introducing us to Mary's Meals and for spreading their charitable message at our event. Last but by no means least, we wish to send our sincere thanks to everybody who purchased a copy of "Trial and Error!" As a community, we can do great things - this project was a brilliant example of that. The following is an email from the very aptly named Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, who is the Chief Executive of Mary's Meals. Please take a moment to read the same, which explains some of what Mary's Meals do on a day to day basis.

"Dear Billy Edwards Thank you so much for the donation of £866.61 to Mary’s Meals from TFNation Ltd, which will be used to provide life-changing meals for children in their place of education. Supporting our school feeding programmes is a great way of helping hungry children to learn and giving them the best chance of a future free from poverty. The daily meals we provide are enabling thousands of children to attend school and work towards their dreams. Children such as 14-year-old Chimza Harry, who attends Mwalamba Primary School in Malawi. Chimza – whose full name, Chimwemwe, means joy – lives at home with his mother Lucia and three siblings. The family ran out of food stores soon after last year’s harvest, having only managed to grow one bag of maize. He said: "I feel weak in the mornings when I walk to school. I feel lethargic, but I am excited to go to school because I will eat here, and learn." Chimza is top of his class and has been every year since he started school. However, as the eldest male living in the household, he feels duty-bound to help support the family and is adamant that he would not be at school if it weren’t for the phala (porridge). "When I eat the phala I get the strength to eat, study, walk home, and work. "If there was no phala, I would have left school, because I know when I am hungry I cannot listen properly, I cannot learn. I would like to finish my education and become a doctor. I would like to help my people - the people around my village - to see a doctor in hospital faster." Chimza’s academic achievements show he is right to be ambitious. Thanks to your generosity, he and thousands more children have the chance to realise their dreams. On behalf of the 1,230,171 children who currently receive Mary’s Meals, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Yours sincerely, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow Chief Executive, Mary’s Meals Mary’s Meals Registered Charity: SC022140. Limited Company: SC265941"

[agentxthirteen]

What if Agent Carter is Peggy’s daydream?

I just had this thought earlier, so please bear with me. What if Agent Carter isn’t canon, it’s one of Peggy’s daydreams while working at the SSR?

Evidence below the cut

Howard There’s a dichotomy in how Howard is portrayed in the movies versus Agent Carter. We know from the Iron Man movies that Howard is - at the very least - distant - to Tony, and the tie-in comics show he’s emotionally and sometimes physically abusive. The movies work this in by showing Howard’s digs to his son, his yelling at Tony to stop playing around in Iron Man 2, how much more Tony got along with his mom in Civil War. The First Avenger shows that Howard is a huge fan of his own - it doesn’t show him being abusive, but it shows him to be fascinated with two things: Himself, and Steve Rogers. And we know one of Tony’s problems with Steve is that Howard always seemed to like Steve more.

But in Agent Carter, Howard is a bit of player, but he’s essentially a good guy. Why? From the narrative aspect, we need Howard to be a good guy because we, the audience, have to be able to root for him, and root for Peggy to succeed in helping him. This Howard is one where no one would ever dream of him hurting Tony or being a bad guy. He might be busy with his job, but he’s not a bad guy.

In the interest of this theory, though, this is the Howard we get because this is the Howard that Peggy knows. She can’t imagine that Howard would ever hurt his child - hell, she can probably barely conceive of Howard turning into a family man, and so we get a version of Howard where no one would ever dream of this Howard striking Tony. We get the version of Howard who goes to a woman he knew years before to help him when he’s in a tight spot, instead of a virtual army of lawyers and private investigators, and who will happily repay in an opulent apartment so she’ll never have to worry about where to live ever again.

Steve Peggy and Steve are supposed to be an epic relationship in the MCU, but what if it wasn’t? The movies show them having a crush on each other, kissing once, and then Peggy moving on to a husband, kids, and grandkids, and Steve eventually trying to move on, too. Markus and McFeely confirmed that the two of them only ever kissed once. According to the Marvel timeline, Peggy and Steve knew each other for less than two and a half years. And we see in The First Avenger that they have crushes on each other for even less time than that. Peggy only gets one scene in The Winter Soldier (where she explicitly talks about how she had a full, happy life, and her only regret is that Steve didn’t get the same chance), and she gets a funeral in Civil War, where the writers and the Russos confirmed that Peggy was Steve’s last tie to his past, other than Bucky. There’s no mention of romantic love, because, well, Peggy moved on decades before and was no longer in love with Steve, and Steve had accepted that they would never have a relationship in 2012, possibly even when he went into the ice in the first place, and had been trying to move on himself for a couple years. So why do people think Peggy and Steve are this huge, epic romance when the movies don’t present it that way at all?

Because of Peggy, that’s why.

Peggy had a crush on Steve. All it ever came to, canonically, was a kiss. But her crush on him didn’t disappear when he did. Suddenly, she has this mission/daydream where she has a physical part of him. Her daydream helps her let go of him. And while the movie had to deal with the fight against Hydra, Agent Carter has more time to delve into her crush. Remember, she was possibly 19 but lying about her age to serve in the US and saying she was 21 (depending on what source you use - I saw a post somewhere long ago that showed two different DOBs, making her 21 in the States but 19 in the UK at the same time). Either way, she was YOUNG in The First Avenger. She had a crush on an international hero. It’s perfectly normal that the crush would run deep for her, particularly given all Steve did.

It also explains why the other Commandos referred to her as “Cap’s girl” and why there was a radio show where a character clearly based on Peggy is rescued by Steve, but why we never see any of this anywhere else. In Peggy’s fantasy, she and Steve DID have a chance to be together, and everyone more or less knew it and approved. She was the Chosen One. Which... anyone who’s been on earth for any degree of time knows that if a woman is dating a famous guy that others want to get with, it’s... incredibly unlikely that the woman is going to be liked. Look at fandom’s treatment of women, especially canon love interests, even in the MCU.

In her daydream, she and Steve had more than just a kiss. She was a respected member of the Commandos, respected enough that they would come if she called them, whereas in the movies we rarely saw her with them because she was assigned to Phillips. Again, we don’t see her close ties to the Commandos in the films - she storms the base with them and Phillips, is present at some planning meetings, that’s it. After the comforts Steve about Bucky, she refers to him as “your friend.” That’s the extent of their interactions. But in her daydream, she’s a heroine who was deeply loved and respected by everyone, where even the Commandos follow her orders because she’s amazing and because she’s “Cap’s girl.” 

Ultimately, her daydream helps her get over her crush on Steve and move on to the guy in her office who might have a crush on her. Which brings us to...

SSR & the resets Why the hell didn’t Peggy jump to SHIELD at any point in the series? Why, at the end of S1, do we get Peggy saying she knows her own worth, and that’s good enough for her, but no one else except her office crush recognizes her worth, even though she has constantly outsmarted them and proved her worth?

Because in her daydream, she has no conception of SHIELD happening. This daydream takes place at the SSR, and she knows that when she comes out of her daydream, she’s still going to be where she started. So the daydream ends the same way it began, as far as her work goes. A bunch of coworkers who don’t respect her as an equal.

So she starts and ends each season almost the same way she started, quietly back at work at the SSR, with the exception of a transfer to Los Angeles to be near Sousa in S2. Which might mirror her considering a transfer in S2, and this daydream is the way of trying it out for size?

Jarvis While Howard is on the run in S1, he leaves Peggy - not with his legion of lawyers or investigators or their investigative tools - but with his butler. Who also follows Peggy’s orders and acts essentially as her sidekick. Her Bucky, her junior agent.

Am I saying she imagined Jarvis? Nope! We know he exists because Tony named his AI after Jarvis. I’m saying that she might have met Jarvis once or twice and she incorporates him into the daydream because she needs someone outside of the SSR, who has ties to Howard, and who will do what she says and can come through in a pinch. She might know that he’s married - but doesn’t know much about his wife - i.e., why we don’t see her in S1. So she imagines him to be what she needs to solve the case. This also indicates that each season is a different daydream - she didn’t know Jarvis’s wife in S1 because she didn’t yet know enough about his wife to imagine her well enough yet, only meeting her after S1′s daydream and thus including more about her in S2.

Michael The daydream theory also explains the set-up for Michael to return. The writers left it open-ended, but they implied that HE was the “M Carter” in the file, meaning he was alive after all.

But what if he isn’t? What if Peggy just daydreams that he might be alive. That there might be some sort of Russian program like she encountered in S1 with Faustus that might have taken her brother? In her daydream, she has the chance to rescue him. She would have saved him, they would briefly have been happy - or had the hope of it - and then he would have gone off before the end of the season again, and things would have gone back to being the same at the SSR, only this time with the hope of seeing Michael again, alive and more or less well. She’s setting herself up for another daydream, this time where she gets to save her brother.

Angie It would also explain why Angie didn’t feature more in S2. Plenty of people have noticed it was odd that Angie wasn’t in LA for acting and was written out of the show until pressure convinced them to feature Angie in at least one scene (the musical scene - a daydream within a daydream). But when you’re daydreaming about a different place, you tend to also cut back on which people you know would be there and then daydream entirely new people - both heroes and villains. So it would kind of make sense, right? Angie might have been a friend or a roommate in S1′s daydreams, but they aren’t close enough (assuming Angie found out about Peggy’s spy career in a daydream and still doesn’t know IRL) that they’re besties, and thus Peggy daydreams a different crew for her LA daydream adventures.

Jason Wilkes & the love triangle There were also complaints about the love triangle in S2, but if Peggy is daydreaming, it makes sense that there would be some romance to her daydreams, even daydreams where multiple people love her at once. Hell, her crush died, her last daydream was about getting over him and letting go, and now she’s bored of that sad crap and ready to daydream about something new. Working how crushes might work with different people, deciding which one she wants to follow up on... Peggy might have preferred to weigh the options in her mind, which is not only fine, but smart. Consider before engagement, etc.

As for Jason Wilkes, if the show is really just a collection of Peggy’s daydreams (S1, S2...) then he makes SO MUCH MORE SENSE. People have talked since the show came out about the show’s problem with white feminism, but this explains why. Because it’s from Peggy’s POV. She isn’t going to know enough or understand enough to portray racism realistically in the late 1940s. She might have heard things, she might even have witnessed some things (the MCU likes to gloss over the brutality and ugliness of racism), but she has never been seen seeking to understand the depth of racism the same way she seeks to understand the depths of sexism, because one of these doesn’t apply to her. So her daydream version of Wilkes lacks the more subtle presentations of racism. Outright racism? She’s there, calling it out and being an ally. But as the writer of the linked article (which is incredible, btw) points out, there’s no way that some people at the SSR wouldn’t be outright racist, and no way others wouldn’t be at least a little bit prejudiced. I posit that we don’t see that because the daydreams are from Peggy’s POV. She doesn’t see them as racist, she doesn’t see the microaggressions, the subtleties, the intricacies, and thus, she doesn’t think to put them in her daydreams, glossing over them the way so many people gloss over ugly things they don’t understand, things that make them feel awkward and uncomfortable, and thus things that they don’t want to see or address.

The technology Peggy has access to all sorts of technology, thanks to the SSR and Howard. Do we ever see it outside of the show? It doesn’t turn up in the movies, as far as I’m aware, and I haven’t watched enough of Agents of SHIELD to know if it turns up there. But Peggy grew up in the golden age of science fiction and worked at the SSR. She would have been able to imagine these weapons for herself. And it’s no surprise that Zero Matter tied in to Doctor Strange, because dark matter isn’t an entirely new concept.

The one-shot I think the Agent Carter one-shot is canon and was always meant to BE canon. The problem is, both the show and the one-shot are set in 1946. When they were writing the series, though, McFeely said he wanted Peggy to grind away in the SSR for a while longer, that they didn’t want her set up SHIELD that fast.

But if the show is just a daydream, it still allows for both to be true. S1 would be her daydream in S1 before Howard sets up SHIELD. She imagines herself working for a different boss - Dooley, who dies respecting her and her skills. Meanwhile, her boss IRL, Flynn, is never so much as mentioned.

Then there’s the S2 daydream, taking place later in the year, where she thinks about transferring to LA to be with Sousa, who has already transferred.

There was going to be another daydream, where she rescues her brother, but then the phone call comes in, and, knowing her skills and built up on heroic fantasies where she’s more than equal to the task of taking out one little gang, she takes on a mission Flynn didn’t want her to take. After that, she’s busy building SHIELD.

I.e., the show wasn’t cancelled so much as Peggy had to wake up and go to work.

Flaws with the theory I’m sure there are some? I’m interested to see what other people think. LET’S DISCUSS.

[interabangs]

It still hurts that Gunn, along with Markus and McFeely and the Russos, think so little of Gamora that they discarded her like trash in IW. Then in Endgame, they dismissed her memories and experiences, and they decided to redo her story from scratch. They replaced her like one replaces a goldfish, because they couldn’t think of anything else to do with her. That they thought her only worth was dying and functioning as an object of motivation for other characters, still disappoints me.

I realized that after Endgame, MCU views both Natasha and Gamora, the original sole female characters in their teams, as equivalent to objects of payment for them to quickly dismiss. MCU thinks of them as only worthy in terms of being silent bodies for men to cry over. The writers said in Endgame, “Women are only useful when we pose their dead bodies like dolls, when they are agreeable or silent wives/moms, and when they get 30 seconds of action or strutting - before being quickly shoved aside while we claim we care about women.”

It’s frustrating that the women in the Guardians franchise - Meredith, Gamora, and Nebula - were thrown away while being framed as objects (or in Nebula’s case, her past self is revealed as ~her real enemy~ instead of her abuser.) Three women in the Guardians’ franchise died as pawns, or as a villain, while the male characters (Groot and Yondu) were given heroic and triumphant send-offs. They got to go out with agency, were framed as heroes, and they are beloved characters. Yondu will probably get a flashback in Vol. 3 because why not. 

I think Gunn thinks he cares about Meredith, Gamora, Nebula, and Mantis, but he didn’t give them much to do other than showing them all fuck up and die helplessly (as opposed to Rocket, Gunn’s proxy who has agency, gets pathos and jokes, and is framed as a hero who never screws up.) In OG Gamora’s case, Gunn approved wiping away all her development while Quill, a man, keeps all his memories. That the main female Guardian was thrown like trash, and her entire arc was set back to Square One shows me that Gunn is dismissive of OG Gamora’s arc. He doesn’t care much about her experiences in GotG - IW. Instead, he values Quill, so Quill gets to keep his memories.

I still love GotG and Vol. 2 despite their flaws, but IW and Endgame made me realize that yeah, the Guardians’ franchise is blatantly sexist and we went 5 steps back, after Vol 2 put in some effort to improve things. I thought that GotG didn’t handle Gamora perfectly, but at least she was involved in the final battle in GotG and she played an active role. In IW she was tossed away and in Endgame she was just standing on the sidelines because the writer refused to show her and Nebula fighting their abuser.  At this point, to me it feels like the MCU is saying her arc between GotG and IW was completely pointless, and it was a waste of time to get invested in her story. In Endgame, in a scene Gunn approved and produced and confirmed he wrote dialogue, the other Guardians were more interested in a fucking knife fight than the fact that their family member was killed by her abuser. That’s how little Gunn thinks of OG Gamora. She means less to him than a knife fight.

Gamora’s ‘story’ in IW (not really her story, it was her abuser’s story) and the way she died, isn’t inspirational at all to me. It’s flat out depressing, and disgusts me. Gamora’s story used to be good and uplifting, but IW and a Endgame reduced both versions of her to prizes for two men.

tl;dr OG Gamora deserved better.

[2whatcom-blog]

Tips on how to make an Avengers movie in 11 steps

Avengers: Endgame, the fourth instalment in Marvel's superhero crossover franchise, made an unprecedented $1.2bn on the field workplace final weekend. It is the most important three-day haul in film historical past; and a testomony to the power of Marvel's serialised method to story-telling. Administrators Joe and Anthony Russo mentioned they had been "definitely surprised" by the movie's "runaway success" - but additionally introduced they had been taking a break from the superhero style, after making two Captain America and two Avengers movies within the area of seven years. "One of the most important things we learned is that when you're shooting two of the largest movies ever made, and you're shooting them back to back... is don't shoot 'em back to back," Anthony informed BBC Information, confirming the duo's departure. Joss Whedon skilled related feelings after writing and directing the sequence' first two instalments. "Why on Earth would I make another Avengers movie? They're really hard," he mused on the DVD commentary for Age of Ultron. "It was ill advised. I see that now." However Marvel's Cinematic Universe will proceed - with new instalments of Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy already confirmed; and a brand new configuration of The Avengers nearly a certainty. When you someway find yourself within the administrators' chair, how must you put together? Listed below are 11 key classes from the individuals who made the originals. This text doesn't include spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, however will focus on plot particulars from the previous movies.

1) Begin out on a TV present

All three administrators of The Avengers made their names in TV. Joss Whedon created Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly; whereas the Russo brothers labored on cult comedies Neighborhood and Arrested Improvement. These experiences had been invaluable when it got here to wrangling a forged of greater than 20 characters, "because they are all ensemble shows," says Joe Russo. "Those were shows that had to be executed in 21 minutes, they had to be funny, and they had to have a plot. And sometimes, like in an episode of Community, you'd have 30 speaking parts - so that's an exercise that certainly trained you in trying to contain as many characters as we do in two hours." "We're drawn to multiple points of view and group dynamics, because we grew up in a very large Italian-American family," provides Anthony, "so we've always loved working with ensembles."

2) Know the characters inside-out

The enjoyment of the Avengers is seeing how these disparate characters, and the actors who play them, work together. "There is a natural competition when the leads from two different franchises get together and it plays right into the competition of two heroes getting together - so it is delightful," noticed Infinity Battle script-writer Chris Markus final yr. "A very compelling element of crossovers is who has primacy. They're all leaders, they're all used to leading their own worlds, and once you put them into the same room, who gets to call the shots? That is a notion we revisit several times." Nonetheless, it is a problem to offer 23 separate characters a definite voice within the confines of a three-hour movie. Fortunately, there's an outdated screenwriting tip that turns out to be useful: In case your characters are well-written, it is best to know the way every of then would react in the event that they by chance fall right into a swimming pool. "Thor from Infinity War would mess that pool up," says Anthony. "Whereas Rocket - he's not exceedingly self-deprecating, so I think I could see him gag and spit. He'd be a little irritated."

3) Take a number of rest room breaks

Scott Derrickson just lately tweeted how he "ran into Joe Russo outside the men's room," whereas he was enhancing the Physician Unusual movie in 2015. "He pitched me the basic story for both Infinity War and Endgame I told him that if he could make the first movie work, the second movie would be incredible." Which begs the query: How lengthy did Joe maintain his colleague ready for the john? "I think it was like a 10-minute pitch," he laughs. "However the funniest factor is that individuals are like, 'Do you guys get collectively at Marvel on a regular basis and have conferences in regards to the storylines?' "And the reply is, 'No, all of it occurs on the way in which to the lavatory'. That is the place everybody runs into each other and begins exchanging data." In different phrases, do not maintain it in.

4) Maintain the story easy

For the entire acclaim heaped on Infinity Battle, the plot could be boiled down to 3 phrases: "Thanos desires stones". "We've so many characters within the film that we knew if the plot was difficult, it will take too to elucidate and that might take away from the characters and the motion," mentioned screenwriter Chris Markus on the DVD commentary. Even the variety of Infinity Stones brought about a headache, mentioned co-writer Steve McFeely. "Had we invented the concept of Infinity Stones in a vacuum, I am certain we'd not have determined there have been six of them. Six MacGuffins is loads for one film." To maintain issues shifting, the Russos dictated that each scene "needed to do a couple of factor". So the opening sequence - by which Thanos crushes the Hulk, kills Thor's brother Loki and steals one of many Infinity Stones - conveys three plot factors in two minutes. "It establishes Hulk's journey - he is been defeated and would not notably wish to assist Banner over the course of the film," defined Anthony Russo. "It establishes a vengeance story for Thor by taking out his brother, and it establishes the plot for stone assortment."

5) The percentages ought to appear insurmountable

"I needed to make a film the place being a superhero wasn't a free go," mentioned Joss Whedon, about scripting the primary Avengers movie in 2012. "The place issues had been robust sufficient that you'd be as sturdy as you can probably be and nonetheless not be sufficient to take care of what was occurring. "The stakes," he added, "are at all times the identical. "The stakes are: You can die."

6) Acknowledge the ridiculous

When your heroes are up in opposition to a sentient robotic who's ripped a whole metropolis off the face of the planet, it pays to acknowledge that the whole lot's a bit far-fetched. And so, on the climax of Age of Ultron, Hawkeye takes inventory of the state of affairs and says: "We're combating a military of robots and I've a bow and arrow. None of this is sensible." "I discuss with that as 'inoculation,'" Whedon explained. "He says the factor we're all considering, and it performs."

7) Discuss to the animators

The Avengers movies are among the most effects-heavy films in historical past, with 4 main characters - Thanos, Hulk, Rocket and Groot - created by laptop animation. Making them plausible is a vital activity, so each Whedon and the Russos began working with artists earlier than the scripts had been written. "Thanos was troublesome," says Joe Russo. "We knew we had been sunk if Thanos wasn't photo-real, so we spent two years doing analysis and growth on Thanos and ensuring that he would work accurately." For his debut because the Hulk, actor Mark Ruffalo even wrote a letter to the consequences group, stressing that his motion-captured performances had been solely the primary stage of making the character. "We're all enjoying this half," he wrote. "I've taken it so far as I can and also you guys have to make use of what you'll be able to after which overlook about me and change into the Hulk." "It was extremely inspiring to the animators," recalled Whedon, who set aside a day to explain how the movie portrayed two different aspects of the green-skinned monster: "The one Bruce Banner turns into unwittingly and the one he decides to be". "What I discovered later was that almost all of them - the truth is all of them - had not been in a position to see the script, in order that they had been simply animating issues in a vacuum," he said. "So it was extremely productive."

8) At all times put the raccoon on a chair*

Have you ever ever seen that Rocket - the CGI raccoon performed by Bradley Cooper - is nearly at all times standing on a chair? "That is a terrific level," says Anthony. "Whenever you're coping with characters of radically totally different sizes, it presents a number of framing challenges. "You start to learn tricks in blocking to keep everyone in the same relative plane, so you can actually shoot them." (* or on a desk, or positioned within the foreground, or simply movie the whole lot in a large shot.)

9) Ban t-shirts

Finish of Youtube submit by RED Lion Film Shorts Once we first meet Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow in Avengers Assemble, she's tied to a chair, barefoot and in a vest high, apparently being interrogated by shadowy Russian forces. In fact, she breaks free in spectacular trend... however her outfit made it one of many hardest stunt scenes to choreograph. "Whenever you say 'she has no sleeves' to your stunt co-ordinator he cries man tears," Joss Whedon famous afterwards. "It's very difficult to do a lot of these things if you can't pad up the knees and elbows."

10) Embrace the darkness

Making these movies is "incredibly physically demanding," says Joe Russo, and there'll inevitably be darkish days. "When you start out, it's all perfect in your head," Whedon informed BBC Information in 2015, "and while you work with the actors, it will get higher. "Then sooner or later you've got been enhancing for thus lengthy you begin considering. 'Who am I? What's occurring?' and also you overlook why you ever confirmed up, and what you are making an attempt to say. And also you despair. It is a very bleak expertise.

11) Emotion > motion

Including character beats to motion sequences has been Joss Whedon's calling card since Buffy - and he pulls it off completely in Age Of Ultron's climactic battle, the place Hawkeye stops whaling on the unhealthy guys to debate dwelling enhancements. "You know what I need to do? The dining room," he tells Black Widow. "If I knock out that east wall, it'll make a nice work space... What do you think?" "That sequence is, for me, the reason I show up," Whedon mentioned within the commentary. "Where two people in the apocalypse are talking about re-doing the dining room, that says more about their relationship than anything else I could have done." The Infinity Battle group made an analogous choice. Their movie would not finish with a battle however the emotional fallout of Thanos's "snap" - scenes that left some viewers in tears. So what is going to they really feel after they stroll out of Endgame? "Catharsis," says Joe Russo. "We realise how impactful the Infinity War ending was," provides his brother. "We saw how difficult it was for many people and that's something that we really respect. So we were very committed to paying off that kind of a story." Comply with us on Fb, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. When you have a narrative suggestion e mail leisure.information@bbc.co.uk. Read the full article

[toldnews-blog]

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How to make an Avengers film in 11 steps

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption The Avengers cast and crew (L-R): Joe and Anthony Russo, Kevin Feige, Robert Downey Jr, Jeremy Renner and Brie Larson

Avengers: Endgame, the fourth instalment in Marvel’s superhero crossover franchise, made an unprecedented $1.2bn at the box office last weekend.

It’s the biggest three-day haul in movie history; and a testament to the strength of Marvel’s serialised approach to story-telling.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo said they were “definitely surprised” by the film’s “runaway success” – but also announced they were taking a break from the superhero genre, after making two Captain America and two Avengers films in the space of seven years.

“One of the most important things we learned is that when you’re shooting two of the largest movies ever made, and you’re shooting them back to back… is don’t shoot ’em back to back,” Anthony told BBC News, confirming the duo’s departure.

Joss Whedon experienced similar emotions after writing and directing the series’ first two instalments.

“Why on Earth would I make another Avengers movie? They’re really hard,” he mused on the DVD commentary for Age of Ultron. “It was ill advised. I see that now.”

But Marvel’s Cinematic Universe will continue – with new instalments of Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy already confirmed; and a new configuration of The Avengers almost a certainty.

If you somehow end up in the directors’ chair, how should you prepare? Here are 11 key lessons from the people who made the originals.

This article does not contain spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, but will discuss plot details from the preceding films.

1) Start out on a TV show

Image copyright Fox

Image caption The Russos directed the pilot of Arrested Development, and have referenced the show in both Infinity War and Captain America: Civil War

All three directors of The Avengers made their names in TV. Joss Whedon created Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly; while the Russo brothers worked on cult comedies Community and Arrested Development.

Those experiences were invaluable when it came to wrangling a cast of more than 20 characters, “because they are all ensemble shows,” says Joe Russo.

“Those were shows that had to be executed in 21 minutes, they had to be funny, and they had to have a plot. And sometimes, like in an episode of Community, you’d have 30 speaking parts – so that’s an exercise that certainly trained you in trying to contain as many characters as we do in two hours.”

“We’re drawn to multiple points of view and group dynamics, because we grew up in a very large Italian-American family,” adds Anthony, “so we’ve always loved working with ensembles.”

2) Know the characters inside-out

Image copyright Disney

Image caption The first Avengers film brought together six heroes, now there are more than 20

The joy of the Avengers is seeing how these disparate characters, and the actors who play them, interact.

“There is a natural competition when the leads from two different franchises get together and it plays right into the competition of two heroes getting together – so it is delightful,” observed Infinity War script-writer Chris Markus last year.

“A very compelling element of crossovers is who has primacy. They’re all leaders, they’re all used to leading their own worlds, and once you put them into the same room, who gets to call the shots? That is a notion we revisit several times.”

Still, it’s a challenge to give 23 separate characters a distinct voice in the confines of a three-hour film.

Luckily, there’s an old screenwriting tip that comes in handy: If your characters are well-written, you should know how each of then would react if they accidentally fall into a swimming pool.

“Thor from Infinity War would mess that pool up,” says Anthony. “Whereas Rocket – he’s not exceedingly self-deprecating, so I think I could see him gag and spit. He’d be a little irritated.”

3) Take a lot of toilet breaks

Image copyright Shutterstock

Image caption Even superheroes need the bathroom

Scott Derrickson recently tweeted how he “ran into Joe Russo outside the men’s room,” while he was editing the Doctor Strange film in 2015.

“He pitched me the basic story for both Infinity War and Endgame [and] I told him that if he could make the first movie work, the second movie would be incredible.”

Which begs the question: How long did Joe keep his colleague waiting for the loo?

“I think it was like a 10-minute pitch,” he laughs.

“But the funniest thing is that people are like, ‘Do you guys get together at Marvel all the time and have meetings about the storylines?’

“And the answer is, ‘No, it all happens on the way to the bathroom’. That’s where everyone runs into one another and starts exchanging information.”

In other words, don’t hold it in.

4) Keep the story simple

Image copyright Disney

Image caption The search for the Infinity Stones is the key plot device of Avengers: Infinity War

For all of the acclaim heaped on Infinity War, the plot can be boiled down to three words: “Thanos wants stones”.

“We have so many characters in the movie that we knew if the plot was complicated, it would take too [long] to explain and that would take away from the characters and the action,” said screenwriter Chris Markus on the DVD commentary.

Even the number of Infinity Stones caused a headache, said co-writer Steve McFeely.

“Had we invented the idea of Infinity Stones in a vacuum, I’m sure we would not have decided there were six of them. Six MacGuffins is a lot for one movie.”

To keep things moving, the Russos dictated that every scene “had to do more than one thing”.

So the opening sequence – in which Thanos crushes the Hulk, kills Thor’s brother Loki and steals one of the Infinity Stones – conveys three plot points in two minutes.

“It establishes Hulk’s journey – he’s been defeated and doesn’t particularly want to help [Bruce] Banner over the course of the movie,” explained Anthony Russo.

“It establishes a vengeance story for Thor by taking out his brother, and it establishes the plot for stone collection.”

5) The odds should seem insurmountable

Image copyright Disney

Image caption Just another day at the office

“I wanted to make a movie where being a superhero wasn’t a free pass,” said Joss Whedon, about scripting the first Avengers film in 2012.

“Where things were tough enough that you would be as strong as you could possibly be and still not be enough to deal with what was going on.

“The stakes,” he added, “are always the same.

“The stakes are: You could die.”

6) Acknowledge the ridiculous

Image copyright Disney

Image caption He’s behiiiiind you

When your heroes are up against a sentient robot who’s ripped an entire city off the face of the planet, it pays to acknowledge that everything’s a bit far-fetched.

And so, at the climax of Age of Ultron, Hawkeye takes stock of the situation and says: “We’re fighting an army of robots and I have a bow and arrow. None of this makes sense.”

“I refer to that as ‘inoculation,'” Whedon explained. “He says the thing we’re all thinking, and it plays.”

7) Talk to the animators

Image copyright Disney

Image caption Hulk and Thanos are based on motion-captured performances by Mark Ruffalo and Josh Brolin

The Avengers films are some of the most effects-heavy movies in history, with four major characters – Thanos, Hulk, Rocket and Groot – created by computer animation.

Making them believable is a crucial task, so both Whedon and the Russos started working with artists before the scripts were written.

“Thanos was difficult,” says Joe Russo. “We knew we were sunk if Thanos wasn’t photo-real, so we spent two years doing research and development on Thanos and making sure that he would work correctly.”

For his debut as the Hulk, actor Mark Ruffalo even wrote a letter to the effects team, stressing that his motion-captured performances were only the first stage of creating the character.

“We are all playing this part,” he wrote. “I have taken it as far as I can and you guys have to use what you can and then forget about me and become the Hulk.”

“It was incredibly inspiring to the animators,” recalled Whedon, who set aside a day to explain how the movie portrayed two different aspects of the green-skinned monster: “The one Bruce Banner becomes unwittingly and the one he decides to be”.

���What I found out later was that most of them – in fact all of them – had not been able to see the script, so they were just animating things in a vacuum,” he said. “So it was incredibly productive.”

8) Always put the raccoon on a chair*

Image copyright Disney

Image caption Size isn’t everything…

Have you ever noticed that Rocket – the CGI raccoon played by Bradley Cooper – is almost always standing on a chair?

“That’s a great point,” says Anthony. “When you’re dealing with characters of radically different sizes, it presents a lot of framing challenges.

“You start to learn tricks in blocking [staging the scene] to keep everyone in the same relative plane, so you can actually shoot them.”

(* or a table)

9) Ban t-shirts

When we first meet Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in Avengers Assemble, she’s tied to a chair, barefoot and in a vest top, apparently being interrogated by shadowy Russian forces.

Of course, she breaks free in spectacular fashion… but her outfit made it one of the hardest stunt scenes to choreograph.

“Whenever you say ‘she has no sleeves’ to your stunt co-ordinator he cries man tears,” Joss Whedon noted afterwards.

“It’s very difficult to do a lot of these things if you can’t pad up the knees and elbows.”

10) Embrace the darkness

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Joss Whedon clashed with Marvel during the making of Age Of Ultron

Making these films is “incredibly physically demanding,” says Joe Russo, and there will inevitably be dark days.

“When you start out, it’s all perfect in your head,” Whedon told BBC News in 2015, “and when you work with the actors, it gets better.

“Then at some point you’ve been editing for so long you start thinking. ‘Who am I? What’s happening?’ and you forget why you ever showed up, and what you’re trying to say. And you despair. It’s a very bleak experience.

11) Emotion > action

Image copyright Disney

Image caption Thor is sad

Adding character beats to action sequences has been Joss Whedon’s calling card since Buffy – and he pulls it off perfectly in Age Of Ultron’s climactic battle, where Hawkeye stops whaling on the bad guys to discuss home improvements.

“You know what I need to do? The dining room,” he tells Black Widow. “If I knock out that east wall, it’ll make a nice work space… What do you think?”

“That sequence is, for me, the reason I show up,” Whedon said in the commentary. “Where two people in the apocalypse are talking about re-doing the dining room, that says more about their relationship than anything else I could have done.”

The Infinity War team made a similar decision. Their film doesn’t end with a battle but the emotional fallout of Thanos’s “snap” – scenes that left some viewers in tears.

So what will they feel when they walk out of Endgame?

“Catharsis,” says Joe Russo.

“We realise how impactful the Infinity War ending was,” adds his brother.

“We saw how difficult it was for many people and that’s something that we really respect. So we were very committed to paying off that kind of a story.”

Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at Toldnewsnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@Toldnews.co.uk.

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[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

'Avengers: Infinity War' Nearly Included Adam Warlock and a 'Giant F**king Snake' (Exclusive)

With only days to go until Avengers: Infinity War arrives in theaters, no one has been able to confirm too much of what is in the movie. (We know that a band of superheroes will take on an Infinity Stone-obsessed baddie played by Josh Brolin, and that's about it.) We now know at least two things that aren't in the movie -- one of which is "a giant f**king snake." "Just huuuge!" screenwriter Christopher Markus exclaimed.

Markus and Stephen McFeely are the writing duo behind all three Captain America movies, as well as Thor: The Dark World, which makes them uniquely qualified to pen the Marvel Cinematic Universe's 10-years-in-the-making crossover event. The writers sat down with ET over the weekend to talk about what was cut from their first drafts, what writing a fake script entails and why it's so hard to get Cap right.

ET: How much of the story and the specifics of Infinity War were you given by Marvel when you signed on to write these movies?

McFeely: Not much.

Markus: Less than you'd think. We had Thanos and his love of Infinity Stones and, basically, a blank check to bring in anybody who was available in the MCU.

McFeely: And to draw on any of the comics that were helpful and stray from them as necessary. We've always done that. Between Winter Solider and Civil War, we use what's helpful from the comics and then make a different thing out of it. So, we did the same thing here.

You introduce new villains in Thanos' Black Order. But were they any other characters from the comics you considered introducing in this, but ultimately didn't, for whatever reason?

McFeely: That we didn't end up? Yes.

Markus: Well, there are some in the original Infinity Gauntlet series that are-- Like, we didn't introduce Adam Warlock, because it's a massive backbend and you practically have to make an Adam Warlock movie to introduce him. He just can't walk onscreen. So, there was a brief moment where we were like, Ehhh..., and then we were like-- [He points to the movie's poster.] We have that many characters already! And then there were others we couldn't use. Like, Silver Surfer would have been useful, but we can't touch him. Currently.

McFeely: I don't want to spoil anything, because then if I tell you that they're not in it, you'll go "Oh, they're not in it." But there are certainly a handful of pretty crazy things that we put in for several drafts and took out.

Is there anything from your initial brainstorming or from those first drafts that got cut along the way that you wish would have made it in?

Markus: I will tell you something that you will go, "Oh, I'm really glad that's not in there."

Tell me.

Markus: A giant f**king snake. Just huuuge!

McFeely: Oh, we had a big snake. [Laughs] That's right.

Is that true?

McFeely: Yeah, we had a big snake in there.

Markus: We were sort of running on empty and we were like, "Snake? Big snake? Let's try big snake." And then everyone went insane.

In what context would a giant snake fit into this?

Markus: I can't tell you the context! Epic snake!

McFeely: We took a lot of swings at this movie and ended up with the right one. But it took a while.

You write the characters you think will be interesting to see paired together, but were there any pairings that came together on set that surprised you with how well they worked?

McFeely: Thor meets the Guardians is hilarious from start to finish. Hilarious. And that's a lot of improv and a lot of structure and a lot of script, but it's just this magical, little fairy dust thing of characters you love rubbing up against each other.

Markus: It's not a surprise, but we got to do more with them this time. Lizzy Olsen and [Paul] Bettany are great together. They just work perfectly together, and it was a pleasure to see them doing non-super scenes together. It was almost like filming a regular movie. A lot of the time, you know, people are on a crane, in front of a green [screen], and you're like, "I think we're telling a story," but there were a couple scenes where it's two people talking in a room and it was like, "These people are great!"

McFeely: It was lovely.

You've had the chance to write for many of these characters in Winter Soldier and even more so in Civil War, but you are writing for everyone in the MCU here. Was there someone that you initially found hard to nail down, hard to capture?

McFeely: Yes, to a degree. Remember what we're trying to do here is tell a story where 23 -- on the poster here -- have just enough of an arc, so that it's satisfying to watch and they're not just in the deep background waving. Some of those characters are beloved and are going to have a small arc and we resist that, like, Oh no, this is one of my favorite characters. This person needs to be in half the movie. But this is a movie where that can't really happen. So, what we said to ourselves is, We've got two movies to work with, so if your favorite character has a smaller part in the first movie, odds are they're going to have a much bigger role in the second movie. And that had to be OK by us.

In terms of the craft, of physically writing these characters, was there anyone who gave you trouble at first?

Markus: In a way, oddly for having written three movies, Cap was a little bit of trouble.

McFeely: He doesn't always come easy.

Markus: When you can dedicate the whole movie to him, his sort of single-mindedness becomes the whole point of the movie. He is the dead center of everything and he's going forward and people are trying to turn him, and he doesn't turn. When he's not the dead center of the movie, when he's in an ensemble, it's harder to throw just a little to him. Because you think, "Oh, he's not reacting. Why isn't he reacting?" Because he's f**king Captain America. He doesn't react. He punches you. So, he was a little hard to calibrate in a way that I didn't expect. I thought he'd be the easiest one, because we were like, "Ah, we know him." [Laughs]

"Because he's f**king Captain America. He doesn't react. He punches you."

Did you write Infinity War and Avengers 4 simultaneously, or did you write Infinity War, turn it in and then start Avengers 4?

Markus: No, we broke them together. [We] had two different boards and went, "That might be a better idea for that." And eventually had two movies and then wrote them one after another.

McFeely: In fact, we wrote the rough draft of one, wrote the rough draft of two, finished one, finished two and then I think turned them in on a Friday and the following Friday. We basically turned them both in to Marvel at the same time.

The title that you had on the cover page of Avengers 4, is that still the same secret title we don't know yet?

McFeely: No, it's always the secret working title.

Markus: I think the internet knows the working title of these movies, and it was just that 2. [The working title for Infinity War is reported to be "Mary Lou," so the title of Avengers 4 was "Mary Lou 2."]

How did it work writing these two scripts at the same time, seeing there will be two movies that come between them with Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel? Did Marvel give everyone marching orders to keep everything straight?

Markus: No, we had to talk [to the other writers] and not dictate, but make certain requests like, "It would be fantastic if you could sort of have a scene that looks a lot like this at the end of your movie." But also that provided story in some ways...In a purportedly interconnected universe, you don't want to either bog everything down with the shared stories, so that nobody can have any fun, but you also don't want them to become so disconnected that it seems like they're no longer in a shared universe. But I think it really paid off for reasons that I won't explain and you'll understand a year from now.

What goes into writing a fake script? Or fake scenes for the script? I imagine they have to be realistic enough to convince whoever is reading that they are actual scenes...

McFeely: [Laughs] I know. That's why it's crap. Our assistant, Joey, for a couple of tries, would just do sort of a bad scene that could be the result of a fake thing over here. It got really complicated, you're absolutely right. Let's say someone died in the fourth scene, right? That's got a ripple effect throughout the whole thing! That means you gotta change the whole thing. You can't do that.

Markus: It's basically the scene with the only interesting thing that happened in it taken out. So, it's like if the door opens and it was your long-dead grandmother, the door would open and it'd be, like, the waiter and he brought you your coffee and left and then the scene ended.

McFeely: So you read that and go, "This is a terrible script!" [Laughs]

Have you had any actors disappointed when they found out one of the fake scenes was fake?

McFeely: I assume! I absolutely assume!

Markus: I think there was literally one point where at least one section of the crew prepped the fake scene. I remember there being some confusion like, "I brought all those things," and people were like, Oh f**k. Prep the blue pages. [After] a year and a half in Atlanta making this movie, I have no specific memories of anything, but it was like a scene said, "They bring in five cans of Coke," and it was supposed to be -- in the real script -- "He brings in five Infinity Stones." And someone showed up and said, "I got those cans of Coke." It's like, "Kev gave you the wrong script. OK, hold on, hold on..."

Anthony Mackie said the final fight sequence in Infinity War is 25 pages. Is that true?

Markus: Probably. When you say fight scene, it's not one thing -- it's a sequence. It could be a sequence intercut with another sequence. It's not like it's just two guys in a room hitting each other for 25 pages.

When you are writing one of these movies for Marvel, who seemingly has endless resources and the ability to do anything you dream up, do you worry about things like page count? Or about the production side of what you write?

Markus: Only after a while. We have occasionally been told, like, "That actor is not available" or "That actor is too expensive." But we've also been told, "Do that anyway. We'll get him."

McFeely: "We'll figure it out," yeah.

Markus: Story wins out. I remember on the very first one [Captain America: The First Avenger], there's a big fight on a train -- an awesome-looking train -- and there was a point in pre-production where we were told, "A train is out of the budget. We just can't do it. Can it be a truck?" And we rewrote it as a truck and everyone was like, "That is so lame." [Laughs] And suddenly the money appeared for the train, because the movie would have suffered had it not!

McFeely: So, we constantly write terrible scenes in order to get the scenes we want!

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