#if she’s there than I guess this storyline will end with the Hulk giving her a proper burial

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #243

[unassimilatedsoul]

So i recently saw Furiosa, and... look, it's not a bad movie, but the people who made it clearly didn't understand a lot of what made Mad Max: Fury Road great.

(Spoilers for Fury Road and Furiosa, I guess)

The only reason I even saw Fury Road to begin with is because a bunch of "Men's Rights Activists" were getting angry about it online, and I figured anything that made them that mad had to be worth watching. And it is, I highly recommend it for a variety of reasons. One of the simpler reasons is that while Max and Furiosa are the main characters, a lot of the supporting characters were women. This meant that none of them are individually in the dubious position of "representing women", so you can have one of them be stereotypical (being in a love story) or weak (try to run back to your abusers and beg for mercy) without it reflecting on women as a whole by virtue of having other women around who don't do that.

A good contrast is Avengers: Age of Ultron, which justifiably got flack for Black Widow's storyline largely being concerned with her infertility. The problem is, since there's only one woman on the team, there's no good options to avoid controversy. If you gave her the Hulk's plot it becomes a problematic PMS allegory, Hawkeye's is about secretly being domestic, the villain existing at all is Iron Man's fault, Thor isn't as plot-relevant, Captain America is "too perfect". If you have only one woman on the team, there isn't a single plotline in the movie that you can give her without it being problematic. The solution? Have more relevant women.

What does this have to do with Furiosa? Well aside from Furiosa herself, the only plot-relevant woman in the movie is her mother, who dies in the first act. I can understand if they want to emphasize her being a "woman in a man's world", but that doesn't justify having literally no important women in her life. Especially since we know that there were: the Wives.

There's a point in Furiosa when she is being held in the vault with the women being kept by Immortan Joe as sex slaves, but rather than have her meet any of her fellow captives, she quickly escapes and joins Joe's mechanics disguised as a boy. This would have been an ideal place to have her connect with other women in the same situation as her, see all their different reactions to it, and join a community with other women.

Maybe there's another girl about her age who she becomes friends with and they plan an escape together, but they get caught (maybe because another one of the women sells them out in an attempt to curry favor with Immortan Joe) and her friend gets captured or killed. Furiosa hesitates, and we flash back to the scene earlier in the movie where her mother was captured trying to give her a chance to escape, but she turned back because she was a child who couldn't bear to hear her mother screaming and gets captured again as a result. Back in the present, Furiosa runs, and successfully escapes... but she can't bring herself to flee into the wilderness. She turns back, not in desperation but with determination, joining the mechanics in disguise to keep from being recognized (at least until she's convinced Immortan Joe that she's more useful as less troublesome as an Imperator then as a Wife) as she works her way up through the ranks and begins her plan to break out the Wives that we see in Fury Road. Then the movie can continue as written, except she regularly checks on the Wives to make sure they're ok (or as ok as they can be) and to brainstorm and coordinate her plans, so that by the end of the movie when she's setting up the escape, they have a clear bond and it's clear that Furiosa is fighting for a cause greater than herself.

[piepeloe]

She-Hulk S1E9 (finale)

That was definitely entertaining. Don't know how to process all the other feelings though.

Loved seeing pretty much every character come back, even just for a bit. Nikki and Pug were amazing, so was Jen's Dad.

I enjoyed the 4th wall break, complete with the Disney+ menu, the walk through the lot, and of course Kevin as an AI. It was fun in the moment. But. It sort of meant the show got it both ways? Because yeah, she complained about certain storylines and typical MCU endings, but they still (sort of) did them.

And then the 'real' ending didn't give much of an explanation as to what actually went down? I'm guessing Todd was revealed as Hulkking and leader of Intelligencia, but it had nothing to do with blood? So he got arrested for leaking all the info on Jen? And Emil got arrested for turning into Abomination again? Why was Titania there?

A lot of the marketing for this show was about Titania, and she was barely in it. Kind of weird.

I don't want Abomination in The Thunderbolts, so I'm glad Wong came and got him, but now I am really curious why he did so. Just returning a favor?

Jen's completely at loose ends: no apartment or job, so she could go to NY. I like her and Matt together, even if they probably won't make it permanent. She probably won't fit the vibe for his show as easily.

I wonder if after all of the Internet's speculation this is really all we'll see of the Intelligencia. That'd be hilarious.

Finally, Bruce. I thought I was prepared. I loved that character, and I was so excited with the post-credits scene for Shang-Chi and then some clips for this show, that we'd finally be getting him back. No, he's gone. We might get a Hulk movie, but there will be no Bruce.

Aside from that, I liked this show way more than I thought I would. I hope we get a S2, at the least.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

posting some of my random thoughts on the original six avengers. because technically no one can stop me.

iron man / tony stark

love to see actual mental illness representation tbh. also i feel like a lot of characters that have that kinda snarkyness and wit that tony has all have daddy issues, right?? like, call it the jake peralta complex (just because i like brooklyn nine-nine), where a character acts extremely immature and doesn't take anything seriously, but becomes progressively less annoying when they actually start dealing with and working through their issues.

i feel like tony's main issue as an avenger is his guilt. when you have anxiaty, you constantly worry about something that could happen that could possibly be your fault. this is what causes tony to create ultron. and we all know how that turns out. which just gives tony even more guilt.

also, as far as comics come, i haven't read a lot of iron man comics, but i do know that at some point he was heavily implied to be canonically bisexual. so that's cool.

captain america / steve rogers

ok so imma be honest. not the biggest cap fan. i guess his character is just a bit too much of a blatantly perfect patriotric boy kinda character for me. but, then again, that's also a kinda interesting thing. because he's just a good person, end of sentence.

steve has a really, really strong moral code that he follows above all else. which is also why john walker couldn't be captain america; captain america isn't a government puppet, and has no problem going against the rules (or the law) to do the right thing. steve is also extremely against hurting people, and would give his life up to protect someone else. that alone makes him almost superhuman, because not a lot of people can stick to their moral code to that extent.

the hulk / bruce banner

okay. originally i didn't really like bruce. i thought he was boring. but recently i've actually started liking him a lot more. the whole "i am not the enemy" kind of storyline of someone being shunned despite only wanting to help was really kind of popularized by the hulk comics, i think. and y'know what? it is a cool idea for a character.

i think i especially liked him in the first avengers movie, because he really seemed tired of people treating him like a labrat and trying to get him to turn into the hulk ("sorry, kids. i guess you're not gonna get to see my party trick after all" he really sounded irritated and exhausted in that line, which i honestly loved). bruce himself is sick and tired of not being seen as a person because of the hulk, and the hulk is sick and tired of everyone (including bruce) seeing him as nothing but a threat or nuisence.

thor odinson

having a literal god on the team? valid. but i also do love how thor doesn't completely overpower the others; the first film goes out of its way to prove that all of the avengers are almost completely equal in terms of ability; for example, for what characters like black widow and hawkeye lack in terms of physical strength, they more than make up for in cleverness and stragedy. whereas thor, who you'd obviously assume is the strongest avenger, is proven to be an equal match for iron man and captain america.

when it comes to thor himself as a character, i think thor: ragnarok! and avengers: infinity war have probably the best way of characterizing him with little ideas like bringing attention to how much he's lost, how he considers earth under his protection and any harm brought to it is something he sees as a personal failing.

black widow / natasha romanoff

ohh boy. let's talk about nat, huh?

she's, in my humble opinion, the most tragic avenger. an ex-russian super spy who was raised to kill but decided to become a hero instead is already an objectively cool character concept, but when you take into account the fact that her only real family as a child was fake, but that she would still do anything to keep her little sister safe, and how no matter how much good she does she'll always still just see herself as a killer, her character starts making even more sense.

nat's friendship with clint intrigues me specifically, as a frayromantic, because i absolutely love seeing a deep emotional connection that isn't romantic at all in media. especially with the kind of dynamic these two have; you can just tell they consider each other as close as family, and that they've probably saved each other countless times.

hawkeye / clint barton

okay. this is gonna be a long one.

i absolutely love clint barton. especially in the comics. so you're telling me this working class orphan kid who was raised in a circus and is hard of hearing and has a disabled brother and is bad at relationships is in the avengers? hell yeah.

overall, i think clint's status as the Regular Guy (tm) of the avengers is pretty well known and established; he's just a human. just a genuine, kind-hearted, human being trying his best. and that's another thing i love about clint barton's character: he needs to try so much harder than the rest of the avengers just to keep up, and let's be honest, a team where everyone is a god or a supersoldier or super rich is just kinda boring to watch. (also, as a working class kid with adhd, i honestly relate to the feeling of having to try way more just to keep up-)

also, the thing about his relationship struggles in the comics also interests me, because knowing he's also a child abuse survivor makes me feel like the reason he can't properly express love to other people is because he never really received it himself. but the fact that he's trying so hard means he wants to learn how to.

also, idk why, but clint has real drummer vibes. both in the comics and the movies. and i just love his relationship with kate, like, i feel like in the comics clint's kinda her mentor/father figure, but in the comics (especially matt fraction run) kate is more like clint's older sister, honestly.

ok so i really liked just writing out my marvel brainrot so i might have to make another one of these posts with different characters-

[vozvrate]

winter guard #1 or WHY AREN’T YOU FLYING THE PLANE?????? LIKE I’M SURE YELENA IS A FANTASTIC PILOT BUT YOU LITERALLY HAVE ONE SKILLSKET THAT SUPERCEDES ALL OTHERS AND THAT’S YOUR FUCKING ABILITY TO FLY A PLANE MY GO D-

Leads: Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian & Yelena Belova aka White Widow. Characters: Carol Danvers, Black Widow, Crimson Dynamo, Red Widow, Vostok, Perun, Chernobog, Vanguard, Darkstar & Ursa Major. Mentioned: Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk. Teams: Winter Guard & Avengers. Programs: Red Room and Wolf Spider Spec Ops. Written by Ryan Cady

Background: Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk was arrested by the Winter Guard for crimes against the Russian government, assumed kidnapped and tortured, and any agent affiliated with the Russian intelligence community who disclosed anything about Walters’ arrest will be prosecuted or otherwise punished by the Russian government. The Avengers are incredibly invested in finding Walters and opposing the Winter Guard.

We start off in the Avengers Secure Holding Facility in an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. Yelena Belova is being interrogated by Carol Danvers under suspicion that she worked with the Winter Guard involving Walters’ arrest.

The Wolf Spider Spec Ops group attempts to break her out in order to capture or kill her for her assumed admission to the Avengers regarding Walters and she escapes in the process. Before a Spider can kill her Black Widow gets her out on the back of her motorcycle (this is sapphic culture we stan) and takes Yelena to her San Francisco Base of Operations where Natalya informs her that the Winter Guard is at war with the Avengers and that her reluctance to join sides means she will continue to be a Person of Interest to the Avengers.

(She’s referred to as the White Widow multiple times??? I’m not sure what the basis for this is, I haven’t read enough comics with Yelena to know if this is a new thing, but it does put her in direct thematic contrast to the main baddie of the comic: Red Widow. However the whole Black Widow, White Widow, Red Widow thing is giving very much Suess energy.)

Yelena discloses to Natalya that she’s working alongside Alexei because they have similar interests in the motherland and that their mission did not involve anyone else, including the Guard, or at least it wasn’t supposed to. She doesn’t want any of the Guard dead. Her relationship with the Guard here I believe is supposed to be a reference to the broader theme of Yelena’s (& many Russian people’s) complicated and nuanced relationship to her homeland as well as a storyline that hasn’t been revealed yet.

Mikhail, Ursa Major, is revealed to have been killed, although not by an Avenger, but at the hands of “Red Widow,” a mysterious Red Room graduate that Natalya describes as possibly inhuman. The main story of the comic begins as Yelena agrees to tell Natalya why “Alexei and I went home...and why I do not hate the Winter Guard.” 

Three weeks before...

Yelena and Alexei are working together to break into a highly secure base in order to steal mission details for something called Operation Snowblind, the Red Guardian’s last assignment.

Red Widow is shown working for the Security Council and leading the Winter Guard.

As she’s assigning the task of hunting Yelena and Alexei down she describes Alexei as the U.S.S.R’s “failed response to Captain America,” “declared MIA after the Cold War,” and “resurfaced in the United States after rotting away for years in prison.” But also frames him as a childhood hero for most of those present at the meeting. She describes Yelena as “Yelena Belova aka White Widow, aka Black Widow, aka the Red Room’s second biggest mistake.”

There’s a throwaway line where Red Widow mentions that the Winter Guard doesn’t question orders. But several members like Darkstar, Crimson Dynamo (the defacto leader), and Ursa Major express discomfort at their assignment.

Crimson Dynamo aka Dmitri Bukharin comments that hunting down Yelena may be in their purview but that Alexei was a national hero and he didn’t agree to lead this new iteration of the Winter Guard to be a hit squad. Vanguard aka Nikolai Krylenko seen above in red, says Alexei may never have been someone to idolize and if he was, that person is long dead and that those who looked up to him should be the ones to bring him down anyway.

Alexei and Yelena recover the hard drive containing information on Operation Snowblind. Yelena is skeptical of the hard drive’s worthiness of the impending fight with the Winter Guard and Alexei responds with the Russian proverb: “What the pen writes the axe cannot erase.”

Yelena engages the Winter Guard while Alexei secures an “exit strategy.” The only remarkable thing from the fight was this weird interaction between Mikhail and Yelena (and yes, Mikhail, as in the guy Natalya said the Red Widow killed 3 weeks from now):

I’m holding out hope but the stereotyping so far is either purposeful in order to be refuted and used later but right now it’s in place of Mikhail having an actual personality. I have no earthly, yawning fuck why it was necessary to mention that Yelena smells like Alexei in this other than bearlore but ok. Reading forward this dynamic can be inferred, at least to me, as a very close friendship or allyship that eventually turned adversarial as Mikhail and Yelena continue to snipe at each other’s choice of work:

This is interesting twofold: one, we have no idea what Operation Snowblind is and why it would make Yelena choose to forgo her usual operational mystique in order to obtain the hard drive, but from what is shown in Widowmakers she’s disillusioned by the government and contract work in general and may be moving onto more loftier pursuits in the name of the Russian people. Two, it’s interesting in a story building sense because Yelena’s love for her country being directly at odds with that country’s love for her is very relevant in modern Russia:

WIDOWMAKERS PANEL 1:

WIDOWMAKERS PANEL 2:

...i digress.

During Yelena’s fight with the Guard Alexei is doing something with the hard drive (???) and is interrupted by Vanguard, who’s wearing an iteration of the Red Guardian’s OG suit, he then boomerangs the kid through a window which was funny. But if I have to suffer through this boomerang again after waiting until 2019 to get a proper shield I’m rioting.

I simply hate him, your honor. 

Anyway, Alexei reveals there’s a traitor in the Winter Guard who’s helping him, he then presses a button and blows up Crimson Dynamo. Darkstar appears like she might have gotten to Dmitri quick enough but I think the implication is that he’s dead or critically injured.

Red Widow pursues Alexei and Yelena as they run to the plane, but Yelena incapacitates her. From the following panel I think that Red Widow and Yelena are going to become dedicated enemies moving forward.

The issue ends with Yelena chiding Alexei for murdering or attempting to murder Crimson Dynamo. From what Alexei says, Operation Snowblind has something to do with the “enlightening of superheroes” which he describes as “rarely a painless process” therefore murder is justifiable, I guess?? It’s still not clear if the spy working with Alexei is Red Widow or someone else entirely.

I didn’t mind this issue. Clearly it's attempting to tie in different themes from the film in order to pull in the movie’s audience, but I don’t hate it. What I’m getting more nervous of is another fucking villain arc for Alexei. They appear to be setting him up as a foil for Yelena: Modern Russia vs Soviet Ideals. I really hope this isn’t the case or if it is I hope he’s redeemed in a way that doesn’t involve another death. 

The next issue is released September 29.

[perpetuallyfive]

some thoughts on Endgame

I always find it a lot easier to write very long rants about things I dislike than praise about things that I like. It just feels like the good things are obvious, you know? So compiling them in lists feels a little pointless.

It’s why I haven’t written anything about Endgame yet. I honestly thought Infinity War was pretty average at best, so the fact that I fucking loved practically every single minute of Endgame kind of caught me by surprise. It checked so many of my boxes that it’s almost hard to even articulate. 

So much of what was good about it honestly felt almost inevitable.

Mark me down as pretty confused then as I read some of the negative responses. Like... obviously, I’m just being dense. Nothing exists, especially on the internet, without some negative response. And I don’t even mean that in a pithy way. People are really different and what works for one person doesn’t work for everyone.

Which brings me back to my earlier point.

Just because I thought some of this stuff was obvious or amazing doesn’t mean everyone did, so here are a few observations, in an unordered list:

The way that time travel works in the movie is deliberately left a little vague, in my opinion, to allow wiggle room for the multiverse moving forward, especially as they expand into streaming services.

They do however clearly say that you cannot change your own past. Bruce says it. This means that Steve absolutely is not in our timeline, whatever the writers might say about it now. He’s not. In our timeline, he knew Peggy married someone else. That’s in his past. He cannot change his past in his own timeline. Therefor he cannot change who Peggy marries in his own timeline.

Seriously, he’s not in our timeline. They’re just wrong.

This means you have a million possibilities in fanfic for all the things Steve did that sent out ripples in his own new timeline or the many multiverses he could have created. It’s a fucking candy shop.

Try not to be too hard on the writers for having no idea what they’re talking about, I guess; it’s hard writing characters that are way smarter than you.

Am I less than charitable toward the writers because of their dumb takes on Natasha in defending why she’s not a part of the funeral at the end? Yes.

Just put a fucking second wreath there, god damn, would it have been so hard.

Framing Nebula’s storyline as a bad thing, which I’ve seen a few times now, is frankly insane to me. She isn’t, as the daily dot put it, killing herself. She missed her chance to save her sister five years ago and has regretted it every since. The second Gamora is at stake this time, she makes it clear that she would sacrifice anything (even someone who looked like her), to prevent losing her sister again. That’s great shit!

I am bummed we don’t get original Gamora back, but I’m also intrigued by the soft reset this does on her relationship with everyone in the Guardians. I wonder what their plans are with that in Vol 3. In many ways, her healing process away from Thanos was sidelined in the first two films and this allows the possibility of reframing that as more central to the focus in the third. Fingers crossed.

More Gamora and Nebula in general but especially in Guardians 3 please; I might threaten to retroactively like this movie less if this is the last we get of this much attention on their relationship, please and thank you.

The problem with the MCU crossover movies is they have to exist as two things at once. They have to be a movie that works as its own thing with good timing, pacing, structure, and an end that feels conclusive. They also have to pay off minor characters that mainstream audiences might not care about, as part of larger world building and the stories shared across an entire universe. Endgame, in my opinion, did a much better job of it than Infinity War or Ultron. (it’s hard to compare it with Avengers, when the scale was much more intimate.) 

No but really, I don’t think a lot of us in fandom have an appreciation for how many people don’t know any of this shit we take for granted. A shocking number of the people I have spoken to IRL who are entirely apart from fandom didn’t even know what “on your left” was a reference to and were actually a little confused by that moment. 

Just think about that and understand the levels this movie has to operate on at all times. It’s almost enough to make me feel bad for the writers, except they still said dumb shit about Nat, so I’m good.

I did actually love all the more subtle callbacks, like Natasha’s necklace and T’Challa knowing Clint’s name, but the direct quotes were pretty great too, especially Steve’s reaction to “I could do this all day.” Super charming.

Another awkward thing about the crossovers is they have to try to level the playing field slightly and there are some Avengers who are just way more powerful than others. Carol was disappointingly absent, but she’s also insanely OP. It’s why Thor got depressed and it’s why the Russos now say that Hulk will have limited use of one arm. They nerfed some of the classic Avengers, but kept Carol full powered just off in space. That’s preferable, so long as she gets more screen time later and jesus please fix the wig. Or just do the actual haircut now that it doesn’t have to be a secret.

Please dear god the hair is great in concept but seriously if there’s anything about the straight agenda ruining Endgame it’s how borderline soccer mom they managed to make that hair look.

Natasha deserved better and I think we can all agree on that, but here’s hoping that her prequel is deliberately designed to echo the destination we know she’s headed toward and to give her a better resolution more in line with what she deserved. I want to believe that they didn’t give her a full ending entirely because they knew she still had a movie coming up and didn’t want to create that sense of finality that might keep audiences from seeing it. Here’s hoping they can make it work. 

Like specifically with very different writers, please. Hopefully a woman. You’ve maybe heard of them before, one of them wrote Guardians, the movie that nobody thought could work and fucking made it work. Yeah.

Tony and Steve were always headed in opposing directions at the end of their arc. This has been covered. Tony went from living selfishly to living selflessly. He went from a playboy bachelor, to a husband, to a father. His one priority when he decided he had to save the world wasn’t even himself, it was specifically keeping his daughter in existence. He went from a selfish dick with daddy issues to someone whose only priority was being a dad.

it was perfect. Like people can say otherwise... but they’re wrong.

 I’m an expert on this, clearly. Tony’s death was perfect. 

THEY FINALLY GAVE ME RESCUE. I loved everything about it, from Tony planning it carefully for a long time -- like obviously I think it’s because he was customizing the design to be more in line with Pepper’s wants and values, like it is in the comics -- to the fact that it actually does look more defensively focused but still super capable in battle. I want to watch this movie a billion times, honestly, but this scene in particular. I need to know everything about what her suit can do.

Steve was always going to end up settling down. We don’t actually know what he did in his own timeline -- again, IT’S NOT OURS -- so there’s a chance he was still a bit of a troublemaker, but honestly the five years seemed to take a lot out of him. He doesn’t always need a war, and that actually is forward momentum and growth. I get that some people are against the idea and think that getting to be with Peggy was somehow a step back, but I’m not sure I buy that.

Tony taking out the arc reaction at the end of IM3 wasn’t actually about him erasing his trauma or leaving it behind, and Steve getting to be with Peggy doesn’t erase his growth. It was part of it.

Theoretically Sharon was always an option, except the audience (and fandom) response to her was pretty terrible, so actually she wasn’t.

And not to just keep harping on points made in an article that I think is frankly pretty terrible, but Steve going back to the past instead of settling in the present wasn’t about compulsory heterosexuality so much as it was about a franchise that is going to keep making movies needing to keep the next decade of films in mind. 

If Steve is still around in the now, that will always linger as a nagging question. The same way that people can’t shut up about where Carol was for the last decade, Steve hanging around in retirement refusing to help would hang over the next phases of movies like a cloud. Putting him in the past lets him live (which he deserves) and clears the slate.

Let Steve rest but, more than that, dear god won’t you please let Chris Evans rest too.

This goes back to how these movies, especially the crossovers, have to work on almost too many levels and it’s frankly shocking that they manage to do it and still have moments of sincere humanity and sweetness. 

Like I’m not going to try to oversell it, but seriously fucking think about the fact that one of the most successful blockbuster movies of all time actually has quiet moments where people talk about trauma, loss, parental abuse or neglect, failure, and depression. 

Hey remember when the movie gave us acknowledgement of Rhodey and Nebula’s disabilities? In the possibly going to be most successful movie of all time, they had characters with disabilities say how they’re different now but it’s okay, they work with what they got, and they bonded over that and it was so fucking shocking for me and BEAUTIFUL. Just a reminder for us all that THAT happened in the movie that may actually pass Avatar to become the MOST SUCCESSFUL FILM OF ALL TIME.

Just allowing another moment to let that sink in while I try to wrap this up (for now).

ps I can’t believe this movie made me have nice thoughts on Ultron, which I fucking despise with most of my being. 

Actually I might have to take back every nice thing I said, just because of the Ultron thing. How dare you, film.

But still lol at the fact that even talking about Ultron for a few seconds was enough to make Tony Stark pass the fuck out. Hard same, Tony. 

LOOK OBVIOUSLY I LOVED MORGAN STARK. I AM EXCITED ABOUT MORGAN STARK. SHE IS A PRECIOUS PERFECT ANGEL AND I LOVE HER.

SHIT.

So this is a totally incomplete list but here you go. Some of my thoughts on Endgame.

[hackedmotionsensors]

Here we go Endgame lets talk about it! 

BELOW THE CUT

So I’ll say this!!! Over all!!! I liked it a lot. For a lot of reasons.

I also HAAAATTTEEEEEEEDDDDDDDDD a lot of some of the choices. That’s okay. We can have mixed feelings about movies especially the end of a saga. I think they did a good job of getting nods where they needed nods, bringing in storylines from previous movies and conversations that needed to happen.

And they fucking whiffed it on at least THREE REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS!!!

So lets start with what I liked.

1) STEVE TONY EVENT. DO YOU HEAR ME IT WAS A STEVE TONY EVENT  aaaah oh my god. From the second Tony lands back on the planet and Steve RUNS to him before even Pepper and he’s holding him and just the look of agony as Pepper takes him away and the fight where Tony says ALL THE SHIT WE HAD BEEN SAYING!!!! WHERE WERE YOU! YOU LIAR!!! and he RIPS HIS HEART OFF OF HIS CHEST AND GIVES IT TO STEVE BECAUSE YOU FUCKING BROKE HIS HEART YOU FUCKING FUCKED UP STEVE!!!!! FUCKK!!!! And then reconciling because “Resentment is corrosive” UGHHH!!! And Steve just barely containing himself when Tony shows up ughh!! UGHHH!!!!!!! AND THE ASS JOKE!!! THERE’S NO HETEROSEXUAL EXPLANATION ABOUT THAT!!!! TONY SAW STEVES ASS AND WAS LIKE TAN FRANCED IT LIKE BITCH YOU NEED AN FRENCH TUCK OF MY DING DONG IN YOUR BUTT!!! and Steve over the intercom being like “omg tony not in front of the kids” AND A STEVETONY SOLO MISSION!!!!!! 

A STEVE TONY...

SOLO

MISSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TONY CALLING STEVE MY MAN  WOW. WOW. FUCKING EXCELLENT ON ALL ACCOUNTS THANKS SO MUCH!! I was given some bread thank you I will eat this stevetony bread nom nom nom nom nom.

2) Tony’s arc in this story was really beautiful. He finally got what he wanted, some perspective and closure with Howard. And I know initially you want to go “Hey Howard was really abusive” and yeah he was. But its complicated. Because Tony even says in Homecoming he was trying to break the cycle of abuse and he DID with Peter and Morgan. You can see just HOW MUCH he cares for his daughter and he was willing to say fuck you to the UNIVERSE in favor of not losing her. Its always a different perspective when you see your parents as people and not as YOUR PARENTS. 

Also Tony lying on the table with Natasha UuU. A lot of the interactions with Tony and the other characters were so good. Tony and Rocket. Tony and Nebula. Tony and Carol (tho brief). Tony arguing with Pierce like his little gay senses were like “This guys a nazi I bet”

3) I genuinely liked the Time Heist. I DID  NOT LIKE THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL IN THIS MOVIE BUT I’LL GET TO THAT. But I looooved the Time Heist. From the New York stuff with Steve fighting Steve and knowing his dumbass loses his shit when he hears things like “Bucky’s still alive” and being done with his own stupid shit “I can do this all day” “YEAH I KNOW” (which btw at this point was basically the last thing he said to Tony in Civil War so maybe that doesn’t have its plucky little fire anymore and now is a sore spot). I loved Loki running away with the Space Stone (even tho as of now I’m still not sure what the FUCK THAT MEANS!? more on that in a sec) Loki making fun of Cap. Loki rolling his eyes at Odin. Tony dressed in a shield outfit screaming Medic!!! The gang all on the elevator and Hulk screaming about it and LOKI WAVING HIS HAND AT THE HULK AS THE DOORS SHUT!! TONY SITTING ON THE BRIEFCASE! SCOTT GOING “how the FUCK did you not know they were Hydra LOOK AT THEM They’re a COP!” Then jumping forward to the 70s and Steve’s legs that went all the way up to his asshole and Tony dressed as a doctor

I drew a doodle of it here you go lol I’ll post it properly later

oh did this not happen? Idk what movie you were watching.

4) The big battle at the end was SO FUCKING COMIC BOOK I WAS LOSING IT. Also I keep calling it the Battle of Five Armies or Return of the King lol T’challa BATHED IN A HALO OF LIGHT LIKE YES WE STAN A KING. MY WIFE

MY.

WIFE!!!!!!!!

VALKYRIE!!! ON HER BEAUTIFUL WHITE HORSE!!!! (also not being given an actual name and called Valkyrie is the funniest goddamn thing. Like that’s like going into a Footlocker and talking to the manager but calling them Manager)

CAROL!!!!!! WITH HER BUTCH ASS HAIRCUT PUNCHING THANOS IN THE MOUTH AND WRECKING HIS SHIT

WANDA FINALLY FUCKING FLYING. LIKE. F L Y I N G. THAT is what the Scarlet Witch is SUPPOSED TO DO!! SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE SO POWERFUL IT TOOK EVERYONE TO TAKE HER DOWN CMON!!!!!! And she almost got him too. Honestly if it were down to Carol and Wanda they probably could have ended Thanos alone. 

Korg coming back for more comic relief AND PUTTING HIM IN TAIKA’S PINEAPPLE ONESIE!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING.

5) This is controversial. And I know it won’t age well. And that’s okay and feel free to disagree with me entirely. 

But I liked Fat Thor lmfao. I know it was played as a joke for the wrong reasons but I laughed. I was like fuck yes his belly looks like mine and that’s not why it was funny and it SHOULDN’T BE but I laughed lol. But on the other hand I think it had partially to do with Hemsworth constantly being like “no no we don’t need a shirtless scene” or just sort of a gag at how Marvel always has a shirtless scene and its just kind of funny to have it not be someone cut. EVEN THOUGH its a fat suit and I can’t take off my fat suit but Hemmy can and that’s kinda shitty. 

but I laughed. I can’t help it. He was a whole ass mess and I thought it was funny. And I know there are Thor fans out there who wanted more for him but like I said before this was a SteveTony event. This movie and this win worked because it was Steve and Tony finally coming together again.

It felt honestly the most comic book Avengers of the entire series. 

And true to comic book events

it whiffed the landing.

Before I get into dislikes I’ll say that I liked this movie more than I disliked it. I cried H A R D at the end of the movie. Because its not a movie that’s an on its own kind of movie. You had to have gone through the journey to get here. The pay off is completely lost if you only watch this movie. Or you only watch one or two of the MCU. Or if you’re like a few people I’ve talked to where they only like Steve and Tony. Or they only like Thor and Loki. Or they only like the Guardians and hate the avengers. If you have hate in your heart for any of these characters the payoff of this movie is pretty much lost.

The theme of this movie is clearly about moving on when things come to an end. When things stop or end or we lose people we love you have to move on. Steve says that at the beginning of the movie to our apparent gay representative straight director Joe Russo.

But like Tony said before.

Steve’s a fucking liar lmfao

But lets not start there. Lets start with the fucking timeline.

I hate.

I H A  T E EEEEEEEEE TIME TRAVEL!!!!!! AS A PLOT!!!!!!! WITHOUT ANY RULES!!!!!!!!!

I enjoyed what we SAW of the Time travel but the rules itself DIDN’T MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE.

So when they’re suiting up Hawkeye for the test run Bruce explicitly says that all these movies that say “if you go into the past and fuck up the past you fuck up the timeline and the present/future is fucked because you’ve changed things”

ARE WRONG. HE SAYS THEY ARE WRONG. He says “If you go into the past. The past becomes your present. But the present then becomes your future. So you can’t go back and un fuck your parents to make you. Or kill baby Thanos. because that happened and you can’t change that but you can change youre present”

WHICH DOESN’T

MAKE ANY

FUCKING

SENSE. BECAUSE THEN YOU AREN”T TIME TRAVELING!!!!!!!!! 

If you go into the past yes YOU are in your present but the world is still being written around you STILL so you go into the past and change something (loki making off with the space stone) that’s CHANGED. You’ve created a new reality.

THEY EXPLICITLY SAY THIS IN DOCTOR STRANGE AND Y’ALL I KNOW DOCTOR STRANGE WAS BORING AS HELL BUT IF YOU’RE GOING TO USE TIME TRAVEL AS YOUR STORY DEVICE THEN YOU CAN’T SAY THAT SHIT IN DOCTOR STRANGE DOESN’T WORK WHEN YOU’VE ESTABLISHED IT AS THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL.

THE ANCIENT ONE EVEN SAYS “you create a new reality. And it fucks shit up”

LIKE!?!?!??!

WHAT THE HELL!!!

So now Loki has the time Stone in reality B, in reality A Steve goes back and puts the stones back where they belong (and I guess.....gives the soul stone to Red Skull????????? wouldn’t you try to get Natasha back????like that itself is a whole movie of Steve going back and putting things away but ??????) 

And then we get to the end of the movie where Steve says Fuck you to Peggy’s reality A family and now on this timeline where they’ve time traveled he lived an entire life WITH Peggy but like.......you were Captain America and you just said “No don’t worry about JFK being assassinated. Or the Civil Rights movement. Or stopping Bucky in any capacity. Or maybe saving MLK. Or Peggy continuing to join SHIELD. Or stopping ACTUAL NAZIS from infiltrating SHIELD.

Because if you go with this idea that Steve went back and “lived a life” What did he DO then. What did he FUCKING. DO?

You’re not Steve from 1940s going back to 1940s. You’re Steve form 2019 going back to 1940s. No wifi. No medicine. No cell phones? Gays are still being persecuted. You can’t drink from the same fountain as black people (or rather they can’t drink from your white fountain). 

You are.

CAPTAIN.

AMERICA.

and you just said nah fuck it its fine? This shit can all happen but I don’t super care because I get to dance with Peggy. Peggy who on her own had this whole life. Who did all this stuff IN YOUR NAME IN YOUR HONOR. Who married someone else. Who had a FAMILY. Who had a NIECE that you made out with. And just..... wha....

Like if he had gone back and danced with her but came back with Natasha in exchange for the soul stone but during his travels had aged. Or met someone else.

Like movie wise and story wise I get wrapping up Steve’s story. And maybe the person Peggy is talking about in the video of her in TWS is actually Steve from 2019. Maybe that’s it. But it still doesn’t make sense because they FUCKED UP THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL SO WHO THE FUCK KNOWS.

So. lol I wasn’t a huge fan of Steve at the end of the movie. I know they needed to do something to end the movie with a finality. With Steve being DONE. But instead of finality or closure I just have so many goddamn questions. And I don’t hold it against Evans or even really the directors per say. But I’ll blame Markus and McFeely because they were writing since TWS. They HAD the Cap STORYLINE to write about and that was how they ended it.

its like when you pack for a very important trip and you plan out all your outfits but then wake up late and end up throwing whatever you can find into your suitcase and run out the door.

It felt final and not final.

But I’ll tell you this. From my perspective and obviously I’m going to skew it this way because its me and FEEL FREE to disagree with me.

He left because Tony and Natasha were dead. The two people that he felt the closest to (sorry Sam, Bucky and Sharon [who we didn’t even see as dusted wow]) were gone. Natasha and Steve had become a brother and sister. He would always come back for her clearly. Trying to cheer her up as she’s crying. Natasha understanding Steve’s feeling of being lost. Tony inspiring and fighting with Steve. Like that’s part of what I liked about this is taht you could really feel how Steve and Tony needed each other for this to work but also they needed to not hate each other. 

Also I kinda knew the second Scott said “That’s a one way trip!!” before the 70s bit that Steve was going to stay in the past lol What an asshole.

Also I don’t think it was very UN-Captain America because I think people don’t always realize that a lot of the inspo for the MCU came ALSO from Ultimates. And if Ults Cap was able to go back to the past he would have in a heartbeat. Who was a more depressed Cap? Ults or MCU? I just don’t know.

Now.

Natasha.

This was another one I kind of saw coming from a mile away as soon as it was just the two of them on Vormir. I was kind of hoping they’d Hawkeye a way out of the deal by like throwing his daughters picture or something like that. Or that it would be Hawkeye. But they both had an upcoming movie/series so I didn’t know which way it went.

And then there was that big jump. And I was like oh my god they did it right

AND THEN THEY FUCKING DIDN’T.

Wow. Wowwwwwwwwww

Markus and McFeely 

REALLY DID THAT

THE RUSSO BROTHERS REALLY DID THAT

THEY DID THE SAME FUCKING SCENE TWICE.

The first time you get because Thanos is a dick and abusive and he would absolutely throw his favorite daughter into the soul pit (which I guess Isn’t picky because she didn’t love him back she hated him but I guess its a one way street with the ol’ soul stone)

And they don’t say during that one (far as I remember) that its a permanent exchange. 

But they sure emphasized this time. And they sure killed the original avenger who was the only girl on the team. Who never got a chance to live.

Who Whedon made herself call heself a monster because she can’t have a family and then she gets a found family and then SHE DIES. THEY KILL HER. AFTER HAVING A FAMILY.

WHAT THE FUCK. Like...my problems with Scarjo aside (which are similar with my problems with Paltrow) You DID. BLACK. WIDOW. FUCKING. DIRTY. I don’t care that there’s a movie coming out that was her story. You were supposed to give her a fucking story. And now her story is only how she relates to her TEAM OF MEN.

And now to my last point that I didn’t like. And I don’t hate this one as much as Steve’s ending or Natasha’s ending.

I don’t like that Tony died. I know this is wrapped up in a lot of emotions I have about Tony Stark the character. Robert Downey Jr the person. Tony Stark the character in all his forms is very important to me and I love that he has many forms. 616, Ults, AvAc, Avengers Assemble, the MCU. But his story is important to me. And its heartbreaking. I’m tearing up a bit now writing this out. 

I’m just the type of person that hates that a character, in a fantasy setting where you have wizards, valkyries, robots, talking raccoons and trees, Dave Bautista, a giant green rage monster wearing chinos, that you have to take this one part and make it realistic. That we have to keep realism kill this character off because it doesn’t make sense if someone doesn’t die. Because the stakes aren’t high if you don’t make them personal as well.

Which is true like you don’t have high stakes (the planet or universe getting dusted) if you don’t are about some of the people in that universe personally.

I just would have rather he had retired. Moved onto his little farm with Pepper and Morgan.

I think they did right by Tony. Storywise, ending...all the stuff the dropped the fucking ball on with Natasha and Steve they gave to Tony. And on one hand I get it and I appreciate that because (sorry to nat and steve fans truly) I care more about Tony. Tony started this whole thing. In a miracle of accidents they got the right actor, the right story, the right character, the right director, the right timing technology wise, the right social mood and made solid gold. And none of this would have happened if it weren’t for that amazing accident that happened.

And I think it has more to do with not wanting to let go or move on even though i can always go back to Iron Man 1 at any point and start the journey over again and have a laugh but there’s always going to be that ending where its final. Its done. Its over. And in the simplest of terms. I don’t like it. You have to know when to bow out and I respect and appreciate that. I don’t wanna see Iron Man 8 with geriatric old RDJ trying to fumble into a mocap suit.

I understand. I appreciate. But I don’t have to like it as a person. And that’s okay.

Its all about moving on isn’t it? That’s the theme of the movie. Moving on.

Even if you’re steve and your moving on wipes out the existance of a whole other family lmfaaoidnsfasfada sorry sorry. 

Okay. yeah that’s all I think I can think of. I’m sure there’s a ton more other people have mentioned aside from what I wrote. Like its a LONG movie and I think its hard to say hey “they fucked this up” or “they got this right” for EVERY SINGLE THING. There were so many characters. Nebula’s story could have been better. Thor’s story could have been more involved. Hawkeye could have been more important throughout the series. Janet could have come back for the final fight and healed Tony. Like there’s a ton of “this COULD have happened” But it didn’t. And that’s okay. It may not be right but its okay. I think they wrapped it up as best you could while still making a good movie. I think you probably can go back after a long while and look at the Endgame and go yeah that wasn’t so bad for an ending. Endings are hard to do with any sort of skill. Its why the joke that the third movie always sucks. 

There’s still a ton of stuff to look forward to.

Falcon/Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Wanda and Vision (i GUESS??? lol), Black Widow’s movie. 

Maybe Steve solved more than he let on who knows. WHO KNOWS. Maybe Mjolnir left him haflway through the journey when she knew he was going to ditch his 2019 family (who again....mostly dead now)

I love Tony 3000. Which I found out is more than a ton which makes Morgan Stark a lot smarter than I am lmfao

[blanket-fish]

Guardians were hurt by Endgame

Throughout the hulk rant I just kept thinking "Please don't get started on the guardians, please don't get started on the guardians" And then I did! This has been a long time coming and will be long and not Russo friendly. Fair warning.

Alright. I'll lay foundations first. In infinity war, the Guardians weren't actually treated that badly! They flew in in a spaceship, bickering like they do, and whilst Quill did seem comedied up, I'll let it pass. There were stupid lines, and a little bickering, all inkeeping with their characters. Rocket was taken seriously a little (And I will bring this back up later)! And Starmora in this movie, oh god my heart.

Gamora. Deserved a better storyline than this. She did. But she was in character, so I guess I'll give them that.

The Guardians, whilst being viewed as silly, did seem to keep the skill levels they should have in the fight. They all gave a damn about Gamora (Remember this). And Quill had a human reaction, if impulsive. Whether that's in character is debateable, but I'm happy to let it slide. As I am with them barely reacting to their teammates dying. By which I mean not happy at all but don't want to write a paragraph on it

You might be thinking I've been a little too generous given the warning I gave. I had to be, really

Because im going to rip endgame to shreds

Endgame. Oh endgame.

"But blanket-fish, they were barely in it! You can't possibly have enough content to marathon rant!"

FALSE. I HAVE ALL I NEED TO MAKE THE RUSSOS CRY FOR WHAT THEY FUCKING DID.

Rocket. Rocket, Rocket, Rocket. The complex character the Russos were too weak to understand so they made him comic relief instead.

We'll go in order. Rocket doesn't know what's happened to his team until Nebula gets to Earth. We get a two second scene of them sitting together. That's it. The next time we see Rocket, he's quipping like nothing happened. Defense mechanism I'll accept, but it doesn't come across that way.

We get a nice little reference to him knowing Thor when he goes with Bruce. They don't really talk like their friends in this film but the Russos are self assured enough to think we'll believe they are anyway.

Just gonna sneak Nebula in here because she's the only guardian (yh iffy but oh well) to get any semblance of a good story. But I'm not feeling kind so: Why the fuck does she not interact with Tony after the ship scenes. They've fucking bonded Russos. Are you such blithering idiots that you think Tony Stark would just wipe his hands with her? NO. That is not how that man works. But why am I surprised.

The conference scene with Nat was nice. Really great that it was never relevant again and she doesn't seem to mourn Natasha or Tony but that's another post in itself.

Back to Rocket. Most of his seems are for humour which is... not inherently bad but he lost his entire family. Maybe the Russos don't have the emotional capacity or common sense to grasp this, but THAT HAS A FUCKING IMPACT.

He... pep talks Thor a little? Sounds a bit sad when talking about Frigga? Runs? Again, really should have mourned Natasha, but that's universal.

And OH MY LORD, THE GUARDIANS HAVE RETURNED! Well, all but Gamora.

Firstly Quill. Quill who *is dead* for a bit, comes back, fights some shit cus what else are you gonna do, sees his dead lover and naturally goes "Oh SHIT I thought you were dead" and there's a very emotional scene where he realised something isn't right -

Oh wait. That's a good movie, my bad. Endgame treated the whole thing as humorous.

Oh yeah I'm bitter. Quill then attends Tony's funeral for some reason? Maybe as support for Rocket or something idk. And then they're back in the ship and - Wait, what? This can't be right... *checks notes* Holy shit. They don't mourn Gamora? Or mention her at all? Russos you actual buffoons it may have been 5 years in universe but for all but Rocket and Nebula it's probably been a week at most since they found out Gamora died. THEY AIN'T OVER IT

Before I head down a rabbit hole, let's move on to Drax. Oh, loveable, complex Drax. How the Russos have hurt you.

At this point I think they haven't actually seen the Guardian movies or even asked anything except the names and who's in a relationship. Drax, as a reminder since the IW and Endgame glossed over it, had a wife and kids before Thanos had them killed. Therefor, he's in the "I want Thanos to pay!" Club. He went for Thanos in IW but... That's it. Maybe there could have been a character moment where he decides to let Nebula kill Thanos instead and it could have been great.. ah but the Russos only took a writing class for 3 year olds and implemented none of the magic.

Again, and this is gonna get old real fast: Why wasn't he mourning Gamora. He does give a damn. Why can't people get this through their heads. He's not a robot with muscles. He should care dammit

Groot! Has no lines so uh... 1.5 second reunion with Rocket... existed, I suppose, unlike all other reunions. Again, should be mourning Gamora. And I hope this isn't coming across like I'm telling people how mourning should look I just... Don't want Guardians 3 to forget it happened.

Mantis! Nothing to say here really. Showed up for 3 seconds. I can't even remember if she was in the ship scene at the end.

I'm trying to avoid talking about Gamora. But I shall do it.

There are words but. I'll tone it down a little.

RUSSOS YOU CAN TAKE YOUR "GAMORA DIES AND IS REPLACED" SHIT AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR GODDAMN ARSES LIKE THE CRAP IT IS. I DON'T KNOW WHAT COMBINATION OF DRUGS YOU WERE TAKING WHEN MAKING THIS FILM BUT I HOPE IT INCLUDED PAIN MEDS BECAUSE YOU ARE GOING TO NEED THEM

Hrrgh. I do not like where they took Gamora at all. She shouldn't have died, but it would be fine if she didn't stay dead. Which she did, by the way. We've literally never seen this new Gamora on screen before. She is a different character. Gamora is dead.

But you know what? Even ending a survivor's story by them being unable to escape their abuser and ending up losing their life to them pales in comparison to the pure terribleness of doing all that AND THEN bringing back a different version of them and acting like shit can just go on.

I cannot physically put into words the way I feel about Gamora in this movie but. Imagine your friend died and then you were introduced to their twin who was cryogenically frozen for a few years and expected to treat them like the same person.

Rocket. I will bring back just before I wrap this up. You know how I mentioned the conference scene? It's heavily implied that this was a regular thing and thus, Rocket would likely have bonded a little, yes? Nat's dead and Carol is never in one place but Rhodey and Okoye are on Earth. Am I meant to belive he's just gonna... Go off into space and leave them? Does he have some kind of long range signal to contact them? Maybe like Carol uses? But can the movie say that please? I can make anything work in theories but there's no proof that any of this movie makes sense.

To conclude, Endgame is a pile of shit, I've never seen more blatant disrespect to a group and the Russos are apparently physically incapable of valuing platonic relationships like the family the Guardian's have. Or siblinghood.

[thelastraigeki]

My Thoughts: TMNT’s Jennika

So... I am still in the process of digesting and trying to accept that now there is a fifth Turtle around in IDW’s TMNT Universe, and she’s certainly made a lot of buzz through out the entire comic book community. And I can even say that my initial reaction to this was.... perhaps uncalled for and even anger laced. I am not really good with certain additions or even subtractions in canon when it comes to my favorite franchises, case in point my negative reactions to the current Alien-Predator canon which... I’ve largely abandoned.

I want to talk about the craze for the new fifth and female Turtle, Jennika, who seems to have taken IDW’s TMNT universe by storm since IDW’s TMNT#95. Now... the news was spoiled to me on Facebook, but I went out and read the comics anyway, and understood the context better but... I’m still trying to process and accept this and it’s not easy for me.

I’ve been reading IDW’s TMNT comics since 2011 when the comic first came out, and have been a faithful reader since. I’ve collected the annual comics, I’ve collected the side story companions such as the Villains series, the Micro series, and the TMNT Universe series. All of them are well done, the comic has been such a treasure and an expansive one to that with newly created and fresh characters... From Alopex, Kitsune, Aka, Lindsey, Libby... And those are the new established female characters I’m talking about...

But Jennika... I haven’t been invested in. Nor have I really felt any gravity towards... And this is a question I am asking myself in order to accept this character with open arms and give her a chance.

Yes. I want to give this character a chance. I want to like this character. I really do... I honestly, really do like I appreciate Alopex, Kitsune, Lindsey and Libby, and all the other ladies of TMNT..

But... right now it’s just... hard for me. To even know she exist in the comics and possibly become a fixture in future TMNT projects.

Why?

The answer... is very, very simple...

Venus De Milo.... Let’s talk about the female Turtle who the entire TMNT fandom treats like the red headed step child that they keep locked up in the basement and occasionally feed fish heads to. Yeah... Let’s talk about the OTHER female and fifth member of the TMNT and the new kid, Jennika.

For the longest time, and I’ve known this in the back of my mind and in the forefront that IDW is pulling from EVERY known TMNT canon out there-- as TMNT has a multiverse, and every TMNT universe is as equally true as the other. Meaning... it’s ALL canon... At least, some universes more so than others. And I kept on asking myself: “So are they going to be pulling Venus into the IDW comics, or introduce a female Turtle?”

Venus De Milo showed up in Saban’s Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation and she wasn’t very well recieved. As a matter of fact, she’s become the object of hatred and mockery in the fandom... Even her conception as a character was something badly executed, as Saban and Fox Executives had wanted Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman to create a fifth and female Turtle, but also wanted her to be the love interest to the brothers...

...Who were no longer mentioned to be brothers related by blood, as she wasn’t really their blood sister because if she was, this would’ve made the romance between her and whoever of the brothers she wound up with be.... really, really, really, weird and well... wrong!

But Venus is the reason why we haven’t had a fifth Turtle in over twenty two years. Now, I could be wrong on this, so correct me if wrong but... the very memory of her and the experience of working with Saban had caused something of a distancing between Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and Peter even had decreed a rule that there was to be no female Turtles.

Let’s face it... Venus was a bad idea...But she didn’t HAVE to be...

And for some reason, I am more okay with Venus than I am with Jennika. You heard it right... I am more for Venus than Jennika. No, I am not slamming or dumping on Jennika but what I am saying is... I think I would’ve preferred Venus.

IDW would’ve have to given her a complete overhaul in design and even backstory since she wouldn’t really be a sibling. And I would’ve been okay with that... I’d like to think I’d have been okay with that anyway.

So... Why am I having a hard time with Jennika?

She’s already got some great design points over Venus. Let’s face it, Jennika has Venus beat in ever department over Venus as a mutated Turtle... For one, no Turtle boobs because Turtles are reptiles and have no need for something like that, and biologically, female Turtles are almost indistinguishable from males unless you look at the claws and tails, and the plastron.

I think it may have something to do with her debut and what IDW did with the character. And IDW has given us a wonderful plethora of female characters through out the eight years they’ve been doing this.

I suppose... I feel, and this is my opinion and mine alone... That they really didn’t do a lot with her.

In her debut, she was shown to have some connection with Darius Dunn in an attempt to overthrow Splinter when he seized control of the Foot clan, then tried to assassinate Splinter herself but ultimately had been defeated... and then he took her under his wing to get her to see things differently. And she’s perhaps been seen in a few battles when Splinter tried to seize control of the criminal underground... Then she was focused to be a love interest to Casey.

Which... I kind of had an issue with since for me, it was all about Casey and April.

And when Michelangelo had decided to bring some orphans to the Foot clan after the whole Triceraton invasion and the Rat King arc, Jennika was more or less regulated to be a babysitter.

I suppose... this is why I feel like they didn’t do much with her when compared to characters like April, Angel Bridge, Alopex, Sally Pride, and Kitsune.

And then the blood transfusion happened and... the comparison to She-Hulk’s origin had come to mind and... I suppose I didn’t react to the news too well.

Another thing which I think contributed to my initial reaction to Jennika is... I hold the IDW TMNT Universe in such a high regard, to a high standard as I do with the original black and white Mirage comics.

I am used to there being just four Turtles, and only four Turtles because that’s what numerous TMNT media has always shown us, and since my focus is on the Mirage comics-- a storyline called the Sons of the Silent Age showed us why the Turtles were something special and unique, and that they are the first and last of their kind. This is something which even the 4Kids 2K3 series adapted though they toned down the tragic ending from the original story...

I guess what I am saying is... I’m such a fan of the Mirage continuity that... I wanted everything to more or less conform to what Mirage did but have their own spin on the mythology... and this was such a drastic change, I reacted badly... and I shouldn’t have.

I want to owe an apology to @idwpublishing, Tom Waltz, @mooncalfe for my initial negative reaction to the news on their new fifth Turtle.

I sincerely wish everyone the best of luck on the IDW comic and hope that I can warm up to Jennika as I have grown to love the other characters.

[anogete]

Bullet List of My Very Random Thoughts on Endgame

Don't click the keep reading link if you haven't seen the movie yet.  I don’t want to be responsible for ruining your first watch of the movie.  Serious, guys.  Only click if you’ve seen it.

I really enjoyed it and I'm happy to suspend my disbelief with almost all of the time travel plot element.  All things considered, it was masterfully executed and a beautiful love letter to the characters, movies, and fans.

My original six lovelies:

- Tony's arc was beautiful and heartbreaking but in a very satisfying way. I think most of us saw that one coming with the way IW set him up against Thanos.  It was that much more poignant when you saw he was happy with Pepper and their little girl but still couldn’t step away from helping make things right if he had the ability.  Pepper knew he couldn’t avoid involving himself despite not wanting to jeopardize his life with her, so her encouragement at the beginning and her comment to him right before he died (“We’re going to be okay. You can rest.”) just break my fucking heart.  So does Peter crying over a wounded and dying Tony, telling him they won.  Oh man.  The waterworks were something fierce.

- Nat was a surprise but packed a shockingly hard punch for me.  Maybe that was in part because it WAS a surprise and also because when we opened the movie she felt so fragile even though she was the one keeping the hope alive.  That moment with her sad little sandwich and the news about Clint being so far off the rails that Steve interrupts?  That alone made my heart hurt for her.  My stomach dropped when I saw her and Clint climbing the mountain on Vormir as I realized what had to happen to get the Soul Stone.  I was hopeful they could game the system and jump off the cliff together and both live, but I understand why this would cheapen it.  She always felt like the glue that kept all these big personalities and big egos together, so it hurts that she’s gone and the group has been fractured with Tony’s death and Steve being out of the game.

- As for Clint--I’m assuming he returns to the family man life unless something big comes up in the future.  I don’t know anything about Renner’s contract, but I’d like to see Hawkeye again.  The hair and the sword and the arms and tats and revenge attitude really did it for me.  How very dare they make him look this edible.

- Thor coping with grief by drinking beer (that beer belly, though!) and playing video games with Korg and Miek was actually refreshing and endearing.  I know some people didn’t like seeing him that way, but it gives his character so much depth.  Besides, he was back to his kickass self by the end of the movie.  I do love that he handed over New Asgard to Valkyrie to rule, and I hope we see him pop into movies in the future, especially with that adorable rivalry between him and Quill.

- Bruce and his newfound truce with Hulk was a delight to see and completely unexpected.  Also, Bruce/Hulk with the muscles and the voice and the five o’clock shadow and the glasses?  Ummmm...  ::is tempted to write Hulky Bruce smut::  I hope he’ll be in future movies.

- Steve.  Ahh, Steve.  I loved the fight with himself and the funny little winks to the viewers with the lines (America’s Ass, “I can do this all day”, “Hail Hydra”).  I loved that he was encouraging others to move on when he couldn’t seem to do so himself.  I LOVED him wielding Mjolnir, especially when the lightning started flying out of it.  Thor’s reaction to that (”I knew it!”) was adorable.  But, I’m torn with Steve’s storyline.  I wanted him to get his happily ever after.  I was dreading seeing him die in this movie, which I thought was definitely going to happen.  But what was so shocking to me was that he got exactly what I wanted him to get but it felt so cheap to me.  I left the movie satisfied with everything but the way they ended things with Steve, and yet I couldn’t seem to put my finger on why I started hating it the more I thought about it.  I know a ton of people are Stucky ‘shippers and, while I love his relationship with Bucky, I’ve never ‘shipped them together.  I’m not thrilled about the way they glossed over that relationship, but I understand the necessity because of time constraints.  I don’t mind that Steve handed the Shield off to Sam because I assumed either he or Bucky (or even both) would pick it up in Steve’s absence.  Bucky would have been a nice full circle between the two of them on their separate paths, but I also understand why it was given to Sam.  Bucky obviously knew exactly what was going on, though I thought the distance between him and Steve was a bit strange.  Maybe they were trying to make a point of showing that Steve and Bucky have both changed.  Whatever.  I can live with it, I  guess.  No one wanted Steve to get his happy ending more than me.  So, what gives?  I couldn’t figure out why it felt so wrong and cheap and like the worst kind of fan service.  @bulmavegotaku sent me THIS ARTICLE which actually articulates what has been bothering me.  Just because I wanted a happy ending for Steve doesn’t mean that it was what was best or even what was in-character for him.  I know other people thought that him hiding in the past to live his life with Peggy WAS in-character, but I don’t think it was at all.  And that’s not even to mention the fuckery with Peggy’s timeline.  Yeah, yeah, they left the question of who Steve married up in the air by not having him divulge that info when Sam asked, but I’m not stupid.  He says she’s the love of his life.  If he’s going back, he’s not going to share a dance with her and then go marry some other chick in the past.  Please.  And that makes Steve Sharon’s uncle.  Which is... weird and WTF.  But maybe they thought we’d forget all that since it is now an alternate reality or whatever.  So, Steve’s “ending” was the one major thing I really didn’t like.  I’m sure one day I’ll write some fic that branches off into an AU in which it didn’t happen that way.  It’s a little too fresh right now for me to tackle, though.  I need to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

Other things I liked:

- Nebula’s dynamic and (at times) heartbreaking storyline as we watched her internal struggle actually play out in front of us with two Nebulas.  My heart dropped when Rhodey was able to return to the present time on Earth, but she got trapped in the past with Thanos.  I’m so happy she survived.  Plus, her game of finger football with Tony was so goddamn endearing for both of them.

- Gamora being alive and the thought of watching her future interactions with Quill all over again.  I love the sexual tension and the chase for sure.  However, if past Gamora ends up in present time, then did all that stuff with Quill and the other Guardians even happen?  Her past self is in the present and so is Nebula’s past self.  Plus, Thanos plays a part (even if he’s off-screen) in much of the two Guardians movies, so if his past self died in the present, did this create some sort of alternate reality in which the things we witnessed didn’t actually happen in that way?  This kinda ties in with my dislike of Steve’s storyline.  Too much fucking with time travel begins to unravel the plot and create holes that I start picking at.

- Thanos turning to dust.  So so so satisfying.  What an absolutely arrogant turd.

- “On your left.”  What a wonderful moment when you heard Sam’s voice and saw T’Challa appear from that portal followed by all of the others.

- While I didn’t enjoy it, I did think the fight between Steve and an emaciated and exhausted Tony at the beginning of the movie was so well done and well-acted.  What a low point to climb out from.

- The scene in the beginning when they kill Thanos was also pretty low, but I thought a great way to start the movie.  You can kill the bad guy, but that won’t change all the bad he did.

- I feel like Scott Lang is all of us.  The scene with him outside when his taco blows away was so wonderful. And the scene in the diner when the kids want pics with Hulky Bruce, but not poor Antman.  So awkward and so funny.

- The closure that Tony got with his dad.  Oh man, that was the best and made even better because he was a father himself at that moment.  Thor being able to speak with his mother and move forward from that was also unexpected but so needed for his character, especially at that moment.

- While I love Carol Danvers and the Captain Marvel movie, I didn’t want her to come in and steal the show from the core group of Avengers as we ended this era of the movies.  I’m pleased with the way they used her to rescue Tony and Nebula and then go off to bring some order to the rest of the universe before returning to help in that final battle.

- Speaking of Carol--the scene during the battle when she takes the new gauntlet from Peter in an effort to get it away from Thanos and all the badass women fall in line behind her to assist brings a tear to my eye.  What made it even better is it caused the two bros seated beside me to mutter and wiggle uncomfortably in their chairs because it was obvious they didn’t really like that part.  As Beyonce would say, “Suck on my balls,” boys.

- Wanda’s white (red?) hot rage toward Thanos when she finally came toe-to-toe with him during the battle.  YES.  I was cheering her on.

- Steve’s ass.  Oh, I’m sorry America’s ass.

- Did I mention Steve wielding Mjolnir?

- Loki being the sneaky little snake he is and grabbing the Tesseract during the confusion when Tony gets hit by the flying door.  And Hulk screaming in frustration about how many stairs there are since he wasn’t allowed to ride on the elevator with everyone else.

- Bucky’s luxurious hair.  Although, I do want my beefy Civil War Bucky back.  On a side note, can someone please please please fix Sam’s facial hair before the next movie or show?  Please?  I do not like it at all.  Anthony Mackie, please go back to WS or CW facial hair.  I’m begging you.

I’m ready for more Guardians of the Galaxy featuring Thor.  I’m ready to finally watch the first Spiderman movie before the new one comes out.  (Don’t shoot me for not seeing it yet!) I’m pumped for more Carol as Captain Marvel.  I love the original characters the best, but I understand we have to move forward and I’m trying to embrace these new babies even though they aren’t Tony or Nat or Steve.  I’m consoling myself with Bucky and Sam right now.

And most of all, I’m excited to start writing again.  I started something last night, but I don’t want to give many details until I know if what I threw on the wall is going to stick.  If it does, then it’ll be Wintershock, take place after Endgame, and will probably be fluffy and free of life and death situations.  My heart can’t take any more of that between Endgame and Game of Thrones.  I’ll pop in periodically to keep anyone who cares updated on new material from me.  Can’t wait to see you again over on AO3 this summer!

[spectral-musette]

So, the Avengers: Endgame spoiler ban is lifted, and I’ve had a chance to mull over my responses, so I’m finally going to try to write up some thoughts. I was hoping to have seen it again in the interim, but that didn’t work out, so I’m relying on memory from one viewing – it’s possible I’ve missed or misinterpreted things.

Spoilers to follow, so scroll carefully, Ye on Mobile! Also, sorry about the Long Post (TM), I apparently I had a lot to say.

 Time-wise, for its 3 hour length, the film didn’t feel long to me. It maintained its momentum and nothing felt laggy or tedious, even the big battles.

Time travel-wise… Okay, positive stuff first. I thought that revisiting the settings of earlier films was absolutely delightful and nostalgic. It felt very satisfying to have those call backs to earlier adventures and cameos of old enemies (Crossbones, Pierce, Zola, and, surprise, even Sitwell). The Cap vs. Cap fight was hilarious, and I loved seeing Steve so utterly exasperated with himself (“I can do this all d-“, “YEAH, I know.”). The scene in the 70’s was good, though some of the Tony and Howard stuff rang a little hollow to me. I think that’s mostly because I’ve always had trouble reconciling Dominic Cooper’s Young Howard Stark (who I’m very fond of, especially after Agent Carter) to the older version of Howard we see in various flashbacks. They look, sound, and act nothing alike; my friends and I always joke that Hydra replaced Howard sometime in the 60’s. So while an aged up Dominic Cooper Howard probably would’ve made me emotional, as it was, I was more moved to see 20 seconds of Jarvis than for all the stuff with Tony talking to his dad about fatherhood.

Using the “Quantum Realm” for time travel was… okay…. Insofar as the “science” of the Ant-Man films has absolutely never made any damn sense (and that’s …. fine. They’re funny and joyful, and I enjoy them a lot anyway. I don’t go to Marvel movies for “realistic” science fiction), throwing time travel into the mix felt like it just might as well happen. I guess I understand why they chose to go with the “nothing we do in the past can affect our own timelines” approach, but frankly it’s still giving me a headache. I also understand not over-explaining, but there’s a middle ground there that wasn’t quite achieved for me. I guess, based on the scene with Tilda Swinton (sorry, haven’t seen Dr. Strange and don’t know her character’s name) and Bruce, we’re supposed to assume that every journey to the past (cue Anastasia music) creates or perhaps just shifts the time traveler into an alternate reality that branches from their original reality at that point? And then when they travel back to the time they started from via the quantum realm, they return to their original version of reality. So the actions that they take in the past affect that alternate reality, but not the reality that they came from and return to. That’s the only thing I can figure out that makes sense to me at all, but unfortunately the film didn’t make that especially clear. Maybe seeing it again would clarify? So this is gonna be a big factor in how I feel about Steve’s ending, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Also, a tangent re: time travel… While Tony (an engineer) and Bruce (a biologist) are both brilliant, this seems a little outside their areas of expertise! You know, wouldn’t it be great if we had a character who was an astrophysicist who could really tackle this type of thing - OH HEY, we do! I realize that there were probably issues with getting Natalie Portman back in a substantial role, but I love Jane Foster a lot and I would’ve loved seeing her work with Tony and Bruce to save the universe with a handful of Pym Particles.

OKAY, there’s an awful lot to cover, so I’m going to break down some of my feelings by character just to try to stay organized.

(First, a disclaimer that I haven’t seen Captain Marvel yet, so while Carol seemed like a great character, I don’t have a lot to say since I don’t really know her yet. That said, this seemed like an adequate introduction to the character and I am interested to know more. We have the problem of “if Fury could’ve called her anytime why didn’t he call her during the Chitauri attack/to fight Ultron/etc.” But all the individual titles that come after the team-ups have that problem a little bit… Where were the Other Avengers in Thor 2 or Iron-Man 3, etc.? Sometimes you just have to accept and move on.)

Briefly:

Nebula and Gamora, Tony, Bruce, Scott, with a quick note about Wanda and a very conspicuous absence

And the heavier stuff regarding:

Thor, Natasha, and Steve (and Sam and Bucky).

Nebula and Gamora:

While the Guardians aren’t really my thing, I did vaguely know that in the original Infinity Gauntlet comic storyline, Nebula takes the gauntlet from Thanos and fixes reality. I understand not following the comics exactly for the sake of surprise and to fit with the changed version of the universe, but it still felt wrong to totally take that away from her. Especially given what Thanos has done to her, personally, it seemed fitting that she was going to be the one defeat him. I’m glad she was still pivotal to the story, but it felt like an extra kick in the teeth that past!Nebula was the catalyst for Thanos catching up with our heroes rather than getting to be the one who saves the universe. And forcing her to kill her past self felt like it should’ve been treated with much more gravity than it finally was.

I’m really glad we “saved” Gamora by bringing the version of her from the past into the current timeline (however that works), but I feel so bad for anyone who’s really invested in Gamora/Peter Quill. It’s so heartbreaking that their entire history never happened as far as she’s concerned, that we’ve not only removed that very key relationship, but her character growth over the past how many years. It is at least hopeful; Peter remembers, and has the chance to woo her again, but that’s still got to sting.

Tony:

So Tony Stark sure did die.

I’m not sure… he really needed to? I mean I don’t think I get the rationale of the Infinity Gauntlet killing/maiming the user. I recall the handwavey line about gamma radiation, but if you don’t immediately die after using it, couldn’t you juuuust, say, use the Reality Stone to be like, “hey what if I wasn’t mortally injured”? Couldn’t somebody ELSE do that? I’m not sure I get that.

So that said, I’m not sure if RDJ was really pushing for “you gotta kill me off” for dramatic effect or just to step out of the franchise? It would’ve been kinda cool to see retired Tony working as Avenger-support, working on suits for Rhodey and future Iron-heroes (Iron Patriot? Iron Heart?), mentoring Peter and other youths, and living his nice life with Pepper and their munchkin.

But what a way to go, huh? Dramatic self-sacrifice saving the the planet(/universe?), and a funeral that almost everybody who’s anybody shows up for.

Bruce:

I’m with Valkyrie that I preferred EITHER version to PermaHulk Bruce. Honestly, the Hulk himself had sort of become an independent character, especially after Ragnarok (my issues with Ragnarok aside). So by Bruce settling into this “I look like the Hulk but I act like Bruce” limbo, are we … essentially killing the Other Guy? I don’t like that. I mean I prefer Bruce obviously, but I’m really uncomfortable with that solution.

Scott:

I really love Scott and he was delightful as always in this film. I’m heartbroken for him that he missed (another) 5 years of Cassie’s life, though. I’m also pretty sad we won’t get to see the little girl who has played Cassie so far in any future films since we’ve aged the character up to a teenager. Also, I would’ve liked to see more of Hope! I loved Scott and Hope’s little moment when Hope calls Steve “Cap” and they trade expressions between Scott going “SEE, HE IS REALLY COOL, RIGHT?” and Hope being like “Yeah, okay”.

Overall I guess the Ant-Fam is sorta tangential to the main MCU Avengers cast, so while it was nice to have everybody play together, briefly, I’m pretty content that we’ll see more of Hope (and Janet!) in future Ant-Man/Wasp titles.

 - Similarly, while T’Challa and the Wakanda fam were definitely underused in Endgame (especially the entirely absent Nakia), Black Panther 2 is happening. It’s disappointing to not get a substantial amount of characters that you like in the big team-up films, but it’s good to know they’ll be returning later.

Wanda:

We are really leaving Wanda in a rough place of having lost her twin brother and her android boyfriend within a pretty short amount of time (that’s rough, buddy). Plus, one of the characters that we’ve seen her have a pretty strong bond with is Steve, and he’s out of the picture too. I’m not sure where we’re going with this character, honestly. Hopefully it’s not continuing to hurt her.

It really seemed conspicuous that nobody so much as mentioned Vision by name in this film. Wanda referred to him indirectly, but that was it. I get that Vision isn’t immediately able to be saved since he didn’t vanish in the Gauntlet event, but, yikes, can anybody besides Wanda please attempt to give a damn about him?

I know sometimes we like to pretend that Age of Ultron didn’t happen to us, but Vision was still an interesting character, and some major plot points of Infinity War focused on the value of Vision as a person. I feel pretty bereft that he’s (apparently) gone beyond recall with so little mourning.

Thor:

*heavy sigh*

Thor’s characterization was….???

Unpopular Opinion: despite its good points, I overall didn’t really like Ragnarok, and Thor already sort of felt out of character to me at that point.

Another Unpopular Opinion: I actually really love The Dark World. Thor’s relationship with Jane, and his characterization of gentleness and humility in that era really were important to me.

And I get that Hemsworth is genuinely good at comedy and probably likes doing it. But Thor has always been a funny character. We just used to be laughing with him instead of at him.

I was so uncomfortable with the way the film framed Thor’s brush with depression and alcoholism. Because Thor has lost so much at this point, he has every reason to struggle. I want to say that Thor wouldn’t have given up, but the same time I can believe that this almost unimaginable weight of loss (Frigga, Odin, Loki, Heimdall, The Warriors Three, Asgard itself) would take some toll. And yet the framing of his scenes treats his grief and despair as cause for humor. We’re expected to laugh about an unkempt beard and a big belly instead of being concerned about the fact that a character that we loved considers himself a failure. And there’s nothing funny about this situation to me. It just made me uncomfortable and sad. Revisiting Thor 2 and having him talk to Frigga was on the better side, but I’m disappointed that we couldn’t save her.

Natasha:

*heavier sigh*

Okay, I think a lot of the problem here is that it’s just really difficult to kill a main character any time other than in the last act (we also saw this problem in Star Wars Rebels, but that’s another can of worms). So because Natasha died at such a midway point in the movie, I still can’t shake the feeling that she’s not really dead. Nothing about it felt final to me. Clint trying to emphasize that, because Red Skull said so, it was impossible to bring her back (it’s freaking RED SKULL, why would we trust him???) just made me think even more that she was definitely coming back. Everything seemed to point to her dramatic reappearance and then it just … didn’t happen. That’s not to say it won’t happen in a future film, though, but it still feels deeply unsatisfying and unceremonious now, and that feeling really was a blow to my overall enjoyment of the film.

It also sat really badly with me that Natasha made this choice not just to save Clint (which I would believe; their friendship is really great and I love seeing Natasha’s extremely profound but non-romantic bonds with Clint and with Steve (though I would’ve preferred Natasha/Clint to Natasha/Bruce)), but because she fundamentally felt less worthy than Clint. I don’t like the idea that Natasha went to her death still feeling such guilt, still feeling like a monster (according to that awful scene in AoU), for the things she did as a very young person under the influence of brainwashing. I don’t like that at all.

I’m also really disappointed that we didn’t pursue Natasha and Bucky’s relationship from the comics in the MCU. Because the idea of two people with very similar emotional wounds coming together to support each other as they heal is just really appealing (#looking for baggage that goes with mine). That throwaway line in Civil War (“at least you could recognize me”) really had me convinced that we were going there. I guess we still could, but there are a lot of “ifs” standing in the way now.

Steve:

Another disclaimer: Steve is absolutely my favorite Avenger, and I ship Steve/Peggy really hard.

Aaand I still felt uncomfortable with the resolution.

Maybe it’s just the difficulty I’ve been having getting my head around the time travel shenanigans.

So a lot of the criticisms I’ve heard/read about Steve going back to the 1940’s to Peggy seems to be functioning under the assumption that Steve is living within the timeline as we know it in MCU canon, staying completely hidden, and just not changing any of the bad things that canonically happen: Bucky becoming the Winter Soldier, Hydra infiltrating SHIELD, etc.

But we’ve been told that time travel doesn’t work that way – that Back To The Future, Doctor Who way – in this universe, right? This brings me back to my Alternate Reality take. So my understanding is that after Steve returns the infinity stones to the points in time that the Avengers yoinked them from, he basically occupies an Alternate Reality for a lifetime (Tilda Swinton’s thing about the branched off timelines being consumed by the ~forces of darkness~ only applies IF the infinity stones aren’t returned, and he took care of that). And he could’ve done anything in that Alternate Reality – married Peggy, saved Bucky from Hydra, prevented any wars and disasters he could. Basically it was Steve’s own personal Happiness AU. And then, (presumably after Peggy’s death), he uses the Pym particles and the Quantum Realm to return to his original reality.

Except, in that case, shouldn’t he have returned on the platform instead of dramatically showing up on that park bench?

So…I’m confused and I don’t like it.

Even from the Alternate Reality take, the situation of that choice is complicated. In choosing to be with Peggy, he’s tearing himself out of the lives of all of his loved ones in his Original Reality – Bucky, Sam, Wanda, (whatever the situation was with Sharon Carter that we absolutely never resolved?), etc.

And we’re not completely sure it was a choice, exactly. It’s possible that in the ongoing work to return the infinity stones, Steve somehow got trapped in the past (don’t know why he would’ve had to go to the 40’s, but I guess he could’ve run out of Pym particles there and had to wait for Hank to invent them to even be able to make the trip back).

Also, narratively speaking, it feels a little like we’re invalidating Peggy’s grief, and her character growth that went on in Agent Carter (even if her happy ending with Steve is going on in an Alternate Reality). I wasn’t totally sold on Peggy and Daniel Sousa yet (though I do like Daniel as a character a lot), but Peggy had a whole lifetime that didn’t involve Steve except as a beloved memory. Where is she in that arc when Time Traveler Steve comes back into her life?

Also, even if it IS an Alternate Reality, there would STILL be a version of Steve frozen in the ice in the 1940’s in that reality. How do we deal with that?

And how do we deal with the fact that Steve isn’t the man that Peggy lost anymore. He still loves her, but he’s changed, he’s lived almost a decade since then. How do they find their footing with each other? I’m sure it isn’t impossible, but it’s interesting, and it’s not addressed at all.

I think that’s what bothers me the most – that this is a whole huge adventure – Steve’s entire LIFE – that we’re shoehorning in at the very end of the movie without showing any of the really interesting bits or answering any of our questions about it. I guess that leaves the situation as a fertile ground for the imagination, and maybe that’s a space that the MCU intends to explore someday? I would absolutely watch the hell out of Steve’s Time Travel Romance with Peggy, somebody take my goddamn money.

Anyway, I’m happy about Sam taking up the Shield as Captain America. Bucky-Cap also could’ve been great, but I feel like, with the place we left Bucky in his recovery, he doesn’t need that responsibility yet. Let him rest. Wherever we’re going with the series featuring Sam and Bucky is going to be really interesting, and maybe we’ll get to the point where Bucky really wants to work towards atonement and is ready to share the burden of the Shield with Sam? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Overall, most of my feelings about the movie were pretty positive. It was a complicated story to tell with a lot of characters, and mostly it was handled pretty well. Some of those threads did fall flat for me, but they didn’t totally invalidate the parts of the movie that worked.

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 2 September 2019

Quick Bits:

Agents of Atlas #2 again seems to focus more on Amadeus Cho and his perspective than the rest of the team, but it’s still very entertaining. Greg Pak, Nico Leon, Pop Mhan, Federico Blee, and Joe Sabino continue to weave together intrigue, superhero action, and romance with a very interesting mystery evolving. 

| Published by Marvel

Animosity #23 is part one of “Rites of Passage” from Marguerite Bennett, Elton Thomasi, Roberto De Latorre, Rob Schwager, and Taylor Esposito. While Jesse and her caravan continue to try to make it out west, her animal friends attempt to plan for her upcoming 13th birthday. Wonderful character moments here and further insight into the horrors that the animals have seen.

| Published by AfterShock

Battlepug #1 brings the web comic to regular monthly print comics from Mike Norton, Allen Passalaqua, and Crank! While it does help to have read the previous adventures, you can pick up and enjoy this humorous take on sword and sorcery fairly easily. Some very nice humour in the “Covfefe” puppet.

| Published by Image

Berserker Unbound #2 is another wonderful issue from Jeff Lemire, Mike Deodato Jr., Frank Martin, and Steve Wands. The art alone from Deodato and Martin is wonderful, deftly mixing the modern and the archaic. It’s also very interesting to see the barbarian trying to navigate our strange modern world and the fact that he can’t understand anything that anyone is saying.

| Published by Dark Horse

Birthright #39 gives us the confrontation with Mastema. Learning that she’s pretty much thoroughly insane and that the entire two worlds are screwed. At least, from her perspective. The colour work here from Adriano Lucas is positively brilliant.

| Published by Image / Skybound

Breaklands #1 is a Comixology digital original from Justin Jordan, Tyasseta, Sarah Stern, and Rachel Deering. It’s different, bloody, and intriguing as to what’s going on. The opening suggests a kind of weird cult, the past gives the impression of post-apocalyptic tribes or gangs. 

| Published by Justin Jordan

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #8 is a prelude to the “Hellmouth” crossover event with Angel, but I’ll say that it is essential to the overall storyline. This issue basically sets up the entire thing, even while still doing prologuey things. Great art from David López and Raúl Angulo. And, despite what Angel (at least that’s who I assume is in that devil mask) and Xander say, the “bat” costume is great, even if it doesn’t make sense.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Conan the Barbarian #9 takes us on a trip through Conan’s hallucinations of monsters he felled in battle as he tries to lead a group of people caught underground in the lair of the Undergod. Incredibly impressive artwork from Mahmud Asrar and Matthew Wilson. As we get a bit of reminiscence here, it feels as though we’re approaching the end of this arc.

| Published by Marvel

Crowded #9 is pretty intense as Vita and Charlie breach a hotel and try to get the information on who set up the Reapr campaign from one of Charlie’s old “friends”. It goes about as well as you’d expect. Christopher Sebela, Ro Stein, Ted Brandt, Tríona Farrell, and Cardinal Rae continue to keep this story on its toes, speeding along as fast as it can.

| Published by Image

Dark Red #6 begins the next arc from Tim Seeley, Corin Howell, Mark Englert, and Carlos Mangual. It tosses more complications into Chip’s life in the form of a “cleaner” enthralled to another vampire and a family of were-jaguars fleeing from an El Salvadoran gang.

| Published by AfterShock

DCeased: A Good Day to Die #1 expands the story a bit further with this one shot featuring a reunion of some of the Bwa-Ha-Ha era of the Justice League and a few other guests. Great art from Laura Braga, Darick Robertson, Richard Friend, Trevor Scott, and Rain Beredo.

| Published by DC Comics

Deathstroke #47 continues “Deathstroke RIP” and it’s going to do your head in a bit. A banged, bruised, beaten-up, and confused Slade shows up with a bad attitude and we’re unsure how he’s back from the dead and acting fairly un-Slade-like. Also, Jericho gets his Doctor Manhattan moment. Priest, Fernando Pasarin, Carlo Pagulayan, Jason Paz, Cam Smith, Wade von Grawbadger, Jeromy Cox, and Willie Schubert are definitely continuing to keep this interesting.

| Published by DC Comics

Die #7 catches up with the other half of the party in Isabelle and Chuck and, well, Chuck is an asshole. Kieron Gillen, Stephanie Hans, and Clayton Cowles manage to out-bleak the previous issue, but in a way that doesn’t elicit sympathy this time. It’s interesting as to how they build up Chuck, elaborate on his backstory, and make him even more thoroughly unlikeable.

| Published by Image

Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds #3 is fairly impressive, with Gerard Way, Jeremy Lambert, Steve Orlando, Doc Shaner, Tamra Bonvillain, and Simon Bowland managing to become even more inventive with the narrative for an already incredibly inventive series. This one takes the convention of a flashforward and presents it as an issue of Doom Patrol in the future, weaving in some hard-boiled narration through a series of novels. Great work here all around.

| Published by DC Comics / Young Animal

Everything #1 is weird. Very weird. This first issue from Christopher Cantwell, INJ Culbard, and Steve Wands feels like it’s mostly about setting up the atmosphere and briefly introducing many of the characters as the new Everything Store opens up in Michigan. Love the art from Culbard.

| Published by Dark Horse / Berger Books

Fallen World #5 concludes what has been an excellent series setting up the next stage of the 4002 AD time period of the Valiant universe from Dan Abnett, Adam Pollina, Ulises Arreola, and Jeff Powell. The art from Pollina and Arreola is gorgeous, really leaning hard into the weird and wonderful of the future.

| Published by Valiant

Fantastic Four #14 kicks off “Point of Origin” celebrating the initial launch of the Fantastic Four’s expedition that turned them into the Fantastic Four. The shifting timeline makes this feel weird, but it’s still an interesting premise. Great art from Paco Medina and Jesus Aburtov.

| Published by Marvel

Future Foundation #2 is more fun from Jeremy Whitley, Will Robson, Paco Diaz, Daniele Orlandini, Greg Menzie, Chris O’Halloran, and Joe Caramagna. Why exactly the kids would mistake a younger looking Maker as their own Reed Richards is anyone’s guess, but this is still an entertaining prison break story building upon loose threads from Secret Wars.

| Published by Marvel

Ghost Spider Annual #1 continues the “Acts of Evil” theme running through this year’s annuals as Gwen takes on Arcade and a host of Spider-Man’s villains and allies. It’s a good story from Vita Ayala, Pere Pérez, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles that helps Gwen get a sense of place when it comes to some of the differences between Earths-65 and -616/

| Published by Marvel

Giant Days #54 is the end to the series, but there’s one more issue in the story in the Giant Days: As Time Goes By special. Still, John Allison, Max Sarin, Whitney Cogar, and Jim Campbell gives us one last hurrah as Daisy, Esther, and Susan spend the summer together before graduation, tying up some loose ends, before saying goodbye to one another. It’s an emotional end, full of the eccentricities and humour that have been a hallmark of the series.

| Published by Boom Entertainment / BOOM! Box

The Green Lantern #11 continues the multiversal adventure. This is really some of the fun, eccentric science fiction-y superheroics that Grant Morrison really excels at along with gorgeous artwork from Liam Sharp and Steve Oliff. I quite like Sharp’s Neal Adams-esque Batman GL and it’s neat to see the Green Lantern oath’s differences across multiple universes.

| Published by DC Comics

Harley Quinn #65 kind of does an end run around the “Year of the Villain” content, incorporating it as a couple pages of the comic within the comic, while the rest of the issue is devoted to Harley dealing with the grief of the loss of her mother. By kind of ignoring it. Escaping to the Coney Island Volcano Island and getting a bit...rustic. Sam Humphries, Sami Basri, Hi-Fi, and Dave Sharpe also keep Harley’s trials going along nicely.

| Published by DC Comics

Harley Quinn & Poison Ivy #1 follows up on Poison Ivy’s new status after regrowing herself from the death sustained in Heroes in Crisis. Now, I can’t say I exactly liked that series or what happened, but I do think that Jody Houser, Adriano Melo, Mark Morales, Hi-Fi, and Gabriela Downie make the most of it and turn it around into an entertaining start to this new story. Also, a nice pick up on both the broader “Year of the Villain” event (even though there’s no event banner) and on the new developments in Justice League Dark about the Parliament of Flowers and the Floronic Man.

| Published by DC Comics

Immortal Hulk #23 brings the fight to Fortean. It’s absolutely brutal on both sides. Joe Bennett, Ruy José, Belardino Brabo, Paul Mounts, and Matt Milla really do an incredible job with the action here. And the end is stuff of nightmares.

| Published by Marvel

Justice League #31 continues the “Justice/Doom War”. It’s very, very nice to see the Justice Society back in the mainline DC universe. Combined with the Legion of Super-Heroes back, it’s a wonderful time to see these two teams back. Feels good. It also helps that Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Alejandro Sanchez, and Tom Napolitano have JSA nestled within a great story, flinging the Justice League through the past and future.

| Published by DC Comics

Lois Lane #3 is worth it for the art from Mike Perkins and Paul Mounts by itself. The fight between the two Questions is incredible, beautiful flow of action and energy all through the exchange. Also, we get some follow up on Superman protecting Lois adding complications. There could be an argument made that this story is unfolding at roughly a snail’s pace, but that would overlook the wonderful character moments occurring, the atmosphere, and epic action sequences. 

| Published by DC Comics

Midnight Vista #1 is a wonderful start to this story from Eliot Rahal, Clara Meath, Mark Englert, and Taylor Esposito. It’s an alien abduction story told pretty much straight and its intriguing as to how the disbelievers in this tale are going to deal with, even amid the very real kidnapping and lost time that occurs. I love Meath’s line art here.

| Published by AfterShock

No One Left to Fight #3 hits hard a couple times, first in Winda’s decidedly horrible way of handling rejection and jealousy and then in the Hierophant’s temptation of rebuilding Valé, fixing what ails him. More great work from Aubrey Sitterson, Fico Ossio, Raciel Avila, and Taylor Esposito. This book is a feast.

| Published by Dark Horse

Pretty Deadly: The Rat #1 is a very welcome return of this series, shifting time frame again to ‘30s Los Angeles and adopting a noir style. The artwork from Emma Rios and Jordie Bellaire is drop dead gorgeous, seemingly coming up with new styles and approaches to storytelling. The film stills in particular are very impressive.

| Published by Image

Savage Avengers #5 brings a bloody and brutal “end” to the first arc from Gerry Duggan, Mike Deodato Jr., Frank Martin, and Travis Lanham. It’s not so much a conclusion as a chapter break, ending the bit with the Marrow God, but transitioning into whatever will come next in the war against Kulan Gath.

| Published by Marvel

Sea of Stars #3 is another showcase for Stephen Green and Rico Renzi to just illustrate the hell out of some really cool stuff. This one shifts primary focus back to Kadyn and his interstellar entourage and it’s hilarious. The kid does kid things that drive his space monkey and space whale friends insane. Especially taunting a quarkshark.

| Published by Image

Something is Killing the Children #1 begins a rather disquieting horror series from James Tynion IV, Werther Dell’Edera, Miquel Muerto, and AndWorld Design. It’s brutal, bloody, and filled with all of the terror that you get from a frightened kid who just watched his friends get butchered. This is a visceral horror that punches you right in the gut. Very well done.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Spawn #300 is not a bad anniversary issue, a fairly hefty book featuring a lead “chapter” with gorgeous artwork from returning long term Spawn line artist Greg Capullo, kicking off with something disturbing, then leading into a combination of the story threads that Todd McFarlane has been weaving for some time now. While there is a foundation on the old, this one also sets up a fair amount of what’s coming. Great art throughout from Todd McFarlane, Greg Capullo, J. Scott Campbell, Jason Shawn Alexander, Jerome Opeña, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia, Brian Haberlin, Peter Steigerwald, and Matt Hollingsworth.

| Published by Image

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order - Dark Temple #1 is a tie in to the forthcoming video game from Electronic Arts by Matthew Rosenberg, Paolo Villanelli, Arif Prianto, and Joe Sabino. It centres around a padawan who somehow managed to escape Order 66 on a recently-joined Republic world of Ontotho and the mystery of a temple that she was sent to investigate.

| Published by Marvel

Supergirl #33 concludes Kara’s quest and “The House of El: United”, giving her perspective on the founding of the United Planets in Superman #14. It’s a decent end here, opening up new possibilities for what we’ll see next.

| Published by DC Comics

Triage #1 is a very impressive debut from Phillip Sevy and Frank Cvetkovic. Interesting set up of variations on the same woman, Evie, across multiple worlds, and a mystery as to what’s going on. Sevy’s art here is gorgeous.

| Published by Dark Horse

Usagi Yojimbo #4 begins a new two-part arc in “The Hero” as Usagi agrees to escort an author caught in a controlling, loveless marriage to her father. There’s a really nice opening sequence in this one with zombies.

| Published by IDW

Vampirella/Red Sonja #1 is a pretty good start to this series from Jordie Bellaire, Drew Moss, Rebecca Nalty, and Becca Carey. It’s set in 1969 and built around the Dyatlov Pass Incident, which sends Vampirella out there to investigate to potentially find a “friend”. Beautiful art from Moss and Nalty. 

| Published by Dynamite

Web of Black Widow #1 is wonderful. Stephen Mooney was born to draw espionage thrillers, having done so incredibly on his own Half Past Danger as well as The Dead Hand and James Bond 007. He has a style that reminds me of Dave Stevens and it just works perfectly for this kind of story. Add to that Jody Houser, Tríona Farrell, and Cory Petit, throw in a mystery born out of Natasha’s past and continued questioning her own status as her since she was brought back from death, and you’ve got a recipe for a near perfect storm of a debut.

| Published by Marvel

Wyrd #4 concludes what has been an intriguing series from Curt Pires, Antonio Fuso, Stefano Simeone, and Micah Myers.  This has been a rather interesting story of superpowers seemingly gone wrong and it ties up with a Superman analogue as a child going homicidal. It’s dark, but it feels real.

| Published by Dark Horse

Other Highlights: Absolute Carnage: Scream #2, Absolute Carnage: Symbiote Spider-Man #1, Alpha Flight: True North #1, Amazing Spider-Man: Going Big #1, Archie #707, Batman/TMNT III #5, Champions #9, Charlie’s Angels vs. Bionic Woman #3, Curse Words #24, The Death-Defying Devil #2, Descendent #5, The Dreaming #13, The Goon #6, House of X #4, Legion of Super-Heroes: Millennium #1, Marvel Action: Spider-Man #8, Nuclear Winter - Volume 3, Old Man Quill #9, The Punisher #15, Redneck #23, Rick and Morty Present Flesh Curtains #1, Section Zero #6, Space Bandits #3, Star Trek: Discovery - Aftermath #1, Star Wars #71, Superman: Up in the Sky #3, Transformers/Ghostbusters #4, Turok #5, The Wicked + The Divine #45

Recommended Collections: Age of X-Man: Prisoner X, Black Badge - Volume 2, Catwoman - Volume 2: Far From Gotham, Hellboy and the BPRD: 1956, Immortal Hulk - Volume 4: Abomination, Infinite Dark - Volume 2, Outcast - Volume 7, Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider - Volume 2: Impossible Year, Superb - Volume 4: The Kids aren’t Alright, War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas, X-Force - Volume 2: Counterfeit King

d. emerson eddy is currently suffering the effects of a very gassy pug.

[ugh-really-why]

Endgame review that is really more of a Rant then anything else because Fuck you Marvel.

Disclaimer: I hate pretty much everything about this movie and am still pissed enough that there is going to be a lot of cussing. Also, this is going to contain spoilers. 

Let’s start with the character that I had the most hope for walking into this movie. Tony fucking Stank. I read the spoilers so I knew that he was going to get a heroic death. I also knew that he hesitated to save the world because he got his happy ending. 

I didn’t realize how much I would hate him for every word that came out of his mouth. Tony Stank really doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. He gets his happily ever after so fuck everyone else. Oh and he’s guilty over losing Peter so he’s going to blame everyone else even though he’s the one that split up the Avengers by locking up half of them in an underwater prison. He’s the one that had a way to contact Steve, knew about the attack because of Bruce, but was too petty to make the damn phone call. But nope it’s all Steve’s fault that he decided to go to Titan and fight Thanos there instead of regrouping with everyone else. He fucked up, but Tony can’t admit that so it’s on everyone else. Piece of shit. 

then Scott comes back five years later with an idea, but nope Tony can’t help save everyone because he’s got his precious little girl. Fuck everyone else who lost their families. At least the picture of Peter and him exists because otherwise, he wouldn’t have done shit. Oh and he insists that they keep the five years since the snap intact meaning that he’s robbing half the universe of five years of life because why the fuck not? Alright, I get him not wanting to lose his baby girl but I also don’t care because fuck him, fuck him so badly for not giving a shit about any of the other people in the universe. He’s such shit. Like honestly the only decent thing he does is die, oh and his conversation with Howard was interesting because it proves that Howard never physically abused Tony. Sorry stans, guess you can’t use that as an excuse anymore. 

Now the character that I love the most who was screwed... Steve. God, he’s fucking pathetic in this movie. Like where the fuck was his obsession with Peggy in any other movie that he was in? Where the fuck was it because this movie implied that it had been something that he had been holding onto for the fourteen (okay thirteen years) that he had been in the future, even though on screen we saw him moving on... No, he’s been carrying that stupid ass compass around with him since he woke up from the ice, just didn’t have a reason to pull it out until Endgame. Such fucking bullshit. He’s so damn pathetic when it comes to her in this movie. Not that she’s much better... Still having a torch for him in 1970 after he had been dead for 30 years. Super fucking pathetic. Like omg, they knew each other for a max of two years, kissed once, and had like five total conversations. But nope the love of his life, poor Sharon she was completely screwed. (I am so going to write out a fic where Steve goes back to the love of his life and finds out that she’s a pale comparison to the actual love of his life). Honestly, if you wanted a Steve that was hung up on Peggy still, having him move on was stupid, and this should have been set up in the previous movies instead of feeling completely out of the blue. Oh and as everyone else already has said, his ending completely ruins a lot of the great lines from the previous cap movies, such as his conversation about a situation going south, or the price of freedom. And it completely invalidates his relationship with Bucky, which was already kind of ruined in canon by Civil War. They owed the characters so much more. Oh, and they had to fuck over Steve’s other best friend. Like honestly, fuck you for what you did to Sam and Steve’s relationship. Just fuck you, Russos. I did like Sam getting the shield (course the question becomes how? because it was destroyed in the battle with Thanos, but who cares about that?) Oh and what happened to Mjolnir? because Steve was traveling with it to return the stones. Like the whole can’t move past the forties shtick is so boring and so old. 

Course for Steve to still be stuck on Peggy they had to ruin her. I can’t get over the disgust I feel for a woman that married another man, had children with him, to still be into a crush she had at 19... when she’s in her 50′s. it’s all kinds of gross. And sure I adore stories about sweethearts finding each other after a long time, but not when they are in committed relationships with other people. We all knew Agent Carter wasn’t worth anything to the MCU but this proves it. 

Bruce was just fucking annoying. Granted, I am not super fond of Banner in general, but Professor Hulk was cringe and annoying and no thanks. I swear I wanted someone to punch him every time he opened his mouth. The only time he was not incredibly annoying was when he talked about Natasha, course they played up the romantic angle for the two of them without ever addressing the issue of him ditching her for years. Like he still held a torch even though everything about the relationship was fail. 

Thor was just sad. He’s an alcoholic that has lost all confidence in himself, gained a ton of weight, something that is mocked throughout the movie and is afraid to fight. Until he talks with Frigga (not gonna lie that was a cool scene) but seriously the way they made Thor pathetic was just sad. Oh and so much mocking of his PTSD by pretty much everyone. I guess not being a dick about PTSD only applies to Tony. 

Natasha, I actually liked the majority of her plotline. Though that being said killing her off was incredibly stupid if the Black Widow movie is a real thing. I really liked her relationship with Clint, the way that she was helping coordinate the recovery, and the way she was willing to risk everything for a chance to fix things. She had a lot of personality, and I do remember why I adore the character again. I’m also glad that they didn’t put major focus on Steve/Nat. Oh no to make Steve’s storyline work he couldn’t be closely tied with anyone so no real friendships in the present for Steve. Nope, just taking advice from Stank to live life and thinking the only way to do that was to go back to Peggy...

Clint was the only one whose storyline I didn’t massively hate. I liked the way they showed his relationship with Natasha and how both of them care so much about each other. We really got to see them being family in this movie so that wasn’t terrible. And it was powerful to see him lose his family (it wasn’t like the other dusting, they were there and then gone the next second... a much better way to show everyone being gone imo then that dumbass over the top speech by Peter in Infinity War.) And his scenes after returning with the soul stone, and the fight against Thanos were kickass. Also seeing Lila Barton have her daddy’s talent for shooting arrows was terrific. Clint is a great father, and I loved the hints of it and his love for his family in this film. He just wasn’t enough to redeem the bullshit for me. 

Wanda...barely in the film but kickass during the fight. It was great to watch her go head-to-head with Thanos, and having the call back to Infinity War with Okoye when the girls were trying to get the iron infinity stone glove away was great. I’m down for an all-women team-up movie a billion times more now then I was before this movie and I already knew that I still wanted that. Course now I would try to figure out how to pirate it because FUCK MARVEL. 

Sam, idk. There were things I liked. Him becoming Captain America (if you are going to screw Steve like this, I’d rather Sam then Bucky any day of the week). His on your left and reaching out to steve over comms when he so desperately needed that little push to keep fighting. I despise the implication that he doesn’t know Steve because of his freak out about the past, and the fact that Steve was keeping secrets from him even though other movies have shown that to BULLSHIT. 

Bucky, Steve fucked him over because he was too obsessed with Peggy to give a shit about his BFF being tortured by Hydra. It’s fucking gross and totally goes against who Steve is in the rest of the series. I did like the hug, seeing him shooting Thanos's army and the easiness between him and Sam. Other than that eh. 

Valkyrie was awesome in the movie. I don’t like her much because of the slaver thing, but she was really great for her five minutes, two of being a leader and three of fighting (and I’m only sort of joking)

Nebula- I’m not sure I understand why Thanos and his people were about to see what future Nebula’s memory system knew And I wasn’t super into her babying of the shithead but other than that I liked the character. I wish they would put more emphasis on the sisterly relationship she’s building with Gamora. 

Rocket- didn’t really like the way that he mocked Thor’s issues. However, he was a fun character. 

Rhodey- He was annoying at the beginning but I liked the fact that he didn’t follow Tony’s example and say FUCK THE WORLD. And I did enjoy some of his lines at the end of the movie. such as the way he addresses the fact that he’s disabled with Nebula, creating a connection between them. (much better than the condescending way that Tony talked to her at the beginning). And I liked how the disability impacted him negatively during the final fight. It was nice to see something that is actually a medical necessity. 

I did like the final battle. It was well done and I enjoyed the different fighting styles, bring back dusted characters, seeing who fought with who, and the devasting strength of Thanos. And the way that Carol really turned the tide. Tony’s death scene was incredibly dumb... Honestly, someone get Peter as far away from these kinds of fightings as possible because the kid doesn’t know how to handle shit. 

There is probably so much more to add to this but honestly, I’m tired and it’s already long af. This movie sucks, be prepared for it to be worse then you expect, if you wanted to see Tony actually be a hero without having be convinced other people matter. If you wanted to see Steve continue with the path that he’s been on since Winter Soldier and suddenly decides that he’s more into Peggy than he is anything else. If you wanted to see more of Ragnorak’s Thor. If you wanted more for Natasha then her death, something that only bothers me/Odin with actual issues. 

[andcurioser]

Avengers: Endgame - Here, Have Some Thoughts

At last, it is time to discuss Endgame. I’m still not totally sure how I feel about the movie. It’s the sort of thing I think will take time and rewatches to be totally certain of. But I want to get some stuff down here as a starting point, and then see how my opinions develop as time goes on. So, let’s ramble. 

General Thoughts:

I’ve been trying to figure out my overall sense of it, and I can’t really decide if it was a letdown or not. I don’t think it was explicitly disappointing, but the fact of the matter is, it was never going to be everything we wanted. It never could be. The best way I can put it is this: throughout the past year, I’ve had a lot of fun theorizing about what could happen in Endgame. Infinity War set up enough exciting possibilities, and as a fandom person, I specialize in coming up with things the narrative could do/could have done but didn’t. So the second that one potential plot was locked in as the one they were going with, there was a certain amount of wistfulness at the paths we weren’t going to take. That’s no one’s fault. They had to decide on something, and this was essentially what I’d expected for a long time. Still. When trying to figure out today if I feel like the movie delivered on a general level, I can’t really say it didn’t, but I can’t say I feel wholly satisfied either. Alas. That’s what fanfic is for.

So to that end: the movie was fun. It was a lot of fun to watch. After all that buildup, I was just tremendously excited to see what was actually going to happen. It was an enjoyable watch, and parts of it were quite good. Other parts, less so. I think they did some things very right and had a few very big misses. But I appreciate what they were trying to do, and I appreciate that I saw the care in at least most of it. They dropped the ball hard on a few things, but at least on first watch, I could feel the import of it all. If nothing else, it had the tricky task of placing a capstone (lol, Cap stone) on the extraordinarily ambitious experiment of the MCU, so if I feel a little residual malaise afterwards, well. At least I know they tried. 

When I think back on the movie, it seems like it naturally breaks into three parts, roughly corresponding to each hour of the movie. I think these three parts are uneven in quality, but they all had their strengths and weaknesses. To break them down: 

Part One, which I basically categorize as everything up to the Time Heist

Part Two: the Time Heist itself

Part Three: everything post-Snap Deux

And just as a last note, I’m sort of grouping the Russos and Markus and McFeely into one big team, so when I say the Russos, I’m usually crediting (or blaming) everyone in said team. Just a shorthand. 

For your mercy, since this became genuinely embarrassingly long, the rest is under the cut. I wish I could have collapsed each part into sections, but tumblr is so very limited and I couldn’t figure out if there was a way to do it. So this is what we’ve got. I split it up into sections under headers so you can scroll through to whatever part might interest you, so hopefully that helps its readability at least a bit. Beware: there is a veritable essay under the cut. But let’s bravely forge forward, friends. Onward! 

Part One

The movie was a little slow to start. On the one hand, I truly do appreciate that they tried to give the characters introspective moments instead of having it all be flash bang battle boom. That’s what we’re always asking for, and it’s what these movies need a lot more of. Unfortunately, I’m not 100% convinced they nailed most of said character scenes. I can’t remember everything - after all, I’ve only seen it the once, but I hope to shore up my evidence upon rematch - but while some of it worked for me, some of it didn’t. To make it even more complex, sometimes that happened within the same scene. Prime example:

The Steve and Nat scene. I loved it for Nat. I didn’t like it for Steve. In a very confusing way, this movie both did good and did very dirty by both Nat and Steve. I thought Nat’s characterization was very good. At last, her arc was focused on who I really think she is as a person: someone who cares very deeply about the people she’s let into her life, and someone who puts tremendous pressure on herself to fix everything. Her pain at her failure worked for me. Her inability to let go of what happened tracked. She was vulnerable and emotional but not in a way that betrayed the steel of her character. More than anything, she was allowed to be a person and not just the Sexy Femme Fatale with a snarky line, oh boys, eye-roll hair-flip hip-sway. I’ve said it before and this movie just further proved it: I only trust the Russos with Natasha. They’re the only ones who get her, who let her be multifaceted, who let her be whole. I love them for that, and this movie delivered me Nat in the way I was hoping it would. That’s a definitive Good in its favor. 

Alas. The Steve of it all. I have a lot of things to say about Steve in this movie, and I’m still trying to work it all out. His was the journey I was most focused on, understandably, and the one I was both most anticipating and certainly most dreading. Steve was barely in Infinity War, so I was very curious to see what they’d do with him when he took up a proper leading role again. And...I’m just. I don’t know. It wasn’t bad, mostly (aside from one very large asterisk, but we’re gonna talk about that a lot more later). But it wasn’t great either. It was. Fine. He wasn’t explicitly out of character, but he didn’t feel so essentially Steve like he did in the first two Cap movies. He had great moments, and he had meh ones. I think the scene with Natasha highlights a lot of what felt a little off about Steve for me. In theory, a scene in which Steve and Natasha commiserate would be my absolute bread and butter. But while Natasha worked so well for me, Steve seemed, if not wrong, still a little off. He seemed distant, a bit cold. I guess I just didn’t buy that Steve wouldn’t have been right there with Natasha during those five years. The implication that he’s been largely absent struck an off chord for me. If Nat’s the one in the chair managing the team, Steve’s the first person she’s sending out. Even more, Steve’s the guy in the kitchen, making her a cup of tea to make sure she’s hydrating. Their friendship was there, but it didn’t feel as vital as it did in Civil War. And it was essentially dropped after this scene, which is no good at all. So I don’t know. I think I need to see this scene again - it’s possible I’m not remembering it entirely well. But the fact that it wasn’t a scene I remembered as a standout means there was something missing. 

As for the rest of Part One, I thought it was a bit slow at first. I liked that they didn’t waste much time in going to get Thanos, because that tracked for me, but after the 5 Years Later title card, it started to drag a little. I did like the sense of atmosphere it established, though. Even if the dark, looming haze was a little pathetic fallacy - I suppose Thanos theoretically could control the weather, but I doubt he was bothering - it made for an appropriately effective setting. But Part One felt a little like it was spinning its wheels til Scott showed up. Speaking of which: 

I loved the Scott stuff! Paul Rudd is just so intensely likable, and I think they did a surprisingly good job of incorporating the more lighthearted caper-y feel of the Ant-Man movies into what is usually a more serious Almighty Doom Avengers vibe. But even more, I thought that Paul Rudd did a really good job with the emotional stuff. He’s a good actor! He excels at comedy, but he’s also so good at that stuff because he gets at the emotional cores too. He wasn’t overdoing anything, but when he reunited with Cassie, when he referenced Hope, I felt it. He did great. Scott’s stuff was pretty universally good. 

The Hulk stuff...not so much. On the one hand, it was refreshing to have Bruce/Hulk to be more comedic than ‘woe, for I am a Monster,” but this was...um. Not my favourite. It was just silly. Like, not bad bad. But I definitely didn’t need it. The whole lunch scene was as close to cringe as this movie came, and it was pretty close. I guess I like what it says thematically that Bruce was able to meld the parts of him that had always been in conflict, but I suppose I was hoping for more after the Infinity War storyline. I wanted to know why Hulk refused to come out in IW. I was intrigued by that in a way I hadn’t been intrigued by pretty much any of Bruce’s story lines until then, and the fact that that all disappeared and we got this instead was, well. Let’s use the intellectual term and call it a bummer. 

That being said, Brulk (what I suppose I’ll be calling him from now on) immediately worked better when he went into Thor’s storyline. I maintain that Thor makes everyone better, but I never actually enjoyed any of Bruce’s arcs until Ragnarok, and this movie proved that, unsurprisingly, Thor elevates Brulk like he elevates Rocket and almost every other previously lackluster character he touches. it’s a talent. 

I...did not expect Thor’s strolling to be. That. I really, really didn’t. That was the one true surprise of the movie, frankly. It’s not what I would have picked for him. But I guess I’m not exactly mad about it? For me, Thor is at the point where any storyline, no matter how ridiculous, works for him. Thor’s so good at this point, and Hemsworth is so charming, that I really buy whatever they want to sell me with him (not all they’s. Not Josh Wheat-thin. But we were nowhere near that level of awful). And to be fair, though this was all mostly played for comic relief, I can’t say it’s not also warranted. Thor clearly went overboard with the self-isolation and coping mechanisms, which isn’t strictly in character. But he went through so much, such an outlandishly awful string of events, that I can see how it would break him. It’s a weird way to process all that trauma, but they did the work to get him to a place where I could see him reacting like this. Again, not something I ever expected, and certainly not something I would have written for him. But after all that? I mean, I get it. And the most Thor thing about it was that his version of a breakdown was still sweet and kind to others. He wasn’t great for his people, but he’d given them a home and set them up with leaders who could take care of them, so if he retreated, it wasn’t really abandonment at that point. And when people came to see him, he wasn’t dark and dramatic and all ‘no one can understand my pain.’ He’s not that guy. He’s just too innately good. So even though it was certainly odd, and definitely not my favourite storyline, at least they kept the core of him intact? I’m bright siding here, but still. It’s fair. 

Though truly, I have to say: there’s something about this that I find mildly annoying. Thor and Chris Hemsworth are extremely objectified, and I’m certain that this was intended as a dismantling of the expectations we have for Thor to be the sex god that he is. But also...I don’t know, man. After so many years of us having to endure oversexualized female characters, you couldn’t let us ladies have just this one thing? The one time a male character is openly subjected to the female gaze in any long-term way, and it becomes a joke to remove that? I don’t actually think there was any ill will there. But I do think it speaks to the continuing inability of male writers and directors to really get it. To be absolutely fair, the Russos objectify women way less than the other films do, but still. They might think it’s funny to make fun of a character’s broad sexual appeal appreciated by a female audience by undermining it, but really, it’s just more of the same. 

Yay Korg! Yay Valkyrie being the real leader! Boo Valkyrie still not having a name (seriously, it’s her JOB TITLE. She was one of many Valkyries. Give her a name, for fuck’s sake.)! 

Tony being such a dick at the compound was a surprising move. It was a bad look, but I was intrigued that they’d let their golden boy act that badly. Tony’s always had such deep flaws, but they’ve always been simultaneously excused within the text, so to have him be so rough without excuse was interesting. Of course it was setting up for his ultimate redemption arc, but still. And then cut to 5 Years Later, and finally. This is the TonyI was promised in Iron Man 3, the Tony I still cared about. I liked him again in Infinity War, but I needed to see how they’d follow up to cement it. I’ll never love him like I do some of the others, but the only Tony I ever wanted to invest in is the Tony we finally got, the one who was fully and properly committed to Pepper, and the one who did the work not for his ego or his lack of impulse control, but who did it after a mature and honest discussion with his partner about the pros and cons, about what he was risking and what sort of person it would make him. This movie was primarily a sendoff of characters, and I’m not sure how many were supposed to be fully sent off. Btu there were two characters as the main objective, and the movie at least nailed one of them. 

I was so overwhelmingly ready for Tony Stark, billionaire playboy philanthropist, to go to bed, and for Tony Stark, devoted husband and father who uses his intellect responsibly and thoughtfully, to come forth. He got to keep an edge, but it tempered the parts of him that made him so easy to dislike. It’s too late for me to be a full Tony convert at this point, but I enjoyed him in this movie, and thought he was served better than most, which was 100% to be expected. But frankly, what some people think is a good sendoff is not always what I think is, so I was worried. And I was right to be worried, but surprisingly, not about Tony. More on that later. 

The time travel tests were fun, but I still found everything involving Brulk to be kind of painful to watch, so. Not saying I didn’t laugh here or there, though. 

Was Endgame sponsored by Audi?? Seriously, why was there so much Audi product placement. 

I’m not sure I even want to touch whatever was going on with Clint. I don’t think it was handled particularly well. In theory, the idea that one of them snapped (lol, sorry) at the unfairness of the random dissolving and decided to take out the bad people who should have been snapped away is interesting. But it was so barely glanced at, so underdeveloped, and then proceeded to go nowhere. We were clearly supposed to be concerned at what Clint was doing, but then he suffered no consequences for it? No reckoning, no moment of remorse, no acknowledgement that he’d let himself go too far? What was it all for? I buy that Nat would sacrifice herself to save hi, but it was an extra bitter pill to swallow given that I’m not entirely sure this version of Clint was worth saving. Certainly giving up Nat for him was a price too high. 

The Biggest Flaw

One of the things that disappointed me the most was the lack of presence for the characters who were lost in Infinity War. For a movie that was supposedly about loss and a drive to regain, there was absolutely nothing specific about it? So the whole mission read as generic hero-type “we need to save everyone because it’s the Right Thing to Do,” rather than a need to get their friends and teammates back. Of course the team wants to bring all the millions of people back, and of course they feel a responsibility to them because they had failed to protect them. But where was the sense of loss about their personal friends? Where was the feeling of lacking, that they had to adjust because the people they’d been fighting alongside for years were now gone? Where was their guilt that they’d not only let down the world at large, but the people whose backs they’d promised to always have? I think that’s part of why the first hour felt a little lacking to me. They were all so ad, but about what? The personal stakes were completely removed. The only one who had any degree of it was Clint with his family, but we don’t care about Clint’s family beyond an abstract familiarity. I suppose Tony had his moment with Peter’s picture, which served as an effective motivation. But what about the others? Why were Wanda, Sam, T’Challa, hell, even Vision, never even mentioned? The people they’d lost, the soldiers who’d fallen. That’s what should have made this movie different from the other Avengers ones: not that the team lost a big battle, but that they lost so many of their own because of it. That’s what hit so hard in Infinity War, and why it felt unique. And they didn’t pick that line up again. Such a missed opportunity. 

It’s taken me too long to write all this and I’m starting to forget everything, so fuck it, let’s move on to Part Two. 

Part Two

This was unquestionably the most fun hour of the movie. It's also probably the hour that's going to hold up the best in retrospect, simply because it was a lot of fun and had a good amount of drive without feeling overwrought. A lot of it was gimmicky, but it was the kind of gimmicky that I'm fine with in this type of movie. It was an unrepentant trip down memory lane, complete with all the cameos that get people so excited, and it was a little silly, but it was also a good time. If it was a bit scattered, it was also nostalgic and served as a neat little retrospective of where we've been. So, while it was definitely a little trite in its execution, it was also a lot of fun, so I'm cool with it.

I was highly suspicious of who was assigned to which stone because I knew it was setting up for more meta things rather than practicality. Steve and Tony had to go together to have one last bonding trip, and to be somewhere where they could meet their respective Important People from the past. Nat and Clint had to go together because they were the only team who would be resonant enough for a sacrifice (it couldn't be Steve and Tony that early in the movie, and they would never let Steve and Nat be a team even though by rights they would be). There were definitely more logical times to get some of the stones (seriously, why wouldn't they grab the Tesseract when it was just hanging out in that wall in Norway? Or when it was safely on Asgard in the vaults before Loki took it? Or or or, etc. etc. They chose a window that gave them about 30 seconds to enact the plan. I know, I know the first Avengers movie is a soft spot for most people. But logically, that was very nah.). But whatever. 

The cameos! There were so many, and they were surprisingly high-profile. I had always expected to see Loki again in pretty much this exact scenario, but I did not expect for Robert fucking Redford to make a two-minute cameo. Damn, son. Once I realized we were in the big leagues of cameo season, it was fun to guess who might make an appearance, and even more fun to see people I never would have expected. 

You know who I was surprisingly happy to see? The Ancient One. We rewatched Dr. Strange as part of my Marvel marathon a few weeks ago, and as thoroughly mediocre as that movie is, I forgot how much fun she is in that movie. Tilda Swinton is just really good. So she was kind of a delight. I still don't get her absolute faith in Stephen Strange, of all people, but I liked her scene even if I still don't really understand what the weird wizards do. It was also really nice to get to see Mark Ruffalo instead of Brulk for a bit. 

Seriously, Robert Redford! And holy shit, Rumlow! Super didn't expect that. And that elevator scene! I totally expected a repeat of the Winter Soldier elevator fight, though I'm not actually mad we didn't get one (it would never live up to the original, the Best).

Loved seeing Frigga again! I don't know that I buy Thor being that unable to rise to the occasion, and his therapy interlude with his mom was kind of a weird left turn. That being said, I liked it, and I'm happy they got to have that time, and I love Frigga and want to bask in her wiseness and perennial chillness always. It was sweet. 

I was also totally shocked to see Natalie Portman again (though I think I saw a headline that it was actually just old footage? I haven't confirmed that, but it would make more sense than Natalie Portman coming back for all of four seconds of filming), and I 1000% appreciated her (mostly off-screen) request for pants as her Asgardian wardrobe (which was subsequently denied). I love Jane. I miss Jane. 

So this now paves the way for random Loki appearances in the future, yes? Ngl, I grinned when Loki just noped out of space, and I'm all for vague possibilities of further Loki. Even if it raises a ton of questions about the space-time continuum (seriously, we're gonna talk about that), it was still fun.

I actually liked the Howard/Tony stuff. It was definitely a little saccharine and on the nose, but not too much. It worked, and it was sweet, and it gave Tony a nice moment that I think only really worked because he'd finally become the more mature version of himself. I buy that the Tony of 5 Years Later had a better understanding of Howard, and tried to give comfort instead of taking his own absolution. The Tony of all the other movies would have made this interlude about how he could assure himself of his father's love. This Tony just tried to connect in a way that seemed unselfish. While I was still lowkey stressed because, seriously, you guys are gonna get caught if you're just strolling out in the open like that, we know they're looking for you, I still liked this part well enough. 

Steve and Peggy, though...look. I don't know. We're gonna go much more into detail about this later, and some of this is clearly my own bias. But a) I do not care for the weird clearly film screenshot photo on Peggy's desk, which is a 100% no, and b) something about the chance of it all irked me. I'd buy Steve seeing Peggy's office and going in, but that he happened to hide in there? Nah. Not my fave. And him gazing wistfully at her...like, in theory, romantic? But I was already certain about where we were going with this, so all I could see were the problems in store, and I couldn't really enjoy it. Much more on that later. 

For the Agent Carter fans, I certainly appreciated the Jarvis cameo. I still haven't watched the show, but nonetheless. Cute. 

Steve vs. Steve

Look, I should have known better than to think that an Avengers movie could go without a big set piece internal conflict fight. This one was slightly less egregious because at least it made sense, but man. Every Avengers movie (Civil War included) features some big fight scene between friends and colleagues, and I’ve never known why Marvel is so into that when there are so many actual bad guys to fight. This scene at least led to some funny moments, but for real, why can’t these movies resist having the Avengers fight themselves, and in this case, literally themselves? I’ve always found it baffling. 

Meanwhile, more of me close-reading things that probably aren’t there: I like to think that the absolute bland stodginess of 2012 Steve is a veiled reference to Josh Wheat-thin’s paper-thin one-dimensional understanding of Steve Rogers. Maybe I’m giving the Russos far too much credit for this (I probably am), but Russos-brand Steve knocking down Wheat-thin’s Not!Steve was a physical manifestation of something I’ve long intellectually felt, so. It’s only that reading that kept me from sighing at how boring 2012 Steve was for a thousand years. So I’m sticking to it. 

That is America’s ass. 

Much like with RDJ and Tony, Steve has always been at his finest when they let Chris Evans and his charm bleed through. So the “I could do this all day,” *sigh( “yeah, I know,” was a clear comic highlight of the movie for me. That sounded like something Chris would say in an interview. Chris Evans is a funny guy! His actual personality (at least his public personality) is what won me over to him long before I started to like Steve. So whenever these movies let him be Captain America as played by Chris Evans rather than dull manifestation of watered down American values whatever that means Captain America, played by Man Who Is Not Robert Downey Jr., I consider it a win. That’s one of the Russos’ great strengths: that they let Steve be fun and quippy too. Not as much as RDJ gets to be, naturally, but still, their Steve gets to have a personality intend of being just a haphazard pile of tropes. The Russos nail him in varying and inconsistent degrees, less well in the bigger movies and never so well as in Winter Soldier, but at least they understand that you can have more than one character with a personality, unlike certain unnamed hack writer/directors whom I shall never stop excoriating. 

You know what I didn't love, tbh? Steve using "Bucky is alive" as a cheat phrase to shock 2012 Steve into letting him go. In theory, I can appreciate it. Steve knows that the only thing that can make him freeze is a reference to Bucky. It's a callback to what he talks about in Civil War - one mention of Bucky and he becomes 16 again, etc. etc. I get it. I understand that the Russos are sort of trying to throw a bone to the Steve/Bucky fans out there. However. Given Bucky's complete lack of presence in the rest of the film, it felt cheap? I never fooled myself so thoroughly into thinking the Steve/Bucky crew would ever get anything but crumbs, and that's exactly what they're giving us. But it's about what I discussed before: there was no feeling of loss throughout the entire movie, no lingering presence of the friends who'd been snapped away. I never thought they were going to have scenes of Steve caressing a picture of Bucky and weeping. But Steve didn't seem to care at all about who specifically was gone beyond a vague "we let down the world," so when he said this, it felt like a trick. It felt like manipulation, which it was, but it made Steve seem cold and dispassionate. Like he was playing his past, more emotional self. Idk, Steve was just so weird to me in this movie. He had awesome moments and then 30 seconds later, would have moments like this, which don't feel like Steve at all. Because he uses this cheap shot, gets 2012 Steve knocked out, and then doesn't follow it up with anything relevant. Just makes a quip and bounces. And don't get me wrong, I laughed at the quip! I did! But it further diminished the moment before, how he'd so casually thrown out this bit of information that had been so important to him in previous movies. It was his entire character arc in Winter Soldier and Civil War. And here, it felt meaningless to him, and the rest of the movie sort of supported that reading, and man. It just made me sad. 

And now we come to Natasha and Clint and the damn Soul Stone. 

First of all, a lot of this scene was repetitive. I get that they have to understand how it works, but man, we just did this. 

Next, did Nebula seriously not prepare any of them for this possibility? I suppose she couldn’t have known for sure how it worked, but afterwards, she sure seemed to connect the dots pretty quickly. Sure would have been logical for her to at least mention that there might be something shady going on over there. 

Ok, so. The sacrifice. I don't mind how they played it. One of the most in-character things in the whole damn movie was Nat and Clint physically fighting to sacrifice themselves to save the other. It works. HOWEVER. I really just...can't with the Soul Stone. I think it's so flawed. I understand the notion of a soul for a soul, but sacrificing someone else's soul? That's not yours to give. I don't understand why the Soul Stone would decide that you understand its power because you're willing to kill. And even if you have to specifically kill someone you love, that doesn't make you responsible, it makes you a zealot, which is exactly what Thanos is. I know this is how it went in Infinity War. But in the ensuing year, I've thought about it a lot, and I became convinced that there must be another way, because the logic is so bad. So I came up with the idea that the Soul Stone will also reward people who understand that the initial deal is bullshit and won't give someone else for their own agenda. And during this scene in Endgame, I basically started to write my own version, in which whoever won the fight to sacrifice themselves, not for their own designs, but to achieve the true greater good that they wouldn't even be alive to see, would be rewarded with the Soul Stone. So if Nat jumps off, sacrificing herself for her friend, to save him and save the universe, she would become the master of the Soul Stone. This makes sense to me. This is a cool twist. And once I thought of this, I became so sure that this made so much more sense than the Soul Stone rewarding murderers that I wasn't even able to fully feel the emotion of it all. I was just surprised that I'd been wrong, even though of course I'd been wrong. They weren't going to do something clever like that if they had a chance for an emotional sacrifice. I got too in my own head about it all. So I had to react very quickly to a scene that was already ending because I just wouldn't take the signs for what they were. 

Nat was always at risk, and I can't be mad about how she went. Of course she'd sacrifice herself for Clint, and for everyone else. But as I mentioned above, is this really the version of Clint that Natasha should give herself up to save? It's not out of character for her, and hell, at least Clint brought up what he'd done for the only time in the movie, but still. This wasn't a good trade to me. To quote another super lady I love, I suppose it's not about what they deserve, but still. 

But most of all, the problem was that once again, we had to sacrifice a female character for the good of the men. Individually, neither of the Soul Stone sacrifices were bad choices. In Infinity War, it could only be Gamora for Thanos, and in Endgame, Nat's arc had been building up to this. It wasn't a bad sendoff for a character like Nat. But on the macro level, just. I'm tired. And all it does for me is pinpoint the problems with having such a lack of female representation in the movies. They're doing better now than they were. Truly, they are. But after Nat dies, we have this scene of five men being sad and angry and throwing things, and it just drives home again and again that Nat was the token girl in the Avengers. There couldn't be another woman in that reaction scene, because in 2012, Marvel wouldn't invest enough in female characters beyond the Only Girl, so that's what we're left with now. If we want to foreground the original six Avengers, and we want to give Nat a dramatic death to finalize her journey, all we can do is filter that through manpain because those are the only characters we have left. And I know this is an old wound. It's futile to rail against it, and at least Marvel's kind of trying a little now with their newer movies. But the rot is still there, deep in the foundations, and it makes this stuff hard. Nat has as much right as anyone else to get a dramatic sacrificial death. But I didn't need both the Soul Stone sacrifices to be both the token girls in two sausage fest teams. I'm simply tired. 

Beyond that, when Clint comes back and the team reacts to Nat's death, Brulk didn't deserve the first reaction. He just didn't. At that moment, I was literally sitting there thinking, if they don't cut to Steve, I swear to god...and they did eventually. But Steve and Nat's relationship was so much more developed and meaningful than Bruce/Nat, so it frustrated me that Brulk got to have the big reaction. And frankly, it frustrated me that once Clint showed up, Steve and Nat's friendship was essentially dropped. I like Nat/Clint. I do. Their friendship worked for me in Avengers 1 in a way that pretty much none of the other relationships in that movie did. But Clint isn't Nat's best friend anymore. I don't begrudge them getting their moments, but I do begrudge the movie for sidelining Steve/Nat after that one scene, which already sidelined Steve/Nat in its implications. Frustrating, and out of character for the Russos. 

Not to mention the scene of them being sad together was very meh. I don't go for manly displays of sad aggression, even if you are part-Hulk. And their whole handwaving of 'she just can't be brought back, just deal with it!' Weak. I don't care for being told to just accept something you haven't explained. I think we all hoped there would be a more nuanced portrayal of whatever the Soul Stone is, shadowy and mysterious as it seems, and there just wasn't. We had to take it all at face value. I'm not one for willfully undoing deaths, because of course that lowers the stakes, but still. If you have an all-powerful gauntlet that can make and unmake a universe, you're gonna have to explain to me why you can't bring someone back, even if the circumstances were particular. Clint is not some expert on the Soul Stone. He just decided this was how it had to be just...cause. Nope. 

The Snap

This was, if nothing else, interesting. It was perhaps closest to the detail that we fic writers crave, because they actually discussed who would wield the gauntlet and why. It was akin to something I'd write for this scene, though it went differently than my own would (will...you'll see.). And I'm glad that at least the arguments were logical. I always assumed it should be Thor but wouldn't be Thor, though I don't know that I buy them sidelining him like that. I think he could have handled it. But whatever. I had assumed that for thematic reasons, they'd make it be Steve or Tony, so I guess I appreciated that Brulk did it, because frankly, the gamma radiation explanation made sense. I didn't think he was a frontrunner going into this movie, but the reasoning was logical and sound, something I wish there'd been more of in some of the big events of the movie. 

What I don't understand? The gauntlet itself. I don't really see how a random Iron Man suit glove would be enough to channel the Infinity Stones? They never fully explained how Thanos's gauntlet worked, but presumably metal forged from a collapsing neutron star would be formidable and unusually strong. I get that the Iron Man suits are fancy, but they're still just Earth metals. This has always been an inconsistency in the MCU that's bothered me - Tony's suits have intermittently been able to stand extreme displays of force only to become vulnerable to the elements a few scenes later - but this still seemed a bit handwave-y. It certainly won't make or break the movie for me, but hell, if I'm airing every single thought I had during this movie, which judging by the length of this thing I sure seem to be, well. Might as well mention it. 

I've forgotten to discuss all the Thanos/Gamora/Nebula 2014 stuff. Frankly, that's because it was the least interesting part of this segment. It was fine, but when I figured that Nebula would have a big role to play in Endgame based on what I'd heard about the comics, I didn't think it would be to our heroes' detriment. I grant that it wasn't her fault, but man. Everything that went wrong did so because of Nebula, and that's a rough thing to put on one character. 

This part also falters because in retrospect, that was another aspect of the time travel set up that failed. We're gonna go into the time travel problems in a devoted section, but if anything didn't make sense even at the time of watching, it was this stuff, which made it hard to love. Also, I've had more than enough scenes of Nebula either being annoying or tortured, and I just. Don't care. I've warmed to her more lately, but I'm still not invested in any of that stuff. I stand by my statement that Gamora is the only one worth anything in the entire Guardians franchise, and while it was nice to see her again, I don't love all this stuff going wrong because of an inconveniently timed technical glitch. 

The abrupt and brutal transition from Part Two to Part Three was intense, and I was into it. Part Three had some problems, but a lack of excitement certainly wasn’t one of them. So let’s get to it. 

Part Three

The momentum of the big battle was pretty excellent. Once it got going, it didn't stop, and if this is what these movies were building towards, well, it certainly did the job. As epic battles go? This one was really good. I think it got that edge because for once, we genuinely didn't know who would make it out. Shows and movies always tease that this one could be the one, no really, we mean it, so much stakes, such high stakes! And they never follow through. But we knew someone wasn't getting out of this one. It was even money at this point whether it was Steve or Tony or Thor (yeah, I said it. I wasn't sure about him), but I think we all knew that all of them surviving after all of this would be a cheat, so. Someone was going. And yeah, we all fretted about it in Infinity War, but we always knew there was another movie to go. This one is the confirmed end for some of them. So it wasn't a matter of if anymore, but when and how. And that, finally, made this battle feel breathless in a way that none of the others could. It's not that I'm bloodthirsty. I am absolutely not someone who thinks you need to kill off major characters in order for it to mean something. But to genuinely not know what was going to happen for once? That's an experience that a jaded over-analytical girl like me doesn't get a lot, and it's pretty unbeatable in terms of anticipation.

Having them split up like that from the get-go was fun. Clint clutching the gauntlet and running through the hallways away from those awful unexplained monsters was exciting as hell. Scott running to save the ones trapped in the flooding basement was great. I don't really understand why Thanos was just sitting there, but having Steve, Thor, and Tony as the ones face to face with him was smart, because those were the main guys, so you never had that sense that nothing important could happen yet. The big characters were present at the epicenter from the get-go. 

The billowing dark smoke and crumbling rubble were an excellent atmosphere. If nothing else, this movie did scenery very right. It felt apocalyptic without being unexplained. 

The Fight

The thing about me and fight scenes: I get super tired of formulaic, generic fighting. Big car chases, too much CGI, muddled directing, it bores me. The first couple of Avengers movies were like that, which made the fight scenes eminently skippable to me. But a good fight scene? I love it. I absolutely love good choreography, sharp directing, the way it can feel like a dance. This is why I can't say enough about the Winter Soldier fight scenes. They're exquisitely put together, and I find them utterly invigorating every time, no matter how many times I've seen them. This fight scene? It was somewhere in the middle, but it edged more towards the good end of the spectrum than the bad. The Russos are very good at directing fight scenes. They're not always awesome at articulating the reasons for said fight scenes (looking at you, Civil War), but they are adept at making fight scenes feel coherent and exciting. This is often because they understand that you need a focus. The focus can shift, but in every aspect, you need to have someone you're following, and you need to be able to understand what's going on. And more than anything, I think the Russos are good at centering on the physical toll that a fight takes out of the characters. Sure, there's a ton of CGI. You can't get away from that with a Marvel movie. But they're great at filtering it all through the perspective of a character, and they're best at it with Steve. They get right to the core of the grittiness of Steve in a battle. You feel his struggle, you feel how much it hurts when he gets knocked down but still gets up, again and again. This was not my favourite battle scene in the MCU, but I liked it a lot, because you feel like it means something. It isn't just an excuse to have cool explosions and CGI weapons going wild. This battle said something about who the people fighting it are, and that's the best case scenario for what this scene was going to be. 

I can't remember everything about the battle. I'll have to fill in some of the blanks upon rewatch. But hey, it was fun. I don't really understand why Thanos's weird blade thing was so powerful. I really don't know why it was able to slice through Steve's shield like that. But if I try to close read a battle too deeply, well, there lies madness, so. There was enough going on in distinct sections of the field that it kept things interesting. I knew everyone was going to show up at some point (thanks, Sebastian Stan, for spoiling that, like, a full year ago), but I didn't feel like we were spinning our wheels til then. And let's be real, most of it was Steve vs. Thanos, which was a good time for all sorts of reasons. Especially this one: 

STEVE AND MJOLNIR!!!!! Listen. Listen. I know I'm being played to. I know this is just one of those overly manufactured moments specifically designed to make you go "fuck yeah!" I knowwwwww. But goddamnit, it worked. Boy, did it work on me. The way they directed it, the way they hadn't tipped us off too much (like they did with some other things), all of it...I did go fuck yeah. Fuck yeah, man. That's my guy with Thor's spare hammer, because he's worthy and he's wonderful and he's gonna fuck Thanos up with it. And I remember when this stuff was first teased way back in Ultron, it annoyed me, because a) I didn't care about Steve at the time, and b) it didn't make any sense. Mjolnir is supposed to choose the person who is worthy to rule Asgard, and that was already Thor. Why would the hammer switch allegiances, and what, would Steve then rule Asgard? But at this point, Thor's got a new weapon, and more than anything, Asgard is gone. The hammer's choice no longer has real world consequences. It's merely an indicator of personal value. And that's Steve. So, fuck yeah. 

Again, it only really worked because the hammer wasn't choosing Steve instead of Thor. It was in addition, and Thor had Stormbreaker anyway, so I didn't have to feel threatened on Thor's behalf. But also, it allowed for little moments like, 'no, you get that one, I get the big one,' from Thor, which was delightful, simply because Steve and Thor's mid-battle engagements are always delightful. That's a tradition I'm pleased got to be continued in this movie. 

I know what they were doing, I see what they were doing, but hell, I'm gonna treasure the image of my man wielding the shield in one hand and Mjolnir in the other. I never knew I wanted it until I got it, but I will take it and cherish it always.

I'd been waiting for everyone to show up. I didn't know how they were going to do it, but I knew they were, because, well, Sebastian Stan had told me so, but also because I knew Marvel could never resist having everyone fighting all at once. That's what this movie was made for, let's be honest. So it was only a matter of time. However, I didn't know how they were going to do it, and frankly? On your left. ON YOUR LEFT. Reader, I loved it. 

Sure, all the portals were a little silly. How did they coordinate so quickly, and why did they all show up at once instead of each of them just coming in when they were ready so they could help as quickly as possible (I mean, we know why. But diegetically, etc. etc.)? And this was another one of those tailor-made 'fuck yeah' moments that more often than not make me roll my eyes instead because of the desperate transparency. But you know what? It was fun. I know what this movie was, and this was what it came to do, and I am capable of just enjoying it. So I did. Everybody shows up and the wizards are finally being useful and you know it's time to just abandon yourself to the crazy and let it all happen. It's grand. 

But truly, on your left was a perfect way to do it. Maybe I should have called it, except that I never would have assumed that something so precious to fandom would actually be what the film itself chose to do. There were certainly a disproportionate number of references to Winter Soldier in this movie overall, which I appreciated, but this was a dream. I got chills. Elegant, lovely, character-appropriate. A++. 

Once the madness got going, I was just along for the ride. I don't have a lot to critique about the battle royale. It was a lot of fun. There were little things peppered in that elevated it - particularly whatever character reunions we could get quickly. I was particularly partial to Scott and Hope and their smiles at each other (plus Hope calling Steve Cap. We'd just watched Ant-Man and the Wasp the night before, so I freshly remembered Hope mocking Scott for calling him Cap, and then here this was as a cute little reference to reward the loyal. Not too heavy-handed, but little sprinkles for the devoted fans, and that's the kind of care for the seriality of the MCU effort that I appreciate from the Russos). It was impossible to give every character fair play, but I enjoyed the characters who did get moments. I liked the team work of passing the gauntlet between people. I did wonder if anyone would put it on, but no one did, and I see why. Still, it was a fun sub-mission within the larger battle. 

CAROL. I haven't talked nearly enough about Carol in this movie. She was sadly not in it that much, which I suppose makes sense (apparently she filmed this before Captain Marvel? So she really wasn't fully Carol yet when they were doing this movie). But I appreciated that her clear power superiority was suitably respected. And before she turned up, that moment when the guns turn around and everyone's like, 'what are they firing at?' And I knew, I knew. And my mind screamed CAROLLLLL and there she was and it was glorious. 

The charge of all the women. Look, I know 100% that I was being played. This is the kind of soulless pandering to your female audience to make them think they're getting a lot more than they are. We've already talked about the iffiness of the female presence in this movie, and how they're continually sidelined for plot reasons. That being said. I can see what they're doing, I can roll my eyes at the manipulation within it, and still fucking love it. I can. I contain multitudes like that. And when all the women marched boldly across the screen to protect each other and break through the fight, I absolutely fucking loved it. I teared up, honest to god. I LOVE THEM. I love these women and I love their power and I will cheer with abandon at their strength and solidarity. I absolutely understand that this was yet another manufactured moment designed to hit at people exactly like me. And yes, I can be critical of the fact that they're not giving us more than token moments. But I will still love this moment, because look at all those women. I meant what I said when I admitted that Marvel's at least been doing better in recent years, because the fact that we even have women in the double digits to fill this scene is the result of maybe just the last three years or so. It's not enough, but it's better than it was, and I hope it leads to a better future. So my heart swelled and I smiled like crazy while my ladies got their moment. May it be merely one of many more. 

Also, Pepper got to fight! Loved that. I have long felt cheated out of the Pepper Extremis storyline, so while this doesn’t make up for it, hey, it was something. 

I don't know why it is that Tony and Dr. Strange as a pairing work for me. They're two characters I've had tremendous problems with who are somehow very interesting together. But when Strange looked at Tony and held up the one, and it was a quiet, intimate little thing amidst all this chaos - it got me. I don't know. Something about it was very affecting. The moment of understanding between them, and what Tony rose up to do. It really worked. 

So, Tony. Frankly, this was precisely the kind of moment I anticipated Steve going out in, but they gave it to Tony instead. I'm both surprised and not. They were always going to prioritize Tony and his journey. That being said, while I intellectually understood that Tony was at risk in this movie, I never really thought Marvel would have the stones to actually kill him and thus make it impossible for him to return. I was too spooked from the last round of wrapping up Tony's character arc only to strike a deal with RDJ and thus rework the entire MCU specifically for his benefit. So yeah, I could never fully wrap my mind around Marvel really letting him go. So in that, I was genuinely surprised. But on a narrative level? It worked. Yeah, this is something I'd have expected Steve to do instead, but honestly, Steve didn't need to do this to prove what kind of person he is. Steve was always the person who would sacrifice himself to save everyone. He's done that already, and he'd do it as many times as he needed to (the ending of this movie notwithstanding, I guess...). There would be nothing added by Steve sacrificing his life by using the gauntlet except an extra sharing of tears. Tony, though? Tony needed something like this to fully complete his journey as a character. Let's be clear: he didn't need to die. I'll never say that someone needs to die to achieve full redemption or growth. There are other ways they could have come to this point with Tony. But this is one way to do it, and it's not wrong. Really, it should have been someone else. There was probably time, and other people on the field had a better chance of surviving the Snap. But if you're in that situation, and you're maybe not thinking totally clearly and things are looking rough and you see an opportunity like that? Yeah, I get it. Tony's always been impulsive, and his growth in this movie tempered his impulsiveness. But if he's going to have impulsive moments, it's progress that they're for the genuine good. 

In a lot of ways, this climax was formulaic. While it's a stretch to call Tony a father figure, he's still a sort of father figure of the MCU, and they're usually the first on the chopping block when it comes to epic fantasy conclusions. But I didn't really have a problem with it, because it was clearly meant to be a tearjerker, but it wasn't just that. More than any other character, Tony needed something that would really indicate that he'd changed as a person, become better. Of course Tony has put himself at risk to help others throughout these movies. But it's never been entirely selfless in the way this is, somehow. I don't know that I can articulate why it's different. But it felt different, and it felt like something that worked for his character more than it would for others. I don't doubt for a second that Steve or Thor would use the gauntlet without hesitation, and Nat already proved that she'd do the same. When Tony used the gauntlet, he suddenly held more control than he's ever had in his life, and yet he gave up control in the most powerful way he could have. Tony has always been obsessed with directing the narrative, creating monsters in his attempts to control the future. But by using the gauntlet, knowing what would happen, even as an extraordinary display of power, he's relinquishing his stranglehold on control and fully giving himself over. In order to win, we have to lose. In order for the Avengers to win, Tony has to lose. At the end, he understands that, and he accepts it, and Iron Man can really, finally die. 

His death scene was effective. I felt things, and I could definitely hear a lot of the theatre sniffling around me. They also did the right thing in terms of the relationships they foregrounded. I was genuinely worried that they'd have Pepper move away for Steve to be the final moment with Tony, and I was ready to riot, but that's not what happened. I'll give them credit for that. Rhodey, Peter, and then Pepper, and it absolutely should have ended with Pepper. I have always said that Tony only works with Pepper, and this movie did a good job of establishing his devotion to her and the way it's inspired him to finally be better. And I really liked how quiet this moment was, and how calm and strong Pepper was. It felt like a natural continuation of that scene they'd had earlier in the movie when they'd discussed what to do. They have matured together as a couple, they went into this understanding the stakes, and they are genuinely prepared to face the consequences. It was really nice, and it gave me emotions in a way that a more desperate show of misery wouldn't have done. 

I saw it coming, but I still appreciated the parallel of “but would you be able to rest?” to “you can rest now.” It was lovely. 

If Tony's death scene was handled well, his funeral was a bit more meh. I get what they were going for, and it was fine, but it didn't get me the way the previous scene had. It was a little too grandiose. I enjoyed seeing some of the groupings - special mention to the Pym/Lang clan, which I'm surprisingly invested in - but the slow pan to every single group was a bit overdone. At a certain point, we were reaching clusters of people who had no real connection to Tony, and a general pan up to include the crowd as a group would have sufficed. It definitely started to feel a little overindulgent. But what else did I expect. 

That video, though - that was the kind of stuff that does get to me more, even if it’s an easy get. I don’t have much to say about it. It was nice. 

And now we must discuss the thing I’ve least been looking forward to going through...

That Ending

I've been having trouble figuring out how exactly to tackle this. I'm honestly really curious about how other people viewed the ending, particularly people who actively ship Steve/Peggy. Because truthfully, this whole ending felt incredibly off to me. I'm trying to parse out how much of it is that it's an extremely fanservice ending for a ship I don't fully ship, but I don't think that's all of it. Regardless, I'd love to hear what people who do ship them thought, and if the pros outweigh the cons if you ship them enough. I've been trying to sort out if I'd feel the same way if it had been, say, Bucky that Steve went back to live with (in a 10000% hypothetical world in which a Disney-owned franchise would ever dare). It's hard to discount the effect of shipper goggles, and maybe I'd be more forgiving if I were more attached to the pairing in question. But I've been thinking about it a lot, and I just can't get past a few major things.

For one, let's get it out in the open: I didn't like the ending, at all. That being said, I was absolutely certain they were going to go this way. Not the whole time - for most of last year, I was still putting even money between Steve dying heroically and Steve getting stuck back in time. But once the trailers started coming out, I became increasingly sure. First, the Peggy compass makes an appearance despite the fact that I didn't even know Steve still had it (seriously, did it show up in any of the previous movies? Maybe it did, but it was unremarkable enough that I didn't remember). Alarm bells started to ring. Then they had that trailer with Peggy's voiceover, and I was certain. Listen. I know when I'm being primed. I see when they're trying to 'subtly' remind me of characters, themes, relationships. They were laying groundwork to make people think they'd earned this ending. And I tried so hard to make myself ok with it. I really, really tried. I prepped myself, I talked it through with myself, I warned myself again and again to make peace with it, because this is where they were going. But still, but still...man, I hoped it would be better than this. Even when Steve mentioned Peggy as the love of his life during that therapy group, which was more than a little heavy-handed and definitely not his style, and I became 100% sure that we were locked into this path, I gave myself another shot of 'prepare for this! It's happening!' and just hoped for the best. And instead. Well. 

The most essential problem of this whole, messy thing, is that time travel just doesn't work. It just doesn't. We'll hit on that again later, but if you're trying to come up with an elegant solution to a problem involving time travel, it can't be done. This movie came closer than some, but it's an impossible problem, and it always will be. Separate from the logical pitfalls, though, there are myriad character problems that this movie just didn't deal with, which kept me from being able to find any satisfaction in the ending. First and foremost, they never committed to whether Steve was going back in this original timeline or branching off into an alternate timeline. The only logical thing would be the latter, because otherwise things would start to become undone before our very eyes, but the fact that he's sitting by that lake in our original timeline at the end ruins that option. In the days it's taken me to write all this, it's since come out that the Russos claim that it was in fact the former - that he was in an alternate timeline and it's a mystery how he ended up back in this one - but the problem is, that is not at all supported in the text. I 100% believed he had stayed in this timeline based on him appearing in our timeline at the end, and there's literally nothing in that scene that would indicate otherwise. So, frankly, no matter what the Russos are saying in interviews, the film itself does not make that clear, and there's no guarantee that any subsequent films will reference what the Russos are hinting at in the future. So for the moment, we can only assume what we've seen, and that's that Steve went back in this initial timeline and lived out his life from 1970 to now with Peggy. And the problem with all this, the risk you take in taking on time travel, is that if Steve goes back to 1970 to marry Peggy and live out his life, there are two and only two options. 1. He goes back in time and alters things, because how could he not? All the things he knows, the people he can help, hell, the very fact that he's there at all - they all change what the reality of this timeline is, and the repercussions echo through to the present and the whole world suddenly shifts. But clearly, that's not what happened, because Sam and Bucky and Brulk are still there, they don't feel a thing, nothing's changed. Which brings us to 2. Steve goes back in time, understands he can't change anything because of the risk involved, somehow manages not to change anything unintentionally despite his presence there (in itself, a complete impossibility - time travel doesn't work), and chooses to live his life quietly, without affecting anything, and that's his happy ending. And that? Is awful. 

So let's say I buy it. Let's say I believe that Steve can go back like that and not significantly unmake the world. To me, understanding Steve's character the way I do? That isn't a happy ending. That's a tragedy. That means that Steve will have to watch everything that he knows is going to happen, every injustice, every crime against humanity, and just let it happen. He takes a back seat throughout all the wars and the misery and the atrocities. He sees someone walk into the road in front of a bus and doesn't try to help, because that would alter the timeline. There's letting Steve retire, and then there's letting Steve become an apathetic drone out of necessity. 

But even worse is the personal scale. When I complained about this to my sister, she said that a person wouldn't necessarily feel the need to avert, say, the Vietnam war, just because they knew it was going to happen. Sure, fine. I'd argue that if any person would, it'd be Steve, but ok, let's say for the sake of argument that I agree. But what about the stuff that hits closer to home? Even if we can accept that Steve wouldn't care that Bucky was still in Hydra's clutches for roughly 40 more years (and hey, this movie made an honest effort of trying to say that Steve only tangentially cares about Bucky, so maybe we are supposed to believe that), could he really be happy knowing that Hydra is growing and taking over the very organization that his wife founded, and is currently working at?? We know from Ant-Man that Peggy remains involved at S.H.I.E.L.D. until at least the 90s, if not longer. How could he watch her go to work every day not knowing what she was helping to create? What about the Starks? Seeing little Tony born, knowing he could help, maybe ease the tensions between Tony and Howard, help them come together? Only you can't, because if Tony doesn't have the childhood he has, then maybe he never becomes Iron Man, and what would happen then. So watching all that happen, and then knowing the exact day his friends Howard and Maria get violently murdered, and sitting back and letting it happen. Knowing that somewhere out there, Natasha is a child being trained to be a killer, being gaslit, being owned, and just leaving it alone. This doesn't sound like a happy ending. This sounds like a genuine nightmare - paralyzed, watching a slow-motion car crash that you know you could stop if only you could just stand up. It's horrifying. And that's what I'm expected to rejoice in? Because him getting to date Peggy again makes that all worth it somehow?

But fine, let's be absolutely, totally fair. Let's say it's ok for the Russos to just tell us what happened vs. everything they showed us in the movie itself. So, cool, Steve went back in time and sprouted off an alternate timeline. Fine. It's better than the alternative, that's for sure. But it still feels wrong for him, and here's why. The tragedy of Steve's story has always been in the longing to go back while facing the impossibility of it. He lost his friends, his girlfriend (I guess...more on that later), everything he knew. It's heartbreaking. It's a lot of why Steve and Bucky are so popular in this fandom - they represent that feeling of nostalgia that we all feel about our lives, brought to an extreme and fantastical degree, and it's fascinating material. You can't go back, but oh, wouldn't it be lovely if you could? Except what makes Steve so incredible, so resilient, is that he adapts. He wakes up 70 years later and everything is different and he finds a way to move forward. It's sad! It's so sad to think of him like this, this man out of time. That's why we have so many fics about some magic trick that lets him go back in time like he's always wished to. But I ask you - how many of those fics end with him staying in the past? Genuinely, I'm asking. I've never read one that ends like that. Because that's not how these stories need to go. Returning to the past is so alluring. It is. I'm an exceptionally nostalgic person, and I absolutely romanticize my happy childhood, or my teens, or my college years, when things were good, when things were easy. Everyone does. But you can't go back. Even if you somehow could, it's not the same, because you're not the same. That's always the moral of these stories, because it has to be. Because humanity is about adapting, about moving forward because there's just no other choice. And of course escapist fantasies of going back and fixing everything are fun. But I've watched and read a lot of sci-fi, and the message is always that that isn't really what it's cracked up to be. And there's a reason for that. 

But sure, let's move forward. Let's say he creates a branched-off timeline and is thus able to affect change in a truly Steve Rogers way. Cool! So I'm gonna assume he roots out Hydra from S.H.I.E.LD., he goes and saves Bucky, he improves the lives of his friends once they're born. Awesome! What a cool AU! Except. It's still kind of a miserable fate to wish on Steve. He can't save everyone, and he knows that. He can do some good, but rewriting half a century of history is too much for any one man, even Steve. But god, imagine the pressure. Imagine the guilt. He does what he can, but he can't fix everything, and he's Steve Rogers, so of course it weighs on him. And yes, you can say, that's what people live with every day! We know there's suffering out there, but we find a way to live through it! Yeah, of course. But you know why? Because we have the blissful luxury of not knowing for sure. We know there are terrible things out there, but a) we're not super soldiers, and b), we don't have advanced knowledge. We can know things are going on out there, but we also can't know that it isn't going to get better, that there isn't someone out there about to fix it. If you go back in time? You know for sure. You know how many people die in useless wars. You know about the epidemics, the awful chapters of human history. And you know it doesn't get better. What do you do?? You can't save everyone. But then your wife comes home from work and turns on the news, and you see the latest death count from something happening out there, and you sit there and think "maybe I could have stopped that." It's ghastly. Time travel is great for fantasies and quiz questions, but it's a gift that it isn't possible, because it would drive you to ruin. It would break your heart every day. So when people say it's wonderful that Steve got to be selfish and live out his life in the past? I can only see the things that are going to make his life miserable. I'd love to be happy for him, but instead, it's this. 

But even beyond all that, what about what it says not only about his character, but about everything that's happened in the MCU so far? Listen, I'm the first to say that his friendships with most of the Avengers were tenuous at best. When the Team Tony contingent of the internet railed against Civil War Steve for picking Bucky over his 'new family,' well, I didn't have a problem with that. It made sense to me. But he also wasn't abandoning everyone. He wasn't completely giving up the life he'd built. But by doing what he does in Endgame, Steve's basically saying he doesn't care about any of the people he's formed relationships with over the past 13 years as much as he cares about dating Peggy. And I...look. Some people will find that super romantic. Maybe I would have when I was, like, 19. But at this point in my life? Romance is great, but so are friendships. So are the bonds with people you've formed over years of trust and companionship. And giving up all of them for a chance at a girl you were into for a couple of years a decade and a half ago? That's not romantic to me anymore. That doesn't do it for me. Steve deserves his chance with Peggy if that's what he wants. But not at the expense of everything else. And I'm supposed to rejoice in that? That after 5 years of missing his friends, he spends, what, a week with them, and then leaves them forever? I'm very carefully trying to remove my feelings about the Steve/Bucky of it all for fairness, but what about Sam? What about Wanda? Remember that relationship that I was so attached to? Even removing the Avengers, there are people Steve loves who I can't wrap my head around him willfully leaving forever (especially since, god, doesn't Wanda need support more than ever right now? He doesn't even stick around for that?). I'll admit, I buy it slightly more now that Natasha's gone (sighhhhh), but even if she'd lived, I don't think the writers would have changed their minds about this ending, and then you'd better believe I'd be screaming bloody murder about this. I don't know, man. Maybe it's me! I have definitely turned on a lot of mainstream romance plots over the years! But god, isn't that what these movies were supposed to be about? The bonds of friendship, the bonds of brotherhood and comradeship, soldiers banding together against an insurmountable army? Am I still, after all of this, supposed to be happy that Steve drops all of his relationships so he can have another shot at an almost girlfriend? 

So let's talk about the Peggy factor. I love Peggy. She's wonderful. But you know what's a real sticking point to me in all this? We know for a fact that she had a life that she loved, lived fully and without regret. In her own words, her only regret was that Steve didn't get to live his. But I never took that to mean she wished it for him at the expense of hers. And yes, I'm sure she would have been happy with Steve too! Well, at least we can hope. But one of the greatest gifts Winter Soldier gave us was allowing Peggy to be a character separate from Steve. As much as I love her in The First Avenger, she still mostly served as a support in Steve's journey. But in Winter Soldier, they made it very clear that Peggy was her own person. That she was there for Steve, that she loved him and cared for him, but that her life was not dependent on him. She found her own adventures, her own happiness. Everything she built, she did on her own, separate from her connection to Steve. I loved that. It was so refreshing to have a character who had been conceived as a love interest get to boldly make clear that she was her own entity. That she was a whole person. And then...this. 

I'm sure that lots of people don't think Steve going back in time and marrying Peggy alters this. None of my irl friends seem to mind this ending like I do. But for me? It feels like a life stolen. Peggy got married! I'm not sure if she had kids, but she might have, and she had a brilliant career and made a name for herself. And Steve knew this. And he decided to make it all never happen. He inserted himself into a place he no longer belonged and took it all for himself again. I know that some people are celebrating this choice as Steve being finally, rightfully selfish, after a lifetime of sacrificing his own happiness for others. But this? It feels wrong. It feels willful. And sure, if it's in a branched timeline, maybe you can look at it sideways enough that it doesn't feel like the theft of a happy life to you. But it still says something about Steve that doesn't sit right with me. I'm all for Steve being less self-sacrificing. When I headcanon my ideal ending for Steve, it always involves him getting to take a slice of happiness for himself. But not like this. Not by undoing someone else's life, not by taking something directly from others. That's not Steve Rogers. 

Meanwhile, let's settle an area of confusion. When I watched the movie - hell, when I first started writing this - I thought he went back to live in 1970 after he dropped off the Tesseract. Frankly, that was the only good thing I had to say about this ending (and I did say it when I was discussing the movie with my friends directly after) - that by going back to 1970, at least Peggy had some time to live a life without him, and he just joined her partway through. But given how long it's taken me to write this, other things have filtered in, and I guess the prevailing wisdom is that he actually went back to the 1940's? I know the cars looked old, so maybe that was the clue, but I wasn't certain, and maybe I just hoped it wasn't the case. Because while this maybe makes it better on the Steve front, it makes it worse for Peggy. She doesn't get to live a life without him at all. And listen, I don't doubt Peggy Carter! I think she can do anything, and she certainly doesn't have to be alone in order to establish herself. But do we really think that in 1945, hell, 1950, 1965, anyone would think Peggy did it all on her own when she had Steve Rogers on her arm? That was part of what I loved about how Steve/Peggy went down. While it was sad for them on a personal level, it meant that after the war, during a notoriously sexist backlash era, Peggy's success was never attributed to her connection with Steve. But with this? It's absolutely unfair, but it would absolutely tarnish her own agency. And I think she would suffer with it. I have long thought that Steve and Peggy, if given the chance to be together in the 40s like they planned, would have actually run into some problems once the war settled down. I have a whole treatise to write on this that perhaps I will someday. It's not that I think they wouldn't have worked. But I'm not certain they would have, because I think the things that make them wonderful as people would have made it difficult for them to be a couple. And this kind of timeline fuckery is exactly the kind of stuff that I think would have tested them, and not necessarily in a strengthening way. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. I absolutely don't think they're doomed to fail. But by forcing them into this kind of trite 'happy ending,' this movie is asking me to ignore what I know about these characters, who they are and how they live and what they've done. That doesn't feel like a satisfying end to me. 

Beyond that, it's impossible at this point to separate the way I feel about Marvel's treatment of its women from what happens in the narrative. In the same way that I don't dislike Nat's storyline for her character individually, but I'm fully raising my eyebrows at them killing off the token girl in the team, it's hard for me to separate all that stuff regarding Peggy. Diegetically, Peggy deserves her chance with Steve. But on an outside level, it doesn't feel great that she exists solely as Steve's Reward in this movie. She doesn't even have any lines. She exists to be gazed at, and then to be danced with. I know we know Peggy's powerful and amazing. But the fact of the matter is, if you only watch the MCU, Peggy's only been in two movies, and one of them for only a few minutes. They killed her off-screen in Civil War. And then she's this in Endgame. Howard Stark gets a long, extended walk and talk with Tony, and Peggy gets this. It doesn't feel great! The exhausted feminist in me is always struggling with this stuff. Peggy doesn't have to be alone in order to be her own person! But I don't trust the MCU to put any of their women in relationships with men (even friendships, frankly), and have them still be the main characters. God, no one even says her name in the whole damn film. I'm probably nitpicking! Welcome to the hell that is living in my own head 24/7! Pity me.

God, I don't know. It's all so complicated. I might be entirely wrong in this. I really would love to talk to others about this and see if I'm just looking at this all wrong. But even though I've long known they were going this way, it's still precisely why I was hoping this movie wouldn't go the time travel route. That way lies madness. It just creates so many more problems than it solves. Problem is, when I planned for this eventuality, I always thought it would be an accident or some sort of necessity and that Steve would get stuck in the past. He'd get cut off back in time and adapt like Steve Rogers does, find the happiness in his new circumstances like he always has. But somehow, it never occurred to me that he would choose to go. That he would willfully decide, all on his own, without consultation or discussion, that he was doing this. And something about that particular change has just been rankling me. For all the reasons outlined above, it lessens Steve's character to me in a way that I never anticipated. I always wanted Steve to retire. My happy ending for him is having him find other, non-fighting ways to help people while also getting to live his own life. But I always wanted it to be his own life, not someone else's. I'm certain people will argue that Steve was never supposed to be in 2012 in the first place, that he was meant to live out his life in his own timeline. But that's not what happened, and the MCU asked me to invest in the last 8 years of Steve learning how to adjust to the extraordinary things that happened to him. If I wasn't interested in seeing that, I would have stopped after The First Avenger. While I understand that Steve getting stuck back in time would have done iffy things for his agency, I think I could have made this work if that was how it all played out. But by him choosing this fate instead, I'm having trouble embracing it as a triumphant end. I wish I could explain it better. I've been soul-searching all week trying to figure it all out. But it just makes me sad at the end of the day. 

Last of all, but it must be said: Sharon Carter deserved better than this. Listen, I remain the first to eviscerate that weird romantic curveball in Civil War. It was a hot mess. But the same damn writers who wrote Endgame wrote that romance too, and they don't get to nope out of their own mistakes. Listen, I'm a fan of acknowledging when something didn't work! I am very pro how the Russos handled the failure of Bruce/Nat! But the thing I liked so much is that they breezed past it, but still allowed it to have been a thing that happened. That significant look in Infinity War was literally all I needed. That was a 'we know this was a misstep and we're calling the loss, but it still did happen and we can't ignore that completely, so we're allowing a diegetic reference to it and then closing the book on that.' Perfect! All I ever needed! Steve/Sharon as it was handled was thoroughly a mistake and absolutely should have been backtracked. But it definitely feels a little gross for Steve and Sharon to kiss and then for Sharon to never be seen or mentioned again. Not even once. All it needed was some side-reference in Infinity War about how Steve's life on the run had been too much to manage between them. That's it! Call it a loss and be done with it! But to completely cut Sharon out of everything just to gloss over the narrative stumble and smooth the way for Steve to get back with her aunt? Yikes. And I say this as someone who has absolutely zero attachment to Steve/Sharon. I appreciate that they didn't double down on that. But snapping Sharon out of existence from the entire MCU was a cowardly way to do it, and I judge them for it. 

Two final petty things: 

I am a little salty about them using "It's Been A Long Time" as the final song, which I understand is a bit irrational. The only reason I know that song is because of Winter Soldier, but man, it's always been a Steve/Bucky song. And I guess the Russos didn't see it that way, and hey, Winter Soldier is their movie, but it only makes sense if it's about Bucky, because in Winter Soldier, Steve has been hanging out with Peggy for a couple of years now, and the song takes place just before Bucky shows up. I know, I know. Shipper goggles are powerful. But I also know how to close-read a film, so. My perspective is probably skewed, but it's also not wrong. 

During that ending, I so, so hoped the Russos would just leave it up to interpretation. When Sam asks about the ring and Steve elects not to tell him about it, I sent a prayer up hoping that the movie would cut off at that. Of course it didn't, for fan service and heterosexual romance reasons, but I really wish it did, because of this: 95% of people would have understood that the ending was exactly what it turned out to be. But for the other 5% of us? For god's sake, dudes, give us that sliver of wiggle room. Let us headcanon what we wanna headcanon. I've always wished this, even for fandoms that I'm not in - fans are great at running with things if you just give them the slightest bit of room. Just let them have it. I've always thought that J.K. Rowling put "19 Years Later" into Harry Potter precisely so that people couldn't do this and they'd have to accept her version of the future, and frankly, I think it's why people have always hated that epilogue, even casual fans. Let us imagine the future. Give us hints, do whatever, but throw a bone to the fandoms out there and let us have some fun. I mean, yeah, we can still headcanon elements of that ending (and we certainly will), but it's still disappointing. Unsurprising, but disappointing. 

Time Travel Doesn’t Work

It just doesn’t, guys. Every movie that takes it on thinks it’s different. They’re all convinced that they have the solution. And they never do. It always, always breaks down. And yeah, that sucks! Time travel is super fun! But it just doesn’t hold up, and I’m tired of movies telling me they’ve cracked the code when they just haven’t. 

I really don't understand why they thought one throwaway line from Brulk was going to satisfy all the issues with time travel. I appreciated that Rhodey and Scott brought up all the other time travel movies that thought they had it down, but Brulk's brush-off was nonsensical. Yeah, if you go into the past, that becomes your future. Everyone gets that. But that doesn't protect the rest of it. Steve can go back in time and live out his future in another period. I 100% get that. But everyone he talks to - their paths will all change because they met him. Events will alter, timelines will branch off. It's a mess. Don't talk down to us like we just don't understand how it works. We understand that it doesn't work. Fuck off, Brulk.

I briefly thought they had a pretty good thing going, though, when they came up with the plan of returning the stones to the exact moments they took them. Honestly? That would have worked. That time travel storyline would have been clean and logical. They were almost there! But then they had to go and have Thanos and crew come to the present from 2014. And then it all breaks down. I don't get it! Are we just branching off another timeline, but in the original timeline, the world is still terrible? I like the twist that we get Gamora back through 2014 version showing up just cause I love Gamora, but it simply doesn't make sense. Ugh, the more I think about it, the less it makes sense. I similarly love Loki grabbing the Tesseract and bouncing because a) it's a very Loki thing to do and b) it gives us a vague but real chance of seeing him again. But it also doesn't work! If Thor doesn't bring Loki back to Asgard, all of Thor: The Dark World doesn't happen, which means present day Thor can't get the Aether, etc. etc., and fuck, is anyone else's mind spinning? Say it with me: TIME TRAVEL DOESN'T WORK. It's just exhausting. But they were there! They were almost there, to a place where it could have worked! We were so close! Oy. 

A Confession

Alright, I have to admit it. I was wrong about how much this movie would center on Steve and Tony’s relationship. I’m very glad I was wrong. I am pleased that the writers understood that there were more important relationships to focus on. There was still a healthy dose of Steve/Tony thrown at us, but it didn't supplant too much. So, I’ll allow that I was more worried than I needed to be (about that, at least). I’ll give you guys that, Russos and co. 

Final Thoughts

This has taken me so long and gotten so thoroughly out of control that I'm certain there were big things I was planning on talking about that I'm just totally forgetting now. But I just need to be done with this thing. I'm sure I'll write a lot more about this movie over the coming months, but for now, here are just a few more things.

SAM!CAP!!!!!!!!! It could only be this way. But I'm so, so happy that the MCU acknowledged it. I have always, always said that it needed to be Sam. That Sam was the only one who made sense, the only one who was really capable of taking up that mantle. But I still thought Bucky was the frontrunner because he's a fan-favourite pretty white boy, and you can never discount the odds in favor of that. But they did the right thing! I'm so glad. All hail Sam!Cap. 

Thor becoming one of the Guardians of the Galaxy was legit the only thing they could have done to make me interested in seeing another Guardians movie if Gamora isn't in it, so damn them. Damn them for hooking me when I thought I could get free. Fucking genius move, that. Presuming, of course, that Thor is actually going to be in the next one. If he isn't, I riot. MORE THOR ALL THE TIME. 

So where do we go from here? I assume there are going to be more Avengers movies, but how and when? Are we going to establish a new core team? Do we really need a team when Carol's around? It'll certainly be interesting. I don't know how long the MCU is going to be able to sustain all this, but man, as someone who takes an interest this kind of stuff, it sure is fascinating. 

Ok, so this whole post got super embarrassing. I set out to write a series of bullet points and instead ended up with a 10-page essay. It's truly unreadable, and I know that. I tried super hard to make the format bearable on tumblr, but such a thing is obviously impossible, so instead it's this. I genuinely expect no one to have gotten through all of this, but hopefully some of you have found bits and pieces that interested you, because I'd absolutely love to talk more about this movie. I've been stewing in my own thoughts all week, and I want to bring in other perspectives. So come join me in over-analytical hell! 

[samcarpnter]

/post/184221536620/i-hate-the-russo-brothers-i-hate-the-russo why do u hate the russo bros ??

i posted that after seeing the endgame spoilers that came out after the world premiere last week, and while i regret and am apologizing for saying bad things about the movie before seeing it, i stand by this post because i really have not liked them post catws. the short answer to this question is that it really seems like they don’t care about what happened with their characters in the movies preceding theirs and ruin a lot of the really good characterization other directors had. plus they have very much contributed to the poor treatment of female characters but that’s kind of an mcu staple. it really seems like for every one good thing the russos do, they do about ten more bad things.

the long answer to this question is going under the cut because i am 100% going to rant and i am sorry but this is really gonna get into my unpopular marvel opinions and it will include endgame spoilers (they will be marked though). read at your own risk, i will try to warn if there is any “anti” characters or something. 

examples of how they ruin the characterizations other directors set in place:

wanda. look i’m just gonna say it now i don’t care for mcu wanda (even without discussing her whitewashing) so if you don’t want to read something written by someone who doesn’t like her, skip this bullet point … in age of ultron, wanda WAS WILLINGLY WORKING FOR A NAZI ORGANIZATION AND UNLEASHED THE HULK ON AN INNOCENT CITY AND PUT THINGS IN TONY’S HEAD THAT LED HIM TO CREATE ULTRON. in age of ultron though, it was fairly clear that the avengers didn’t fully trust wanda and pietro when they “switched sides” but immediately in civil war, the russos wrote it as if none of that happened. i would like mcu wanda so much more if she was given a real redemption arc, like loki in ragnarok, letting her answer for the things she previously did and proving that she is trustworthy and a true ally. the avengers immediately pardoned her, so much that it wasn’t even talked about clint is exempt because pietro saved his life and a child’s life and thus felt responsible for wanda because the russos just really want to get the brownie points for including a female hero that isn’t black widow

tony in civil war. they made it pretty obvious that tony was supposed to be an antagonist or at least someone you should root against. whether you were team cap or team iron man or you didn’t care because it was so stupid the movie was written pretty clearly to favor team cap and make tony look awful … even though he had a perfectly valid and reasonable argument for signing the sokovia accords … i mean they really do need to be held accountable for all of the destruction they cause. and yeah i agreed with cap too because they shouldn’t relinquish all control to the government, but the russos wrote it so that tony looked like the bad guy, when he really reallyyyyyy wasn’t

thor. poor, poor, beautiful thor. in ragnarok, thor went through a major character arc that allowed him to see that he is more than just the person who can wield mjolnir because he has had the power and strength to be a hero within him all along, then BAM russos say screw that in infinity war and make him go off on this whole mission that really was a waste of time to get a weapon that he doesn’t need to defeat thanos. yeah i’ll admit storm breaker is cool and i love that he got to build a relationship with rocket and kind of groot but it is just so unnecessary when they could have done something different to build that relationship, but it literally says fuck taika’s storyline for thor.

loki. in the first five minutes of infinity war they kill him off in the most un-loki-like way possible. taika did so much for the characters in ragnarok, giving loki a true redemption arc and adding valkyrie to the mcu as a strong and important character, but do the russos care about any of that? NOOOOOOOO.

ENGAME SPOILERS START HERE.

so they ruined steve. i am not accepting his ending. it really just is not him, because as we have seen from the past six movies, he will pretty much do anything for bucky. ANYTHING. and i know he loves peggy, peggy was the love of his life except bucky but marvel is full of cowards but he moved on from her, and she moved on from him. i mean agent carter was about peggy proving herself as more than just captain america’s girlfriend, and steve going back in time to be with peggy erases all of the character development peggy went through as well. honestly, i think the russo brothers did that because they knew people would likely be more upset with steve dying than tony dying (maybe i’m wrong, but just of all the marvel fans i know irl, they like steve more than tony. for the record, i would have been equally sad with either of their deaths because i love them both) and the russo brothers are fully aware of how big the stucky ship is, and this was their way of saying “hey, guess what? we didn’t kill steve and he is hetero, and there was Nothing There with bucky”. they made steve just reinsert himself into peggy’s life, when he KNEW she was happy without him and peggy had no choice in it. 

and as if they didnt do enough to thor in infinity war, they screwed him over EVEN MORE in endgame by making his only purpose to supply lazy fat jokes. there were so many other ways they could have depicted his depression, SO MANY WAYS, but they chose the lazy route of putting hemsworth in a fat suit and making fun of fat people the entire movie.

i can admit that they wrote carol well … but only when she was actually in the movie. i mean what she was there for maybe eight minutes?

and of course the lgbtq character was fucking joe russo as a glorified extra. queerbaiting that it was carol, thanks russos

ENDGAME SPOILERS END.

i really feel like i do need to clarify that i do love marvel and the mcu, and most of these characters just mean so much to me, but the way they are written and done dirty by the russo brothers when they were given such great developments before just ruin so much of it. and the russos actually do some great things, like as i said the rocket/groot/thor team up was awesome in infinity war, just what they were doing with said team up was undoing taika’s beautiful movie. the best way i can describe the russos is that they do one good thing for every ten bad things, and that’s that on that.

[wigwurq]

WIG REVIEW: AVENGERS - ENDGAME

You guys can you believe I saw a Marvel movie within like 5 days of its release? I DID IT! AND NOW I CAN WRITE A LOT OF SPOILERS - READ ON ONLY IF YOU HAVE SEEN THIS 3 HOUR MARVEL OPUS TO ITSELF! But what about the wigs? OH GURL. LET’S DISCUSS.

We begin in the Mid-waste (I think?) where Hawkeye has been taking some time out of the fight and hanging by a sleeping tree, Bran-style (oh get ready for a lot of GoT crossover comments as I saw this right after the Battle of Winterfell episode and I might get my nerdy details conflated). Anyhoo, did you know that Hawkeye is married to Linda Cardellini? Is she just the supportive wife in everything? Side note: this fact might have existed in an earlier MCU movie. To be fair, I have seen MOST MCU movies (except Thor 2 and Spider-Man and I’m not correcting that) and only saw the other ones like once so I was going into this movie like most of America: vaguely confused about former facts and really exhausted about where this 3 hour movie was about to take me. ANYWAY, Hawkeye’s entire family vanishes like at the end of Infinity War and ugh I see what you’re doing Endgame: this movie is gonna be a BUMMER.

Iron Man of course lightens the mood with some cute banter with Nebula but also: they’re fully about to die in the space void and did RDJr lose a lot of weight or is this just that Marvel technology they used to make Chris Evans look spindly in the first Captain America? Anyway, things are looking BLEAK but then our girl Captain Marvel shows up and saves the day.

Back on earth, the Avengers are really bummed out about half the population being gone (but not so bummed out that ScarJo and “Best” Chris Evans haven’t taken some time to get haircuts - they look great!) But no time for  hair maintenance talk: Brie Larson is ready to go back to space! Also her hair looks good! This movie was made before Captain Marvel and it looks like they just used her real hair and it’s so much better than her wig in that movie. 

Anyway, to space! Wait, now Brie is wearing a wig. UGH. Dammit, space! However, I think this is ScarJo’s real blonde hair (a more natural look than her blonde bob wig seen in Infinity War) and what a long strange trip it’s been since Black Widow’s first perm to her mall hair in Age of Ultron and beyond. Thank the lord for this lewk. 

So the (remaining) Avengers land on whatever planet Thanos is living on now and apparently he’s using old Avengers costumes as Scarecrows? Ok I know we’re supposed to hate this guy but he’s all for population control, gardens, AND now recycling are we sure we hate him? The Avengers definitely still hate him and after learning that he destroyed all the jewelry he spent all of Infinity War finding, they are PISSED. Thor is so pissed he kills him! Which is a super hot-headed thing to do and is basically as bad as “worst” Chris Pratt’s behavior with Thanos in Infinity War and will these alpha males ever learn??? How are they gonna reverse this whole half of the population missing thing now?

Spoiler (haha these are all spoilers!): THEY DON’T. FIVE EFFING YEARS PASS. And in real movie time, at least like 45 minutes? In which we’re supposed to believe that Black Panther (and other notable Avengers but mainly Black Panther) are going to remain dead. GET ON WITH IT MOVIE. Even more damning: Black Widow is now a sad sad lady making sad sandwiches alone and with THIS HAIR LEWK. I was so damn happy for ScarJo to be wigless and THEN THIS. WHAT IN OMBRE HELL. I think (?) what we’re supposed to think is happening here is that she’s so damn sad that she’s failed at hair maintenance and let her blonde highlights grow out into this mess? Here’s the thing, this wig is actually fine - it looks like real hair - but with A TERRIBLE DYE JOB WHY UGH. 

Speaking of new lewks, ScarJo still skypes with the remaining Avengers (bless her heart!) and Captain Marvel went ahead and got THIS HAIRCUT WHAT. I guess the internet can stop talking about how much she needs a scrunchie? I think that this is actually truer to her comic book self but also is giving me all the Lilith Fair vibes (IN A GREAT WAY!) It is still a bad wig in a man wig way (the back taper is a mess) but you’ve gotta love the 90s gelled sideswept bangs for pure nostalgia. 

Speaking of nostalgia! Ant-Man is back from the quantum realm and damn am I happy to see Paul Rudd (ALWAYS). He is shocked to learn that five years have passed while he was gone (this storyline is very Flight of the Navigator) and goes to find his now teenage daughter even tho he looks exactly the same (tho this would be true regardless - Paul Rudd doesn’t age). However, she’s all alone in her house with no Judy Greer or Bobby Cannavale in sight and does this mean they’re vanished or just not in this movie? Is this daughter being raised by Michael Pena now? Also why isn’t he there? EVERYONE IS IN THIS MOVIE I DEMAND ANSWERS. 

So anyway, Paul Rudd is all: why don’t we just time travel through the quantum realm and get those damn jewels and fix this whole Thanos situation? Best Chris and ScarJo are in, but Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer are the real pros at this whole quantum realm thing but are definitely vanished (as is Evangelline Lilly) so they go find Iron Man since he’s smart, right? Unfortunately, he is now living in a cabin by a lake and has a daughter (mazel! but this is def gonna throw a wrench into the time travel thing). Also Gwyneth is around looking tanned and vaguely ginger. Her wig is basically a more expensive, highlighted version of Nicole Kidman’s wig in Big Little Lies which is to say: MUCH BETTER BUT STILL PRETTY SHITTY. There is also a “joke” (?) about Gwyneth reading a book about composting which I think was supposed to be a Goop dig but honestly: WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT THIS MOVIE IS ALREADY SO LONG CAN WE JUST GET TO SAVING BLACK PANTHER AND THE OTHERS?

Iron Man def is like: dudes I’m not time traveling - I’m gonna do this whole dad thing WHICH IS FAIR so they go find the like #5 smartest person they know: DR. HULK. There are no pictures of this (that I could find) but Bruce Banner is now living life just AS the Hulk (but not an angry one) so he’s basically a bulky green guy in glasses which is fine but where does he buy those huge cowl sweaters? Asking for myself. Also ScarJo finds Hawkeye in Tokyo being some sort of hooded vigilante with a fauxhawk and guyliner and jeez someone is not dealing well without Linda Cardellini. 

Also not dealing well? THOR! #2 Chris is off in Asgard living life with the best supporting characters from Thor: Ragnarok (TAIKA WAITITI 4EVR) and LETTING HISSELF GO. Oh also, Tessa Thompson is there too being a fisherman (?!?!?!) even tho she’s an effing valkyrie how did she get this job?!?! But I have to give full credit to Chris Hemsworth for fully embracing the deglam life here and for the next several hours of this movie. DEGLAM THOR IS EVERYTHING. 

However, the wig is obviously terrible. ZZTop beard aside, the wig is these weird dreadlock tendrels which I’m guessing Thor wouldn’t have had time to maintain between playing video games, drinking beer, and eating pizza. Side note: I was really disappointed that he wasn’t eating Billy’s Pan Pizza (Lisbeth Salander’s #1 food choice in Sweden through all of those terrible books) which I actually tried in Iceland once and spoiler alert: original flavor INVOLVES HAM. Just saying: the devil’s in the details. Anyway, Thor and Iron Man decide to give this whole time travel thing a try (why not?) AND YES ONCE REASSEMBLED, IRON MAN’S FIRST POINT OF BUSINESS IS MAKING A BIG LEBOWSKI JOKE.

Iron Man somehow whips up some time travel gps bracelet and holy shit all of the Avengers movies are literally about jewelry. Then it’s on to making some sweet new time travel suits, Hawkeye gelling up that fauxhawk, and away we go to the quantum realm! Nothing bad can happen!

First stop: the first Avengers movie! OH GOD I SEE WHAT THEY’RE DOING HERE. The MCU literally made a plot where they could journey back to all the other MCU movies like a greatest hits tour and THIS MOVIE IS ENDLESS. This also involves journeying back to the ghosts of wigs past AND GURL I’M SHOOK. I guess I have to give credit to the MCU for wig consistencies - these wigs are as shitty as the originals! - and I guess they saved a lot in the already nonexistent wig budget. Also TILDA EFFING SWINTON IS THERE. This cast, dudes. Dr. Hulk and Tilda have a whole Back to the Future (which they make fun of in this movie, btw and I wasn’t here for it) discussion about time travel that I pretty much zoned out on until Tilda was just like eff it: here’s the jewelry you want, you seem pretty chill now, Dr. Hulk. 

Oh and Tom Hiddleston’s shitty Loki wig is back! Jesus Christ this wig. Also, Robert Redford is back? How do I not remember him being talked into the MCU?? Anyway, the jewelry Iron Man and Best Chris were looking for is DEFINITELY snatched by Loki so they have to figure out a new time travel scenario.

Oh and Best Chris and Iron Man totally made up after being at odds for the last 2-3 Avengers movies. Also what do we think the hairspray budget was for these two? There is also a LOT of talk about Best Chris’s ass in this movie (they literally refer to it as America’s Ass) and I feel like this could very much be its own movie with maybe some added Best Chris badass twitter wars. Just saying. 

Meanwhile, back in olde timey Asgard circa Thor 2, RENE RUSSO IS BACK (also Natalie Portman LOLOL everyone is in these movies). However, Sir Anthony Hopkins is definitely not wasting time on this nonsense and: fair. Also omg this wig on Rene. GURL. I don’t know what GoT prostitute dayplayer they stole this from but regardless: it’s a mess. Also apparently, Rene is about to die (I didn’t see Thor 2) and Deglam Thor is a MESS about it (also still very much a drunken mess also). He almost effs up the plan by going and crying on his mom (don’t worry - Bradley Cooper in his best work to date as Rocket Racoon got the jewelry!) And Rene tells Deglam Thor it’s ok to not be who he’s supposed to be an just be HIM which is very good advice OMG I LOVE RENE RUSSO. 

So speaking of parents, Iron Man decided to go find some Infinity Stones in the 70s where his dad, John Slattery is! Apologies for the quality of this picture - it’s the best I could do. Anyway, John Slattery was made for period piece witty repartee tho his man wig (like all man wigs) is a friggin’ mess. He and Iron Man have some fairly emotional dialogue despite the fact that John Slattery doesn’t know that he’s talking to his son and also someone refers to RDJr as Mungo Jerry so I was really down with this whole section of the movie. 

OH AND MICHAEL DOUGLAS IS THERE (again apologies for photo quality). What Marvel does best is face deaging technology (I still demand this be used for more 80s movies Michael Douglas wasn’t able to make at the time) but what Marvel consistently does worse is: wigs, specifically man wigs. WOOF. Regardless, they got all the jewelry they needed from the 70s! Moving on! 

Over in Thanos town (probably what it’s called), nice Nebula is reunited with her former shitty self and also her sister. Jeez this whole part of the movie is family reunions. Anyway, Gamora’s wig is still a Hot Topic mess. Also a mess: Nebula let Thanos into the whole time traveling jewelry snatching heist which will definitely ruin everything.

Meanwhile, over by the cliffs of sorrow (also definitely official name, probably), ScarJo and Hawkeye and their upsetting hair looks are trying to get that one piece of jewelry that can only be gotten with human sacrifice, which they somehow had forgotten since Infinity War when Thanos sacrificed Gamora to get it. Maybe they just weren’t that tight with Gamora and forgot this? Anyway, the most important thing is that ScarJo gave herself these highlight braids which make this whole look slightly better but it’s still really bad. Also bad: one of these characters has to die! In the end it’s ScarJo I think because she doesn’t have a Linda Cardellini to go back to (or 3 kids) but I don’t really like what the MCU is implying here about the value of single ladies but regardless: goodbye ScarJo and your wig! You are probably better than this whole mess anyway!

Anyway, all the (remaining) Avengers time travel back to present day (aka 2023 just go with it) and everyone is so stoked that they got all the jewelry but then bummed when they hear about ScarJo. Side note: I forgot to talk about Iron Man’s highlights and feathered lewk. It’s upsetting! Moving on! Linda Cardellini calls Hawkeye which means this whole time travelling thing worked and they brought back half the population and also most importantly probably Black Panther so go team! But before we can talk to Linda Cardellini, Thanos crash lands into the Avengers HQ AND DAMMIT NEBULA.

So then everyone is somehow transported (?) to Thanos town aka Fightsville which feels like a great place to probably die in the apocalyptic fight FOR JEWELRY. All the Avengers yet again suck at fighting computerized Josh Brolin aka Thanos and then he calls in all his evil space backup army and everyone is definitely effed. It’s a lot like the part in the Battle of Winterell when the Night King does a Nancy Pelosi clap and reanimates all the dead people to fight the living and Jon Snow cries.

It doesn’t even help when Deglam Thor gives hisself the most wild lightning based makeover. Seriously, he surrounds himself with lightning, gets those badass Total Eclipse of the Heart eyes, and somehow is able to use lightning TO GIVE HIMSELF A HALF UPDO AND BRAID HIS BEARD HAIR AND NO I’M NOT MAKING THIS SHIT UP. The lightning fails to remove his beer belly and again: I’M HERE FOR #2 CHRIS COMMITTING TO THIS DEGLAM BODY. I don’t know the hows and whys of lightning makeovers - I guess it’s just restricted to hair. Which still looks like crap, beard braids or no. Moving on: Best Chris can somehow use Thor’s hammer now and did I miss something? I think it’s a Chris thing and I’m glad that everyone agreed that Worst Chris wasn’t invited to it. But also he’s not there. YET.....

BUT THEN. Dr. Benedict Cumberbatch who I definitely forgot about (and who has the most hilarious American accent) creates all his sparkler circles. Also his whole wig/goatee lewk is like that one adjunct professor you had who kept office hours at a coffee house and/or a part-time vampire. Anyhoo, he BRINGS. BACK. EVERYONE. Black Panther (and all of Wakanda!) Spider-Man! Guardians of the Galaxy! ETC! THE JEWELRY HAND CHANGED HANDS MANY TIMES. THERE WAS SO MUCH GOING ON. Everyone starts kicking ass but it’s still not enough until Captain Marvel and her 90s pixie cut show up and I swear to god all the lady Avengers made a protective barrier around her like the Lilith Fair is serious getting back together (I WISH!) It was all the ladies you love - Valkyrie on a flying horse! Wakandan warriors BUT NOT LUPITA BECAUSE US IS BETTER THAN THIS! Elizabeth Olsen in that terrible red wig! Kate from Lost! Gamora and Nebula I think! - plus also Gwyneth who I totally forgot had an Iron Man suit too but sure! It was a very girl power moment that almost worked but very did not. In a final moment we all saw coming since before Infinity War, Iron Man sacrificed hisself for the jewelry hand (also: humanity). Thanks for your service: the jewelry was saved! OH MY GOD THIS REVIEW IS SO LONG. Am I still writing this? Are you still reading this? THANK YOU FOR READING THIS.

In the end, everyone is saved and reunited...to have a sweet funeral (apologies again for picture quality)! I shit you not: they gave Iron Man’s electric heart a viking funeral at his cabin. Really! And all the other prestige actors you weren’t sure would make it to this movie were there: Marissa Tomei in some sweet beachy waves! Michelle Pfeiffer in some not so sweet beachy waves but whatever: I’m always happy to see her! Michael Douglas! The Winter Soldier in his somehow shittier than Loki wig! That chick from How I Met Your Mother! Other people! Samuel L. Jackson! Oh and I think Iron Man’s daughter is now being co-raised by Jon Favreau? Ok! It was also a funerary co-production for ScarJo and I guess (?) Elizabeth Olsen’s computer boyfriend (aka Paul Bettany) who somehow wasn’t able to be revived by jewelry for reasons unknown. Oh and  where the eff were Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena OR GODDAMNED JUDY GREER I DEMAND ANSWERS!!!!!

SO THEN. Captain America has to go back in time to return the jewelry because Dr. Hulk promised Tilda Swinton and I still don’t get how time travel works in this movie. Also Dr. Hulk is still running the time travel machine even though the whole Ant-Man crew specializing in this technology are back but ok? It all goes great until Captain America returns IN OLD AGE MAKEUP WHAT. Turns out he took a detour to have a life and get married and huh? He then tells Anthony Mackie that he can be Captain America now - officially making the MCU America of 2023 on the level of real America in 2008 and I can’t believe they didn’t cut to a weeping Jesse Jackson (or at least Don Cheadle?) However, Deglam (still!) Thor makes Valkyrie the King of Asgard which officially makes MCU Asgard of 2023 definitely way better than the America of 2019 (yeah I went there) and then he decides to be a Guardian of the Galaxy which means we get to spend an agonizing 3 minutes with Worst Chris. Then they cut to the 1940s and a slow dancing Best Chris and Hayley Atwell and truly: if you can just time travel and be happy can’t we bring back all the dead Avengers too then? HUH? Whatever: THE END! Oh and there’s no post-credits scene but still watch the first like 5 minutes of credits to enjoy the truly mind boggling way that the MCU chose to credit the 5000 people in this movie. Are we please done with Avengers movies now?

VERDICT: DOESN’T WURQ (BUT NOW I WANT A LIGHTNING MAKEOVER)