Avengers Endgame
Apr. 24th, 2019 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pigtailed_goddessOk I need to vent about Avengers Endgame.
I'm disappointed. So fucking dejected. This is the world we live in. Where spectacle is the only thing that matters. Where Endgame and Disney and Marvel are big and will make money regardless.
Hail Hydra is used once again to come out of an anti-nazi/anti-fascist icon. Deliberately doubling down on the controversy of Hydra Cap. That's a-ok for Marvel.
Nebula kills her past self, just as abused as she. Gamora died and looses her character arc. Neither kill Thanos. That's for Iron Man.
Widow is the sacrifice and not mourned as much as Tony. Of course.
Tony gets the attention. Understanding of his dad. A family. The great fixer of the tech. The sad goodbyes. The funeral. His fans will be upset he died, but it's entirely all about how great and heroic or unfair his death is. How he was so special to save the universe. Don't look too closely at this hubris-tic and hollow sacrifice though. He gets to vent at Steve about his losses, like Steve and the whole world didn't also suffer, and Tony wasn't wrong in AOU, CACW or Infinity War. He gets to go off and form a family while others can't let go, while there is grief and chaos in the universe. That family, that daughter is given more weight than the snap reversal. Meaning the MCU leaves the universe broken, people returning to 5 yrs of chaos and change and grief and probably other lives lost in the snap or since, so Tony's kid lives. There is no Aunt May. Peter's narrative is about Tony.
Thor's narrative is a joke. So some Asgardians survived Thanos. The favorites from Ragnarok even if they would have not fled a battle. Thor revenges in manly angst fashion and then becomes a sad sack. Yes, grief is apparently Fortnite in the snapped MCU, and dude bro behaviour and alcohol binges and apathy. This is his legacy. Not ruling, not pushing through loss, and not kindness. Hollow ass-clown behaviour excused because killing didn't solve his problems.
At least he gets a narrative. Bruce doesn't.
Hawk-eye is given the same childish man angst men think are great when they fridge women and children. I lose my family and get tattoos and a mohawk and kill people. Then I get them back and am fine.
We've already covered Natasha as the sacrificing woman of the team. She only matters if she's caring about others or a lover. Her as a person, a fighter, a survivor herself? Nah.
And Steve. Oh god, Steve. This is your character huh? The moral right. The worthy of Mjolnir. Back to ugly outfits and Tony acceptance and bland looks and speeches about teamwork covering a character hole. Robbed of getting to express real feeling or conviction, because it would expose the lack in all the BS around you.
His ending choice entirely destroys him. I don't even wanna rewatch the movies I loved him in. Time travel explanations or not, Steve is choosing to abandon all he lost and regained in the present for a past he was already moved on from. He abandons the current future, current Sam and Bucky and Wanda and all the connections and ways he's forged a current self. What a fuck you to his friends. I'd prefer to live in an alternate reality, and maybe make you my better version, than be with you now.
Peggy is also a different woman in the 70s. She's a person who will have lived without him by 30 yrs. The 70s are not his era or his home. The film doesn't give a fuck. And Steve showing up to be with her or stare at her, disavows any acknowledgment of that. Disavows their connection re-made when he awoke, and the lost love and connection he shared with her before she died, and carried on after. Of her own grief and moving forward independently as well. Disavows her as the character who affected the future for herself and him as he awoke too. Built Shield. Morally convicted advisor and influencer who had to go against sexism and her reduction as Captain America's girl. All her development will be changed.
That's if it's an alternate timeline.
Make no mistake, it's Steve choosing to be with Peggy, as an end, not a beginning. It's not framed as a change or new start to a new story. Not fixing a past mistake, fighting for a happier future for himself or others. Not Steve and Peggy growing in a new possibility that we see. It's just a choosing to go back for an idea of a girl he once loved and the dance of what could have been.
If it's a more fixed loop, with older Steve showing up, and the stones having to go back at all, then Steve not only abandons his future and friends, he abandons his morals. He leaves the world to re-build on it's own and will sit and watch both minor and major past hurts, that affect people he loves like Peggy, Bucky, Howard and Tony, Sam, Wanda, etc etc and do nothing. Worse, he'll keep Peggy in the dark or complicit in his abandonment of caring.
Real great happy ending that.
Other minor quibbles because I'm mostly about character.
The plot is stupid and full of unnecessary jokes that make it a joke to take seriously. So any emotional payoff, or action payoff, is of course both fan-service because it's devoid of any theme or meaning, and not weighted by realism.
The excuse of it being comics is old. This is a film. These are a series of films, with their own continuity and build. Structure and narrative flow and points to the stories, are good things to have. I'd even say it's a failing of comics industry today that they are more interested in an event or idea of character or story, then actually building and telling one correctly and with purpose.
Infinity War was entirely meaningless as well. It set up character's being gone. That's all. Thanos as a villain or his backstory was given no point, as it was not carried over to this film. The assine 50% and value of life argument is also given no examination here. Apparently Thanos was right and the consequences were only that it makes people sad. People, our heros, only care about the snap, not morally or out of good economic and social reason, but because it took away our favorite characters momentarily and gave a veneer of it's so sad and bad.
I'm disappointed. So fucking dejected. This is the world we live in. Where spectacle is the only thing that matters. Where Endgame and Disney and Marvel are big and will make money regardless.
Hail Hydra is used once again to come out of an anti-nazi/anti-fascist icon. Deliberately doubling down on the controversy of Hydra Cap. That's a-ok for Marvel.
Nebula kills her past self, just as abused as she. Gamora died and looses her character arc. Neither kill Thanos. That's for Iron Man.
Widow is the sacrifice and not mourned as much as Tony. Of course.
Tony gets the attention. Understanding of his dad. A family. The great fixer of the tech. The sad goodbyes. The funeral. His fans will be upset he died, but it's entirely all about how great and heroic or unfair his death is. How he was so special to save the universe. Don't look too closely at this hubris-tic and hollow sacrifice though. He gets to vent at Steve about his losses, like Steve and the whole world didn't also suffer, and Tony wasn't wrong in AOU, CACW or Infinity War. He gets to go off and form a family while others can't let go, while there is grief and chaos in the universe. That family, that daughter is given more weight than the snap reversal. Meaning the MCU leaves the universe broken, people returning to 5 yrs of chaos and change and grief and probably other lives lost in the snap or since, so Tony's kid lives. There is no Aunt May. Peter's narrative is about Tony.
Thor's narrative is a joke. So some Asgardians survived Thanos. The favorites from Ragnarok even if they would have not fled a battle. Thor revenges in manly angst fashion and then becomes a sad sack. Yes, grief is apparently Fortnite in the snapped MCU, and dude bro behaviour and alcohol binges and apathy. This is his legacy. Not ruling, not pushing through loss, and not kindness. Hollow ass-clown behaviour excused because killing didn't solve his problems.
At least he gets a narrative. Bruce doesn't.
Hawk-eye is given the same childish man angst men think are great when they fridge women and children. I lose my family and get tattoos and a mohawk and kill people. Then I get them back and am fine.
We've already covered Natasha as the sacrificing woman of the team. She only matters if she's caring about others or a lover. Her as a person, a fighter, a survivor herself? Nah.
And Steve. Oh god, Steve. This is your character huh? The moral right. The worthy of Mjolnir. Back to ugly outfits and Tony acceptance and bland looks and speeches about teamwork covering a character hole. Robbed of getting to express real feeling or conviction, because it would expose the lack in all the BS around you.
His ending choice entirely destroys him. I don't even wanna rewatch the movies I loved him in. Time travel explanations or not, Steve is choosing to abandon all he lost and regained in the present for a past he was already moved on from. He abandons the current future, current Sam and Bucky and Wanda and all the connections and ways he's forged a current self. What a fuck you to his friends. I'd prefer to live in an alternate reality, and maybe make you my better version, than be with you now.
Peggy is also a different woman in the 70s. She's a person who will have lived without him by 30 yrs. The 70s are not his era or his home. The film doesn't give a fuck. And Steve showing up to be with her or stare at her, disavows any acknowledgment of that. Disavows their connection re-made when he awoke, and the lost love and connection he shared with her before she died, and carried on after. Of her own grief and moving forward independently as well. Disavows her as the character who affected the future for herself and him as he awoke too. Built Shield. Morally convicted advisor and influencer who had to go against sexism and her reduction as Captain America's girl. All her development will be changed.
That's if it's an alternate timeline.
Make no mistake, it's Steve choosing to be with Peggy, as an end, not a beginning. It's not framed as a change or new start to a new story. Not fixing a past mistake, fighting for a happier future for himself or others. Not Steve and Peggy growing in a new possibility that we see. It's just a choosing to go back for an idea of a girl he once loved and the dance of what could have been.
If it's a more fixed loop, with older Steve showing up, and the stones having to go back at all, then Steve not only abandons his future and friends, he abandons his morals. He leaves the world to re-build on it's own and will sit and watch both minor and major past hurts, that affect people he loves like Peggy, Bucky, Howard and Tony, Sam, Wanda, etc etc and do nothing. Worse, he'll keep Peggy in the dark or complicit in his abandonment of caring.
Real great happy ending that.
Other minor quibbles because I'm mostly about character.
The plot is stupid and full of unnecessary jokes that make it a joke to take seriously. So any emotional payoff, or action payoff, is of course both fan-service because it's devoid of any theme or meaning, and not weighted by realism.
The excuse of it being comics is old. This is a film. These are a series of films, with their own continuity and build. Structure and narrative flow and points to the stories, are good things to have. I'd even say it's a failing of comics industry today that they are more interested in an event or idea of character or story, then actually building and telling one correctly and with purpose.
Infinity War was entirely meaningless as well. It set up character's being gone. That's all. Thanos as a villain or his backstory was given no point, as it was not carried over to this film. The assine 50% and value of life argument is also given no examination here. Apparently Thanos was right and the consequences were only that it makes people sad. People, our heros, only care about the snap, not morally or out of good economic and social reason, but because it took away our favorite characters momentarily and gave a veneer of it's so sad and bad.
