I’m “biast” (con): nothing
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
NO SPOILERS!
I hardly know where to begin talking about Avengers: Endgame, and I don’t mean because I’d rather not spoil anything for the three of you who haven’t yet seen the film. And also not just because I find it a satisfying challenge as a film critic to write about a film in a substantive way without spoiling the plot, which is absolutely possible in every instance, but not always the easiest thing to do.
Getting my head around Endgame in a way that helps me digest it is tough because it’s just so big. Which is certainly appropriate for a film that is the finale of a 22-movie saga. Has anything movie-movie ever been truly as epic as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, kicked off 11 years ago by 2008’s Iron Man? I go reread my decade-plus-old review of Iron Man now, and it feels so prophetic for the entire series: I noted its humor and its snark, but also its seemingly (but not) contradictory sincerity and its humanity, its sense that Tony Stark isn’t (and has subsequently proven not to be) a superhero in the cartoony sense but a real, complicated, flawed human man just trying to navigate a world that has gotten weirder than he ever could have imagined, even if that weird world is, at least at that point, entirely of his own making.
Maybe that’s part of what the MCU has been: something strange and wonderful but also its own Frankenstein monster, as if it willed its own delightful unexpectedness into existence against all odds, in spite of itself, and probably against all good advice. I mean, of course, it did will itself into existence: it’s a corporate product motivated by a desire to make a profit that will appease its shareholders. But it kind of doesn’t feel like that, for all that its movies sport production budgets each close to the annual GDP of a small nation. It feels more organic than that. It feels like a lot of very talented, very creative people both in front of and behind the camera fumphering along, in the best possible way, making it up as they go — maybe to a rough sketch of a larger plan, but nothing more than that. And it astonishingly mostly all worked out in the grand scheme. Which is incredible. Except it also isn’t. Because that is often what happens when creative people are given free rein to do their thing and trust their instincts. Goddamn if the MCU doesn’t feel, as much as is possible, like the studio-filmmaking equivalent of the theater nerds ganging together, taking over Farmer Brown’s barn, and gosh-darning, “Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!” With more CGI assistance than any theater nerds ever had, but still. Maybe that’s its greatest legacy.
I am aware that I am also glossing over the fact that the creativity of the MCU has mostly excluded women and people of color — pretty much anyone who isn’t a white man — and please do not write in to say “But Black Panther” or “But Captain Marvel.” Because those are very late-in-the-game outliers. And Endgame still centers white men, mostly Cap and Tony and a little bit Scott Lang. I love them! But I long for more inclusive stories. I am painfully aware that my love of the MCU has very much been about what I hope is a last gasp of gotta empathize with white men cuz that’s all we got for ya, toots. As a female geek, I really would love to feel like I am seen the way that white male nerds are. (I can’t even truly imagine what it must feel like to be a geek who ain’t white.) But this has also been what My Life As A Geek has been since I was a kid: having to learn to love stories that center white men, because there wasn’t much else. Maybe part of why Endgame feels so momentous is because it puts a period on the big overarching stories about Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.: The Judge, Chef) and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans: Snowpiercer, What’s Your Number?) that have driven the MCU, and as much as I will miss them, that’s a good thing, too.
Ah god, I’m not sure I even know what I’m talking about. As the kids today say, Avengers: Endgame is a lot. I’m only chipping away at one tiny corner of it, if even that.
So, previously on Avengers: Thanos (CGI’d Josh Brolin: Deadpool 2, Only the Brave), perhaps the most powerful Bad Guy ever, has — OMG — erased half of all life in the universe with the snap of his fingers, aided by the Infinity Stones, which are, well, infinitely powerful. Endgame opens immediately after that, with the 50 percent of the Avengers who are left reeling with shock and grief. When Tony gasps, “I lost the kid” — he is referring to teenaged Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland: Pilgrimage, The Lost City of Z), who turned to dust in Thanos’s snap — it’s like a punch in the gut, not least because he didn’t “lose” the kid, it was just the random result of Thanos’s action. But it also feels, if you are an adult of Tony’s age *raises hand* like a premonition of the near future, what with the kids today starting to wake up and be angry (and justifiable so!) about the world-ending shit *cough* global warming *cough* that we Xers and our Boomer elders have been unable to shift any action on. At least Tony was trying to stop Thanos! Fuck all the rest of us in the real world who’ve done fuck-all to stop our own looming apocalypse.
Looming apocalypse. Clearly this is starting to weigh heavily on the pop-culture zeitgeist. (See also: this weekend’s Game of Thrones’ Battle of Winterfell, and its general “winter is coming” vibe.) There is something going on across these 22 movies, culminating in Endgame, that is very much about us feeling an end-of-the-world barreling down on us, a very dramatic paradigm shift in the offing. And I think part of the emotional right hook of these movies is that we absolutely know, even if we don’t want to admit it, that there are no metahumans who are going to swoop in and save us from it at the last minute.
Fittingly, Endgame does not downplay its apocalypse, or make it easier to accept. Returning screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (as a team: Pain and Gain, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader) do not indulge in the great science-fiction reset button that we are all used to and were, frankly, expecting here. There’s a moment early on in Endgame at which any self-respecting geek was, I suspect, feeling simultaneously like, “Okay, this is where they fix everything, and I’m gonna hate it because it’ll be a cheat,” and they don’t fix it and it’s not a cheat and we are all “Waah, but I want adorbs teen Spider-Man back!”
Then Endgame continues on and settles into its apocalypse and starts to be about how we deal with grief and how we move on after the very worst has happened. And even though it fixes some bad things that happened, it doesn’t erase them, doesn’t make them not have happened. And those fixes cannot make right the new bad things that occur along the way. The trauma that the world — the universe! — has suffered cannot be undone, and fresh trauma cannot be avoided. (Enduring something awful does not, alas, make us immune from further awfulness.) It can only be coped with, new paths forged, new lives built. And every new choice comes with the risk that that will be snatched away at some point, too. Tragedy never ends.
And yet, miraculously, Endgame is not relentlessly sad. It doesn’t wallow in its grief. It’s surprisingly funny! Sometimes in bold, brash ways, as with Thor (Chris Hemsworth: Bad Times at the El Royale, 12 Strong) continuing to embrace the more fleshly aspects of his existence as a god, and the movie also continuing to embrace the bittersweetly comic side of him as a character, both of which we started seeing in Ragnarok. Sometimes in sneaky, meta ways, as in how it has a few characters — Scott Lang/Ant-Man (Paul Rudd: Fun Mom Dinner, They Came Together) and James Rhodes/War Machine (Don Cheadle: Miles Ahead, Flight) — explicitly discussing pop-culture explorations of a science-fiction trope that Tony and Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo: Now You See Me 2, Foxcatcher) are trying to harness for real in their quest to undo Thanos’s snap. The characters invoke these other movies — which are clearly movies in the MCU reality — as a way to point out what a fresh disaster this plan could be and how difficult it will be to make this idea work. But then this movie itself audaciously steals the brilliant conceit of a franchise Scott makes particular snarky reference to, and centers its entire plot around that conceit!
Stealing that other franchise’s Big Idea is part of how, meta and in-story, everything appropriately comes full circle in Endgame. It revisits its own progression, reminding us of how far these characters have come, how much they’ve willingly sacrificed, and how much they’ve unwillingly lost. It lodges the MCU firmly in a realm of pop-culture geekery that has gone mainstream in a way that I think lots of us — me certainly — never could have imagined happening to such nerdy stuff, cheekily anchoring it to other fictional universes we love and winking to Marvel continuity outside the movies. (Cap has a line of dialogue, in a scene that mirrors one that has become iconic in the movies, that references something that has only happened in the comics. It’s a huge nod to the utter sprawl of the many parallel Marvel realities.) It cements itself as an ultimate sort of superhero science-fiction soap opera, one that it’s difficult to imagine ever being topped. And Endgame does that, for better or for worse, by reinforcing something that has become obvious in the last decade-plus of superhero cinema: the big battles are least interesting bits; that remains true of the big battles here. The ’shipping and the stanning and the fan-service downtime for our beloved heroes to process the emotions the battles inspire, to comfort one another? That’s where the real deal is.
Still, I have only begun to scratch the surface of what Avengers: Endgame does, why it feels so important to fans and what’s so important about it as a movie, both creatively and from the business perspective. I feel like there’s something really key hidden in Thanos’s insistence here that “I am inevitable,” but I haven’t hit on what that is yet. More viewings and much more thought is required. I can’t wait.
see also:
• Avengers: Infinity War movie review: it’s all been leading to this
There were two things that bugged me about the movie, but I was willing to let them slide because the rest was so good. And the directors have now given the same explanation for one of them (an apparent inconsistency at the end) that I head-canoned at the time, so I’m even happier.
Please feel free to share what bugged you…
I had been avoiding spoilers, but since we’re past that now:
The “inconsistency” was Caps return at the end, which seemed to break their time-travel rules. Which I quickly rationalized away, using assumptions which the Russo’s have confirmed:
https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/30/avengers-endgame-russo-brothers-captain-america/
The other issue was Black Widow’s fate. Though having just got back from my second viewing, I think it worked for the movie and for the character, even if it was problematic in light of her treatment in previous movies. She had agency, and she exercised it to the fullest possible extent.
(The fact that she was set up so it made sense for her to use her agency for self-sacrifice is, IMO, a different problem than “fridging”.)
It also “helps” that the number and significance of really-dead main-timeline characters over the two movies seems roughly evenly distributed by gender.
Also: we have alternate timeline versions of one dead woman (Gamora) and one dead man (well, usually; Loki) set up to probably be seen again (Gamora in GotG 3, Loki in his upcoming show).
Though the second viewing did bring up another plot-quibble: How were there enough Pym particles for both Nebula-14 and Thanos-14 (and his ship) to get to 2023? My wife is content to assume that, given a sample, Thanos made more.
Technically, Thanos could have gotten more Pym particles from Black Widow’s corpse; but he wouldn’t have had any reason to look for it, and we don’t know whether bodies stick around after the Soul Stone is granted.
“Hey Peter Parker.”
This ups the ante on the scene where Okoye and Black Widow come to the aid of Scarlet Witch in Infinity War. As it unfolded, I was like alright here come the ladies let’s kick some ass. And then more appeared. And even MORE. It may seem like pandering to some, but holy cow do I want to see THEIR movies now.
I honestly didn’t even think about that scene as “it’s all ladies” until reading later reactions. I was just like “Yay, Carol! She’s my favorite! Ooh, and there’s another favorite! And another! Go, get that gauntlet over the goal line!”
Oh man, I clocked that bit *instantly.* I bet most female geeks did. I knew it was ultimate pandering, but its power is undeniable.
I was just hyper-focused on Carol. On 2nd viewing it was pretty obvious.
I enjoyed the pandering, but I really hope they follow it up. A-Force, A-Force, A-Force, A-Force.
– SPOILERS –
I have to admit, I had two huge issues with the film. This just infuriated me to no end on my first viewing, and dampened my enthusiasm for the rest of the story. This crept up on me more gradually, and I can empathize with those who were really upset by it. It took me some time to make peace with (or at least compartmentalize) these shortcomings, and when I saw the film again I was able to enjoy all the many things it did right. And I did enjoy it ENORMOUSLY.
It’s a truly stunning achievement. 22 films telling separate but related stories that interweave into a single, coherent, overarching narrative over the span of a mere ten years — no other franchise comes to my mind that has done this, not Star Wars, not Harry Potter, not LOTR, not James Bond. And not only to do it, but to do it well — to release 22 films that were ALL profitable and ALL generally regarded as at least good if only some were great, and to have us fall in love with multiple characters over and over again. Maybe the most impressive proof of this is all the YouTube videos of theater audiences full-throatedly cheering and clapping and tearing up for every. single. hero who returns for the final battle. That’s how much we’re invested in these characters. Just amazing.
I’m also astounded at how much Endgame paid off seeds that were planted not just earlier in the film, and not just in Infinity War, but in all the previous films. Tony’s “I am Iron Man,” of course, ends his story as he began it. The instantly iconic moment of Cap wielding Mjolnir paid off the party scene from Age of Ultron. Tony full-on hugging Peter paid off him telling Peter “That’s not a hug, we’re not there yet” in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Even one of the least-loved films in the series, Thor: The Dark World, gets to be a significant emotional anchor in this film, for chrissake. And there are even small moments as subtle as Hope saying “We’re on it, Cap” (and Scott grinning at her) after she’d mocked him for referring to Steve as “Cap” in Ant-Man and the Wasp. The kid from Iron Man 3 shows up, all grown up, at Tony’s funeral. And Steve finally gets that dance with Peggy that they’d scheduled all the way back in Captain America: First Avenger. The level of care and attention with which the filmmakers honored ALL these films just blows my mind.
Anyway — like you said, there’s so much more to say. I look forward to any further thoughts you decide to post! :-)
And one last thing: Captain Marvel, as underused as she is, remains the most awesome ever. And Carol’s new haircut gives me life.
Oh! And also: How incredible is it that Marvel has been training its viewers to accept more and more wildly outrageous scenarios? Iron Man was a fully grounded movie: tech guy builds himself a suit of armor. I remember being concerned about how they were going to bring Thor into the mix: How is Tony Stark’s grounded cinematic world going to handle a god? And I remember thinking it was clever that they found some way to “science” it to make it palatable to skeptical moviegoers: he’s not really a god with magic, just an alien with advanced technology.
Fast-forward a decade: Quantum realm, time travel, talking raccoon, apocalyptic battle with sorcerers and alien monsters and universe-destroying jewels and a friggin’ horse with wings, and we’re lapping it all up, no problem at all! Absolutely amazing.
I cannot disagree with either of your huge issues.
I love Carol’s new haircut too.
Without Age of Ultron, I think I would have been more okay with what happened with BW but, with that movie, it just felt gross to me; or at least there was an unpleasant undertone. I absolutely agree about the Thor stuff; it really wasn’t funny and I’d rather see what Okoye was up to rather than Korg and Miek playing Fortnite. I actually shot the screen the bird when the female heroes suddenly, and illogically, congregated together; what kind of pheromone was released that drew them together like that? They’re not ants, Marvel, and you haven’t been particularly interested in their stories before so … no. They got the bird from me because I would love to see more of their stories that are about them, not the heroes they’re supporting.
I’m a sucker, so I still liked it but I had a low-level frustration with it throughout. Loved Captain Marvel but I wanted someone to call her ‘Captain’ or ‘Captain Marvel’ and, well, I wanted the shaved head and the pseudo-Mohawk. Not a big deal, though, and they did have many lovely pay-offs, so it, mostly worked.
Oh. And I’m so glad we’ve got a reset on Gamora and Quill’s relationship because that never made a bit of sense to me, why she would be into this emotionally stunted individual who’s incredibly immature. I was ALL IN on that one because it’s been a puzzler for me.
So much fan service… and so many plot holes… if this were food, it would be the kind that Thor ate for five years… (Overstuffed with tasty stuff and not much else…)
Also…This movie made fun of Back to the Future… but that movie made sense…
I have to say that the best superhero film this year so far has been Shazam!…
This movie hung so many lampshades on how the time travel wasn’t going to make sense because no time travel story (not even BttF) makes real sense because time travel is by definition nonsensical and that’s not really why we’re here anyway that complaining about it… I mean, sure, ok, I guess.
Time travel isn’t the issue… good writing is. I’ve never met anyone ask me to help explain to them what happened in BTTF. As nonsensical the time travel rules were, the audience was able to follow, and enjoy the payoff. (That is what good writing is supposed to do…)
Once Loki and then Cap diverged from the film own rules… (The Ancient One even used visual aids…) I couldn’t just follow along. I expect films to follow their own logic and this one doesn’t… so instead for feeling happy for Cap… I was thinking that this shouldn’t be and this is some Lazy Writing…
I mean, ok, sure, I guess.
How, though?
The film posits that going back to the past and changing things there doesn’t change YOUR past, it creates a separate alternate timeline from the point of the change.
Arguably, Cap broke the film’s rules because by going back to live with Peggy, he should have created an alternate timeline; instead, he shows up again in THIS timeline as an old man. (Although there are a few theories floating around on how this could have been made possible.)
Loki didn’t break the film’s rules. By stealing the Tesseract and escaping (and not being seen again for the rest of the movie), arguably he DID create an alternate timeline where events unfold differently (that we just don’t see). He’s still dead (*sob*) in the universe of the movie, but a different version of him is alive in some new alternate reality. Perhaps that’ll be the subject of the new Loki show on Disney’s streaming service.
Who says he’s not jumping around timelines?
The directors say he *did* jump timelines.
Even Deathstroke936 agrees that Steve jumped timelines. Deathstroke is just insisting that time paradoxes are okay but inconsistent rules are bad—which is his (or her) right as a moviegoer.
Sure. And I replied to him earlier about why I think the rules are actually consistent (Steve got his happy ending *after* returning all the Stones). But I wasn’t replying to him above. :)
Apparently he is, and (as Allen W points out) that’s what the directors say. But the story doesn’t make that clear, so it’s an extra-textual explanation. Unless/until that’s clarified or explored in subsequent stories, it’s like Rowling saying Dumbledore’s gay. :-)
I’m with you that the film should have made it clearer.
I don’t think it’s quite like Dumbledore, though, in that his gayness was barely hinted at in the books; whereas alternate timelines were explicitly called out in Endgame.
I’m guessing the name of the new Loki show isn’t Just Loki, I Guess…
Tonio!!! Welcome back.
Er, thanks, Bluejay.
Why the “er”? That was sincere. :-)
I suspected it was. I just considered it to be unexpected.
And I don’t know why I wrote “er”. A bad habit picked up from writing too much fan fiction? Too much time channeling Abed Nadir? Who knows?
I’ll know better next time I return after a long absence.
Thanks again for the welcome back.
Unbreakable Loki?
Do you agree that when the Ancient One was discussing preventing “chaos” in the timeline… as the visual aids were showing… arriving at a different time created an alternative timeline… and the way to prevent that… was to return the infinity stone at the same time it was taken… and the visual aid showed the alternative timeline removed, gone … in Banner’s words … as if nothing happened…
If you agree that is what was established, then we can continue, if not then you won’t have the problems I had with the plot…
Replying to this rather than to your reply to me:
I agree that the Ancient One and Banner told us that an alternate timeline created by removing an Infinity Stone would be erased if the Stone was returned. Convenient!
But Steve said that he did his thing (which apparently involved going further back) *after* he returned the Stones. So, the StevePeggy timeline continues to exist. And in that timeline, he may (or may not) have done all kinds of things, including exposing Hydra and rescuing Bucky. He *probably* didn’t arrange to have himself defrosted early, since that would be awkward with Peggy; although the “America’s Throuple” fanfiction may well already be out there.
But: He must have had a second shield made at some point, since the one he gave Sam is visually distinct from the original (which was already in the ice by the time he arrived on the timeline).
P.S. He also might have defrosted himself, let that Steve stay with Peggy, and go on to marry someone else. Which could explain why he chose not to tell Sam about her.
Was it visually different? Interesting — I may have to go back for a third viewing. And yeah, there are all sorts of ways to have a second one made. He could have had Howard Stark do it, or even Tony — remember in Iron Man 2 he had an incomplete version of the shield just propping up some of his other gadgets. He could also have emailed Shuri in Wakanda. :-)
The new shield has a line in the middle of the silver ring, and apparently some other details as well:
https://www.therpf.com/forums/threads/captain-america-shield-endgame-spoilers-turn-back-now.301689/
Just got back from a second viewing. The Ancient One is more specific than this. What she tells Bruce is that if an Infinity Stone is removed from the timeline, that will create a bad branch. She makes no mention of people hoping around creating chaos.
As for whether Steve gets the stones back where they need to be… well, look, either he did or he didn’t. If he did, great, story over. If he didn’t, well, then, we have a story hook for a new Infinity Saga. No mention is made to what problems, if any, will precipitate from Thanos disintegrating all 6 stones.
I wasn’t asking you to convince me that your interpret was the only correct one. I just wanted you to expand on your comment.
Maybe you didn’t intend it, but this is pretty damn condescending.
I apologize…Not meant to be condescending, but if it comes across “snarky” is not because of you and its all about my disappointment on the writing…
And the scene… it seemed pretty black and white with the lines disappearing… And seeing it twice… and everyone I’ve spoken so far agreeing we saw the same thing…
But I realize that not everyone would agree, so in case you didn’t… you saw something different and I would be just complaining… (I can do that on my own…)
Almost everything time-related in the movie pretty much seems to follow the rules it explains: you can’t change your past, you can just create divergent timelines. (Which is also how time travel sometimes works in the Marvel comics.)
The one apparent exception is Steve’s appearance at the end. That threw me for a few seconds, until I rationalized it as “Steve must have lived those years in another timeline, and then gotten back some other way.”
Which, according to the directors, is exactly what happened:
https://ew.com/movies/2019/04/30/avengers-endgame-russo-brothers-captain-america/
I do think they could have spared 30 more seconds at the end to explain it better
Thanks for that EW link. From the article:
Dammit, guess I’m gonna have to get a Disney+ subscription now.
I agree that he lived in another timeline. The issues I have is how he got back…
As the Ancient One showed using visual aids… once the stone is returned, that alternative timeline doesn’t exist anymore. So that means he’s tied to the reality that sent him there. So if he waited for Peggy to die to return the stone… once he did, that reality no longer exists… the only way back is through the machine. Any other way feels like a cheat or bad writing…
And him going back doesn’t prevent the original Cap from going into the ice and taking the shield with him, so where did his shield come from…??? More plot holes… and I still haven’t mentioned Loki…
Who’s to say that isn’t exactly what happened?
How is that a plot hole? He would have had an entire lifetime to acquire another shield!
I think you may be trying to make it unnecessarily even more complicated than it already is.
“Who’s to say that isn’t exactly what happened?”
“How is that a plot hole? He would have had an entire lifetime to acquire another shield!”
Is that what you saw…??? Because nobody else did… movies that require me to assume things … to close their logic gaps… not my cup of tea… Cap had since the end of Civil War to acquire another shield… no precedent there either… people are free to assume “what if” but since none of us got a writing credit on the film…
I didn’t say the former, but the latter: that’s a stretch: *No one* could have seen that?
That’s most movies. Most stories. Not everything gets spelled out, and some things don’t need to be.
I didn’t say the former, but the latter: that’s a stretch: *No one* could have seen that?
No one saw it because there was no such scene in the movie. My issue is that everyone has to “see something” that wasn’t there in order to close the logic gap…and the movie doens’t lay the groundwork for everyone to “see” the same thing…
That’s most movies. Most stories. Not everything gets spelled out, and some things don’t need to be.
Movies with good writing… absolutely. With movies that don’t follow their own rules… you either complain or overlook…neither the signs of a good movie…
I’m afraid I’ve lost track of your argument; it’s hard to keep track of these threads.
What rules are you now saying the movie established, but didn’t follow? Because the ones I saw you talking about earlier, it followed.
Steve explicitly says that he went and had a life *after* he returned the stones. And the new shield is visually distinct from the old shield.
https://www.newsfromme.com/2019/05/02/a-cranky-rambling-rant-part-three/
I actually like It’s a Mad Mad World… Mark is asking us not to lose civility about stuff that doesn’t matter…
I don’t know what you’re trying to say…
And that’s why it’s so funny here!
I’m not sure I agree with you 100 percent on your police work, there, Lou.
I’m sure that there are plenty of things we don’t agree on. But for a sample size of one screening, the audience and I had more fun, more laugh out loud moments and left the movie feeling really good. And not wondering if that made sense…
My thoughts:
I really wasn’t sure what to expect with this. I honestly hadn’t spent any time thinking how they were gong to go about fixing the universe. I suppose how this movie plays out is about as good as it could have been considering the circumstances. And yet…something was off here. The character moments were great. The sense of despair at times felt real and needed. I was even thrown off completely by what happens early on in the film. But then we introduce the whole time travel element. I’ve never liked it much in anything. I always end up confused. People encounter versions of themselves. We have cheesy fan fictiony moments like meet ups and such. Its just weird. Some of it is very clever, yes, But other times it’s just a headache.
With Thanos, is he really that bad ass without any of the stones? I always thought in the first movie that it was the stones making him so powerful. Like when he mops the floor with Hulk. Maybe I was wrong? Titans really ARE that powerful? Huh. I really missed some of the people that made Infinity War so great like Spiderman, Doc Strange, Everything Black Panther and Wakanda related. Speaking of Wakanda, THAT battle was WAY better than the one that takes place at the end of Endgame. Endgames just felt redundant. Almost boring even. Of course the fight with Thanos was cool, but the rest? Meh.
I missed the Captain Marvel movie, so I know nothing about her yet, but boy was she sorely underused here. I honestly was expecting her to be a major character in this. She just shows up a couple times to do really cool super things and that’s it. I expected more out this supposed heroine of the universe.
Karen Gillan continues to be so good as Nebula. Her and and Gamoras relationship is fascinating to watch. Everything ended about the way I thought it would, besides one total WTF moment. They really did that? Really? Ugh.
Anyway, after all this I may be done with super heros for a while. I don’t know where they are going from here, but personally, I’m moving on.
The real world explanation for Captain Marvel’s relatively small role is that this movie was actually filmed before her solo movie.
I was actually thrown a bit by this knowledge, thinking she’d be in space for the duration based on the Avengers teleconference scene.
I was thus pleased to see her return to punch out another starship.
I loved her explanation about how every planet in the universe was dealing with Thanos’s snap, and didn’t have Avengers to help them. I loved the non-human/Earth-centricness of that. I hope they develop that in a later film.
There’s a running gag in the comics, “Carol vs. cars,” which I’m very pleased to see has been carried into the movies as “Carol vs. spaceships.” Intergalactic insurance agents hate her.
It’s kind of like the Justice League/Superfriends meme about how, every time there’s a big fight there’s coincidentally an asteroid about to destroy the earth, so Superman has to go deal with that instead of easily beating the villain.
Yeah. It’s interesting that the movie pretty clearly shows that Carol and Scarlet Witch are the two most powerful Avengers. Thanos needs a surprise Power stone shot to get rid of Carol for a while, and an orbital bombardment to handle Wanda.
But that’s like saying, Are the Avengers really that *good* without the stones? I mean… the stones just amplify the basic impulses. Thanos wanted to do evil (though of course he thought it was good), and the Avengers wanted to do good. And a huge part of *Endgame* is about ensuring, or trying to ensure, that using the stones wouldn’t erase the good that has happened since Thanos used them. (And I think — I really *hope* — that as the MCU continues, they examine whether reversing Thanos’s snap was better for the net good, or not. (I feel like Steve’s comment about seeing a pod of whales in the Hudson River is going to be a Thing. I hope it will.) There is SO MUCH potential set up here for exploring the ramifications of every action and reaction, and I hope the writers are wise enough to deal with that.
It’s still playing, even getting a boost from *Endgame.* Do try to see it.
Great points, but I don’t think MarkyD was asking if Thanos was BAD without the stones, he was asking if Thanos was BADASS (ie a formidable fighter) without the stones. :-) I think he had to be; he was shown in Infinity War beating Hulk by being a smarter tactical fighter, and even in flashbacks and earlier films he’s shown conquering worlds (like Gamora’s) with his army and executing half the local population, and instilling fear in lesser villains (like Ronan the Accuser and Loki).
It’s been pointed out that if half the people in the US disappeared, that would reduce us to the population levels in… the 1960s. Which… doesn’t sound that that bad? And, yeah, more breathing room for whales? :-/
Then again, if we want to remove any doubt that Thanos’ scheme was irredeemably evil, just consider that the Snap means Thanos killed half of all dogs. Someone on Twitter suggested a movie in which John Wick comes after Thanos all by himself. :-)
Totally random complaint about a movie I loved but… the whale thing, while a nice Steve moment, really wouldn’t work like that. Randomly culling already borderline populations like whales, rhinos, lions and tigers, etc. would have a catastrophic effect on their breeding abilities and genetic diversity, so even with greatly reduced pressure from us, they’d still be in terrible trouble (and likely doomed). Mosquitoes and ticks, though, would rebound essentially immediately, only with less prey to share among them. So all of us yummy warm-bloods would have that to look forward to. Yay.
Thanos really didn’t think this whole 50% thing through.
He really didn’t! He should have paid closer attention in megalomaniac school. You can’t just skip to the fun part; you have to do the research first.
What does that matter, though?
Because it’s surprising, and implausible, that he was able to simultaneously and successfully fight Thor, Tony, and Steve without any Stones, when we previously
only ever saw him defeat that caliber of opponent WITH at least one Stone.
For myself, I rationalized it as Thor being severely out of shape, and the other two being still beat up from the recent attack.
Yes, THIS.
*shrug* Ask MarkyD, it’s his question. :-)
I always thought(wrongly, I know now) Thanos was just a regular bad guy except bigger. I didn’t think he was super-powered in anyway. I thought it was the stone(s) that allowed him to whoop Hulk. I still find that scene unfeasible considering what we’ve seen Hulk do and survive in past movies. I understand why they did it, though. Setup.
If all Titans(in the past I know) were that crazy powerful they could have taken over the universe easily. No stones or snaps needed.
I guess my point is that he seemed just as badass(yes, fighting-wise) without the stones as he did with them. Like Allen says, its seems implausible he could take on 3 supers.
Yesterday, someone posted and then deleted a post that included a link to a post-Infinity_War interview where the directors said that Thanos beat up the Hulk *without* using the power of the Stone that was then in his gauntlet (which, as they say, wasn’t glowing at the time). Their claim was that the Hulk may be somewhat stronger, but Thanos was in the same ballpark, and cleverer, and thus won.
Which was unclear to me at the time, but is consistent with him being able to defeat three Avengers by himself.
Speaking of which: New Spider-Man trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt9L1jCKGnE
And oh my god they ARE going to go with the multiverse. The storytelling possibilities are just HUGE.
If they’re going to repurpose one of the old Spider-Man theme songs, I want to hear the one from The Electric Company.
Given Tom Holland’s intro to the trailer, the title of this Electric Company “Spider-Man” episode seems appropriate. :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA_Hs9DkmOo
Well, the do have a shiny new 21st Century Fox stable of Marvel characters to play with.
Mightn’t Mysterio be lying about where he’s from? :-)
Mysterio is an established villain in the Spider-Man comics, and one that I love because his costume is so gloriously dumb—Devo meets Vegas lounge singer. So I’m going into the movie assuming that Mysterio is lying, and that the Eternals (who he claims are an invading force) are the real heroes. But I like the Marvel films best when they play with my expectations, so I’m hoping the situation is more complicated and unpredictable. Also, if there really is a Multiverse, we might get a live-action version of Miles Morales.
The MCU has already established that Miles exists in the main timeline. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Donald Glover plays his uncle Aaron, who makes reference to Miles (“I got a nephew who live here”) while talking to Peter. No multiverse needed for that one. :-)
He might, but Marvel would be passing up a great storytelling option. I think it’s more likely that he’s telling the truth about the multiverse, but lying about being a hero in his world.
To clarify on Thanos: yes, he is that much of a powerhouse. The directors went out of their way to show the gauntlet didn’t have a glow on the Power Stone when Hulk got worfed hard. https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/12/02/avengers-infinity-war-how-thanos-beat-hulk/ pulls the quotes from the two hour long interview. Now, these are the same guys with the … interesting… interpretation of their own time travel rules in regards to Steve’s Dance, but it does appear to follow intent.
Speaking as a fan who was pulled in by the Hulk cartoons, someone who is always ready to bring out HULK IS THE STRONGEST THERE IS, I’m… fine with that. Eternals (he’s an Eternal of Titan; I’m hoping the Eternals pic shows their exodus) are terrifyingly powerful, which fits, since, like Thanos, their origins are cribbed pretty heavily from Fourth World before getting some thankful expansion into other ways. Heck, I played the TSR Marvel Comics Superheros game in the 80s and 90s; if you could convince a GM you had “rolled” an Eternal as your origin, you were SETFORLIFE or at least until the annoyed GM squooshed you for using an AM(50) blast on a common mugger once too often.
That’s just the comics, too, which brings me around to one of the strong points and weak points with the Thanos v. Hulk (and by extension, others in the MCU) thing. The strong point is this: movie Hulk is not comics Hulk. Yes, the madder he is the stronger he is, still– to an extent. We’ve never seen him hold up a mountain range (though there’s an excellent homage…) or destroy an asteroid twice the size of Earth, and I suspect we never will. He’s strong enough and nigh-unstoppable enough that we’re impressed, and hence, theoretically impressed when Thanos beats him down.
Which to an extent I have made my peace with, but the weakness there is one of the weaknesses of the entire Infinity Saga: they tacked it together at the middle-to-end too much. They kept Thanos as a reference and a hint, sitting on his throne, for so long that it became almost a joke. They never gave us the opportunity to see him being the unstoppable engine of destruction (either the comic’s more blaster THEN meleeist or the movies’ meleeist then blaster) until IW itself. Especially if a viewer is still priming themselves based on the comics or cultural osmosis about the better-known Hulk, it can come off jarring and lazy. I really wish they had involved him in the shadows more, or made the stingers he was in a bit more physical.
They’ve got a chance to make up for that with the coming Captain Marvel sequel if it’s an interquel, or at the end or stinger of the Eternals movie, since the rumor right now is ‘millions of years’ in the past prequel for the latter. Similarly, since Feige has said he wants post-Infinity Saga Marvel to have a bigger Cosmic feel, if they have other interquels, flashbacks, or prequels, they have a chance to show us Thanos’ terrifying side.
Just please, please, whatever saints and angels watch over writers and directors all combine to make sure that they let Gamora’14 be her own person with her own arc and not just a replacement goldfish.
I am inevitable said Thanos.
It is inevitable said Agent Smith.
They were talking about the same thing.
I really liked the slowness and mournful, pensive atmosphere following the first two beats of the film, and I did enjoy the ensuing action. However, I was a bit miffed by the under-use of Captain Marvel, who only gets to play a dea ex machina at the very beginning and end, and the repeat occurrence of a woman being sacrificed – or fridged; I learned a new verb last week – to obtain the soul stone. I had expected the film to be weirder, with more involvement of Doctor Strange perhaps, and various realities colliding as the original six Avengers were forced to cooperate with new arrivals such as Captain Marvel. Instead, we got a confusing time travel heist that raised numerous questions about alternative time lines and paradoxes, which were swept under the carpet. However, my biggest beef was and remains Thanos as the main adversary. He simply didn’t scare me. This creature is so far removed from human experience that he doesn’t trigger any normal human fears so that the entire conflict remains somewhat abstract. The day after watching the film I had an empty feeling, as if I’d eaten a big meal that hadn’t nourished me. It may have something to do with the wish-fulfillment aspect of superhero movies – none of the heroes ever really dies, due tot reboots, time travel etc. – which makes it difficult for me to buy into the tragedy sometimes. Still, I had a good time and shed a few tears.
I thought everyone knew this at this point! So, at least you got that learning experience. :-/
Never too old to learn. (Approaching 58 now, ouch!)
Was he, though? The main adversary, I mean. He is eliminated so early in the movie… and so the “adversary” becomes “the past” or maybe just a general sense of “what has come before.”
I’ll tell you what I hated- some guy sitting next to me started cheering and applauding when Thor cut off Thanos’s head at the beginning. Way to miss the point. Killing Thanos was tragic in its futility- just one more death on top of the billions that went before.
SPOILERS
Much as I love Tony going out with his most memorable line from his first movie, isn’t it a little uncomfortable that he used the gauntlet at the end? Aside from the fact it appeared they were already winning the battle, it feels kind of like if Frodo used the ring against Sauron. The infinity stones seemed like the sort of thing no one should use.
I also thought Cap’s ending was very sweet, but at the same time I feel like it overly romanticizes his time with a woman he only knew for a few months. I was hoping he’d end up with Bucky, or maybe Sam.
SPOILERS
The point was to keep Thanos from using the Stones. They already tried to get rid of the Gauntlet by sending it back in time via Ant-Man’s van, except Thanos destroyed the van. So they’re stuck with the Stones, which can’t easily be destroyed, and at the end Thanos already had the Gauntlet on his hand and was always RIGHT on the verge of snapping. Even if they somehow got the Gauntlet away from him, he’d always be there and would never stop coming after it. Using the Stones to vaporize Thanos and his army really seemed to be the only way.
You might say the conclusion was… inevitable?
I feel like, if nothing else, Steve could have planted a serious smooch on Bucky as he headed back into time. That would have been nice.
It wasn’t a smooch, but their little farewell exchange was really meaningful: “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.” “How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.” It’s a direct callback, with the roles reversed, to their farewell dialogue in the first Captain America movie, just before Bucky leaves Skinny Steve behind to go fight in the war. There was a lot of affection — and a sense of finality — behind that jokeyness, and I think the callback is meant to remind us of their bond and to suggest that they both knew this would be a significant and lengthy parting of ways (at least from Steve’s perspective). It was brief, but a nice capstone on their friendship.
The second time I watched, the goodbye was a little more poignant because I realized Rogers had already told Bucky what he was going to do and where to meet up for the passing of the shield, so both Bucky and Steve knew they were saying goodbye for a very long time (from Rogers’ perspective). That’s how Bucky knows to immediately walk to the bench and tell Falcon to “go ahead” and talk to old Rogers.
I’ve never liked Captain America, but this movie almost made him interesting and did a good job ending his arc. I would have appreciated several silly midcredit scenes of him returning each of the stones, (Hey Red Skull… how’s it hanging? Love the new apartment dude, just wanted to uh give you this back… sorry bout the whole uh… you know… bye!), I guess that would have destroyed the somber mood.
I’ve heard that the three characters who briefly carry the gauntlet toward the endzone were chosen specifically because they will replace the big three, so instead of Thor, Cap, and Iron Man we’ll have Carol, Spidey, and Black Panther. I don’t know if it’s true, but if it is, and they do a decent job introducing She-Hulk and Kamala I might actually become an MCU fanboy in the next phase.
Typical boys being jerks to each other because they cannot handle their actual feelings for each other. I don’t find that very satisfying.
Well, they WERE typical boys in WWII. But when they say it in Endgame, it is (to me) weighted with the history of all that they’ve been through together. It means something more. (Same with Tony’s “I am Iron Man.” When he says it in the first movie, he’s just strutting and bragging. When he says it in Endgame, it’s a summation of his life and journey.)
I would have appreciated a longer, heartfelt conversation too. (Or a smooch!) But a longer goodbye with Bucky would have revealed Steve’s plans to the audience too early; as it is, we do have an inkling that Bucky know something’s up, but we mostly discover Steve’s plans when Sam does, as the story intended. I think the short dialogue conveys a meaningful goodbye efficiently without stepping on that surprise.
I’m not sure that’s how a couple of close male friends would have spoken to each other in the WWII era. Men being utterly unable to be emotional with their male friends is a more recent phenomenon, as is “no homo” gay panic. Here’s some evidence of that: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/bosom-buddies-a-photo-history-of-male-affection/
Also too, Steve and Bucky have accrued an incredible amount of experience, including in the modern 21st century world, together and separately. In many ways, they can no longer be considered men of the WWII era.
That’s a FASCINATING link, thanks. It’s interesting now to think of how Steve & Bucky’s personalities/experiences have been filtered through 21st-century storytelling assumptions and biases. (And how many fans perceive Sam and Frodo’s affectionate handholding in LOTR as gay — either approvingly or disapprovingly — when Tolkien very likely was just writing what he thought of as platonic male friendship.)
Also found this interesting: “One of the reasons male friendships were so intense during the 19th and early 20th centuries, is that socialization was largely separated by sex; men spent most their time with other men, women with other women.” Ironic that toxic gender segregation wound up encouraging more healthy same-sex intimacy.
There are cultural differences today, too, around touching and personal space. I grew up in an environment that I remember as being a lot more relaxed about male intimacy. I had to “unlearn” some touchy-feely or “you’re standing too close” tendencies when I came to the US, and I suppose that contributed to the sense of isolation I felt during my first years here. Western toxic masculinity has impoverished all our lives and experiences, more than many of us have imagined.
It would be really interesting to have a story follow up on how Steve, given all his 21st-century experience, copes with being back in the 40s/50s with Peggy. He’s a man out of time again. :-/
I’ve just read this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/style/modern-love-college-i-love-you-man-.html
And now I’m thinking what a powerful statement it would have been if Steve and Bucky had simply and quietly said this to each other before Steve leaves. Yeah, you’re right, MaryAnn. I still think their goodbye was meaningful; but it could have been a lot more.
Yup. That.
Sure it’s due to the fact that this movie has such a freaking huge cast, but I found it so refreshing to see SO many big manly dudes openly expressing their feelings in front of one another and their emotions not being made out to be something to be ashamed of (with the exception of Rocket’s jab at Thor, but it’s Rocket, so).
Several, if not all of the main guys shed tears at some point in the film.
Exceptionally spiffy comic writer Jeremy Whitley (Unstoppable Wasp, Princeless, Raven the Pirate Princess) brings up another issue with the Soul Stone scene: Nobody actually sacrificed something they loved. In fact, they fought like hell to not do so.
https://twitter.com/jrome58/status/1124848220692258820
Right, I’ve been arguing the same point in other conversations.
One possible answer: What Red Skull actually says is that you must LOSE (not sacrifice) that which you love. He does say “the Stone demands a sacrifice” — arguably that could cover self-sacrifice by the loved one, so that the one who loses the loved one gains the Stone. Man, they should’ve introduced Jennifer Walters to the MCU earlier, and taken her along to Vormir, so she could use her lawyerly skills to parse the Soul Stone’s fine print.
Someone elsewhere made an interesting suggestion: They should BOTH have jumped off simultaneously. This might’ve short-circuited the Stone’s selection process and they could have both woken up holding the Stone together. (That’s part of what annoys me about Widow’s fridging — it’s not that it doesn’t make sense or is out of character within the story, it’s that the writers could have told so many OTHER stories with other outcomes, that didn’t fall into this pattern of sidelining the Original 6’s lone female member.)
Another thought: The Ancient One said the Stones, together, create our reality. Wouldn’t that mean that if one of them was destroyed, the fabric of reality would be massively affected? So how come nothing happened when Wanda destroyed the Mind Stone in Vision’s forehead?
#ProblemsButTheMovieWasStillAwesome
I’d be cautious calling this a fridging. Gamora got fridged, certainly, since her death was there to give Thanos (the protagonist for Infinity War) some pathos. But while Barton and Banner were very sad, it contributed nothing to their arcs.
https://www.themarysue.com/endgame-girl-power-did-it-work/#comment-4447383976
ymmv
Like I said, caution. You seem to be expanding the definition wide enough to include any character who dies mid-story. You also seem to be divorcing the trope from its paternalistic “They killed his woman, now it’s personal” roots. Bruce and Clint (and Steve, really) were saddened, but they weren’t spurred to any action they hadn’t already committed to. Memetic mutation is a thing, sure, but “Mary Sue” is now irretrievable; why shove another useful line of critique, uh, into the fridge.
I also agree with Allen W that you risk stripping Natasha of her agency. The writers clearly established that a sacrifice was required. They did plenty with Natasha, going back to Winter Soldier, to motivate her to do so.
Finally, I think I disagree with Mr. Whitley. I think that both end up making a sacrifice: the jumper, even if they want to go out in a blaze of glory, would like to see the world saved; the survivor gets to live with not having been able to save everyone. His alternatives are also pretty weaksauce. We already played out the child angle. Lose a limb? In these stories? Please.
But, like you say, ymmv.
Then you really didn’t read or understand the comment I linked to.
I did. My mileage varied.
They both lose something, but since neither character loves themself, neither takes actions that would lead to losing something they love.
That’s not paternalistic at all. That’s called caring about someone more than anyone else, and being willing to risk everything in order to avenge them. It’s the absolute height of devotion to the victim.
I think they reason why so many feminists fail to understand this motivation is because they all frequently care only about themselves, rather than others.
I was pretty unhappy over the death of the Black Widow as well. I especially was angry when Tony got the huge send-off with everyone present and Natasha got Clint and Wanda saying a few words. Sure, Cap and Bruce were sad in the one scene by the lake but it wasn’t a goodbye. She deserved better. And the stark contrast of 1 woman in the Avengers was pretty evident in EW’s video roundtable with most of the cast. There sits Scarlett amid a bunch of guys.
The more I think about this, the angrier I get. Is the Black Widow the ONLY Avenger who never got a true love interest? Even the Hulk had a love interest in his movie. Sure, she had something affectionate with Bruce but that doesn’t truly count. I truly love the Avengers and enjoyed Endgame but this aspect is deeply disappointing.
I think Natasha and Bruce count as much as Peter Parker and Liz. And I don’t recall Sam or Rhody having love interests, though I could be mistaken.
If we’re only talking original MCU Avengers, and *if* we count the Hulk movie, (and not Bruce and Natasha’s relationship), then yeah.
With all sincerity, I don’t see why this would bother the average person. Is there some reason for this?
I really didn’t care for the movie or the characters at all. In fact I’m glad for Stark to die. The way he is written in a quippy one-liner fashion and frankly even Robert Downey’s voice has irritated me from a few movies back. The genre has gotten stale for me I guess.
You forgot Wonder Woman. I think you can come up with a few more if you really cared.
That’s I4 on the 2015 Bingo card. Mazel tov!
Is the mention of the Bingo card on the card?
Cheers.
O5 (2017).
If you’re bringing up the part of the review where she says that the MCU has mostly excluded women and people of colour, Wonder Woman doesn’t count towards that, as it’s a DCEU film. And even if Wonder Woman *DID* count, that’d be 1 film against 20 or so superhero films that focus on men, so no matter what, her point still stands.
What is this a reply to?
Let me add as well that super hero movies are already too concerned about “race” and gender that they are changing the traditional assignments in remakes/reboots/sequels.
LOL no, not even close.
It’s the quotation marks around “race” that really make the comment.
Since “race” is merely a non-scientific placeholder word in the first place, the quotation marks are appropriate.
Okay, and now you’re denying that race is real?
You are banned.
100%. Things are only going to go downhill now that the core of the franchise has been lost. But don’t worry, when it goes the way of Star Wars, they’ll blame it all on misogynist trolls.
Anticipating the first gender fluid super hero, though.
Disenginous to say women haven’t had major action heroes in blockbuster movies, or female leads, I only have to mention James Cameron’s list,Pam Grier in Foxy Brown,Sigorney Weaver in Aliens franchise, TheTerminator 1, 2, Linda Hamilton, Underworld movies/ Kate Beckinsale, Resident Evil Series/Mila jojovich, Tomb Raider 1,2, Salt,/Angelina Jolie? Some marvel characters bombed of courses, ahem, Catwoman and Electra movies.
What about the Matrix trilogy,Carrie Ann Moss, Star Wars/Princess Leia, Kill bill 1, 2/ Usa Thurman? Ghost in the Shell Red spider /Scarlet Johanson? Charlie theron/Atomic Blonde, Mad Max? Wonderwoman? Battle Angel Alita? The comics released Wonderwoman in the late forties, written by a MAN, as was Captain Marvel.Dozens of female superheroes followed.☺Strong representation of multiracial characters too. And Blade trilogy predates’Black panther by decades.
Hey, you want a fun challenge? On a sheet of paper, list every female-led action movie you can think of. Go ahead, every single one. And you don’t just need to rely on your memory, go ahead and google away. Use every source you can think of.
Done? Okay. Now on another sheet of paper, list every male-led action movie you can think of, or that you can look up. Every single one. Again, feel free to do research.
Run out of space? Feel free to get another sheet. Or two or three. When you’ve filled them up, feel free to get more here.
When you’re all done with that, come back here and share with all of us how long your two lists are, and what the ratio is between the two. And as a second experiment, imagine if the lists were reversed, so that the men had the women’s numbers and the women had the men’s numbers. Then tell me if you think you’d be content with that amount of male representation.
Have fun!
I’d be quite happy to earn the kind of money female Ceo’s, lawyers, doctors, earn, let alone the millions female actresses now earn, lol!My heart bleeds.And your missing my point, when Captain Marvel , Disney spout none sense about ‘now finally we have strong female leads’ they are lying through there teeth, because they have always been there.even before my time, I’m 50.
Here are more fun questions to ask: “How many women end up becoming CEOs, as opposed to men?” (I’ll help you out: click here for the answer.) “How much do female doctors, lawyers, and actresses make, compared to their male colleagues?” (Answers here, here, and here.) And finally, “If even rich women are being paid less than men with the same jobs, does that mean middle- and working-class women are also being paid less than men doing the same jobs?” I’ll let you google that one yourself.
That’s not the claim. The claim is, “Now finally the MCU has a female superhero in a leading, central role,” which is accurate.
It’s fallacy, if women aren’t being paid enough for the same job ,EXACTLY the same role,conditions and hours, then they have grounds for renegotiation, or court, because the employer is in breach of contract ,breaking the law.
Like the case recently about why professional women in sports,movies not getting the equal pay of their male counterparts, its about attedance numbers ,and sports don’t just rely on ticket sales, they rely on sponsorships, and if they don’t pull the numbers of veiwerson and off air, should a company go broke paying them?
If its about ‘diversity’ lol, ahem,Monica Rambeau was the BLACK Captain Marvel, when I was a boy.And they made her a sidekick?
A leading role, Marvel movies with a central character? What pivotal central role did Captain Marvel play? a few minutes on screen only to have Thanos toss her around like arag doll, lol! Even the comics she was based on shows her drifting in and out of the Avengers, not commanding it.
Yes, her own movie, with her name in the title. You’re conveniently forgetting that, because of course you are.
You mean when she rescued Tony from space, wrestled Thanos to the ground so Thor could chop his head off, blew up his ship, didn’t budge an inch when he head-butted her, and nearly beat him again so that he had to surprise-supercharge his other fist to get him off her? Are those the few minutes you mean?
That’s a legitimate criticism, and there’s a discussion to be had about why Monica gets passed over and Carol gets to go first (although technically Carol has a longer history as she was introduced earlier, in 1968, as opposed to Monica in 1982). But I guarantee 100% that if they had made a movie about Monica first, you’d still be one of those whining about Marvel being PC and pandering to the SJWs.
Gotta love how the MRAs are all coming out of the woodwork to complain about Carol in any and all movie reviews. You guys just can’t stand her. That means Marvel is doing something right!
“That means Marvel is doing something right!”
No, it means that Marvel are being stupid.
Here’s another fun question: how many women EARNED it, relative to men?
Oh, and in case you’re one of those people who get their entire perspective handed to them by rags like Jezebel and The Mary Sue, the Wage Gap has been debunked over and over again, by sources such as Time, the Economist, Newsweek, the Guardian and even the Huffington Post.
Consider this your copy of the memo.
All of your sources are run by men.
Oh, fuck off with your antiwomen shit.
I imagine you would. Sadly, you’re just another mediocre white male with too much self-regard and all the self-awareness of dog licking its own balls in public.
Irony level: >9000
Exactly. Female-led franchises have been the norm for at least 30 years, but because only a few of them turn out to be any good, feminists just pretend to themselves that it’s a breath of fresh air when a new one gets their Twitter-feed in a tizzy.
No, they have not.
The real joke is that you think that a) this ratio is a problem, and b) that if you shorten your frame of reference to the last 30 years, it would skew in favor of female anyway.
You’re just ignoring the reality of today by referencing the inequality of the past. There should be a Bingo card for just this sort of stupid equivocation.
Disingenous — no, wait, it’s an outright lie — to say that I (or anyone else, for that matter) has said such a thing.
And there it is: “But Ripley!”
YES. “But Ripley” is right, and it’s also a point which shreds your argument.
Just like with your moronic bingo card, you take legitimate criticisms of your position and ignore or mock them simply because you don’t wish to deal with their implications.
Female actions stars are not new. That’s a fact. They’re not novel; they’re not a ‘breath of fresh air’. In fact, they’ve become so standard as to become stale, and a trope unto themselves, largely because unlike the original ones, they are no longer being written convincingly, and are instead now created to pass a checklist of feminist devising.
That’s why they’re all so drab nowadays, and no amount of PR machine is going to change that. The Star Wars fanbase rejected Rey because she was a standard Mary Sue, not because she doesn’t have a penis. The Doctor Who franchise crashed because the female Doctor was written specifically to whine about men, not just because she has only X chromosomes.
Feminism is the problem, not being female. If feminists would stfu and just let today’s storytellers do their jobs without pandering to a Woke agenda, then you’d be rewarded with BETTER female characters to cheer for.
Which squares on the Bingo cards would you consider legitimate criticism, and what are these devastating implications? That 40 years ago, one action movie among dozens had a female lead, so now no feminist can ever complain again about representation?
How are modern female action stars both more drab and less convincing than male action stars? Do you want them to be more flamboyant and colorful, but also more realistic? That’s a pretty high hurdle to place. Male action heroes seem to perform over-the-top ridiculously unrealistic acts all the time. How did Captain America know how to use thunder magic immediately with no training? And Stark solves time travel in a few evenings by asking Alexa to draw a Möbius strip? What a bunch of Marty Stus.
I’d agree that modern action movies are more drab all around on average, but this trend affects all characters. The only interesting character in Rogue One was K-2SO for example. The male characters were just as, if not more drab, generic, and forgettable as Jyn. I don’t even remember their names, and I’m a fan of Donnie Yen. And don’t even get me started again on John Wick’s and Alita’s male “characters.”
Feminist film fans are just as unsatisfied with pandering as you are. We would also like to see well written, interesting female characters at the center of more stories. The only way to make this happen is to let studios know that our dollars will be withheld unless their product is more reflective of their audience and its desires. Positive change does not magically occur when people stfu.
I’m honestly not sure why you’re so hysterical about this. There are quite a lot of movies still being made with male action heroes and scantily clad, young, attractive women in supporting roles. Maybe you should grill some burgers, do a few chin-ups, and watch a little football until you’re able to calm down and be reasonable.
FYI: Football Talk has been banned.
Christ, you are fucking tedious.
You won’t hear back from Bluejay, as it should be obvious he/she is clearly brainwashed and incorrect.
You’re gone.
See. You have done it again. I don’t know who you refer to but you are in need of a doctor, being full of Assumption.