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weaselettSo I went to a double bill showing (infinity war leading into the midnight showing of endgame). It was crazy busy, but I think that partly because they only did a 2d (the last two double bill/midnight showings I've done had choice of 2d or 3d, so screen wasn't so packed).
I have very mixed feelings about Endgame. And I am doing this post before going to see what other people thought. So it's entirely my feelings.
SO. Endgame.
I enjoyed the first half of the film, the narrative worked pretty well, characters were mostly balanced. My main issues were white boy focus (the ladies and Rhodey got moments, but it was mostly the boys), and the weird Bruce/Hulk thing.
I LOVED Tony and Nebula though.
There were lots of playbacks and nods to the past, some played straight, some not so much.
Clint and Natasha clearly, somehow, missed the fact one of them was going to have to die? Nebula's comment to Rhodey made it sound like they knew that.....or knew there was sacrifice at least to be made dependant on feelings....
The plot feel apart quite badly in the end, to be honest. It went from fairly well balanced coverage of characters, to tipping a whole box out and somehow only killing one of them in the end.
There were bits tooooo clearly there to tick a box (all the ladies backing each other up, for that one bit).
There's also the fact that they completely forgot about how the plan was meant to work, and the requirements of their time travel.
They killed Thanos, his children and Nebula. Who needed to be alive years later in order for them to need to go back in the first place (aka the reason for all the planning and the take and return thing). Also Loki got loose with the tesseract and they didn't correct....so that should have MASSIVELY shifted the rest of what happened prior to Thanos.
AND I have no idea how Steve aged? I thought the serum would have at least made him age slower?
Tony's death feels like the right thing for his narrative, just, the timing was a bit funky with how they paced the whole battle. But yeah, the final sacrifice to save the world.
Steve. Oh My God. The Steve thing. I was alright up until aged Steve and Peggy/Steve. It lessens everything they have done with Peggy up until now (and completely messes up the past URGH). Add in the fact we got almost no Bucky & Steve interaction, and just that tiny bit of Steve & Sam? URGH.
I wanted one of them to get the Captain mantel, but not like that. :/
Bigger issue - Natasha and Gamora. The Soul Stone's tragic sacrifices. It should have been Clint in Endgame. Thematically, and to give Natasha something more, a bigger part of it all, it should have been Clint. We should not have had the two sole original ladies from the two teams both be the soul stone deaths.
Please - How the hell do you return the soul stone?? It's meant to be an 'eternal exchange' so should be loved one's soul for the soul stone for eternity. Returning it is counter to that. So returning it should have provided the chance to get Natasha (& Gamora) back. But no.
They didn't even get decent mourning/memorial scenes 0.0 Don't even know what happened to the dang bodies. :(
Instead of the epic, illogical, (how the hell did any of them survive the bombing/all end up that far apart when they were in three rooms next to each other??) battle scene. They should have had to fight to get a living Thanos back to the time from whence he had come. (How, I know they used the machine, but they had needed the bands with the compasses....and Nebula had present Nebulas.....)
It felt like so many of the ladies were there just to make up numbers (Carol really didn't have much to do? The returned not having a huge part of it all makes sense, but Okoye and Carol....)
I'm not even sure how the time jump is going to work.
And clearly it's now taken as Vision, Heimdall, Natasha, Gamora and....maybe...Loki are all dead for good? (Loki has the tesseract so :/)
I just. I didn't feel the pay off for all the drama? I really wanted to, but it just, didn't quite work for me.
I did like a lot of the family moments - Pepper and Tony and small one, Scott and Cassie (wherever Cassie's mom and step dad were?), Clint and his family, Natasha and team as family. Rocket and Nebula. Rhodey.
I liked some of the plays, like the Cap on Cap fight, the little touches in the past scenes. They went to a lot of effort to tie off all the films that came before that aren't going any further. (Oh and bonus kid from Iron Man 3 at the end!)
It's just a shame that they had sooooo many characters, and after all the work on building the rules for the time travel (as a narrative point) to then abandon them/leave some things messed up, just, didn't work. If they hadn't made a point of setting those rules, I would have been easier to ignore the fact that killing Thanos before he used the stones renders it all moot.
I wish I had liked it more. That I could feel the closure/enjoyment people have for it. But it just didn't work for me.
I don't have much investment in Guardians with no Gamora (she balanced the others out well, I like Groot and Rocket and Drax, but without Gamora.....). I have never loved MCU Natasha as much as comics/animated Natasha, because they played around with her, and took some of her power away (she is meant to have the serum too) but damn. To have both of the first ladies in the teams gone, and in the same place? It sucks.
That said, yay for Queen Valkyrie I guess (though will we ever see her again?) and Pepper survived and got her own suit. Wanda survived, but she didn't really get anything but two tiny moments. Tiny bit of Wasp too.
I guess I can hope that maybe going forward the ladies will get a bit more attention, with most of the white guys out of the picture? (I guess Bruce is out now? It wasn't as set as with Steve and Tony, but they...kinda seemed to not know what to do with him but comic relief? So. Yeah.)
So that's my immediate feelings on this one.
I have very mixed feelings about Endgame. And I am doing this post before going to see what other people thought. So it's entirely my feelings.
SO. Endgame.
I enjoyed the first half of the film, the narrative worked pretty well, characters were mostly balanced. My main issues were white boy focus (the ladies and Rhodey got moments, but it was mostly the boys), and the weird Bruce/Hulk thing.
I LOVED Tony and Nebula though.
There were lots of playbacks and nods to the past, some played straight, some not so much.
Clint and Natasha clearly, somehow, missed the fact one of them was going to have to die? Nebula's comment to Rhodey made it sound like they knew that.....or knew there was sacrifice at least to be made dependant on feelings....
The plot feel apart quite badly in the end, to be honest. It went from fairly well balanced coverage of characters, to tipping a whole box out and somehow only killing one of them in the end.
There were bits tooooo clearly there to tick a box (all the ladies backing each other up, for that one bit).
There's also the fact that they completely forgot about how the plan was meant to work, and the requirements of their time travel.
They killed Thanos, his children and Nebula. Who needed to be alive years later in order for them to need to go back in the first place (aka the reason for all the planning and the take and return thing). Also Loki got loose with the tesseract and they didn't correct....so that should have MASSIVELY shifted the rest of what happened prior to Thanos.
AND I have no idea how Steve aged? I thought the serum would have at least made him age slower?
Tony's death feels like the right thing for his narrative, just, the timing was a bit funky with how they paced the whole battle. But yeah, the final sacrifice to save the world.
Steve. Oh My God. The Steve thing. I was alright up until aged Steve and Peggy/Steve. It lessens everything they have done with Peggy up until now (and completely messes up the past URGH). Add in the fact we got almost no Bucky & Steve interaction, and just that tiny bit of Steve & Sam? URGH.
I wanted one of them to get the Captain mantel, but not like that. :/
Bigger issue - Natasha and Gamora. The Soul Stone's tragic sacrifices. It should have been Clint in Endgame. Thematically, and to give Natasha something more, a bigger part of it all, it should have been Clint. We should not have had the two sole original ladies from the two teams both be the soul stone deaths.
Please - How the hell do you return the soul stone?? It's meant to be an 'eternal exchange' so should be loved one's soul for the soul stone for eternity. Returning it is counter to that. So returning it should have provided the chance to get Natasha (& Gamora) back. But no.
They didn't even get decent mourning/memorial scenes 0.0 Don't even know what happened to the dang bodies. :(
Instead of the epic, illogical, (how the hell did any of them survive the bombing/all end up that far apart when they were in three rooms next to each other??) battle scene. They should have had to fight to get a living Thanos back to the time from whence he had come. (How, I know they used the machine, but they had needed the bands with the compasses....and Nebula had present Nebulas.....)
It felt like so many of the ladies were there just to make up numbers (Carol really didn't have much to do? The returned not having a huge part of it all makes sense, but Okoye and Carol....)
I'm not even sure how the time jump is going to work.
And clearly it's now taken as Vision, Heimdall, Natasha, Gamora and....maybe...Loki are all dead for good? (Loki has the tesseract so :/)
I just. I didn't feel the pay off for all the drama? I really wanted to, but it just, didn't quite work for me.
I did like a lot of the family moments - Pepper and Tony and small one, Scott and Cassie (wherever Cassie's mom and step dad were?), Clint and his family, Natasha and team as family. Rocket and Nebula. Rhodey.
I liked some of the plays, like the Cap on Cap fight, the little touches in the past scenes. They went to a lot of effort to tie off all the films that came before that aren't going any further. (Oh and bonus kid from Iron Man 3 at the end!)
It's just a shame that they had sooooo many characters, and after all the work on building the rules for the time travel (as a narrative point) to then abandon them/leave some things messed up, just, didn't work. If they hadn't made a point of setting those rules, I would have been easier to ignore the fact that killing Thanos before he used the stones renders it all moot.
I wish I had liked it more. That I could feel the closure/enjoyment people have for it. But it just didn't work for me.
I don't have much investment in Guardians with no Gamora (she balanced the others out well, I like Groot and Rocket and Drax, but without Gamora.....). I have never loved MCU Natasha as much as comics/animated Natasha, because they played around with her, and took some of her power away (she is meant to have the serum too) but damn. To have both of the first ladies in the teams gone, and in the same place? It sucks.
That said, yay for Queen Valkyrie I guess (though will we ever see her again?) and Pepper survived and got her own suit. Wanda survived, but she didn't really get anything but two tiny moments. Tiny bit of Wasp too.
I guess I can hope that maybe going forward the ladies will get a bit more attention, with most of the white guys out of the picture? (I guess Bruce is out now? It wasn't as set as with Steve and Tony, but they...kinda seemed to not know what to do with him but comic relief? So. Yeah.)
So that's my immediate feelings on this one.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-25 10:48 pm (UTC)So, I think that Endgame works if you’re a casual viewer of the MCU. If you have any investment in it, or any desire for character continuity (which is why I got out of comics in the first place) then it’s probably going to grate.
The Soul stone, I figured, is something that you have to give up, just as you need to sacrifice for it - but the sacrifice is once and can't be undone unless what you've done has been undone. And Clint gave it up so it could go back to Vormir for Thanos to later find (and destroy).
2014!Thanos coming to Earth and dying is a MAJOR MAJOR PLOTHOLE that I am surprised nobody has commented upon. I mean, maybe Tony wiped their minds and sent them back but made it look like he dusted them, but that seems complicated. And would have been less cinematically satisfying. But after they went to all the trouble and fuss about putting the stones back…
Also: I liked the idea that Peggy got over Steve, married someone else, lived life long and happily and successfully and died of old age. I LIKED IT. Plus,I’m struggling to see Steve sitting back and doing nothing (or next to it) while the world slowly slides sideways…
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 09:57 am (UTC)Yeah - the soul stone thing makes sense, just given that they put a plot hole in to allow Loki to survive, I figured they could have at least found a way to get Gamora or Natasha back (because to be honest, I would rather have one of them than more Loki :/) or you know had a dude be the second soul stone sacrifice (back I would i loved to see how that return worked, given you never saw it appear, it just had a whole thing, unless you just toss it off the cliff? and how did steve react to red skull.....so many questions)
2014!Thanos - YES URGH - as soon as he arrived I thought 'oh, they need to just send him back and wipe his memory' but instead they created their own EPIC PLOTHOLE just to get that massive battle in a wasteland. And to make it look like the only things you can do with the stone is destroy (or in the one instance wonky return things with no fanfare). It was frustrating, cos the initial past bit set it up like they going back in time caused the reason to need to (Thanos knew his existing plan would work - knew Stark was part of why, hence his comment in IW)
But yeah - dust is more cinematic or whatever. Even if they also showing Nebula and some of the other children die in that battle as well....such an EPIC PLOTHOLE
Peggy I am very sad about. Because it took so much away from her, and Steve (they attempted to show Steve moving on in CW, but I guess the vocal fans didn't like it and chris and hayley said similiar so that might be a disney meddle? IDK) - and I am still baffled by aged Steve (unless he travelled even further back to start? but that throws off Agent Carter, that said it seems to have abandoned all of that so *shrugs*)and how he could have stood by IDK his love was there so he had no reason to fight? Or something ;/
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 10:13 am (UTC)Do you remember what year it was that Tony and Steve travelled back to? 1950s? 1960s? I recall thinking that quite a few years had passed, perhaps as many years as Steve's lived up in the future?
his love was there so he had no reason to fight?
*sigh* I will take a BILLION "or somethings" over this. Because every person who thinks "I've got mine, so fuck you" does this, and that is not in any way, shape, or form heroic to me.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 10:28 am (UTC)I thought it was 1970 (because Tony was due...) 29 years after valkyrie (so more than Steve has lived in the future - and then not enough since for him to look that old by the end)
yeah - i think that my steve related issue with it - the russo's made him worthy of the hammer but also made him as unheroic as they could on so many occassions ending with choosing Peggy. :/
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 10:35 am (UTC)the russo's made him worthy of the hammer but also made him as unheroic as they could on so many occassions ending with choosing Peggy
Honestly, this whole thing is just getting worse the deeper we go. *facepalm*
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 10:41 am (UTC)(I always put tony and rhodey older too, then they throw in dates that make them younger than RDJ and DC)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-05 07:25 pm (UTC)The only thing I can think of why they picked Natasha over Clint is that they had the whole 'Clint has a family' thing so...they could give him a happy ending in retirement? But considering Clint went MIA for a while, odd. And Carol was really only there for five min despite the hype they had for her?
Honestly, the time travel stuff is weird. Loki is a kinda ??? given he teleported away but...that's another Loki? I'm pretty sure Vision is still dead (but there's a miniseries?) and Gamora is kinda but not cause there's past Gamora?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-05 10:54 pm (UTC)Yeah, carol was over hyped (and given her powers....under used - but it was filmed pre CM and Brie apparently didn't even know to start w that she was Carol?? It all weird) Yeah, the Het agenda of the film is happier with happy ending for Clint (it one of those annoying 'woman was bad once, she must sacrifice her life to make amends, man bad once, he gets to amend without death' things for me though :/)
The time travel made sense up to a point, then it just.....went (it was past Gamora? Tony's snap either made them never travel forward, or sent them back, or IDEK o.O) Vision does seem to still be dead, but yes mini series, which is funny, as the Loki bit seems to have been the set up for his and......it's a bit of a mess.