And I'm impressed...
I was expecting the ending with Thanos triumphant, although everyone refusing to be even the vaguest bit utilitarian (and both Quill and Wanda finding their gumption but too late) kind of annoyed me. I am that person who would kill someone I loved to save the universe. But I acknowledge that I am not like most people.
Of course, once Thanos did his thing, I was hoping against hope that Maria would survive the post-credits scene - if only so there'd be the possibility of her in Avengers 4. Yeah, no luck there. Also, that scene was put forward as something for Captain Marvel, and I was looking forward to having Maria back. *sulks*
Otherwise...quite a few things I saw in the trailers weren't in the movie - was that just me? I wasn't expecting Team Steve and Team Tony quite so, uh, starkly, but that's where they went. Also, they spent absolutely no time on any of the relationships except Quill/Gamora and Wanda/Vision, and that was mostly because both Gamora and Vision were the sacrifice characters. Steve and Bucky hug, Natasha and Bruce have an awkward reunion (which Sam hangs a lampshade on) but that's about it.
The fanfic engines are revving right now (not just mine, but, really, everyone's) because there's two years to fill in between CW and IW, so all kinds of possibility. And a lot of dead air, because, really, there's just about zero dynamic change between Steve, Nat, Sam, and Wanda, compared to the start of CW. Nobody behaved loverlike, or, really, anything more than friends and colleagues. Honestly, the best 'shippy' moment for me was Strange giving up the Time-gem for Tony's life. Or Tony/Pepper.
And, TBH, that's probably a large part of why I enjoyed it.
In discussion with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
morbane, she's pointed out that the vanished characters will probably form a significant part of the next film, because they're part of the "reason" that the characters Left Behind are fighting Thanos. So, that's hopeful?
I am slightly annoyed by the complete lack of Valkyrie (although at least she wasn't shown dead...I think?). Okoye's presence was definitely a balm - I love the dynamic between her and T'Challa. For me, it echoes the dynamic between Nat and Steve - that droll vibe that's not quite sibling-ish but is pretty darned close.
Speaking of which Avengers: Left Behind is my new name for either this movie or the next one.
I have more things to think about and comment about, but I don't have a lot of brain right now. If you want to discuss spoilers in the comments, then I don't mind at all. I'd love to have conversations with people about different angles.
Also: when's Captain Marvel actually due to come out?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Nick POV section to write for sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame (the sedoretu series).
I was expecting the ending with Thanos triumphant, although everyone refusing to be even the vaguest bit utilitarian (and both Quill and Wanda finding their gumption but too late) kind of annoyed me. I am that person who would kill someone I loved to save the universe. But I acknowledge that I am not like most people.
Of course, once Thanos did his thing, I was hoping against hope that Maria would survive the post-credits scene - if only so there'd be the possibility of her in Avengers 4. Yeah, no luck there. Also, that scene was put forward as something for Captain Marvel, and I was looking forward to having Maria back. *sulks*
Otherwise...quite a few things I saw in the trailers weren't in the movie - was that just me? I wasn't expecting Team Steve and Team Tony quite so, uh, starkly, but that's where they went. Also, they spent absolutely no time on any of the relationships except Quill/Gamora and Wanda/Vision, and that was mostly because both Gamora and Vision were the sacrifice characters. Steve and Bucky hug, Natasha and Bruce have an awkward reunion (which Sam hangs a lampshade on) but that's about it.
The fanfic engines are revving right now (not just mine, but, really, everyone's) because there's two years to fill in between CW and IW, so all kinds of possibility. And a lot of dead air, because, really, there's just about zero dynamic change between Steve, Nat, Sam, and Wanda, compared to the start of CW. Nobody behaved loverlike, or, really, anything more than friends and colleagues. Honestly, the best 'shippy' moment for me was Strange giving up the Time-gem for Tony's life. Or Tony/Pepper.
And, TBH, that's probably a large part of why I enjoyed it.
In discussion with
morbane, she's pointed out that the vanished characters will probably form a significant part of the next film, because they're part of the "reason" that the characters Left Behind are fighting Thanos. So, that's hopeful?I am slightly annoyed by the complete lack of Valkyrie (although at least she wasn't shown dead...I think?). Okoye's presence was definitely a balm - I love the dynamic between her and T'Challa. For me, it echoes the dynamic between Nat and Steve - that droll vibe that's not quite sibling-ish but is pretty darned close.
Speaking of which Avengers: Left Behind is my new name for either this movie or the next one.
I have more things to think about and comment about, but I don't have a lot of brain right now. If you want to discuss spoilers in the comments, then I don't mind at all. I'd love to have conversations with people about different angles.
Also: when's Captain Marvel actually due to come out?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Nick POV section to write for sharp Evening stars and bright Morning flame (the sedoretu series).
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:D
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...and once again I need new icons...
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Google says Captain Marvel release date is 6 March 2019, imdb says 8 March 2019. Ofc it's been moved a couple of times already ...
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//SHRIEKS
Yeah, I....spoiled myself absolutely for this movie back when people were still insisting the reddit summary was fake, and uh, no. I'll be over here in my post-TWS bubble for like four years and counting now, never underestimate a fangirl's powers of denial.
I think morbane's on the nose and the characters who didn't get a lot of attention in this one will be there for the sequel. Sounds like that's mostly going to be Clint, Ant-Man, maybe the Wasp, Carol Nebula, Rocket, and of course ALSO Thor and Tony and Steve and Bruce! because they're the white guys. Nat will be there too I guess. Like everyone else I thought "the Big Damn Heroes will disappear and the up-and-comers will have to rescue them," but uh, no. Okay then.
What strikes me about this movie -- and no I haven't seen it and I'm not going to -- is how comic-book it is: you have to have seen nearly all the other movies for it to make any sense, even plotwise; it's basically a giant comics event with all the zany pairings and crossover teams; the white dudes are the most important part; and it's All About Thanos. To a degree that kind of squicks me out, really, because I never bought the "it was ALL leading to THANOS" stuff but I guess in the mind of Feige it really was. Which makes me wonder what he thought he was building. The dudes who go on and on about the Thanos stories are even worse than the ones who go on and on about OG Civil War. It obviously strikes some kind of deeply resonant emotional chord in their little psyches and I have no idea what it is.
But like I said elsewhere, if I want to see a giant asshole hell-bent on destroying everything so he can scratch that itch in his jockeys, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS LOOK OUT THE GODDAMN WINDOW. It's not something I want to see as entertainment.
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Well, I did love GotG, the first one. And the Black Panther parts of CW (Tchalla's arc!). And the Val parts of Ragnarok. But other than that. It was like the team movies especially went down this hole of GLOOOM AND DOOOM, which I suspect was a lot of Whedon's influence. (But Feige also apparently wanted Civil War and Thanos. Who knows.)
(I did also like the party scene in AoU. But that was it for that movie.)
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It does all the things a megasuperblockbuster is supposed to do, but lacks the soul and catharsis that the original Avengers movie had. I've been 'hearing' the Avengers theme in my head all weekend - that brassy, hopeful emotional tone that was entirely missing from the end of IW. I think that says a lot about what I missed from this movie.
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That's a really great way of putting it, yeah. And this film really is defeatist -- I mean yeah, if it's Thanos's biopic/story/whatever, he wins, end of film. The next film will, apparently literally, be all about reversing it (and won't it be interesting to see if audiences will buy that. Again, literally buy it). But like I was just saying elsewhere, this film shows the gang defeated over and over and over again. Nothing works, and in fact their typical love-saves-us-all/we-don't-bargain-for-lives philosophy not only doesn't work, the writers rig it so that makes Thanos succeed (Gamora trying to save Nebula, Wanda trying to save Vision until too late, Strange trying to save Tony. Altho apparently the theory is Strange has set this all up for Tony to save the day -- bleah).
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Nebula, Tony
Mmmmm'Baku (THAT MAN), Okoye, Rhodey, Bruce, Thor, Rocket, Steve, Nat; Shuri, Nakia, and W'Kabi probably made it?
offscreen: Val, Carol, Scott, Hope, maybe Jan and Hank, Clint, uhhh who else not enough coffee
So that looks like maybe Nebula, the Wakandans and Val might have bigger roles? altho apparently Clint's gonna save the day. LBR, the OG of Clint, Thor, Steve, Tony, Bruce and Oh Yeah Natasha is gonna save the day. Steve will die killing Thanos, I bet.
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I was not actually surprised about who vanished v how stayed? I was kinda disappointed that it played out exactly that way :/ (I had pegged it as the guys they are probably bowing out after this would 'survive' and the ones who will carry on/the up and comers would be the 'deaths'....) I was so insanely happy that Rhodey and Okoye and M'Baku stayed (given ever other non white person went or died :/) and miffed that Maria vanished *sighs*
And yes - I kept waiting for Valkyrie to pop up....hopefully she will in the next one?
It was a good film - I will give it that - but I had pegged it as the Rogue One of Marvel and yeah.......
Like Rocket and Nebula are the only ones left from Guardians, but all the white boys are left from avengers (and Nat...) and the lovers sacrificing thing. Though I guess you got the side of Thanos and Gamora....
While I am really hoping for focus away from Tony and Steve and Thor, I suspect they will sadly be the focus, and their man!pain (and bonus if Clint/Scott lost a kid to it or Pepper...cos yeah o.O) - I would rather have it be Shuri, Okoya, M'Baku, Rocket and Nebula focus but.... Hopefully Carol get focus and the Russo's write a better Clint....
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I think probably what's going to motivate Clint to be Ronin is his family going poof. If they make Pepper Potts go poof, I might egg Kevin Feige's fucking Benz.
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*sighs* Fridging is so exciting o.O (Like, I adore comics Clint, but the movies, they really don't get him, and if they go Ronin, it'll just be another film another version of clint barton *sighs*)
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Well, that hope turned out well.
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My biggest miff about Maria is mostly that they've missed so many chances to bring her in as a side hero-character, the way they did Nakia, Shuri, and Okoye (and Ramonda) in BP. All her extra scenes? Cut. All the possibilities of her story? Denied. And granted I'm speaking as a Maria fan, but I've been hoping for the last five years to get something more than scraps and...well, I'm pretty bitter about this.
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But even then, R1 certainly had plot holes, and its catharsis works. Emotionally, thematically, character-wise. I think a giant and obvious problem this movie has is it's just too stuffed. It has all the virtues (your faves in one fight! zany team-ups! big stakes!) and flaws (poor to no characterization, bad plotting, reset button) of big comic book events. People have been saying MCU has turned into a giant TV serial, but really the team movies are more like onscreen comics. Altho that's unfair to comics, because they managed to come up with stuff like The Confession in the original Civil War, whereas MCU CW gave us an unconvincing and apparently hastily-done brief VO thing.
I do keep thinking maybe we'll get Maria in the next movie, along with Fury? Maybe?
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I'm highly cynical about this. Unless all the people who were smoked have been sent to a kind of parallel reality and are working together to get out of there (which, I admit would be a very cool), then the chances of her being anything more than one or two lines in the movie are miniscule.
There's too many other emotional arcs that they'd follow up first: all the "beloved dead" reunions - from Steve/Bucky to Rocket/Groot, Peter/Tony, and so on - to go through before they ever got to anything more than Maria delivering a line or two.
(And honestly, I'm tired of Maria delivering a line or two. If I had five dollars every time someone said "well, she appears in my fic" then I'd have close to a thousand dollars by now. Because that's the only thing she ever does in 99% of stories - appear! They give her one line and she walks off. There's no friendship, no emotional significance to her - and, really, as a fan, why would I want to read fic about that? Do they really think I'm that stupid that I can't see they're throwing me a bone while feasting on roast pork?)
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Damn, I wish someone would write that fic. Maybe they're all in that orange place (The Soul Planet?) with bb Gamora?
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man I better start working on my Good Ship Asgardia utter fluff fast or six other people will have written it
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On the other hand, nobody else will be writing anything Maria/Steve oriented from IW at all. Definitely a down side.
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YEAH, THAT
more like Infinity Manpain if you ask me
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*face palm* (With bonus!redskull no one really wanted to see again thank you)
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This movie was so not for me at all, I mean I'm still stuck fifty miles behind everyone back at the DID YOU JUST FUCKING KILL IDRIS ELBA YOU FUCKS signpost.
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PEOPLE IDRIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE THE NEW BILLY AND DIE IN ALL HIS MOVIES
(I have a list of characters I want back, and the characters I hope don't come back, but I'm sure will be because the crazy girl fan girls will make war if they don't return)
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OH MY GOD DON'T EVEN MENTION THAT PLEASE NO. Val met up with Sif somehow and they're leading all the Asgardians to Oklahoma. Or somewhere safe.
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There are after all, only so many 'hold my beer' take downs women can do before they just get tired of beating the boys ;)
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but hey it's the same as there was a load of people pointing out that the general population would actually make some effort instead of screaming, but like we are totally just all holding on for a hero.
THE WORLD IS ALL GIRLS FIGHTING ONLY GIRLS, THERE WAS A MEMO and making bitchy comments while doing so. Because. GURLZ.
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I want Pepper from IM3. I want Extremis!Pepper and Rescue!Pepper, and some idea that someone with her competence and lengthy time knowing Tony would not expect him to give up trying to save the world, and NAG him if he did so.
(Like, she could be conflicted about it. She could be encouraging him to be the Mechanic and not the Iron Man. She could be trying to find ways for him to direct his saviour instincts more usefully. But there's no way that BY NOW she has any illusions about him and his motivations and likely actions in any scenario.)
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I could more believably see Pepper telling Tony: "I love you. And if you don't come back in one piece, I will gut you."
Which then could have fed into Tony getting back to Earth, realising that Pepper's one of the casualties, and desperately vocalising (to Rhodey) that he wishes she was here to gut him...
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Add in the fact that if Valkyrie doesn't appear in the next film, I will be miffed - I mean I'm not even convinced that we'll get a huge amount of Okoye in the next film? With the Captain Marvel throw in, it's like the white people will save the day with the help of a Raccoon and Nebula.
Yeah - the more I think the more frustrating it is in many ways, this film is just going to get a reset button the most overdone thing in scifi in the modern age, and maybe it'll cost us one white boy (maybe two). And there's no way that the whole Bruce/Hulk thing isn't a set up for something in the next movie. *sighs* It's really nothing new, and they twisted the comics motivations for it, and it doesn't quite, work. I can see 'what they were going for' but eh.
The worst thing is, it seems like they know people are interested in Maria, so they randomly just throw her in, so people can't say she didn't appear *face palm* (like having her in AOS...and her use in AOU)
It would have been so much better if it'd been set up so the big guns were doing all the showy stuff while the people we didn't see were setting up to actually save the day. (with Maria on that team) - see even months after seeing BP, it's still a good film. It still works, there's nothing frustrating. It was solid, and a big part of that was the side hero-characters.
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But even in something like AoU, the cut scene where she challenges Steve about whether he can actually put down the fight/war - that's a great scene. SHe didn't get him before when she criticised the twins, but she totally gets him now. These are people she knows and she cares about and who she understands, and they're both comforted and discomfited that she gets them. It's as important a character scene as the one between Okoye and Nakia disagreeing about what they're going to do when Killmonger has defeated T'Challa. But they cut that scene from AoU, and the one where she challenges the council in A1, and...
I was hoping that we'd see a lot of the 'second string' surviving so they have to save the day. I mean, the originals don't need to go out with a bang - they've had their bang. Give the new little guys a chance to shine! And even something like having Groot without Rocket or anyone else who understands Groot to translate, and then someone starts picking up what he's talking about...
The second string would have provided a whole new set of interactions in interesting ways, not the same-old, same-old of the previous movies.
One thing I'm terrified by is Linda Cardinelli - Laura Barton. Like, if she survives and gets a whole story thread...I'm going to be so annoyed. I was hoping for her and Maria to be working together in the background with Clint in this, b/c of the photoshoot spread about IW, where one of them was leaning on the other and...
If that doesn't happen, I'm just going to be spitting chips. (Also, I love Black Widow as a character, but I'm starting to feel she's overused. I don't want more ScarJo as BW, certainly not in a movie. I want OKoye, I want Shuri, I want Maria and Laura and Wanda and, oh, I know they proposed an all-female team-up for Marvel, but out of all the women in the universe, Maria is going to get left out because she's not coded as sexy and nobody's in love with her and she doesn't get big heroic moments, and her character's a villain in the comics and it seems nobody knows how to change that...
*sigh* These are bad thoughts to be having before a three and a half hour solo driving trip back home. Unfortch...
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Yeah - I was expecting what we got, but hoping for more second string (Sam, Groot, Drax....) - and I am dreading how Steve and Tony is going to work in the next one :/
I have not seen the stuff with Linda, so I had not realised they might be selling a bigger Laura part.....but apparently Maria and Fury are both on set during bits of IW2? Like I honestly don't know how much is teasing and how much is real, or how much will be 'back in time'.....
I don't.....I honestly don't feel like BW has actually gotten anything decent? You could have taken her out of IW and it wouldn't have changed anything? Apart from the decent her and Okoye backing Wanda bit? Like, the women all got bit parts in this? Given Gamora was oddly framed, more for her importance to the men, than on her own? Peter was framed better, more independantly than Gamora......
It would be amazing to get an all female team up - to have the ladies all have a part, but, these people are all about the white boys, the big ones who have already had plenty.
Honestly, I'm hoping that something changes post IW2 and we get some different voices, like with BP, in there.
I think Maria gets the worst of it sadly, because the way they're playing with the comics, they don't know what to do with her. Pepper's on a similiar level now. It's just, these boys don't know what to do with the powerful women from the comics/source material. Unless there's potential romance.
But - hopefully there's more - if the rumours and pictures from IW2 of Maria being there, maybe some in Captain Marvel thats not been mentioned.
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Isn't Captain Marvel is just going to be Fury and Coulson, given most of it's set in the 90s and Maria would be too young?
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Some of the stuff post IW reactions is mentioned stuff with them that might fall into IW2 but *flails*
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But I also don't get the general lack of women and POC in so much of what fandom creates now :/)
I am sorry - and it sucks :/
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