#avengers rewatch

[rocinantescoffeestop]

I’m eating a dessert with blueberries. Tony’s eating blueberries in this scene. It’s like we’re connected. :)

[avengersrewatch]

E16: Widow's Bite

Speaking of lady superheroes, here is something else I don't like about this series (and it seems like I have a lot of complaints even though I am rewatching this cartoon because I like it better than other versions): the Hawkeye and Black Widow subplot.

Since the beginning mini-episodes, Hawkeye has thought Black Widow betrayed him to Hydra and that she was a double-agent. And that's fine, even though everyone watching knows she's not evil by now because Black Widow has appeared in the movies at this point. So she's actually more familiar than Hawkeye to a lot of viewers.

So he has been hunting her down and this episode is a lot of continuation of that. I think it makes Clint look stupid that he hasn't figured it out. Because it is definitely made clear in this episode, as if it wasn't set up before, that she is still working for SHIELD and trying to protect him while she is undercover.

I feel like Widow should be part of the Avengers team by now, but instead both Widow and Mockingbird continues to work for SHIELD and Janet remains the only lady on the team. I can't quite figure out why this should be.

Of course this is also the era of "Marvel thinks girl toys don't sell" so maybe that is why?

It's also unclear exactly what the Avengers are at this point. Tony points out that they are supposed to be dealing with the Breakout (the super villains who escaped prison which is the whole start of the series) and Widow isn't one of them. Which would make sense as a reason the organization exists. But they also do other missions, like the alien robot we just saw in the previous, so why can't Barton try to bring this criminal to justice. Nick Fury tries to say because HYDRA is too complicated, but... is it? It doesn't seem that way on the show.

What I like about this episode:

Captain America and Black Panther duo. It's such a fun dynamic. Steve and T'Challa go after Hawkeye, but without permission from Tony. Steve says no one can take on HYDRA alone and T'Challa says he knows what it is like to be blinded by vengeance. So together, they know better than Hawkeye but don't actually stop Hawkeye, just hover like parents hoping their kid will make friends at pre-school.

I repeat T'Challa and Steve are acting like they are Clint's two dads, hoping he and his new bff Bobbi, beat all the Hydra agents up but if he doesn't, they will swoop in and rescue him. (Which they do.) Meanwhile, they are secretly high fiving in the Quinjet that Hawkeye made a "little friend."

After Mockingbird pops up and Hawkeye decides to team up with her, T'Challa says "at least we know his weakness now if he were to turn on us." Like that's a thing he's been worried about. T'Challa is going to fling women at Clint if he goes rogue. I don't know why this makes me laugh so hard. (It's kind of a Batman thing to say.)

There's also a funny bit when they lose Hawkeye, Tony is mad and says he told Hawkeye not to go after Hydra why did they help him? And T'Challa and Steve are both like "I didn't hear you say that." (Steve says it sounded more like a suggestion than an order, and T'Challa says in Wakanda the words of avenge and revenge are the same. So you guys were just confused about the definitions of words, I get it.)

Just when Steve is freaking out that Hawkeye's signal is lost, T'Challa's like "I have faith he will contact us," and an unknown signal appears in the middle of the ocean. Hawkeye's location. T'Challa's like, "That's my boy."

Cool shots of everyone running at the hydra guys. Panther shreds Grim Reaper's arm scythe.

Odd thing:

Madam Hydra (Viper edition) is introduced and there is a scene where she pulls the pin of a grenade out with her tongue, that is cool but also weirdly suggestive for a kid's cartoon.

Unless this cartoon isn't intended for kids in which case Hawkeye is REALLY dumb.

[someoftheday]

You picked his softest lines 😭

The Avengers (2012) // Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) // Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

[sersi]

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) dir. Joss Whedon Avengers: Endgame (2019) dir. Anthony and Joe Russo

[thenoman-sland]

[ivysos2001]

Never forgiving marvel for not giving us a rogue avengers movie bc we didn’t get enough of these three being badasses on the run together

I’m basically imagining catws meets buddy cop movie vibes (with some romanogers thrown in there ofc bc I’ve been rooting for them since 2014)

Like I love this trio sm and this would’ve been such a cool era to see on screen so I’m sad marvel left us almost completely in the dark about it

[whos-hotter-jjba]

Hottest JoJo Character Bracket - 3rd Place

[spockvarietyhour]

Defiant & Avenger "In a Mirror Darkly Pt. 2"

[wandavisionedits]

Wanda Merlin vs. Wanda Maximoff The Scarlet Witch | two-handed power

[moonlightsdream]

DRAMAS in 2024: 14 | Avengers Social Club 부암동 복수자들 (2017) — dir. Kwon Seok Jang, Kim Sang Ho   

[rocinantescoffeestop]

I want a fic about Tony and Erik Selvig doing nerd shit or just talking about nerd shit.

[avengersrewatch]

M17: Welcome to Wakanda

If you are watching on Disney+, this "mini" episode is the third part of the 7th episode called "The Man in the Ant Hill."

It's really called "Welcome to Wakanda" because it's all about establishing Wakanda and T'Challa and actually has fuck all to do with Ant-man.

Not only do I hate that this got shoved into Ant-Man's episode, I hate it a lot.

I hate how the character we will come to know as M'Baku says "come and face de man ape!!" in a weird-dumb accent. I hate how Wakanda is vaguely African but might also be Central America for all we know because it's just "ethnic". The way foreign countries are in a lot of movies.

I hate how T'Challa is like "if you fight M'Baku, dad, yo will lose," and the explanation of why T'Chaka has to fight is basically "we are a backwards people and don't know how to pick our leaders."

Ooh I hate the design of M'Baku.

I don't like that the two dora milaje we do see are interchangeable and have no personality.

This episode makes us feel a lot for T'Challa who has to watch his dad die. But in making T'Challa smart they make the rest of the Wakandans kind of dumb.

A few things I do like,

I do like that though T'Chaka is hilariously small compared to M'Baku, he gets a few good hits in during the fight. I mean, T'Challa has some gray hair here. I'm not sure how old he is supposed to be but I am figuring T'Chaka is no spring chicken.

The composition of the shots when M'Baku hits T'Chaka and he dies in the (convenient) rain does make me a little teary. It's his dad! I am not a monster!

I'm also conflicted about the Klaw-M'Baku alliance. I know that is how a lot of Western countries destabilized "third world" nations. Is by backing dictators. But I also think it contributes to M'Baku seeming dumb. Like he can't have thought of this himself. He needed Klaw to become King of Wakanda.

LOL. I do like this portrayal of T'Challa. It seems like I hate everything, but it's just so inferior to the Black Panther films Ryan Coogler gives us. I think as an origin story it's also not as good as the BET Motion Comic version of Reginald Hudlin's run on Black Panther. (Like if you want to introduce children to Black Panther.)

Rating: Do Not Recommend

[swingsetindecember]

nothing made me angrier as noticing oracle's product placement in iron man 2 and 3. like tony stark uses oracle.

that piece of shit platform that crashes when you try to do a purchase order is what iron man uses. like i am FERAL. for anyone who has had to use oracle, please chime in because my god. if they actually spent that money on something other than product placement and made a functioning platform then good god. anyway, this is how i know i am old because i got angry at the oracle product placement

IT'S EVEN IN AVENGERS. ORACLE IS USED BY THE AVENGERS. IT EXPLAINS SO MUCH WHY THEY GET HACKED BY HYDRA AND WHATEVER VILLAIN OF THE WEEK

i hate it here

[billygoat26]

Y’all, unfortunately I don’t have a PHD in Deadpool, but I have assumptions

Buddy boy jokes through life, we know that much from the comics (from what I’ve read anyways) and the movies. It’s his thing, what we all know him for. The Merc with a Mouth.

BUT- he can be serious. And ooooh boy when those jokes stop you better run while you can.

Only reasons why I think this are (spoilers for Deadpool and Wolverine below)

When they were in the Honda Odyssey I think it was called (right before the fight scene many of us agree was more gay than gay sex) Logan/Wolverine had pretty much insulted Wade’s entire being, and his love life. And we KNOW it hurt him, you can see the subtle change in his expression, even though it was masked literally. Then after that he said the whole “I’m gonna fight you now” and then they fought, blah blah blah.

That little itty bitty moment of silence, vulnerability, all that fun shit means that there’s a limit. We all have one, after all.

In the first Deadpool movie he was a little more serious when dealing with Francis- except in like, the first half during the major car collision and when Wade beat the shit out of Francis and all that fun stuff- and when trying to save Vanessa.

And god, was he destroyed in the second movie when Vanessa got killed… he was a mess, even for him! Trying to find any way to see her again, constantly hurting himself in ways that would kill any ordinary person just so he could catch a glimpse of her again. Hell, he even went back in time to SAVE her!

Which brings us back to the newest movie.

Vanessa had pretty much dumped him. They’re still friends, at least as far as I remember, I’ve only seen the movie once and it’s been on my mind since two days after it released when I watched it. And we know he was hurt by it and we know he got rejected from joining the Avengers (which I’m pretty sure, if I remember correctly, he wanted to join to basically earn Vanessa’s approval again) and after his rejection he sort of just… stopped. Gave up on being Deadpool, hung up the suit and found some job where he worked with Peter.

So basically, Vanessa is that limit. I think, anyways. He might joke about stuff (I’d assume) relating to her, but no matter what it’s a sore spot. Something he hates himself for messing up and would try anything to fix.

So, cue the entirety of the movie to save his timeline and all that fun stuff, and OH MY GOD THE AWKWARD BUT PROBABLY HOPEFUL MOMENT WE SAW WITH HIM AND VANESSA AT THE END AGGGHHHHH-

And how Logan had told Wade to go talk to her- MY HEART- AAAAH-

Anyways…

I’ve lost track of what I was originally rambling about- I think it was Deadpool’s limits or something and movie-wise (I dunno if the “Vanessa” of the comics for him is different or not, I haven’t read enough of them to know for sure) that limit, the line to never be crossed, is Vanessa. She’s the main one, and the others are damn important to him too but I think Vanessa holds the biggest place in his heart.

[c-is-for-circinate]

MCU Rewatch #3: THOR (2011)

General Impressions: I'm allowed to like this one for reasons unrelated to objective quality! I'm also allowed to dislike it for same!

Thor does a good job at a bunch of things. It manages to really succinctly outline what Asgard's deal is, who the major players are, and how this complete fantasy world works, while remaining in the context of a two-hour movie that mostly doesn't even take place there. It's very funny in places! It's not at all a deep movie, but it's entertaining and fantastical and that's fun. This is -- and was! -- the perfect movie to watch in a cold movie theater during a hot summer, munching popcorn and explosions, and that's a perfectly valid thing to be.

Anyway, for me the best parts and the worst parts of this movie were the same, ie Loki. We'll get there -- he was by far the most complex part of this really quite simple film, and that has its plusses and minuses!

All in all, there's nothing wrong with a simple film, and for the most part that's what I'll say about Thor: it was a simple film with good fight scenes, and nothing much was wrong with it.

OH. Except the sound balancing/editing. That was absolutely criminal and whoever was in charge of sound design for this movie should be shot, not just for their crimes here but for the many years of emulation to come.

The Hero: Like the movie, simple but endearing, with a genuine heart.

Thor is definitely not as compelling as Tony Stark, but he's likeable, and his emotional arc is definitely both present and the most genuine part of this movie. In a lot of ways, what we see here is that Thor is a big kid. He makes decisions without thinking about consequences. He does not bother to try and read a room. He's arrogant in a way that reflects his position, but he's also arrogant in a way that suggests he hasn't considered his position -- having his powers, hammer, and home taken away from him is a shock because he's never thought about the fact that he had them in the first place. Getting sent to Earth is more or less a boy being grounded by his father to try and teach him responsibility. Thor is almost a coming-of-age movie, except that it never quite feels like Thor actually gets there -- he's better, by the end, but not quite a man standing on his own two feet just yet. Breaking the Bifrost is a sacrifice on his part, not a decision carrying the weight of the responsibilities Thor will have as an adult and future king.

That said, I really enjoyed the sincerity of his confusion and grief over being told Odin was dead. He's a hurt little kid, asking his brother if please, can I go home. The scene with Selvig in the bar is one of the best in the movie, with Thor admitting vulnerability and doubt and regret over how he left things with his father. (And again, telling that all of these are feelings about his dad, with a man old enough to be a dad/granddad, and that's the energy Thor needs to lean on right now -- Selvig, not Jane, gets Thor's emotional breakthrough moments, because Thor is a tall handsome child who hasn't grown past needing a parent.)

Also, I vaguely remember some fan back-and-forth about whether Thor is kind of dumb, or very smart but trolling, or very smart and just ignorant of local customs. Upon rewatch, Thor may or may not be smart, but he doesn't particularly care. He does shit on Earth because he doesn't care enough to pay attention to whether it's appropriate. Nobody else is smashing coffee mugs, and the diner is totally lacking in raucous celebratory energy, but Thor wants to be raucous and celebrate, so he's going to do so whether it's appropriate or not. Doesn't matter that he's been driven around in cars his whole time on Earth, he doesn't spend thirty seconds to think about what might be appropriate travel, he's going to make assumptions. This is more of that self-centered teenager logic, where he doesn't bother to try and think about the existence of points of view outside his own.

The Villain: If I end up having Loki Feels by the end of this marathon I'm going to stab something. I refuse.

Anyway, Loki was the most complex part of this really quite simple film, which has good and bad sides! I can and will be objective about how well/poorly that complexity was rendered, but sitting here thirteen years after this movie came out, I can admit it: I really fucking hate the Evil Adopted Kid trope. It's a shitty trope and I don't like it, for personal reasons, and that is always going to color my experience with Loki in any movie where he shows up

That aside, Loki's actual motivations and plans in this movie were baffling and kind of a mess. The problem is that Loki is a complex character, with a lot of doubts, full of love and jealousy and insecurity and pride, but we very rarely get to see him from the inside. It feels like the movie was really invested in surprising people with the end twist of Loki killing Laufey in front of Odin, revealing that actually he was on Asgard's side all along! and does not hate his family! So therefore, for the movie before that, we had to be witness to everyone else's doubts about him and only seeing his actions from the outside, to keep that a surprise. I can see how it'd be effective on a first watch, when the suspense of 'what is this guy going to do and what side is he on?' can pull a viewer through the movie. On a rewatch, knowing what Loki's ultimate deal is, it just feels confusing and inconsistent. What exactly was your plan for when your dad woke up, Loki? Did you actually intend to leave Thor on Earth forever? Were you or were you not actually hoping to kill your brother? What the fuck was your endgame here?

I think there is probably a very interesting story here where Loki's plans seem muddled because he's muddled, awash with emotions and doubts and the inner conflict between love of his brother, twisting jealousy, the objective truth that Thor would be a terrible king, and the fact that Loki, like Thor, is also still very much a grown-up kid. He's making dumb decisions by the seat of his pants and his motivations are contradictory and messy. That tracks, with what we see, but we don't get to see that because this movie is too invested in its twist and its simplicity. Allowing Loki the time and space to be this complicated would steal the entire show from his simpler, genuine brother, and because the movie itself wanted to be simple and straightforward, there wasn't room to hold the layers of its complicated villain. No wonder the Tumblr girlies went wild for him.

The Ensemble: Weak romantic lead with an A+ comic sidekick, hobbled by needing to run two casts at once.

I think this is where we really see Thor suffer from the problem of having to establish two casts at the same time. The New Mexico side of the equation, Jane and Selvig and Darcy, simply doesn't get time for character development. We know next to nothing about Jane, except that she cares about her research and once dated a doctor. Why this research? How did she get into it? How long has she been in New Mexico? What university does she even work for??? It's true that we don't get a lot of details about, say, Pepper's backstory, but it doesn't matter because we understand from the very beginning how she fits into her life and also Tony's life. Jane is a brief three-day whirlwind in Thor's existence, and that's not enough time for him or us to understand who she is or why we should love her. It feels like the movie went through the motions of having a Lady Love Interest, and it doesn't work out great.

Darcy and Selvig actually fare better, simply because there's less need for them to be more than they are. All we know about Darcy is that she's a polisci major who's working a summer internship way outside of her field, but we don't need to know more -- she's there to be fucking hilarious and indeed she is. Selvig is there to help facilitate Jane's choices and Thor's emotional development, and he does his job well.

The Asgardians have a similar problem. Thor's four friends are basically interchangeable (Sif's only notable distinction being that she's a girl). Thor's mom...shows up? We get the impression that there's more going on with Odin than we've seen, but I wonder if some of that is just me remembering Ragnarok -- either way, given that Odin is literally in a coma for 3/4 of this movie, it doesn't mean much. Heimdall probably has more characterization than anyone else in Asgard other than Loki, and that is...not a lot.

It's a lot of just not very much, across the board.

The Franchise: We're already seeing the formula start to get built and tested in the moviemaking labs.

It's fascinating watching Thor on screen directly after two back-to-back movies of Tony Stark, because Thor has some of Tony's same growth arc with none of his fascinating complexity. On the surface they've got the same vague sketched outline: careless, self-involved privileged prettyboy must learn to think outside himself and care for others to become a hero. Thor takes that plotline in a very different direction, which means the movie doesn't feel same-y, but a more cynical viewer might wish to speculate about what boardroom or producer's office suggested that the writing team follow that.

I think Thor actually does better about wasting time trying to set up the future of the franchise. We don't spend a ton of time on Coulson and Hawkeye here -- if we watched this movie with no idea who they were or that they were here to set up anything at all, they'd function fine as Generic Government People (with an inexplicable thing for archery). I think the place where the setting-up hits worst, actually, might be with Loki: he needs to be complex and sympathetic enough to be interesting as the main villain of Avengers, but we can't resolve anything about him before that. (Not sure how far they'd planned the plot of Avengers at this point in the production run, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd already called him as their bad guy.)

Thinking about the big thematic MCU premise of a superhero world without secret identities -- the choice of Thor as our next hero in the franchise, somebody who neither has nor needed a secret identity to begin with, is clever there. They're not going back on the freedom from overworked secret identity bullshit that they've promised, but they're also not stuck making a second movie about the lack of them, which would just end up looking like a retread of IM2. The secrets we do find here are all kept by SHIELD, which is clearly trying to keep superhero stuff in, and just as clearly is not managing it. (Loki also has a secret identity, with his discovery of his Jotunn heritage...hmm, much to think about there for the future.)

We pretty much lose all themes around the military-industrial complex here, and the movie is probably the better for it, considering what a hash IM2 made of the subject.

VERDICT: A breezy, light 6/10

Thor is in every respect a perfectly fine movie. It's simple, it's straightforward, it manages to do a bunch of things and establish a brand new fantasy setting without actually putting much depth into any of them.

I suspect that, as I get further on in this franchise, 'perfectly fine and no great flaws' is going to be the verdict on a lot of these movies, and I'm going to start dropping my number rating lower and lower every time something shows up that's simply fine. For now, with the context of only IM1 and 2, 'does light summer adventure flick competently with some sincerity and doesn't fuck it up' feels like an improvement over IM2's messiness, so that's where I'm rating it.

Except for the sound design. Anyone who thinks their battle sequences need sound effects roughly 800% of a standard dialogue scene should be forced to watch their own movies with the sound on a pair of unremovable headphones set to a flat however-loud-it-needs-to-be-to-hear-people-talking. Perhaps, after the deafness ensues, they will change fucking careers.

[amelia-mariee]

Re-entering a fandom because they’re making something new with characters you love is like you’re a jaded ex-secret agent in one of those action movies who’s coming back for one last mission because “this one is personal”. You still have all the knowledge from the last time you were here, but people in the fandom who stayed the whole time know a few things that you missed in that time that you stopped checking in for a few years.