#everyone agrees black panther is the only really good mcu movie so far

[allthislove]

Thinking about the Namor discourse, I'm reminded of the Killmonger discourse from back when the first movie came out. Almost everyone agreed that he was right, but that his methods were extreme, and that Nakia had already suggested the same things without the violence. Killmonger's stance was... surprisingly just like Namor's. Basically burn the world, take it over (although Namor seems to have little differentiation between poor, oppressed people of the surface and the oppressors of the surface. At least that's how it seems.)

But there was also this huge rise in fans of Killmonger. He's a cool, confident character, played by a handsome actor, who was fun and cool to watch. He was definitely killed off too soon, though. Marvel had that problem of killing their villains back then, when comics heroes usually encounter their villains many times.

Now the main difference between Killmonger and Namor is that Namor isn't a villain. Killmonger comes from a straight forward villain character in the comics. Namor is an antihero in the comics. He has a long-standing feud with T'Challa and Wakanda, and they clash often for reasons similar to this movie. But Namor isn't supposed to be hated as a villain. He's coming from a completely unique perspective than everyone on the surface. Comparing Tenoch Huerta's Namor to the Namor in the comics, they're very similar in that their main goal is the safety and protection of their underwater society. Sometimes, that aligns Namor with the surface heroes. Often, he clashes with them, either because of his own extreme views (burn the world) or because they're getting up to something that puts Atlantis in harm's way (Talokan in the MCU).

So, when I'm seeing a lot of like... takedowns of people who like Namor, and who are attracted to Tenoch, and comments like "Anything for a sexy face" and "y'all wouldn't do this for a Black man" it feels very much... to me... like unfamiliarity with the character. Namor is a superhero, not a villain. We're not supposed to see him like Loki or Thanos. That's why they've been billing him as "the first Mexican SUPERHERO" in the press tour. He is an antagonist for Wakanda a lot of the time, but that's because Marvel comics are actually quite good at nuances. A lot of characters aren't strict hero/villain archetypes in Marvel comics. Look at Magneto and Professor X, as an example. You're gonna tell me Professor X is a moral good superhero and Magneto is a moral bad supervillain? Especially in the current comics where all Mutants live in Krakoa together and have a society protected from the rest of the world. You're gonna tell me Iron Man is a strictly good superhero? Like, nuance is how the comics work. That's what Coogler is actually really good at bringing to his MCU projects and it's why he's the perfect director to even handle a character like Namor.

Coogler knows how to bring the nuance. It's why everyone loved Killmonger, too, even if we didn't agree with him. (Though some of y'all did.) Nuance shows us why Killmonger wants to do what he's doing.

As far as "wouldn't do this for a Black man" takes... isn't that disingenuous when talking to fans of the Black Panther franchise? It's not like the franchise was small or didn't do well. It was one of the most successful movies of the Infinity Saga, up there with Infinity War and Endgame. Most people in these tags HAVE gone up for a Black man. T'Challa was not lacking in love. Neither was Killmonger. Or even M'Baku. How many oneshots I read about M'Baku taking care of his "vegetarian children" because of that one off, throwaway line "Just kidding. We are vegetarians." (Loved the callback to it in this movie with him eating a carrot while talking to the council!) People liking Tenoch Huerta and thinking his version of Namor is attractive has nothing to do with whether or not people find the Black men attractive. But for what it's worth, THERE'S ONLY ONE MAIN BLACK MAN IN THIS MOVIE and that's M'Baku. Unless you expect a bunch of teen and 20-something fans to go up over the elders on the council. T'Challa has passed, W'Kabi is in jail and never shown, Killmonger does show up for a cameo but that's not a main role. All we get is M'Baku. And people are going up for him, because people love M'Baku. This is a movie about a whole country of badass Black women. The only male characters of consequence are M'Baku, Namor, and Ross.

Namor is just a shiny new character and again, not a villain AND provides representation to an entirely different group of people. People are allowed to be excited to see an Indigenous character in a Marvel movie. It doesn't mean they don't love the Black characters in the movie.

As far as shipping, there's really only two choices and that's Shuri/Riri and Shuri/Namor. It's surprising that y'all are upset about Shuri/Namor, as that ship was obvious. You can dislike a ship without pretending everyone who likes it made it up based on nothing. Media literacy is understanding what a story is trying to do, and the Namor and Shuri scenes before the attack on Wakanda were trying to make you see them as a potential romance. I saw one take saying that they might possibly be switching Namor's obsession with Sue Storm into an obsession with Shuri (which is ehhhhhh and I kinda hope not, but would work with the storyline they're building).

With Riri, you get an easy ship kinda in the same grain as ScienceBros, and they are really good friends in the comics, so that ship is a pretty surefire one going forward.

I don't really like Shuri and M'Baku, but I could see it happening more than any of them in canon. I only don't like it because he reads very "older brother" with her and it would feel like an extreme left turn for them to date. But I could see the movies trying that pairing on some like... "good for Wakanda" stuff.

(Then there's Namor/M'Baku which is really funny, and I like your minds 🤣 Based on the "fish man" stuff alone.)

Anyway I'm getting off track, but basically, I think there's a lot of extreme behavior going on in the tags and I think it really boils down to this being your first introduction to Namor, because there's no reason to be angry with people for liking him. You're gonna have to get used to him, too, because he's a Problem, tm, and I fully expect him to insert himself into so many conflicts and give the Avengers grief, too. And I hope we get a main universe (I refuse to call the MCU 616) Illuminati with him and Strange and them, too.

[agentem]

Endgame and passing the torch in the MCU

I think the a lot of the failings of Phase 4 and (so far) Phase 5 have been discussed at length.

But lately I have been thinking of one I haven't seen really discussed, and that is tentpoles/franchises. Iron Man, Thor and Captain America were the big franchises of the first couple phases. As such, they were (I believe contractually) always a big part of the Avengers team-ups.

It's those three characters that enter the battle with Thanos in Endgame together. Just the three of them.

Then everyone arrives and there was a symbolic passing of the Gauntlet to the three heroes I believe Marvel expected to be the next tentpole franchises: Black Panther to Spider-man to Captain Marvel.

Sadly, the Black Panther franchise was rocked by the loss of Chadwick Boseman. He really should have been the "new face" of Marvel coming into Phase 4. I think Letitia Wright did a great job in crazy circumstances with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But I am still not sure she is a movie star the way Robert Downey Jr or Boseman were.

There wasn't anything Marvel could do about that loss, but it's felt in the lack of focus in Phase 4, for sure.

Tom Holland has arguably done his job as Spider-man. People still love his portrayal. No Way Home was one of the only huge hits in the COVID era. But now the future of that tentpole is also in question while Sony decides what they are going to do. I think this is something that could have been foreseen, unlike Boseman's death. Obviously Spider-man and the X-Men have been Marvel's most popular comic franchises for recent memory so they want Spider-man to be a big part of the MCU.

But wanting something and the ability to make it happen are two different things. And Marvel should've known there would be kinks in that process. They probably should've been laying the groundwork for a new deal with Tom Holland years ago. (Even if he wouldn't agree to anything before his old deal expired.)

I'm also surprised that they didn't have a Captain Marvel movie in Phase 4. I suppose Ms. Marvel was the entry that was supposed to make Carol's presence felt. And I do think Marvel really wanted that to be a huge hit. (They are going to air it on ABC near the release of The Marvels and I think that's a good idea to reach a wider audience.) I liked that show. And Marvel could totally still land this one by making The Marvels a big deal in November. TBD. But it seems late, and not just because it got pushed back a couple times.

... and then there is the weirdness that is the Thor franchise. This was the one of the "big three" that was continuing through Phase 4. And I think they whiffed it. They could have made that movie about passing the torch to Jane Foster Thor (which would keep with the themes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye). They could have made that movie a way for Thor to enter the Guardians of the Galaxy world, and help transition the end of both of those franchises. They could have had it tie into Moon Knight and Eternals with the themes of "bad" gods.

This tentpole is holding up no tent. It doesn't serve the greater narrative at all.

Then characters like Doctor Strange and Ant-man were ongoing franchises that were never the biggest stars in Avengers films. And I think there was an effort to make them "matter more" by adding Scarlet Witch to DS, and making Ant-Man the first to confront Kang.

But I don't think the Multiverse of Madness did what Marvel wanted it to do. They could have positioned it as a big smack down between Strange and Wanda, who had grown in popularity following WandaVision and I think that could've worked as a messaging strategy. But the marketing was all about the multiverse and nothing really happened with the multiverse in that movie. I mean they went to two other realities and confirmed the multiverse exists. Except, you know, No Way Home came out first (which it wasn't supposed to but Sony didn't play ball, and they were probably right to do so since theirs worked and Marvel's didn't) so we already knew that. So it didn't add anything new really. Except that fans really want to see all the various Marvel film universes interact, and I think Deadpool will be the beneficiary of that lesson (which I could've told you from WandaVision alone), not Strange himself.

I was pretty "fine" with Ant-Man's showing. But a lot of people thought the third movie deviated too much from the charm of the earlier movies in the franchise. (One of the things people liked about Ant-Man was his more "regular guy" and smaller stories.) I think there was probably a better way to balance the tone of the first two movies better with the third. (Possibly less about the "Quantum People" and their struggle to make more room for Luis, Cassie's mom and step-dad and some of the other characters from the first two. (Glad David Dasmaltchian--Kurt and Veb--at least got to be in all three.)

I'm not sure I know what character is the "heart" of the Marvel stories anymore. They may be waiting for Sam Wilson's Captain America to break out in his upcoming movie, and for the Hulk rights to come back to them (because they are clearly setting something up there with the return of all his villains plus the introduction of She-Hulk.)

Also no idea what's going on with Shang-Chi and the Eternals. I do hope that Shang Chi and Kamala Khan are going to be important to the multiverse sage (see my ring theory post). But we have to wait and see how Loki and The Marvels land.

[gdcee]

Mum: I don't like a lot of the new stuff Marvel is putting out. I only liked the What If T'challa episode.

Me: Yeah, I didn't like the Loki episode after that either. Why would he even want to take over Earth?

Mum: The series was pretty good though. Kind of weird and quirky?

Me: Nah, I thought it was pretty bad.

Mum: Really? You seemed to like it so much. And you like weird stuff.

Me: Yeah, at first, but then things got too weird. Like Loki making out with his opposite gender counterpart at the end.

Mum: Yah, didn't like that either, but not surprising, right? He's a narcissist, he's in love with himself.

Me: He committed suicide at the end of the first Thor movie.

Dad: Yah, he doesn't love himself, his problem is self-loathing. He wants other people to love him, not just his mum. Particularly his dad.

Me: Oh definitely, but Odin is a bad father.

Dad: Yup. Very emotionless grumpy old man. Doesn't show any affection for his son.

Me: Besides, if he was actually a narcissist, why would he fall in love with his opposite gender version with dyed hair who doesn't look like him when there's that President version who looks identical to him?

Dad: Oh yah, hor? Doesn't make sense.

Mum: I don't know. -makes a face- I don't like either of those things.

Me: Yep, but they made you watch one of those things on screen.

Mum: Ugh, the romance was so unnecessary. I take it back, everything after episode 3 was mediocre.

[before-whatgod]

How I Would Fix the MCU Movies (in chrono order)

Black Widow is mentioned but there are no spoilers! also this is super long sorry lol

CA:TFA

--More time with the howling commandos- instead of a montage with their battles with sit with them and feel their struggles. we feel not only capt’s grief but everyone on the team when bucky ‘dies’. idk would have loved to see more of a band of bothers bond 

Captain Marvel 

--I saw/read somewhere that her story could have work really well with a similar structure as CA:TFA and i agree. they were so concerned with making carol look powerful that they forgot to give her the fiery/badass personality we were promised. there was too much telling not enough showing 

Iron Man 

--Literally Nothing. Perfect. Great Intro to the series. 

Iron Man 2 

--again really solid movie i wish the villains were a bit more developed by tbh this is my fav iron man movie 

The Incredible Hulk 

--babes i dont even remember this movie its super cool they keep rossi around from it tho. hes literally the only thing the mcu kept from this monstrosity i would keep a similar plot structure but with mark ruffalo and a better script and tbh a better evrything. cannot tell you where to start with this jesus   

Thor 

--would have liked to see of the personality thor has later on in the timeline line- but it is interesting to think maybe he developed his humor and friendliness from his time on earth, idk this movie was kinda dull? i mean everything is dull compared to ragnarok and better compared to the dark world so idk how to fix that- maybe less of chris’s weird screaming- definitely less of chris’s screaming 

The Avengers 

--honestly love this movie-great set up to the team dynamics wouldn’t change anything. i love the nostalgia i get from watching this  

Iron Man 3 

--another movie i dont really remember but? this is the one with the bunny right? i feel like after iron man 1 the quality of tony’s enemies has gone down hill but i could watch rdj do anything so overall good experience 

Thor: The Dark World  

--besties what even happened in this movie like, jane babes what are we doing. loki is as amazing as ever tho. but like ‘oh no lokis dead again whatever are we going to do’ i would simply through the whole thing away- keeping jane going to asgard, loki being dramatic, and the relationships of the asgardian gang we get to see. also the reality stone thats pretty important 

CA:TWA 

--I. Love. This. Movie. my fav in the whole timeline. can you tell im a capt girl? literally the best wow won’t change a thing 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1

--so! much! fun! i love their family dynamics and tbh i love peter quill (we all did until pratt was a dick but) 

Guardians Vol. 2 

--I wasn’t obsessed with this movie but I cant quite figure out how i would change it- it was visually beautiful and emotionally beautiful but idk something felt off until the very end 

Age of Ultron 

--hot take- i really like this movie. i like how it completely changes the direction of the series and makes the mcu feel so real, like the friend ship seen- i would have like more clint so his character arc in endgame would have been impactful i dont hate the farm family but man i sure dont love them jesus but yea i love the dialogue and the only thing i would really change is clint’s involve meant. also helen cho deserved to have a bigger part in the mcu 

Ant-Man 

--super fun! i feel like this movie is great the way it is- a familiar super hero movie when the series was starting to get pretty dense with the lore wont change anything 

CA:CW 

--i read somewhere this movie was originally going to be steve and sam and the rest of the squad finding bucky and i was robbed. over time the mcu starting telling us how great steve and buckys relationship was instead of showing us. like men can show each other affection marvel that is a thing that happens but tbh i loved this movie- i would change a lot but i still really enjoyed it 

Spiderman: Homecoming 

--its so cute i love it but I miss andrew garfields peter- he felt more like the comics but besties i love this movie and tom i would just change how ton is characterized to be more comic actuate but also maybe not idk 

Doctor Strange

-- tilda swinton owns my heart and sole. but imma be honest i saw this in theaters 3 weeks after a horrid concussion and i remember none of it and thinking about it makes me sick (love head trauma) so imma just leave it how it is 

Black Panther 

--nothing. its art. 

Black Widow

--I’m writing this around an hour after I watched the movie and tbh I dont know how I feel about it. I dont love it yet but im not quite sure why yet- its most likely the pacing it felt a little rushed to me but idk yet ill be able to gather all my thoughts in a later post prolly 

Thor: Ragnarok 

-- to think i can even dream to improve on anything taika waititi is putting bad karma into the universe. that man is a genius. you can feel just how comfortable everyone is in their characters which makes for a great performance

Ant-Man and the Wasp 

--the breather we all needed after iw but i dont think anyone really loved it- no idea how to fix it but yknow it was just bland 

Avengers: Infinity War 

--I loved it. I loved it so much. obviously there are some bad things here and there but i would not change a thing 

Avengers: Endgame 

--I hated it. I hated it so much. obviously there are some good things here and there but i would not keep a thing. 

(I have in fact written an essay about said topic bc i felt so passionate about it i did not know what else to do)

Spiderman: Far From Home 

--I dont know something was off for me with this one- again I think it was a pacign issues but I am not sure how I would change it 

I might do the tv shows in another post- but if i do those i want to include the netfilx marvel tv shows as well as the agent carter and agents of shield series(es?) 

anyway thank you for reading all of this if you did!

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Erik Killmonger

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been able to tell compelling stories with its heroes, but for the longest time the films lacked a key component of any great superhero story: great, compelling villains. Sure, there were enjoyable foes like Ultron and Red Skull and then there was Loki, the poster child for villainy in the early days, but I think at some point we can’t JUST have fun, we need something compelling and engaging too. To quote one of the greatest MCU villains, it should be “perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”

Thankfully, we eventually got those compelling villains. Characters like Zemo, Toomes, and Ghost showcased a level of complexity and depth not really seen in anyone outside Loki, and fun villains like Hela and the Grandmaster were better than ever, with more engaging personalities. Then we got villains who were a blend, like Ego and Mysterio, and don’t even get me started on Thanos. But there is one villain who stands out even among the greatness of these villains, a villain who is one of the few Marvel villains that I would without hesitation call one of the greatest villains of all time: Erik Killmonger.

Killmonger is a character who solidified Marvel’s turning point from weaker villains into villains worthy of high praise. And not only that, he helped to completely redeem his actor, Michael B. Jordan, in the eyes of filmgoers everywhere after a not-so-fantastic previous outing into the superhero movie genre (though starring in Creed probably also helped him out). Killmonger’s story is almost Shakesperean, with a tragic life molding him into the ruthless man he became, a man whose entire motivation is founded on hypocrisy. But it’s these facets and more that make him if not the greatest, but one of the most fascinating characters in the MCU. And yes, I mean characters period.

Motivation/Goals: Erik had a pretty miserable life growing up. His dad was killed by T’Challa’s father for allying himself with Klaue due to wanting to end Wakanda’s isolationist policies after seeing black people disenfranchised in America, and his mom was apparently in jail (and she died there). Erik’s greatest desire is to carry on his father’s work, only on a grander scale: he wants to take the throne of Wakanda for himself and forcibly end their isolationist policies, supplying vibranium tech to black people around the world and giving them the strength to fight back at their oppressors. And, you know, I can’t really fault him in theory, his plan isn’t totally evil…

...but it becomes very clear that the only person Erik really thinks about is himself. He’ll oppress and murder black people if they don’t fall in line with his plans, he doesn’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t black in general, and most tellingly of all: he decides to keep the power of Black Panther to himself, destroying it to keep any future generations from getting it. While there definitely is some truth to his goals and desires, it’s hard to deny that Killmonger is also acting out of vengeance and a lust for power. Unlike most villains who lust for power, he at least has a lot of other things going in to his motivations, which keeps him from being bland like, oh, I don’t know, Malekith.

I think it’s also worth noting that even in the film, the characters point out Erik is still operating like a CIA wetworker, dismantling and destroying governments while masking his motives under the guise of rebellious ideology. The thing here is that he’s not working for anyone who’s going to swoop in and scoop up the assets from the ruins of the places he’s destroying – he’s the master, and all he is doing is leaving behind chaos, destruction, and death for nothing. His own goals are not truly helped by a lot of his actions, especially not when he decides to eschew Wakandan traditions in the third act, which helps lead to his downfall.

Performance: Michael B. Jordan is a very talented man, which anyone would be able to tell you provided they had watched Chronicle and sat out F4ntastic. Unfortunately, the latter managed to stick in most people’s minds since it ruined the career of Chronicle’s director and basically garnered a lot of vitriol for everyone involved, so it was going to be an uphill battle for Jordan with this film.

Boy did he win the crowd here.

Jordan manages to make Killmonger everything you would want to see in a villain. He’s cunning, he’s dangerous, he’s charismatic, he’s pretty damn hot (Did you SEE him with his shirt off?!). It’s to the point where despite the incredibly embarrassing CGI cat fight at the end between him and T’Challa, Jordan manages to turn Killmonger’s death scene into a poignant and emotional moment that ends up deeply affecting T’Challa as a character and setting the stage for his character growth to the point where you can almost forget that you spent the last ten minutes watching a PS3 cutscene.

Final Fate: For a comic book movie villain, there is about a 10% chance you will make it out of any given superhero movie alive. Killmonger does not fall into that 10%; thankfully, he does get a poignant sendoff, where he gets to watch the sun set on Wakanda (both figuratively and literally, considering T’Challa’s actions in the ending) and deliver one last line clinging to his ideology to his dying breath. Maybe he was just playing a bit to mask his own egotism, but you have to give props to a man who stays steadfast and defiant even to the end. Even when offered the chance to be saved, he chooses to go out on his own terms.

Best Scene: I can hardly narrow it down to one scene, because Killmonger basically steals the show whenever he’s onscreen. But his cold-blooded murder of his own girlfriend when she became a liability to his plans, followed up by executing Klaue and delivering his corpse to Wakanda? That’s just ice cold. Most villains wish they could get the lengths they’d go to established like that.

Best Quote: After going on about the poignancy of his dying words, how could I not put them here? When T’Challa tells Killmonger Wakandan science can save his life following the Video game cuts- er, final battle between the two, Killmonger responds thusly:

“Why? So you can lock me up? Nah. Just bury me in the ocean, with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, 'cause they knew death was better than bondage.”

Final Thoughts & Score: There is just so much to unpack with Killmonger.

I think one of the aspects about Killmonger I like the most is that despite his good intentions, there is an inherent hypocrisy in all he does which, despite valid points and incredibly valid grievances, firmly cements himself as a villain. For all his talk of aiding and liberating his fellow Africans from the opression they face around the world, he feels no remorse in appropriating from them (as he does to that mask at the start of the film, ironically after calling out a museum worker for stealing it) or violently subjugating them and destroying aspects of their way of life as he does when he comes to Wakanda. And his own gripes against white people, while founded in a place of legitimacy, are also filled with hypocrisy on his part, to the point where he actively does everything he rails against the white colonizers for doing, down to even oppressing and harming other non-white racial groups so long as it furthers his desire to turn Wakanda into a power that can oppress all other nations with its technological superiority. Now, usually such rampant hypocrisy would lead to a poor character, or even an idiot – but such is not the case here. His own hypocrisy only serves to make him a richer, more well-rounded character.

Compare him to Thanos. Thanos also had a plan that was inherently flawed, hypocritical, and not rooted in rational thought – and he is widely praised as an excellent character. This is because you are not supposed to agree with a villain, valid as their points or their anger are. But at the same time, their anger and their motives gives you an insight onto who they are and how they operate, a window into how their mind works, and Killmonger’s definitely shows how he is a broken, angry man who was failed by Wakanda and failed by America and has suffered bigotry, racism, and violence all his life. And in his shoes, would you too not be angry? Even with the numerous atrocities he commits and the horrible hypocrisies he wallows in, it’s hard not to feel a bit of pity for a man who could have offered so much, only to give in to hatred.

And the thing with Killmonger is that not only is his anger valid, it ultimately does have ramifications, it ultimately does change the status quo, though maybe not in the way he envisioned. T’Challa realizes in the end that Wakanda failed Killmonger, that Wakanda has been selfish and allowed horrible things to occur to their fellow Africans because they didn’t consider them their people. And so T’Challa opens the borders, decides to share Wakanda’s gifts with the world, and reach out and help disenfranchised black people around the world so that someone like Killmonger never rises up again. What this could mean for the MCU going forward is anyone’s guess, but it definitely shakes up the status quo of Wakanda a fair bit.

I think it’s rather obvious that Killmonger earns himself a 10/10, joining the ranks of Thanos, Mysterio, and Ego at the table of champions. As far as villains go, I’d say he’s probably the deepest and most well-written, though I’d still say it’s arguable if he’s the absolute best. Still, he is certainly a fine metric by which to judge other villains, and if nothing else he will most definitely wash the bad taste of Jordan’s Johnny Storm out of your mouth forever. Killmonger really is what I would consider the gold standard that other villains need to live up to in other comic book movies, and generally speaking, we’ve been getting that recently. Let’s hope that the pace can be continued, and let’s hope whoever T’Challa is fighting in Black Panther 2 can measure up.

[positively--speculative]

Let me be clear by starting this off by saying that I am an MCU fan. I don’t hate the MCU, I just tend to sway more towards the critical side in my enjoyment of it.

I began to feel more critically towards the MCU in 2016. Before then, I ate these movies up. I liked some more than others, but I never really had anything bad to say about any of them. What made me start looking at them with a more careful eye was the way BvS was trashed by critics and MCU fans™ to prop up the MCU. I didn’t write a lot about BvS or MoS at the time, because I knew liking either movie was an unpopular opinion. I might have said a few things here or there, but I mostly stayed quiet. Then CA:CW came out, and I watched how everyone praised it to hell and back...and I remember walking out of that movie disappointed, and I couldn’t understand how BvS--a movie that explored the trauma and hardship of two iconic heroes--was trashed so harshly, while CW was presented as one of the best of the MCU. I didn’t hate it...but with how it was hyped up and how everyone seemed to agree that it was better than BvS, I felt like something was lost on me.

And the fact that everyone, it seemed, saw something different than what I was seeing, made me feel as if I had to be the only one feeling this way. I had to be wrong.

Then Suicide Squad came out, and you know what? I’ll be the first to say there were flaws in that movie. I’ll be the first to say it’s not my favorite movie by far...but that’s when I noticed some of the negativity towards the DCEU movies got downright personal. I will never forget or forgive the headline, “Suicide Squad is the Donald Trump of superhero movies.” That, right there, was what set me off. How are you going to tell a fandom that from what I have seen is full of women of color and LGBTQ+ fans that they were supporting a movie that was the equivalent of Trump? That one stung me, and as I continued to gloss through the negative reviews of the three movies the DCEU had made thus far, I began to see similar headlines, and as a woman of more than one marginalized group, I felt talked over. People couldn’t stop at simply listing out the reasons they didn’t like the movies, they had to disguise their irrational hatred as something “woke” or “progressive,” and there I was--a queer Black woman--sitting there thinking, “None of you speak for me. Just shut-up!”

And it was this that started making me reexamine the way I looked at the MCU. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw the flaws I had never thought too much about before. I saw how characters of color were tokenized or villain coded and I saw how Disney just kind of dilly-dallied in giving us women led movies...and I just began thinking, “This is what you’re all comparing the DCEU to in terms of inclusiveness?”

2017/2018 wasn’t bad for the MCU. It gave us Spiderman: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and Ant-Man and the Wasp...but those movies were completely disrespected by the Russos two times. It seemed there wasn’t much care at all given to what the directors of these movies gave the characters, and Endgame just kind of sealed the deal for me. The story didn’t make sense, characters were acting out of character for the sake of shock, loose ends weren’t tied, and I’m sorry, that little “she’s not alone” scene with all the women doesn’t erase how Natasha was completely disrespected.

...but here we go again. No one wants to give it an honest review. No one wants to talk about these problems. No one wants to acknowledge these problems, and as I’ve said before, what I fear is that this is the start of a pattern. We’re just going to see Disney shit these things out, and people are just going to consume them and say they’re good, just because they’re Marvel.

I used to be so invested in this franchise...now, I’m not so sure.

[galaxyglitchchic]

How about this MCU Fandom:

Endgame and Infinity war don't exist. While we're at it, let's include civil war(even if I'm of the many who are still salty over that). It's going to sound like I'm glossing over a lot of movies (well I kinda am).

Let's begin!

(For one time I'm trying not to be a salty trashcan bear with me guys)Also I have not seen the following movies YET but I have heard/seen parts of them:Captain marvel,Spider man homecoming and far from home ,black panther and avengers endgame.

*Wanda and Pietro stay with Clint and his family and Wanda learns to fully control her powers. They ,along with with the Barton children, love to set up pranks on Clint. When Nat visits the farm,she helps them as well.

*Tony Stark lives a long life with Pepper and Morgan. Already at a young age,Morgan is intelligent. Big brothers Peter and Harley visit as often as they can and help Morgan with whatever invention she has been building.

*Thanos is dead and Gamora and Nebula have a healthy sister relationship. Sometimes Nebula visits Earth to see Tony. Both Gamora and Nebula are now Morgan's big sisters. And they take it seriously.VERY SERIOUSLY.

*(Hela is in Hel) But Loki,Valkyrie,Thor,and a convinced Bruce go to make peace with Hela. After a long time,the three siblings bond over Odin's bad parenting. Cue many drinking contests between Thor and Hela and knife fights between Loki and Hela. Hela , after a long therapy session, is given the throne of Asgard. All Thor wants now is to go to Earth to be with his friends and Jane. Loki,hmm that is tough to say. He might a) go with Thor, b)stay on Asgard,c) go wherever the fuck he wants cause that's how he is.

*The tension between the Maximoff twins and Tony is finally cleared up. Pietro frequently takes Tony's coffee/snack from him every time Pietro has the chance to. ("Too slow old man," is often heard while the speedster is on the run. In retaliation, Pietro finds him room covered wall to wall with Flash merch) Wanda loves using her magic to prank Tony.

*Stephen,Shuri,Tchalla, Peter and Harley are now new members of the Science Bro clubs.

*Shuri,Peter,Harley,the Barton kids,Cassie,and the Maximoffs are all meme and vines addicts and love to confuse the others. Sometime the Asgardians and the Guardians get them from time to time.

*Stephen and Loki are still being petty while Hela and Wanda are practically inseparable.

*Tony and Loki are frienemies. They bonded overe making Stephen's life miserable.

*Movie night was a good idea bit no longer possible.Thor and Peter Q. are fighting over the popcorn, Tchalla,Tony,Bruce,Rhodey and Pepper just want everyon to be quiet, Wanda and Wong are stuck sitting between Stephen and Loki who never stop glaring at each other. Steve asks to much questions much Sam's dismay and Bucky can't figure out why the "one can't simply walk in Mordor " scene is so damn funny to the teens.

*Might as welll count out vacations. The guardians and asguardians are horrible babysitters.

("Loki,what are you afraid of?""I have no fears, feline princess"[Harley]"guys where's Morgan and Cassie?""Let me correct myself, two fears")

("What are you doing Pete 2.0?" "Nothing Pete 1.0?""Well you're doing nothing incorrectly. See to cut in line we first have to disable the security cameras so they won't catch us cutting")

*the raft isn't a prison it's simply a place where the heroes can hide and relax while having a much needed therapy session.

*while the heroes do have to be responsible for any damage they might have caused they are not threatened unlike in a movie that I'm still salty over.

*choose your ending for Steve.(I'm not a fan of steggy or stucky. I'm actually a Peggy x Daniel shipper and kinda a Steve/Sharon shipper)either

a) he actually stays with Peggy

b)he dates Sharon

c)he dates Bucky

*Please have Bucky and Tony be friends.("where's the flying car Tony? Back in my day your dad promised flying cars.""He also promised my mom he wouldn't be a dick to me, Buckaroo, and look how that turned out")

*A mini civil war between Stepehn and Tony over which actor is the best Sherlock. ("Keep dreaming stark,Benadryl Cumcumberbatch is not the best Sherlock!""So Robert Dumbass Junior is?!What kinda meds are you taking,Doctor?")Everyone else somehow gets involved in this.Some have a bet of how long this argument is gonna last(Nat,Carol,Valkyrie,Peter Quill,Pietro and Rocket)while some are getting really into the argument(Shuri,Peter,Scott,Mj Ned,Harley Bucky, and surprisingly Thor and Loki). And there are some who just these two idiots to shut up(Gamora, Nebula,Hela,Pepper,and Bruce) Loki agreed with Tony simply to piss off Stephen and well naturally Thor went along with Loki.

*One time Bucky and Loki were arguing overe their knife collection. They started fighting but it really looked like a cat fight. The others had a laugh when Peter P. showed them the recording of them.

*The only ones who take Groot seriously are Thor and the guardians. The rest think he's too adorable.

*Heimdall is given a longdue vacation.

*R.I.P. whoever tries to teach the asguardians and guardians how to work modern technology

*PLEASE LET THEM HAVE A LONG PEACEFUL LIFE THAT'S ALL I WANT NOW

Feel free to add more

[elizas-writing]

Of the latest “controversial” opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). To Scorsese, MCU films are more like an amusement park than cinema which is meant to “convey emotional, psychological experiences.” As you do, this sparked some outrage among fans and even a few filmmakers from MCU. Scorsese himself even wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to further explain himself when the backlash got out of control and specified he meant the whole comic book film genre.

On one hand, I understand not wanting to give in to an elitist ideal of what “cinema” is, and comic book films deserve to be on equal footing as any other genre. Not every film needs to be a grand masterpiece, and art is subjective and can come from anywhere, even in the MCU. Black Panther is an expertly crafted film of Afrofuturism and deserved all its awards nominations. Guardians of the Galaxy, despite being an inherently goofy franchise, delivers a strong, emotional, complex narrative of found family and overcoming trauma from a lifetime of abuse. MCU also gave a ton of publicity for more unknown actors and directors. And audiences steadily flocked to the rest of their work, and they look forward to what else they have to give besides superhero films; it’s one of the reasons why Taika Waititi is now a favorite director in my book. And give credit where it’s due, Marvel is the only successful cinematic universe so far to stay in the long run where others spectacularly failed. It’s not perfect, but all things considered on what could’ve gone wrong, it’s surprising to see the hard work pay off.

At the same time, despite being a longtime fan of MCU, I’m starting to feel fatigued with the superhero genre. And this began way before Scorsese said anything. With the release of Disney+, fans are expected to subscribe and watch these new shows which apparently will tie into future movies scheduled out until 2022. It’s also not much of a secret that Disney is morphing into a corporate monster and consuming all media it can grabs its hands on. And with more time to further reflect on some of these movies without the excess hype, I admit I was probably far too kind on my initial reviews. There are a lot of MCU films I can discuss in these regards, but as I drafted this up, I had far more to say on Spider-Man. So that will be my primary focus for this piece.

At the end of the day, Scorsese’s opinions are mainly on his personal film tastes— also, c’mon, the guy agreed to voice act in fucking Shark Tale of all things; no one’s twisting your arm to take his word as gospel—, and not everyone is gonna automatically like the superhero genre. I respect that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and I agree it feels like the film market is oversaturated with them. And there is still a lot to be said on recent filmmaking trends and if MCU can keep a steady momentum in the long run. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. After a while, you’ll want to leave the amusement park, but when will that point be? Well, I’m here to break down my biggest frustrations with MCU through Scorsese’s lens and a reevaluation of Spider-Man, both the character and the movie franchise.

I. Too Many Damn Franchises

In his op-ed, Scorsese worried about “franchise films [which] are now your primary choice” in major theaters, leaving little room for everyone else.  It isn’t much of a stretch that we don’t see a lot of original content which stands on its own between all the sequels and reboots which expect prior knowledge of its predecessors to understand what is going on. And of course, Disney is the largest perpetrator of this with all the properties they own and all the live action remakes/reimaginings of their original content which no one asked for (no, trust me, you didn’t ask for an origin story of Cruella de Vil; turn off the nostalgia goggles).

Yeah, there’s only like, one of these I want to see

Some of MCU’s individual franchises, particularly the earlier films, work well on their own without necessarily needing to watch every other film in the universe. Some are only connected with super minor details which can be picked up from context clues or dialogue referencing events of the previous films. Guardians of the Galaxy is the best example of this as their adventures are self-contained up until Avengers: Infinity War. But then you have Tom Holland’s Spider-Man which completely relies on fully understanding what’s happening in the universe as whole; what happens to him in Captain America: Civil War and the last two Avengers movies influences the plots of Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far from Home. It’s impossible for this iteration of Spider-Man to stand on its own without MCU context. And they can only spend so much time to recap the previous movies because they assume you already watched them; the recaps are just bare bones refreshers. Each new MCU film is further tied into the entire franchise, so now you have to watch a decade’s worth of movies to understand the individual franchises.

MCU is also one of many franchises dominating movie theaters, averaging at about 2-3 releases per year. It may not sound like a lot, but it’s overwhelming when they’re sandwiched between other franchises from D.C. Comics to Harry Potter to Star Wars and whatever 80s or 90s properties Hollywood finds worthy of a reboot/sequel. Movies are still pretty expensive, and we can’t be expected to see every movie as they release. So we end up having to pick and choose what to immediately see in theaters. And if you’re seeing a franchise film, chances are you’ll also have to backtrack on whatever predecessors are available to get the context of a new movie. When other movies, especially non-franchise films, don’t perform as well upon opening weekend, their showings are reduced, and you’ll be lucky if they’re still there a month later. And this is part of why directors like Scorsese turn to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime to release their movies to not panic on box office numbers, “the primary delivery system” as he calls it.

While streaming services are convenient and far less expensive than movie tickets, viewers are still subject to content overload. With fluctuating availability of certain titles, you still have to pick and choose what you want to see first before it disappears for months or years. Do you want to watch this new Netflix original film that’s gonna be there forever, or do you want to watch re-runs of The Office before its contract expires? Sometimes if a service doesn’t see an immediate high viewership of certain original shows, they get cancelled and fade into obscurity. Now everyone and their mother wants to hop on the streaming bandwagon, and spread out their exclusive shows as thinly as possible, including Disney. The overall costs come close to cable or satellite television which goes against the whole point of streaming services.

Expanding the MCU to television isn’t a new concept. We still have Daredevil and Jessica Jones on Netflix, just to name a couple shows. Although they referenced the MCU films, their worlds were separated far enough that you could watch the shows without needing to see any movies. But then you also have something like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D which is more dependent on seeing the movies to understand the show’s plot. If you didn’t see the latest MCU movie that weekend before the next episode, you’ll probably miss out on the context and be barraged with spoilers. Although the events of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D weren’t referenced in the MCU films, the fans still have a lot of work to keep up with the show’s story.

Also, I know y’all are worried about brand integrity, but you already own Hulu…??

Not only were all the Netflix shows cancelled in favor of Disney+, but the shows on the new platform are said to affect future films, including all the new characters to be introduced. We still don’t know to what extent the shows and films will tie in together, but it already sounds demanding to keep up with. And let’s be real, who asked for WandaVision, a show with two of the most boring MCU characters? Or Hawkeye after Jeremy Renner decided to make a raging asshole of himself? Do I really need to watch these shows to understand the movies going forward?

Again, it’s still too early to determine how much the shows will coincide with the movies. And given the success of a show like The Mandalorian, I hope I’m wrong on the quality of future Disney+ projects. But I can’t help notice that MCU started favoring quantity over quality since they know they can make bank regardless of the project. It aaaaalllllll comes back to money which brings me to the next big issue of MCU.

II. Business Over Art

Business and art is always at odds with each other in filmmaking, especially if you’re going into Hollywood, and it’s never easy to compromise on the two. You need to find a balance between getting a finished movie out to theaters and not wasting the production’s time and money. According to Scorsese, this used to be “a productive tension that gave us some of the greatest films ever made.” However, in recent years, this balance tipped in business’s favor “with absolute indifference to the very question of art.” As a result, we don’t get the full “unifying vision of an individual artist.” We just have “worldwide audiovisual entertainment” and cinema. “They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And [he] fear[s] that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other.”

Okay, this is still fun no matter how many times I see it

Sadly, we see this financial dominance with Disney grabbing on as many properties as possible and launching their own streaming service with exclusive shows and films. This became most heated with the Spider-Man character rights debacle with Sony. Back in August 2019, Sony disagreed on Disney’s proposed 50-50 split of MCU Spider-Man movie profits. If a deal wasn’t made, Disney would lose the rights to Spider-Man, and the MCU wouldn’t get a third film for the character. And it took a month for the companies to reach a deal to keep Spider-Man in the MCU with the third film scheduled for July 2021, but the details of the new deal weren’t publicly disclosed. Fans were divided as to which company was in the right, and it’s a little bit of Column A and B.

On one hand, it’s annoying when studio executives get in the way of the art and think they know what will guarantee box office and critical success. And it’s especially irritating in this case when character rights bounce around and determine who will make the next movies and what stories to tell. Spider-Man already has not one, but two previous franchises cancelled before their full potentials were realized. Yeah, Sony kinda shot themselves in the foot with the crap quality of Spider–Man 3 and The Amazing Spider–Man 2, but I can’t help wonder how these stories could’ve gone if they were allowed to continue.

Still the superior Spider-Man movie, by the by

On the other hand, Sony was right to refuse Disney’s initial offer. You think after the tremendous success they had with Into the Spiderverse that they would settle on only half of the profits? Disney has more than enough monopoly on Hollywood that they’re nowhere near in danger of bankruptcy like they used to be. We still need studios which will put their foot down to greedy demands and will better unleash creativity in ways which even Disney is still too chicken to pursue. I’m still so glad we waited on Sony to make Miles Morales the star of his own movie, because MCU has a bad track record of keeping up with diverse representation that only within the past 2 years of a 12-year-old franchise did we finally get movies not led by cisgender white men. And there was a lot more genuine love to do this story and these characters right to show anyone can be a hero.

Between the tug-of-war on character rights and franchise overload, these business decisions greatly affect the movies, and some of these stories may not live up to their full potential (not to mention the actors’ contracts which dictate how much screentime their characters get). As this is Disney we’re talking about, we also run into my final major issue with their control on MCU.

III. Cultural Authority on Stories

I knew saving my books from the UC: Santa Cruz Walt Disney class would come in handy some day!

In her essay “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece'”, media historian Moya Luckett discusses the concerns of Disney holding “cultural authority” on the images of famous stories. As Disney is a formidable part of most everyone’s childhood, they are usually the go-to images when we think of Cinderella, Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and dozens more. Disney is clearly doing something right if these films are enjoyed decades later. I still go to Disney when I first think of Robin Hood, and it’s just as great as when I watched it as a kid. Unfortunately, with Disney dominating family and children’s media, they don’t allow much room for other interpretations to shine.

For example, with Luckett’s focus on the 1940 film, Fantasia, music critics worried “that the power of Disney’s images would anchor the music,” so some audiences may immediately associate “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” with Mickey Mouse or “Pastoral Symphony” with centaurettes instead making their own interpretations¹. And those critics were definitely right to worry, and the concerns expanded beyond classical music. To this day, folks still react with shock when they read the original books or darker iterations of fairytales which these movies are based on. In some extreme cases, Disney’s images contribute to racial stereotypes and distorted perceptions of histories and cultures, and the company still hasn’t figured out how to properly express that while they were products of their time, they weren’t okay then and they’re certainly not okay now.

But anyway, what the fuck does this all have to do with MCU? Sadly, Disney’s cultural authority leaked into MCU too.

With an indefinite future and the inevitable MCU reboots of characters and groups like the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, it is probably going to be literal years before we see new versions of characters like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, at least as far as live-action movies are concerned. We’ll always have the numerous cartoons and, of course, the original comics, but the live-action films are stuck until Disney reboots these franchises themselves, or they pass the rights along to another studio to do so. For some viewers, MCU may be the first go-to images of these heroes, and not every fan will be dedicated enough to seek out other adaptations on their own. And that’s not a good thing if a comic arc or character gets a shitty adaptation. One such example, which also ties into Spider-Man, is the Civil War storyline which was adapted to film with Captain America: Civil War in 2016.

The original comic, published from July 2006 to January 2007, was a mega Marvel crossover event in which after a superheroes and villains battle ended in over 600 civilian deaths, the U.S government quickly passed the Superhuman Registration Act. Any superpowered person— regardless how they obtained their abilities— was required to register with the government, publicly reveal their identities, and enlist with S.H.I.E.L.D. for training to serve as a hero. Many heroes split up into two factions: one led by Tony Stark, who helped pass the law, and Steve Rogers, who went rogue to create the Secret Avengers because he found the law violated civil liberties of freedom and privacy. Families and friendships were torn apart, and the fighting escalated so badly that it was no longer even about the law but about Tony and Steve’s massive egos on who was right, resulting in more damage than any villain could’ve done (I recommend watching Comicstorian’s overview of the story for more details since it there’s so much going on, and his video is nice and succinct).

MCU already put themselves in pickle trying to adapt one of the biggest comic stories ever as they couldn’t portray the same scale of conflict, emotional zeitgeist, or the multiple sideplots weaved in. Film is already an inherently limited medium of entertainment for time, so cuts are inevitable. And what do you do when you can’t bring in major players like the Fantastic Four or the X-men? Well, for Captain America: Civil War, the conflict was scaled down to the Sokovia Accords which gave control of Avengers activity to the United Nations since their more recent missions often did more damage than good. In theory, this isn’t necessarily a bad idea since it still ties into the themes of government control versus civil liberties and when heroes need to be accountable. And the two sides still align similarly to the original comic with Tony Stark in favor of the law after his screw-up with Ultron and Steve Rogers against it after S.H.E.I.L.D. turned out to be front for HYDRA just a couple years before.

Unfortunately, the conflict over the Sokovia Accords is too quickly sidelined over Bucky Barnes being framed for a terrorist attack and a severe misunderstanding of his brainwashing when he was the Winter Soldier. The characters’ motivations— most of which have nothing to do with the Accords at all— jump all over the place on why they side with Tony or Steve. The ultimate battle boils down to a bromance love triangle, and I don’t feel like the MCU Avengers are a cohesive enough unit to feel any emotional drama when they split apart. In the long run, the worst consequences that anyone faces for violating the Sokovia Accords are either going into hiding or being placed under house arrest. And the law really stops mattering to anyone once Thanos snaps half of the universe’s population out of existence, making most of the film inconsequential. And for all of MCU’s best efforts to cut and edit the story to fit to film language, it’s still underwhelming to not have the massive scale the comic had. I don’t know if Civil War could ever have a proper live-action film adaptation without splitting it into multiple parts, and let’s be honest, audiences only have so much attention spans before they want something new.

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One of the major sideplots of Civil War was, of course, Spider-Man’s involvement, which became a huge selling point in the film’s trailers. In the comic, Peter Parker was ambivalent towards the Superhuman Registration Act, because villains could use the heroes’ public identities to attack their friends and family. But he still had faith that Tony Stark had everything under control, and revealed his identity in a press event to publicly voice his support for the Act. However, after a fight against the Secret Avengers resulted in the gruesome death of Goliath, Peter questioned Tony’s motivations and switched over to Steve Rogers’s side in hopes to de-escalate the fighting so no more heroes would die. At this point, Tony and Peter were well-acquainted that the former supplied him with his own tech, particularly the Iron Spider suit, so the side-switching (including a one-on-one fight between the two) was a hell of a surprise for readers. And I was really looking forward to that dynamic to play out in MCU, especially with a younger version of Peter Parker.

“So, cool if I just dip out for like 3 months without explanation?”

But MCU decided to throw out that conflict in favor of Peter Parker giving unquestioning veneration to Tony Stark as his mentor when he honestly doesn’t deserve it– I covered some of this briefly in a previous post on Tony Stark’s character stagnation, so there is some repeat but also some update with Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home in mind. Anyway, let’s break down Tony’s wonderful career as a mentor: manipulating Peter to join a fight against Captain America without the full details when it was already a huge misunderstanding; putting him on radio silence when black market weapons dealers were ready to steal his tech and just said he had it under control (spoiler: he didn’t, and Peter had to save the day himself and was nearly crushed by a whole building in the process); and trusting him with a pair of hi-tech glasses without instructions on how to not accidentally set off drones against his classmates.

This scene from Homecoming will always annoy the piss out of me. You can’t change my mind.

There’s a lot of confused framing and intentions to unpack here. Tony clearly doesn’t have certain situations under control, constantly struggles to come to terms with the fact he can’t save everyone, and lets anxiety overwhelm his better judgement in his deluded ideas to protect people. Despite his paranoia of saving everyone, Tony somehow doesn’t seem the least bit concerned with all the dangerous situations Peter, a 16-year-old, throws himself into while he’s on vacation. And Tony is still framed in the right on how he handles his problems, including punishing Peter for questioning his poor communication skills. Yeah, bold flex from a guy who waited until the last second to help save a boat full of civilians. Yes, we have to go through “with great power comes great responsibility” in a Spider-Man story, but Tony was well-aware how eager Peter was to prove himself, especially when he’s much more inexperienced and at a much younger age where he seeks validation from adult role models. Aside from giving Peter some nice tech, Tony didn’t actually teach him anything about heroism, and he certainly didn’t care to get to know him personally when he’s out of the suit which severely undermines the mentor-student route they attempted with these two characters. Tony gave Peter a lot of power, but didn’t guide him how to responsibly use it. 

Sweet moment; you gonna apologize for the part where you sat off to the side while he was almost crushed by a building?

I wanted to see that conflict between Peter and Tony like in the comics. It would’ve been fascinating to see the perspective of a teenager roped into the adult world of heroes. Perhaps he’d look back on his involvement in Civil War and wonder why the hell he was a part of that and what being a hero means to him. I didn’t want Peter to be punished for rightfully questioning Tony’s methods, and maybe, just once, Tony would get a come-to-Jesus moment and stop being a perpetual douchebag. The closest we get to those moments of actual love and mutual respect are the last two Avengers movies when Peter is snapped out of existence and Tony sacrifices himself to stop Thanos. The payoff is in the right mind, but MCU forgot the proper build-up to establish any genuine connection between Peter and Tony, let alone hold the latter accountable for his constant fuck-ups and neglectful mentoring. The lost potential in that bond and the Civil War arc only scratches at the surface in regards to why this adaptation of Spider-Man falls short.

Another gripe diehard MCU fans had on the character rights debacle was if Sony got back Spider-Man, how would they do the next movie without referencing Tony Stark? And this ties back again to the fact MCU Spider-Man cannot work as a standalone franchise. Peter Parker’s growth revolves too much on other MCU events and characters, especially Tony, and you don’t know who he is without those outside influences. Even the villains’ motivations are framed around Tony doing them wrong in some way. Yes, most viewers are familiar enough with Spider-Man that it’s redundant to show the origin story again; we know Uncle Ben is gonna die no matter what. But personal tragedy and family love were always Peter’s primary motivations to becoming a hero, and MCU barely references them. They can’t even get the dynamic between Peter and Aunt May right; their love is so lifeless and dull.

Iron Man Jr? Spider-Man? I don’t know anymore…

What makes Peter’s arc fascinating to watch isn’t him proving himself to Tony or some other surrogate father figure. It’s his relationship with what little family he has left, sacrificing his emotional needs to protect them, using his resourcefulness to build himself up as a hero, looking out for the underrepresented of New York City so they don’t have to go through what he did, and accepting that he can’t save everyone, even with all his best efforts. MCU shows snippets of that arc, but the development is still too focused on Tony to the point where Spider-Man feels more like an Iron Man Jr. It works well enough for the overall MCU, but not so much as an individual franchise when you compare the story and character relationships to the films made by Sam Raimi, Marc Webb or even Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Thank God that Spider-Man has so many adaptations for people to flock to, because if this was someone’s first and only introduction of the character in live-action film, they’d be hopelessly confused.

Sadly, that ends up being the case for so many MCU characters whose stories are also stuck with too much outside influences instead of being allowed to develop on their own. If I tried to cover every character potential wasted in MCU so far, we’d be here forever. As of late, MCU focuses on tying every event and character arc together and overloading on Easter eggs to build up to the next major plot conversion instead of creating stories with organic world-building which can stand on their own. This isn’t the case for every MCU movie, but it is the most common trend in their latest projects which will most likely continue to that next crossover event, whenever and whatever it is. The allusions to other films in the universe should be embellishments, not the entire story’s foundation.

Although I’m curious where they’ll take Peter Parker given the midcredits scene of Far From Home, I also wonder if they’ll tell his story with him front-and-center and without referencing Tony Stark every five minutes. But what’s done is done, and MCU’s Spider-Man relied too much on those allusions to the point where some fans forgot what made him a great hero to begin with. When you strip away his involvement with the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., his arc is feeble compared to other adaptations. Sure, Tobey Maguire got goofy at times, and Andrew Garfiled’s drama was maybe too heavy-handed, but their Peter Parkers are at least well-rounded characters who figure out what being a hero means to their personal growth. Tom Holland does well with what he’s given, and I love seeing his emotional vulnerability, but I don’t know who his Peter Parker is without Avengers shenanigans.

I want to continue enjoying MCU as much as anyone else, but it’s hard to not see Scorsese’s point that most of these movies are mindless like amusement parks. At some point, we gotta turn off the hype goggles and see what else these stories have to offer besides how they relate to larger events in the cinematic universe. It’s not bad to indulge in mindless fun every now and then, and we still get fantastic movies out of MCU, but audiences will get tired of the obligation to watch dozens of shows and movies to keep up with the story. And with Disney controlling almost all of entertainment, we need to re-evaluate if they’re interested in telling engaging stories or in shooting out franchise after franchise to maintain steady profits and if these are even good-enough adaptations of such beloved comic characters we want to automatically go to when we think of them. As I said before, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and you need to leave the amusement park eventually. Since we know so little of their next crossover events, I hope MCU finds the point where they can satisfyingly wrap up the story of this universe before we get exhausted by it all.

Luckett, M. “Fantasia: Cultural Constructions of Disney’s ‘Masterpiece.'” Disney Discourse, ed. E. Smoodin (New York City, NY: Routledge, 1994), 227.

Shout out to my darling friend, Kayla, who helped me through one of my rough drafts to help focus this piece!

As always, if you enjoyed this post and what I do here, consider buying me a ko-fi! Your support is much appreciated!

Martin Scorsese Isn't Totally Wrong: The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Overindulgence, and Re-evaluating Spider-Man's Arc #martinscorsese #mcu #marvel #spiderman Of the latest "controversial" opinions to rock social media, renowned director Martin Scorsese voiced his dislike of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)

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SO’s Guide to the MCU

A handy guide for @coffeegleek to decide if she (or anyone else) would like join the ranks.  It’s fine if you don’t want to, but that means more shawarma for us.  

1. Iron Man - 

Robert Downey Jr. plays himself Tony Stark, an asshole billionaire, genius, playboy, philanthropist, who nearly dies, and saves himself by becoming Iron Man.  This film kicks off the tone of the MCU combining humor and action and just being a fun ride.  Completely recommended to get a jump start into the MCU to see how it all begins.  

2. The Incredible Hulk

Rightfully considered the black sheep of the Marvel family.  It’s... not good.  In fact, I couldn’t even find a gif for you.  Eventually, they’ll switch out Edward Norton for the much more entertaining Mark Ruffalo, and pretty much nothing in this movie matters to the big scheme of things, so it’s entirely skippable.  And I mean, even if you are a huge Hulk fan - I’d probably still recommend skipping it. 

3. Iron Man 2

This film is considered by a lot of people to be one of the weaker ones - and while I still enjoy it a lot, it’s understandable as to why people think that.  It’s funny and has charm, but it’s kind of a mess - so... if you had fun with Iron Man 1 and really want to see more Tony Stark I recommend! Otherwise, feel free to move on.  Black Widow is introduced here, but her introduction in The Avengers is just fine.  

4. Thor

For me, the first Thor film is a little ‘meh’, though it does have some charm.  Chris Hemsworth plays a frat boy god who gets grounded to Earth after he misbehaves by his father Odin.  The real gem of this film is Tom Hiddleson’s Loki and the family dynamics between Thor, Loki, and Odin.  The stuff with Natalie Portman and the Earlings is fine.  But I almost recommend watching Avengers first and seeing if you like that first, and if you do, come back and watch Thor if you’re interested or if you just want to see Chris Hemsworth be pretty for two hours. 

5. Captain America: The First Avenger

The epic romance that is Steve and Bucky starts here.  If you’re totally intrigued by tumblr’s fascination with ‘Stucky’ this is a must!!  But more seriously, C:TFA is a fun film, yes set in the 40s, but I think it handles that well and Chris Evans is an absolute delight as Cap -- or Steve Rogers, a plucky kid from Brooklyn who just wants to prove what a big heart he has.  It’s much more entertaining for than the Thor film (IMO), though if you’re still on the fence, again, watch Avengers first, and come back if Cap holds your attention. 

6. The Avengers

If you’re really unsure about any of the first phase of films, then start off with The Avengers.  This film is amazing -- it’s funny, and emotional, and is nicely paced, and you really get a nice sense of who the characters are and what they stand for.  This film is just fun, with the MCU’s trademark humor and intriguing action (and I say this as a person who really isn’t into action films if you can believe it).  I can’t say enough good things about this film - it’s really good, go watch it!! 

7. Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3 is the continuing adventures of Tony Stark.  This film is batshit insane at times (but I kinda love it - though I love Iron Man, so...)  It’s got some great character work for Tony Stark if you’re interested, which I think is the best thing this film has going for it.  It doesn’t, however, play much of a part in the bigger scheme of things, so if  Tony isn’t your person, then you can skip past it. 

8. Thor: The Dark World

This film is often considered the weakest (after Incredible Hulk), but I’m not gonna lie, I find this way more enjoyable than Thor 1.  It’s... not a good film, but if you’re a fan of Thor, or Loki, or just utter nonsense in a fantasy setting then check it out! 

9. Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The Epic Romance of Steve and Bucky pt. 2: The Return of Bucky!!  I’m kinda being tongue-and-cheek, this film is honestly pretty amazing.  It’s a political spy-thriller where Cap has to go underground and undercover when Shield (the good guys) is infiltrated by a Nazi organization.  Everything about this film is done wonderfully well, and I highly recommend this one.  (Though, I’m not doing it justice - just ask @ckerouac) 

10. Guardians of the Galaxy

Do you like epic space operas with a quirky sense of humor and a good soundtrack?? Well then Guardians is right up your alley.  The first film Chris Pratt is Star Lord - a scavenger Han Solo type who finds himself caught up in space hijinks.  There are green aliens and talking trees and raccoons and whatever Drax is.  It’s fun and entertaining.  I think general audiences like it more than I do - but I do agree that it’s a wonderfully done film. 

11. Avengers: Age of Ultron

Well, let’s be honest - the Avengers sequel just isn’t what the first film is.  It tries, and has some charming moments, but just doesn’t hold together very well, the main issue being that the villain - Ultron - just isn’t a very good villain.  If you liked Avengers - give it a shot, it introduced Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and a lot of the next batch of films, but I recommend going into it without much expectation.  However, you can always come back to this one if you want to wait to see if you like some of the later films first. 

12. Ant-Man

Ant-Man, played by the delightful Paul Rudd, is a low stakes fun heist film that’s kind of a mix between Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Ocean’s 11, and every other MCU film.  It’s cute and lighthearted - and if you find Paul Rudd charming, I totally recommend it.  If you’re still on the MCU fence, though, there are other films I’d much rather recommend first. 

13. Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: The Epic Stucky Romance pt. 3 -- Steve Rogers breaks up with his current BF Tony Stark so to be with his one true love, Bucky Barnes... Meanwhile, Tony Stark finds out he’s a dad -- to a teenager. 

Okay, I’m kidding.  Here’s the thing... 

This film is hard to discuss.  Some people love it (me! - I love the characterization stuff we get in it, plus the deep nods to the comics, and the introduction of Spider-Man), others hate it (@ckerouac - this is not a Cap film, It’s Avengers 2.5.  I want my Cap film!!) and, much like the film itself, there are valid reasons for everyone’s point of view.  It does play a major part in the fabric of the MCU - so I do recommend seeing it at least once so to gather your own opinion. ;) 

14. Doctor Strange

Benedict Cumberbatch plays a mystical Tony Stark Doctor Strange.  I think it’s an interesting film - it’s kind of got an Inception/Matrix vibe about it, but I like both the character and Cumberbatch in the role.  However, I don’t think it’s anywhere near the strongest of the MCU films, so if any of that doesn’t interest you, then it’s okay to skip -- Doctor Strange’s appearances in other films are better if I’m being totally honest. 

15. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Guardians 2 is probably my second least favorite film of the bunch.  I think it kind of lacks the charm of the first one and amps up the 12yo humor.  But that’s just me.  If you really liked Guardians 1 check it out! Otherwise, feel free to move on. However, it does gain a few points for Baby Groot. 

16. Spider-Man: Homecoming

Let’s be real - This film is basically Tom Holland being a precious little muffin for two hours, and if you aren’t sold entirely on that premise, well then, I can’t help you. ;) 

17. Thor: Ragnarok

Underwhelmed by the first two Thor films? Thought the Hulk movie sucked? Well - welcome to Thor Ragnarok -- the film that just does not give a shit what came before it and does whatever the hell it wants because it’s like a 70′s acid trip.  And walks away being, perhaps, the best comedy in the MCU.  Everything is delightful about this film -- and if you wanted more from a Thor film, more Loki, more crazy antics with Mark Ruffalo - then you’ve come to the right place.  Also - bonus batshit crazy Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson as an amazing lesbian/bi (?) female warrior, and Jeff Goldblum -- Jeff Goldblum-ing.  

18. Black Panther

Chadwick Boseman is Black Panther - and I’m sure you’ve heard all the stuff swirling about how amazing this film is.  There are two things I personally really enjoy about the film -- the fact that it digs deeper than your average superhero film and is not afraid to tackle relevant questions we’re talking about in society right now, and the fact that the female cast in this one is fantastic and incredibly worth watching.  This one’s a definite must! 

19. Avengers: Infinity War

So...  I’m sure you’ve probably heard all about this one by now.  Here’s what I have to say about it -- I recommend seeing if after you’ve seen all the previous ones that you’ve wanted to see -- it does build on the others in a way a TV show builds to its finale.  And honestly, left me emotionally satisfied (knowing it was the first half of a two parter).  It’s a great film, imo, and worth it.  

20. Ant-Man and the Wasp

Ant-Man and Wasp is a lot like the first film, only ramped up a little more.  After the heaviness of Infinity War, it’s light and a treat.  It’s not entirely (or at all) essential, but it’s a lot of fun if that’s what you’re looking for.  

21. Captain Marvel

Okay, so Captain Marvel isn’t out yet - but the trailer looks delightful, I know who Cap Marvel is from the comics, and it’s time the MCU got its shit together and put a woman in the front.  I say go see it! Plus, I’m sure it’ll be relevant for the next Avengers film. 

22. Avengers: End Game

So, um, also not out yet - but if you’ve liked everything up until now, I’m sure you’ll not only go see - but cry buckets full <3 

23. Spider-Man Far From Home

Let’s be real - we’re all gonna need another two hours of Tom Holland being a precious little muffin after whatever Endgame throws at us.  ;) 

///

And that’s it! That’s the MCU in a nutshell (so far).  Marvel has, like, it’s next ten years planned out, so definitely not the end.  But - hey - if anything interests you - I really do recommend checking that out first and coming back to fill in things if you want to know more. :) 

Guide to Non-MCU Marvel Films Part 1 Guide to Non-MCU Marvel Films Part 2

[cute-gothic-sweet-demon]

Let’s have a talk about Endgame real quick

I saw some people complain about some things in the movie and I want to say what I think about those things. Of course, it’s okay to not like the movie and stuff and I don’t think you’re wrong or right, I just don’t agree with you. Okay.

First things first: Stucky - I really understand the shipping, I do ship them too, but let’s be honest: nothing cannon hints that they like each other romantically and to think that their supportive relationship means something like that is just toxic masculinity. We see it every time two guys show meaningful affect towards another guy, and it’s okay to ship them but we have to stop making every good relationship between guys a romantic one (and the bad ones too. The fact that people ship Steve and Tony and not Steve and Thor is because Steve and Tony have a significant relationship and people HAVE to ship two guys that have one). It just says to boys that if they demonstrate love for a male friend he’s gay and that’s really toxic and make straight boys less confident in getting over toxic masculinity. Bucky keeps trying to show a girl to Steve in the first movie, Bucky is really supportive when Steve kisses Sharon and he even tried to flirt with Peggy right in front of Steve. Again: there is no such thing as a cannon hint of a romantic relationship aside from they being supportive and would make no sense to them to be together canonically.

Steve’s End: Steve is my absolute favorite character and have always been and he always have demonstrate that he didn’t got over Peggy. The fact that he just start to pay REAL attention to Sharon after he discovered she was Peggy’s niece says something about how much he cares and can’t get over her. Would it be good for him to move forward and live a life with his new friends? Yeah, I would love that, but that’s just not the character they wrote. He always felt bad in our time, he was probably still a virgin in Endgame, he still reference the fact that he’s a soldier for another time, and he can’t even do something with his life except for being Captain America all the time. All the characters have some scene where they’re just a normal human, but Steve’s only friends are Avengers or agents of Shield ‘cause he can’t fucking fit in our world. People often mock him. It’s okay to him to go back and live a normal life in a place he could actually be Steve Rogers and be married and have sons and not being seen as an old man. Steve was happy when he passed his shield to Sam and if he was that happy it was okay to him. And let's be honest, the Russo Brothers made the best movies of Steve, a lot of people thought he was boring until Winter Soldier, I know we love those characters but Chris Evans and those guys KNOW and write them a lot more accurately than what we do in fanfics and I have to say that 'cause there's a lot of people mixing their fanfiction Steve Rogers - that is totally valid since comic Steve is the original one and he was write by a bunch of authors in different way - with the canon MCU Steve Rogers that is not more valid than yours but is definetely the one that came back to his past and married Peggy and this is okay, and you can dislike it, but is ridiculous to say that this is not him 'cause a lot of people already saw and expected that as his ending a long time ago, it's there and have always been there.

Tony's death: okay, he had a lovely daughter that made him so happy you could almost touch his satisfaction. He was okay with Pepper the whole movie wich is totally new for him, he and Steve got back to be more friends and supportive than ever, he hugged Peter for real, he literally vanished the whole reason of his anxiety and depression, he fought with his wife side by side, he was totally positive about the world in his post mortem message, he made peace with his daddy issues, he was an absolute genius the whole movie and, as Pepper said, he could finally rest. Now, I know all this things could have happened with him alive in the end but the problem is that if Tony is alive he cannot rest. The only reason he was fine during those five years is because the only danger in the world were drug cartels, but when the next villain come from outer space he would never be able to get rest. Diying is the only way for Tony to get piece forever and he was totally okay with that, he said this in his hologram message. Like, really he was happy and satisfied from those five peaceful years with his family, even Pepper, that was always against him being Iron Man said to him that he should do something and that it was okay to him to go, 'cause she knew he was okay and that it would be healthy for him to go back to be Iron Man. I just want to say that Tony died in a good and peaceful moment of his life that wouldn't last one more year, probably.

Thor: Okay, people are being fatphobic with Thor and aparentely have never passed through depression, which is good for you, but it's very good what they did to Thor. They made him get revenge and not being satisfied by that. They made him pretend none of this happens and pretend that he was alright and they took the most powerful and proud Avenger and put him in a situation where he feels he can't do anything. He was feeling garbage and this shit happens to us, but he is a god and he can't figure or accept that he's not perfect and his talk to his mom is so meaningful 'cause we never actually had a good notion of their relationship and it was very important to him. We got him being supported by friends, we got him figuring that being a kings is too much for him and always has been and we had him starting to accept that he doesn't have to be perfect and he even got to go with the most flawed group in the MCU and be okay with that. I would honestly hate this movie if they used Thor being fat only as a joke, but they made him fight and feel proud, and be awesome in his body and it was very satisfying to see this character grow so much.

Natasha's Death: Yeah, there is a problem with killing MCU's first woman hero, and I get that and I agree that it could be different, but it makes sense for her character arc. It could be better, it could have been more meaningful as Gamora's death was in the first one, but I honestly think that it makes sense for her character to die for Clint (and again, the fact that people ship them is toxic. They have a beautiful friendship and turn everything into romance just erases the importance of supportive and intimate friendship). I would be satisfied with the death of any of them (I mean by story point of view, I'm not sadistic) but I think it is more meaningful for her character arc than it would be for his. But yeah, could've been a lot better and it bothered me a lot when I watched, can't disagree with that.

Thing that actually bothered me:

-It's stupid to say that that gay guy was representative but I'm okay since they promissed they'll put a LGBT+ hero in this next phase and I don't doubt they will since they picked the Sam to be the next Captain America instead of Bucky and since they're making Shang Chi, Captain Marvel and Black Panther meaningful in this next phase, I hope for the best

-I wished I have seen Hulk and Banner resolution into being a single being but I was pretty happy with them saying that Banner was just ignoring the fact that radiation can't make a second personality and that he was just erasing the fact that Hulk is a part of himself

-Steve and Bucky deserved a better ending and some good time spent together. I do think they're very good friends and even though I like Steve's end, I think we deserved some scenes with them doing something normal together.

-Carol deserved to be far more than a Deus Ex Machina the whole movie. I do agree that this movie should be focused on the original ones, but Carol was kinda lazy written into the movie even though she got some very cool scenes that I'll love forever.

-I personally don't get why they coudn't rebuild Vision. They could actually put the Soul Stone back on him, fix him, redo that surgery Shuri was doing and them take the stone back to it's time.

In the end I think is a fucking awesome movie and most of the critics I saw were based on how much fanfic people read and how much they care for perfectly happy endings. I personally think that bittersweetness in endings make them more satisfiable, since perfectly happy endings are kind of forced to be that way but everyone have a taste and it's okay.

I hope for better phases, I hope for better stories, I am very grateful for all of those ten years and for growing with them. I'm excited to see an MCU with different versions and with no versions of those original Avengers and I ask you all to care for characters in a healthier way 'cause being actually depressed and stressed by movies if they don't end as you'd like is not cool or something you should incite on others. The MCU should not be something for you guys to be so obsessed with and they really shoudn't try to be your headcanon version, that's why fanfic are for and you can actually work on making comic scripts for Marvel if that's so important to you. Be safe, be healthy, be okay.

I hope I didn't offend anyone in this post, I'm not english fluent and if I said something in the wrong tone it was not on purpose, I just wanted to show my thoughts too. :)

[seriouslycromulent]

MCU’s Captain Marvel - Thoughts, review & more

I’m off to see DC’s latest superhero reincarnation Shazam later today, but I wanted to make sure I captured my thoughts on the MCU’s last superhero outing, Captain Marvel, so I don’t get my feedback crossed. 

I know I’ve said in the past that I’ve been a bit burned out when it comes to comic book movie (CBM) adaptations, but there are a few here and there that still catch my eye, and essentially I’ve boiled it down to: “Does this genuinely pique my interest?” 

Now, I wasn’t too interested in Captain Marvel based on the trailers and didn’t plan to see it, but I struck a deal with my Mom. (Backstory: She and my stepfather go to see all the superhero movies because, hello!, they’re the nerds that nurtured this Big Nerd. Seriously, I started reading comic books because of them, and my geekery just grew and grew. I rely on them often to fact check the fandom details most comic book nerds on Tumblr claim to be authorities on. And yes, their 40+ years of comic book knowledge and expertise puts most of you to shame.)

With that said, she wasn’t very interested in Shazam. She said it looks like they’re aiming for a kids-only audience, and that made it kind of m’eh to her. But I said I would go see it because I’m a Zachary Levi fan. Billy Batson’s OK, but for me, it’s the casting of Zach that piqued my interest. So the deal was that she would see Captain Marvel and tell me if she thought I’d like it. And I’d see Shazam and do the same for her. Based on her commentary, I went to see CM, and now I’m returning the favor.

That was the intro. 

Now, here’s the set-up.

If you’ve read anything related to the CBM-world here on my Tumblr, you know that I am a supporter of the DCEU, X-Men and the MCU, but I go hardest for the DC universe. You’ll also know if you stop by often that my point-of-view rarely matches up with the popular perspective within the fandom world, in general, or in the fandom communities, specifically.

But unlike some (dare I say, many), I never want to harsh anyone’s squee! If you loved something that I didn’t. Bless you. Live in that love, and pay me no mind. I have no desire to rain on anyone’s parade simply because I don’t land on the same conclusion regarding comic book characters or their feature film adaptations. I don’t think less of you, hate you, or even care if you don’t agree with me. If you do, that’s cool. If not, that’s cool too. 

But before I jump into my mini-review of Captain Marvel, allow me to prepare you for how I roll. Here are some examples of where I landed after watching many, but not all, of the films from the MCU, DCEU, X-Men, Deadpool, and Spiderman franchises. I repeat, I rarely share the popular perspective or take on a CBM as the masses. You have been warned.

I enjoyed Ant Man and the sequel. If they made a third film, I’d see it.

Logan is a brilliant masterpiece, and I would change absolutely nothing about it.

Although I’ve never been a big fan of origin stories because they’re typically written like the audience is simple and can’t appreciate anything beyond the most cookie-cutter of plots and a paint-by-numbers of good and evil characters, I enjoyed Sam Raimi’s first film of the Spiderman franchise the most when it comes to comic book adaptation origin stories. So far, he’s still the person to beat in this category.

I enjoy most of the X-Men films, but often find the changes they make to the characters unnecessary and poorly executed. I also want Bryan Singer to leave the Summers boys alone. 

I found the Wonder Woman film completely underwhelming. Why? See my #3 regarding origin stories.

I enjoyed Black Panther, but was not really wowed by it.

I enjoyed both Deadpool films, but I still think his character is highly overrated by male fans. I like the movies for what they are. They don’t really say anything. You’re just meant to “Ooh!” and “Aah!” and LOL! Then go home. I can respect that.

I thought Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was brilliant, and easily one of the best comic book-based films of the last 20 years. That film is a work of art, and I’m saddened that Zach Snyder’s vision wasn’t appreciated and respected by the studio. Even if the mainstream public thinks that comic book movies should be light and fluffy with virtually no connection to any messages of substance or strong characterization, the studio should have respected his vision and let him complete it with Justice League.

I liked The Avengers and I thought Age of Ultron was pretty decent, but I felt that Civil War was a mess of poor characterization, weak execution, absurd conclusions, unresolved tension, and a dispensable villain unworthy of the audience’s time. Literally everything the mainstream public and MCU fanboys (and fangirls) complained about Batman v Superman applies to Civil War, not to BvS. Civil War was the film that was rushed, and it shows.

I have virtually no interest at all in the main storyline of the MCU anymore. I don’t care about Thanos. I didn’t see Infinity War, and I don’t really plan to see Endgame. Yes, I’m aware of certain events happening regarding specific characters. Still don’t care. The run-up to this final showdown with Thanos was so poorly done and underwhelming that I have no emotional investment in this fight anymore. 

Now, if you’re still reading, I want to say thank you for sticking around and ... welcome to my brain. Since this post is already long, let’s dive into Captain Marvel.

I saw the film twice. So that right there should tell you I enjoyed it. Yet, the weekend it came out, apparently, a bunch of fanboys and a handful of critics took to their keyboards and YouTube channels to review it and cry disappointment. Ultimately, I didn’t care too much because, again, it didn’t really pique my interest. 

Then my Mom told me what she thought about the film and how it was the antithesis of what the fanboys and reviewers were claiming, and this ... is what actually piqued my interest. I love a good mystery, and I felt as if I needed to see the film for myself to not only see what the hubbub was about, but to also determine who was wrong/right. 

So I saw it the following Tuesday after its opening weekend. And I walked out feeling as if the MCU had finally grown up.

What I liked

The 1990s nostalgia without the 1990s “nostalgia.” That is, the language, the clothes, the tech, the venues, etc. were all great throwbacks to this oddly romanticized decade without any of the romanticizing. As someone who was a teen throughout the ‘90s, and remembers it somewhat differently than others, I appreciate that. Respect.

Maria Rambeau. She is a best friend who gets to shine and enjoy the spotlight in her own way. She also has dark skin and short hair. (Yes, it matters.) But more importantly, Maria Rambeau isn’t a sidekick. Instead, she is the best friend everyone dreams of. Not only is she smart, fearless, and a badass behind the controls of a space-worthy fighter jet, but she’s also not judgmental. I don’t know many people who wouldn’t have some residual anger over being made to believe their ace boon was dead for 6 years, then one day just knocks on your door and say “What’s up? I’m not sure who I am.”

The villain-turned-not-so-bad-after-all Talos, played to perfection by Ben Mendelssohn, has the best one-liners and reaction shots in the film. Also, we get aliens with a variety of accents, character depth, and families. 

Despite the fact that the passengers on the light rail/subway car saw the “old lady” could handle herself in a fight, the surrounding passengers did get involved to try and pull Danvers off of the old lady because, from a common sense perspective, this young woman should not have been trying to beat the hell out of an old woman. Kudos to them for trying to do the right thing.

I’m scared of Ms. Monica and her guilting her Mom to fly with Danvers, Fury and Talos on a life-endangering mission. When she said, “Just think about what kind of example you are setting for your daughter if you don’t go?” I was like, “No, she did not!”

The perfect subversion of the “prove to me you can beat me without weapons” gag at the end. Not only because it means that Yon-Rogg (Jude Law’s character) might show up in later films, but because that trope is sooooooo annoying. Plus, we all know she’s stronger, so why bother?

There’s some subtle commentary about the treatment of refugees as terrorists or enemies of the people by the same people who made them refugees in the first place. I would like to think that commentary is intentional, but that may be asking for too much.

What I didn’t care for

The CGI on Phil Coulson’s face. Um, yeah. That was not good. It would seem they spent more time on getting Samuel L. Jackson’s face just right so he could look believably younger, but then they ran out of time to do the same for Clark Gregg.

The CGI they used on Annette Bening’s face is ... not great in some scenes. Not all. Just some.

Why does Danvers sitting down with Fury in the bar for a Q&A about their past provide proof that they’re not Skrull? If the Skrull can’t adsorb distant memories, then this Q&A would only fill you with confidence to trust the other person if you actually know the other person. Danvers didn’t know Fury before that day, and he didn’t know her. Sitting there and answering questions only lays the groundwork to determine if they’re not Skrull later, but it shouldn’t provide proof that they can trust that the other isn’t a Skrull at that very moment. Also, how does Fury know that the Skrull can’t shoot blasts from their hands? He’s just going to take her word for it? Although given he was told by his “boss” to stay close to her and find out what she knows, I could see this as him simply playing along for the sake of his mission.

I’m not really buying this imaginary world where a black woman in the military is taking the time to keep her hair straightened while flying jets and working on special aircraft missions. However, I will suspend disbelief this time due to the fact that Rambeau was working on a top secret project and therefore was not necessarily hindered by the typical schedule of the average fighter pilot. ... This time.

I wished we could have seen more of Gemma Chan. Yeah, Minn-Erva’s a bad guy, but ... it’s Gemma Chan. I already had fanfiction theories playing in my head about her relationship with Yon-Rogg before I left the theater.

What I loved

We go on a journey with this character. We learn about her as she learns about herself, which is what keeps us invested beyond the “she’s going to be Captain Marvel by the end of the movie, obvs.” idea. This is an origin story done in a far more interesting and captivating way than anything presented in the Marvel cinematic universe since Iron Man. We get flashbacks to the most unassuming events of her life that later turn out to be the most important ones. Where others complained about this approach to an origin story, I wholeheartedly applaud it. Nothing in CA: The First Avenger, Thor or Ant Man was as clever or interesting as this angle when it comes to introducing a superhero’s origin.

I don’t want a flurkin. But at the same time, I want a flurkin.

Having a villain who turns out not to be a villain, and a mentor who turns out to be our actual villain, was to me another sign that the MCU has finally realized that complexity isn’t a bad thing and not every story must have a one-note single-purpose villain. Yes, we get a little bit of that in Ronan (Lee Pace’s character), but to lead the audience down this road where not all the information you receive can be immediately trusted suits me just fine. It’s realistic and engaging. Danvers’ confusion mimics our confusion, but not so much that we can’t enjoy the story. We don’t have it all figured out and determined who has the moral high-ground until she does. I love that. And as a writer myself, I respect that. 

I love, love, loved the 1990s songs in this movie. Not only because the songs reminded me of my adolescence and you can never go wrong with Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains,” but because No Doubt’s “I’m Just A Girl” is THE perfect song for the big showdown between Danvers and her former Kree brethren. I almost jumped out of my seat in excitement when I heard that music intro. Kudos to whomever made this soundtrack! 

There is no love story. Unless you count the love between 2 best friends/family being reunited, there’s no love story. Thank you.

When I first started watching the film, I had to scratch my head. I thought, “Since when are the Kree good guys?” After watching every season of Agents of Shield and knowing how it’s the Kree who leave mankind dangling on by a thread, manipulating them, torturing them, and turning them into their own little ant farm, my brain had to pause and question this version of the Marvel universe where Danvers is a Kree. But as the story continues, of course, we’re led on this journey where we learn 1) I was right not to trust the Kree as good guys, 2) there are some Kree who are good and Dr. Mar-vell is one of them, and 3) the MCU is capable of writing stories where character development isn’t sacrificed just for laughs and boss fights. See what I mean about growing up?

I think that’s it for now. This review is already long enough, and I’m sure I could discuss more details about the film if I had more time. Yes, I am aware of the mainstream critic and fandom backlash against the film. I’ve heard some of the complaints, and frankly, I struggle to find the justification for them anywhere in the film.

I read one critic complained saying that because the audience doesn’t know who Danvers is from the beginning, she’s hard to root for or identify with. I disagree. The audience learns as Danvers learns. And by the end of the film, it’s clear that what matters most about her is not her name or where she’s from, but what she does with her power. Personally, that’s a great message to everyone when you think about it. 

I’m also aware that a lot of the fandom backlash has been ... how do you say ... male-driven. I think that’s unfortunate given that Captain Marvel is the MCU’s first female-led superhero movie and it’s long overdue. I don’t know if CM is flawless (I doubt it), but I know I enjoyed it as much as (and in a lot cases, more than) the other superhero origin MCU films. The message was great and the character relatable. 

No, I’m not saying everyone can relate to a human-turned-all-powerful-superhero by a blast that should have killed her, but we can all relate to understanding that it doesn’t matter how many times we are knocked down, what matters is how many times we stand back up. 

I’m not usually one for the hokey, after-school special messaging that a lot of MCU films (and DCtv shows) push, but that message about what makes her a hero (the standing up after getting knocked down) seems just as powerful as the message behind what makes Steve Rogers a hero (it’s not the special serum, but the fact he was willing to die for his countrymen in battle). I’m not sure how Danvers’ story is less worthwhile than Rogers’ story.

As for fanboys saying the studio should have just made a film about Natasha/Black Widow, it’s statements like that that make others wonder if your dissatisfaction with Captain Marvel isn’t rooted in misogyny. You would rather watch an origin film about a female team member on an already predominantly-male team where she plays a role, but is in no way as strong or as powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with most of the team members. Hmmm? 

Hear how that sounds? There’s nothing wrong with liking Natasha. She’s the bomb. But again, making a film about Black Widow instead of Danvers, leaves the Avengers with one less female character, and one less character who can kick ass and take names with the big boys. The fanboys -- whether intentional or not -- have painted themselves as afraid of Captain Marvel’s strength and the power she has to be actually considered an equal to the other members of the team.

Perhaps if they said the MCU should’ve made a standalone or origin film about the Scarlet Witch, the misogyny wouldn’t be as glaring.

I don’t know. I’ll leave that argument for others for now. I’m heading out to movies now. Shazam here I come!

[monday--vibes]

Forcefully Optimistic: Spider-Man’s Exit From the MCU… Might Not Be Completely Terrible?

I’m not a big lover of Disney as a corporation, but there’s no denying that they’ve done some pretty amazing things with the MCU. So when the news first broke about this little lover’s spat between Sony and Disney over everyone’s web-slinging spider-child, I was (appropriately) devastated.

Then, because I both have no life and have a great love of knowing things, I started digging, sorting out the facts and the speculation and then taking a good, long look at what this means for Peter Parker and the Spider-Man franchise.

And I realize… maybe—just maybe—this isn’t completely horrible.

Let’s break it down.

The Facts:

As is the case with anything that changes and develops super-fast, there’s a lot of uncertainty and incorrect information floating around, but here are the facts that everyone can seem at agree on.

Tom Holland is still under contract to appear as Peter Parker/Spidey in a third Spider-Man movie; Jon Watts is being considered as the director for this third movie but, as his contract wrapped up with Far From Home, this isn’t a sure thing.

Under the current contract, Sony has the distribution rights of and creative control over Spider-Man and Spider-Man related characters; Disney, meanwhile, receives 5% of first-dollar gross (meaning that Disney would get 5% of ticket sales, no matter if Sony made a profit or not) and the right to include Spidey in the MCU. Disney already owns all the merchandizing rights for the character.

Disney also suggested that it get involved in other Spidey-related movies, including the Venom sequel. (For a price, of course.)

Under the contract initially proposed by Disney, the two companies would co-finance future Spider-Man movies, essentially splitting both costs and box office revenue 50/50. Therefore, while Sony would have to pay less to produce future films, the company would take a huge cut to their profits and would loose a considerable amount of control over Spider-Man and the related characters.

There are rumours that Disney has come back to play, offering a six picture deal wherein Disney would co-finance all Spider-Man related films, splitting costs and box office revenue either 30/70 or 25/75 split in Sony’s favour. Right now, neither company has confirmed this.

Sources:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sonys-spider-man-deal-with-disney-and-marvel-studios-explained-2019-8

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/20/20825631/spider-man-marvel-sony-dispute-mcu-deal-film-rights

https://deadline.com/2019/08/kevin-feige-spider-man-franchise-exit-disney-sony-dispute-avengers-endgame-captain-america-winter-soldier-tom-rothman-bob-iger-1202672545/

https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/08/23/rumor-marvel-and-disney-offer-new-deal-to-sony-to-keep-spider-man-in-mcu/

The Speculation:

In Endgame, we saw the metaphorical baton being passed on to the next generation of superheroes as Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and—yup—Spider-Man played the most high-stakes game of Hot Potato ever while trying desperately to get the Infinity Stones to the Quantum Tunnel. This cemented Peter as one of Marvel’s new Big Three, meant to replace Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.

It also, when combined with the current contract between Sony and Disney and the commercial success of Homecoming, Far From Home, and just about every other Marvel movie ever, undoubtedly resulted in Sony laughing all the way to the bank.

After all, it was their intellectual property that Disney just set up as a cornerstone for future Marvel movies.

However, Sony is also in the rather precarious position where its most valuable franchise, by far, is Spider-Man. Far From Home racked in twice as much money on its opening weekend than Sony’s second most successful film of 2019, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The latest installment of Men In Black, which was made by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, has yet to break even at the theatres (and, at this rate, it probably won’t).

Source: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/studio/chart/?view2=release&view=parent&studio=sony.htm

Plus, Sony’s had a pretty spotty history with Spider-Man movies—the Raimi trilogy saw a steady decrease of gross revenue across all three films, and The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb, were… not received kindly. Let’s leave it at that.

Venom, for all that it was a box office success that racked in more than US$ 850 million over the course of its run, was pretty much summed up as ‘meh’ by critics, making the success of its sequel not the shoe-in that Sony would surely like. The only Spider-Man movie that’s been an absolute critical success was Into the Spider-Verse.

And, even though Sony has a whole slew of Spider-Man related movies announced, including Morbius and a Venom sequel, they’re still missing their star character—the web slinger himself.

There’s no way that Disney isn’t aware of this, of course, and considering how successful they’ve made the Marvel brand, plus and their ability to churn out (mostly) decent superhero movies year after year, it’s clear that they have an edge over Sony on that front.

However, if Into the Spider-Verse’s critical success and Venom’s financial success are any indication, it’s also clear that Sony’s been paying attention and taking notes—at least as far as superhero films are concerned. This contract breakdown could be the perfect(?) opportunity for Sony to bring Holland’s Spider-Man under their own brand, using Marvel’s successful adaptation of Peter Parker to help bolster their own Spidey Cinematic Universe.

The “Why It Might Not Be Completely Horrible”:

Whew. That was long. Okay… Let’s keep going.

Right now, we’re in this really not-good point in time where companies are merging and consolidating faster than ever. In some ways this is good, because we get standardized service across different brands and we get the possibility of an X-Men/Avengers crossover.

In other, bigger ways, though, it’s… very much not-good.

1. Oligopolies are bad for creativity.

Oligopolies are the business version of oligarchies, where a small group of people (corporations) hold all the power. Sound familiar?

Right now, Disney owns the rights to all the Marvel characters (except Spider-Man), which according to the Marvel Database Wikia, is more than 60,000 characters. The only other big player out there for superhero movies is, of course, Warner Brothers, which owns the DCEU. You can’t get much more of an oligopoly than that.

Adding one more player to the mix—Sony—doesn’t help this problem much, but it does help to distribute the characters out, giving movie goers more ways to vote with their dollars if a major company makes something that they don’t like.

Big corporations only really care about one thing: lots and lots of dollar signs. When consumers don’t have a choice where they get their consumables from, those corporations know that they’ll make money no matter what, and so they have no reason to innovate and no reason to push their creativity.

And, they don’t have any reason to listen to consumer wants or needs, either.

The result? Complacent corporations, consumers who are ignored, and a stagnant movie culture.

2. Marvel is bowing under its own weight.

With 23 movies, five discontinued series on Netflix, plus at least seven more Marvel series set to stream on Disney+, the MCU is easily one of the biggest movie franchises out there. And that doesn’t even count all the preludes, novelizations, and other add-ons.

My point is, the MCU is really, really big, and all of this bloat is starting to show.

The most recent example of this is in Far From Home, when Fury brings Peter to the underground layer and we first meet Mysterio. When Peter asks why Dr. Strange, Thor, or Captain Marvel aren’t involved in handling the Elemental threat, Fury flippantly tosses out a series of vague excuses.

And we only cover three characters, too. If Strange isn’t available, but we’re still dealing with a guy who—it seems, at least—is wielding magic, why can’t Wong step in to help? Or at least consult? Why not call in Scarlet Witch?

We see this in Endgame, too, in the final fight scene. While it’s a great scene, I’ve heard a lot of people question why Carol Danvers even needed help getting the Infinity Stones to the Quantum Tunnel, or why she couldn’t be the one to snap her fingers. After all, she took the full force of a single Stone when she was fully human and ended up fine, so why wouldn’t she be able to withstand (or withstand better than very-human Tony) the radiation let off why the Snap?

Sure, this sounds like nitpicking, but it’s a problem that’s going to have to be addressed over and over again as we see more MCU films. Why is this character facing this conflict? Why can’t another, better suited character handle the problem instead?

As writers, we should always be asking why we’re putting a certain character in a certain situation—it’s one of the ways to ensure that our plot is an effective one. However, if the answer is “because if I put another character in their place, the plot would be resolved too quickly”… perhaps the conflict or the character choice needs to be revisited.

3. Peter’s never been allowed to stand on his own two feet.

This new, younger, less mature Peter is an absolute delight on screen, and Holland does a fantastic job bringing him to life. In particular, this worked really well for Homecoming. As the first movie that really focuses on how the ‘regular’ world is affected by the Avengers, it’s interesting to see how this happy-go-lucky teenager sees a world that is, once we really get to explore it, surprisingly different from the real world we live in.

However, the MCU has since spent most of its time exploring what makes Peter special, as opposed to what makes him so relatable—one of the very things that made him such a popular character to begin with.

With Thanos’, the Vulture’s, and Mysterio’s motivations being completely unrelated to Spider-Man’s own motivations in the movies, he doesn’t ever have to question his own motivations, opinions, attitudes, or beliefs, meaning that he doesn’t have to grow.

And when the conflict of the movie does catch up with him, he doesn’t have to think his way out of things in the same way that his comic book counterpart or previous movie iterations have always had to do—someone else will always show up. In Homecoming, it was Iron Man; in Endgame, it was Danvers; and in Far From Home, it was Happy.

And, because these MCU Spider-Man movies all always working within the confines of a larger universe, they have to always spend time setting up conflict for other characters and other movies. This takes away valuable screen time that could otherwise be spent deepening his relationship with other characters, allowing him to explore his own thoughts and feelings, or establishing his character growth.

Taking Spidey out of the MCU will let us go back to basics with his character, so to speak. By necessity, Happy, Danvers, Fury, and the Skrulls won’t be in future movies. If something goes wrong, then, Peter will have to use his own grit and intelligence and resourcefulness to get himself out of his messes, grounding the stories of possible future movies in a sense of realism that’s sense escaped the MCU (for better or worse) and better allowing him to learn and grow from his mistakes.

4. It pairs Peter up with his greatest nemeses/anti-heroes again.  

As great as it was to see Spider-Man team up with Avengers, the most obvious down-side, I don’t think, as missed by anyone: if Spidey’s hanging out with another corporation’s IP, then he’s not allowed to hang around with many of the 900 plus characters developed in his own world.

With Venom being as successful as it was, having Spider-Man under Sony’s banner means that the Venom versus Spider-Man rematch we’ve all been waiting for is all the more likely. We could see the Black Cat cinematic appearance that was teased in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but was never explored. We could see Peter interact with Sable or Kraven the Hunter, both of which have movies in Sony’s line-up. The possibilities are nigh endless.

…

…

…

Or, of course, this could all go down in a giant dumpster fire. But let’s not think about that too much, eh?

[juliabenerdy]

Top 12 Female MCU Characters

In celebration for Avengers Endgame coming out I wanted to do a post that was fun and non spoilery to put my love out there for Marvel. Since I am all about women power and things I thought this would be a great thing to do!

I am only doing women in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and this does not include TV shows that might slightly tie in to them. That was really hard. This is my opinion and not everyone will agree with it and there certainly can be a discussion but no bashing anyone of opinions. That is totally not nice. Anyway..like i said there will be no spoilers for Avengers: Endgame, but all other movies prior is free game--Be Warned!

12. Nebula

Abilities

Superhuman strength, agility and durability

Regenerative healing factor

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Skilled assassin

Wrist blasters

I love Nebula. Who doesn’t love an underdog story, plus she is probably one of the characters that most people could relate to. Who can’t relate to someone who has sibling rivalry? Of course, most people don’t have an insane father that will pit his children against each other into battles of almost death and when one looses the loosing child will get tortured with mutilation when getting cybernetic enhancements. The thing that most amazes me about Nebula in the MCU is her character growth. She shows that she truly loved and cared for her sister and it was the tyrant between them that kept them apart for so long. Ultimately she realizes that she was following a maniac and she starts helping the good guys in Avengers: Infinity War. I can not wait to see where her journey goes from here! 

11. Hope “Wasp” van Dyne

Abilities

Size manipulation

Flight

Bio-electric energy blasts and extendable claws on her gloves

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Hope is the definition of independent woman in my eyes. She is a fighter. She is intelligent, not afraid to run with the big boys, teaches men how to punch, ambitious, and makes being the Wasp her own. Despite being estranged from her father for most of her childhood she learns forgiveness and softens to him when she finds out the truth about her mother. It takes a lot of character to forgive someone in my opinion and being lied to most of her life would be a lot to forgive, but in the long run letting love be the ultimate thing to win in her relationship with her dad and with Scott instead of pushing away is true bravery and a bad ass woman. 

10. Agent Peggy Carter 

Abilities

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

Trained in Fire Arms

Military Combatant

Skilled Agent

Peggy Carter, the one that falls in love and gets the heart of Captain America. (Lucky....) Seriously, she is definitely a woman that can be a role model for little girls. She is like the ultimate bad ass. Smart, knows how to take care of herself, refuses to be a damsel in distress type, tough as nails, but still keeps her own form of feminine charm. Like I said bad ass and great role model. I would love to learn to kick butt from this woman and I would gladly tell everyone she was the Agent I learned from. 

^ Brilliant

9. Okoye 

Abilities

Skilled in many forms of combat

Exceptional in using various Wakandan weaponry and tools

Brilliant Tactician and Military Strategist

When I watched Black Panther I was moved and amazed by the female empowerment in the movie. You can actually see my previous blog about it! I am still in love with that factor of the movie. Okoye is one of my all time favorite characters of the MCU and favorite parts of Black Panther because she is smiply awesome. The King of Wakanda has women...women back him up. I want all sexist pigs out there to soak that in for a moment. If you are still grumbling and thing that T’Challa was wrong, remember all this:

8. Shuri 

Abilities

Animorphism

Genius-level intellect

Expert martial artist

Necromancy

Super speed

Stone skin

Use of high-tech equipment and weapons including vibranium uniform

Enhanced agility, durability, endurance, reflexes, senses, speed, stamina and strength

I love this girl, because in the MCU she is one brainy badass. In the abilities listed above we definitely see the genius level intellect and her high tech weapon use. 

I am going to just say right now I will loose my ever loving mind if i see her animorphism and necromancy skills in the next Black Panather movies. Holy crap. Mage and Harry Potter crap there! LOL Anyway, Shuri is definitely a refreshing woman to see in movies today. A woman that can take care of herself and lets say save the man in distress.

7. Mantis

Abilities

Master martial artist

Empathy

Plant manipulation

Accelerated healing factor

Astral projection

Ability to communicate telepathically with the Cotati

Energy projection

Okay, so in my opinion Mantis is one of the coolest Marvel heroines’ that has ever been introduced. I will be the first to say that she was actually one that I was not to familiar with until I looked her up after the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 came out. Honestly, I do not think they have touched on half of what Mantis can do. Master martial artist? Where was that? Plant Manipulation? Um, yes please enhance Mantis characterization in the next films please Marvel because empaths can be totally badass and she is apparently no different. In Infinity War she jumped on Thano’s back and practically immobilized him! She was that powerful! Her power made it to where she almost made Team Iron Strange (lol like what I did there with the Team that was on that planet?) successful in Infinity War. Almost...*sigh*

6. Pepper Potts

This entry will be a little different. I said I was not going to spoil Endgame and I plan on keeping it that way. I will probably not have any blogs stating anything specific about the movie plot and things for a little while longer. That being said I still wanted to include Pepper because even though there is things I don’t want to say about her character and her story line in Endgame I still want to say how much I love her. She is smart and a very capable women. She is the one running Stark Industries after all and the woman that is in love with Tony Stark which is also hard, but I think she is the proof that Tony has a heart throughout the entire MCU. 

5. Black Widow

Abilities

Expert tactician, hand-to-hand combatant and secret agent

Slowed aging, and enhanced immune system

Expert marksman and mastery of various other weapons via gauntlets

grappling hook

knock out gas

taser

explosives

tear gas pellets

radio transmitter

If you would ask me which female superhero I would want to be like the most, I would probably tell you the super femme fetal Black Widow. Who wouldn’t want to be a beautiful super spy badass? Natasha Romanov does not need super powers to be amazing. She just is and that is part of what makes her great. She is also not afraid to say that she has demons in her past and she is definitely wanting to atone for things that she has done wrong. That takes courage and guts to want to strive to be a better person. Not many people would even try to atone for anything. Natasha...you are definitely my hero.

  4. Gamora 

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, agility, and durability

Skilled assassin

Skilled hand-to-hand combatant

The Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe 

I love Gamora. I think she is fierce, smart, strong, independent, beautiful and everything a badass woman should be! She fought for what she thought was right despite going against her father’s wishes. It can be extremely hard to go against family. Let’s pretend for a moment that her father was not a total psychopathic tyrant for a moment and consider that that is a hard thing to do. Yeah, if we go back to the fact that he is a psycho and he techinically murdered half her people, including her real family, and basically kidnapped her, it would still be weird to go against the man who raised you. It would at least takes guts to go against the person that raised you into the total badass bitch machine that you are now, knowing that he is a psycho so you could become a Guardian of the Galaxy because you have better morals and values! Gamora is legend. She is the Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe! 

3. Valkyrie

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, durability, and longevity

Mediumship with spirits of the dead

Valkyrie is one of the most complicated female characters in the MCU so far and given a lot of depth in my opinion. She suffers from PTSD, which I can relate to, because of her battle against Hela. There are not many characters that you see with Post-Traumatic-Stress-disorder. Being the only survivor of the Valkyrior because of the battle against the Goddess of Death, she suffers a lot of loss, and she was also saved by one of her sisters in arms when almost speared through the heart by Hela. She drowns her sorrows in alcohol which is actually a very human thing to see despite the fact that we are supposed to be watching a woman that is superhuman. .The reason why I really like Valkyrie so much is because how much I relate to her. Instead of drowning in sorrow she realizes that she can not run from her past but get stronger from it. She is a inspirational woman that kicks total butt!

2. Scarlet Witch

Abilities

Reality warping

Magic

Probability manipulation

Teleportation

Matter manipulation

Time manipulation

Energy projection, manipulation and absorption

First of all, I think magic in the MCU world is fascinating, needless to say I am a fantasy nerd and mages, witches, and magic is a true love of mine anyway, but Scarlet Witch is right up there with Dr. Strange. When talking about pure power and abilities she is extremely the bomb. I wont go super nerdy on everyone here because most of the reason why I love her is because of playing her in old video games like X-Men Legends (turning bad guys into boxes--hahaha boxes) and the comic story lines (House of M anyone?). If I think about her character in the MCU alone I still love her because her powers are still ultimately powerful due to the mind stone. Her powers are more telekinetic and telepathic in nature in the MCU because of this. Remember when she manipulated the Hulk? Yeah that is power! She has had to go through a lot of crap and she always uses it to make her stronger. This is what makes her awesome. 

1. Captain Marvel

Abilities

Superhuman strength, speed, endurance, and stamina

Energy projection and absorption

Flight

I really struggled with how I was going to rate my last five. I was not sure whether I was going to make our dear Captain Marvel number one, but she is number one to me, because I related to her. Simple and probably selfish, but it’s my list so LOL, This is my opinion of course, but I really did pick this a lot based on how I relate to Carol Danvers. She is one powerful woman and it was a lot of manipulation that toned down that power until she realized she could utilize her emotions to make her stronger. Her character growth was essentially understanding who she was and letting herself not be afraid of her power and her emotions. Danvers is powerful, sassy, funny, a fighter pilot, and an adventurer! Who wouldn’t want to be her? 

  So this is my list..like I said its all my opinion and I put a lot of what I feel in the reason. If you agree or not that is cool. I love to hear people’s opinions, that is if anyone is reading this LOL, but no battering people for their opinions! No spoilers for Endgame!

Just saying also...can we please get She-Hulk in the MCU! SHEESH!

At some point I might do a top list of males in the MCU with Spiderman coming out in awhile. Maybe a list of what I love about Spiderman..cause I love Spiderman. Who knows haha 

[jigensass]

2018, 2018, 2018

Guess I should probably let how my overall evaluation of this year as a whole. 

Well, it was long. Very long. Black Panther felt almost forever ago as well as every other movie I watched on the big screen including Crazy Rick Asians. 

Subjectively, I thought it was okay. Then again I did something big that a lot of people are hesitant to do. I deleted both my Twitter and Facebook accounts which gave me back some of my life. I felt less dead inside especially after a certain orange idiot came to my city and it made me very upset that people I liked at work were indeed the most stubborn assholes I have ever met. And facebook went before that because I was getting overwhelmed with all this nonsense coming through and such. Which was a part of this...journey that I don’t know where in the world I’m going. 

2017 was the year I decided to finally start this quest (I guess I’ll call it) to find myself after an ex of mine who mentally scarred me came back into my life and broke me right in front of my coworkers after what was already a very stressful week. I couldn’t take it and I started taking medication and I took some therapy sessions to find out what was going on and why I was feeling cramped in this imaginary world that my mind was making for me and come to find out, there were a lot of skeletons in the closet that I needed to burn. And that was for the 2nd time in my life I turned to meditation and Buddhism as my first stepping stone. 

This helped a lot to unravel and deal with daily problems as time went on, but it wasn’t enough. My boss in the six-seven months I have been hunkering down in her office has helped me and I have helped a lot of other people so much as to I am the multi-tool in everyone’s back pocket that they want to keep around. But that’s only at the forefront of my work ethic. I’ve always done my best with small tasks and keeping busy work ahead of me. Work is what kept me going because well, my social life was and continues to be utter garbage. 

As you probably know I could write my way out of a cave, but to talk my way out of a paper sack would be impossible. This reflects me as a person. Right now, I feel as if I’m that middleman in everyone’s lives that is used to find the better thing. I’m never the end goal. I’m always the support, never play of the game. Don’t get me wrong I love playing support because if you don’t have the cushion to the backbone in any situation, you’re pretty much fucked.  But with me, everyone sees that I can make POTGs, I can “be the hero”. So they let me, and I always get put in that middle way of ‘should I or should I not’. It’s stupid. Do I stay in my bubble or do I answer the call of duty? I’ve been put into those situations so many times without warning and then I get anxious and screw up! 

Right now, I decided to make this journey to descend to whateverthefuck is at the top of my mountain of life and I’m at like....maybe a third of the way there?  There’s definitely a clash somewhere between wanting to play support and people around me knowing the potential I have and want to throw me into the sun. And I have those days where people don’t want to do anything so I have to end up doing it, then people complain as to why I’m doing it.  Okay, enough ranting. Back to 2018. Yeah, I’ve made progress but I still don’t feel ready for this ‘higher calling’ I lived a lie for at least 23 years and I’m just now trying to figure out the core mechanics of what being ‘Crystal Short’ entails.  Because there are lives I could live, things I could do, but they don’t feel right at all for who I'm supposed to be.  At the end of this year, Buddhism tells you to be compassionate to all beings. I really can’t get behind that. There I some people who poisoned my soul who I want to watch burn so I guess that’s a plus of finding out that I agree with some things, but not all things, that one idea has to state that it is the true ideal in life. The only person who I want to burn so far is my dad because my mother makes me tolerate his ass whenever we go out and he acts like a toddler when he’s 50something. The therapy did pull up that he and my mom both did a lot of physical abuse when I was a kid and he was a good block for the mental and emotional abuse I have. He forced me to go see my grandma who also mentally scarred me when I was 12 and I had a panic attack in the nursing home and my dad started getting mad about it. Let alone I’m sure the CNAs noticed and did nothing.

fuck that man. And he’s a sexist, racist homophobe so that is kindling for the fire.

‘oh she’s not bad’  ‘yeah she’s not a bad person, but did she give you trauma’ (I’m convinced there are slivers of PTSD somewhere in my brain)

Maybe I have been looking at core mechanics but people around me keep trying to drown my thoughts. I don’t know. Next off, Relationships. My body and society tells me to do one thing and everyone else tells me to fuck off probably because I’m a terrible partner who tries too hard and isn’t interesting!

THAT’S ANOTHER THING! CAN’T SAY IT ENOUGH BECAUSE I’M ANXIOUS, PARANOID, HAVE ADHD AND REJECTION SENSITIVE DYSPHORIA YOU GOTTA FUCKING PROBLEM WITH ME YA GOTTA SAY IT TO MY FACE OR YOUR PERSONAL CONNECTION TO ME IS GONNA GET QUESTIONED EVERY TIME I BREATHE SPECIALLY IF I KNOW SOMETHING SMELLS FISHY.

Last thing in 2018, this blog. We here at Doctor Strange are staler than toast. Despite the massive surge of everyone else, I’ve only had a slight incline in followers this year. Probably because I love Doctor Strange in the MCU, but I’m not IN love with him. One, Benedict Cumberbatch is not attractive and two: I relate to him on a metaphysically level that he’s the longest thing that has been engraved in my interests. When I watched Infinity War, I was upset at the decision he made to hand over the Stone initially but I went back, reevaluated, and discovered that Ben was the perfect person to play this character. (I’ve spoken about this in buried posts, so I don’t want to sound like a record). And maybe it’s my age that’s showing.  I will flow with what comes out and what comes but there are so many other things I want to do such as play video games and watch movies. 

So conclusion of 2018. 1. Let me take my own journey because unlike everyone else I’m slow as shit 2. I’m at the bottom of the mountain because I was fed lies 3. The Super Beard Bros are still cops 4. I get bitter about stupid people. (House Slytherin is my home don’t give me no Hufflepuff schpeel) 5. I gotta be confident and stand up for myself 2019 sorry 20BITEEN is gonna be the year I kick names and take ass. No mercy

If I could put 2018 in one gif for me it would be.

2019 goals

[themattress]

Unpopular Opinion Re:MCU

Thor, Iron Man 3, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Avengers: Infinity War are all underrated in their own ways, while Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, and both of the Ant-Man movies are overrated in their own ways.

I’ve made this view known before, but I’d like to get into more detail as to why. 

There are many who dislike Thor because they don’t care for Thor himself, don’t care for Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearean vibe in a superhero movie, don’t care for the New Mexico setting, don’t care for the human characters of Jane, Darcy and Selivg, don’t care for the fish-out-of-water antics Thor gets into, or even don’t care for Loki as a villain. But I love all of these things and think they were done beautifully, since Branagh is a director who always has an eye for the beautiful and the extravagant and the big and the colorful and the epic. He was the perfect choice for director, just as the cast is perfect and the music is perfect. The movie itself is NOT perfect, there are definitely some flaws, but I believe it deserves far more credit than it gets. It’s definitely the third-best Phase 1 film, following The Avengers and Iron Man.

There are many who dislike Iron Man 3 because they don’t sympathize with Tony Stark’s PTSD, they don’t like his stupid decisions, they don’t like the emotional conflict between him and Pepper Potts, they don’t like the villain Aldrich Killian and his Extremis scheme, and especially don’t like the Mandarin, Iron Man’s arch-enemy from the comics and played here by Sir Ben Kingsley, turning out to be a fraud and a joke. But I like all of that stuff, think it was done well and is really entertaining. I never had any real love for the Mandarin in the comics, I love Kingsley’s performance as Trevor Slattery, and think that Killian, the “real Mandarin”, is actually legitimately intimidating and that Guy Pearce gives a great villainous performance.

Age of Ultron is definitely a flawed film both due to choices made by Joss Whedon and by Marvel Studios, but I still think it’s a worthy follow-up to The Avengers. The characters and their interactions are still enjoyable, some interesting developments are made by several of them, the spectacle factor is still strong, and the titular villain is one of the MCU’s finest.

Professional critics appear to think that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is weaker than its predecessor. I actually think it’s somewhat better - the original is still excellent, don’t get me wrong, but the sequel takes everything to the next level and has a lot more weight to it.

And professional critics aren’t entirely big on Infinity War because of how massive it is, what a roller coaster it is, and what a downer of an ending it has. But that’s why I absolutely adore it and eagerly await its follow-up. It’s a “Crisis Crossover” comic story accurately put to screen!

Spider-Man: Homecoming is a really good movie. But trying to put it on the level of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2 is disingenuous. Those movies may have their flaws, particularly the first which is dated in many aspects, but they also helped to define superhero movies, including the later MCU. They had excellent writing that gave clear arcs to all their major characters. Only two characters have arcs in Homecoming: the hero, Peter Parker / Spider-Man, and the villain, Adrian Toomes / The Vulture. Everyone else is portrayed very two-dimensionally and made to service them. It’s still a great Spider-Man movie and an ideal modern reinvention of the character, but I feel it gets a little too much hype simply because it’s the best Spider-Man movie we’d had in 13 years. Look past that and it’s not that great.

Thor: Ragnarok is a good, fun, competently put-together movie, and I do admire Taika Waititi’s commitment to his own unique vision. It’s got a great climax, and is an overall better film than its predecessor, Thor: The Dark World. But the relentless comedic tone and retro 80s aesthetic, shamelessly ripped off from the Guardians of the Galaxy films, just doesn’t fit the story that’s being told, which is supposed to be about the Norse apocalpyse. Oh, wait, that’s not the story being told most of the time - most of the time it’s a Planet Hulk adaptation!  The characters can go OOC for a laugh, moments of dramatic weight and emotion are almost always undercut by jokes, elements and characters from the previous Thor movies are flagrantly disrespected no matter how much certain viewers may have liked them, and plot decisions like Hela being Odin’s firstborn daughter and Odin having built Asgard through a bloody campaign of imperialistic conquest are downright ludicrous and not even followed through on. Yet this hot mess is considered one of the best movies in the MCU? Really?

Blank Panther is excellent, and I agree that it actually IS one of the best movies in the MCU. But for professional critics to rate it THE best, over Iron Man, The Avengers, both Guardians of the Galaxy films, or even the following Avengers: Infinity War? I’m sorry, I don’t think so.

And both Ant-Man movies tend to get high marks due to some form of dissatisfaction with the Avengers movies that preceded them (Age of Ultron and Infinity War respectively), with viewers finding that the more simple, light-hearted Ant-Man movies are welcome breathers after them. But I don’t think they deserve to be rated higher than their predecessors, as neither one are all that good. The first one in particular is, IMHO, the most forgettable MCU film since The Incredible Hulk. I’d rather watch Iron Man 2 and Thor: The Dark World over it.

[lightandwinged]

So I saw The Movie. Spoilers--good, bad (or neutral), and ugly--below. Spoiler-free: not as good as the first Avengers, but better by far than AoU. 

The Good

This film made me even more furious with Joss Whedon, solely because it proves that the problems in AoU were of his own making, namely his inability to handle too many characters and therefore incompetence when it comes to a film of this type. The Russo brothers took a very smart approach to this, in that they knew they couldn’t take the time to give all of the good guys the characterization they’d have gotten in a film with a smaller cast, so they basically made Thanos the main character, which is really what should’ve happened with Ultron but inexplicably did not happen. 

And man, what a joy Thanos is as a character. So many superhero villains are so kind of... one dimensional, tbh. Or not one dimensional, but rather, they seem to have an understanding that what they’re doing is evil or, if they don’t have that understanding, a lack of real conviction. They’re nascent Sith, in a sense, running on either the sheer joy of being cruel or on a heightened desire for vengeance. They can be a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong, but they seem, for lack of a better word, like cartoon villains. 

They’re fun, like I said, and the world is full of people who are just... evil for the sake of being evil (as we’ve found out in the last ~2+ years more than a lot of us realized, I think), but they get tired when they’re the villain of everything. Chaotic Evil, in other words, gets less compelling when it’s all you see. It becomes the same person with a different mask, 9/10 times, which I’m sure contributes a lot to superhero movie fatigue. 

Thanos, though, I enjoyed because he was 100% convinced that what he was doing was for the good of the universe. Ultron was trying to go there, I think, but Whedon handled it with about as much delicacy as a bull in a china shop (Ultron is mostly redeemed by his being played by James Spader, who is a delight at all times, but that also ends up being his downfall because you get the feeling that he’s winking at the audience the entire time... “I’m saying this with conviction, but here’s a quip to show that I know I’m evil.”). Thanos actually felt real. He felt like he believed everything he was saying, like he truly thought he was doing the universe a mercy, that he was the good guy. 

And that doesn’t redeem him by any means (incoming people screeching about how I’m downplaying genocide or stanning because dude’s evil, y’all), but it makes him infinitely more compelling, and GOD, that is refreshing. It’s the same way that Killmonger was refreshing because, even though you don’t agree with it, you see his point. I mean, who among us that’s worked retail hasn’t wanted to snap our fingers and make half of humanity vanish? It’s been more than a decade since my last retail position, and I still have those days.

On a different level, it’s that garbage that gets pushed by freshman level philosophy students who are like “people should stop having babies” because that, not a mismanagement of resources by the wealthy and powerful, is why there’s scarcity. It’s rubbish, absolute rubbish (and it doesn’t work because science tells us that the universe, that all of existence, is infinite... and fuck, the movie’s science tells us that as well--Bananabread Cabletelevision had his little moment of hunting for spoilers and only got through about 1.4 million of the unending possibilities that exist BUT I DIGRESS), but at first blush, you ask yourself, “Wait, does he have a point?” No, he does not.

A rundown of other Goods:

Look, Thor in lightning form is the sexiest creature in existence. I’m sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Also I appreciated him getting another smushface. And then the immediately following Battle of the Chrises (all I’m saying is that if there’s not a threeway Chris standoff in Part Deux, I’ll be very sad. Also, someone please cast Chris Pine in Captain Marvel, he needs to spend the rest of eternity watching powerful women heroes in awe).

The people who were allowed gave fantastic performances. RDJ will be sorely missed as Iron Man (because if y’all think he’s living past the next film, I’m sorry for your loss), and of the good guys, I felt like he came the closest to being the main character here. Which has been true of the other Avengers films as well, so that’s nice to see. Ultimately, these first three phases of the MCU were Tony Stark’s story, and that finale will be really... well, painful. 

Other great performances: Tom Holland (darling baby child, I wept for you), Mark Ruffalo (good at constipation), Bagels Cucumbers (that hurts to admit, he’s the Worst, but damn if he isn’t a good actor), Zoe Saldana (you’d better come back), Chris Hemsworth (as always), Paul Bettany (NOOO), and Elizabeth Olsen (poor darling). 

The humor was nicely balanced, not fourth-wall breaking like you get in the Whedon Avengerses, but logical. It was kind of like exhaling: inhale the action and serious stakes, exhale the humor. It allowed breathing room in all the intensity, so that was great.

Also how can I have missed Wakanda that much if it’s only been like... not even two months since I saw Black Panther?

Look, if the next movie involves just one scene--just one!--of Okoye, Nat, and Wanda fighting together, my ticket will have been worth its price.

Related, Proxima Midnight is (a) literally the coolest name for anyone ever, and (b) my wife now.

The Neutral-Bad

Or, really, more the expected. 

In any ensemble movie, you’re going to have a lot of characters whose purpose is just to step on scene, state their name and allegiance, and then fade into the background. This ended up being the case with pretty much all of Team Cap, and it was to their detriment. They had their shining moments (”Earth just lost her greatest defender” made me ship things like FedEx), but as opposed to the group above, they didn’t really have a lot to do? Or even really much in the way of reactions? They just sort of... came and saw and fought and that was it. 

It felt a lot like nobody knew what to do with those characters, which is fair enough, but it also felt like they were wasted, and they shouldn’t have been. If I had to guess, I’d guess that the writers had to pick and choose which good guys they wanted to focus on and which new Avengers and old Avengers would get the attention. Tony because these films have been basically a huge Iron Man series. Thor because I think? the plot requires him to be Important, as per comic books. But as much as I adore Thor, I wish there had been a focus on Steve more. With Tony, you’ve got the plot of “oh my god Thanos, the thing I’ve been afraid of since 2008″ but maybe Steve could’ve had more of a reluctant plot, like he’s been heroing all this time but all he’s gotten for it is locked up and exiled and shit? I don’t know, point is that if Captain America is going to be so prominent in the MCU logo, he should get a bigger slice of the plot pie.

Also I’m annoyed with Gamora’s passing, though I wouldn’t call it a complete fridging because it wasn’t just for mangst. It was just mostly for mangst. Either way, though, I think that’s the death (besides the end ones) that bothered me the most. It didn’t feel unnecessary and was probably the most shocking, when you look at it objectively (more on that in a second), but... I don’t know, it bothered me, but I can’t 100% put my finger on why/how. I do appreciate, though, that it gave Gamora a decent arc in the film. 

Anyway, to the deaths. The presumable permadeaths (Heimdall, Loki, and Gamora) were, for the most part, unsurprising. The Thor trilogy is over, so Heimdall and Loki end up being kind of extra weight, the former because he doesn’t have a lot to do that’s not in a role filled by another character, and the latter because the only other way he could’ve worked in this film was as an eleventh hour heroic sacrifice, and that feels almost too woobie-ish, like beyond Zuko levels of woobie. 

The Great Dust Rapture at the end was also fairly unsurprising, mostly because there’s no way a good chunk of those characters aren’t coming back. At least two have sequels literally named after them coming out sometime in the next couple of years; as I also pointed out to Kyle, “Look, Gamora may be dead forever, but if the rest of the Guardians remain dust, GotG3 will just be The Adventures of Rocket Raccoon Being Very Sad.” The non-dusted bunch are the OG Avengers, plus or minus a few friends; the stakes for the next film are, therefore, a LOT higher, since all the OG Avengers have finished their trilogies and, should they survive, will probably only ever show up again in cameos. We know T’Challa and Peter Parker and the Guardians of the Galaxy and probably Dr. Strange and everyone still have Things To Do. 

But the OG Avengers do not, and they couldn’t really kill off the main characters of the franchise with one film to go, so...

(also, calling it now: the next film is going to be The Avengers: Rebirth. I will put money on it)

The Ugly

But HNNGH. Okay.

I 100% understand the choices they made with the dustinatings, but like... there’s no suspense whatsoever. If Marvel didn’t release their film titles 6000 years in advance, maybe the stakes would’ve been stakier, but as it stands, it’s like... come on people. 

You know what would’ve worked way better and made for stakier stakes? Don’t kill off the main characters from franchises that still have sequels coming out. Kill off sidekicks. T’Challa doesn’t die, but maybe M’baku or Okoye does. Spare at least three of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Leave Peter Parker’s fate uncertain (though his death scene was literally the only one that made me tear up because TOM HOLLAND IS JUST THAT GOOD, DARLING FROG-IN-MOUTH BOY). Bucky, Sam, Nick Fury, Maria Hill--they can remain dusted. But if you want to keep the stakes for the second film while actually letting us believe that there won’t be any resurrections this time, maybe don’t kill people who we know will be back in various MCU films at future dates. 

It’s like I keep thinking when I watch trailers for Solo or literally any prequel anything: the problem with 99% of prequels is that we know who lives and who doesn’t, so giving us trailer shots of Chewbacca in danger, for example, is like trying to play peek-a-boo with an adult. We have object permanence, it’s not surprising when you pull your hands away and your face is still there. It’s not surprising that Chewbacca isn’t going to get his face bashed away by a rock. It’s not surprising that somehow, in Avengers Four: You Asked For More, all the dusted people with eponymous films coming up will be back. 

Another big plot hole: why didn’t Dr. Strange go and do his future vision the second a giant green man fell into his living room? Bruce, as Bruce, tells him “Thanos is coming for the macguffins” and then he goes and spends the next 5 minutes going through possibilities and then figures out the very easy way to solve the thing. 

That easy way? Just have Wanda destroy the time stone. Now we’re not panicking about taking out Vision’s brain as fast as we can (point: that scene was unrealistic, Shuri would’ve actually had it done in about 13 seconds flat) and Thanos has lost and maybe he goes around killing people manually but at least he can’t rewind time if things don’t go his way. 

The movie didn’t do this, obviously, but it’s one of those things where it’s like “if your audience can figure out a better way of doing things before the credits even fucking roll, maybe revise your script.”

(if Carrie Fisher had been alive to script doctor this shit, we wouldn’t have this problem, universe)

Other big frustration: does every Avengers film really need Thor to go on an epic quest away from everyone else for half the film? Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty cool to see him jumpstart a sun and see Peter Dinklage being huge (all I’m saying is that if Disney ever acquires the rights to the X-Men, things are going to get very confusing) and see a new Mjolnir-like-object, but oh. my. god. Every time those scenes were happening, I felt like it was a bathroom break. Like legit, that fucking ax had better cleave Thanos in half in the next movie because otherwise, that was so much wasted time that could’ve been devoted to literally anything else. 

Final Miscellaneous Thoughts

Maybe this means that GotG3 will be about Peter Quill actually growing up and dealing with his issues. I hope it does. 

Also, Nebula/Tony Stark road trip back to earth? I’m all about it. 

Wonder Woman would’ve ended this all in about 30 seconds flat, which is why Captain Marvel can’t show up until the next film. 

The next film is literally going to be at least 90 minutes of Thanos refusing to interact with anyone trying to kill him because he’s on vacation and fuck you. 

Literally why does anyone still live in NYC in the MCU? The first movie would’ve been enough to convince me to move to a cornfield in Nebraska and just stay there for eternity. 

“Thanos will return.” Along with literally everyone else SERIOUSLY THIS IS NOT SUSPENSEFUL MARVEL AAAAAAUGH.