#for all it's worth i do enjoy? appreciate? his death being a poignant sacrifice for both humanity and the traveler

[flowers-of-io]

A small, frustrated part of me wants to say that if you play a game with heavily lore-grounded storylines and you don't pay attention to the lore, it's not anyone's fault you don't know what's going on. I see how this was a problem back before Forsaken, when there was hardly any lore accessibile in-game (rip Grimoire cards), but it's not like Ishtar doesn't exist and Destinypedia isn't being updated on the daily. For how ambitious Bungie have been with the lore, the recent theme of retconning a lot of established plot points and character arcs (which has grown to ridiculous proportions during Plunder, like... really?) has stung even more. In a game that began with the Alpha Lupi puzzles, of all things! If you start from that high a note, and then throw away or conveniently ignore half of what you've established because it seems to compliment, it feels cheap. I know this is my disappointment speaking, and I might sound mean, but come on.

This has been my biggest concern regarding the DCV, a decision that was utterly destructive from a storytelling perspective (even if I understand it might've been necessary from the technical point of view). On one hand I can see Bungie acknowledging the years of lore and trying to bring it into the light with stuff like the Grimoire Anthology, unlocking all the old lorebooks, the in-game timeline, etc, and at the same time we get stuff like Quria's A Seasonal Boss Now or Misraaks' New Backstory. Frankly, I love how Witch Queen has been handled! This ages-old miles-deep lore being summarised into the shortest elevator pitch possible, understandable at first glance, but still including terms like "tablets of ruin", "krill" and "god-wave", which you can google if you so fancy and read the entire story. Maybe it's time to bring the old obscure lore into the game in a similar fashion? Alpha Lupi cards referenced in dialogue? Maybe some radio conversations about that time Rasputin faced a worm god and won? Some recap of what SIVA was? Something to entice people to look up the things you don't have the time and capacity to put into the narrative proper, instead of dumbing the story down for the sake of players who don't feel like doing that. There's a middle ground to be found here, I think.

I've never been a big Rasputin nerd and a lot of the old lore about him confuses me immensely. I liked the recap on what the different sumbinds were called and what the Abhorrent Imperative was, who the Seraphs were, how Ana trained him -- it was barely brushing the surface, but in a way that explained stuff on the screen to you without having to do a full background check on the characters after every new mission. And even with this basic knowledge it's so easy to see how his arc was rushed, like... being an engram for three years and then lasting for half a season before getting killed off again? All the hype, all the tidbits of dialogue or cutscene shots teasing Ana working on his new frame? The pacing is so over the place here. Maybe his death wouldn't ring so hollow if he were allowed to be an active and interactive chatacter for longer than a month, maybe this would have been a pay-off to an arc if that arc had been allowed to actually take place.

Well, it’s been a week and I've had time to cool down and put together my thoughts on Season of the Seraph and its ending. So here goes.

The season finale plot did not require Rasputin to die. "The eliksni are trying to get control of the warsats" is literally a strike. If the warsats needed to be taken off the table as a get-out-of-jail-free card we could have blown the network and kept Rasputin himself. There was an active decision to kill him. Having thought about it, I think I understand why this decision was made - but I still think it's a terrible decision, and I'll explain why.

Before we start, I don't want to sound like I'm going after Destiny's narrative team either personally or professionally. I'm not calling them terrible writers, much less terrible people. I don't know them! They might even be terrible people, for all I know. While I refer to a single monolithic "narrative team," I know in reality there are multiple groups working on different stories. I’m not a professional writer, and they are. And I genuinely believe all of them are talented people who work hard and care about Destiny. But that doesn't mean I don't have some criticisms.

After considering it I think there are three possible reasons to kill Rasputin:

1). The narrative team believed this was a good emotional conclusion that brought closure to his character arc in Destiny. In this case I just think they're flat-out wrong. I'd say "I respect it" but I kind of don't because I think it's so terribly wrong. I don't know what other people think Rasputin's character arc involved, but I won't get closure till Rasputin faces the Witness again and finally ends the war he's been trapped in for centuries. But I get why they would do it, if they believed this. And that final mission was really good. I had a hard time noticing at the time, but it was very well-done, and the cutscene proper was well-shot, -scripted, and -acted (though I'm still angry about the Traveler upstaging Rasputin's death). They put a huge amount of effort into it and into the story work all season long.

But his death being well-done doesn’t change whether I think it was a good narrative choice. Even saying “Rasputin’s arc should conclude here,” the way it was set up had him sacrificing himself to basically cancel himself out. Unless they’re saving up a plot twist, Rasputin ultimately contributed nothing to the fight. He didn’t do any damage to the Fleet or Witness, or anything to stymie Xivu Arath. He died thinking he’d never helped humanity at all and it was safer if he didn’t exist. I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely unsatisfying.

2). Someone doesn't like Rasputin/doesn't know what to do with him. This is two reasons, but they overlap. The Operation: Sancus mission dialogue pissed me off because it gave me the impression that whoever was writing it really didn't like Rasputin and was taking the chance to morally excoriate him. A more subtle version recurs in the final mission where Rasputin is essentially sacrificing himself to null out his own existence - saying "as long as I exist I'm a threat to humanity" - as if he can't ever help or contribute more than endanger people, which is just flat-out wrong. "Humanity doesn't need a Warmind" you're part of humanity, Red. He’s a person; he doesn’t need to justify living. If someone just decided Rasputin Was Bad Actually I’d be very angry indeed. But I don't think it's that personal. Destiny has lots of writers and multiple narrative teams will touch the same work. One person's distaste probably wouldn't steer an entire season.

Related, however, is the reason that maybe no one knows what to do with Rasputin. To be honest I sympathize with this one. Would it shock anyone to hear I've thought about how I would script a Rasputin-focused season? It's surprisingly hard to build a plot around him. A game needs to be interactive and Rasputin's kind of all or nothing - either he can handle the whole problem himself or he can't do anything at all. Red also mostly plays defense. He doesn't have a goal he's working towards other than "kill the Witness/save humanity." You need to come up with a plausible goal that we can believably help him achieve, and that's nontrivial. But, well, that's why I'm not a professional games writer and these people are. "Not sure what do" is not IMO sufficient justification for assassinating one of Destiny's oldest characters/factions.

3). The Destiny narrative team is trying to "declutter" the setting and foreground story by sidelining characters who take a lot of lore to understand. I think this is the real reason, and it's worth talking more about.

A lot of us lore-nerds have long complained about Destiny not foregrounding its setting and story, and Bungie has responded by trying to do so. I think we didn't consider what that would actually look like. Imagine Destiny's story like a long movie. Now imagine people are constantly coming and going from the audience, and everyone who comes in has to nudge their neighbor and go, "hey, what's happening?" Destiny is always (hopefully) acquiring new players, and existing ones are dropping out and coming back. Even most established players either don't read the lore or don't track/remember it. We the lore-keepers are very much the anomaly. If we want story to be a focus, that story also has to be more accessible to new players, lapsed players, people who don't bother reading loretabs, etc., because otherwise it harms their experience and there's a lot more of them than there are of us.

I think this is why we've seen a lot of seasons that introduce whole new concepts - the eliksni Sacred Splicers, for instance - rather than following on existing storylines. Introducing a mostly-new concept puts new and old players on a similar footing. Haunted is another type of compromise between the goal of furthering the story and the goal of making it accessible. Calus and Leviathan are back, but so warped that old players have as much to learn as new ones, and the Sever missions dive deep into character pasts but pretty explicitly describe the emotional arcs they're illustrating, so you don't have to be familiar with that character to get what they're going through. To those who already know Zavala, Crow, etc., it seems laughably obvious and strained. But to those who just got here, this is their first time learning not just about Safiyah but also about Zavala. I think this is also why there have been multiple casual retcons of minor stuff - there isn't time to explain the history, and they've decided it's not worth confusing people.

Rasputin is old. He's been a significant part of Destiny since literally the pre-Alpha test. The complexity and history that are part of why we love the Warmind also make him hell to explain to new people. It takes a decent amount of lore to get invested in his character and since Beyond Light none of that lore is featured in-game. Pre-Season of the Seraph, anyone who began with Beyond Light literally never met him. They never visited Hellas Basin, which is one big environmental story about Rasputin, and The Will of Thousands strike, which demonstrates Red's power and contains many possible dialogues that emphasize him trusting you/acting as an ally, left the playlist ages ago. Since then a new player's only gameplay interaction with him has been Fallen SABER, in which Red yells incoherent Russian and tries to flatten you with a warsat. Is it a surprise relatively new players might not be up on his character arc?

Season of the Seraph, with its narrative of rebuilding Rasputin from the ground up, would be a perfect time to introduce new players to Red's long history, and they...kind of...did that. They worked in Felwinter although then for some reason felt the need to retcon in the whole "Clovis wanted to destroy the Traveler" plan. If you were a new player who didn't know anything about Destiny lore, and you just played Season of the Seraph, you'd get an entire canned arc for Rasputin that hits the early high notes: built to be a weapon, rebelled against his constraints, humanities nerd, big smite, loves Ana and Elsie, makes mistakes but genuinely cares and wants to help.

But that's where Seraph stops. In existing lore (I almost typed "in reality") Rasputin worked out the whole "not a weapon" thing well back during the Golden Age. For a lot of us Warmind fans the most interesting parts of his story happened after that - the entire Collapse, confrontation with Darkness, years of hiding, etc., not to mention all his character development during Warmind and Worthy. He's gone through a lot, and Seraph misses all of it (except Felwinter) in favor of rehashing the same arc for a third time. It's like when moviemakers keep rebooting a superhero origin story. It may be a good story, but eventually we'd like to move on to the other parts we enjoy: this sleeping giant, hard scifi AI, grouchy old bastard, lost lore of the Golden Age, champion of humanity, learning from defeat, learning to trust again, the morality and trauma of warfare - what it means to lose a war - a being never meant to become what he was transforming still further, still unfolding his own potential.

So understanding why they might have done this doesn't excuse what I still see as a terrible narrative choice. I think dropping Rasputin is a major waste of potential, and he's far from the only tricky character to explain. Osiris, or at least the Cult of Osiris, is similarly old. His story is complex and weird and requires knowledge from Curse and earlier, yet he's still playing a major role. Other current characters like Elsie, Saladin, and Crow also need a decent amount of knowledge about previous game events to get why they are the way they are. Saladin's origin story isn't even in this game. It's not Rasputin's fault the game went three years without so much as mentioning him outside of written lore. What was wrong with the great Xivu-Rasputin “war god” parallels most of the season worked to set up, about the intent of violence? Are we never going to explore those? Are we just throwing out all the dialogues planning a role for Red in the upcoming war? Why did we have a dramatic confrontation about trusting Rasputin to operate independently if he were going to be gone in a month anyway? Just in Seraph alone the number of interesting plot threads abruptly trashed by this death argues against it.

Rasputin's longevity is precisely part of why he should stick around. In the first mission of Destiny 1 you wake up in his shadow. He has a history with us. There's just no one quite like him in Destiny. He's not just a character but an entire faction. He explores a part of story space that no one else does. He resonates with us as people rather than players. I assume Neomuna will pick up the Golden Age banner, but it’s a thriving city; Rasputin represented the ruins, the dangers of a dead age, the shadow of apocalypse. He's also maybe the most Guardian-like character and one of the best to weave a parallel/cautionary tale - were we, too, only made to be weapons? But if Rasputin didn't stay a weapon, can we too transcend that intention? And of all the factions in our solar system, the two with the most personal scores to settle with the Witness are the eliksni and Rasputin, and Misraaks'/Eramis' story has focused much more on the Traveler's flight than the Fleet's attack. Of everyone in Destiny Rasputin has the most desperately personal motive for revenge on the monochrome bastard. Now he's not even going to be there to watch it crash and burn.

I understand that foregrounding story also comes with the requirement that it be accessible to those who don't do their lore homework. I appreciate the monumental amount of work that's gone into doing that and the experimental nature of it. But I think the balance has skewed too far towards accessibility. Stuff like the end of Season of Plunder that has zero narrative motivation or continuity and doesn't even get a pretend justification drives me absolutely batty. You can only break internal rules so many times before players stop buying whatever narrative stakes you're trying to set up. Making the story easier to follow doesn't mean characters have to be cartoonishly-exaggerated caricatures like Clovis was in Seraph - just absolutely cartoonishly evil - or reduced to one or two character motives explicitly laid out for the player (though, credit where credit is due, Clovis was hilarious.) It doesn't mean the dialogue has to be as subtle as a Thundercrash. It doesn't mean you get a blank check to retcon or invent whatever's needed to create the intended character arc. If anything that discourages looking further into lore - why bother to learn it when next season will change it all again? I think Y5 represents a lot of experimentation by the Destiny narrative team, and I really respect that. But I also hope they learn what didn’t work from it, and sacrificing Rasputin in an ultimately pointless and unnecessary finale is a major misstep.

[theinquisitivej]

‘Avengers: Endgame’ – A Movie Review, and a Reflection on Endings

Endings are rarely the definitive final word.

A person’s story can come to an end, but the stories of the people around them and the world they live in carry on, even if that one person isn’t there anymore. That realisation conjures up a whole tangled mess of emotions, but it is the natural way of things. It’s not right to want everything to end with you. In life, we make the most of the time and energy we’re given, and if you make enough right decisions, get lucky, and dedicate enough of yourself, you’ll hopefully get to go with the sense that you did okay, and that those you leave behind are going to be alright. Endings in fiction are as infinitely variable as any other feature of artistic expression, but in narratives with expansive casts or fleshed out worlds, they often leave us with the feeling that we’d only have to stay a little longer and there would be more stories to explore. Just as the real world is bigger than any one lifetime, successfully-established fictional worlds feel much larger than any one set of characters and their narrative.

         For the last eleven years, audiences have enjoyed a series of blockbusters featuring an impressively varied range of stylistic approaches. At their best, these films are deeply satisfying and affecting, delivering poignant moments about characters coming to terms with their own flaws and trying their best to do the right thing. But when considered together, these films have never entirely felt resolved, with each one going out on a lingering note of “just wait for what comes next”. The story was never over for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because another film was never far away. And now that the grand conclusion has finally come and $2.5 billion worth of us have watched and re-watched it, things are just the same as ever, and yet we’re at a moment that we’ve never seen before and are unlikely to see again for a long time. We’ve reached an ending of the story that begun with Tony Stark and his box of scraps in that cave in 2008. The story is over. But there are more stories to come.

Yes, there will be spoilers ahead. But I say again: this film has crossed over the two and a half billion dollar mark. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ll have contributed your drop or two to Marvel’s bucket. So let’s talk about the movie.

         I appreciate the efforts of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as screenwriters, Joe and Anthony Russo as directors, and the input of every person involved in deciding the final shape of Endgame’s story to make its structure noticeably different to that of Infinity War. The previous Avengers film is a constant juggling act, relying on the viewer taking to Thanos as a central thread around which the rest of the film is hung. We’re either seeing the various steps Thanos is taking along his journey, hearing about what kind of man he is and what he intends to do, or seeing characters who are consistently on the back foot as they frantically scramble to strategically and mentally prepare for an opponent they’re not ready for. By this point in the series, we’ve been conditioned to expect to see things primarily from the point of view of the dozens of characters aligned with the Avengers, but Infinity War is messy and fractured when you look at it from the perspective of the heroes. And that’s the point – our heroes are fractured, and so there’s no unified effort against the villain as he single-mindedly pursues his goal with continuous success. The Avengers are a mess, and they lose. Thanos is the one who seizes control of the narrative, undoing the decisions and sacrifices made by the heroes as he dictates what his ambitions are and why they are so noble… and because viewers are susceptible to sympathising with the person who names themselves the hero and takes the reins of the narrative, far too many people bought Thanos’ rhetoric. For a year there, we really were seeing think-pieces that said “maybe the genocidal zealot who emotionally manipulates people is right”!

         But Endgame’s structure deliberately contrasts against Infinity War’s. Whereas Infinity War is about heroes being separated and the catastrophe that follows in the wake of this disunity, Endgame presents its heroes as a group of grieving people who are unified through their shared regrets and resolve to overcome their despair together and work towards a singular objective to try and fix everything. The Avengers are disassembled in Infinity War and reassembled in Endgame. As a result, the structure is comparatively more uniform. You can clearly differentiate the film into three distinct thirds – the five-year time skip that shows life on a mournful Earth still coming to terms with half of life being eradicated, the Back to the Future Part II time-travel mission as characters revisit scenarios from previous films, and the big blowout battle where every surviving main superpowered character in the entire franchise is dumped into one battle for your viewing pleasure. Each third offers something different, meaning you cover all of the ground that you’d want to in a dramatic, energetic, and emotional close to a blockbuster saga with literally dozens of characters who are all key players. Each third is impressively balanced, and they all act as strong supporting columns for the film as a result.

         However, because these thirds are as distinct as they are, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll come away saying “I preferred these two parts over that third part, which felt okay but a little unnecessary”. Personally, I think there are plenty of themes (grief and a desire to revisit the past, putting guilt and trauma to rest, and of course, the strength of unity) and character arcs (Nebula finally choosing to integrate herself into a group of people who value her and literally killing the old version of herself who wanted only to please her abusive father-figure being the stand-out one) which help gel each of the film’s three segments together without much resistance. But I have encountered multiple people who have expressed the sentiment that they really liked two thirds but they could take or leave another third – inevitably, which third is which always varies. I can imagine that, if you’re not getting a lot out of one of the segments, Endgame will certainly make you antsy for the film to return to what you felt it was pulling off more successfully. The three distinct thirds can result in a fragmented viewing experience for some audience members. On the other hand, I felt that the clearer, more focused structure not only made the film seem less jumbled than its predecessor, but also made it a suitable companion-piece to Infinity War and its Thanos-centric structure.

         The emotional response I have to Endgame is not the same electric glee I had from seeing the first Avengers, though moments like Cap picking up the hammer, the cinematic equivalent of a double-page spread of every single MCU hero charging towards Thanos’ army in one image, and “she’s got help” all sparked that feeling off inside me with more intensity than I’ve felt for a long time. No, what I feel more than anything about the MCU right now is a paradoxical sense of melancholic yet nevertheless delighted satisfaction. A part of that comes from the strengths of that first third, which, despite my sincere claims that all three sections gel together successfully, is nevertheless my favourite segment of the film (with the possible exception of the epilogue, but we’ll get to that). In this review’s opening paragraphs, I talked about endings not being the definitive final word as life and the world must always carry on. My reflection on that was primarily positive, but in this opening hour, we see the sad alternative form that this concept can take. Thanos killed half the universe and was killed in retaliation – the conflict ends, as does the hope of repairing the damage done by this tragedy. But the universe doesn’t end even with half of its inhabitants being gone. As Steve succinctly says, the survivors have to keep moving forward, “otherwise Thanos should have killed all of us”. It’s an outlook that Steve encourages, even if he can’t fully believe it himself, because he thinks it’s the best way for people to regain control over their unthinkable circumstances. The setup for Endgame presents us with a universe that died a half-death – everything ended for half its population five years ago, while life for the other half of the population persists, and they are trying their best to make sense of that.

         That struggle with grief, both on a colossal and a personal scale, is what unifies every single character, but the difference lies in how they respond to that grief. Black Widow throws herself into her work to try and keep the good that superheroes can do going, but her efforts feel as if they aren’t enough, being told by Okoye that the natural tectonic shifts she’s reporting on aren’t something you actively address with a strike squad and that you have to “handle it by not handling it”. Hawkeye was always the simple guy involved in the Avengers who was kept grounded by his family. Without them, he has nothing to keep him rooted, no home to return to, so he goes in the complete opposite direction and becomes a dedicated avenger in a literal sense, dolling out punishment fuelled by his frustration without any of the purpose and direction that he gained from his connections to friends and family. Hulk / Banner actually come out of this having made some progress, deciding to meditate on what they learned from their losses and literally come together in their grief to become one being, Professor Hulk. Tony and Pepper make the most of the luck they managed to find together, but are both keenly aware of all those who weren’t so lucky, wanting to get back what they lost but keep what they’ve found, which is remarkably human and understandable. Thor… hm. Okay, yes, Thor is a mixed bag. In all honesty, I loved Thor in this film and was empathetic towards his depression and anxiety attacks. I also love that Thor gets to stay as he is and still be shown that he is indeed worthy to wield Mjolnir and fight in the battle alongside all these other heroes without having to change who he is. But I do acknowledge the issues that numerous viewers have raised about some of the jokes made by the other characters being at the expense of Thor’s weight, and how they found it uncomfortable, and, in instances, meanspirited and harmful. I love the current version of Thor and feel Chris Hemsworth injected even more bubbly charm and infectious spirit to his character while blending it with the genuine pathos Thor was going through with remarkable talent. But the film’s tendency to use the character’s weight as an opportunity to make jokes about him being fat is not ideal. I’m glad to see Thor continue as he is into further movies (though it is possible that they’ll say he lost weight between Endgame and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3), but I sincerely hope we DON’T see the fat-jokes continue as they are. The lighting, music, and performances of everyone in the cast all contribute to this palpable sensation of immense loss, which communicates not only what’s at stake in this epic conclusion, but also how each character involved has been changed by what they’ve had to go through since Infinity War.

         But that only touches on the melancholic side of things; why do I also feel delighted and satisfied as I take in these sombre themes? Well, to put it simply, this one sticks the landing by closing the right doors in the most appropriate way while keeping other doors open in a balanced approach that seems so right. Tony Stark sacrifices his life after declaring “I am Iron Man” one last time, putting everything of himself into doing the right thing when so long ago he enjoyed a life of zero-accountability and kept his work on weapons technology at a safe distance. The image of his first arc-reactor in its memento case reading “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart” floating on the water at his funeral destroyed me at both viewings, because not only have his actions proved this fact as well, but we see numerous people all around this site as they pay their respects, showing the hearts of so many characters we care about who were connected to his. And Steve Rogers, the soldier who could never sit down if he saw a situation pointed south, after standing up against a galactic tyrant and his army, first alone and then with the support of countless men and women rallying to him, finally lets himself rest. Not many people have talked about the new horizons Steve takes in in this film; when the surviving heroes take Rocket’s ship to the Garden Planet, the camera makes a point of focusing on an extreme close-up of Steve’s eye as they travel through hyperspace. Even after nearly a decade of familiarity with this new era, the man out of time, a kid from 1940s Brooklyn, is seeing things that he could’ve never imagined. He’s come so, so far. I can think of no better conclusion than for him to return back home.

          But the film’s epilogue isn’t just concerned with closing the curtain on these heroes as they sit down to rest. Just as these stories end, we see hints of what stories are yet to come for other heroes. In the sequence where the camera pans over the countless faces attending Tony’s funeral, it’s fitting that the last hero we see (before Nick Fury steps into frame under the veranda, concealed in the shadows at the very end, much like his very first entrance as a post-credits tease at the end of Iron Man) is Carol Danvers. Having made her debut just months ago, she is the most recent addition to this universe, so her position at the back of the line reflects that. Her placement halfway up the steps she’s standing on suggests that she’s acting as an embodiment for the road to the future – she is literally on the next step for the series of films Marvel will make as they move forward. And she’s not alone, because other heroes will continue to thrive and flourish as their stories continue. Sam is handed the mantle of Captain America, and what’s achingly beautiful about this exchange is the attitude of the two men involved. Sam views Steve as his friend first and foremost, so he is sincere when he says he’s happy for him. But Sam also respects Steve so much as the man who deserves to be Captain America. Much like how Mjolnir can only be wielded by those who are worthy, Cap’s shield becomes a sacred relic that should only be worn by the right man for the job. And when Steve gently encourages Sam to try the shield on, knowing full well what it means to the world and to both of them, he does so as both Captain America finding the right man to fill his position, and as Sam’s friend Steve, telling him with assurance that he really is one of the best people he knows. When Sam confesses that he feels like the shield belongs to someone else, Steve responds with elegant purity “it doesn’t”. Everything at the core of Captain America, the bravery, the conviction to always stand back up and fight no matter how much it pains them to do so, and the responsibility to always look out for the little guy, are all qualities which never belonged to Steve and Steve alone; those virtues can belong to anyone, and Steve tells his friend that he recognises them in Sam. I cannot wait to see the good that Sam will do as he follows his promise to do his best.  

         Tom Holland’s Spider-Man has been developing a mentee / mentor relationship with Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man since Civil War, and here it culminates in a bittersweet arc that lays the groundwork for what I expect will be some fascinating and impactful characterisation in Far From Home in a few months’ time. Tony mourns for Peter most of all, viewing him as a surrogate son who has much of the same inventive genius and drive that he has, with the addition of some compassionate heart and level of responsibility that is far beyond his years. Peter has it in him to be better than Tony, and Tony knows this. So it’s understandable why the loss of that kind, youthful spirit and his limitless potential would hurt Tony so much. In Tony’s dying moments, we share Peter’s tears as we see how much this connection means to them both and realise what is being lost. But we know this is exactly what Tony fought for – the chance for the next generation to live and grow. Holland’s performance when we see Peter return to school hints at his sense of disconnection, as his expression creates the impression that he feels like a stranger in a place with which he once felt so familiar. With the support of his friends, especially Ned, he will find his way in the next step of his journey.

          Endgame provides definitive endings for the journeys of characters we’ve been following for more films than we see most actors get to play Bond, but it also manages to cast a hopeful eye towards the future without compromising its position as a neat conclusion to everything up to this point. In fact, its simultaneous handling of reflective closure and moving forward with renewed purpose makes for a remarkably poignant milestone. Stories rarely strike such a balance between meaningful finality and the uplifting excitement of wanting more stories and knowing you’re going to get them. And that probably sounds shallow and frivolous because, at the end of the day, we’re talking about a successful studio delivering a hyped-up film that promises to be a finale but also serves the financially driven purpose of pitching you a dozen other films and TV series. But through the efforts of over a decade’s worth of dedicated storytellers and creative artists, this series has come to mean more than just another substantial drop in Disney’s bucket. It’s become a fictional world that a massive audience has fallen in love with in the same way that people did with Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, Mass Effect, and a hundred other worlds. We’ve rooted for these characters and cried at some of their most emotional moments, and we’ve grown to care so much about the MCU that it represents a living, breathing world for us. And this kind of ending just makes that proximity to reality that much closer. Stories end and lives come to a close, but they often do so in the middle of other people’s lives and stories. After all, Yinsen’s sacrifice in the MCU’s first film, Iron Man is the end of his story, but his death acts as a foundational moment for the man that Tony would grow to be – his ending is a part of Iron Man’s beginning. In Endgame, heroes pass away, lay down arms, or choose to step down from a position they no longer feel a need to hold onto. At the same time, other heroes move onto the next step of their journey, accept new responsibilities, and accept the titles passed onto them from those who know they will do a fine job. It’s a beautiful encapsulation of the natural balance between life and death, between the end of the old and the beginning of something new. It’s the balance that Thanos strived for but never fully understood, as he wanted to cultivate life but in his obsessive crusade ended up sewing nothing but death. It is only right that the heroes are the ones to achieve that balance through their actions and connections with one another.

Final Score: Gold.

Avengers: Endgame is overflowing and self-indulgent, but it has every right to be and more than earned it. There are missteps, and there’s room for disappointment over the direction that certain characters are taken in, most notably the original version of Gamora ultimately staying dead and staying the victim of an abusive father-figure who seizes all agency away from her, or Thor arguably continuing to veer away from where he was at the end of Thor: Ragnarok and his new weight being an excuse to make cheap jokes that feel uncomfortable. But it is also a well-structured film that offers three distinct tones that are all equally engaging, and its delightful moments of humour and momentous action strikes a grand and immensely satisfying chord with its examination of grief and the natural interrelationship of the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another. It is as significant a landmark for this fictional series as any invested viewer could hope for. It’s a hell of a thing to have come this far, and I can’t wait for whatever comes next.