stealinghome

Thor was definitely the Avenger least serviced by the first two Avenger movies overall (and then Nat had like three lines in IW). I’ve always chalked it up to Thor just not being a character (type) that Whedon was either interested in or particularly good at writing. wtf, autocorrect! This is not Star Trek!

Had Feige known where they were going to go in Ragnarok at the time AoU was scripted and shot, it feels very possible Nat/Bruce would have been pivoted to Thor-Bruce at least somewhat, for sure. I suspect that there is actually a fair amount that TPTB behind the MCU would change if they could go back in time and know where certain plot strands/characters/etc. ended up.

I've always assumed they killed Quicksilver in AoU as part of a deal with Fox, since iirc everyone has always been really murky about the rights to those two characters. I do agree that killing Quicksilver did Wanda's character no favors, though. I am indifferent to Vision and hope/would prefer he stay dead, but I do wish the movies had a clearer vision (no pun intended!) for Wanda and gave her more to do. I thought she worked in Civil War as Natasha's, and to a lesser degree Steve and Sam's, protege, but then all four characters combined got like 20 seconds of screentime in Infinity War and we all know how Endgame ended, so...that never really went anywhere. Man, if there was ever a part of the MCU that needed a Disney+ show, it's totally Steve/Natasha/Sam/Wanda on the run as a guerilla superteam between Civil War and Infinity War.

If you haven't seen the 2016 Ghostbusters, it is worth watching for Hemsworth (and also because it's just a genuinely fun movie). He's hilarious in it.

I'm low-key rooting for a Nebula/Rhodey romance, I can't lie. I just thought those two played so wonderfully off of each other in Endgame, and that Nebula seemed to connect with Rhodey in a way she hasn't with anyone else. And I want to see her get some happiness at the end of the day!

Just being a classic telenovela trope doesn't mean the show by default should have used it, though, unless it worked for the story and would cover new ground for the characters. I would argue that it didn't really here (and it was executed rather poorly to boot, which didn't help). At this point in the show, no one seriously thought that Jane/Rafael were going to break up long-term over Michael coming back, and it's not really "the ultimate question" if Michael isn't even the same person as he was when he "died" (imo making Michael a fundamentally different person is actually a bit of a writing cheat). I understand why the writers wanted to do the "return from the dead" trope, but ultimately I think it was a big miscalculation and bad choice that unfortunately has ended up sullying one of the best storylines the show ever did: Michael's death and Jane's learning to live again through the grief, which ultimately paved the way for her to be with Rafael long-term (which, by the way, was also the best possible end to the interminable triangle from hell that sucked all the life out of the show for the first two seasons). Bringing Michael back also, to me, just felt oddly regressive. The show had evolved beyond the character. The actor is charming but showrunners need to learn when to let go.

Now THAT is a road trip buddy movie that I would pay top dollar to see.

Right? Marvel is many things, but amateur hour isn’t usually one of them. Really surprising (though I wonder if an increasing inevitability of their kinda chop shop approach to making movies). At this point it doesn’t even actually matter what the explanation is—just pick one and create a party line, so you stop looking like amateur hour!

I don't know, I would argue that's not really the case and is a bit of a false equivalence. It's a hoary old chestnut, but it's true: people can accept fantastical premises (aka suspension of disbelief works) as long as the rest of the story is told in a consistent, non-self-contradictory, tight manner. What drives fans nuts is when the story contradicts itself and/or has serious gaping problems that the writers didn't see, because then suspension of disbelief is broken and the entire storytelling world is called into question. My sense is that Game of Thrones is a great comparison actually (I say as a non-GoT watcher who has been observing the carnage for the past few weeks!). Like, as far as I can tell, no one was mad at the Game of Thrones finale because it involved magic and dragons and they're not real, you know? They were mad because they felt like many characters were served poorly by the show's end and the narrative was inconsistent with what came before (I don't watch the show so I have zero idea whether or not that's true, for the record, though it sounds familiar...). Storytelling/narrative problems are totally different from the suspension of disbelief required to roll with a fantastical premise.

I’ve ducked in and out of JtV over the years, so maybe that is why, but I found the finale kind of flat. The only times I really got emotional like the show wanted me to was when it focused on Alba, Xo, and Jane, and the end of their lives together (which I found moving I think mostly because several times the actors were really crying...I wonder if the scene out on the porch was the last one filmed). Otherwise, it was an episode that was...there? IDK, I just thought the episode wanted to be more epic and grand and magical than it actually was. I was kinda bored tbh. That may be a metaphor for this entire season, come to think of it. The one plot line that genuinely had story left and could have used development in this ep—JR and Petra reuniting—got like 5 seconds. With that all said, given how many shows have had just AWFUL finales recently, I commend JtV for not trying to have some “edgy” or “shocking” or whatever finale. (No lie, when Alba went to turn off the light I had a brief moment of horror, wondering if the show would have her keel over right then...and then I was like nah, this is not that show!) They played the end straight and gave everyone their HEA and didn’t try to do something ridiculous and that was the right call. Adios, JtV. You were always uneven but usually fun and charming despite several missteps. I hope most of the cast finds excellent future projects—they are all so talented!

Well, assuming that he did create a new timeline as per the stated movie rules, I certainly HOPE that he supersoldiered the shit out of the new timeline and prevented/fixed all the wrongs he could! (Prevented HYDRA from growing inside SHIELD, saved Bucky and by extension Howard and Maria, saved a young Nat from the Red Room, prepped Earth for the various alien invasions, etc etc.) If he created an alternate timeline just to do jack shit and let all that happen as it did in the original timeline, that would be the absolute worst! To answer what I think is the question behind the question, I can believe Steve fixed stuff in the alternate timeline to create a better world and still think the end the movie wrote for the character is hugely narratively unsatisfying and inconsistent given the character’s arc up until Endgame.

Steve isn't going home, though. The middle of the 20th century isn't his time anymore. It's not his home anymore. Steve himself says as much at the end of Ultron. My issue isn't with Steve retiring and going off to figure out his life--I definitely agree he's earned that right, and I could totally see post-Thanos Steve feeling that way, tbh (since he seems to have felt that way in 2023 before Scott comes back). My issue is with him going back to the past to do it. IMO that just doesn't work for the character at all as presented up until Endgame. I do think that unless he died, wrapping up Steve's story was always going to be really hard for the writers because the character had mileage left and writing Steve out was clearly dictated by Evans wanting out of the franchise (as opposed to Tony, where RDJ wanted out but I also really do think this is the right time for the character to bow out). I just think the writers screwed the pooch in how they did it, and the fact that they're all scrambling to explain everything in interviews--and contradicting each other in those interviews--is a good sign that they did, in fact, screw the pooch. Put differently, I would make the same comment on the Infinity War vs Endgame lady team-up shot discussed above: while sad and some fans wish it hadn't happened, no one is arguing that Tony's death was out of character or didn't work for Tony's character arc as presented in the MCU. That suggests Tony's death was good storytelling that built on what came before. The fact that the debate continues to rage over Steve's suggests (imo) that the writers fucked up on some level, because if they hadn't, there wouldn't be a debate.

Yes!!! I LOVED that moment, easily one of the two or three best in Infinity War for me. And as you said, that moment feels much more earned and therefore works so much better—it’s telling, I think, that there was no “but it’s pandering!/inorganic!/etc.” response to that moment. It just goes to show that Marvel CAN definitely do better—and as others have said, it looks like they’re making it a priority in future movies, which is awesome!

ITA with this and am really, really hoping that Marvel continues to diversify its representation. Black Panther and Captain Marvel have been good starts and I hope Marvel keeps going strong in that direction. With that said, though, I was meh on the girl power team-up moment because imo it felt unearned and way too self-congratulatory given the MCU to date. It felt to me like Marvel wanted to get quick or easy points for being pro-powerful women, but the moment kind of rang hollow because the MCU hasn't put in the work to where it felt like it flowed with the track record established in the however many movies led up to Endgame. I'm not willing to give Marvel a cookie for one team-up shot of most of the MCU ladies when Marvel's overall track record re: gender--and even in this fucking movie, given Natasha's death (imo)--has been shoddy. If they want a cookie from me, they need to do better. Now, double with that said, the degree to which that moment is making the manbabies upset delights me to no end given that it's like a four-second piece of the movie, so at the end of the day I'm glad that Marvel kept it in. But even better than that one shot would be Marvel doing much better across the board by its female characters in the next decade. If they can do that, then maybe the next time we get a shot of all the MCU heroines teaming up, it will feel earned and authentic and there won't even be a discussion about whether or not it's pandering because the storytelling will have built up to that moment appropriately.

As Bill even pointed out to her later!