Wynterwolf

While they consistently keep reiterating that they did, and while also never even acknowledging the ramifications for the rest of the universe. From a storytelling standpoint, I think the biggest issues have come from them allowing Thanos to make the snap. If they hadn't done that, I don't think the scope of their story would have gotten quite so far away from them. They basically went a step too far... for shock value, not for storytelling value. And if they had kept the scope to something that would be more inline with a 2-3 hour movie, they still could have used Time Travel and creating the mulitverse to stop him, but it would have eliminated so many of the unanswerable questions if they hadn't been so hot to kill everyone. And when you have to spend countless interviews and AMAs trying to 'explain' your movie, that's generally a pretty clear indication of a failure in the storytelling. It was still a very pretty movie, though.

Interesting theory about what Keri Russell's character could mean for Rey. I admit, I love the idea that Zorri Bliss could have info (that maybe she wants to sell) for Rey about her parents.

Ha, yes! I really want to see exactly what she's covering there!

There is already fic!!! 🤣

I think this might have been back from when JJ had only said 'a significant amount of time had passed'. I don't think I would have worded a year in that way, I probably would have worded that more as 'some time has passed'. A "significant" amount of time would be longer than a year to me, but I'm glad we have a firm time frame now. I had missed that info when Celebration happened.

Interesting also that they're saying here that it's been about a year since TLJ, rather than the 2 years I had seen before. That changes things up a bit in that the events of TLJ aren't quite as far in the past, and so could realistically inform more of what will happen here than if it had been twice that long.

Those Vanity Fair articles and picture are amazing and fascinating. Visually stunning. I am so ready to shift into Star Wars mode. This reality in particular, is something I hope JJ is able to incorporate effectively into his vision (from here).

Yep, that's where I'm living these days...

I strongly suspect the writers were mandated to hook Steve up with a woman, and since they were killing Natasha, and Sharon wasn't in the picture, Peggy was their only option.

I'm sure some are, but I know a lot that are angry for how Peggy was reduced to a prize (good article about the issue of male entitlement in Steve's arc here). I feel like the ending was designed to appeal most to people who either haven't seen the prior movies, or don't remember much about them and so were only going by what was shown in this movie, so it was more like a stand alone. But even with that, there are still so many logical fallacies that you can't make any scenario work with the text 100%, so you have to either fill in a lot, or ignore stuff.

They didn't work closely with Armin Zola. Howard also straight up became an arms dealer. There is definitely a lot of open water there, between Howard in TFA and later, and you can fill that in however you choose. eta - I also wonder how much of a coincidence it is that Howard came up with his own (what appeared to be blue glowy tesseract powered) Super Soldier serum, after he worked with Zola.

Yes, she was great. She essentially shared the 'exposition fairy' position with Professor Hulk. Shitty and distant is emotional abuse. And emotional abuse can sometimes have a much deeper/more damaging impact on someone than physical abuse. Everyone is going to view this movie through their own personal lens, that's what we as fans do. Everyone is going to focus on different things, things that speak to them. For me, this movie is 90% super delicious, absolutely gorgeous frosting, but the tiny cake underneath is basically whiny white boy fanservice. I'm honestly surprised no one called Thor "soy boy" for having feeeelings and for showing in the past that he genuinely supports and respects women.

Yeah, I don't believe they are either. What they did was deliberate. Especially M&M trying to sell that Bucky is 'fine', that's why Steve could feel good about leaving his friend, while the Russo's keep harping on how damaged he is. Which seems like what they are ultimately trying to do now is reset Bucky back to where he was in CW (ignoring that any time or character growth, however limited it was, has happened at all, or that he was deemed 'fine' in EG so Steve could happily leave him), so they can now explore that element of Bucky's character without Steve in the picture, since they couldn't figure out how to do that without some fans viewing their interaction as romantic. That's... yeah. That's how I felt about so many of the 'feel good' moments: Girl Power iconic image! (so lets ignore that no woman played any major role and even Natasha was reduced to only being relevant because a man loved her enough for her to qualify as his sacrifice to get a stone) Aw, Steve gets to grow old with Peggy! (so lets just ignore every sociopolitical and character-based implications of that choice, not to mention in-universe logistical issues) Thor is still worthy! (so lets ignore how his 'friends' denigrated and ridiculed him the entire movie for a laugh, and even in the otherwise beautiful scene with his mother, even she fat shamed him and told him to eat a salad... for a laugh) Sam is the new Captain America! (so lets ignore that Clint was a racist serial killer with no consequences for, or even acknowledgment of the implications of, his actions) Aw, Tony is bonding with his father over having a kid (so lets ignore that his father was either a Hydra dupe or Hydra collaborator and was an abusive father that contributed tremendously to his son's mental health issues, which in the end also contributed to him returning to his roots not only as a purveyor of a WMD, but also as a wielder of a WMD as his final 'heroic' act). (sits back down in corner with a checklist of 'unpopular opinions')

Apparently they're also forgetting that, as late as during the process of writing IW, they were still considering Sharon a viable option when they talked about how they abandoned the idea of including that domestic scene of them in an apartment somewhere 'trying to make it work'. Also, re them writing the Cap films, yeah I think EG (and to a lesser extent IW) is a great example of what happens when you have to write a plot-driven story with predetermined endings rather than the character-driving stories they did for the Cap films. I think that's also partly why they kept the 5 year time jump, because it gives them a lot of wiggle room to say that 'weeeelll, a lot happened in those 5 years' to cover for the unearned character leaps, not only for Steve's character, but for everyone else too.

Yeah, I suspect Keaton will always be my favorite Batman, perfect combo of actor and project.

I'll be honest, I'm intrigued. Pattinson is a blank slate to me. I stayed far away from anything Twilight related, and I'm not familiar with anything else him might have been in. But at least what I've seen of him, I think he far better suited to how I picture the character than the last several iterations. This will be interesting to watch unfold..

Heh.

And you don't have to abandon the underlying bigotry and the effects of systemic prejudice to tell different stories, in fact it would silly to do so. It's part of the landscape, it can cause problems with how to solve whatever problem The A Plot is trying to solve, and sometimes it can be even more effectively examined as the B plot. It's the same with queer stories, they don't always have to be about being queer, queerness is part of the landscape and should be shown as such.

Yeah, they were pretty wishy washy about the time stuff in AntMan & the Wasp too. Basically it does whatever they want it to at the time they want it to do it.

Heh. Weeeell.... in all seriousness, I believe they had originally intended to make that a timeloop, so they were trying to imply that Steve had gone back in time and stayed there, living his life in real time from 1948 (when we say Steve and Peggy dancing) to 2023 and OldSteve knew to go to that bench at that time, because his younger self had been there. But there were myriad issues with that scenario (that they apparently didn't think of before they decided to use that storyline??? yeah, IDK). But also apparently that intention was changed at some point by the Russos to be that OldSteve came from a different timeline that he created when YoungSteve went back to 1948 and stayed with Peggy. Which there are also myriad issues with, but different ones (and they present it as a 'mystery' for how OldSteve got on the bench... aka, poor writing/storytelling). So, really it's viewers choice... you can go with either of those options (M&M are supporting the timeloop, Russos are supporting the New Timeline), or you can figure out something else if you have another idea... all ideas are valid. And with Scott, he was basically stuck in limbo in the Quantum realm (where time apparently didn't pass for him?) when the mouse/rat hit the button on the gizmo in the van that brought him back. So, another completely different situation to any of the possibilities that Steve did.

I'm seeing some fallout from fans that identify with Dany's character through dealing with mental health issues, similar to how fans identify with Bucky through PTSD, and Quentin's death in The Magicians... writers need to get their shit together and learn about mental health issues, and how to portray them more responsibly.

I think that might be another part of the my issue here, though... a movie isn't a comic book. Or even like a television series. The individual character beats and plot points carry far more weight in a movie environment as far as their impact on a larger audience. So if they fail or don't make sense, there are greater consequences, both in-universe, and in real life, and there're not as easy to 'fix' or even just overlook.

The vast majority of viewers aren't bothered by any of this, though. Yep.

Yep. The calculated intention of this movie in a nutshell. And in general, they weren't wrong.

I'm glad you liked it!