marvel really made every single character worse in endgame. fat joke thor. republican steve. mass murderer clint. dead nat (rip). professor hulk. wtf were they thinking
I’ve been thinking a lot about Endgame, probably too much and this is what I’ve concluded after having seen the movie 3 times, and having thought about it at length. I’m adding a read more tab because this is nearly 3k long.
steve rogers physically COLLAPSED onto the ground from grief. he just watched his best friend die for the second time. he hears silence on the comm link with sam. wanda is missing. vision is dead. the extent of loss is unknown to him, but he’s already overwhelmed by it. some of the most important people, his family, are gone. he can’t hold himself up from the weight of his sorrow. and I’m expected to believe this steve rogers spends his time in a basement mourning a woman who died of old age? UUUUYYGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
having a lot of feels after reading @luna-rainbow ’s stucky meta… about the theme of partners following each other and how much of an expression of love that is for steve and bucky.
how in catfa steve wanted to go to war, to do his part, like other men. but also, i think he wanted to follow bucky, where bucky was assigned to the unit that steve’s father had been in. how bucky followed steve into the alley, dispatching the bully and pulling steve out from where he’d gotten in over his head again. how steve, in a symbolic death and rebirth into a new physical form, did manage to follow bucky to war. how steve, not knowing if bucky was dead or alive, followed him into a nazi research facility. how, in following bucky, steve truly came into his own as captain america. how bucky, in turn, followed steve back to war, and they set about burning hydra off the map. inseparable in schoolyard and battlefield. how bucky quite literally followed steve to the jaws of death– just like he said he would.
how steve, in avenging bucky, also followed him to death. how they both re-emerged, battered and worn, relics of a long-ago war forced to fight again, bucky not even knowing who he was, and steve being so horrified that bucky didn’t recognize him that he almost let hydra shoot him in the head. how steve’s most prominent memory of the man bucky had been, the man he knew remained within the winter soldier, was of bucky following steve from his mother’s funeral to offer him a home together. how steve put his old uniform back on in the hopes that bucky would recognize him. how he spent two years chasing bucky, following him again. how he would have let a helicopter rip his arms off before he let bucky go again. how when steve finally, finally caught up with bucky, he chose to burn his bridges with the country whose colors he wore (as well as with some of his new found family and most of the rest of the world) to protect him.
how bucky literally disintegrated in front of steve, and steve knelt and touched his ashes. the two of them following each other, losing and finding each other, two stars revolving around each other, over and over in circles, a line that never ends, like their vow to each other. how bucky screamed not without you in that burning factory, preferring to die with steve rather than live without him. how steve preferred to die at bucky’s hands rather than lift his own to hurt him again.
how following someone is a theme of love in so many stories, poems, and songs. orpheus and eurydice, achilles and patroclus, sam and frodo.
it’s just sad that the writers chose, as steve roger’s last act, to have him go where bucky couldn’t follow.
To commemorate Endgame’s two-year anniversary, have another rant (you’re welcome). Even after two years, something that troubles me no end is that, according to Endgame, Bucky and Sam et al. are just supposed to… get over losing Steve. That they were expected to just move on from the loss of their friend (in Bucky’s case, his lifelong best friend and alleged soulmate) and just be fine after a little while. Yet at the same time, Endgame Steve, who, roughly eight decades on, is apparently still unable to get over Peggy - the woman he kissed one (1) time and only when he was maybe about to die, the woman he knows lived a long, happy life without him, who actually told him to move on, and who he literally buried - is expected to do no such thing.
Because, of course, heterosexual romance, even of the blandest kind, is far more valid and important than every other kind of romance, friendship, and (found) family combined.
Steve and Peggy never even went on a single date. Never canonically said ‘I love you’ or anything of the sort (certainly nothing like ‘I’m with you till the end of the line’). Fuck, Steve was even shown kissing Peggy’s niece not long after he buried Peggy. And yet we’re supposed to buy that in Endgame, Peggy is suddenly ‘the love of Steve’s life’, and losing her to old age devastated him more than the unexpected losses of so many of his friends - including Bucky, who he’d only just gotten back after years of looking for him, fighting for him, getting him back and losing him again- combined?
We’re supposed to blindly accept that it makes total sense for Steve to then, at the end of Endgame, leave everything and everyone he loves to go back to the past, to a time that would’ve been horrible for him for so many reasons, solelyto play happy families with Peggy? Even though Steve canonically told Tony in AOU that the guy who wanted stability and a family went into the ice 75 years ago and someone else ‘came out’? Even though Steve fought the whole world to get Bucky back and keep him safe, gave up his shield for him twice, and would’ve given up his life for him without hesitation if the alternative meant having to live without him again (even at a time when Peggy was still alive, mind you)?
The fact is, in the Cap movies we were shown that when it came down to it, nothing was more important to Steve than Bucky - certainly not Peggy. If anything came close, it was Steve’s relationships with the people he met in the new century, who he spent years living and fighting side by side with, and who, in Sam’s case, he canonically loved and admired enough to entrust him with his shield and legacy. What was between Steve and Peggy was canonically little more than a crush or mutual admiration/infatuation. If we’re supposed to take Endgame’s ending at face value, what Steve did was extremely out of character, deeply unhealthy and unfair, and most likely indicative of severe mental instability as a result of repeated and untreated trauma -not some romantic grand gesture to swoon over, and not a well-deserved happy ending. Apart from that, nothing we were shownin canon warranted Steve’s decision to leave everything and go back in time to be with Peggy in Endgame. And yet, that’s what the creators chose to go with, simply because it was the most widely palatable and therefore the most marketable option.
So yeah, Endgame’s ending is a farce and an insult to our intelligence at best, and a patronizing, cowardly, misogynistic, homophobic, capitalistic and plain awful mess at worst. And it is also one of the reasons why I simply do not vibe with canon any longer and I’m sticking to fanon forever more, thank you very much.
Why is the soul stone the only one that needs a Thing to aquire? Time and Space were chilling on earth, Reality and Power in cages, and Thanos just had Mind somehow. Why did two women have to die for fucking rocks??
I feel this needs to be shouted loudly everywhere. Like I’m waiting for the idiots to let me in on the joke or credible explanation of why the infinity mcguffins mattered at all but especially the soul stone being all set up… AND nothing explained. Red Skull and man-pain lady killing. WHY?! What was with the rule and guardian and soul realm and ok you have it for the set but what did the bugger do itself?
steve rogers said “I can do this all day” bc as a 105 pound chronically ill man he would get into fights w men twice his size daily and get knocked down time after time after time. his whole mo was stand up for the little guy & for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves, despite the fact that he was the little guy. it is a phrase that was born in the back alleys of brooklyn, and belonged to a man that always stood up (as long as his body allowed him), and peggy carter should not have been given that line under and circumstance
these tags are fantastic @anniethelen and completely on point
What Marvel is doing with Captain Carter is really bad. They’re making some shithouse choices with her.
It’s clear the purpose is a female badass super hero on the same level as Cap, the problem is Peggy is not Steve Rogers no matter how much the writers of What If and MOM pretend.
What makes Cap great, both Steve and hopefully Sam depending on what Spellman does with him, is that they’re people of conviction, morality and courage. They have high ideals and live up to them. Steve’s Cap is the idealised version of Steve Rogers, but Steve is still the basis for those ideals and behaviours. He is “not a perfect soldier, but a good man” and someone that has spent his life disadvantaged, and pushed aside for everything but his gender. And remember, 1940’s America at the height of Eugenics and Masculine Manly Ideals and Steve was a scrawny, disabled, Irish Catholic lad that was poor, and probably written off as a ‘fairy’. So being male wasn’t much of a privilege in that context.
Mean while Peggy Carter is a spy. Not a soldier. And not a great person really, I’m sure others can and will elaborate but… I mean holy hell, losing your tempter and SHOOTING at someone in an enclosed space all because someone kissed them? Ain’t good.
And furthermore she does not share the same history of hardships and oppression Steve does. Aside from her gender, Peggy Carter is an incredibly privileged woman, and even then, feminism and equality was making some serious strides, even if it was set back after the war.
So taking Peggy, giving her the serum (after stepping over Steve’s bleeding body), and then slapping on all these elements form HIS story? Does not a compelling character or story make. You’re just slapping on red white and blue paint and calling it good and it loses ALL the depth and meaning it had in the original context.
And the line “I can do this all day” is a perfect example of this.
We first get that line from Steve when he’s the little guy, bleeding in a back alley, after getting up from a punch. After standing up to a guy being an asshole during pre-movie newsreels. And you get the feeling that he’s said this *a lot*. And he’s had to say it, each and every time he gets up after being knocked down, despite burning lungs, despite broken noses, bleeding lips, black eyes forming and whatever else he’s faced. “I’m not tired, I’m not broken, I can and will keep going, fuck you.” Because a disabled sickly little guy isn’t supposed to be able to keep going. It’s defiance. It’s will.
But what does it mean when Peggy says it? A healthy, athletic, woman, well off, well educated, now super enhanced. There’s no question she’s faced pushed back her entire life because woman with ambition wasn’t accepted really… But lacks the layers of Steve’s struggles. And more it lacks precise context. We’re never given a moment of her own when she’s had to 'go all day’. Where she’s had to get up again and again and again. We are not shown. It isn’t earned.
Which is why it feels half-assed, slapped on. It doesn’t have the meaning it does when it comes from Steve (that ridiculous moment in Endgame aside).
And that’s really the problem with Captain Carter. Narratively speaking, nothing’s earned with her and all the moments she has been given aren’t even hers. And thus they’re shallow, flimsy, and so is she.
It’s bad writing. As usual.
If she’d been given the time and good writing instead of being placed on a pedestal and covered in Steve’s schtick, this wouldn’t be a problem. If she had been given her own moments, her own lines instead of piggybacking of the male base model, the whole Captain Carter thing would not feel so forced and shallow. They could have riffed on her whole playing knight story as a kid, made references to her brother, shown us her doubts, her fears, her weaknesses and humanity. A great writer can do a lot with a few lines at the right moment. They had the Agent Carter series to build off.
But they didn’t. They just stole stuff from Steve and called it a day.
This hurts so much. This is exactly what needs to be the rebuttal to Steve and his choice of ending. Because it’s not his missed chance to be regained. It belonged to his past. Either that alt Steve or the him that first lost time, because the Steve of Endgame is not the same and doesn’t belong.
Longing for old joys or chances is not the same as finding new hopes. And I want a Steve that hopes and seeks it, hence he belonged learning and finding or seeking it in the now, in his future.
5 years ago, and 4 years ago, and even 3 years ago, I would’ve been over the moon about the announcement that Loki was getting his own show. I would’ve been floating on air, the kind of excited where you could hardly eat or sleep because of the anticipation. I don’t feel any of that now. What I actually feel right now is…dread? Marvel has changed, drastically, and the franchise that enchanted me, that I fell in love with, looks nothing like it did before. It has become something of an unkind stranger, harsh and unwelcoming. My favorite character was made to look weak, turned into a laughing stock, robbed of all his powers and reduced to throwaway plot device in the cruelest, most brutal way they could think of. Marvel just not only allowed him to be tarred and feathered, they…revelled in it. They plotted his demise to make sure it was the most horrible and the most hurtful and they were… so proud of it. The way they bragged, the way they trolled fans. They make me sick. I felt so disillusioned and disenchanted. I felt like an idiot for caring way more about this than I evidently ever should have. I can never believe another word that comes out of their mouths, and I can’t trust them anymore. So you can understand why I feel the way I do about the Loki series.
I think the biggest mistake Marvel made (narratively, evidently non economically) is to have so many people writing the story. Of course it is impossible to have one director and one group of writers if you want to get three or four movies out every year, but they could have least have the same for a whole trilogy, and at least people with similar ideas, so that the characters we see in the avengers movies are almost treated the same as in their trilogies.
to be fair, they did offer Ragnarok’s direction to the director of Thor 2 first, but he said no
apparently they gave him a lot of freedom in directing Thor 2 but changed his work so much in the editing room that it was irrecognizable to him and he didn’t want to go through that again
(they also offered Thor 2 to Thor 1′s director but he also said no because he felt he would not be able to do the film justice vOv)
I’m a bit more unsure on what happened with Whedon other than the reported stress of working on AoU pushing him out of filming the next one
5 years ago, and 4 years ago, and even 3 years ago, I would’ve been over the moon about the announcement that Loki was getting his own show. I would’ve been floating on air, the kind of excited where you could hardly eat or sleep because of the anticipation. I don’t feel any of that now. What I actually feel right now is…dread? Marvel has changed, drastically, and the franchise that enchanted me, that I fell in love with, looks nothing like it did before. It has become something of an unkind stranger, harsh and unwelcoming. My favorite character was made to look weak, turned into a laughing stock, robbed of all his powers and reduced to throwaway plot device in the cruelest, most brutal way they could think of. Marvel just not only allowed him to be tarred and feathered, they…revelled in it. They plotted his demise to make sure it was the most horrible and the most hurtful and they were… so proud of it. The way they bragged, the way they trolled fans. They make me sick. I felt so disillusioned and disenchanted. I felt like an idiot for caring way more about this than I evidently ever should have. I can never believe another word that comes out of their mouths, and I can’t trust them anymore. So you can understand why I feel the way I do about the Loki series.
Sometimes I think about how badly Thor Ragnarok’s back must hurt from carrying the weight of almost all of Thor and Loki’s character development in one film. ESPECIALLY the effort in bringing THOR’S story full circle. Bothering to NOT ONLY bring back Thor’s original story from the first film, not only give it a satisfying ending, but also develop Loki beyond the “Clever, backstabbing villain” pigeon hole the character was in. (And also develop the lore beyond the fail sauce “Oh, it’s just science from a different point of view” they’d used before.)
Then I remember that Infinity War and Endgame’s reaction to that development was this:
chris evans, hayley atwell, the russos, markus & mcfeely, every person at marvel: steve rogers ending was a perfect fit for the character and it’s what we planned on from the beginning
me, referring to every minute steve rogers has been on screen in the mcu: I have receipts that prove otherwise
do I think it was in character for steve to leave his best friend til the end of the line, bucky barnes? no. do i think it was in character for steve to leave his left hand man sam wilson? no. do I think it was in character for steve to leave a life he had fought so hard for in the present? no.
but most importantly, I do not think it was in character for steve to be selfish enough to disrupt a timeline he didn’t belong in, claim a trophy wife, and abandon his morals. do I think steve deserves to be selfish after everything? yes. but do I think steve could be selfish, after everything? also no.
see the thing is, steve rogers is a hero. he was a hero from the day he was born. captain america was never the important special part about him. it was who he was. steve rogers, a underweight chronically ill kid, stood up against bullies double his size and let himself get beaten to a pulp daily. not because he didn’t know when to give up, but bc he couldn’t. steve rogers jumped on a grenade bc he’d rather sacrifice his life than watch others die from his inaction. steve rogers stood against the us govt, world govts, his own friends…..not to be difficult or stubborn but bc it is ingrained in his very essence to stand up for what he thinks is right, even if he is the only one standing.
I refuse to believe that the end scene in endgame in canon bc while you can take captain america from him, steve with ALWAYS be steve rogers
It’s so hilarious that Endgame was supposedly the greatest event in cinematic history and less than a year later nobody talks about it ever and if it’s brought up again the collective response is just “oh right”
infinity war steve: DONE following the rules. KNUCKLE gloves and a BLACK suit and a BEARD. fuck the police fuck the government fuck You. on the run bc he wants to be not bc he has to be. drama. prestige. icon. 10/10 will fuck u up
I cannot believe marvel had the audacity to give us only six minutes of fucking nomad steven grant rogers (teasing that he’d have a much bigger part in a4) just to have him shave the beard off three minutes into endgame
As everyone knows, I freakin’ love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and will gladly gush about my babies to any and all who will listen. That doesn’t mean, however, that I won’t call Feige and Marvel on the carpet when they do stupid stuff … and in a universe that spans over a decade with so many movies and writers and actors and directors, mistakes are bound to happen.
So here’s my off-the-top-of-my-head-list of things the MCU has fucked up. As always, these are my opinions and you are free to disagree with me. Some of these are very personal (*cough* Clint *cough*) while others are fairly universal. Enjoy at your own leisure!
10. The Five Year “Blip” that deprived the audience
I get it. They wanted to show the Avengers dealing with loss, make some changes to characters, and really ratchet up the emotional stakes of the plot. To give us an older Steve Rogers, Tony with a family, and Hulk/Bruce who’s come to terms with himself. But the five-year gap between the snap and the return of the “blipped” creates more problems than it solves. All of Spiderman’s friends blipped except the new M.J. love interest dude? What are the odds? People didn’t move on with new lovers/spouses? Awkward. The sudden influx of 50% more people didn’t throw the whole world into chaos? (a mention about fundraisers in Far from Home isn’t enough, folks)
And let’s talk about rushed storytelling in those five years. If you jump the plot forward, we miss a satisfactory conclusion of Bruce’s story (oh, yeah, he’s both now!), a lovely completion of Tony’s growth into content father & husband, a serious look into Thor and Steve and Natasha’s different depression arcs. There were so many other ways to do the same thing (I mean, six months would work, honestly); the blip deprived us of way too much.
9. Killing off Pietro and keeping him dead
Of all the characters who’ve died and stayed dead (and there are not that many main ones; they even figured out how to get Gamora back), Whedon’s decision to kill Pietro rankles, especially now that Wandavision is on the horizon. As a central comic book character in both the Avengers and X-men series, Pietro serves as a balance for his sister’s excesses (which I certainly hope to see in the Disney+ show) and as a bridge between the two franchises. Now that Marvel has the X-men in hand again, Pietro would make a great way to bring them together, draw Magneto into the Avengers’ sphere and the Avengers into the X-men’s bubble of influence. He’d also be a touchstone for Wanda as she goes through the loss of Vision and what will surely be her own descent into madness with the upcoming Dr. Strange movie. It’s also a waste of talent (Aaron Taylor Johnson’s got some serious acting chops) as well as a missing link to the Young Avengers through his nephews Billy and Tommy (the latter another speedster).
8. The Villian-A-Movie formula for most flicks
Thanos and Loki aside, most of the MCU movies use a formula where the villain dies and/or is brought to justice at the end. Sometimes, it doesn’t bother me …honestly, Vanko in Iron Man 2? The Dark Elves in Thor 2? Darren Cross in Antman? Were they fleshed out enough to really be a threat to our heroes or just cyphers thrown in to give the heroes something to react against? … but for a really fascinating, well-drawn villain like Killmonger or Vulture, it’s a crime to cut short their development because the hero has to win. Don’t get me wrong; I love Killmonger’s final lines … I cry every damn time … and I like the prison tag scene in Homecoming, but those characters are wasted by only being on our screens for such a small time. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t formula … either we seem to get flat, one-dimensional bad guys or we get too little time with the fascinating ones … which brings us to …
7. The Humanization and Tragic Backstory of Thanos
I’m going political here, so be warned. Why, of all the possible villains to give a daughter he appears to love and a tragic “my planet didn’t listen to me” spiel, did they pick Thanos? Mr. Despot, Genocidal Dictator who kills millions without hesitation? Who spouts absurd theories that sound like something Jordan Peterson or Richard Spenser would say? A guy who believes it’s his way or the highway and by highway, he means mass murder?
Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? I don’t. Are we supposed to believe he loves Gamora, the little girl whose mother he killed in front of her then later sacrificed for his own desires? I don’t. Is he supposed to invoke any of those Old European White Guys we’ve been force-fed in history classes, the ones that cared only about their own power as they raped and pillaged their way across other people’s lands? ‘Cause that only makes me hate him more.
I could say I wonder how they got this so wrong, why Killmonger dies and Thanos gets a huge story arc, but I know exactly why. Representation at all levels of the movie biz matters, folks.
6. Ronin: A Case of Too Quick and Too Little
Dealing with a massive undertaking like the MCU, there’s bound to be plots & characters from the comics that people love and want to include but there’s just not enough time to do well (see villain point made above). Ronin is an example of a name that got lots of fans excited but failed to materialize as anything more than a couple of quick but cool fight scenes, a blink and you’ll miss it scenario that left a lot of us feeling unsatisfied. After those first glimpses in Endgametrailers, the quotes from the Russos and others about how much they love Clint Barton as the ninja assassin, the follow-through was … well, let’s just say it didn’t live up to the hype, shall we?
The problem with tossing in characters and details like Ronin is that it takes them off the playing board for future movies/shows, constraining the portrayals from now on as “Clint’s blip breakdown” rather than the rich history of Ronin could have had.
5. Where Have All the Women Gone? – Peggy Carter, Sharon Carter, Jane Foster, Pepper Potts, Janet Van Dyne, et al
Let’s see if I’ve got this.
Introduce a female character as a love interest for hot male superhero. Maybe play up her strengths, make her a badass, intelligent, and hot too. Don’t give her a lead role … and if you do, put her in a network show without any support and let the network effectively kill it … but do make her attractive enough that guys want to fuck her and women want to be her. Then drop her as if she never existed, just don’t bring her back at all (Darcy) or toss of a line about them breaking up (Jane) or let her die so there can be man pain at the funeral (Peggy).
Numerous sources say that the only reason we had Pepper Potts in Avengerswas at Robert Downey Jr’s insistence. Hell, they killed off Natasha as a sacrifice play, so why would we expect them to care about Janet Van Dyne who literally is a founding team member in the comic books?
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
4. LGBTQIA Bait and Switch by Disney et al
First thing queer fans of Marvel need to know is that those headlines you see mean jack shit. Oh yeah, we have gay people in our movies, Disney touts. Gonna be a bisexual in an MCU film real soon! Right there, see him? Third bystander on the left? He’s trans!
Look, I probably have a deeper understanding of what Feige and the Russos and Taiki are facing when it comes to getting a queer character past Disney execs because I study pop culture. The notion that putting a homosexual character in a film will make homosexuality more prevalent is an old, old, old evil that is deeply wound around our Western ideals of childhood, repressed sexuality, and puritanical roots. It’s fucking wrong, and the face it was so damn difficult to let Joe Russo use a male pronoun for his snapped spouse in Endgameneeds to change. This shitty bait-n-switch where they promise and promote it only to be a tiny flicker of celluloid moment is the worse kind of pandering and condescending garbage. It’s high fucking time we got off this hobby horse that’s destroyed so many lives and psyches, and we’re beyond ready to hold these executives and others accountable when they pretend to care but only really want to make boatloads of money kowtowing to outdated racist and sexist beliefs.
3. The Character Assassination of Clint Barton
Speaking of hobby horses, as a fan of Hawkeye, the denuding of Clint’s comic personality to make him the stable family man of the group is one of the worst writing decisions of the MCU. Yes, I know they went more with the Ultimates universe, but even there Clint is a smart-mouthed asshole who jumps off buildings and likes being the center of attention. From Whedon’s choice to put Clint under Loki’s thrall (he appears in the first Avengers movie for just under 13 minutes) to the Russos dropping his part in CA:WS to Whedon giving him a family in AOU for his main storyline to being absent entirely in Infinity War and the shitty short Ronin stint in Endgame, we were robbed of the funny, sarcastic little shit who could have been so much more.
And speaking of AOU …
2. Bruce and Natasha’s Ill-fated Romantic Arc
Look, I want Bruce and Natasha to be happy as much as the next person and they damn well deserve to be loved. But shoehorning in a romance that seemingly comes from nowhere and even contradicts some chemistry/hints of pairings from other movies (Clintasha, I’m talking about you) isn’t the way to do it. Add to the sudden appearance of the romance the ham-handed writing … he falls face first in her boobs, for God’s sake, Joss … and the sun’s going down “Natasha civilizes the beast” repetition, and it’s fast on its way to squicky territory.
But that cringeworthy, gender-stereotyped discussion about how they’re both monsters? Sure, it can be read as Nat saying she’s a monster because of being the Black Widow and all the terrible things she’s done over the years, but Whedon had to go and add the part about forced sterilization (forced being the imperative word there, the part of Nat’s story that makes her NOT a monster but a terrified girl not given a choice over her own body). That one conversation takes us into “Oh, hell, no, we are NOT going there” anger. Poorly written and conceived, it’s one of the worst, head-scratching decisions anyone made in the MCU.
1. Old Man Steve Rogers
I want to state for the record that I fucking adore Steve and Peggy. Yes, I can easily see her as the love of his life and understand his utter loss at not spending his life with her. Peggy Carter deserves all the good things. If Steve had been stranded in the past, only enough PYM particles to send Tony back to his family, I would have been fine … nay … I would have rejoiced to think of Steve and Peggy together and thought the whole “we never saw her husband” a clever twist.
Alas, it was not so. Instead, we get a convoluted mess of time travel (don’t get me started. I have flow charts and diagrams to explain why we can’t have BOTH Loki disappearing with the tesseract not affecting the main timeline AND Steve going back and reappearing in the main timeline because te two contradict each other) and dangling threads everywhere. Did Steve watch Sharon grow up? Did Steve get squicked out watching her grow up? Did Steve warn Peggy about HYDRA? About the importance of Hank Pym’s work? About not trusting Obediah Stane? Did he look up Nick Fury?
But I’ll argue the biggest of all fuck-ups is the absolute negation of the Steve/Bucky plotline that had developed over the course of three Cap movies and Infinity War. Can the Russos and Feige and the others involved have notnoticed the deep and abiding connection between the two men that they themselves put on the screen? ‘Til the end of the line? Oh, did you really mean until I have a time machine and can go back to change my life? Even if we take the latent homoerotic subtones that may or may not be present out of the equation, going back in time and leaving his best pal, his buddy, his Bucky, the guy he had when he had nothing makes no freakin’ sense. Somewhere, in their rush to bring the era to a close and decide how to send Chris Evans off in the sunset, they fell back into the stereotype of “man marries and that’s the end of anything interesting in his life to write about.”
Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall for a while and reread Fraction’s Hawkeyerun.
Cake delivering the goddamn tea yo
As an addendum to the problems of Old Man Steve:
The way the writers insist Steve was in this timeline, that he’s Peggy’s husband here? It means Steve didn’t just abandon Bucky in the present. It means Steve sat around for DECADES while his best friend was brainwashed, tortured, and forced to be an assassin for Hydra. He didn’t just choose to abandon Bucky once, he did it every damn day, while he let Peggy go to work with people he knew were Hydra, but apparently didn’t warn anyone about.
It’s supposed to be a “happily ever after” for Steve, but it’s him living a constant betrayal of the two people in this world that he supposedly loves the most.
idk idk idk I really fail to see how steve rogers went from wearing a uniform so dirty it was black w the star ripped off, drinking “fuck the government” juice & saying shit like “I’m not asking for forgiveness and I’m way past asking for permission” and looking like this
to a 50 yo suburban dad who wears socks under his sandals crying in a basement about a woman that died of old age ten years prior to the only sad sacks in nyc willing to listen to him, all who watched their loved ones disintegrate in front of their eyes ……..
Also gotta love that steve had become so jaded & tired of fighting —of existing— that he just abandoned all of his core values and his friends !!! his stubbornness was gone!! his unceasing drive to protect people was gone !!!! he literally moved to the city to feel bad for himself about a girl he NEVER dated (kissed once!!!!! Once!!!!) while natasha struggled to take care of herself because she was left Alone to run the avengers and keep tabs on planet earth in the face of an apocalypse
steve did nothing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in civil war & infinity war steve was on the run. America had turned on him. the government had turned on him. the world had turned on him. he was an international FUGITIVE. the ones he fought so hard to protect turned their backs on him. Did he stop fighting? Did he stop hunting hydra and the evil in the world? pushing back against corruption and inequality ? NO. that bitch said I’m going to work on my look, be gay, and fight crime!!!!!!!!
endgame said “forget all that. steve misses peggy. That is his One personality trait now”
it’s just funny how for a movie claiming to be the perfect Closure to a ten year saga, it managed to fuck up every single main characters narrative arc and give them the Worst possible ending
marvel had to axe steve’s development because they had made him so bucky-centred in the winter soldier and civil war that the only logical step would’ve been is to make them lovers and marvel is, first and foremost, a Coward. in this essay i will—
so when Christopher Markus said that the stevebucky arc has a satisfying end bc they were both healthy and could move on, did he not remember what friends are? & that friends don’t just drop each other the second they’re in ok places? u don’t “move on” from friends ??????hello???? Christopher Markus hello?????
can someone tell me why they hate clint? and “because he’s not like he is in the comics” and “because he should’ve died instead of natasha” isn’t an answer
I don’t hate Clint, in fact I’m now a Clintasha shipper. But in onscreen canon, he becomes increasingly unlikable as the movies go on.
He’s positively lovable in the first “Avengers” movie, as the devoted agent whose closest bond was seemingly with Nat.
“Age of Ultron” basically rewrote his character entirely, reconning him into a character that now felt less spry, and that powerful bond with Natasha was reconned to “oh they’re just really, really good friends.”
“Civil War” did no one’s character any favors, but Clint got some of the worst of it, from peer pressuring Wanda to stupidly put herself into the worst possible position, to taunting Tony about Rhody’s broken back. Putting himself in such a dumb position when he had a wife and kids back home made him look even worse.
In “Endgame,” his cynical personality of course makes sense for a man who lost his s family. But since we never got to know said family over this decade long series, it’s hard for the audience to properly empathize. The fact that in the last movie where we saw Clint, “Civil War,” he didn’t seem to care all that much about his family, doesn’t help his revenge arc.
And having this plotline follow Clint’s dickishness in CW just makes his entire character seem inherently grumpy and unlikable.
How far the Legolas of SHIELD has fallen.
So to make a long story short, the relationship we the audience saw and cared most about for Clint was not the one driving his character, and the family that’s supposed to be his driving force is one we know jack all about.And Clint doesn’t do a great job convincing us by himself that said foot is more important to him than Nat.
