Given the leaks turned confirmation of the power change for Kamala Khan in the upcoming Disney+ show, I figured I’d gift this to my Kamala Khan fam upset with the changes being done to Kamala’s origins.
Been watching the discussion from the side and I can’t help but notice how quick people are dismiss legitimate concerns with all these changes and frankly it’s annoying.
I am afraid to ask but what they change about her powers?
It’s been confirmed that rather than the elasticity powers she has in the comics, the show is going to change it to Kamala being able to making Energy Constructs:
This coincides with an earlier leak/rumor which revealed that not only would Kamala’s powers be changed, but the actual source of the powers would also be completely changed. Rather than being turned into an Inhuman through the terrigen mist, Kamala would instead find a family amulet that gives her “Djinn” powers.
…that’s racist
There is so many things wrong with this because like there is this lack of awareness. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t Jinn considered demons in the Koran? And the idea that they mix and matched Kamala with her actual fucking sidekick Amulet is baffling.
What’s described is literally his power and it comes from a family heirloom. And before you say, “how come that’s not racist but when Kamala does it, it is?” Because what Fadi aka Amulet does is explicitly noted that his power is considered taboo in his culture.
But that’s not Kamala’s story.
This is like absurd.
There’s also the fact that Kamala having a power change means that she cannot morph into Carol in her origin story. Which means her entire arc about realizing that she does not need to be some white, blonde haired, blue-eyed woman to be a hero. Her entire story of self-acceptance and overcoming internalized racism is gone.
Kamala is having a power change and it’s likely being done so that she can match and/or better compliment Carol, because Kamala’s very specially not pretty looking polymorph powers don’t vibe with the white woman aesthetics. It’s not just a change in her power set, it’s a fundamental change in her origin and who she is as a character. And this change to the Pakistani-Muslim’s character is being done to better center a white woman who is the current poster child for USAF in cinema.
Fuck, and I mean this with all my heart, the MCU.
If this turns out to be true (which I don’t doubt because fuck the MCU), then FUCK THE MCU.
Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse
anybody that watches it is as disgusting as the people making it, this is not a hyperbole, fans of her have been reporting for months how they’re butchering and how likely she just became a us military puppet, do not fucking give views to promilitary whitewashed islamophobic media for the love of anything you value, not one decision hasn’t been made with the desire to turn her into a tool of white supremacist and imperialist violence please i beg of you
between playing the mc in an awful embarrassingly fake woke fake feminist mcu show or playing a gay mc in a 16+ season long lowkey homophobic canadian show that will never end and making bad soundcloud music on the side i feel like the maslany siblings made some monkey’s paw typa deal to become famous
It’s 2020 and Marvel still messes up diversity casting?
I know everyone is excited because of the recent news Marvel has announced at Disney Investor Day. Personally, I haven’t been able to fully indulge in it given the recent circumstances that has been happening in the US. However, there’s a certain news that left a bad taste in my mouth. What am I talking about exactly? I’m talking about America Chavez.
As a biracial Puerto Rican myself, this is unacceptable. I look at this, look at the actress and I feel grossed out. I have to keep reminding myself to not take it upon the actress but I ponder if I should, since when someone auditions for a role, they MUST have SOME knowledge about the role they are auditioning for.
There’s something a lot of you need to realize. Hollywood has a bad track of hiring Latinos, Hispanics or a brown people to play each other. Especially white casting directors, writers, producers, directors because at the end of the day this doesn’t affect them; they just need the space filled, doesn’t matter by who as long as they at least look the role. This is stereotyping Latinos playing other Latinos.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened in Doctor Strange. Many of you may or may not recall how the role of the Ancient One, an Asian man, was given to Tilda Swinton, a white woman.
The reason this doesn’t get called out as often is because it was given to a woman. Erasure of a minority for another minority is STILL ERASURE even if it was done to make it more “approachable” and by that I mean straight up WHITEWASHING.
In the case of America Chavez, this was Marvel infamously placeholding. What does this mean? It’s what I call when they couldn’t bother find an appropriate person to fill the role so they went with the “next best thing”.
No one should be celebrating these people insulting your intelligence and yet people are applauding the decision to cast a light skinned indigenous Mexican girl for the erasure of one of the FEW if not THE most well known established Afro-Latina Caribbean PUERTO RICAN superhero (the other three are the mantle of the White Tiger and the last two were americanized women of puerto rican descent).
I know people are going to mention that she’s an alien and that she represents brown people alike and that’s all fine and dandy. However, one can not ignore her being black and the acceptance of puerto rican culture as part of her identity. You can NOT call this representation when they are literally misrepresenting the charaters herself.
This is all done with the illusion of “diversity” and it’s pretty damn disappointing y'all are so accepting with this knowledge that you’re okay with because it’s “at least diversity” even if at the expense of another marginalized group.
Half puerto Rican and you wanna get mad because this girl isn’t dark enough for you. Fucking fake.
First of all I’m a biracial Puerto Rican pendejo de caca. Second of all, yes I am (and so are many) and what about it , dummy? Did you miss the whole point of the entirety of this post? Almost 4K people did but then there’s gotta be this one dumbass (that’s you) that’s gotta go against the current.
I’m not about to entertain someone purposely obtuse, so everyone, let’s all point and laugh!
“Benny Emmanuel wants to be Miles Morales in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Mexican actor stated on his social media his interested for the awaited role”
Colorism has gone so rampant to the point we have people boldly out loud proclaiming anti blackness. The fact that he has said this twice already (despite already existing a Mexican spiderman;check his Twitter account) and refuses to see that this character was NOT MADE TO BE INTERPRETED BY PEOPLE LIKE HIM makes me gag and my skin crawl.
They already put a light skin Mexican (super young) actress to play America Chavez, a character majority displayed dark skin/black who adopted the Puerto Rican culture.
I think what bothered me was the Mexicans in the Twitter thread defending this twat, being in (black) Puerto Rican business. Saying shit like “Josh Brolin isn’t from Titan” or “Tom Holland is British”. Pretending to be purposely obtuse.
I just find it hard to be believe daily in hispanic solidarity with these clear messages. The anti blackness was rampant in the twitter thread and quotes, not to mention the complete disregard for Puerto Rican culture and our feelings of constantly being erased. But are the same people that enjoy Puerto Rican music and our colloquial languages used in said music. The same people that have these traperos and wannabe reguetoneros appropriate our language.
And you know what…I find it hard to believe that marvel wouldn’t pull some shit like this. I mean why not? People blindly and stupidly cheered on for the casting of America Chavez surely they can pull it again. No…who knows. They got away with her but there would be riots and arson if they tried to pull some bullshit with Miles. Miles at this point is a Puerto Rican icon.
I’m so bitter though. The amount of Mexicans and Hispanics roasting and rationing on Twitter concerned Puerto Ricans was disturbing.
You can not blame me or anyone else who feels like me to NOT believe in any of this Hispanic solidarity bullshit.
I never thought Peggy carter was as interesting as 616 Sharon. But at least mcu Peggy moving on with her life after losing steve was 10 times more interesting than her being his trophy or her as alternate universe female steve rogers living the exact same storylines that we’ve already seen.
Disney please just let sam Wilson be cap. We don’t need captain carter. If there’s one thing the mcu doesn’t have a shortage of, it’s super powered white women with no personality.
E Olsen is an anti semitic, homophobic, and racist nepotism baby who can’t act to save her life so don’t you tell me she was the best possible actress for Wanda
Disney+ daredevil is gonna be a 6 episode action comedy featuring a brand new cg costume, half a dozen cameos, references to the mcu movies, and having half of the story based around setting up future spin offs. Thanks feige
Man does Disney+ marvel makes me miss daredevil. The practical sets and fight scenes. The focus on story over action and cameos. Having enough time to flesh out the characters. Not wasting so much time trying to reference past movies and set up future spin offs. Having mature themes and not trying too hard to stick to family friendly comedy for mass appeal.
so now that it’s been confirmed that the mcu is the 616 universe, is it about time for fans of wanda to be able to criticize the mischaracterization and whitewashing of wendy without her toxic stans screaming and crying that it’s a different universe or…?
Okay so one thing that was my biggest gripe in the film is that-prior to this when MCU!Wanda goes “You break the rules” and all, I thought it was referring to the whole NWH situation. And, if that were the case, I could be a little more lenient on my feelings because, while with good intentions, in the end the spell was risky from the start. However, instead, the movie decides to have her bash Strange for…giving Thanos the time stone? Even though, for one, he didn’t even really want to do it, you could see how much of a difficult choice it was for him to give it up. Two, he literally searched different possible outcomes and that turned out to be the best one. And three, his intentions were for the greater good, and even still Strange is shown to have wished things had gone better. Like it felt as if they were framing it as Strange just going off and doing his own thing, with no regards when he actually took the time to work around ultimately having to give up the stone. It is not on the same field as taking a whole town hostage, removing dozens of people’s autonomy just to play into your fantasy, and then harming those who went against what you were doing-only for you to not only not apologize to any of them (that apology to Monica was trash and we all know it), but continue to act as if it was right.
At the end of the day Peggy is a far more comfortable character for Marvel and Disney than Steve ever was.
They wrote him as a fierce socialist who has no problem with fighting the system, taking down Shield, defying the government and having a speech in his movies about civil rights and freedom, speaking of politicians having agendas and standing up to the UN.
But when it comes to Peggy… she IS the system. She took an active part in Operation Paperclip, she worked alongside Zola, she was head of Shield for decades and she never fought against the system at all, quite the opposite. Do we ever hear what she thinks of civil rights? Nope, not a damn word. For all we know she’s perfectly happy as long as she keeps power to herself (in the case of Captain Carter) or enough privilege to do whatever she wants.
It’s never about helping the little guy, it’s all about her and her wants.
If Steve had avoided the plane crash and had returned to base, the very moment anyone implied they should pardon a bunch of nazis and hire them to work with them he would have stopped that immediately - he would have never forgiven Peggy or Howard for getting Zola out of jail, especially after what he did to Bucky (and many other soldiers he must have experimented on as well).
You know that scene in TWS where Steve tells Fury not only they’re fighting Hydra but they’re taking down Shield too? Well, he would have done something similar here - if the options are hire nazis or destroy the SSR he would have done the latter.
And so they’re not content with just claiming she’s his one and only true love, they have to portray her as a “female Steve” to the point of giving her his catchphrase? They were so uncomfortable with who Steve was that in their desperation they replaced him with her, they sent him back to effectively get rid of him and brought her to the present fully expecting the audience to get behind her like we had done with him but that’s quite simply never gonna happen. She’s nothing like Steve and she will never be.
Steve is an uncomfortable character for Disney. So is Sam. Neither of them can or would endorse who and what Disney is, not if they write them correctly and not make them total strawmen. Which I’m terrified of.
Peggy is incredibly weird.
I mean that she’s weird in that the only thing holding her back is sexism, and she’s in a world where that is apparently the only true axis of oppression that exists. She’s set up in a way that means she could have been written to be honestly empathetic. But Disney also can’t acknowledge that there is such a thing as racism in their world- the closest they have come to it was TFatWS, and that was… weak at best. Peggy only showed that she was exceptional, that she was personally able to overcome, but not see where the world needed fixing.
That’s honestly the problem with a lot of superhero media. Superheroes are innately conservative. They want to preserve what is, not change things. Usually, the people wanting change are written as villains. It’s a really gross shortcut- show how the world has let someone down, and wanting to take the matters extreme enough to actually achieve change are seen as extreme, unless its up against a villain like what we had in Black Widow- someone who is operating outside of the norm and is safe to vent upon. Even that got pushback though.
But a white woman like Peggy- a beautiful princess who only needs to be acknowledged for her exceptionalism to become one of the men and not change anything of note- is not a danger the way Steve (disable, poor, subtexually queer) and Sam (black, poor) wouldn’t. She weaponizes her femininity to uphold the status quo, while both Steve and Sam want to bring it down.
She doesn’t stand for anything.
Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head. Steve, Bucky and Sam appeal to a very different demographic to Peggy. There is something inherently marginalised about all three of these men, and by nature, what they stand for. And there is something very…political about what Steve and Sam stand for. I think this is partly why I object to the reading that Civil War happened purely because Steve wanted to be selfish and protect Bucky. I think Civil War is the first movie to start diluting Steve’s moral stance and minimising the importance of what he’s fighting for. Steve’s motivation is personal, they tell you, handwaving away what the Accords mean to privacy and individual responsibility.
We knew CEVans’ contract was ending, but they gave him an ending that was in opposition to Steve’s entire belief system. They stripped the heroism away from Steve before they kicked him out of the MCU. They are performative about the way they sell Sam, and have made him conformist while not given him any opportunity to discuss his values.
And I think you’re right, neither Steve nor Sam represent the America they want. It’s telling that they voice more sympathy for Walker’s plight than they do for Sam. Sam is relegated to hurt on behalf of other people, but not be a person with his own hurts.
Walker - able-bodied, golden child, broken only by using the serum at the wrong time. Just like Peggy - able-bodied, privileged, held back only by her sex. And you’re right…for dudebros that’s kinda the fantasy, isn’t it? A woman whose “only” flaw is being a woman? Who is attractive, posh, smart, powerful, kickass…with no moral viscera to speak of. The perfect soulless doll for you to project your own belief system onto.
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.
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.
To everyone shouting “Don’t make Sharon a love interest!” in Falcon and Winter Soldier, I wonder how they feel when they learn she and Steve were together for over 50 years in the comics, they were even married and adopted a son together. And if MCU followed the Earth 616 comics, Natasha would be alive and date Bucky and Misty Knight would be casually dating Sam.
I get it, women can be their own person without men. But feminist fandoms get superparanoid whenever women fall in love. They have this idea if a woman is dating or marrying a man, she can’t be empowering. And that mindset needs to die.
