at least a little one off short of Cap returning the soul stone and have red skull be like wtf
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Something my brain consistently returns to is the stand-off of Past!Nebula VS Past!Gamora+Present!Nebula, and the climax of that bit. Thinking a lot about the difference between a person trapped in an abusive relationship and the person they become after escaping, and how despite that meaning definitive proof they get out okay, they still cannot reach safe reconciliation in a high stakes situation like that. The machinations that got Nebula to where she currently is in her character arc are just specific enough that her past self could not drop everything, but Gamora could. Gamora dropped everything once she was aware it could be better and healthier, yet Nebula could not, and Nebulaâs past state of mind was in part due to Gamora, who herself was also trying to survive abuse. Itâs unfortunate that Past!Gamora is probably not going to factor back into things because her contribution to this really delicate subplot would be good (even though, like, GotG2 already tried to resolve all that angst (but hey healing isnât linear)). Also just so itâs clear Iâm not saying âGamora did some harmful things to survive abuse therefore she isnât sympatheticâ, itâs way more complex than that, and thatâs the part that interests me.
Anyway so Infinity War had some of the flattest characterizations in the whole MCU (thanks for just making Quill an idiot I guess) and then Endgame just pulls it all (or a lot) off, and makes the big event actually interesting for several character arcs instead of just being a âhey so we made twenty three movies so we could organically reach a lord of the rings momentâ thing. Iâm still thrown by this.
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Can you elaborate because for me that ending was just a big LotR moment. Maybe because I am older or cynical or have watched too many movies. The execution of the small moments was good but the plot was such a straight line. The final battle had too many moments where I just squirmed in my seat. Captain Marvel is here and she does stuff till they canât. Here is a hammer that doesnât really change anything I guess. Rocket and Groot do not get a moment. Here are women posinglikeateambecauseshitgotreal . Now back to Spiderman and Ironman having a three minute death scene and Ironmanâs wife getting 15 seconds because she did not want to be there. I felt too much the machinations of captialism and symbolism and requirement and reality and none that it felt like a story that wanted to be told.
This is why old people only watch sports huh? Well back to video games for me.
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true old people can see the machinations of capitalism in sports too
I dunno, I think itâs gonna be a bit dependent on what feels too condensed to you, and what plot threads are the ones that mattered most to you. Carol having an entire movie to set her up just so she can only show up in the beginning and end was way more of a funny âoh shit we canât have tension if Gokuâs hereâ writing problem thing to me. Steve suddenly being Surprise Worthy was great to me in the way that, like, itâs a cherry on top of the story pace in One Piece when Luffy unexpectedly but hilariously flattens a villain thatâs been built up for a few chapters. I stopped at the Cool Girls Double Splash Page moment and wondered if it was a deflated Girl Power kind of thing, and then I thought about how that might look to a teen girl who thinks all these women are cool and I was like okay yeah this is cool. Infinity Warâs Cool Girls moment felt a lot more awkward to me because it was specifically âwe got all the heroines to fight the lady villain/sâ which always looks way way less organic to me. All the girls teaming up is a fun coincidence of timing, all the girls fighting all the girls is a bit.
I was satisfied with how they wrapped up Tonyâs long arc of redemption and Steveâs lost sense of place, but Iâm also not saying this was the ideal version of the movie, because I donât think that could exist because art is mostly just fucking around and trying to stick a landing. I felt Infinity War tried to carry every character relatively equally and flopped for it, and Endgame tried to primarily focus on the six OG Avengers and got really satisfying arc endings for 3-4 of them. Superhero media (or at least Marvel/DC) is an endless exquisite corpse of patch notes and so for me when something fumbles its way into being meaningful or at least resonant with me I give it credit for that. It is hella biased of me.
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Thanks! I apreciate your response. I feel like this is a film where there isnât right and wrong response and there is plenty of room (sobestfilmeveriguess) so that it ressonated with you is neat! And I thank you for interrogating your own feelings about it.
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How important is the story of Captain Marvel I still havenât seen that and Iâm not sure I feel like doing movie homework before I go see this
Not at all. Like really, this was mostly filmed before Captain Marvel, and according to a few friends who watched both, it shows.
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For me, the Girl Power Double Splash page actually kinda made things worse, because it highlighted how none of the women in the movie aside from Captain Marvel have any definition beyond the men they are associated with. Like everyone in that shot is âX male characterâs girlfriend/sister/etc.â and not a character on their own, in their own movies. Heck, Wasp is the only one that even gets mentioned in a title card, and that is preceded by âAnt Man andâŚâ. I got what Marvel was going for, but it mostly comes of like a Highlights Find Whatâs Wrong but for the Bechdel test.
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hey one of them isnât a girlfriend/sister itâs a Subordinate Lady General Included Because Marvel Got Blindsided By Her Popularity In Black Panther So Letâs Get Her On The Poster and In A Scene or Two I Guess
actually what happens to the social hierarchy in Wakanda when the magical plant-eating monarch who ascends the throne through ritualized Big Fights is removed via sudden dusting?
what is the protocol?
all the Magic Plant got burned, right?
dang
did Okoye just set up a military junta?
Marvel Pictures please address my questions in Black Panther 1.5 thanx
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for some of the shots in the suit it looked liked goop couldnât be bothered to show up and shoot a face so they just made a whole computer gwyneth and she skyped in her lines
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I mean, itâs better than Portman, who was clearly just reused from Thor 2 footage, which is why she only meets up with a CGI raccoon.
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Probably still finished off her contract.
Got a million $$$ out of it.
Get it girl.
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i agree that that particular shot was bad and weirdly self congratulatory, but i also think that the gamora / nebula / thanos relationship is really well done (in a creepy way obvs) and, while not perfect, it is a more complex family dynamic than any of the other Complicated Families they have tried to make in the MCU (well, i have a soft spot for thor because of how well they lean into the mythic royal family melodrama aspects of it to the point where it becomes kind of parodic). also, all of the good things about captain marvel the movie were basically missing here. i guess what iâm saying is the female characters are better when they are people and not just like vessels for girl power. But anyway IIRC neither gamora or nebula were in that sequence which⌠yeah
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honestly the most surprising thing about that Girl Power shot is that they did almost the exact same one AGAIN from Infinity War. i mean i guess you had to get Captain Marvel in there but still.
the â3rd Act is Unskippable Fighting Game Cutscenesâ drag that hampers every single one of these movies felt SO BAD in this one, but i think thatâs only because of how engrossed and entertained I was in the first half. plus you had to make sure every hero got their âSpecial Moveâ shot.
i always knew Thor was my favorite Character and Film Series in the MCU, but I donât think I really appreciated how good Chris Hemsworth is at sincerely portraying this role. Some of his best work in this. I hope he shows up in Gunnâs GOTG3, even for just a brief cameo
overall pretty entertaining!
Hemsworth is good.
Lazy fat suit and accompanying shit were not.
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yeah they were awesome. love Chungus Lebowski Thor
seemed a missed opportunity though for Quill to not gloat a little bit about Thor being fat after all that posturing in Infinity War and Gamora ogling Thorâs muscles.
yeah i mean it works only on the level of being an in joke of hemsworth seemingly being contractually obliged to have an ultra chiseled topless shot in every thor movie. it is funny but also the fat shaming aspect of it is ridiculous. it is even more ridiculous because they would clearly never do this for a female character - even when black widow is sad you still have to want to bone her. i feel like it would have been way more affecting if they just, like, didnât ask hemsworth to train like a maniac for the movie and just showed him having a normal body. the fat suit was way too much.
despite the ugliness of the prosthetics and everything that goes with them, i found that arc and its tone weirdly affecting precisely because it wasnât taken seriously. like they are showing thor hit rock bottom, but itâs still funny because⌠itâs thor, and you know heâs going to bounce back eventually. i donât know that theyâve really gotten the other characters quite to that point, they have made them âbroodingâ and âflawedâ enough that they donât really inspire this kind of unshakable faith. but thatâs why i like thor - all of these characters are ridiculous power fantasies, and trying to make them seem like tragically damaged victims never really works that well for me. i guess what iâm saying is it kind of seems like thor is enjoying his midlife crisis / depressive episode, and i find that sort of inspiring
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i think the point about the fat shaming is fair, but i will say i enjoyed the little detail that his gut still has abs on it
A bunch of professionally paid to be fit people cracking jokes about fatties is some hella punching down, and lazy shit too. They literally could have had him be skinny normal Thor and still done the Libowski jokes because, oh shit, guess who wasnât fat.
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