Avengers Endgame
Jul. 8th, 2019 10:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackOK, what you just said is not what EPR is. But well done getting all the time-travel-babble out of the way UP FRONT, and then not reopening it with a bunch of nonsense that changes the rules just in time for a deus ex machina. I'll buy pretty much anything as long as someone explains it in a science-y voice and then people STICK to it.
Reading Q&A about how they decided on the plot was really interesting. When it works, it's hard to see the difficulties, but lots of things could easily have been different, and worked very well: killing Thanos; ending up fighting past Thanos; the general pacing of wondering what to do, and seeing Avengers off the rails before ramping up to a solution; slotting into all those specific great moments in previous films. Those all paid off really well.
I can see how it felt weird, but I was so pleased to see Banner/Hulk seeing HAPPY.
OK, so now some new people Snap, and UN-kill billions of people on every planet in the galaxy. And what do you know, they ALSO forgot to make "unlimited free food machines" everywhere, when five years is probably just long enough for the supply chains to have settled on a lower demand. They could just say it's too complicated or something! I still don't know what Thanos' excuse is.
Thanos: There's too many people and not enough food. When I get some REAL power I'm going to...
Majordomo: Make more food?
Thanos: No! Gratuitous genocide.
Thanos: I'm not randomly evil, I'm killing people for, um, evolution. And economics.
Majordomo: Look, please just stop talking.
I really loved seeing where the Avengers got to *after* heroing. I loved vigilante-Hawkeye (although glad we got mostly the aftermath, not a whole film of that). And reluctantly-in-charge Black Widow (I'd like a whole film about that, please!)
And gosh. We've kind of done dad-Tony to death, but I fell in love with the portrayal of him as an actual dad, of having actually retired, and got some family time, and then deciding whether to pick up the mantle again, and that being a real choice where I'm not sure if I wanted him to or not.
I think part of the problem was, the film was always planned as the end of an arc of the *original* four or six avengers, to make way for the next generation. But the pacing of the film series make that impossible to do well, albeit since a film series like that was basically a new thing they figured out as they went, they did amazingly well! But by the time this rolled around, the arcs of the originals hadn't really finished, but people were eager for more of everyone else, who were inevitably all killed in the snap because the original heroes needed to still be around for this film.
I also realise, there was never a time the four main avengers were just regularly a team. I think they came together for each avengers film, and then had to go off again to be in other films. There wasn't any time to really show that, but I wish they'd squeezed in a montage or something at the end or beginning of one of the films, to show they did have some regular bonding time, that the three avengers films weren't the ONLY time they were actually all together.
They made a good attempt to show the missing from earth, but we didn't see enough of it in the previous film, and we saw NONE of it on any other planet, so they were already playing catch-up. Show the empty houses. Show the problems with vehicles crashing, with power plants shutting down. There's a support group, but... this isn't some people, it's EVERYONE. Show how it changes society! And again, when they come back!
Assorted rants, some serious, some not
SALADS DON'T MAKE YOU THIN! THEY'RE NOT ANTI-FOOD! MAYBE FOR THOR TRYING=FIT=THIN BUT IT'S A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE MESSAGE FOR THE HUMANS IN THE AUDIENCE! ALSO, VIKINGS HAD GUTS, OK, WHERE'S FIT, FAT THOR?
OK, yes, I'm pleased they COULD do the all-the-women-kick-ass-together scene. But why on earth would they all happen to be together on the battlefield? Do you realise that having a scene with DOZENS of women heroes and HUNDREDS of male heroes and no (iirc) known nonbinary heroes maybe wasn't quite as "rah, gender equality" as you were trying to sell it?
Who decides who is "worthy" to hold Mjolnir? Odin? He was pretty fucking crap at deciding who was worthy the rest of the time.
So... one of you has to give something, apparently someone up to get the macguffin. Does it count if you both try to STOP the other person sacrificing themselves and try to kill yourselves in their stead? I appreciate you both caring for the other so much, but do you realise that if you fuck up your fight and you BOTH die, or one of you dies and it doesn't count, you've killed BILLIONS of people? I hate it, but you were both wrong here -- flip a coin :(
Dr Strange's Weird Gamble
Someone I know wrote an amazing piece of fanfic I can't find now, about Tony and Strange's battle against Thanos, supposing that Strange was deliberately manipulating events so that Tony survived -- the premise being that for some reason Tony was instrumental to Thanos' final defeat, but he'd die in the snap, so Strange needed to make Thanos feel impressed by Tony's persistence, but not seriously threatened.
That made a lot of sense! The actual film said something similar, with Strange's comment about 14000000 possible paths and only this one leading to the good outcome. If I understood correctly, they were specifically alluding to that with Tony's sacrifice at the end, implying that was the ONE good outcome.
But I have problems. Firstly, the "1 in so many million" is a good line, but it's not actually a great premise. The audience knows the heroes usually manage it! Really, they should be facing threats with about 50/50 chances against them, so winning four films on the trot is impressive, but not ludicrously unlikely. 1 in 14000000 is just saying, "trying as hard as you can didn't help, it's all down to, did the script writer choose to give you a winning lottery ticket, or not".[1]
Secondly, maybe all the other outcomes would have failed, but the audience can't see why. If Strange had just... not given Thanos the time stone, he wouldn't have got Vision's stone either. He'd still be a powerful space warlord, but he'd not get the stones. I guess maybe he would eventually? But we don't SEE that. The heroes came quite close to beating him several times. Heck, Captain Marvel beat him up ok. Couldn't they send HER back in time, to when he'd collected the stones but just before he added them to his gauntlet, to beat him and collect the stones and bring them back to the future?
Or, the stone in the "someone you love has to die" chasm. If Strange had somehow sent a message to Gamora saying, "You know where one of the stones is, and you're going to lead Thanos there and give him the only thing in the universe he can use to retrieve it. Instead, go to planet Foo, play these winning lottery tickets, get a berth on this cold-sleep ship to an unexplored galaxy, go kick ass for justice there" the whole thing could have been averted much earlier.
I get that Thanos is supposed to seem unstoppable, and he is quite impressive, but having half a dozen moments when he could have been stopped apart from luck turning out bad rather than good, undermines the idea that his win was somehow nearly inevitable.
[1] Kudos for Run, Lola, Run for somehow making this actually work out well on screen!
Reading Q&A about how they decided on the plot was really interesting. When it works, it's hard to see the difficulties, but lots of things could easily have been different, and worked very well: killing Thanos; ending up fighting past Thanos; the general pacing of wondering what to do, and seeing Avengers off the rails before ramping up to a solution; slotting into all those specific great moments in previous films. Those all paid off really well.
I can see how it felt weird, but I was so pleased to see Banner/Hulk seeing HAPPY.
OK, so now some new people Snap, and UN-kill billions of people on every planet in the galaxy. And what do you know, they ALSO forgot to make "unlimited free food machines" everywhere, when five years is probably just long enough for the supply chains to have settled on a lower demand. They could just say it's too complicated or something! I still don't know what Thanos' excuse is.
Thanos: There's too many people and not enough food. When I get some REAL power I'm going to...
Majordomo: Make more food?
Thanos: No! Gratuitous genocide.
Thanos: I'm not randomly evil, I'm killing people for, um, evolution. And economics.
Majordomo: Look, please just stop talking.
I really loved seeing where the Avengers got to *after* heroing. I loved vigilante-Hawkeye (although glad we got mostly the aftermath, not a whole film of that). And reluctantly-in-charge Black Widow (I'd like a whole film about that, please!)
And gosh. We've kind of done dad-Tony to death, but I fell in love with the portrayal of him as an actual dad, of having actually retired, and got some family time, and then deciding whether to pick up the mantle again, and that being a real choice where I'm not sure if I wanted him to or not.
I think part of the problem was, the film was always planned as the end of an arc of the *original* four or six avengers, to make way for the next generation. But the pacing of the film series make that impossible to do well, albeit since a film series like that was basically a new thing they figured out as they went, they did amazingly well! But by the time this rolled around, the arcs of the originals hadn't really finished, but people were eager for more of everyone else, who were inevitably all killed in the snap because the original heroes needed to still be around for this film.
I also realise, there was never a time the four main avengers were just regularly a team. I think they came together for each avengers film, and then had to go off again to be in other films. There wasn't any time to really show that, but I wish they'd squeezed in a montage or something at the end or beginning of one of the films, to show they did have some regular bonding time, that the three avengers films weren't the ONLY time they were actually all together.
They made a good attempt to show the missing from earth, but we didn't see enough of it in the previous film, and we saw NONE of it on any other planet, so they were already playing catch-up. Show the empty houses. Show the problems with vehicles crashing, with power plants shutting down. There's a support group, but... this isn't some people, it's EVERYONE. Show how it changes society! And again, when they come back!
Assorted rants, some serious, some not
SALADS DON'T MAKE YOU THIN! THEY'RE NOT ANTI-FOOD! MAYBE FOR THOR TRYING=FIT=THIN BUT IT'S A HORRIBLE HORRIBLE MESSAGE FOR THE HUMANS IN THE AUDIENCE! ALSO, VIKINGS HAD GUTS, OK, WHERE'S FIT, FAT THOR?
OK, yes, I'm pleased they COULD do the all-the-women-kick-ass-together scene. But why on earth would they all happen to be together on the battlefield? Do you realise that having a scene with DOZENS of women heroes and HUNDREDS of male heroes and no (iirc) known nonbinary heroes maybe wasn't quite as "rah, gender equality" as you were trying to sell it?
Who decides who is "worthy" to hold Mjolnir? Odin? He was pretty fucking crap at deciding who was worthy the rest of the time.
So... one of you has to give something, apparently someone up to get the macguffin. Does it count if you both try to STOP the other person sacrificing themselves and try to kill yourselves in their stead? I appreciate you both caring for the other so much, but do you realise that if you fuck up your fight and you BOTH die, or one of you dies and it doesn't count, you've killed BILLIONS of people? I hate it, but you were both wrong here -- flip a coin :(
Dr Strange's Weird Gamble
Someone I know wrote an amazing piece of fanfic I can't find now, about Tony and Strange's battle against Thanos, supposing that Strange was deliberately manipulating events so that Tony survived -- the premise being that for some reason Tony was instrumental to Thanos' final defeat, but he'd die in the snap, so Strange needed to make Thanos feel impressed by Tony's persistence, but not seriously threatened.
That made a lot of sense! The actual film said something similar, with Strange's comment about 14000000 possible paths and only this one leading to the good outcome. If I understood correctly, they were specifically alluding to that with Tony's sacrifice at the end, implying that was the ONE good outcome.
But I have problems. Firstly, the "1 in so many million" is a good line, but it's not actually a great premise. The audience knows the heroes usually manage it! Really, they should be facing threats with about 50/50 chances against them, so winning four films on the trot is impressive, but not ludicrously unlikely. 1 in 14000000 is just saying, "trying as hard as you can didn't help, it's all down to, did the script writer choose to give you a winning lottery ticket, or not".[1]
Secondly, maybe all the other outcomes would have failed, but the audience can't see why. If Strange had just... not given Thanos the time stone, he wouldn't have got Vision's stone either. He'd still be a powerful space warlord, but he'd not get the stones. I guess maybe he would eventually? But we don't SEE that. The heroes came quite close to beating him several times. Heck, Captain Marvel beat him up ok. Couldn't they send HER back in time, to when he'd collected the stones but just before he added them to his gauntlet, to beat him and collect the stones and bring them back to the future?
Or, the stone in the "someone you love has to die" chasm. If Strange had somehow sent a message to Gamora saying, "You know where one of the stones is, and you're going to lead Thanos there and give him the only thing in the universe he can use to retrieve it. Instead, go to planet Foo, play these winning lottery tickets, get a berth on this cold-sleep ship to an unexplored galaxy, go kick ass for justice there" the whole thing could have been averted much earlier.
I get that Thanos is supposed to seem unstoppable, and he is quite impressive, but having half a dozen moments when he could have been stopped apart from luck turning out bad rather than good, undermines the idea that his win was somehow nearly inevitable.
[1] Kudos for Run, Lola, Run for somehow making this actually work out well on screen!
no subject
Date: 2019-07-13 02:11 pm (UTC)Oh, and I really liked that they clarified his thought process with something like:
"I thought that destroying half the universe would shock people into thinking I was right. But it turns out you're more stubborn than that, so fuck you all, I'm destroying the universe and starting over."