obligatory Endgame post

[kaydeefalls]

I am incandescently furious about that ending.

I genuinely enjoyed 90% of the movie, and there were some moments I loved to bits (see: the entire jump back behind the scenes of the first Avengers movie, that entire extended sequence was absolute gold), but the ending destroyed pretty much all the goodwill the rest of the movie earned for me. I have seen enough reaction posts to know that many people will disagree with me, and that's fine, but Steve (and Team Cap in general) got the SHIT END OF THE STICK in ways I HATED. Actually, yes, all of Team Cap (which I consider to be Steve - Nat - Bucky - Sam), because WTF Natasha?! Yes, let's outright refrigerate the only original female member of the team at like the 2/3 mark in such a way that I legit assumed it would be undone by the un-snap at the end, so it had no real emotional resonance for me, and then...nope, okay, I guess that was real, but nobody cares except like Clint having one vaguely emo moment with Wanda while literally the rest of the entire universe is mourning Tony instead.

Oh, and um, so we're leaving the five-year gap in there? You have a massively traumatized populace, most of whom are hopefully in the process of moving on with the shards of their lives after FIVE YEARS, and now suddenly we're restoring the Dusted with...no consequences whatsoever? ALL OF PETER'S CLASSMATES ARE STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL?! It's been FIVE FUCKING YEARS. People have moved on. They've remarried, they've started new lives (like, y'know, Tony and Pepper did), they've rebuilt their worlds -- and now we're suddenly just DOUBLING the world's population again like that's just gonna be fine for everyone?! I don't understand how you undo the Snap without taking it back to the actual moment of the Snap, I really fucking don't. I will handwave all manner of comic-book physics, but this broke every sense of continuity and my willingness to suspend disbelief. And yeah, Tony's moppet was at the funeral, and Cassie Lang is still a teenager at the end, so they did leave the five year gap in. That choice will cause more damage to the universe than the original Snap did. Fuck you, screenwriters, you lazy assholes.

And do not get me started on Steve winning the Peggy prize at the bottom of the box of fucking cracker jacks. I adore Peggy, I very much approve of Steve/Peggy as a ship, and that is some BULLSHIT right there. She had a life after him! She built a magnificent, rich, full life for herself, she married and had kids and grandkids and did not have a damn thing to regret, and they made their peace together in Winter Soldier in really beautiful ways. Fuck you, Steve, for taking all that away from her. And you cannot tell me that Steve choosing to stay and live his life starting in the late 1940s would not MASSIVELY change the course of history, because that man is incapable of not standing up for what he believes in, and there's no way he would sit out, like, the civil rights movement, or knowingly leave Bucky to be extensively tortured and brainwashed by Hydra while he's in the right time to intervene. Lazy. Fucking. Writing. (I also call bullshit on Bucky not insisting on going back with him, but that's a whole other can of worms, and I would rather not get started on how much of a nonentity Bucky was in this movie. Like, "Bucky is alive" is the magic catchphrase Steve used to knock his younger self out of the fight in the Avengers time-jump, but then the un-Snap happens and they barely even look at each other once. FUCK THIS NOISE.)

Sam got the shield, at least. That's literally the only good thing that came out of that for me.

I'm sorry, I'm just so goddamn disappointed, and I hate being that person in fandom. Especially when, like I said, I thought like 90% of this movie was great, and there are so many wonderful moments in it. But goddamn it, I would much rather they had killed Steve off than given me this steaming pile of crap. In fairness, though, the MCU took a hard turn post-Winter Soldier for me, and particularly starting with Civil War, where I've strongly disagreed with many of the character arcs. The individual franchise movies are still good (Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Captain Marvel were all great fun), but the team efforts and overarching narratives have left me cold. So the MCU in general just isn't my jam anymore, and that's fine. I'm clearly not the target audience.

At least we'll always have fanfic.

Comments

[mithborien]

Well, at least one person agrees with you.

I've been trawling Dreamwidth, reading people's reactions, trying to find people who feel the same as I do because pretty much everyone seemed to enjoy it a lot. But I am on the same page as you with pretty much everything you said.

And you're right, it's just so goddamn disappointing. So much that I can't even enjoy the good parts of the movie without getting angry.

And you know, I wasn't really thinking of Peggy as a "prize" but you're right, she totally was. And it sucks even more that we only got a couple of seconds of her when they initially when back in time, but Tony gets a full on conversation with Howard.

:(

[kaydeefalls]

UGH PEGGY. Such a wasted opportunity! I know, I know, we don't want to fuck with the timeline...except we're already massively fucking it and apparently that's okay, so they could have given us a glorious scene where Steve reveals himself to Peggy in 1970 and enlists her help in saving the universe, and incidentally remind the audience why she's a CHARACTER and not just a sexy lamp, and then his choice at the end might have resonated more. FUCKERS.

[true_statement]

Thank you for this rant, since I couldn't be bothered typing it out myself.

[kaydeefalls]

It felt very cathartic. I highly recommend it.

[tardis_stowaway]

Yup. All of this! I genuinely loved the majority of this movie, but the ending for Team Cap was so bad that it ruined my ability to think of the film in a net-positive way. For what it's worth, I've been seeing a fair amount of Steve fans with a similar reaction.

I thought Steve's decision to literally live in the past was a horrible end to his character arc, but MAYBE I could have accepted it if the film had treated Peggy well and reminded us of all the reasons why they were a great couple. Instead, Peggy is, as you so aptly put it, a Crackerjack prize. She's a Sexy Lamp. Did she even have any lines? Steve loved her and regretted what he missed with her, but the Steve I know would NEVER take away all of what he knew she built for herself. And how is he supposed to live all those years without fucking with the timeline?

The movies have now killed both Natasha and Gamora, who were originally the sole female members of their teams. Much as the number of female characters has increased, they are still in short enough supply that this feels too close to a Highlander situation. Natasha's death did hit me emotionally (I cried), but not seeing her memorialized alongside Tony was a slap in the face. There had been serious talk about a Black Widow movie, so I'm holding out hopes that they might still make that movie and revive her as part of it (instead of making it entirely a prequel), but not much.

And the decision to just bring back the Snapped people while leaving in place everything else that happened in the five years is really awful. Like, what about all the folks who weren't snapped themselves but died as a result others vanishing? What about all the infrastructure disrepair and political destabilization that would have happened from people in critical roles going missing? What about all the people who moved on with their lives and did stuff like remarry, only now their original spouse is alive again? I call BS.

I found Just This Once (The Everybody Lives Remix) by Dira Sudis to be a tremendously satisfying fixit fanfic.

[kaydeefalls]

Thank you for the rec, it soothed my soul. But, goddamn it, Peggy deserves better. Thank you for the Sexy Lamp analogy. Like...since we're already massively fucking the timelines in the Time Heist and apparently that's okay, they could have given us a glorious scene where Steve reveals himself to Peggy in 1970 and enlists her help in saving the universe, and incidentally remind the audience why she's a CHARACTER and not just a sexy lamp, and then his choice at the end might have resonated more. But no, she's just a girl, so whatevs. Like, fuck that pandering All Girl Avengers moment during the battle, almost none of those characters got any speaking lines at all. That is not empowerment, Marvel.

[dhampyresa]

I agree with all of this.

[kaydeefalls]

BAH I SAY. AND ALSO HUMBUG.

[msilverstar]

So agree with you! They spend all this time fixing their timeline and whoops, Steve says no thanks?

Peggy as a sexy lamp, damn, I'm glad she got the series and she deserves lots more.

FWIW, Joe Russo says "alternate futures"