There are other things going on in the world right now, far more important things. To be talking about some old men having an opinion on some popular films seems like an exercise in futility, and yet…
When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again. Martin was kind when he said it’s not cinema. He didn’t say it’s despicable, which I just say it is.
This comes off as very hypocritical considering his positive comments on the MCU’s big hit Black Panther. Ryan Coolger specifically asked for his opinion and showed him an early cut of the movie. Now it seems he’s changed his mind. What a way to treat someone who looks up to you, don’t cha think?
But I digress…
I love the MCU and superhero movies in general. There’s a few of them I feel like I could say “This movie was made for me.” But, you know, they’re not made for me. The people behind them I feel are fundamentally making them for children, giving children good role models and good lessons. I mean, say what you want about Marvel movies as cinema, but they do generally contain the sort of thing you’d want your children to learn, you know? “Bad people should be stood up to” “Respect your friends even when they’re having problems” “Seek help whenever you need it”… yeah?
Like, take the ending of Black Panther. That’s an amazing scene and frankly I think a lot of real-life world leaders ought to take it on board.
And I think everyone can take something away from “I don’t like bullies, I don’t care where they’re from.”
Morally I don’t think the Marvel movies are despicable, not remotely. Disney as a company… I suppose you could debate til the cows come home about what their morals actually are besides money, but also I think it’s fair to assume that the individual directors of the various MCU movies probably came into the enterprise without any ill intentions. (Or, y’know, hopefully at least.)
Speaking as a former child, I love that more kids are getting the sort of stories I longed for as a 12-year-old… stories with women and girls in leading roles especially. Look at this fabulous list of Marvel heroines, and that’s only a handful of them.
And speaking as an adult, I look very forward to seeing the sort of things a generation raised on MCU movies will create. I suspect only some of them will be to my taste but I know what I’m not gonna label the ones I don’t like.
WandaVision is rapidly approaching the start of production and more details about the series is starting to come out. Firstly, the show is being jokingly referred to as “Wanda’s Vision”, and there’s even been some art done with that name where the apostrophe is the Soul Stone and the “Vision” text is generated by “lightning” […]
Usually, I only share trailers but I simply had to share the first official movie poster for the MCU’s Black Widow, which will be coming out in May of 2020.
Seriously, this is so kickass!
Now, before you read any further, I guess I should say that I’m about share a spoiler from Avengers: Endgame. I think everyone in the world has seen that movie by now and, if you haven’t, you probably don’t care about the MCU or any of that other stuff. But still, just in case, consider this to be your SPOILER WARNING:
I really liked Avengers: Endgame but I do have to admit that it really pissed me off that they killed off Natasha. Storywise, there was no reason to kill off Natasha. If anyone in that scene needed to redeem themselves by sacrificing their life for the greater good, it was Clint! After…
The release date for a new Black Panther movie was officially announced at D23! See?
But apparently “Black Panther II” is just a placeholder title, with the real one to come along later. And I’ve been wildly speculating…
What if its title is “Black Panther and Captain America?” Not old Cap, new Cap. Sam Wilson.
This guy.
Here’s all the bits and pieces which made me speculate that speculation:
The upcoming Falcon and the Winter Solider show is called just that, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, when really Sam’s new name should be Captain America now. He was given the shield, so the codename is his. Apparently the show is going to be partly about Sam learning to take on the mantle, and…
On the most serious note, Sam being the first black Captain America is obviously very important. That’s something I can very much see Ryan Coolger and the other Black Panther creators wanting to tackle. Especially since Sam was the first ever black Marvel superhero. Him being Captain America now is a Huge Thing, and honestly I don’t think the story of him claiming the new title could be done by anyone better.
Sam has already encountered T’Challa and been to Wakanda, so a movie could jump straight into the action without having to do introductions all over again.
Marvel loves team-up movies (apparently the Doctor Strange sequel will be a team-up too, with Scarlet Witch) and titles with “and” in them!
And finally, I refuse to believe Sam won’t be on the big screen ever again.
Obviously I could be totally wrong, and probably am! But considering no-one really knows anything about the movie so far except its release date… here’s to quietly crossing my fingers?
This post sums up the reasons that I, too, love Sam Wilson. I just have a real soft spot for characters who don’t have any superpowers but are heroes anyway.
With the recent news of Sony’s reclaiming Spider-Man I feel like anything I write on the subject of the Marvel Cinematic Universe right now will feel increasingly post-mortem, but there’s nothing wrong with the odd retrospective.
I don’t know why I found myself dwelling on the character of Sam Wilson, but his introduction in The Winter Soldier I found to be one of the most important moments in the MCU. The ninth film, six years after the advent of the series, and up until that moment we were missing several profound elements that Falcon brings to the table especially in his introductory scene.
There was a time yesterday when almost every single hashtag trending on Twitter was Spider-Man related in some way.
So clearly this latest news has hit a nerve somewhat. I don’t know what to make of it, beyond, “wow, it was a pretty ballsy move to end Far From Home on a massive cliffhanger, then.” Actually no, wait, I have a few other thoughts:
This whole situation has really solidified my dislike for Venom. Goddammit, why’d you lot have to make his solo movie a hit?!
Great, now we’re going to get bloody Jared Leto playing Morbius while poor Tom Holland, if he even keeps the role, will be awkwardly shoehorned into the background. If that method-acting asshole sends the poor boy rats there will be hell to pay.
3. Some days I hate being a fan of primarily just the Raimi Trilogy and the comics. This is….not one of those days.
There are some things I like about this scene. I love that Peter Quill was one of the first to kneel, even though he didn’t even like Tony, because that’s the sort of person he is.
But. When I first heard about this scene it was in relation to Gamora, so I assumed that maybe it would be a scene abouther. Nope! She still warrants barely a thought in a story that should have been hers. We see her walking away while the other superheroes kneel and that’s something at least, confirmation she actually, y’know, wasn’t dead. (Because, you know, why would the cinematic version of the movie bother to confirm something like a major female character being alive at the end.) But once more Endgame proves that the only character it was really interested in is Tony, Tony, Tony. Gamora, the one who arguably actually kickstarted the whole Infinity Saga, will have to wait until Guardians 3. If that.
Sigh. I really resent Iron Man these days, in so many ways. Black Widow didn’t get a whole battlefield of people who didn’t know her kneeling to her.
I literally can’t even explain how excited I am about all this!!! (Uh, so I’ll let other bloggers do it for me?)
I may be most thrilled of all about Jane as a new Thor. I love Jane to pieces. But then the Valkyrie thing, my god, is that finally confirmation she’s the “first Marvel LGBT character” we’ve all been waiting for?!?!
Um. Is Thor 4 gonna end with a Valkyrie/Jane pairing? Please, please say yes.
Waking up this Sunday morning my head is still throbbing with a slight headache from all of the exciting news last night from Marvel Studios. It was said there was going to be a panel depicting what’s next for Phase 4 of the MCU, I knew there was going to be some information about the upcoming Black Widow movie and Eternals film but…I was not expecting what would transpire next.
Today, I’m recapping the mind-blowing event last night. You may have been like me, refreshing the Twitter and following along with the live tweets and updates on the websites. If not, prepare for your mind to be blown! Enjoy.
The First Eleven Years
The panel began with a giant montage celebrating the first eleven years of the MCU. Avengers: Endgame spearheaded the end of the montage with Thanos saying, “I am inevitable” followed by Tony Stark’s already-iconic response, “And I am Iron Man.” A few more clips of Endgame were shown before the logo for the first three phases of the MCU was released, which you can see in the picture above. The Infinity Saga. Isn’t it beautiful?
So the dust has settled on Avengers: Endgame now, and I’ve had months to turn my problem with it over and over in my head. Really, I think most of my negative feelings are encapsulated in one scene: the one where Thor leaves his people behind and gets aboard ship with the Guardians in the end.
Bear in mind everything that’s happened to these characters at this point. Thor’s lost his brother and spent five years in a haze of bad mental health. Peter’s lost Gamora, thought he got her back, and lost her (in a different way) again. Drax has wanted to kill Thanos since the first movie he was in, Thanos is now dead, and… nothing. Rocket lost all his friends for half a decade and suddenly they’re back. And so on. No-one gets to react to any of this. Like, not anything. Instead they hang around and laugh while Peter and Thor have a pissing contest over who gets to be leader.
Like… that’s it? That’s where you think these characters should be right now? Really?
It’s all the worse because that scene should be about Gamora. She was the cog the whole of Infinity War spun around, hell she was the cog the whole Thanos story spun around, and what happens to her? She gets thrown in a pit, brought back from the past, allowed to fight a little and then more or less forgotten about.
Does Gamora get even a reaction shot when Thanos, her tormentor, the person who’s haunted her and brutalized her for three damn movies, dies at last? No, she does not. Okay, my slightly infuriated thoughts went at the time, perhaps maybe the last scene with the Guardians might be aboutherand where she is and how her friends will start the search for her? Nope! Instead it’s about… Thor. Bad luck.
So yeah. I wanted to stop short of saying “It’s sexist” but I can’t because really none of the important women in Endgame get their due at all, not just Gamora. Captain Marvel got built up and built up, but she’s in the movie for like… five minutes, and we don’t get to learn her thoughts and feelings about anything going on. (She has close friends on Earth, we learned in her solo movie, but she doesn’t even mention them or worry about their fate.) Black Widow gets agency in her sacrifice at least, but then – not unlike Gamora actually – she’s forgotten about. While Tony gets the massive funeral and the tributes, Hawkeye remembers Natasha in one line at the end. Nothing the Avengers did in this film would have been possible without her but she’s not getting any of the accolades.
Nebula is a strange case, because she does get a lot of agency and depth in this movie, but I can’t forgive the scene where she kneels over Thanos – the man who abused her and murdered her sister – and closes his eyes. That makes no sense. It’s bewilderingly out of character and if it was supposed to make her more palatable as a heroine, or something, it doesn’t. The best Nebula line is in the second Guardians movie, I think, when Gamora tells her she could help all the little girls in the world who are suffering like they used to. “I will help them by killing Thanos,” Nebula says, and that’s the line which turns her from a sympathetic villain into (finally) a crusader against injustice and abuse. To have her show a shred of tenderness against her father takes all that away, and it’s so, so baffling to me that apparently the writers couldn’t see that.
Then there’s the women the movie appeared not to have time for, like Okoye. She was prominent on the poster but got maybe two lines in the movie. There was time to follow Hawkeye’s Adventures in Murder but not time to check in on her? Especially since her storyline – let’s assume she was left essentially the leader of a whole, suddenly devastated country since the royal family were dead – would have been really interesting. Come to think of it Natasha falls into this category too, since she was supposed to have a great subplot that ended up on the cutting room floor, because of course it did.
Some of the MCU women who’re bit players in this one – think Valkyrie, Pepper etc – actually do get treated well in the movie, credit where credit’s due. Pepper’s last scene with Tony hit really hard, for example, because it’s played straight. And I mean that sounds ridiculous, of course the death of a major character in one of the biggest franchises of all time is gonna be played straight you’d hope, but there were moments where I wondered, because this movie is so incapable/terrified of believing people would take it seriously. When Thor bids goodbye to his mother and leaves her to die, after the heartfelt I love you’s she tells him to eat a salad because he’s fat now and that’s funny and we’re meant to laugh. When Gamora finds Peter again and no longer knows who he is, which is a tragedy for both of them, she kicks him in the balls and he rolls around in pain making a quip and that’s meant to be funny too. Is it not realistic that Tony’s death might have been interrupted by someone falling over, or a fart joke? Is it weird I’m almost surprised that it wasn’t?
Anyway. Wait, why did I hate Thor for a little bit? Well, I can’t bring myself to hate him really, or even dislike him, he’s an adorable golden retriever of a man. But that scene with him and the Guardians at the end is teasing Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and that is the last chance anyone has to give Gamora her due, to make her story and her constant victimization mean anything. And with that scene, suddenly her importance was pushed to one side to make room for Thor. Who despite his many good qualities is still a white straight able-bodied male superhero, not exactly an underrepresented group. And he’s also one who has three movies bearing his name already, plus major roles in all the Avengers films. Who looked at Thor, looked at Gamora, and decided he not she was the one the audience should have more of? And that Gamora is so unimportant that in the scene where her friends should be discussing how to find her, they are instead trading jokes with him, because the one BIG thing Endgame can’t take seriously is its women?
You’re great and I like you fine, Thor. Honestly. And you didn’t deserve those fat jokes. But you’re done. Now take your hammer, and your snazzy axe thing, and just… go away for a bit.
