do I need to make, like, a ‘reasons gamora will be fine’ tag for people to look at on my blog
Right? I feel like maybe I’m just too used to Marvel comics for this to be concerning for me. I feel like fandom needs a mantra à la Incredibles: when everyone’s dead, no one is.
I’d like to see that post. I’ve read interviews and the like which heavily imply she’ll be back, but I just have no faith anymore, and it really sucks.
If Last Man on Earth ends up getting cancelled on a cliffhanger it will just about finish me off fiction-wise. Infinity War did what it did, Star Wars is in a depressing place, Doctor Who won’t restart again for ages, I sound chipper but man I’m glum. See? See?! I just tried to find a gif of Captain Holt saying “Everything is garbage, never love anything” and I couldn’t find one. EVERYTHING IS GARBAGE, NEVER LOVE ANYTHING
God, the difference between GOTG Vol 2 and Infinity War is just, vast– (spoilers)
GOTG2 is all about overcoming abuse, breaking cycles of abuse, learning and growing and loving your family. And – this is the first thing I liked about it – it makes it so clear that any form of treating people like things is wrong, the narrative has no sympathy for Ego, why does he deserve any? It’s a hopeful movie, full of good things. Yondu dies, but he dies on his own terms doing something out of love. Everyone goes forward into the future with what seems to be better things ahead of them-
And then Infinity War decided, “you know what would be a really good idea, how about we spend a whole movie trying to make you feel sorry for a genocidal abuser and kill off a beloved Guardian to serve his story?”
It’s like the fuckin’ evil twin of GOTG2! That movie left me feeling upbeat and hopeful! IW has done…dramatically the opposite.
(huge spoilers ahead)
(not positive, oh man, not positive)
I went into the theater all excited with my new Guardians of the Galaxy backpack and wee little Awesome Mix earrings, but as soon as Gamora died that was it for me. Oh, she might be back of course (especially considering what happens at the end of this movie), and I fucking well hope so, but she was –
– she was fridged for the character development of her abusive, genocidal father, while a literal Nazi ghost (don’t fucking ask) looked on. She died not among her friends, but alone and screaming, because I guess that’s supposed to tug at the heartstrings or something, another great female character murdered. So much for her being front and center of the poster, because her own damn death in this movie is actually about Thanos instead.
Turns out that the character whom the writers consider the most interesting is not the abused but the abuser. Everything about this movie is desperately trying to get the audience to feel sympathy for Thanos, a creature who wants to murder half the galaxy because overpopulation or something. He cries! He speechifies! He has occasional doubts! He is the least interesting villain the MCU has ever conjured up, including that elf played by Christopher Eccleston, and yet the movie is obsessed with him. At the end of the credits the words “Thanos will return” appear. Hooray. Can’t wait to see three more hours of a purple alien, played by a man once arrested for domestic violence, sit around and justify genocide to himself.
After leaving this movie I sat around in the foyer while my husband went to the gents and listened to other people’s reactions. “Thanos had a point,” I heard one guy say. “He was just thinning the herd.”
Fuck this movie.
is that you? [huge spoiler at link]
I want Mike and Erica’s reunion to be sweet and respectful. Something like, “Oh, you’re married to Gail now? And you have a baby! Well, I too am now in a relationship with [insert random name here], so it’s all good. I’m not dead!*”
That being said, I don’t think too much time will be spent on Mike/Erica. They went on a couple of dates and had one aesthetically pleasing kiss and that was it. And – god, I know how risky it is to say this these days, but – I really honestly do trust the writers. Reading interviews with them, I think they do know what they’re about and what a good thing they’ve got going here. The only really big misstep they’ve made in all the show so far is killing off Lewis, and I suppose one Big Mistake per four seasons is a pretty good ratio.
*Will not be the case if Mike turns out to be a ghost which is my other theory
Jason Sudeikis to return to ‘Last Man on Earth’
I wonder about this a LOT because… can they actually afford to keep Jason Sudeikis around for a whole series, if a series five does get commissioned? So I can’t think of how they’re going to do it. But I’m looking forward to finding out!
A few more spoilery thoughts on the trying-so-hard-not-to-be-spoilery press releases:
The majority of the Infinity War cast at D23! They showed a trailer but alas, it’s not for the public eye. Here’s the best description I could conjure (Note: I may upload a more revised version of the description once the hype dies down and I can breathe):
The Guardians are flying in the Milano and an unconcious Thor smacks into their windscreen. They bring him on board and Mantis wakes him up and he asks, “Who the hell are you guys?”
Then there’s quick flashes of Peter Parker on a school bus, Loki and the Tesseract, someone describing Thanos as, “Death follows him like a shadow”, the Collector’s gallery gets obliterated, a shot of Gamora crying, Spider-Man badly injured fighting Thanos, Thanos punching Iron-Man, Star Lord takes on Thanos with his guns, Captain America has a beard, Thanos rains meteors down on the Avengers, Groot still looks teen sized, new suit for Spidey and the return of Hulkbuster!
That’s all folks! I may have missed some things, and I may have seen some things incorrectly, so keep your eyes peeled for more info! Comic-con is next week so hopefully the trailer is released to the public by then
NOTE: Not all the cast is present in that picture, but don’t worry, the only missing characters that aren’t featured in the trailer are Ant-Man and the Wasp, which I predicted months ago. I believe they won’t be a part of the War until Avengers 4 2019 (after their own film in July 2018).
I did actually see Spider-Man: Homecoming today! There are a lot of things I really liked about it. I frickin love that it has a more diverse cast than any MCU movie released so far, and that you can see Jewish kids!! and Muslim kids!!! just randomly chilling out in the background like how they don’t generally on screen. And I loved Ned. That kid is awesome. He even made a fedora adorable. What?
BUT I guess…I can’t quite get over how they translated the female characters to screen. Okay, you’ve got a lovely, sweet Liz Allen, she’s perfect. You’ve got Betty Brant with… with the exact iconic Gwen Stacy look, blonde hair and black hairband, okay I’ll go with that I guess? And then you’ve got Zendaya, the perfect casting choice for Mary Jane Watson, playing someone who has the nickname MJ but is not technically Mary Jane Watson? Okay….? And the message I got from all that is that Peter’s main love interests throughout the years – Liz, Betty, Gwen and Mary Jane – are interchangable in the eyes of these filmmakers, and that really and truly bums me out. Add to that that Aunt May never really gets her due either, and…
Basically, it is a really, really good superhero movie it’s just not a very good Spider-Man movie? I mean… there’s not a single mention of Uncle Ben in there. A Spider-Man film!? That doesn’t mention Uncle Ben!? Come on!
Side note: I really and truly and utterly dread the day the MCU casts a Harry Osborn. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I can’t help but think, if they see a whole group of women as being basically interchangable, they’ll probably see the two Goblins that way too. So that means for the second franchise in a row, we’ll get Harry Osborn – an abused drug addict and mental illness sufferer – seen as interchangable with his abuser. I really, really hope they don’t do that. But like I say, I dread it.
Okay, I’m…genuinely not getting how conflating Gwen with Betty and changing MJ’s name makes all of Peter’s love interests interchangeable. Like. Liz and MJ are actually distinct characters in this? They have basically nothing in common? Like if you wanna argue they’re not necessarily putting names in the right places, sure, I guess, but I really don’t see how this means that Norman and Harry will be the same guy if they both appear in a film.
Also, uh. We’ve gotten a whopping five movies and god knows how much else where Uncle Ben is constantly hovering over proceedings. It is really goddamn refreshing to me to get a Peter Parker who’s not constantly defined by the death and loss in his life, a Peter Parker whose takeaway from the death of a loved one has more to do with keeping people safe than agonizing on rooftops. The fact that only one person dies in this movie and it’s not Peter’s fault makes me extremely happy.
I mean I like that this is a lighter-hearted take on Spider-Man too, but I just feel like Uncle Ben should’ve been in there somewhere, not because he died, but because he was such an important part of Peter and May’s lives. I kept waiting for there to be a talk between the two of them about how they cope with everything now and it never happened. I like a Peter who’s defined by (well, not entirely, but) not exactly the fact that his father figure died, but the fact that after his father figure died he immediately set about superheroically making sure no-one would suffer the same way he did. Adding Uncle Ben into the movie wouldn’t have even meant adding in Peter’s culpability in his death, but… I just figure he should’ve been in there in some form, a photograph, a grave, what have you.
The female characters aren’t interchangable in the film as such, I know (and yeah, Liz doesn’t really borrow heavily from any of the other women, although she does have a plot function very similar to, well…. to Harry, of all people! Who she ends up marrying in the comics! Huh.) And maybe I’m reading too much into the Betty/Gwen thing (it’s not like she was a major character) but it bugged me a bit. And Michelle was a good (if slightly underused) character but…I dunno. I just feel like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me because Zendaya was such great casting, and inexplicably for no reason she’s not getting to play ‘the real’ Mary Jane after all. It’s as if back in 2002 JK Simmons had put in his performance as J Jonah Jameson and then someone dropped in to say “nah, this isn’t J Jonah Jameson, this is J Jonas Jimson. Totally different person!”
Look, the stuff with MJ on Kevin Feige’s end is bad and wrong. You’re absolutely right about that. There’s no reason this character shouldn’t be called Mary Jane Watson. What’s tripping me up, though, is how this plus the Betty/Gwen thing somehow leads to the idea that Harry will be conflated with Norman in future movies. I feel like I’ve been presented with the beginning and end of your argument and left to sort out what the middle is for myself.
As for Uncle Ben–I feel like he is in the film in some good, subtle ways. You can see him in May’s anxiety over Peter sneaking out. And I think more than anything you can see it in Peter’s refusal to let Liz’s dad die. Just sort of the…the general ethos of the film is pervaded by the fact that all these people have loved ones. It doesn’t need to literally be Uncle Ben. The hole he left is still there.
Oh, the middle part is “okay, we know this adaptation has changed and conflated quite a bit of stuff, aged down characters and the like, are we I sure they won’t go the shitty Amazing Spider-Man route and have Harry be the original, murdering-criminal-monster Green Goblin for whatever reason*” I don’t want to rag on the MCU too much, I like and love huge amounts of it, but they don’t really have a good track record when it comes to stuff like this… and I love Harry Osborn. He’s like in the top three Most Important Characters To Me Of All Time. Having him be written into the place of his abusive father again would depress the hell out of me.
(*[spoiler!] “Because we’ve already done a story where one of Peter’s classmates turns out to be the child of a supervillain” is one reason I can think of :/)
But I really hope I’m wrong. (And I really hope the next movie retcons the “Michelle” thing and Zendaya gets to be a Mary Jane for a new generation. You did say, I remember, that the actual writer wanted that…)
