That Orange Is The New Black finale scene, with (spoilers) everyone running to the lake and having freedom and fun possibly for the first time in their lives….that was one of the BEST MOMENTS I’VE EVER SEEN ON TV, for reals
spoilers
you honestly expect me to believe that natasha fucking romanoff got thrown into a cell and didn’t find a way to break herself out and she had to wait for a man to rescue her??
Thank you.
But she singlehandedly built herself a morse code system (in a CAVE, from a box of SCRAPS…) and telegraphed for someone to come get her? That is finding a way to break yourself out!
Joss Whedon’s idea of writing about female characters
- Natasha ‘I am a monster because I cannot bear children‘ Romanoff
- Jane ‘I get a nobel prize but I am reduced to my boyfriend boosting about me’ Foster
- Pepper ‘I run Stark Industries but I am also reduced to my boyfriend using me like a joke line’ Potts
- Wanda ‘I get called weird and witch and even though I am technically more powerful than all of them I need Hawkeye to give me a pep talk’ Maximoff
Do not let Whedon touch female character 2kFOREVER
ouch
Wanda ‘I’m Romani and Jewish but Whedon made me white’ Maximoff
Wanda ‘I’m Romani and Jewish but Whedon made me white and a Nazi sympathizer’ Maximoff
I’m pretty sure Nat called herself a monster because she is haunted by what she did while working as an assassin, not because she can’t bear children, you guys will jump on literally fucking anything without giving it any thought. Also the lines about Pepper and Jane were because they couldn’t be in the movie. I agree about the bit about Wanda though, like that wasn’t cool at all. Like I get that the Twins couldn’t be mutants, but doing that to their characters was down right disrespectful. But calling her a witch was fine, because you know, she the mother fucking Scarlet Witch and how the hell is calling her powers weird offensive, and yes she’s powerful but this is her first real fight and being scared is totally okay and it’s actually fucking demonstrating depth. And Whedon can write really good women, like have any of you seen Buffy or Firefly or Atlantis: the Lost Empire?
^ pretty much agree with all of this. Joss is guilty of falling into certain tropes when writing female characters, but I didn’t see that happening in this film and I was actually quite impressed.
concerning the twins, I didn’t get the impression they were Nazi-sympathizers though? I know tumblr has been kind of relentlessly perpetuating this idea and granted, the association with Hydra/Nazism is in poor taste, whatever the circumstances are. but Wanda and Pietro were taken in by Hydra, experimented on (without their actual consent, I assume) and given powers.
then the first chance they get: they escape, track down Strucker and murder him. that doesn’t seem very sympathetic to me? what I gathered is that Hydra was a means to an end for them in their quest for justice and their vengeance on Tony Stark.
it would have been awesome to see her played by a WoC, but I’m still hopeful they’ll establish her as Romani and Jewish in future films (although perhaps I’m just being optimistic on that one, we’ll see)
I’m Jewish, and the majority of my family, who were from Poland, were slaughtered in the holocaust. My great uncle (still alive) was taken to Auschwitz when he was 10 years old. My grandmother was in different concentration camps for basically the entire war. She barely survived.
My great aunts were actually twins who actually had horrible experiments done on them by Nazis. (By Mengele, specifically.) One of them is still alive, and she is EXTREMELY fucked up. Like, you don’t even know.
So I’m gonna tap in here.
To show the The Twins as, basically, slaves forced into that camp, experimented on by Hydra, forced to work for Hydra, them ultimately breaking away and FUCKING UP THE SHIT of all the people who were metaphorical Nazis, everyone who was using and manipulating them (from Hydra to Ultron) was pretty great. I wasn’t offended at ALL and I actually quite liked it.
Like, my whole family has never been offended by the Hydra stuff. It feels cathartic, honestly, to see the likes of Cap and the Avengers kicking their asses. For me, it’s ESPECIALLY cathartic to see a female twin who was a victim of their horrifying bullshit use WHAT THEY DID TO HER and turn it around on them to free herself and to stop them from hurting anyone else.
My dad, who was raised by a holocaust survivor and a survivor of a Russian Prison Camp (my grandfather), and who has been a comic book nerd since the first issue of X-Men and Spiderman and basically the beginning of Marvel, eats that shit up with a spoon.
for this last comment ^^^^
(note i have not seen the film)
The Bartons (or, one thing Age of Ultron did that was a HUGE improvement on its source material)
I hate The Ultimates, guys. I hate it even more because this was my first introduction to these characters, and so for ages I actually thought that Steve Rogers was a xenophobic jerk, Black Widow a murdering traitor and so on. But I think I can pinpoint the moment (beyond ‘you think this letter on my head is for France?’) when I started hating it:
Laura Barton and her three children are killed in the Ultimates not long after they’re introduced. Laura’s shot in the head, one of the children is shot in Hawkeye’s arms, the baby is killed in its crib, and you see one of the children later lying dead in a puddle of blood because of course you do. Their deaths are later used for Hawkeye’s enemies to taunt him with. “The children swallowed bullets, and that fat wife of yours.” It’s a really gruesome, over-the-top fridging. Oh, and it was Black Widow who ordered the hit, by the way.
So even though I doubt the Barton family’s inclusion in Age of Ultron was a deliberate fuck-you to all that, I’m still really glad it stands the way it does. Laura’s alive and fine, her children are alive and fine (though they appear to have had their names and ages switched), Laura is close enough friends with Proper Not-A-Murderous-Traitor Black Widow to name a child after her (hooray! lady friendships!), the kids call Black Widow Aunt Natasha and adore her and she them (aww), and everyone seems happy and well-adjusted etc.
Basically I always thought ‘Laura Barton and her kids deserved better’ and I’m really glad they did eventually get Better. (Of course, if any of them die in a future movie, this is all moot.)
Age of Ultron!
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD. SO MASSIVE
- Quicksilver
becomes the first big real casualty of the MCU. (Unless I’m forgetting
someone. Which I probably am.) I thought the Cradle of Plot would be
used to save him, but nooope. Poor ‘ol Quicksilver. I half wonder if he
wasn’t offed just because Fox’s version of him was more interesting.
- Hawkeye
is actually kinda the heart of this film, to my not unwelcome surprise.
He has a wife! And kids WHO CALL NATASHA ‘AUNT NAT’ HELP ME MY HEART IS
EXPLODING. I remember the wife and kids from the Ultimates, where they
were all shot in the head. On orders from Natasha. Don’t read the
Ultimates, kids.
- Black Widow herself was very good in this
movie, although I’m not really feeling the Bruce/Natasha thing. I prefer
them as friends. Also, the glimpses of Natasha’s past were EXCELLENT
and I really can’t put into words how MUCH there should be a solo Black
Widow movie. (I know…there have been rumours. Maybe this’ll be the
year they finally come to fruition.)
- Tony was Tony and Steve was
Steve? I dunno, I’m not quite as invested in those two as a lot of
fandom is. I like that their friendship is finally starting to take
shape, though.
- Tony and Thor listing Pepper and Jane’s
respective achievements and fighting over which woman was ‘better’ was
obviously a well-intended scene so I can’t quite bring myself to be mad about it, but I just know it’s going to be used by fandom and the mainstream media to pit the women in question against each other. Just like they do with real-life women. Yay.
- Rhodey! He had quite a big role, actually. Good!
- And FALCON! I was so pleased when I heard he was going to be in it, I love Falcon. He’s only in two scenes, but still, I bet Anthony Mackie exploded with excitement when told about the second one.
- Paul Bettany as Vision was WONDERFUL, I hope he has a big role in the next one
- Scarlet Witch was good, but not as good as her comic book counterpart, whom I keep meaning to read more about.
- Nick Fury’s Crowning Moment Of Awesome was very, very awesome and I loved it.
- There were…wait for it…FIVE WOMEN! in this film. Natasha, Wanda, Maria Hill, Laura Barton (wife of Clint), and Helen Cho. I thoroughly expected Helen to die in one scene (she is virtually the only woman of colour in the MCU after all) but she was actually alright, and I’m glad.
- Also, it just scraped by the Bechdel Test, because Natasha and Laura are friends and they talked! And I want there to be more female friendships in the MCU so I am so glad about that.
- There was a little bit of stuff about civilians casualties/protection/civilians not wanting to be protected by people they can’t trust. That’s the sort of stuff I like and I expect there will be more of it in Civil War, although I am greedy and want it now. (Is this what Daredevil is, because if so I am so there.)
- I am 99% sure a familiar face from The Winter Soldier shows up and, as a fan of the minor characters usually more than I am of the main ones, I was so pleased to see him.
This has probably been speculated about before, but I’m willing to bet that the character B J Britt is potentially playing in Age of Ultron won’t be Tripp, but his Howling Commando ancestor.
(since a. we already know there‘s a flashback set in the WW2 era, and b. we’ve never heard who Tripp’s ancestor is, he could be a Commando we’ve never met before)