Domenika Marzione (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
domarzione) wrote2019-05-03 03:28 pm
domarzione) wrote2019-05-03 03:28 pm
Entry tags:
Endgame meta
My Endgame thoughts are still all over the place, but this is one I really want to set down and organize before it gets lost in the haze of memory and oh-shit-I-have-a-term-paper-due Sunday.
One of the things that, upon reflection, intrigued me was how all of the Avengers were depicted at the five year mark. The choices were at times incredibly insightful and, in at least one case, incredibly misguided. The insight might have been unintentional, but...
* Steve and Natasha are both emulating people whom they'd see as incredibly influential on how they'd shaped themselves, at least the good parts. Steve is doing his best Sam impersonation, running a support group to try to heal his own wounds, while Natasha is performing her best interpretation of Nick Fury by trying to run a save-the-world network and keeping her shit together and under wraps. These are solid choices and reflect the film's overall echo of CA:tWS, since that's the movie where Sam and Steve met and where Natasha and Fury's relationship was made explicit. Their arcs for the rest of the movie, however, are quiet admissions of failure to keep up appearances and their final acts are confessions of their true selves, who they've been all along. [I am 1000% okay with Natasha's arc, but that's for another day.]
* Bruce is more or less channeling Tony, but not in the same way as Steve and Natasha and not just because Tony's still alive and Bruce is quite possibly still in regular contact with him. The whole diner scene with the fangirls is pure, unfiltered Tony Stark, like Bruce copied how Tony handled celebrity. The 2023 Bruce is comfortable with himself and, without the everpresent fear and loathing of the Hulk, we see just how alike the two men really are. Bruce Banner is not the sweet, kind, gentle Eeyore of the Avengers that fandom loves to portray with an affection for scented candles and herbal tea. He's an arrogant genius - Ultron's other daddy - who has been very successfully shackled by the Other Guy and can only take tiny, delicate steps and make slow and considered movements. Set free, this is who you get. This is a (probably unintentional) callback to what Abe Erskine talked about when he talked to Steve, especially with the gamma radiation projects being an attempt to recreate the serum. The serum gave Steve a better platform to show off his goodness; the merge with the Hulk gave Bruce a better platform to show off that he's a bit of a jerk.
* Rhodey is essentially himself because his crisis happened at the end of Civil War, when he became a paraplegic, and his social support network was completely untouched by The Snap. He's more himself because he's not being overshadowed by Tony's outsized presence, but that's not really a change. He accepted his new reality by the time of Infinity War and has thrived since, so he can be the backbone others need now.
* Clint and Thor are reverting to earlier selves, with the meta problem that Thor's reversion is to a self that's not in MCU continuity. Clint-as-Ronin is John Wick, a violent and lethal weapon who'd chosen to leave that life and be changed by family and then had that family stolen from him. Hawkeye was an assassin before he was an Avenger; he murdered people for a living. Ronin is Hawkeye with his humanity locked away and if this surprises you, stop basing your headcanon on Fraction's version.
Thor... Thor is a reversion to that goofy short where he is the surfer dude roommate-from-Hell. Which makes no effing sense and bothered me more than anything else in the movie. Thor's arc, from the first Thor film through Infinity War, has been about him evolving into a worthy king of Asgard who understands that he doesn't need to be like his father - and in fact is better off not being his father. It's been about Thor growing up, in other words. At the end of Ragnorok, when he takes his seat at the front of the ship and turns around to give his people a little wave, that's where it all led. And how he acted in Infinity War was all the more powerful and poignant for that because here was a man who had finally understood himself ready to accept the burdens that awaited him, only to have it all stripped away while he watched, helpless and impotent. Nobody knows how they'll break under grief until it happens and the IW version of Thor was how he broke: a man of profound sorrow but not without humor or compassion or belief in his power to effect change. The Thor of Phase One or Phase Two would have helped forge his new weapon in exactly the same way, but it would have been a show-off-y thing and not the act of desperation it became; he knows he'll probably survive it, but that's now besides the point instead of it being exactly the point. That Thor, the one who sat isolated from the other Avengers and yet still had a little fun testing Carol, is nowhere to be found in Thor2023, not even with a microscope. He's not even a bad Babelfish translation of Ragnarok's Thor, even if they were trying to make something of the role reversal with Valkyrie.
* Tony... Tony almost doesn't count because his arc is pure meta. Everything that happens to Tony is a set-up for RDJ's perfect exit from the MCU because RDJ is actually the most powerful person at Marvel Studios, not Kevin Feige. And I don't mean that as a slam at all. This era of the MCU began with Tony Stark and it would always end with him, the alpha and the omega. There were no other options. RDJ's power (which is really no different than any other hugely successful franchise's or television series' lead's power) is such that more time is dedicated to his arc than anyone else's, but he was always going to have the final act to himself because the story demanded it. It's not a criticism or a complaint, it's just how it had to be.
That said, Tony was Phase 3 Asshole Tony for the first part, the self-absorbed man whose first response to profound pain is to make sure someone else hurts as much as he does. The guy who tried to murder Bucky in Civil War, the guy who could not get over his butthurt and call Steve at the beginning of Infinity War and then spewed awful bile at him at the start of Endgame, the guy who told the Avengers to fuck off when they came to him for help because he was okay and living his best life and could they go bleed on someone else's front porch. The Tony who drove up to Avengers Headquarters with the shield in the trunk, that was the Phase 2 one everyone liked best, the billionaire genius philanthropist teammate, and I'm very glad he's the one they went to war with.
One of the things that, upon reflection, intrigued me was how all of the Avengers were depicted at the five year mark. The choices were at times incredibly insightful and, in at least one case, incredibly misguided. The insight might have been unintentional, but...
* Steve and Natasha are both emulating people whom they'd see as incredibly influential on how they'd shaped themselves, at least the good parts. Steve is doing his best Sam impersonation, running a support group to try to heal his own wounds, while Natasha is performing her best interpretation of Nick Fury by trying to run a save-the-world network and keeping her shit together and under wraps. These are solid choices and reflect the film's overall echo of CA:tWS, since that's the movie where Sam and Steve met and where Natasha and Fury's relationship was made explicit. Their arcs for the rest of the movie, however, are quiet admissions of failure to keep up appearances and their final acts are confessions of their true selves, who they've been all along. [I am 1000% okay with Natasha's arc, but that's for another day.]
* Bruce is more or less channeling Tony, but not in the same way as Steve and Natasha and not just because Tony's still alive and Bruce is quite possibly still in regular contact with him. The whole diner scene with the fangirls is pure, unfiltered Tony Stark, like Bruce copied how Tony handled celebrity. The 2023 Bruce is comfortable with himself and, without the everpresent fear and loathing of the Hulk, we see just how alike the two men really are. Bruce Banner is not the sweet, kind, gentle Eeyore of the Avengers that fandom loves to portray with an affection for scented candles and herbal tea. He's an arrogant genius - Ultron's other daddy - who has been very successfully shackled by the Other Guy and can only take tiny, delicate steps and make slow and considered movements. Set free, this is who you get. This is a (probably unintentional) callback to what Abe Erskine talked about when he talked to Steve, especially with the gamma radiation projects being an attempt to recreate the serum. The serum gave Steve a better platform to show off his goodness; the merge with the Hulk gave Bruce a better platform to show off that he's a bit of a jerk.
* Rhodey is essentially himself because his crisis happened at the end of Civil War, when he became a paraplegic, and his social support network was completely untouched by The Snap. He's more himself because he's not being overshadowed by Tony's outsized presence, but that's not really a change. He accepted his new reality by the time of Infinity War and has thrived since, so he can be the backbone others need now.
* Clint and Thor are reverting to earlier selves, with the meta problem that Thor's reversion is to a self that's not in MCU continuity. Clint-as-Ronin is John Wick, a violent and lethal weapon who'd chosen to leave that life and be changed by family and then had that family stolen from him. Hawkeye was an assassin before he was an Avenger; he murdered people for a living. Ronin is Hawkeye with his humanity locked away and if this surprises you, stop basing your headcanon on Fraction's version.
Thor... Thor is a reversion to that goofy short where he is the surfer dude roommate-from-Hell. Which makes no effing sense and bothered me more than anything else in the movie. Thor's arc, from the first Thor film through Infinity War, has been about him evolving into a worthy king of Asgard who understands that he doesn't need to be like his father - and in fact is better off not being his father. It's been about Thor growing up, in other words. At the end of Ragnorok, when he takes his seat at the front of the ship and turns around to give his people a little wave, that's where it all led. And how he acted in Infinity War was all the more powerful and poignant for that because here was a man who had finally understood himself ready to accept the burdens that awaited him, only to have it all stripped away while he watched, helpless and impotent. Nobody knows how they'll break under grief until it happens and the IW version of Thor was how he broke: a man of profound sorrow but not without humor or compassion or belief in his power to effect change. The Thor of Phase One or Phase Two would have helped forge his new weapon in exactly the same way, but it would have been a show-off-y thing and not the act of desperation it became; he knows he'll probably survive it, but that's now besides the point instead of it being exactly the point. That Thor, the one who sat isolated from the other Avengers and yet still had a little fun testing Carol, is nowhere to be found in Thor2023, not even with a microscope. He's not even a bad Babelfish translation of Ragnarok's Thor, even if they were trying to make something of the role reversal with Valkyrie.
* Tony... Tony almost doesn't count because his arc is pure meta. Everything that happens to Tony is a set-up for RDJ's perfect exit from the MCU because RDJ is actually the most powerful person at Marvel Studios, not Kevin Feige. And I don't mean that as a slam at all. This era of the MCU began with Tony Stark and it would always end with him, the alpha and the omega. There were no other options. RDJ's power (which is really no different than any other hugely successful franchise's or television series' lead's power) is such that more time is dedicated to his arc than anyone else's, but he was always going to have the final act to himself because the story demanded it. It's not a criticism or a complaint, it's just how it had to be.
That said, Tony was Phase 3 Asshole Tony for the first part, the self-absorbed man whose first response to profound pain is to make sure someone else hurts as much as he does. The guy who tried to murder Bucky in Civil War, the guy who could not get over his butthurt and call Steve at the beginning of Infinity War and then spewed awful bile at him at the start of Endgame, the guy who told the Avengers to fuck off when they came to him for help because he was okay and living his best life and could they go bleed on someone else's front porch. The Tony who drove up to Avengers Headquarters with the shield in the trunk, that was the Phase 2 one everyone liked best, the billionaire genius philanthropist teammate, and I'm very glad he's the one they went to war with.