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shadowscast(Four and a half years of nothing, and then two posts in two days! Wild.)
I have some more thoughts to share about Endgame, just for fun. These are not deep thoughts. I want to talk about some stories Endgame didn't tell, or more specifically: times when I thought I saw where the story was going, but I was wrong!
1) The Snap; The End.
Actually this isn't from Endgame, but from the end of Infinity War. When I walked into the theatre to watch IW, I was completely unspoiled (despite the fact that I saw it several days after its opening). And when I say "completely," I mean: I didn't even know that it was part 1 of 2. I thought that Infinity War was the end of the story arc. So I really, really expected the heroes to pull off a last-minute victory.
When the snap happened? When major characters started dissolving into dust? Wow, was I ever shocked. I remember my stunned thoughts running along the lines of: "Oh my gosh, they lost. That went a whole lot darker than I expected. Nicely played, Marvel Movieverse, I didn't think you had the guts. I guess all those actors' contracts were getting awfully expensive!"
And then there was the end-title card, with "The Avengers Will Return" etc., and I understood. But yeah, for a few minutes there I thought that really was the end.
2) A Scrappy Band of Heroes Defeats Thanos, Quickly Reverses the Snap.
For this one, I really have to give kudos to the movie-writers for the deliberate misdirect. Walking into Endgame, I was not unspoiled for the fact that several of the dusted characters had their own movies coming up, and I figured that they couldn't all be prequels, so I expected a snap-reversal of some sort to happen. (Me and everybody else, presumably.) When Natasha, Carol, Rocket, Rhodey, Steve and Thor set off to confront Thanos, I thought "Ah, okay, this is the story this movie is telling." I thought it was an interesting set of characters to toss together, but I felt a little disappointed by how straightforward the adventure seemed to be.
And then the whole thing was over in less than five minutes, and the real story was something else entirely. I was so impressed! Oh man, when we hit that 5 Years Later moment, I was stunned and delighted. Way to pleasantly surprise me, movie-writers!
3) Reset Button vs The Gifts of the Past Five Years.
Five years had passed. Ant-man had popped up with his time travel idea. And we were introduced to Tony and Pepper's adorable less-than-five-year-old daughter, Morgan.
So here's what I thought was being set up: a confrontation between the people who had built new lives and love in the past five years, and the people who had only lost, not gained. I thought that they were proposing to reverse the snap by going back in time and preventing it—which would then undo everything in the five years following, including Morgan's very existence. An unbearable choice, pitting the people who wanted to keep going against the people wanted to hit 'revert to previous save file'. And I guess it would have been Civil War redux, with Cap on one side and Tony on the other.
Anyway, I quickly discovered that I was wrong; this universe's time-travel mechanics (such as they were) were explained, and it turned out that the five years wouldn't be undone. Which made for a very different story, full of madcap adventures instead of gruelling ethical dilemmas. Probably a good choice, movie-writers!
4) Loki Saves and/or Ruins the Day, All Over Space and Time.
After Loki vanished with the Tesseract, I was distracted for the entire rest of the movie, waiting for him to suddenly pop up and save and/or ruin the day. Right through to the end of the credits, I was waiting for it! (I was unspoiled as to the fact that there was no end-of-credits scene. That's okay. I like sitting through the credits. I used to do it even before end-of-credit scenes were a thing! As a result, my friends and I were the only ones in the theatre in 1996 who saw the bonus scene at the end of the credits of James and the Giant Peach.)
I mean, what the heck was that about? You release the God of Mischief, and then there's no payoff at all?
I was sure that Loki's "the sun will shine on us again" line was going to tie in and be significant somehow. Loki wasn't really dead ... Loki only gave Thanos one Tesseract, he still had the spare from the other timeline ... SOMETHING. Argh! Anyway, yeah. So distracting.
What about you? Did you make some wrong guesses that you'd like to share? :-D
I have some more thoughts to share about Endgame, just for fun. These are not deep thoughts. I want to talk about some stories Endgame didn't tell, or more specifically: times when I thought I saw where the story was going, but I was wrong!
1) The Snap; The End.
Actually this isn't from Endgame, but from the end of Infinity War. When I walked into the theatre to watch IW, I was completely unspoiled (despite the fact that I saw it several days after its opening). And when I say "completely," I mean: I didn't even know that it was part 1 of 2. I thought that Infinity War was the end of the story arc. So I really, really expected the heroes to pull off a last-minute victory.
When the snap happened? When major characters started dissolving into dust? Wow, was I ever shocked. I remember my stunned thoughts running along the lines of: "Oh my gosh, they lost. That went a whole lot darker than I expected. Nicely played, Marvel Movieverse, I didn't think you had the guts. I guess all those actors' contracts were getting awfully expensive!"
And then there was the end-title card, with "The Avengers Will Return" etc., and I understood. But yeah, for a few minutes there I thought that really was the end.
2) A Scrappy Band of Heroes Defeats Thanos, Quickly Reverses the Snap.
For this one, I really have to give kudos to the movie-writers for the deliberate misdirect. Walking into Endgame, I was not unspoiled for the fact that several of the dusted characters had their own movies coming up, and I figured that they couldn't all be prequels, so I expected a snap-reversal of some sort to happen. (Me and everybody else, presumably.) When Natasha, Carol, Rocket, Rhodey, Steve and Thor set off to confront Thanos, I thought "Ah, okay, this is the story this movie is telling." I thought it was an interesting set of characters to toss together, but I felt a little disappointed by how straightforward the adventure seemed to be.
And then the whole thing was over in less than five minutes, and the real story was something else entirely. I was so impressed! Oh man, when we hit that 5 Years Later moment, I was stunned and delighted. Way to pleasantly surprise me, movie-writers!
3) Reset Button vs The Gifts of the Past Five Years.
Five years had passed. Ant-man had popped up with his time travel idea. And we were introduced to Tony and Pepper's adorable less-than-five-year-old daughter, Morgan.
So here's what I thought was being set up: a confrontation between the people who had built new lives and love in the past five years, and the people who had only lost, not gained. I thought that they were proposing to reverse the snap by going back in time and preventing it—which would then undo everything in the five years following, including Morgan's very existence. An unbearable choice, pitting the people who wanted to keep going against the people wanted to hit 'revert to previous save file'. And I guess it would have been Civil War redux, with Cap on one side and Tony on the other.
Anyway, I quickly discovered that I was wrong; this universe's time-travel mechanics (such as they were) were explained, and it turned out that the five years wouldn't be undone. Which made for a very different story, full of madcap adventures instead of gruelling ethical dilemmas. Probably a good choice, movie-writers!
4) Loki Saves and/or Ruins the Day, All Over Space and Time.
After Loki vanished with the Tesseract, I was distracted for the entire rest of the movie, waiting for him to suddenly pop up and save and/or ruin the day. Right through to the end of the credits, I was waiting for it! (I was unspoiled as to the fact that there was no end-of-credits scene. That's okay. I like sitting through the credits. I used to do it even before end-of-credit scenes were a thing! As a result, my friends and I were the only ones in the theatre in 1996 who saw the bonus scene at the end of the credits of James and the Giant Peach.)
I mean, what the heck was that about? You release the God of Mischief, and then there's no payoff at all?
I was sure that Loki's "the sun will shine on us again" line was going to tie in and be significant somehow. Loki wasn't really dead ... Loki only gave Thanos one Tesseract, he still had the spare from the other timeline ... SOMETHING. Argh! Anyway, yeah. So distracting.
What about you? Did you make some wrong guesses that you'd like to share? :-D
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-10 08:05 pm (UTC)2) Yes, I really liked that about it and I especially liked that it gave us a little slice of life, however brief, in what counted as Avengers downtime.
3) And I guess it would have been Civil War redux, with Cap on one side and Tony on the other.
Very much so, assuming they could figure it out without Tony at any rate. There was stuff which had to be papered over in terms of personal dynamics but the real issue to me here was the way not any of them ever seemed to question whether they should be making those decisions for the entire universe! And that was the real problem with not simply reversing what Thanos had done but causing everyone to first live with consequences of the loss and then with the consequences of the chaotic return. In that respect they were doing just what Thanos had, because it wasn't simply undoing his act and only Tony's family and a few other people outside the Avengers would ever have known what they lost from those 5 years.
Thanos even addressed that pre-battle, that he should have wiped the universe out so that no one had any memory of anything lost or gained.
4) I was sure that Loki's "the sun will shine on us again" line was going to tie in and be significant somehow. Loki wasn't really dead ... Loki only gave Thanos one Tesseract, he still had the spare from the other timeline ... SOMETHING. Argh! Anyway, yeah. So distracting.
You and me both. I remember a specific gifset that laid out what I was also thinking during IW. And this is why it also stood out to me that Tony said some things that seemed to indicate he knew more about the situation than he should have.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 12:28 am (UTC)OMG yes.
a specific gifset
Oh wow, I hadn't even thought about how explicitly parallel those scenes were! Both Loki and Strange had their stones magically hidden in a way that Thanos presumably never could have got to them. Both of them could have teleported away instead of giving up the stones. And yet they gave up the stones ... and then said mysterious and significant-sounding things that gave the impression that they knew what they were doing. How was that not actually significant? Storytelling argh.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 01:25 am (UTC)Gifsets can also just be fun to look at, but I've thought for some time that they're an excellent mini meta format.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 01:35 am (UTC)That's very interesting; I'd never thought of them that way before!
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 01:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 02:58 am (UTC)I'm going to try and reply by email because I've run into an issue trying to reply on your entry. (I filed a support request -- trying to comment makes me lose my password. It happened once before a few months ago but i didn't report it then).
Goodluck on my part :) I'm definitelylooking forward to Endgame icons -- I suspect my remaining icon slots will fillup at that point.
HoweverI wanted to mention something else that the gifset brought up which is theleverage Thanos had over all the Avengers because he could use them against oneanother. It reminded me that in thatTony time travel story I mentioned (which I finished yesterday), part of thewriter's "fix" was that Tony, (who thanks to Extremis was able toregenerate quickly) wielded 4 of the Infinity stones and immediately tookThanos back to Titan from Earth so that he could fight him alone in a placewhere no one else could get used as a hostage! It also actually described how the soul stone could work in a fight,which was interesting because I really didn't understand its purpose.
In someways it was more interesting to read about exactly because neither side had allthe stones so that we could see them in action. For all that they're important as a McGuffin in the films, we rarely seethem in use and not in combination.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-05-11 03:47 am (UTC)Yes, good point. Since it turns out that Loki really didn't have a secret awesome fallback plan—he really, truly gave up the Tesseract because he couldn't bear to see Thanos snap Thor's neck.