The Best Reads For After Seeing ‘Avengers: Endgame’
The crossover climax to all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies released so far hasn’t been out for a week, but it contains so much and leaves so many questions that it’s hard to keep up. Rather than flood Digg with spoilers, we’re keeping the good stuff here.
Really, you’ve been warned. Scroll past this video of Paul Rudd reacting to the “Thanus” theory and you’ll be in “Endgame” spoiler territory.
First Things First, Let’s Talk About Tony
Writing for The Ringer, Adam Nayman reflects on Robert Downey Jr.’s 11-year run as Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man — which, as you should know, is now over. He dies. You have seen the movie, right?
I don’t think I’ll ever find movies as gleaming and calculatedly anodyne as Iron Man or The Avengers genuinely moving, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an inherent power in watching actors age and develop along with their fictional alter egos, or that Downey’s achievement in creating, sustaining, and ultimately perfecting a character who means so much to so many isn’t impressive. It’s the stuff that icons are made of.
Black Widow Deserved Better
Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow has appeared in more MCU movies than many of the marquee heroes, but has consistently been relegated to a secondary role or worse (remember, she was introduced before Tony toned down his leering). While her self-sacrifice arguably makes sense given her arc and particularly her post-“Infinity War” role in the Avengers, Sophie Gilbert argues at The Atlantic that the studio’s initial reluctance to treat Johansson’s character respectfully still resonates in “Endgame.”
She’d been conceived in a different time, when it was sufficient for women to be sidekicks and decoration. An era when the former Marvel CEO Ike “Mar-a-Lago Cabinet” Perlmutter could block Black Widow merchandise because he didn’t think girls’ toys would sell. Though Black Widow was an extraordinary fighter and a fearless Avenger, she seemed perpetually cast as a foil to the male superheroes, rather than being a compelling character in her own stead.
For what it’s worth (if you’re upset by the way things played out/Widow’s constant side-lining, probably not much), screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely almost went the opposite route and had Hawkeye sacrifice himself. In an interview with Dave Itzkoff at the New York Times, McFeely puts Black Widow’s motivation and the filmmakers’ worries over killing her off in blunt terms:
Her journey, in our minds, had come to an end if she could get the Avengers back. She comes from such an abusive, terrible, mind-control background, so when she gets to Vormir and she has a chance to get the family back, that’s a thing she would trade for. The toughest thing for us was we were always worried that people weren’t going to have time to be sad enough. The stakes are still out there and they haven’t solved the problem. But we lost a big character — a female character — how do we honor it? We have this male lens and it’s a lot of guys being sad that a woman died.
That Was The MCU’s First Openly Gay Character? Really?
At Vulture, Jackson McHenry explains why co-director Joe Russo’s “Endgame” cameo as a man working through his post-Thanos-snap grief at a support group with Captain America feels “exhausting.”
In large part, it feels like Avengers: Endgame’s moment is part of a trend of big movies paying lip service to the idea of representing a great variety of people on screen, rather than the (mostly) straight white men who have consumed dangerous amounts of protein powder, without putting in the hard work to make that representation meaningful[…] With or without [Russo’s cameo], this is still a universe where action is defined and propelled by its straight and/or sentient plant leads. (Some of them might be queer, sure, but we haven’t heard about it!) Including a scene with a gay character as minor as this doesn’t rectify that reality, it just makes the overwhelming sameness of the rest of the enterprise more stark.
[Vulture]
We Should Be Happy For Thor, But Not For The Fat Jokes
Mathew Rodriguez at Out Magazine takes a pretty hardline stance against the direction “Endgame” takes Thor in, especially in the way the god of thunder’s thicker physique and depression aren’t merely new developments, but played up for laughs.
His mother, who he meets in the past, tells him to “eat a salad,” while Robert Downey, Jr. calls him “Lebowski” due to his size and alcohol consumption. Rocket Raccoon says he has “crumbs in his beard” — you know, because all fat people are slobs. When tasked with talking to his fellow Avengers about finding an infinity stone on Asgard, Thor is played up for laughs. He’s a shell of his former self who breaks down crying about his former glory and his ex-girlfriend Jane. The visual cues are there for laughs, as well. While another Avenger discusses finding a stone, Thor is slumped in a chair, his shirt barely covering his belly. (P.S. that moment was very hot.)
[Out]
At Vanity Fair, Joanna Robinson is also unamused by the tired fat jokes, but sees Thor’s “Endgame” arc on the whole as a promising continuation of the character revamp that started with Taika Waititi’s “Thor Ragnarok” — as does Hemsworth.
“Some people come out of the gates with all the confidence in the world,” Hemsworth said of his long period of uncertainty in the M.C.U., “and I think I was always looking for someone to steer me in the right direction.” What Hemsworth eventually found was the ability to guide his own ship straight into one of the more poignant story lines that Endgame has to offer. Thor doesn’t get a big death like Tony—but, like Cap, he gets to retire from the unreasonable expectations he’s put on himself.
Speaking Of Thor, How About That Hammer He Shares?
Foreshadowed in the best scene of the otherwise-forgettable “Age of Ultron,” the moment in “Endgame” when Captain America wields Thor’s hammer Mjolnir is possibly the biggest crowdpleaser of the film. It’s also, possibly, a little bit confusing if you’re not up to speed on the hammer’s lore beyond “Thor can lift it, others can’t” — Polygon’s Susana Polo lays out the comic book history of Mjolnir quite helpfully.
When newly forged, the spirit of the God Tempest was still strong within it, and not even Odin himself could control Mjolnir. So, he gave it its famous enchantment, that only the worthy would be able to wield it and summon the power of its lightning. Thousands of years after that, he eventually bequeathed the hammer to his son Thor, who had sought for years to lift it. (Keep in mind, this is all Marvel canon, which is, uh, notably divergent from actual Norse mythology).
[Polygon]
Captain America’s Send Off Is Right, Even If It’s A Little Hard To Wrap Your Head Around
By the movie’s final scene, depending on your interpretation of Tilda Swinton’s — er, the Ancient One’s — head-scratcher explanation of how removing Infinity Stones from the past impacts time, Steve Rogers’ swan song might be confusing. For The Hollywood Reporter, Laura Sirikul recaps the long-running mystery of who Peggy Carter married after Steve went in the ice in the ’40s. There are hints it was Steve all along.
During Endgame, Steve and Tony go back to 1970 in New Jersey to steal the tesseract that was held at SHIELD’s military base at Camp Lehigh, the birthplace of Captain America. Hiding from soldiers looking for him, Steve sneaks into an office and sees an old photo of him on the desk. He then realizes the office belongs to Peggy and sees her through the window. During this time, Peggy would be almost 50 years old. It’s unlikely Steve went back to that year to be with Peggy, especially since she would have already had a family by then. But that does raise the question of why she would still have a photo of Steve on her desk if she was already married to someone else with a family of her own.
Some folks might be upset that Steve gives his shield to Sam Wilson instead of Bucky Barnes — both successors have precedence in the comics — but Tracy Brown does a good job laying out why passing the Captain America mantle to Sam is the right move for the MCU in 2019.
Because the “Captain America” films spent significant time developing Bucky and Steve’s relationship, there was reason to believe that Steve could’ve handed over his shield to his “oldest” friend. But if the MCU is indeed moving to be more diverse in its next phase, Sam — a black character who until now has been relegated to being a sidekick — was the most logical choice to become the next Captain America.
Seriously Though, Are We Going To Have To Watch More Three-Hour Marvel Movies In The Future Now?
If there’s something to be said for “Endgame” as a piece of filmmaking (and not big-corporate brand advancement using the language of cinema), it’s that it doesn’t drag much, if ever, during it’s three-hour runtime. For NPR, Chris Klimek reflects on why blockbuster movies are stretching themselves out to intermission-less extremes.
Movies can be so long nowadays because there is now less financial pressure to keep them short. According to the National Association of Theater Owners, there were 40,837 movie screens in the United States in 2018. In 1987 that number was 22,697. That year’s box office champ was Three Men and a Baby, running 102 minutes, or Endgame-minus-80. In those days, screen real estate was more scarce, and movies that ran much longer than two hours would reduce the number of potential screenings per day. Availability is seldom an issue now, with single-screen theaters having all but vanished, and theatrical exhibition windows having shrunk to as little as 60 days, when there’s a theatrical exhibition window at all.
[NPR]
