obligatory Endgame post
I am incandescently furious about that ending.
I genuinely enjoyed 90% of the movie, and there were some moments I loved to bits (see: the entire jump back behind the scenes of the first Avengers movie, that entire extended sequence was absolute gold), but the ending destroyed pretty much all the goodwill the rest of the movie earned for me. I have seen enough reaction posts to know that many people will disagree with me, and that's fine, but Steve (and Team Cap in general) got the SHIT END OF THE STICK in ways I HATED. Actually, yes, all of Team Cap (which I consider to be Steve - Nat - Bucky - Sam), because WTF Natasha?! Yes, let's outright refrigerate the only original female member of the team at like the 2/3 mark in such a way that I legit assumed it would be undone by the un-snap at the end, so it had no real emotional resonance for me, and then...nope, okay, I guess that was real, but nobody cares except like Clint having one vaguely emo moment with Wanda while literally the rest of the entire universe is mourning Tony instead.
Oh, and um, so we're leaving the five-year gap in there? You have a massively traumatized populace, most of whom are hopefully in the process of moving on with the shards of their lives after FIVE YEARS, and now suddenly we're restoring the Dusted with...no consequences whatsoever? ALL OF PETER'S CLASSMATES ARE STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL?! It's been FIVE FUCKING YEARS. People have moved on. They've remarried, they've started new lives (like, y'know, Tony and Pepper did), they've rebuilt their worlds -- and now we're suddenly just DOUBLING the world's population again like that's just gonna be fine for everyone?! I don't understand how you undo the Snap without taking it back to the actual moment of the Snap, I really fucking don't. I will handwave all manner of comic-book physics, but this broke every sense of continuity and my willingness to suspend disbelief. And yeah, Tony's moppet was at the funeral, and Cassie Lang is still a teenager at the end, so they did leave the five year gap in. That choice will cause more damage to the universe than the original Snap did. Fuck you, screenwriters, you lazy assholes.
And do not get me started on Steve winning the Peggy prize at the bottom of the box of fucking cracker jacks. I adore Peggy, I very much approve of Steve/Peggy as a ship, and that is some BULLSHIT right there. She had a life after him! She built a magnificent, rich, full life for herself, she married and had kids and grandkids and did not have a damn thing to regret, and they made their peace together in Winter Soldier in really beautiful ways. Fuck you, Steve, for taking all that away from her. And you cannot tell me that Steve choosing to stay and live his life starting in the late 1940s would not MASSIVELY change the course of history, because that man is incapable of not standing up for what he believes in, and there's no way he would sit out, like, the civil rights movement, or knowingly leave Bucky to be extensively tortured and brainwashed by Hydra while he's in the right time to intervene. Lazy. Fucking. Writing. (I also call bullshit on Bucky not insisting on going back with him, but that's a whole other can of worms, and I would rather not get started on how much of a nonentity Bucky was in this movie. Like, "Bucky is alive" is the magic catchphrase Steve used to knock his younger self out of the fight in the Avengers time-jump, but then the un-Snap happens and they barely even look at each other once. FUCK THIS NOISE.)
Sam got the shield, at least. That's literally the only good thing that came out of that for me.
I'm sorry, I'm just so goddamn disappointed, and I hate being that person in fandom. Especially when, like I said, I thought like 90% of this movie was great, and there are so many wonderful moments in it. But goddamn it, I would much rather they had killed Steve off than given me this steaming pile of crap. In fairness, though, the MCU took a hard turn post-Winter Soldier for me, and particularly starting with Civil War, where I've strongly disagreed with many of the character arcs. The individual franchise movies are still good (Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok, and Captain Marvel were all great fun), but the team efforts and overarching narratives have left me cold. So the MCU in general just isn't my jam anymore, and that's fine. I'm clearly not the target audience.
At least we'll always have fanfic.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. Comment wherever you'd like.