(no subject)
these are just my immediate, just-got-out-of-the-theatre thoughts
1. One thing that I felt about Winter Soldier and also felt about this movie: this is a movie that cares about the shit I care about. by which I mean: it cares about characterisation and relationships. it cares about consequences for superheroes. it asks genuinely difficult questions (without having to be a dire suckfest). in some ways it felt like a direct thesis statement against everything Man of Steel stood for. also, it cares about Natasha being a badass, which I also care about so fucking much.
2. although in a massive ensemble cast there will always be people who are short-shrifted and that was certainly true here, it was amazing how this movie gave double the amount of characters far more interesting character stuff in far less time than Age of Ultron. Wanda was far better served by this movie. Vision was better served. Tony was better served, and Age of Ultron was all about Tony, for crying out loud. Rhodey got so much more in this film than I was even hoping for! Sam! Sharon!
3. a brief and incomplete list of moments I fucking loved:
- sam and bucky in the car
- natasha's every scene (did u guys know I am a Natasha fan?), but particularly her scenes with Tony, and, of course, letting Steve and Bucky go
- t'challa's scene at the end with zemo & his refusal to be consumed by revenge and have I mentioned I am a sucker for Guys Who Care
- eeeeeevery scene with t'challa who was SO SO GREAT and I cannot wait for his movie
- fuck the steve/bucky/tony fight scene was emotionally devastating
- peter's Empire Strikes Back joke, amazing
- "Give me back my Rhodey"
- I didn't love this but I was DEVASTATED when Rhodey hit the ground. I felt it in my body. I thought they'd killed him.
- that scene where they're divided in half and then they're running at each other and some of them are in the air - you know, that shot that is basically a big splash page in the middle of a comic book fight scene? I emotionally hated what was happening but I am a big fucking nerd and I LOVED that SHOT.
- honestly a lot of the jokes were great
- I am meh on Clint but "We're still friends, right?" was a relief to me because I had such complicated emotions about the Avengers breaking up and I liked that it wasn't all about Steve and Tony
- Considering the only development they had was *in this movie*, I cared a huge amount about Vision and Wanda fighting
- tbqh Steve and Tony's friendship was almost all developed only in this movie and yet I still totally believed it and bought it and argh
- Natasha coming to the funeral because she didn't want Steve to be alone. h e l p.
- chris evans arms appreciation moment (the hilariously silly helicopter scene). cheeeeeeesecake
- tony and rhodey right at the end. and I really liked rhodey's lines here. they were thoughtful and in character.
- in the scene where they're talking about whether or not they will sign the accords - I really liked this whole scene. it was thoughtful. everyone seemed genuinely torn - it wasn't like they immediately picked one side and went there. and everyone's rationales for their ultimate decisions made sense. I especially liked Sam and Rhodey here.
- the airport fight scene - look, I'm a former comics fan and that shit is just fun. everybody wisecracking! everybody fighting! it's what everyone wanted to get out of Superman vs Batman and totally didn't.
- speaking of the scene where Natasha lets Bucky and Steve go - one of the things I sneaky loved about this was that Natasha had ultimately cut some of the fighting and gone to where she had known Steve and Bucky would try to get to.
- when Natasha says to Bucky something like "do you at least recognise me" and I had a MOMENT about whether or not the Winter Soldier and Natasha had ever worked together and omg I hope this Comes Back Later
- idek, but Bucky buying fruit at the market. it was so natural and normal and it did things to me.
- t'challa's dad's speech about Wakandan isolationism was terribly interesting. it made the geopolitics of the MCU briefly very interesting to me, which is a feat considering I don't even really care about real-word geopolitics.
4. if I had had control of this movie I would have cut out, in order, Clint, Scott, and Peter. aaaand then maybe I would have thought about cutting Sharon, although I did like her moments a lot and I thought Peggy's funeral was tremendous. (It would have been reasonable for Sharon's involvement to have ended there, but I'm not that mad about her other scenes because cool, character development, nuance, Peggy's ongoing influence...) Peter I would have been saddest to lose because he really was a joy, but this was a long movie and he wasn't necessary. also, I wouldn't have been sorry to see Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker.
5. They didn't end up developing this fully because they tried to do too much but that scene right at the beginning where Wanda tries to stop the bomb and ends up killing people and is clearly devastated and they dwell on that, and on Steve feeling bad about it too - I thought that was very good even though, yes, they ultimately do carry on avenging. it's one of the things that made this movie the anti-Man of Steel and yet was still more thoughtful than Man of Steel - you can acknowledge and be thoughtful about bystander deaths and the superhero paradox, where superheroes appear to draw ever more destructive villains, without sucking the fun out of life and movies and superheroes. and in a way I think it's *more* thoughtful to say yes, this is difficult and consequences are tremendously hard and these people care about it but they are going to go on trying to do what is right than to nihilistically say these deaths are inevitable and the only way to deal with it is to choose not to care.
6. I am such Steve/Bucky trash and every moment where Bucky was captured by the good guys I was going ARGH MY WEE BUCKY. I mean, I realise that is ludicrous, but the scenes where he is in that tiny glass prison and he looks pale and just like he looks before they froze him in Winter Soldier -- argh, my poor wee bucky! yes, yes. I am trash. (also when he starts shouting when dude is using the trigger words! argh!)
7. actually bucky is probably the person, ironically, who is *least* well served by this movie and got the least characterisation
8. I still cared about him way too much
9. despite this I felt for Tony so much at the end. like yes steve is ultimately right, bucky was being brainwashed. but also tony just watched bucky kill his parents on video and bucky doesn't even try to apologise and also steve knew and kept it from him (which! is! TERRIBLE, btw)
10. i'm obviously thrilled steve doesn't die but gosh, you know, tony's turnaround is a lot easier to understand when you have that devastating scene with steve's body.
11. when we came out of the theatre K and L were like "omg the audi product placement was just ridiculous" and I could not have told you the brand of a single car in that movie. this isn't really a thought about the movie but it did make me laugh.
12. some more Natasha thoughts: her characterisation in this movie just shows up how shitty her characterisation in Ultron is. this Natasha has thoughts and feelings and a complex emotional arc and cares about shit and is a pivotal character, but her thoughts and feelings and emotional arc all relate to the plot of the movie, they aren't about her wanting a baby. and look! I'm not saying she can't want a baby or be devastated about her fertility issues or whatever (though it was always terrible to frame that as monstrousness), I'm saying that deciding to explore those issues in the middle of your explosive superhero movie was gross and bad and terrible. she doesn't need to have Special Girly Problems to have problems and an emotional arc. she could have related to Bruce as a monster because of her existing actual backstory as an assassin etc. anyway yeah this is just a "shit on Age of Ultron" moment, because this movie just demonstrates so many of the things Age of Ultron did badly.
13. look. construction wise, this wasn't a perfect movie. there were a couple of different plots and slightly too many characters. it was a tad long. but it hit so many of the things I wanted and it did so many of the emotional things I needed and it didn't kill anyone, thank fuck, and it really made me want to see the T'Challa movie even though I hardly know anything about T'Challa and it loved all of the things I loved about these characters and about superhero movies so yeah, I totally loved it.
This entry is crossposted from http://labellementeuse.dreamwidth.org/377532.html, where there are
comments.