can you move your seat up?
so i have been to philly and seen fangirls and watched cacw, and can i just say, it took me seven hours to get there and seven hours to get back and that's a lot of driving. also a lot of tolls. >.< $11.25 on the nj turnpike! twice! and $15 to get over the george washington bridge. (look, that's a lot to cross a bridge, ok?) on the other hand, NO TRAFFIC IN CONNECTICUT ON THE WAY DOWN FOR THE SECOND TIME IN A ROW. which is weird! there's always traffic in connecticut!
anyway. the next time i have a burning need to go to philadelphia and see fangirls - by which i mean next month for wizardworld - i'm going to take the bus.
i should probably talk about the movie, huh?
first, to get it out of the way, i liked catws better. i think it was a tighter movie.
second, to also get it out of the way, there was too much tony. not just plot tony, but tony with the emotional arc. it's not your movie, stark. you got three movies of your own in which to whine and angst and fling manpain and daddy issues everywhere. you don't need to come into steve's movie and do it there too. how can we miss you if you won't go away?
i get the tony-vs-steve sokovian-accord thing, and i thought i read that the russos wanted to present both sides so neither is totally right and neither is totally wrong - and to do that i guess you have to show enough tony for the audience to understand why he's so pro-accord and why he's so upset that steve is fighting him on it - and also you need to know where bucky fits in because zemo's end game depends on him - i'm losing that sentence. >.< anyway. i get why the movie might need a tony-centric side plot, but come on, HE WAS ALREADY THE EMOTIONAL CENTER OF THREE MOVIES. WHY THE HELL DOES STEVE'S MOVIE HAVE TO SPEND ANY EMOTIONAL ENERGY ON HIM? except that steve's movie did. >.<
hmph. for a movie that's supposed to be about, you know, captain america, there was a lot of side plot involving iron man. and spiderman! who was totally adorable, i'll be honest, but his presence seemed entirely studio-driven and not movie- or character- or plot-driven. like, he was only there because the marvel ptb wanted to introduce him before he gets his own movie. which, again, hmph. (he's an avenger in the comics, isn't he? i don't actually know what came from the comics and what didn't, aside from the overall idea. if there's comic book reason or non-studio-interference reason for peter to be in cacw, please tell me! i don't want to be wrong this way.)
and while i like scott lang and i think paul rudd is the cutest, i wasn't totally sure why he was in it either. did they need to fill out both sides of the war? make it look like it was more than just steve vs tony? ant-man already had his intro movie, so it's not that, and if they're trying to drum up excitement for ant-man 2, they could've brought in wasp for a cameo.
i can't remember what else annoyed me, aside from the excessive tony and the assorted steve-less side plots. i mean, tony going to queens to flirt with aunt may and try to recruit peter took attention away from steve and bucky, who really are the emotional heart of the movie. what looked like the very beginning of a possible introduction of wanda/vision is deeply, deeply weird and kind of creepy to me, i think partly because i read wanda as kind of young (younger than natasha, anyway, and i think younger than elizabeth olsen) and i know vision's practically a baby but paul bettany really isn't, and partly because vision is a little too uncanny valley for me. he's so close to being human, but... he isn't. it's an ai/robot thing. i did like him trying and failing to cook for wanda, tho. i like that he seems to genuinely care about her. and she's trying to set boundaries ("we talked about this" - use the door, dude). but, again, giving their side plots some weight kinda overstuffed the movie. there was a lot of stuff! even tho some of it i really liked. and wanda's accent kind of came and went and i couldn't figure it out at all.
ok, t'challa. so much love. i am so excited for his solo movie now. i loved his relationship with his dad, i loved his suiting up and fighting (i loved all the fight scenes, actually), i loved the way he went from wanting to kill bucky in revenge for his dad's death to learning that bucky wasn't responsible to realizing that killing the guy who DID cause dad's death wasn't the way to go. i don't think locking zemo up in that cage was all that merciful - martin freeman was very "you're my bitch now" - but i did like that t'challa opted for non-death-dealing justice over revenge murder. and he had great presence, just in general.
one of the things i liked about the last scene with t'challa and zemo was the way it paralleled tony's attempt to kill bucky for his parents' murder. and i get it - tony has had a long time to deal with his parents' death (and we all know he hasn't dealt, and really, tony, you should've been in therapy twenty years ago) (which is one of the reasons i have so little patience with him and am getting so tired of him), but it's such a gutpunch to not only see it on screen but to know the guy who did it is a. standing right next to you, and b. your friend/colleague/team leader's best friend, and not only that, but c. said friend/colleague/team leader keeps defending him, and d. knew about it and never told you. (altho really, can you blame steve? what a horrible thing to tell someone - "oh, by the way, my best friend killed your parents when he was a brainwashed assassin".) t'challa saw his dad die right in front of him, and he hasn't had any time to process it, and yet he can pull back and show dad's murderer some mercy.
the other parallels i liked, which were really callbacks, were steve going "i can do this all day" when tony is telling him to stay down, and steve and bucky's exchange when they get to siberia ("remember when we had to ride back from rockaway beach in that freezer truck?" "was that the time you used our train money to buy hot dogs?"), which felt like a callback to catfa - "remember when i took you to coney island and made you go on the cyclone?" "yeah, and i threw up?" different situations, but the reference was fun.
i think there was another callback but i don't remember it. was there another one? tony telling steve "stay down" made me laugh, because the fact he says it means he doesn't know steve at all. he should know steve never stays down. i don't think steve even can.
oh, the "he's my friend"/"so was i" - i think chaneen said this? or @oftenadamanta - at that point tony's saying "i WAS your friend", as in "i'm not your friend any more because you betrayed me". he's not comparing his relationship with steve to bucky's relationship with steve. i like that reading better than tony apparently being hurt that steve would choose bucky over him.
i did love all the steve&bucky stuff - there was some banter! and touching! no hugs, tho - and their little exchange on the quinjet to siberia ("it wasn't your fault, you didn't know what you were doing"/"yeah, but i still did it" - whatever the exact words were, it's not on imdb to jog my memory) broke my heart a little, as did bucky's "i remember all of them" when tony asks if he even remembers mom and dad stark. and bucky doesn't do that any more! and sam won't move his seat up so bucky can have a little more room! and bucky wants to be frozen again because what happens if someone else knows the code words to bring out the winter soldier! and he kept the program from the captain america smithsonian exhibit! (which i didn't realize until someone had to tell me, and it just made me wonder how many times he went back to the exhibit, reading all the text and watching all the movies, trying to remember who he used to be and who he was to steve.) the way he grabbed the motorcycle when they're all chasing him through the tunnel was fucking beautiful.
he and sam had such cute chemistry. after bucky thaws out again, i can just imagine him and sam trading steve-shenanigans stories, and kind of ganging up on steve to give him shit.
when zemo is reciting the trigger phrase, and bucky panics because he knows what's coming, you can see the second the trigger takes - his face goes absolutely blank. it just wipes clean. it's amazing. sebastian stan is such a gift, i swear.
oh, and natasha asking if bucky remembers her, after he's been triggered into winter soldiering again. i reallly want to know what she's referring to.
oh, and clint! coming out of retirement! (which, whut? clint, retired?) even tho there really were too many characters in this movie, i liked getting to see him again. i half expected him and natasha to revert to hair-pulling and biting when they were fighting at the airport, as a callback to the avengers, but no. but they might still be friends.
natasha going to peggy's funeral to be there for steve was really lovely. she's not team tony at the expense of steve, she just thinks the accords are a good idea. the avengers could use some oversight. she's still steve's friend and is still trying to help him. she'll help tony and t'challa and co find the winter soldier, but she's not going to help them capture him. she'll help him get away.
steve carrying peggy's casket was the only time i teared up the whole movie. i came prepared with napkins and i didn't even need them! (we went to shake shack for dinner before the movie. the girl behind the register saw chaneen's winter soldier hoodie and went "is that a bucky hoodie?" and when chaneen said yes, the girl said "i know where you've been!" we had to tell her we were actually going to the 10:30 show. she was literally vibrating with excitement, just bouncing up and down behind the counter. it was so cute.) but man, that was tough. sharon's eulogy made me think of peggy telling one of the howling commandos that steve would say "do what peggy says" if you were to ask him what to do, and this is what peggy's saying - compromise until you can't, and when the world tells you to move, you plant your feet and say "no, you move". which is kind of what steve does.
i wish there was more sharon than just "here's peggy's eulogy, here's some info about zemo, here's a kiss". the kiss struck me as kind of weird and misplaced.
there's something i'm forgetting, good or bad. i wanted to walk out of the theater desperately needing to see cacw again, and i didn't. i mean, i do want to see it again - hopefully i won't feel the need to bitch about the excess of tony to my sister - but i don't need to see it next weekend. i'll get to it eventually. i wanted to walk out of the theater full of feels and squee and thinky thots, and... i didn't. and i couldn't say that on thursday, because everyone else seemed to be full of feels and squee and thinky thots, and i don't want to harsh anyone's squee. it kinda suffers from the same thing aou did, in that there's too much going on, too many people, too many little plot threads. it's not really a captain america movie. also, there's too god-damned much tony.
oh god, now i remember. the younger tony, in his memory demonstration at mit. holy shit, uncanny valley. so, so cgi-creepy and disturbing.
also, "your mother's name was sarah. you used to wear newspapers in your shoes." - i missed steve's sadface from the first trailer. we got a totally different attitude from him. can't learn that from a museum exhibit, and which bucky is he talking to?
...i don't know if any of that made any sense. overall i liked it, but i wanted to love it, and i'm kind of disappointed that i didn't. i mean, i'm kind of disappointed in myself.
did i mention i really liked the fight scenes? because i really did. and i'm so glad rhodey isn't dead.
i liked bucky's hair. try to contain your shock. :D it's entirely possible i'm just used to it.
so we did that thursday, and went to bed at an obscene hour (ie, five >.< ), which meant we got the slowest imaginable start on friday before we managed to shift ourselves out of chaneen's apartment and to lunch. (pancakes!) because the weather was crappy we basically sat on her couch all day and watched movies - catws (because of course) and the losers, because oftenadamanta had never seen it. go petunias!
today we got a slightly less slow start, had cake for breakfast, and everyone else went off to free comic book day and i drove my ass home. and there was traffic in connecticut! and all was right with the world. because i'm going back for wizardworld next month, if you're going too (azewewish :D ), we might actually get to see each other.
there are two homemade chocolate-chip zucchini breads on my kitchen counter and store-bought fruit salad in the fridge and i have to remember to sign my mom's mother's day card before i leave the house tomorrow. >.< also artists' claims open up for spn-j2-bigbang which means i'll have to hide in my parents' bedroom at some point during the day to see who claimed my summary.
anyway. the next time i have a burning need to go to philadelphia and see fangirls - by which i mean next month for wizardworld - i'm going to take the bus.
i should probably talk about the movie, huh?
first, to get it out of the way, i liked catws better. i think it was a tighter movie.
second, to also get it out of the way, there was too much tony. not just plot tony, but tony with the emotional arc. it's not your movie, stark. you got three movies of your own in which to whine and angst and fling manpain and daddy issues everywhere. you don't need to come into steve's movie and do it there too. how can we miss you if you won't go away?
i get the tony-vs-steve sokovian-accord thing, and i thought i read that the russos wanted to present both sides so neither is totally right and neither is totally wrong - and to do that i guess you have to show enough tony for the audience to understand why he's so pro-accord and why he's so upset that steve is fighting him on it - and also you need to know where bucky fits in because zemo's end game depends on him - i'm losing that sentence. >.< anyway. i get why the movie might need a tony-centric side plot, but come on, HE WAS ALREADY THE EMOTIONAL CENTER OF THREE MOVIES. WHY THE HELL DOES STEVE'S MOVIE HAVE TO SPEND ANY EMOTIONAL ENERGY ON HIM? except that steve's movie did. >.<
hmph. for a movie that's supposed to be about, you know, captain america, there was a lot of side plot involving iron man. and spiderman! who was totally adorable, i'll be honest, but his presence seemed entirely studio-driven and not movie- or character- or plot-driven. like, he was only there because the marvel ptb wanted to introduce him before he gets his own movie. which, again, hmph. (he's an avenger in the comics, isn't he? i don't actually know what came from the comics and what didn't, aside from the overall idea. if there's comic book reason or non-studio-interference reason for peter to be in cacw, please tell me! i don't want to be wrong this way.)
and while i like scott lang and i think paul rudd is the cutest, i wasn't totally sure why he was in it either. did they need to fill out both sides of the war? make it look like it was more than just steve vs tony? ant-man already had his intro movie, so it's not that, and if they're trying to drum up excitement for ant-man 2, they could've brought in wasp for a cameo.
i can't remember what else annoyed me, aside from the excessive tony and the assorted steve-less side plots. i mean, tony going to queens to flirt with aunt may and try to recruit peter took attention away from steve and bucky, who really are the emotional heart of the movie. what looked like the very beginning of a possible introduction of wanda/vision is deeply, deeply weird and kind of creepy to me, i think partly because i read wanda as kind of young (younger than natasha, anyway, and i think younger than elizabeth olsen) and i know vision's practically a baby but paul bettany really isn't, and partly because vision is a little too uncanny valley for me. he's so close to being human, but... he isn't. it's an ai/robot thing. i did like him trying and failing to cook for wanda, tho. i like that he seems to genuinely care about her. and she's trying to set boundaries ("we talked about this" - use the door, dude). but, again, giving their side plots some weight kinda overstuffed the movie. there was a lot of stuff! even tho some of it i really liked. and wanda's accent kind of came and went and i couldn't figure it out at all.
ok, t'challa. so much love. i am so excited for his solo movie now. i loved his relationship with his dad, i loved his suiting up and fighting (i loved all the fight scenes, actually), i loved the way he went from wanting to kill bucky in revenge for his dad's death to learning that bucky wasn't responsible to realizing that killing the guy who DID cause dad's death wasn't the way to go. i don't think locking zemo up in that cage was all that merciful - martin freeman was very "you're my bitch now" - but i did like that t'challa opted for non-death-dealing justice over revenge murder. and he had great presence, just in general.
one of the things i liked about the last scene with t'challa and zemo was the way it paralleled tony's attempt to kill bucky for his parents' murder. and i get it - tony has had a long time to deal with his parents' death (and we all know he hasn't dealt, and really, tony, you should've been in therapy twenty years ago) (which is one of the reasons i have so little patience with him and am getting so tired of him), but it's such a gutpunch to not only see it on screen but to know the guy who did it is a. standing right next to you, and b. your friend/colleague/team leader's best friend, and not only that, but c. said friend/colleague/team leader keeps defending him, and d. knew about it and never told you. (altho really, can you blame steve? what a horrible thing to tell someone - "oh, by the way, my best friend killed your parents when he was a brainwashed assassin".) t'challa saw his dad die right in front of him, and he hasn't had any time to process it, and yet he can pull back and show dad's murderer some mercy.
the other parallels i liked, which were really callbacks, were steve going "i can do this all day" when tony is telling him to stay down, and steve and bucky's exchange when they get to siberia ("remember when we had to ride back from rockaway beach in that freezer truck?" "was that the time you used our train money to buy hot dogs?"), which felt like a callback to catfa - "remember when i took you to coney island and made you go on the cyclone?" "yeah, and i threw up?" different situations, but the reference was fun.
i think there was another callback but i don't remember it. was there another one? tony telling steve "stay down" made me laugh, because the fact he says it means he doesn't know steve at all. he should know steve never stays down. i don't think steve even can.
oh, the "he's my friend"/"so was i" - i think chaneen said this? or @oftenadamanta - at that point tony's saying "i WAS your friend", as in "i'm not your friend any more because you betrayed me". he's not comparing his relationship with steve to bucky's relationship with steve. i like that reading better than tony apparently being hurt that steve would choose bucky over him.
i did love all the steve&bucky stuff - there was some banter! and touching! no hugs, tho - and their little exchange on the quinjet to siberia ("it wasn't your fault, you didn't know what you were doing"/"yeah, but i still did it" - whatever the exact words were, it's not on imdb to jog my memory) broke my heart a little, as did bucky's "i remember all of them" when tony asks if he even remembers mom and dad stark. and bucky doesn't do that any more! and sam won't move his seat up so bucky can have a little more room! and bucky wants to be frozen again because what happens if someone else knows the code words to bring out the winter soldier! and he kept the program from the captain america smithsonian exhibit! (which i didn't realize until someone had to tell me, and it just made me wonder how many times he went back to the exhibit, reading all the text and watching all the movies, trying to remember who he used to be and who he was to steve.) the way he grabbed the motorcycle when they're all chasing him through the tunnel was fucking beautiful.
he and sam had such cute chemistry. after bucky thaws out again, i can just imagine him and sam trading steve-shenanigans stories, and kind of ganging up on steve to give him shit.
when zemo is reciting the trigger phrase, and bucky panics because he knows what's coming, you can see the second the trigger takes - his face goes absolutely blank. it just wipes clean. it's amazing. sebastian stan is such a gift, i swear.
oh, and natasha asking if bucky remembers her, after he's been triggered into winter soldiering again. i reallly want to know what she's referring to.
oh, and clint! coming out of retirement! (which, whut? clint, retired?) even tho there really were too many characters in this movie, i liked getting to see him again. i half expected him and natasha to revert to hair-pulling and biting when they were fighting at the airport, as a callback to the avengers, but no. but they might still be friends.
natasha going to peggy's funeral to be there for steve was really lovely. she's not team tony at the expense of steve, she just thinks the accords are a good idea. the avengers could use some oversight. she's still steve's friend and is still trying to help him. she'll help tony and t'challa and co find the winter soldier, but she's not going to help them capture him. she'll help him get away.
steve carrying peggy's casket was the only time i teared up the whole movie. i came prepared with napkins and i didn't even need them! (we went to shake shack for dinner before the movie. the girl behind the register saw chaneen's winter soldier hoodie and went "is that a bucky hoodie?" and when chaneen said yes, the girl said "i know where you've been!" we had to tell her we were actually going to the 10:30 show. she was literally vibrating with excitement, just bouncing up and down behind the counter. it was so cute.) but man, that was tough. sharon's eulogy made me think of peggy telling one of the howling commandos that steve would say "do what peggy says" if you were to ask him what to do, and this is what peggy's saying - compromise until you can't, and when the world tells you to move, you plant your feet and say "no, you move". which is kind of what steve does.
i wish there was more sharon than just "here's peggy's eulogy, here's some info about zemo, here's a kiss". the kiss struck me as kind of weird and misplaced.
there's something i'm forgetting, good or bad. i wanted to walk out of the theater desperately needing to see cacw again, and i didn't. i mean, i do want to see it again - hopefully i won't feel the need to bitch about the excess of tony to my sister - but i don't need to see it next weekend. i'll get to it eventually. i wanted to walk out of the theater full of feels and squee and thinky thots, and... i didn't. and i couldn't say that on thursday, because everyone else seemed to be full of feels and squee and thinky thots, and i don't want to harsh anyone's squee. it kinda suffers from the same thing aou did, in that there's too much going on, too many people, too many little plot threads. it's not really a captain america movie. also, there's too god-damned much tony.
oh god, now i remember. the younger tony, in his memory demonstration at mit. holy shit, uncanny valley. so, so cgi-creepy and disturbing.
also, "your mother's name was sarah. you used to wear newspapers in your shoes." - i missed steve's sadface from the first trailer. we got a totally different attitude from him. can't learn that from a museum exhibit, and which bucky is he talking to?
...i don't know if any of that made any sense. overall i liked it, but i wanted to love it, and i'm kind of disappointed that i didn't. i mean, i'm kind of disappointed in myself.
did i mention i really liked the fight scenes? because i really did. and i'm so glad rhodey isn't dead.
i liked bucky's hair. try to contain your shock. :D it's entirely possible i'm just used to it.
so we did that thursday, and went to bed at an obscene hour (ie, five >.< ), which meant we got the slowest imaginable start on friday before we managed to shift ourselves out of chaneen's apartment and to lunch. (pancakes!) because the weather was crappy we basically sat on her couch all day and watched movies - catws (because of course) and the losers, because oftenadamanta had never seen it. go petunias!
today we got a slightly less slow start, had cake for breakfast, and everyone else went off to free comic book day and i drove my ass home. and there was traffic in connecticut! and all was right with the world. because i'm going back for wizardworld next month, if you're going too (azewewish :D ), we might actually get to see each other.
there are two homemade chocolate-chip zucchini breads on my kitchen counter and store-bought fruit salad in the fridge and i have to remember to sign my mom's mother's day card before i leave the house tomorrow. >.< also artists' claims open up for spn-j2-bigbang which means i'll have to hide in my parents' bedroom at some point during the day to see who claimed my summary.