Avengers: Endgame
Hopefully this will all be hidden after the cut, because I need to say why Endgame is terrible.
I hate Endgame. It has plot holes that make no sense, but anytime you mess with time, that's a given. Steve gets his girl without destroying the timeline somehow; Tony gets a tragic death, completely with a beautiful funeral; Clint gets to go home to his wife even though he's a serial killer; the Hulk overtaken by Banner, just as the Hulk started to get to be a real person (this is supposed to be a good thing); Thor gets to be a hippie? at least a child taking a year off to find himself; and Natasha is fridged.
Yep. Fridged. In a way she gets fridged twice, first symbolically, as she is the one who takes Fury's place, leading the Avengers right up until AntMan comes back and has a plan. Then we are back with Tony and Steve trading the lead and Natasha's only value is in going to collect Clint. So first death for the sake of the guys. She's given a mission with Clint to the Soul Stone. Nebula, of course, does not explain about the Soul Stone, so that they could take a puppy or something, and Clint and Natasha fight about who gets to die. Natasha, apparently, is still convinced that she's not got a life worth living, and that Clint, who has a biological family does. Clint spent the five years between the start of the movie and Natasha finding him, killing everyone he decided wasn't worth surviving. And all the boys are briefly sad about her death. Clint will stop killing people and love his family. Yay! Growth!
Thor, as depressed, dreadlocked and unclean could have been amazing. But they had to put him in a fat suit and have fat jokes. There are a lot of fat jokes - not all verbal, a lot is done just with camera angles. It destroyed what could have be a really important look at how depression works, if they had just had him in a bathrobe, a real beard, and not made him get to 1% body fat. But nope, he was just sad for humour value.
Then there's the stupid football scene. "How will we make all the Avengers help in the final battle," someone must have asked. "I know! We'll have them play football. It will be great." It wasn't. "And then we can have a scene with all the amazing women we have, so don't worry girls, we fridged Black Widow, but you can still have these other girls!" Apparently we should just ignore the fact that Captain Marvel doesn't actually need back up and that this undercuts her power.
They did manage to get Peter Parker a decent line, but there was nothing left for the Wakandans. Not even a new toy made by Shuri. Never mind that the only army continues to be black people, which isn't a good look, either.
I did like the sister story line between Nebula and Gamora and that Loki might not be dead given that they stole one of the stones.
But they fridged Natasha. I had just started to trust Marvel to not do that to their female characters. This entry was originally posted at https://con-girl.dreamwidth.org/72239.html. Comment where ever you like, but if it isn't in this post (at LJ or DW) I likely won't see it :)