Sophinisba Solis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophinisba) wrote2019-10-06 09:08 am
sophinisba) wrote2019-10-06 09:08 am
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Avengers: Infinity War
Okay okay okay, I know what you're thinking: but sophinisba, did you like that other Avengers movie, the one that came out a year and a half ago?
I didn't, especially! Here is a post about that, with spoilers for both Infinity War and Endgame.
I mean, background, I'd always felt half resentful at fandom anyway for getting so excited about these movies that I felt like I had to see them to keep up with anything, though I'd ended up liking some of them –– Iron Man 3, Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming spring to mind. But big Avengers ones, ugh, so heavy, and always such long fight sequences that I don't care about. The fact that it was called Infinity War and was three hours long just seemed like the quintessence of everything I don't like about action movies. My interest in fandom in general had been slowly waning for a long time but I said, fine, I will go and then I can stop trying to avoid the spoilers.
Sure, there were things that were enjoyable about it. In general Avengers movies are neat because you get to see favorite characters from different movies come together and have fun interactions. I am not immune. There were some fun combinations, what with more Avengers showing up in Wakanda and then the stuff with the Guardians. But I was also sad about how chopped up it was, that we kept alternating between these different stories with a few characters each in them, and we never got to see the core members of the team together.
But the more frustrating thing to me was this repeated element of characters having to choose to hurt their loved ones. I mean really. Some people love thinking about the Trolley Problem and I have no interest in it. (I don't even like that episode of The Good Place, and I love The Good Place.) To me it has always seemed straightforward, if you need to kill one person to save more people that is the right choice. Does that mean it's easy to do? Obviously not, and that's part of why I don't like thinking about it. To be honest the fact that other people find it morally complicated also makes me feel like there's probably something wrong with me, like I don't love individuals who are close to me as much as I should.
So but anyway I'm like, okay, it's unpleasant but let's get it over with. Peter, you need to shoot Gamora! Wanda, you need to kill Vision! (Maybe there were other parallel situations I don't remember oh my God there have been so many fucking movies.) The choice is clear but please do it now and hello why am I being forced to watch this? But since it's a movie it's very drawn out and then... It doesn't matter? Because Thanos already has whatever stone so your choices matter not at all, and your sacrificing the person you love matters not at all, and basically nothing anybody does in this movie matters at all and I still spent three hours of my day at it? I mean what?
All that said, I kind of loved the ending! Not having read any comics or spent much time in the fandom (I'd read some fic, mostly when I had a specific reason to want to make a podfic) I had no idea what was coming and found it really shocking, and I loved the visual effect of the dust lingering in the air. I had no idea what to think about what would come next. I had no idea what the post-credit scene with Fury and Maria and the pager meant.
I left the theater feeling somewhat impressed but also shaken and confused and tired. And, because of the way my local sad old mall is set up, I walked through the Marshall's on my way to the car and there were some cute purple Sketchers on sale so I stopped to buy them. The cashier was this cute skinny teenage boy who seemed bored to be working in a very boring job, and I felt awkward as I do in almost every personal interaction, and awkward about doing something so banal when half the universe had just died, and as we were waiting (and waiting) for the credit card transaction to work I said, "Have you seen the new Avengers movie?" and he said yeah and I asked him what the post-credit scene meant and his face lit up telling me about Captain Marvel and comic books, and that made me feel a lot better. Those shoes have turned out to be not great for my feet but they're still very cute and I always smile when I wear them because they're my Infinity War shoes.
Then I mostly quit fandom for like a year (not completely but like, no fanworks in over a year, and I stopped looking at any of these accounts for maybe six months). It wasn't that I was upset about Infinity War or anything, like I said that wasn't my fandom, I just hadn't found anything to replace Merlin in my heart, and I felt like nobody cared about my lady-centric podfics in random fandoms (very few people do, to be fair), and work was busy, so yeah I checked out. Captain Marvel came out in the spring and reviews were so-so and I said yawn there is a thing I used to be sort of interested in, maybe I'll see it when it comes out on streaming.
But my partner B (who thinks of Marvel movies as the thing I drag her into while I thought of them as the thing y'all drag me into) said no we should really go see it before it leaves the theater. So we showed up at the sad old mall one Saturday but ooops, it was the opening weekend for Endgame and the ticket lines were so long that we gave up and went home. But we went back on a weekday a few days later and you guys! Captain Marvel was so good!? So full of feelings and surprises and with so little concern for white guys! I found it really satisfying and did not feel the need to come back here and be fannish about it, but I thought oh heck, we might as well also go see Endgame and wrap everything up, so we went back a few days later and did that.
And like, there is much that can be said about the many terrible things that happened in this movie, and I have read many of those posts and I get and agree with most of the criticisms but also, for me
And so here we are! I'm still so amused that I immediately came on Dreamwidth and Twitter expecting everybody else to be as excited as I was, and found out almost all my old friends were either enraged or indifferent, but anyway that's some of my journey.
I didn't, especially! Here is a post about that, with spoilers for both Infinity War and Endgame.
I mean, background, I'd always felt half resentful at fandom anyway for getting so excited about these movies that I felt like I had to see them to keep up with anything, though I'd ended up liking some of them –– Iron Man 3, Thor: Ragnarok and Spider-Man: Homecoming spring to mind. But big Avengers ones, ugh, so heavy, and always such long fight sequences that I don't care about. The fact that it was called Infinity War and was three hours long just seemed like the quintessence of everything I don't like about action movies. My interest in fandom in general had been slowly waning for a long time but I said, fine, I will go and then I can stop trying to avoid the spoilers.
Sure, there were things that were enjoyable about it. In general Avengers movies are neat because you get to see favorite characters from different movies come together and have fun interactions. I am not immune. There were some fun combinations, what with more Avengers showing up in Wakanda and then the stuff with the Guardians. But I was also sad about how chopped up it was, that we kept alternating between these different stories with a few characters each in them, and we never got to see the core members of the team together.
But the more frustrating thing to me was this repeated element of characters having to choose to hurt their loved ones. I mean really. Some people love thinking about the Trolley Problem and I have no interest in it. (I don't even like that episode of The Good Place, and I love The Good Place.) To me it has always seemed straightforward, if you need to kill one person to save more people that is the right choice. Does that mean it's easy to do? Obviously not, and that's part of why I don't like thinking about it. To be honest the fact that other people find it morally complicated also makes me feel like there's probably something wrong with me, like I don't love individuals who are close to me as much as I should.
So but anyway I'm like, okay, it's unpleasant but let's get it over with. Peter, you need to shoot Gamora! Wanda, you need to kill Vision! (Maybe there were other parallel situations I don't remember oh my God there have been so many fucking movies.) The choice is clear but please do it now and hello why am I being forced to watch this? But since it's a movie it's very drawn out and then... It doesn't matter? Because Thanos already has whatever stone so your choices matter not at all, and your sacrificing the person you love matters not at all, and basically nothing anybody does in this movie matters at all and I still spent three hours of my day at it? I mean what?
All that said, I kind of loved the ending! Not having read any comics or spent much time in the fandom (I'd read some fic, mostly when I had a specific reason to want to make a podfic) I had no idea what was coming and found it really shocking, and I loved the visual effect of the dust lingering in the air. I had no idea what to think about what would come next. I had no idea what the post-credit scene with Fury and Maria and the pager meant.
I left the theater feeling somewhat impressed but also shaken and confused and tired. And, because of the way my local sad old mall is set up, I walked through the Marshall's on my way to the car and there were some cute purple Sketchers on sale so I stopped to buy them. The cashier was this cute skinny teenage boy who seemed bored to be working in a very boring job, and I felt awkward as I do in almost every personal interaction, and awkward about doing something so banal when half the universe had just died, and as we were waiting (and waiting) for the credit card transaction to work I said, "Have you seen the new Avengers movie?" and he said yeah and I asked him what the post-credit scene meant and his face lit up telling me about Captain Marvel and comic books, and that made me feel a lot better. Those shoes have turned out to be not great for my feet but they're still very cute and I always smile when I wear them because they're my Infinity War shoes.
Then I mostly quit fandom for like a year (not completely but like, no fanworks in over a year, and I stopped looking at any of these accounts for maybe six months). It wasn't that I was upset about Infinity War or anything, like I said that wasn't my fandom, I just hadn't found anything to replace Merlin in my heart, and I felt like nobody cared about my lady-centric podfics in random fandoms (very few people do, to be fair), and work was busy, so yeah I checked out. Captain Marvel came out in the spring and reviews were so-so and I said yawn there is a thing I used to be sort of interested in, maybe I'll see it when it comes out on streaming.
But my partner B (who thinks of Marvel movies as the thing I drag her into while I thought of them as the thing y'all drag me into) said no we should really go see it before it leaves the theater. So we showed up at the sad old mall one Saturday but ooops, it was the opening weekend for Endgame and the ticket lines were so long that we gave up and went home. But we went back on a weekday a few days later and you guys! Captain Marvel was so good!? So full of feelings and surprises and with so little concern for white guys! I found it really satisfying and did not feel the need to come back here and be fannish about it, but I thought oh heck, we might as well also go see Endgame and wrap everything up, so we went back a few days later and did that.
And like, there is much that can be said about the many terrible things that happened in this movie, and I have read many of those posts and I get and agree with most of the criticisms but also, for me
- seeing the original six Avengers together, after being denied that in IW, was great
- seeing several of them at the Battle of New York brought me back to 2012 in real life and me feel such incredible affection for the wonderful, talented fans whose enthusiasm has forced me to watch all these fucking movies
- seeing characters make choices and make sacrifices that had consequences was so very satisfying in exactly the way that Infinity War was not, and
- I cried when Steve gave Sam the shield.
And so here we are! I'm still so amused that I immediately came on Dreamwidth and Twitter expecting everybody else to be as excited as I was, and found out almost all my old friends were either enraged or indifferent, but anyway that's some of my journey.
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I was pretty unmoved at the end of Infinity War because I knew they would find a way to bring the characters back, and also I kind of have a built in dislike of time travel plots that really worked against me here.
But I was glad I saw it through to the end, and I too really really enjoyed Captain Marvel. I understand there will be a Black Widow origin story sometime and I am so up for that, and of course we will have Spider Man again now that Sony and Marvel have kissed and made up. Billions of dollars will do that for a corporation.
I loved Iron Man 3, but I liked the first two better, and yes to Ragnarok. My favorite remains the first one, Avengers, and also Winter Soldier because I was a Bucky/Steve shipper. Also Iron Man I.
But Sam is awesome and above all I love Natasha. I would read any amount of fic about Natasha. I wish they had gone with shipping her canonically with Bucky, instead of Hulk, because I loved that idea from the comics (which I haven't read), and I thought it made way more sense.
But it was a long and exhausting ride.
Glad you could get through it. And yay for purple shoes.
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I like Natasha a lot and have enjoyed seeing her shipped with Bucky in fics. I don't know that I would have loved to see that in the movies, and I'm much more of a Bruce fan than a Bucky one, though I did hate they way they brought in the Natasha/Bruce in Age of Ultron.
Also the scripts gave way too much screen time to Thanos' pain.
On this we can definitely agree! Another big reason that IW dragged for me.
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I was pretty unmoved at the end of Infinity War because I knew they would find a way to bring the characters back, and also I kind of have a built in dislike of time travel plots that really worked against me here.
See I didn't have that at all! Like I like time travel plots but I had no idea there would be time travel, I was just gobsmacked!
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Civil War and the fandom fallout broke my heart (I mean, an actual person I knew in person stopped talking to me over it, let alone all the people on the internet who felt the need to come tell me I'm an actual real life bad person for not being Team Iron) and I just... I knew Infinity War would be full of those drawn out "oh no I have to kill someone I love I must dawdle as long as possible" decisions. I'm with you on how ridiculous dragging it out is.
I am looking forward to the Sam and Bucky show, though. That might heal my heart from the last few years of the MCU.
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"oh no I have to kill someone I love I must dawdle as long as possible"
This is exactly how that movie felt to me Nye thank you for putting it so succinctly!
Bucky never made a big impression on me in the movies (I know, I'm ridiculous, Glim has boggled at me a bunch) but Sam/Bucky as a ship has been a really unexpected joy for me these last couple months, an I also feel hopeful for their new show.
*hugs*
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I liked Captain Marvel, all the women!! And sidekick Nick Fury. And the screw you moment to her mentor at the end there.
And Endgame's a mess, especially blowing off alternate universes, what the actual fuck? Natasha's sacrifice was touching (but why not give her a proper memorial?) The last battle had so many characters most of them got no time. I was hoping when all the women showed up, they'd have a chance to make a difference, but it was a few seconds only. And Steve's choice felt contrived and awful in so many ways. Sam rocks though!
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OMG I love it so much though. :P Like the second time I went to see it with my buddy
Then it was funny to go see Spider-Man: Far from Home a couple months later and that it starred another white dude. (I also love him though.)
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Definitely agree with your happies from Endgame. There are definitely flaws in both it and Endgame, but I love them for what they are. I just hope this resolution to this long-standing storyline will mean they introduce a wider range of characters rather than sticking mostly with the white dudes. :-P Sam getting the shield is a start, but...
And as much as I enjoyed Endgame, I'm tired out when it comes to the MCU fandom. So I haven't written anything since December, oops. Ah, well, I've been doing lots of reading of actual books, which has been lovely.
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The ending of Endgame did make me feel very hopeful about having more diverse stars going forward, as I was saying to
Ah, well, I've been doing lots of reading of actual books, which has been lovely.
OMG according to my records I finished 27 books between January and May of this year and one (1) in the months since. It's a little embarrassing but I am also having a very good time.
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Yesss. Oh, Spider-Man... those are fun movies. I had more feels about FFH than I expected, but given the subject matter, it makes some sense. Now that we're definitely getting another Spider-Man MCU movie, I'm super curious if they'll move him past Tony's influence on his life and how.
Woo, look at you go! I'm on #40 for the year, but I haven't been putting down dates so I'm not sure how it falls over the months. And teaching is an excellent excuse for not having time to read, to be fair. ;)
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I am excited that you are feeling fannish!!
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Yeah it was so gory I was like wtf this is the nice sitcom we watch at dinner!
Thank you for mentioning Asimov's laws! I was not familiar with them and they're quoted at the start of the Russian robot show I started watching on Netflix recently. I should make a post about that too but also I should watch a few more episodes first but then again maybe I shouldn't because I don't actually care about any of the characters, hmm.