A compliation of my Endgame reaction posts from Tumblr

[dira]

Under the tag: all the spoilers, none of the squee. Click at own risk.

My Endgame reactions on Tumblr today, a play in three acts.



#1

My reaction, after twelve hours:

[STOP READING THERE IF YOU REALLY ENJOYED THE MOVIE AND ARE HAPPY ABOUT HOW IT ENDED, I WAS UP REALLY LATE LAST NIGHT AND I’M TIRED! HAHA!]

…Anyway, I wish I actually meant that humorously in the sense that I was awake until 2 in the morning between seeing the movie and hashing out my feelings about it, but, no, I just mean…

Look, I can see ways to bend and twist and reconstruct the material that movie gave us into a lot of fun and enjoyable and great fic? But at this point I don’t even want to because I am just. so. fucking. tired. of engaging with a canon that thought THOSE were good endings for the characters I’ve spent a decade bonding with. What the actual fuck. I keep trying to like, rank the original six’s endings in order of which I am most to least mad about, but I just–what the actual everliving fuck.

Also it is sort of impressive, in a trainwrecky way, how many character arcs get warped into incoherence, grim futility, or total fucking nihilism by the gravitational pull of these endings. Like. Wow, I retroactively dislike other movies because this is apparently where you were going that whole time! AWESOME. THANKS I HATE IT.

https://dsudis.tumblr.com/post/184459811109/endgame-thoughts-i-guess-spoilers-under-the-cut

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#2

Another Endgame thought, this one about Steve and his storyline. Which I am not squeeing about in this post.

Okay, so, everyone always sees a different version of the same movie, right, we all know that.

But it is fucking SURREAL to see a character’s ending and go “wow that was an only barely metaphorical suicide concluding his six-movie arc of depression and alienation, I need to go huddle with The Magicians fans now” and then have people cheering about what a beautiful and romantic and life-affirming happy ending it was.

https://dsudis.tumblr.com/post/184465063904/another-endgame-thought-this-one-about-steve-and

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#3

Third and perhaps most inevitable Endgame Thought

…oh no I just spent an hour plotting out the fic I want to write to fix EVERYTHING.

https://dsudis.tumblr.com/post/184467130094/third-and-perhaps-most-inevitable-endgame-thought

Comments

[kore]

The Russos/screenwriters are giving a whole lot of "explaining" interviews which actually contradict each other (sometimes it happens in the same interview even) so I just don't think there's truly any way to make the time travel in this make sense. It's amazingly sloppy and insubstantial worldbuilding (and despite the people who say you can't criticize it because "Comics!", the movies aren't the comics, although the MCU appears to have been opened up to the multiverse in this installment). Steve was in an alternate universe, yes, Old Steve was in our timeline, no, how and where Steve got the shield is a ~mystery (this might come up in the Sam/Bucky series?), and yes there are two Caps but they don't see this as a problem. I think they think that Steve and Steve II don't overlap? Which makes no sense. This was a movie largely driven by big set pieces and Magic Plot and Pretty, which is fine, but the inconsistencies warp the characters, and I watch these movies for the characters, not the uh rigorous logical plotting.

[ratcreature]

I saw someone eagle-eyed pointing out that the shield Steve gives Sam apparently doesn't look like exactly like either of Steve's shields we've seen. So maybe it will become a plot point?

[kore]

Yeah, apparently the pattern of circles is different and it has an inner star? But while I usually find the whole MCU serial "tune in to the next installment to find how the story goes!" thing kind of oddly charming, it feels wrong in this movie. This is the end for Steve. Even if he guest stars in that series, it's the finish of his story, and I at least wanted it to be a bit less of a tangled mess.

Also, I just read like six interviews with the writers and the Russos and now my head hurts.

[ratcreature]

I skimmed one Q&A but that didn't make anything make more sense, so I didn't bother looking for more. It's pretty clear that they put less thought to coherence than most watchers (and not just the close watchers who spot extra rings on props). There were plenty of fun bits in the movie, but a grand puzzle coming together it wasn't.