I appreciate the humanist approach to this movie, which I'd agree with you is inconsistently deployed. But part of me wishes they went in the opposite direction. The biggest problem with the MCU since "Endgame" has been stakes. After every single misdeed was undid at the end of that film via time travel, and what followed was the multiverse, what stakes have there been?
Given that this is some... sort of... suicide squad... I would have been okay with these characters finding redemption and then dying horribly. Or maybe not horribly -- maybe by saving the Sentry, they get stuck in the Void when they save anyone. For plot reasons, they need a team of Avengers for the beginning of "Doomsday", but why couldn't Valentina de Allegra Christina Vicki Barcelona Fontaine just collected yet another Avengers team, maybe from the ashes of those shows? There are too many characters in the MCU -- instead of ignoring some of them (the Eternals do seem like they're a Big Deal), just start showing the wages of a superhero life?
The death of Taskmaster really does feel petty, because she deserved the most redemption AND she was played by Olga Kurylenko, the one bonafide action star in the entire cast. I've heard Kurylenko doesn't want to do any more long shoots when she's away from her kids, but she wears a mask -- just film all her unmasked closeups in a day, let her voiceover the rest, and let her ride. Seems like a lousy way to dial up the stakes.
That's interesting, because one of the reasons Schreier gives in that interview for killing Taskmaster was because the film had been too bloodless. As if by killing Taskmaster, we fall under the pretence that any one of these characters could die at any time.
If you ask me? The exact way to fail setting that pretence is to unceremoniously kill off the character with (as so many fans have sardonically pointed out) one of the sparsest screentimes in the whole franchise, and that's before subtracting the scenes where she's just an action figure being banged against another action figure. She was killed off precisely because she was stakeless. Audiences will recognize that.
To that point though, I do agree with you re: the stakes problem in this universe. I also, however, think that the way to solve that problem is to step away from the totality of the shared universe, which Thunderbolts* seems to be doing here, albeit by heavily bending what are supposed to be the rules of the MCU's dense interconnectivity (which could itself reflect the non-human system that Yelena and co's ultimate commitment to love, community, and humanism directly disrupts). F4 is certainly stepping away from that totality, courtesy of being from another dimension.
The value of a shared universe is in things like Spider-Man being able to cross paths with Wolverine, which sets the stage for a story focused on isolation (Spider-Man) and purpose (Wolverine), almost certainly filtered through a wider lens of masculinity. Comic book universes get rebooted so that they don't have to deal with the insurmountable baggage of the past, which is a trap that the MCU is falling into here. And again, I think you're right that Secret Wars will reset this franchise. This, I would assume, in favour of what James Gunn seems to be doing, or some version of that.
As for Bucky, if we reeeeeeaaaaally leverage (read: abuse) the multiverse implications, his constituents are the whole of the United States, unfortunately.
I appreciate the humanist approach to this movie, which I'd agree with you is inconsistently deployed. But part of me wishes they went in the opposite direction. The biggest problem with the MCU since "Endgame" has been stakes. After every single misdeed was undid at the end of that film via time travel, and what followed was the multiverse, what stakes have there been?
Given that this is some... sort of... suicide squad... I would have been okay with these characters finding redemption and then dying horribly. Or maybe not horribly -- maybe by saving the Sentry, they get stuck in the Void when they save anyone. For plot reasons, they need a team of Avengers for the beginning of "Doomsday", but why couldn't Valentina de Allegra Christina Vicki Barcelona Fontaine just collected yet another Avengers team, maybe from the ashes of those shows? There are too many characters in the MCU -- instead of ignoring some of them (the Eternals do seem like they're a Big Deal), just start showing the wages of a superhero life?
The death of Taskmaster really does feel petty, because she deserved the most redemption AND she was played by Olga Kurylenko, the one bonafide action star in the entire cast. I've heard Kurylenko doesn't want to do any more long shoots when she's away from her kids, but she wears a mask -- just film all her unmasked closeups in a day, let her voiceover the rest, and let her ride. Seems like a lousy way to dial up the stakes.
Also, who are the Winter Soldier's constituents?
Fromtheyardtothearthouse.substack.com
That's interesting, because one of the reasons Schreier gives in that interview for killing Taskmaster was because the film had been too bloodless. As if by killing Taskmaster, we fall under the pretence that any one of these characters could die at any time.
If you ask me? The exact way to fail setting that pretence is to unceremoniously kill off the character with (as so many fans have sardonically pointed out) one of the sparsest screentimes in the whole franchise, and that's before subtracting the scenes where she's just an action figure being banged against another action figure. She was killed off precisely because she was stakeless. Audiences will recognize that.
To that point though, I do agree with you re: the stakes problem in this universe. I also, however, think that the way to solve that problem is to step away from the totality of the shared universe, which Thunderbolts* seems to be doing here, albeit by heavily bending what are supposed to be the rules of the MCU's dense interconnectivity (which could itself reflect the non-human system that Yelena and co's ultimate commitment to love, community, and humanism directly disrupts). F4 is certainly stepping away from that totality, courtesy of being from another dimension.
The value of a shared universe is in things like Spider-Man being able to cross paths with Wolverine, which sets the stage for a story focused on isolation (Spider-Man) and purpose (Wolverine), almost certainly filtered through a wider lens of masculinity. Comic book universes get rebooted so that they don't have to deal with the insurmountable baggage of the past, which is a trap that the MCU is falling into here. And again, I think you're right that Secret Wars will reset this franchise. This, I would assume, in favour of what James Gunn seems to be doing, or some version of that.
As for Bucky, if we reeeeeeaaaaally leverage (read: abuse) the multiverse implications, his constituents are the whole of the United States, unfortunately.
I just want to know what a Congressional campaign looks like for a hundred years old former sleeper agent who canonically killed JFK.
Fromtheyardtothearthouse.substack.com