Morgan and Cassie. It’s age discrimination, I tell you!We all know who's missing.
Spoilers Avengers: Endgame grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
- Start date
Peggy carter 
Like death and taxes, the inevitable contrarian review of this movie had to be written, and as such, the World Socialists have published just such a review:
Avengers: Endgame: A waste of time, money and talent
Avengers: Endgame: A waste of time, money and talent
Based on the headline alone, I know not to bother wasting my time.
"One anticipates that as the situation changes—with crises and, above all, the intervention of the working class—audiences and artists alike will find a better use of their time, money and talent."
Uhh...how about you take a straw poll of what the working class thinks of Avengers, and see how they feel about it?
Yeah, these guys are entitled to their opinion. But for a group devoted to taking on economic injustice, they are people who don't like fun movies spending their time writing a review of a movie to an audience that doesn't want to see it anyway. Basically an exercise in intellectual masturbation.
But that part about the working class intervening to stop movies like this from being made is just deluded to the point of hilariousness. They make these kinds of fun dumb movies because they specifically asked the working class what movies they want and they said "Fun dumb movies!!!"
Uhh...how about you take a straw poll of what the working class thinks of Avengers, and see how they feel about it?
Yeah, these guys are entitled to their opinion. But for a group devoted to taking on economic injustice, they are people who don't like fun movies spending their time writing a review of a movie to an audience that doesn't want to see it anyway. Basically an exercise in intellectual masturbation.
But that part about the working class intervening to stop movies like this from being made is just deluded to the point of hilariousness. They make these kinds of fun dumb movies because they specifically asked the working class what movies they want and they said "Fun dumb movies!!!"
Perhaps. But we can choose. That's all it takes. We're not going to over analyze...today.
I came here to over-analyze, and chew bubblegum. And I just ran out of bubblegum.
I can almost guarantee you it was mostly the working class who made movies like the Transformers series the huge hits they ended up being."One anticipates that as the situation changes—with crises and, above all, the intervention of the working class—audiences and artists alike will find a better use of their time, money and talent."
Uhh...how about you take a straw poll of what the working class thinks of Avengers, and see how they feel about it?
Yeah, these guys are entitled to their opinion. But for a group devoted to taking on economic injustice, they are people who don't like fun movies spending their time writing a review of a movie to an audience that doesn't want to see it anyway. Basically an exercise in intellectual masturbation.
But that part about the working class intervening to stop movies like this from being made is just deluded to the point of hilariousness. They make these kinds of fun dumb movies because they specifically asked the working class what movies they want and they said "Fun dumb movies!!!"
If the working class takes over, there will be MORE comic book films!
Not if they have their way. I posted that to show that there are lots of ordinary people (not all of them dogmatic true believers like the people at that site) who dislike superhero movies, many of them saying so online. Many ordinary millennials also watch only classic Hollywood movies instead of current ones, as this article shows and this comment shows (plus this article as well.)
I didn't mean to paint anyone with a broad stroke, I mean in terms of plurality. There's lots of diversity in taste, obviously. But no other single niche has enough following to make billions. If you've seen Sullivan's Travels, he came to the same conclusion.
And I think the people who watch older films are people who got tired of current Hollywood films first. And that group skews more toward the college crowd.
But by the way, that website? If you are looking to hook someone on classic film, and they are anyone but a super-artistic intellectual, Breathless is a horrible choice to introduce them.
Another thing about old movies. The old movies I like are usually art movies. Hollywood movies, whose goal is entertainment? Modern films do a way better job.
Technology aside, they were bound to taboos and social norms and especially from a feminist standpoint aged extremely poorly. Especially prior to the 70s. Adventure is campy and culture is presented through a self-idealized filter. Everything is light and simple, black and white with no ambiguity. Villains are simply evil, justice of law is absolute, criminals always get caught.
One example, The Apartment has women saying things like “I’d spell it out for you only I don’t know how to spell!”
I can watch these movies and appreciate them from a historical or artistic standpoint, but if your goal is to sit back and be passively entertained, it doesn’t work the way it does with things like Avengers because you have to acclimate to greater amounts of cultural dishonesty. Heroes are too perfect to be relatable.
I think the Chaplin films of the 20s and 30s are more purely entertaining than anything Hollywood put out for another several decades.
Technology aside, they were bound to taboos and social norms and especially from a feminist standpoint aged extremely poorly. Especially prior to the 70s. Adventure is campy and culture is presented through a self-idealized filter. Everything is light and simple, black and white with no ambiguity. Villains are simply evil, justice of law is absolute, criminals always get caught.
One example, The Apartment has women saying things like “I’d spell it out for you only I don’t know how to spell!”
I can watch these movies and appreciate them from a historical or artistic standpoint, but if your goal is to sit back and be passively entertained, it doesn’t work the way it does with things like Avengers because you have to acclimate to greater amounts of cultural dishonesty. Heroes are too perfect to be relatable.
I think the Chaplin films of the 20s and 30s are more purely entertaining than anything Hollywood put out for another several decades.
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Just read the review. This is why Socialists can't have nice things...
Can't but agree with you there. And a millennial (in particular a millennial of color) is going to have a hard time watching the movies just because of all the bits involving people of color that are in many of the older movies being as they are simply because the Hays and Breen Offices stipulated how people of color should be, and how women and LGBT people should be.
The reason the Chaplin movies (and any other movies of the '20's and early '30's prior to the Motion Picture Production Code being implemented in 1934) are more purely entertaining is because they don't have to be forced to adhere to said Code, which was created due to the insane (and inane) blathering of Christian fundamentalists about 'sex and perversion' being on screen warping young minds.
And yeah, just like you, I prefer more recent American movies to older so-called 'classic' ones when it comes to entertainment.
There’s plenty of films I like between 1935 and 1970, just they’re all depressing.
83%.... Unless you know something about Black Widow that the rest of us don't....
But the percentages are important insofar as there's a mix. When there's been a full group team-up shot in these movies, it's usually a mix of genders. Granted, it's been predominantly men (which isn't too surprising since men are more likely to be attracted to violence, fighting, and soldiering) but there's nearly always been at least one woman in there, usually Black Widow. Sometimes there have been shots that are only men but those are ones that are only a small portion of the team, like showing the big 3 of Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. But there's never been a shot featuring ALL of the men and NONE of the women. So when there's a shot that is specifically ALL of the women and NONE of the men, it's pretty clear that this is being done, not because it's a badass superhero moment, but because they want to highlight an identity politics agenda. And given that I've been watching female-led action movies since long before the MCU existed, I'm not in the mood to be virtue signaled at.
And your political agenda is so pure?
It might have at least felt a little more dramatically natural if it had started with one of the less powerful characters like Shuri or Mantis and then gradually built up to Captain Marvel.
Given how unconvincing Brie Larson has been as a superhero, it would almost certainly be an upgrade. Too bad Tessa Thompson and Zoe Saldana are already spoken for. Maybe check with Michelle Rodriguez or Bingbing Fan?
I think tthat Larson's main problem is the voice. All the other female heroes tend to speak in a slightly deeper register, which gives them a more authoritative tone. Brie Larson sounds less like a superhero and more like a really cool babysitter. She doesn't sound like she's going to save the world. She sounds like she's going to let me stay up late, eat ice cream, play Nintendo, and watch R-rated movies.
Oh and look, everyone's most favorite scene!
I can't see Captain Marvel in this part of the shot, so it's quite an improvement. I LIKE all of these characters.
Because Scarlet Witch is a dramatically interesting character in her own right and not just a representation token.
Yeah. For that matter, with the exception of the Time Stone being needed to stop Dormamu in Doctor Strange, aren't all of these timelines better off without the Infinity Stones?
While I understand how the time travel works in the movie, I can't help but notice that they chose the least elegant, most dramatically unsatisfying version of time travel for the story. If traveling to the past just creates an alternate universe, then you can go back and fuck around as much as you want with zero consequences to your own reality. At least when Stargate used this version of time travel, we always ended up following the altered timeline, so that the time travel itself had actual consequences.
That makes sense but it would have been nice for them to include a shot of her at the end going off on her own, maybe with Star Lord or Nebula calling after her and her looking back with an ambiguous, wistful expression before leaving them behind. Or maybe just flying around on a space motorcycle during Tony's speech at the end.
Yeah, I was absolutely on the edge of my seat for that part. And I loved Hawkeye in the aftermath, "Do you want to go talk to the red floating guy?!"
Overall, I think that the movie is a good finale for this section of the MCU but I suspect that it will be getting a lot fewer rewatches than most of the others.
I had originally said that I would be pissed off if they killed off Iron Man but I was actually quite pleased with how he went out. I think it helped that it was set up less as a sacrificial moment and more as a badass moment.
I generally liked how they ended things with Steve, although his marriage to Peggy Carter makes me ask-- What about Sharon Carter? What about Daniel Sousa?
(Speaking of Agent Carter, I loved James D'arcy returning as Jarvis. That was my biggest fanboy squee moment.)While I think Steve should stay retired, I kinda hope that old man Steve shows up for a surprise cameo to punch somebody in a future Avengers sequel.
I'm fine with funny, fat Thor but I don't think that they did a good job of digging him out of that pit by the end of the movie. Even his heartfelt reunion with his mother was played a bit too much for laughs and he still seems to end the film in a worse place emotionally than he was at the end of Thor: Ragnarok, where he accepted responsibility and his role as king.
But then, it also seemed like the movie spent too much of Star Lord's screen time crapping on the character, with Rhodey calling him an idiot and Gamora kicking him in the nuts. While he's not the smartest character in the MCU, he's still not as dumb as the Russos or Markus and McFeeley think he is. (Also, there's now a parallel timeline where Star Lord died of a brain hemorrhage because he got punched in the head by friggin' War Machine!)
I did, and what little I can read of it shows me how bogus it is; this was private money being used, not public money. If the Marvel movies (and any of the sci-fi/fantasy movies that are also targeted by this article) had public money from governments (as is done for movies made here in Canada, the UK, and other parts of Europe) making up part of their budgets, I'd see their point, but as these are all privately funded, I don't. This is a case of people striking at the wrong things causing poverty and other social ills when they should be doing better research on what causes them; cases in point for me, the stupid [IMHO] song Whitey On The Moon that did nothing but provide fodder for neoconservative whites that dislike (as opposed to outright hate, but that does eventually come later) black people and also full-on white supremacist whites like this guy, with the pen name of 'Paul Kersey' who write things like this, plus answer songs like this sung to the tune of Whitey On The Moon.
If these people really want to change things, they (at least in the United States) need to vote smartly and to vote often so that they can get closer to what they want to see in society; attacking a major sci-fi/fantasy movie franchise ISN'T IT (also, as JirinPanthosa said, sanctioning movies like Breathless-a farrago of misogyny complete with an ending in which the female character is blamed for the death of the male character who's nothing but a common thug we're supposed to cheer on because he salutes Bogart at the beginning-is not the way to get people onside your socialist view; as well, it just serves as a reason for people to vote for retrogressives like Trump).
The more I think about it, the more it seems like returning the Stones to where they originally came from is way easier said than done. Granted, the Time Stone can just be given back to the Ancient One with a polite thank you note and the Soul Stone can be taken back to Vormir. (Although Steve's unexpected reunion with the Red Skull would be hilariously awkward and totally needs to be a Marvel One-Shot.). But how did he get the Power Stone back into its shrine when taking it out nearly burned off Nebula's robot hand? How did they reconstitute the jewel cases for the Tesseract and Loki's scepter? (Also, why was security so shitty at the army base in 1970?) And Rocket's gadget to remove the Aether from Jane Foster seems awfully convenient given that a major plot point of Thor: The Dark World was that all of the best scientists on Asgard couldn't figure out how to remove it from her.
