AoS is still in the MCU (Fiege can have it when he pries it from my cold dead hand). The last episodes of season 5 happen simultaneously with Endgame and end before the blip, seasons 6 and 7 happen 1 year into the blip (with an epilogue 2 years into the blip). They're lucky in that the main characters didn't blip, and don't mention it but they are a year into it and busy with 3 simultaneous alien invasions and quantum realm time travel (that eventually leads to an alternate timeline hop, but they return).
It drives me a little nuts how some people are so eager to just seize any pretext to remove stories from the MCU. It reminds me of back when people argued Iron Man 3 was non-canon because of Age of Ultron. I suppose it satisfies the curatorial impulse, but it's really annoying.
Yeah, that was weird. I mean literally the last line in the movie before the credit rolled was explicitly about how he IS Iron Man, with or without the armor and gadgets. How people took that to mean "he's not Iron Man now!"--let alone miss the significance of the cocoon metaphor-- escapes me. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but it's hard to deny that this is one of those "it works, but you have to turn your head and squint a little" things.
I tend to go with the idea that they ended up in an alternate universe from the second half of Season 5 on.
For me it's a case of Schrodinger's Continuity for the time being. Season 5 and beyond is both in and out of continuity until something definitively substantiating or contradictory collapses the wave function.
Between the Avengers traveling time, and Doctor Strange's cavalier use of the Infinity Time Stone as an Acolyte and as the Sorcerer Supreme, hey, you can explain any discrepancies in the continuity of the MCU ( and they're all Canon)
Oh sure if you want to be finnicky about it there's plenty of variant timelines they could exist in (and Deak at least definitely does now); though I think we all know what we're really talking about is whether it's in the "main" MCU timeline--the chain of linear causality we've been following since 2008--not some variant tributary, which is why I say it's still up in the air. We won't know unless and/or until something happens in a Marvel Studios production, one way or the other. Hence: Schrodinger's Continuity. One random thing that only just occurred to me: - Spoiler: The Eternals & Loki The alternate future where Graviton broke up the Earth certainly lands differently now we know that what he probably actually did was prematurely awaken Tiamut. Indeed, Tiamut itself may have even been the source of the gravitonium. Also, that the TVA even permitted that branch to exist can be explained by the Agents very presence being necessary to preserve the sacred timeline though the infinite closed causality loop that's actually a finite spiral, thanks to Robin (just as they didn't mess with the Avengers during Endgame.) Though it doesn't bode well for the characters that got left behind. They were probably mind wiped and/or fed to Alioth as soon as the Agents departed.
I just realized....the whistle scene between Clint and Yelena. It's the "SAVE MARTHA!" idea but actually executed RIGHT. It shows that it's not a bad idea, just needed more set-up and execution.
I completely agree. I fully believe that if there had been a scene with Clark investigating Bruce Wayne--seeing the name Thomas and Martha--and then showing us that he figured out Batman's identity--would have shown us that Clark is a solid investigative reporter and set up the Save Martha scene quite well. That has been a problem with Snyder. He thinks up great set pieces and concepts but he fails to think through all the details of the plot.
Like Michael Bay, Snyder is more a Music video director. With great action scènes but not good story building
In the VERY broad strokes perhaps. But if the goal is for Bruce to suddenly see through the haze of hatred and fear and recognise Clark's humanity *in the moment*, their mothers having the same still feels like a sub-optimal choice. I feel like if one is dead set on pulling the "Martha" thread specifically, then the middle of a fight isn't a good place to do it. Better to find some other way. Conversely; if one needs it to happen in THAT scene specifically, better to find some other vector, so that the World's Greatest Detective doesn't come off as a gibbering idiot. It's just too abstract for that scene. And yes, Hawkeye executed it so much better, though in fairness it had a whole prior movie to establish the significance of that whistle and what it represented to both Nat and Yelena, AND it had multiple prior movies to establish how close Clint and Nat were. How close? A member of the family close. She was 1) the only Avenger to even know his family existed, 2) was a frequent enough visitor to be "auntie Nat" to his kids, and 3) his third born was named after her.
Simple. One was a clunky and awkward 180 on all previously stated and demonstrated views and motivations, executed with all the grace and elegance of a drunk elephant attempting a three point turn in a golf cart. The other was a simple portrayal of catharsis, not one of revelation. Clint and Nat being close friends was not new information to Yelena. She already knew that through both what is public knowledge, and what she saw and heard in Budapest (the arrow holes in the safe house, the crawlspace in the subway where they hid for however many days, they it was Clint that even got her out from under the Red Room in the first place.) The whistle just broke through to a part of her that she'd walled off out of grief and despair. The name of a mother was the ONLY thing Bruce and Clark had in common. Conversely, that they hadn't met until then was the only thing stopping Clint and Yelena from being family since they already had *everything* in common.
I don't think it was awkward. Clark was probably not thinking straight at the time. Thought it was quite clever to utilise that both of their names are the same and to throw Bruce off for just a second.
Snyder always strikes me as a wonderful graphic artist or designer, individual frames of his stuff can look amazing, it's just that a lot of the time he doesn't know how to link these together so however action packed his stuff is I sometimes find his movies oddly static.
The reason people don't like Snyder's style is simple. He explained in the extras for Snyder Cut. His first 2 comic books were Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. Both deconstructions. He doesn't love the comics we do, he only loves the comics that make them look bad.