Wednesday 1 May 2019

POW NYEEOW PEGASUSES BANG tink tink tink - Two "Avengers: Endgame" thoughts


 Stark staring

"We're not beginning to... to... to mean something?"
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
 Am I wrong, or have Marvel movies changed what film stars are, changed them back to what they were? These charming, witty, principled but troubled and surprisingly middle-aged heroes of Marvel Phases 1, 2 and 3 aren't the kind of blockbuster surefire things I or even my Dad grew up with. They're Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, and like those stars - and unlike the singular Schwarzenegger or Connery - they're legion. If Disney really is buying all the cinemas and Netflix all the telly then the Studio System might be returning, and I don't know what to feel about that because I've always loved old movies... That was one thought I had after "Avengers: Everyone". The other's a SPOILER, so anyone who doesn't mind those, meet me under the table, and everyone else, BYE x



Okay the other thought was:

SPOILERS, REMEMBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She lets him die. "We're gonna be okay... You can rest..." The more I think about it the more gutted I am. I've never recorded on this blog before how oddly important Downey's "piping hot mess" has been to me. Iron Man wasn't a comic I knew anything about and I'd always found RD Jr a bit too get-out-of-my-way in previous films, but from "Iron Man 2" onwards Futurism was suddenly a thing again, and curiosity and hope, all served with newly smart grasp of the USA's unique relationship with fantasy, and this excited me. And I loved Tony Stark. So to see him finally diagnosed with a death wish, and to see that wish granted by the person who cared for him most was devastating. There were other reasons he had to die of course narratively speaking: as an idealisation of post-War America, Stark's mini-Hiroshima with the finger-click couldn't go without a reckoning (just as the earlier murder of Thanos had to turn Thor blurry). But I'd hoped for a happy ending with "Endgame", and feel something has been let go, and that it being let go is final proof it was untenable. And I don't want to type the words "Rest In Peace" again either I don't think. At least the alternative "Fare Forward" avoids the idea life's a chore. Ideally I'd just like to say from now on "Sorry you've gone"... Good film though.


Clark staring