Can we talk for a second? Just you and me?
First off, I just want to say thanks for visiting my blog, and I mean that. Whatever it was that led you here, I'm grateful that you clicked the link. This is, in fact, a milestone for me; 250th post. I honestly never thought I would stick with it this long, and as far as I know I'm probably winding down the output (just trying to finish up the frigging Disney fan fiction and all that). But I really do appreciate you taking the time to scroll through my attempts at jokes, insights, and complete sentences (not necessarily in that order).
But the main thing I'd like to talk about is that I'm a misfit, and for better or worse I always will be. As I type that out, it occurs to me that the words carry any number of meanings depending on context. Misfits always find each other (to paraphrase the Ed Wood production team's DVD commentary). Lone misfits feel the weight of their isolation, and the discovery of a misfit community fills them with an apprehensive exhilaration. "You mean I get to belong?" they say, "My people were out there the whole time?" It's uncomfortable being a misfit; and to illustrate, let me point out how smoothly in this very paragraph I shifted from talking about myself to talking about a third person archetype. The discomfort never goes away. I bring this up because now we live in a world which I never could have predicted back when I was a small-for-my-age child living in fear of being beating up by kids smaller and younger than me. The nerds won.
Nerds and misfits don't exactly equate interchangeably, but the overlap is enough where the spectrums only require one story. The misfits own the cinema, and television, and the internet, and the non-misfits have had to get comfortable coming to us for navigational guidance. We won. And the funny thing is, I don't think we realize it. We certainly never meant to, we were just trying to do what we thought was right. And thus, total victory still doesn't feel like a victory.
So what the hell does this have to do with Avengers: Endgame? A few things. First point, Endgame is the undisputed BIGGEST thing ever in the cinema (western culture's secular temple). It's the most massive, expensive thing ever to be experienced by this much of humanity all at once that didn't come from the Heavens. It's earned back its budget and marketing costs in two days and stands a chance at snapping that f**king James Cameron hack job out of the number one slot. Marvel delivered on the impossible promise they made eleven years ago, and everyone in my circles couldn't be happier. Which brings me to my second point; as usual, I'm the schmuck who has something to gripe about.
For the record, I don't like being that guy. I'm tired of being the misfit. I'm tired of feeling like an asshole whenever my coworkers ask me what I thought about the latest 'thing' that brought so much joy to everyone else as they brace themselves for what will inevitably come across as a fabricated flaw in paradise. I wish I could just ride the roller coaster as it is instead of honing in on what I think kept it from transcendence. But I am that guy. I take Prozac to be a little less of that guy, but for reasons known only to God I live in the suburbs of impossible-to-please.
So here it goes- what didn't I like about it? Let me stress...mostly nothing. The Russos pulled off a feat that I sure as hell won't pretend to ever have the capacity for; I've been writing the same damn novel for nine years now. The film deserves all the praise that it's been getting from everyone around me. But it also deserves to have the two glaring flaws pointed out; and I'm not talking about whether or not Ned failed his senior year five times.
Flaw one (and I know I'm being unrealistic here), the Thanos saga needed to be a trilogy. Acts one and two are nearly flawless, but the third act is just too overstuffed to carry the resonance of Wanda's three minutes of screen time, Spiderman's resolution, Wasp's appearance, and Pepper's...whatever it was she did. Why not just wipe out all of Wakanda if the survivors aren't going to matter until the ending? Was Wong really doing something that important during the time heist? And you can't use the same character for a big damn heroes moment twice in one movie or you get diminishing returns on both (that's already becoming an issue with Carol Danvers).
But you know what? I could totally overlook flaw one were it not for flaw two. I mean, Captain Marvel had plenty of issues and I didn't lose it over that movie. Admittedly less was at stake, but as I felt that they got the important stuff right I could bend on everything else. And unfortunately with Endgame, flaw two is kind of important. Staring us all right in the face. And I have to be the bad guy by pointing it out. But here it goes.
They left Thanos out of the movie.
I mean, yeah I know. I DID see the same movie you did. He's visually there. But his character is gone. I don't know if he got cut for time (refer to flaw one) or if the Russos just didn't bother for a second round, but all of his complexity in Infinity War that made him such an engaging villain was non-existent in Endgame. His performance was as wasted as Christopher Eccleston's was in Thor: Dark World. The big guy deserved better.
Why do I think he deserved better? At his core this version of Thanos was a misfit; just like me, just like the audience who cherishes superheroes, and I would assume just like you. The best villains are the ones who reflect something truly horrible inside us, and Thanos represented a blind belief beyond reason in an extreme idea. How many examples of that in the world today can we think of? Should we be comfortable with villainizing them beyond any hope of redemption?
But he murdered half of all life in the universe! Yeah, I know. I didn't say we just needed to hug it out. Thanos is a villain, and he's consciously accepted that role in favor of doing what he feels is a greater good. But our heroes also had Thanos at their mercy, and they stopped being heroes when they executed him right there on the spot. And even though I know we probably would have done that ourselves given the chance, our heroes are supposed to be better than us; and be heroes, especially when it sucks to be heroes. Heroes have rules, not the least of which is you can't kill a villain unless there's no other choice.
This is what should have happened. They confront him, cut off his gauntlet hand (honest mistake), and then talked to him once he was no longer a threat. The reality of the situation unfolds the same way (no more infinity stones, no do overs), and the Avengers decide to just leave Thanos where he is. Alone with his sunrise and the knowledge that the rest of the universe is going to know where to find him. It's at that point that Thanos, in an apparent bout of remorse, gives them the idea for the time heist.
Act two unfolds pretty much the same way, but it's slowly revealed that one-armed Thanos is secretly manipulating things in a way that causes his younger self to receive information about the future, thus reminding us of what a master tactician he is. This culminates in the epic battle sequence but with the added layer of a post battle one-armed Thanos for Steve to deal with; this time no shield, no Tony, and no Thor. But who comes to the rescue? Loki. He's the deus ex machine, for whatever bullshit reason his unresolved timeline opened up. He gets the killing blow on Thanos. And as an act of mischievous generosity, he's the one who sends Steve back to his own time period.
And you know what? I changed my mind. It still needed to be two movies.
