Welp

[gwyn]

So that was a thing that I saw.



Because I am petty and small and vindictive, I loved the fact that when Tony (and anyone else) first appeared on screen it was quiet, but when Steve appeared on screen our nearly sold-out theatre erupted into cheers and applause. Marvel has this idea that people only care about Iron Man and Spider-Man, and I loved hearing the audience prove them wrong, even if Marvel and especially Feige never listen. (Also loved the cheers for Thor and his axe.)

I leaned over at one point and said to minim calibre, who loves Cumberbatch and tolerates my intense hatred of him as an actor and Sherlock as a character he plays, "I am absolutely loving him in this. What is happening to me?" Every time he dragged Tony I wanted to high five him, he was freaking hilarious. I…the universe is unsettled. I not only liked Crumplesnatch, I liked freaking Dr. Strange, a character I have never cared one molecule for.

Totally called Red Skull. No one believed me when I said that.

I don't see this as producing a lot of fic, or at least, what I want to read. I see this as the fandom I've known and loved for four years, Steve/Bucky and the Cap Family (with Sam and Nat), either rage-quitting or just drifting away in sadness. I've watched this happen before to open canon fandoms with deaths or cast culling. I'm feeling very sad about this. I'd love it if fandom proved me wrong, but I've been in fandom a damn long time… And I'm already hearing from people that seeing Bucky die in front of Steve's eyes again was a bridge too far, even with comic-book rules.



I'm going to have to see it again just to process things. Plus catch all the lines I didn't hear!

Comments

[destina]

Oooh my god, I think the fic potential in this is endless, but then again, I'm a huge multi-shipper who throws canon out when I don't find it convenient. *g* It's too bad I don't have any time or energy to write, so I have to rely on fandom to cough it all up. What makes me saddest is that Steve lost his new BFF and his old BFF in the same minute. Ugh.

I really enjoyed the Dr. Strange movie, even tho I agree with you about Cumberbund, as you know. It's a good movie, tho. He's easier to look at with the goatee. Heh.

[gwyn]

I do hope fandom proves me wrong, but I'm already seeing such depressed posts and texts from people. WS was this wide open ending that gave us room for so many types of stories, and CW gave us this painful closed ending that limited storytelling. While this might be somewhere in between, it felt like all people are going to be left with are sad feels. I've just seen this sort of thing eat away at a fandom, so I guess I'm really braced for negative impact.

As much as I love multiple ships in it, at the core I've always been Steve/Bucky. That's what's always given me the most joy, the thing that makes my heart beat fastest. But the Cap family barely existed in this. It felt like it was a movie about other people with a cameo by Team Cap and the Wakandans. I don't know if that'll be reversed in 4, like you were speculating. Right now my heart just hurts. I've had enough people in real life die in front of my eyes or in my arms to enjoy this sort of thing anymore. Steve losing everyone again is just…hard to bear right now. I guess he still has Nat though. Maybe he'll hit it off with Carol and they can be super buddies when she shows up to save the day. (I wish you had time and energy to write, too! That would mean your life is not so stressful!)

Yeah, I also mentioned to min that I was surprised how much I didn't totally hate Dr. Strange the movie. Like, I didn't like it, but I didn't also want to spork my eyeballs out. I remember very little of it other than the cape. :-D Definitely think the goatee helps his face. He was just so funny in this though, the way him and Tony were sparking off each other.

[kore]

Totally called Red Skull. No one believed me when I said that.

That is amazing!! How did you know?

I don't see this as producing a lot of fic, or at least, what I want to read.

I've been seeing a lot of people going "Well this is BETTER than when he was in the freezer in Wakanda" and I'm just like....really? Wha? Like, apparently they think he could be time-travelling or in another dimension or in Wonderland with Alice or whatever, but....it was pretty clear everyone died. I could fankwank them all going to the soul planet maybe, since that was where Teentsy Gamora? was, but how are they going to get out? They're just going to have to be rescued, so anythin anyone writes will be jossed. IDK. I know fandom loves to play with the narrative but that just felt nasty.

I see this as the fandom I've known and loved for four years, Steve/Bucky and the Cap Family (with Sam and Nat), either rage-quitting or just drifting away in sadness. I've watched this happen before to open canon fandoms with deaths or cast culling. I'm feeling very sad about this. I'd love it if fandom proved me wrong, but I've been in fandom a damn long time…

Well I keep meaning to write my latest Stucky fic! it's just sort of in that post-TWS bubble where I take a hard left at AoU and nobody's going to want to read it, heh. We might see booty-call-in-Wakanda fics? Again IDK. It seemed like Stucky fandom really stalled out after CW (altho people kept telling me no no, more and more fics are being written!....mostly modern AUs). I hope it doesn't happen even more now. But it feels like the same situation as CW: open-ended (like a LITERAL CLIFFHANGER, this time) but also too final (Bucky being frozen, Bucky being....IDEFK, smoke-disapparated).

And I'm already hearing from people that seeing Bucky die in front of Steve's eyes again was a bridge too far, even with comic-book rules.

Yeah, I don't want to see that. I saw a fucking terrible camrip and that was bad enough. I don't want to see that on the big screen. Steve carrying Peggy's coffin was bad enough in CW. (It doesn't help I think the Russos totally under-directed Evans in most of the clips I saw, like they did in CW.)

Marvel has this idea that people only care about Iron Man and Spider-Man

I've heard "Well they didn't have time for a big long farewell with Bucky and Steve, he was in shock, it was perfectly legit," and LOL with the long fucking operatic goodbyyyyyyyye with Tony and Peter. And in AoU Cap was the one dying in his arms! Feels like they really are phasing Cap out, and not in a great way.

Cumberbatch is an unsettlingly good actor. I saw him in Fifth Estate and as Guy Burgess in a BBC thing and was like, whoah, he really is them. I think I formed my impression of him in stuff that was just terrible, like BBC Sherlock or Imitation Game. He was about as terribly miscast in Hollow Crown as Hiddles.

[minim_calibre]

Cumberbatch also has some of the best comedy chops I've seen in an actor best known for his dramatic work. He's got amazingly fluid physical movements, a rubber face, does some great work with his voice, and has no fear about looking like a complete tit.

(He'll also throw himself into a role with such complete commitment that he'll wind up injuring himself, which he did multiple times during Danny Boyle's Frankenstein during his turns as the Creature.)

It's a deep shame that he keeps doing the Srs Bsns stuff instead of MOAR FUNNY THINGS.

[gwyn]

I will listen now when you tell me these things. :-D


(But I do still wish they'd stop casting him in everything and playing everyone. Fatigue might have a little to do with my antipathy. Also, being funny makes him way, way less cold of an actor for me, and that's been my number one complaint with him, how cold and remote he is. He's just so alive in this.)

[twistedchick]

My favorite Cumberbatch is as the dragon in The Hobbit. I can concentrate on his voice, which is good.

[kore]

He does have a lovely voice.

[minim_calibre]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKnvC67ECMM WHILE THIS IS NOT ACTING, I maintain that this dramatic reading of Little Red Hen (it's a sincere one for an actual UK literacy thing) is a great indication of what he can do.

(Look, I think Lilly was five or six when I found that originally, so I've seen it a lot.)

[gwyn]

Totally called Red Skull. No one believed me when I said that.

That is amazing!! How did you know?

Well, I think about this stuff too much, and I rewatch First Avenger almost as much as I rewatch Winter Soldier. And I'm using some of the visual information about the Skull holding the teseract at the end in my Cap RBB fic, so I've been paying a lot of attention to that.

But the sky that opens up behind Schmidt when he's holding the cosmic cube looks an awful lot like the galaxy sky above Asgard that we see in the first Thor movie, and I've been speculating that he'd show up again at some point--he dissolves, kind of burns up in the movie from holding the stone (not quite the superior man he thinks he is), and even though it's a different stone, I figured it was sending him somewhere, most likely in some sort of position where he was locked to a stone or to some sort of space where he couldn't escape unless he had another cube or stone. In the comics there are other cosmic cubes, but I figured that, if any movie was going to show us where Schmidt disappeared to, it would be the one where Thanos is accumulating the stones. I wasn't sure in what capacity, but him being tied to the soul stone was a great way to lock him into that space that he couldn't escape from.

[kore]

Wow, that's observant! No wonder you make such good vids.

Hmmm, that seems more like the people who went poof are going to be in some other dimension or in the soul stone or on the soul planet or wherever. Not that they're gone 'forever' (i.e. until the next moneymaker). Which I would think might upset the cosmic balance thing....? because if they are, then their souls are existing and somehow corporeal? but nevermind, it obviously doesn't have to make sense.

[hypertwink]

Two words: Time Stone. I have hope.

But yes, I am heartbroken over Bucky (& Steve), but the heartbreak also came from areas I wasn't expecting: T'Challa & Okoye, Peter & Gamora in Knowhere, Peter & Tony, Fury & Hill.

p.s. I was surprised by Red Skull. Also, it's not Hugo Weaving, it's Ross Marquand who does great imitations/mimicry of actors and of Hugo Weaving apparently.

[kore]

AND SAM. Sam dies alone! He looks like he's waking up from an awful injury or something! And then Rhodey is calling out and just missed him....that seemed super cruel.

[hypertwink]

I forgot about Sam. And Heimdall. I've disliked Loki and Tony since forever but seriously, Loki dying and Tony seeing Peter turn to ash was so sad as well.

[kore]

THEY KILLED IDRIS ELBA! HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THAT

Thanos neck-snapping Loki right in front of Thor was just brutal. (I saw a truckload of clips before they all got snatched off reddit, hah.) It was like a foreshadowing of how he killed Vision too. Just tossed them aside like trash once he got what he wanted.

I thought RDJ acted the hell out of that scene (under-acted, really, his eyes are so huge and communicative!) but I just don't like Holland, he's way too young for me. I also thought if we got a long operatic farewell for Peter dying in Tony's arms, Steve and Bucky could have gotten longer than ten seconds. (I also really, really could have done without the prolonged slo-mo Wanda-and-Thanos-paired "I kill the person I loooooove!" bits.)

But Sam really hurt because I hadn't read the comics when I saw TWS and so didn't know anything about Falcon, and I spent like half the movie chanting "No killing Sam! No killing Sam!" because I was so sure as the brother, he would go out -- something like Bucky killing him and then Steve felt Bad, whatever. And I was so totally pleased and surprised when he didn't (and Fury didn't either). And it was like they wiped that away in five seconds. Nobody saw him, he didn't have anybody, it was like he didn't matter.

[hypertwink]

Iron Man 4: Avengers Disassembled [with Special Guest Star, Captain America] taught me that Steve (and Bucky) will never be given importance as long as Tony is anywhere in the vicinity.

I'm actually happy that they even get to hug this time and get a bit of banter -- talk about setting the bar really really low.

[kore]

I told my husband I felt like I got pwned by the Monkey's Paw. "All I want is one hug, Marvel! Just one fucking damned hug!"

FEIGE: ....granted.
//EVIL SMILE AS HE PLOTS BUCKY COLLAPSING IN A PILE OF DIRT AS STEVE STARES BLANKLY FROM LIKE 30 FEET AWAY

[hypertwink]

My mom was the one who noted that basically, we're down to the original Avengers now (unless Clint also disapparated on his farm). Talk about saying goodbye to the old...

[kore]

I think (this is my speculation, not spoilage) Clint's family went poof and that's what's going to drive him to become Ronin and he'll show up and super help save the day. So it'll be the original six, just like it was in the first Avengers movie. (Someone made the suggestion MAYBE THEY WILL EACH USE A STONE, but omg, that would be so cartoony.) Probably Linda Cardinelli will go poof and we'll see Manpain, then near the end of the movie the 4400 50% will return and family hug!

....part of why I'm so salty is Marvel got me back INTO fandom. I started writing again after years and years of not writing anything. And now I'm just like "Seriously, you raptured a ton of the cast? And murdered more? What do I do with THIS?"

[hypertwink]

That's why I just read modern Bucky/Steve AUs these days, or post-CAWS/CACW. Less angst, more fluff lol

[gwyn]

Yeah, I mean, I've seen the set photos from 4 with the 1940s car and Steve in his Avengers uniform (ptui!), so I assume there will be time-trippin' for Steve. But…I just left the theatre feeling way, way worse than Rogue One. Weirdly that movie made me feel far more hopeful. Maybe because I felt it was a better movie qua movie, and far tighter script writing.

ETA: Also meant to say that it was very hard to watch Okoye watch her king and her friend die, that would just destroy her. I also really thought it would be either Fury or Hill, but not both, which was a gut punch.

[hypertwink]

Rogue One is weird because it's not the end. We have the luxury of knowing what happens even when they all died. We know that their deaths are not in vain. I mean, it's a better story that they lucked into by the time they premiered it but Tony Gilroy (I think) took most of the fat away and left us with that.

Here, for one thing, it's a lot of story or stories, actually, that almost coalesced -- but I really have to comment the Russos for accomplishing that feat. And aside from that, we are in limbo for one year and 1 month. We don't know who's coming back, who dies again and who among the ones who didn't die now will die most likely permanently a year from now. I think for me, that's where the anxiety and unrest comes from.

[kore]

I said this elsewhere but I thought R1 was hopeful. That's the whole thing with that movie -- they don't know the message will get out, they don't know they will win, it doesn't matter. They looked at the cost and they said "It's worth it" and did what they wanted to do. With this, it felt....hopeless. Everybody went up against Thanos, repeatedly, and had plans, and the plans fell apart and Thanos just swatted them all aside and at the end he won. It was like if Vader had scooped up the message at the very end.

I also wasn't thrilled with the whole Malthusian thing and "the good of the many outweighs the good of the one" but those were almost incidental compared to how fucking grim it was.

[giandujakiss]

Our theater cheered for Steve too! And for the first shots of Wakanda. It was great to see it with an enthusiastic bunch. Really awesome reactions to the ending sequences as well.

[gwyn]

Wakanda definitely got a bit of applause (as did Bucky), and you'd hear things like "yeah!" when someone would appear, but Steve was the only introduced character who got screams and shouts and wild applause. It was like being at a rock concert, and I laughed and laughed with glee. I think Peter got a few claps too, but in our theatre, that was drowned out by the huge laugh response Ned got with "we're all gonna die." I enjoyed the tidal wave of love for Thor there at the end.

I was surprised by how lackluster the response was when it was over. Like, most of the movies have had thunderous applause at the end (even a few days on), and I would guess only half the house was applauding at this, and I heard more than a few "what the fuck"s and a lot of stunned silence. There was quite a bit of confusion, too, about Carol's symbol on Nick's …pager…thing, and I think that added to the lack of response.

[kore]

I get it that we're supposed to ask "OOOH who is that" and be led into Carol moviedom, but as a symbol of possible hope and salvation it was terrible, because NOBODY IN THE ENTIRE MCU VERSE HAS SEEN IT BEFORE.

[seekingferret]

The response I saw included some parents deadpan telling their incredulous eight year old children, "No, Spiderman is really dead. For good. He's not coming back."

[kass]

I haven't seen it, and am not likely to do so -- honestly I don't feel like dealing with the sadness; is that ridiculous? -- I'm just going to stay in my happy bubble where everyone is alive and okay.

[gwyn]

Honestly, I wish I could have.

[spikedluv]

OMG! OMG, it was the same at our theater! And from comments I've read online, at many others. The first time the theater erupted into cheers (aside from small cheers when the lights dimmed) was when Steve made his first appearance. I was already primed to like it, but man did it get my heart pumping to hear the cheers. And when Thor and his ax landed in Wakanda everyone clapped. Two such great moments.

I was just the opposite after watching this; I expected there to be lots of fix-it fic, so I will be very disappointed if there aren't. I mean, I think Marvel is going to fix it after tearing out our hearts and laughing, but I would love to see the ideas fandom comes up with to do it.

I had the bare bones idea for a Steve | Steve/Bucky tag, and yeah, it was frelling SAD being from Steve's POV and all.

I'm definitely going to see it again, too. And maybe I'll take some notes.

[gwyn]

I think a large part of it is that literally the only kind of fic anyone's talking about is fix-it, and that…isn't really what I want. I'm very much a source material sort of gal in some ways, and I like variety in my consumption--like, I love chocolate, but I can eat some good chocolate and be done for three or four months, and a steady diet of only chocolate stuff would kill me. That was what I loved about Winter Soldier--there were SO MANY different types of stories we could write, OMG. (Bucky coming in from the cold! Everyone accepting Bucky and living in the tower as a team fam! Bucky and/or Steve as avenging angel on the Hydra murder trail! Fluff and silliness! Steve and Sam and Nat up all night to get Bucky! and on and on and on.) And Civil War just shut that wide-open door and made it really tiny and narrow and we had to squeeeze our way through, and this feels like…well, you'll get fix-it fic and you'll like it now shut up and eat. Maybe there will be more creativity than I imagine, but it feels really limited to a specific type of story (and I've written my share of fix-its, and read a lot, but as the only type, it's just not as much my flavor, I guess).

All that said, though, I am hoping to see myself proven wrong, and I don't necessarily mind seeing it from Steve's POV because I feel like he got really, really shafted in this and we had almost no reactions from him, so I hope you will write that and post it. I hope all my friends list will write stuff and post and I can sit there in my wrongness and be wrong.

[spikedluv]

I'm sorry that's not your jam. :( I could read hundreds of fix-it fic (and have; see: Clint/Coulson *g*) because everyone is going to have their own twist on it. I expect a lot of people are going to write 'denial' fic, too. In one of my (smaller) fandoms the fans even created a community for denial fic because of character deaths that we are all still in denial about. It's great to see so many people going, no, just no, and doing their own thing with these characters. But that's probably not your jam, either. Unless you just kind of pretend you never saw this movie and revert back to reading/writing post-TWS fic.

[kore]

That was what I loved about Winter Soldier--there were SO MANY different types of stories we could write, OMG. (Bucky coming in from the cold! Everyone accepting Bucky and living in the tower as a team fam! Bucky and/or Steve as avenging angel on the Hydra murder trail! Fluff and silliness! Steve and Sam and Nat up all night to get Bucky! and on and on and on.) And Civil War just shut that wide-open door and made it really tiny and narrow and we had to squeeeze our way through, and this feels like…well, you'll get fix-it fic and you'll like it now shut up and eat.

YES, YES. I think for me it's a combination of feeling nearly all the solo movies finished their individual stories but still left stuff open, so there was room for fic, but the team movies closed everything down (BUT also left us hanging in limbo for the next team movie). And LBR, the solo movies have become more and more like sub-team movies because everything is marching toward these big two conclusions (case in point, "Captain America" Civil War). What I'm hearing people talk about is "what if Bucky's in another realm and he and Steve could still communicate and people are in another dimension" and I'm....just not thrilled with that. Or super duper Steve angst, and I'm just like, poor Steve has had ENOUGH angst. Watching his lifetime BFF crumble into CGI dust was just piling on the agony.

And in this case I've just hated the canon for a while now (Aou, CW) and I don't even want to read fix-its for all that. Those aren't the stories I fell in love with that made me want to write about the characters.