Okay, now I’m good! Thanks, Chris and here we go! I’m going point-by-point: 1. Yes, where the fuck was the movie that was a direct (or as direct as possible) sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier?! Although one thing: there’s an ugly, anti-black racist trend in fandom to make Sam the in-home therapist in the flavor of him being the Magical Negro that always takes care of the white characters and it’s…pretty ugly.
Then, you also have to put it into perspective: Bucky’s trauma consists of seventy years of torture, brainwashing, being forced to do things that he doesn’t want to do, and more torture. He is a man that has PTSD and memory problems out the wazoo and there are quite possibly a dozen or so trigger words still in his head.
Sam Wilson is a good, honorable man brimming with compassion and insightfulness and most-certainly he will eventually like and befriend Bucky, just like in the comics. But Sam Wilson is also, in the MCU, simply a VA counselor that helps your average Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly, every now and then, the average Vietnam veteran. Bucky’s trauma and the needs and particularities that it entails…are way, way out of Sam’s league. And on top of that, you have the issue of boundaries when it comes to therapists/counselors not being their personal friends’ therapists/counselors.
But! I do think that there can be something for Sam helping to direct Bucky to someone who can help him. I do think that you can show Sam holding Bucky’s hand as they search for a good, suitable doctor that can help Bucky. Yep, yep.
2. Yeah, the whole of Tony’s presence in this fucking movie and the rest of this universe for that matter hinge on him acting a fool and an asshole. I personally still can’t get past the question of…what is Tony even doing here? Outside of, say, providing funds for the very best lawyers for Bucky off-screen? Like, the motivation for that ending fight scene felt beyond forced and contrived. I’ve never been nor will I ever be for the narrative of Bucky having been the one to kill Tony’s parents because it doesn’t make sense and, even more, because it runs the great risk of centralizing Tony in what should be Bucky’s story.
I mean, movie!Tony Stark has existed since 2008; the very first Iron Man movie came out in 2008. It is 2016 now and that means it has been a whopping eight years since Tony’s debut. It wasn’t really until the second Iron Man film where we saw Tony…supposedly get some closure from his father (…that little video where Howard says that Tony “is my greatest creation”…and yes, I have negative feelz about that in & of itself), and that should’ve been that. And of course, we hear and see next to nothing about his mother.
So now, over eight years later, if we, the audience, were supposed to care so much about Tony’s parents and believe that he had such a warm, close relationship with them as to become unhinged upon realizing they were murdered by Bucky, then it’s far too late by now. I mean, in the first ten minutes of the movie? We watched his mother kiss him goodbye…like she almost never kisses him, much less shows any kind of casual affection for him at all.
And yes, again, I’m still stuck at Tony, why in the fresh fuck are you even here in this movie?!
It didn’t work. It doesn’t work.
3. Ehhh? You felt Captain America: The Winter Soldier tried to cram in about nine movies? I actually love CATWS and I’m deeply curious about your interpretation of that. Would you care to elaborate? :O
4. …Yeah, I…kinda got a lot to say about that, too. But you just condensed it: apparently only villains care about natives. Huh.
5. This movie should’ve been morally complex for what it was, yes. But I was telling WingedBeast and a few other friends: A Civil War movie never should’ve happened in the first place. The Civil War event in the comics is one of those highly infamous events and for good reasons-the characterizations are terrible (especially if you love and are interested in Tony Stark (who acts like a fucking fascist the whole time) and Steve Rogers (who acts like a fucking anarchist the whole time)), the basic handling of the question of oversight, responsibility, etc. is horrifically not well-done. And it’s just in general a really, really bad comic book event.
The only moral complexity in this movie that I and a whole lot of other Marvel fans cared to see was the moral complexity of the [beginnings of] The Winter Soldier Trials. Prove to us, within the context of the movies, that Bucky Barnes is not an evil man, but the longest-serving POW ever known. Prove to us, also, that Bucky Barnes can and will step on the path of being worthy of the shield of Captain America. Prove to us that you can balance Bucky’s crushing guilt with the righteous anger and grief of his victims and their families.
Prove all of that to us. Show all of that to us. That’s what the fuck we wanted. And, again, Tony Stark should have absolutely nothing to do with that outside of providing the very best lawyers for Bucky.
6. Ohhh, that would’ve worked! And I forgot that Marvel doesn’t have the rights to Fantastic 4 and so they don’t have the right to Doctor Doom. Huh. :O
7. True that. Preach. All of the countries that either had a direct hand in genocide or just stood by and let it happen…and all of the times that genocide still goes on to this very day.
Also, as far as Steve’s wartime service during WWII as Captain America? That reminds me of one thing that I really, really, really do not like about CATWS: one of the basic premises of that movie as far as Steve’s character is that it’s no longer easy for him to figure out what to do, what’s right, what direction to follow because what’s right and what’s wrong is so blurry. Who to trust and who not to trust is not clear-cut and it’s, in fact, quite dangerous to slip and trust the wrong person and/or mistrust someone that actually can be trusted.
This gives the ugly, unfortunate implication that it was simple for Steve to be Captain America…back in the 40s. And that’s…one on part, that shouldn’t be Steve Rogers as a character and on another part, that’s totally a disgustingly, fetishizing, white-washing, privileged view of the past. The 1940s (and the 30s, and the 20s…) was fucking ugly. You still had lynchings of African Americans. Segregation. Japanese internment camps. Homophobic hate crimes. Anti-Semitism (oh, hai thar, Greatest Country In The World callously denying whole boatloads of European Jewish refugees!). The list goes on and on and on.
So for Steve…it should’ve been difficult and blurry to be Captain America from the very beginning. His second movie shouldn’t have been the first time he really, really started questioning things, really started feeling deeply discomfited and resentful of things. No, just...god, no.
8. This. This. That, and that. Yeah.
Although, I will say about the mother cornering Tony after Tony handing out all of those Wealthy Affluent White Man Guilt College Grants? The mother was black and one of the ugly things about this movie that I haven’t seen called out elsewhere is the egregious use of black bodies to prop up the white character’s guilt. It’s not just that black mother’s black child dying in that building. It’s also how Wanda accidentally blows up a building in Lagos…full of black people. And there’s a shot or two of a close-up of a dead black person, their eyes staring endlessly at the camera and it’s just…
Stop using the pain and death of black people to prop up and propel the stories of your white characters, Hollywood. Stop it.
9. OMFG!!!! Chris, I have absolutely loved your dialogue rewrites/re-imaginings ever since the olden days when we would talk about Twilight in Ana’s comments sections! They have always made me laugh out loud, if not put a bright, bright smile on my face for the rest of the day. And on top of being hilarious, they also wonderfully, dryly prove the point of how the source material is wildly problematic. I just love it. I do. –heart eyes & chin hands-
And this one just made me laugh out loud so, so much! Yes, yes, yes to it!!
10. Oh yes: Dr. Betty Ross has been written out of the movie universe entirely. She’s a white woman love interest that doesn’t interest me all that much just for that reason alone, but it’s quite infuriating because she could bring so, so much to the plots.
And you think Ross is a villain, too?! I always got the impression that the movies and, perhaps, the comics, wanted him to be portrayed and interpreted as some kind of morally-grey figure, a desperate man with a whole lot of power that’s just trying to do the right thing by any means necessary. Like, the source material is trying to sell us a character that’s heavy on the Machiavellian, but can somehow still be sympathized with. But of course, it does not work for me, you, and a whole lot of the rest of the audience.
I will say that for myself, personally? I very, very, very much always preferred the General Ross from the 2003 Hulk movie, with Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly. I haven’t re-watched it in a good minute, but I felt that that version of General Ross actually, truly, deeply loved and cared for his daughter. I loved the flashback of child!Betty eating ice cream with her father in a diner, though they’re interrupted by military officials. I love that he demands of Betty, “What do you want me to do?!” and the narrative allows Betty to yell back, “I want you to help [Bruce]!” I love that, at the end, Ross truly apologizes to Betty for everything and, though I don’t remember Betty’s exact response, it sounded like she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him, much less start rebuilding their relationship.
Just about none of that complex pain was shown in the 2008 reboot with the new General Ross and Betty. Ross was and still is just a power-hungry, callous, reckless asshole that truly doesn’t care about hurting and/or killing even his own daughter to get unfettered access to Bruce Banner’s body. I re-watched the 2008 reboot a few weeks ago and still to this day, I can’t sense that Ross truly loves his daughter or at least, truly wants to rekindle some kind of relationship with her where she understands and trusts him. It’s disgusting.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
11. Speaking of the shitty Iron Man 3? My favorite part? When Happy got fatally injured because of the villains and Tony was angry? He went and outed his personal home address in a challenge to those villains on an international platform and he did it solely out of anger…which is a hallmark character trait of movie!Tony Stark. He gets angry, he lashes out without a care for how this will hurt other people.
And then of course, a certain lady named Pepper lives in that house, too. He comes home after issuing that challenge, she drops their bags in front of him and states that they are going to bounce and bounce yesterday. And then he tells her, “I can’t protect you out there!”
…But you can protect here in the house of which you just gave away your address to. Because you’re angry. Because that’s logical. Because that’s smart. Because you’re a genius. Hahaha…hah…hah.
Also, I know a lot of people are saying that it was the MCU guys that came to RDJ to centralize him in Captain America’s movie? But I personally call bullshit-RDJ is a fucking notorious contract shark. I bet he totally pushed and shoved his sorry ass all the way to the front yet again for sure.
12. Yep. Exactly. Like…how many times does the MCU want us to watch this wealthy, powerful white man that is supposedly a genius…realize that he’s wrong and then go to absurd, destructive lengths to correct that wrong and end up actually making a bigger mess than before? If you watch all of the movies he’s been in, you can see just how formulaic it is (I was talking about this with Geyahi in another comment thread on this post) and it’s nothing but status quo. I mean, if I want to watch MCU!Tony Stark do this over and over again, I’d just turn on the news.
13. I reiterate my point on #1. :D
14. …Aww shit, I forgot that Vision can apparently lift the hammer! Excellent point!!!
15. Psst…Chris. Doncha know that we black women don’t actually exist? It’s always either men of color or white women and so, yes indeed, it is impossible for a character to be both of color and a woman. Why, you’re talking to a mystical unicorn right now. ;)
Ohhh, I very, very much enjoy your better proposal!
And no, you didn’t write too much at all! Again, I thank you so much for dropping in to comment, Chris! Thank you, thank you! :D
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mmmag
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Date: 2016-05-22 03:27 pm (UTC)1. Yes, where the fuck was the movie that was a direct (or as direct as possible) sequel to Captain America: The Winter Soldier?! Although one thing: there’s an ugly, anti-black racist trend in fandom to make Sam the in-home therapist in the flavor of him being the Magical Negro that always takes care of the white characters and it’s…pretty ugly.
Then, you also have to put it into perspective: Bucky’s trauma consists of seventy years of torture, brainwashing, being forced to do things that he doesn’t want to do, and more torture. He is a man that has PTSD and memory problems out the wazoo and there are quite possibly a dozen or so trigger words still in his head.
Sam Wilson is a good, honorable man brimming with compassion and insightfulness and most-certainly he will eventually like and befriend Bucky, just like in the comics. But Sam Wilson is also, in the MCU, simply a VA counselor that helps your average Iraq, Afghanistan, and possibly, every now and then, the average Vietnam veteran. Bucky’s trauma and the needs and particularities that it entails…are way, way out of Sam’s league. And on top of that, you have the issue of boundaries when it comes to therapists/counselors not being their personal friends’ therapists/counselors.
But! I do think that there can be something for Sam helping to direct Bucky to someone who can help him. I do think that you can show Sam holding Bucky’s hand as they search for a good, suitable doctor that can help Bucky. Yep, yep.
2. Yeah, the whole of Tony’s presence in this fucking movie and the rest of this universe for that matter hinge on him acting a fool and an asshole. I personally still can’t get past the question of…what is Tony even doing here? Outside of, say, providing funds for the very best lawyers for Bucky off-screen? Like, the motivation for that ending fight scene felt beyond forced and contrived. I’ve never been nor will I ever be for the narrative of Bucky having been the one to kill Tony’s parents because it doesn’t make sense and, even more, because it runs the great risk of centralizing Tony in what should be Bucky’s story.
I mean, movie!Tony Stark has existed since 2008; the very first Iron Man movie came out in 2008. It is 2016 now and that means it has been a whopping eight years since Tony’s debut. It wasn’t really until the second Iron Man film where we saw Tony…supposedly get some closure from his father (…that little video where Howard says that Tony “is my greatest creation”…and yes, I have negative feelz about that in & of itself), and that should’ve been that. And of course, we hear and see next to nothing about his mother.
So now, over eight years later, if we, the audience, were supposed to care so much about Tony’s parents and believe that he had such a warm, close relationship with them as to become unhinged upon realizing they were murdered by Bucky, then it’s far too late by now. I mean, in the first ten minutes of the movie? We watched his mother kiss him goodbye…like she almost never kisses him, much less shows any kind of casual affection for him at all.
And yes, again, I’m still stuck at Tony, why in the fresh fuck are you even here in this movie?!
It didn’t work. It doesn’t work.
3. Ehhh? You felt Captain America: The Winter Soldier tried to cram in about nine movies? I actually love CATWS and I’m deeply curious about your interpretation of that. Would you care to elaborate? :O
4. …Yeah, I…kinda got a lot to say about that, too. But you just condensed it: apparently only villains care about natives. Huh.
5. This movie should’ve been morally complex for what it was, yes. But I was telling WingedBeast and a few other friends: A Civil War movie never should’ve happened in the first place. The Civil War event in the comics is one of those highly infamous events and for good reasons-the characterizations are terrible (especially if you love and are interested in Tony Stark (who acts like a fucking fascist the whole time) and Steve Rogers (who acts like a fucking anarchist the whole time)), the basic handling of the question of oversight, responsibility, etc. is horrifically not well-done. And it’s just in general a really, really bad comic book event.
The only moral complexity in this movie that I and a whole lot of other Marvel fans cared to see was the moral complexity of the [beginnings of] The Winter Soldier Trials. Prove to us, within the context of the movies, that Bucky Barnes is not an evil man, but the longest-serving POW ever known. Prove to us, also, that Bucky Barnes can and will step on the path of being worthy of the shield of Captain America. Prove to us that you can balance Bucky’s crushing guilt with the righteous anger and grief of his victims and their families.
Prove all of that to us. Show all of that to us. That’s what the fuck we wanted. And, again, Tony Stark should have absolutely nothing to do with that outside of providing the very best lawyers for Bucky.
6. Ohhh, that would’ve worked! And I forgot that Marvel doesn’t have the rights to Fantastic 4 and so they don’t have the right to Doctor Doom. Huh. :O
7. True that. Preach. All of the countries that either had a direct hand in genocide or just stood by and let it happen…and all of the times that genocide still goes on to this very day.
Also, as far as Steve’s wartime service during WWII as Captain America? That reminds me of one thing that I really, really, really do not like about CATWS: one of the basic premises of that movie as far as Steve’s character is that it’s no longer easy for him to figure out what to do, what’s right, what direction to follow because what’s right and what’s wrong is so blurry. Who to trust and who not to trust is not clear-cut and it’s, in fact, quite dangerous to slip and trust the wrong person and/or mistrust someone that actually can be trusted.
This gives the ugly, unfortunate implication that it was simple for Steve to be Captain America…back in the 40s. And that’s…one on part, that shouldn’t be Steve Rogers as a character and on another part, that’s totally a disgustingly, fetishizing, white-washing, privileged view of the past. The 1940s (and the 30s, and the 20s…) was fucking ugly. You still had lynchings of African Americans. Segregation. Japanese internment camps. Homophobic hate crimes. Anti-Semitism (oh, hai thar, Greatest Country In The World callously denying whole boatloads of European Jewish refugees!). The list goes on and on and on.
So for Steve…it should’ve been difficult and blurry to be Captain America from the very beginning. His second movie shouldn’t have been the first time he really, really started questioning things, really started feeling deeply discomfited and resentful of things. No, just...god, no.
8. This. This. That, and that. Yeah.
Although, I will say about the mother cornering Tony after Tony handing out all of those Wealthy Affluent White Man Guilt College Grants? The mother was black and one of the ugly things about this movie that I haven’t seen called out elsewhere is the egregious use of black bodies to prop up the white character’s guilt. It’s not just that black mother’s black child dying in that building. It’s also how Wanda accidentally blows up a building in Lagos…full of black people. And there’s a shot or two of a close-up of a dead black person, their eyes staring endlessly at the camera and it’s just…
Stop using the pain and death of black people to prop up and propel the stories of your white characters, Hollywood. Stop it.
9. OMFG!!!! Chris, I have absolutely loved your dialogue rewrites/re-imaginings ever since the olden days when we would talk about Twilight in Ana’s comments sections! They have always made me laugh out loud, if not put a bright, bright smile on my face for the rest of the day. And on top of being hilarious, they also wonderfully, dryly prove the point of how the source material is wildly problematic. I just love it. I do. –heart eyes & chin hands-
And this one just made me laugh out loud so, so much! Yes, yes, yes to it!!
10. Oh yes: Dr. Betty Ross has been written out of the movie universe entirely. She’s a white woman love interest that doesn’t interest me all that much just for that reason alone, but it’s quite infuriating because she could bring so, so much to the plots.
And you think Ross is a villain, too?! I always got the impression that the movies and, perhaps, the comics, wanted him to be portrayed and interpreted as some kind of morally-grey figure, a desperate man with a whole lot of power that’s just trying to do the right thing by any means necessary. Like, the source material is trying to sell us a character that’s heavy on the Machiavellian, but can somehow still be sympathized with. But of course, it does not work for me, you, and a whole lot of the rest of the audience.
I will say that for myself, personally? I very, very, very much always preferred the General Ross from the 2003 Hulk movie, with Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly. I haven’t re-watched it in a good minute, but I felt that that version of General Ross actually, truly, deeply loved and cared for his daughter. I loved the flashback of child!Betty eating ice cream with her father in a diner, though they’re interrupted by military officials. I love that he demands of Betty, “What do you want me to do?!” and the narrative allows Betty to yell back, “I want you to help [Bruce]!” I love that, at the end, Ross truly apologizes to Betty for everything and, though I don’t remember Betty’s exact response, it sounded like she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him, much less start rebuilding their relationship.
Just about none of that complex pain was shown in the 2008 reboot with the new General Ross and Betty. Ross was and still is just a power-hungry, callous, reckless asshole that truly doesn’t care about hurting and/or killing even his own daughter to get unfettered access to Bruce Banner’s body. I re-watched the 2008 reboot a few weeks ago and still to this day, I can’t sense that Ross truly loves his daughter or at least, truly wants to rekindle some kind of relationship with her where she understands and trusts him. It’s disgusting.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
11. Speaking of the shitty Iron Man 3? My favorite part? When Happy got fatally injured because of the villains and Tony was angry? He went and outed his personal home address in a challenge to those villains on an international platform and he did it solely out of anger…which is a hallmark character trait of movie!Tony Stark. He gets angry, he lashes out without a care for how this will hurt other people.
And then of course, a certain lady named Pepper lives in that house, too. He comes home after issuing that challenge, she drops their bags in front of him and states that they are going to bounce and bounce yesterday. And then he tells her, “I can’t protect you out there!”
…But you can protect here in the house of which you just gave away your address to. Because you’re angry. Because that’s logical. Because that’s smart. Because you’re a genius.
Hahaha…hah…hah.
Also, I know a lot of people are saying that it was the MCU guys that came to RDJ to centralize him in Captain America’s movie? But I personally call bullshit-RDJ is a fucking notorious contract shark. I bet he totally pushed and shoved his sorry ass all the way to the front yet again for sure.
12. Yep. Exactly. Like…how many times does the MCU want us to watch this wealthy, powerful white man that is supposedly a genius…realize that he’s wrong and then go to absurd, destructive lengths to correct that wrong and end up actually making a bigger mess than before? If you watch all of the movies he’s been in, you can see just how formulaic it is (I was talking about this with Geyahi in another comment thread on this post) and it’s nothing but status quo. I mean, if I want to watch MCU!Tony Stark do this over and over again, I’d just turn on the news.
13. I reiterate my point on #1. :D
14. …Aww shit, I forgot that Vision can apparently lift the hammer! Excellent point!!!
15. Psst…Chris. Doncha know that we black women don’t actually exist? It’s always either men of color or white women and so, yes indeed, it is impossible for a character to be both of color and a woman. Why, you’re talking to a mystical unicorn right now. ;)
Ohhh, I very, very much enjoy your better proposal!
And no, you didn’t write too much at all! Again, I thank you so much for dropping in to comment, Chris! Thank you, thank you! :D