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537 – Kooky And Spooky
Posted on November 20, 2024 by Dawn

One heck of an Endgame…

Posted on May 8, 2019 by Clint
So if you’re like us (and seemingly most of the world with nearby cinemas), you have now seen or plan to see an obscure little flick known as Avengers: Endgame. If you haven’t seen it yet and are still trying to dodge spoilers — first off, good luck, and secondly you’ll probably want to stop reading now. I’m not planning a big spoilery review but I’m also not guaranteeing I’m going to be on my best behavior in terms of keeping details secret by action or implication. Anyhow. It’s great. And more than that, what a great inspiration for me and any other serial storytellers out there on how to stick the landing and close out a huge arc while also leaving the door open to keep going forwards. Between this and Infinity War, what an accomplishment in balancing old and new, of giving the “original 6” their time to shine while still allowing everyone to applaud some more recent favorites. Not everyone will agree with me and there are moments which might fall short for some, but we’ve also come a long, long way from the Year 2000 where the X-Men all had to dress in black leather and crack snide about “yellow spandex.” The MCU dared audiences to care about a talking raccoon and eased them gradually into more and more outlandish plots and characters until we have a theater full of people nodding their heads at the idea of Quantum Time Travel and international audiences outright sobbing over the fate of a dude dressed in an American flag. The time travel angle gave writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely the perfect excuse to revisit the nostalgia of a skein of MCU lore woven over time and the course of 22 separate movies, hearkening back even to its earliest moments. A retrospective that also manages to more forward, and broadens understanding of past, present, and future. This is the kind of stuff I aspire to achieve, and frankly I’m playing in the bush leagues while they, Kevin Feige and the Russo Brothers are up there on Expert difficulty, showing both excellent planning but also an equally excellent ability to adapt and even improvise. The MCU had been prophesied to stumble and fail so many times over the years. Even I remember hearing the news of Captain America: Civil War and thinking they’d bitten off more than they could chew. Bringing that many heroes together in any sort of way that wasn’t a completely confusing fustercluck? Impossible. Then I watched and they pulled it off. But instead of patting themselves on the back and returning to more humble ambitions, they doubled down with Infinity War, and again the nagging doubts in my head were there and again they were quelled. By Endgame I should by all rights have had my doubt license revoked, and in fact we did go ahead and advance purchase our tickets, but I won’t deny there was some relief and wonderment still as the positive reviews started emerging. If you disagree, if it didn’t move you, that’s fine, but just on a purely technical level there was an achievement here worthy of study and admiration. As a lifelong comics fan, for me it was so much more.