Monthly Archives: April 2019

April 27, 2019 · 10:02 pm

Of The End

Reaching the end of a good story is always a bittersweet affair. There’s no doubt a sense of joy in the catharsis of resolution, that sense that the story has been completed and all is well. In a good story, its ending will pay off all that came before. But an ending means it’s over; the story and characters that you’ve spent several hours with are done. You don’t get to be a part of their lives and adventures anymore.

It’s certainly kinda weird: these characters are fictional, this world, no matter how similar to our own, is an artifice. Yet there’s such a want to spend more time there. I want to spend more time with the Pevensies in Narnia, I wanna join Luke Skywalker for more of his adventures, I’m really happy that Nathan and Elena got their happy ending, but man, I would love to have another story.

These stories are decidedly done. Uncharted 2 comes to a close and so too does Nate’s adventures in Nepal. Sure, the series counties in its sequels, but there won’t be more of Nathan Drake exploring the Himalayas with Elena and a chronically side-switching Chloe. That moment, that particular dynamic is unique to this story.

Maybe there are stories to be told. There are a couple years between Avengers and Age of Ultron, presumably filled with stories as the Avengers hunt after Hydra. But there’s not gonna be a big movie about that time, featuring the original six doing their thing. That time is past, those stories are told.

Now there is space for those stories to be told; consider the books, games, and comics of the old Star Wars Expanded Universe. They filled the gaps between the movies, introduced new characters, and expanded the world to a ridiculous degree. But even the best books aren’t the same as getting to see and hear Luke, Han, and Leia traipse around the Death Star. Stories lose part of their jazz when translated into a different medium. Maybe it’s the change in budget or creative team; in any case, it’s just not quite the same. Could be good, really good, it just won’t really be the same.

Could the continued Avengers films have maintained the status quo and told more stories of the six saving the day together? Sure. But we’ve already heard that story – it’s the climax of the first movie. There’s little to be gained when retreading old ground, it’s far more interesting to push these characters in wholly new directions. A Thief’s End sees Nathan Drake going on yet another adventure, but this one isn’t after another mystic artifact or following an adventure of Francis Drake. There are the familiar thrills and witticisms — it wouldn’t be Uncharted without ‘em, but Nate’s on a different journey yet again. It’s not the same story as the one before.

It’s frustrating, sometimes. I love the third season of Chuck, and I wish the show could just stay there forever. But at the same time, I’m so glad the series has the chance to grow and for characters to change and so on. It’s one of my favorite shows perhaps because it had the space for that change and progression. I’m sure that had it stayed as its season three self for the entire time it would be tiring and lose what makes it so special. It’s precisely because it doesn’t last that it’s so special.

To all this, Avengers: Endgame is the, uh, end, of the MCU as we know it (give or take a Spider-Man movie coming out in a couple months). It’s quite the feat to resolve ten years of storytelling, but somehow the movie actually does. With that, it’s done. There’ll probably be another Avengers movie, but it ain’t gonna be one too familiar (for a whole variety of reasons), just as no sequel is quite like the original. The old ones can be revisited, yes, and replayed, reread, and rewatched; but they’re over, the story had to end.

Maybe that ephemerality is what makes stories so special. Just because something doesn’t last forever doesn’t make it any less meaningful.

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April 20, 2019 · 6:12 pm

It’s The Endgame

It’s wild to think that when I started this blog seven years ago The Avengers was only just about to come out. There’s been a regular deluge of movies since taking place in The Marvel Cinematic Universe and it’s all coming to a head this weekend with the release of Avengers: Endgame. It’s hard to overstate just what Marvel Studios has managed to pull off here; 21 interconnected films with crisscrossing characters and story elements.

I still remember when Iron Man first came out. I was in high school and really wanted to see it opening day, but I was taking the SAT the next day and the plan was to watch it after that exam. Iron Man had always been one of my favorite superheroes, owing in no small part to a particularly wonderful cartoon I watched as a child. In any case, the movie was fantastic, a kickass superhero movie with a warm, human core. And then the post-credits stinger rolls around and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury tells Tony Stark about the Avengers Initiative.

As someone who grew up with the superhero osmosis in the ’90s, I knew that these Marvel characters teamed up. Captain America had shown up to fight Red Skull in a Spider-Man cartoon; Daredevil and The Human Torch were both in a Spider-Man video game (Spider-Man got all the good stuff in the ’90s). That’s, of course, not counting the comic collections I’d flip through at Barnes and Noble. So naturally, the idea of the Avengers meant something to me and it meant something very cool.

Think again of how absolutely unheard of the idea of a superhero team-up movie was ten years ago. The Spider-Man and X-Men movies existed in different spaces, and Batman and Superman teamed up, but only in the cartoons. Movies crossing over was limited to the likes of Alien vs Predator. Iron Man teaming up with the Hulk and who-knows-who-else was such a cool, idiosyncratic idea.

There’ve been plenty of articles on the internet about how singular an achievement the MCU is, and as much as I’d like to, I don’t think I can write as good an article in a single afternoon. Leastways I don’t have much new to bring to the discussion that hasn’t already been said a dozen times.

On the other hand, there is the whole idea that Endgame is very much going to be the end of an era. Sure, Spider-Man: Far From Home is coming out afterwards, and there are a bunch of movies in development like a Black Panther sequel and the announced Shang-Chi movie that are yet to be given release dates. But the Avengers as we’ve known them for the past ten years is very much coming to a resolution. This may well be the last time we see characters like Iron Man and Captain America on screen for a long time, and it’s up to this movie to give a fitting farewell.

I’m curious, naturally, as to what form it’s gonna take. There’s a lot of stuff we know, of course. There’s gonna be an inevitable rematch with Thanos, and I’m willing to put money on a big team up with every single Avenger, especially given that Infinity War didn’t feature that moment. Seriously, there has to be a call-back to that iconic shot in The Avengers. But there is the big question of how it’s all gonna look when the dust settles. Will Tony and Steve pass on the mantle of leadership to Captain Marvel? Is someone else going to take up Cap’s shield at the end? What comes next?

Pulling all that off is going to be the real trick of Endgame, but if there’s one thing producer Kevin Feige has proven during his showrunning of the beast that is the MCU is that he’s warranted our trust. In light of that, I cannot wait until Thursday night.

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April 13, 2019 · 3:28 pm

Star Wars Trailer

There’s a new Star Wars trailer, for Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, and naturally, I am very excited. Because, y’know, Star Wars. There’s so much I dig about it (Rey’s fantastic new outfit, Poe and Finn on adventures, Leia!), and I’m fully aware that this is because it’s Star Wars and these movies will forever delight me no matter what. But here’s the thing, the trailer for The Rise of Skywalker is an essentially perfect example of how to tease a movie.

Right off the bat, we’re treated to a sequence of Rey in the desert, staring down an incoming starfighter. There’s essentially no plot to this sequence; we don’t know whose TIE it is (it looks somewhat like Kylo Ren’s TIE Silencer from The Last Jedi, but the cockpit is different), and we have no idea where or why Rey is where she is. But what’s clear is Rey’s come a long way from the scavenger on Jakku. This is her thing.

The next chunk of the trailer is checking in with the other characters and what they’re up to. We see Kylo Ren and his stormtroopers fighting their way through a forest against an indistinct enemy (is that a Knight of Ren?) while someone repairs Kylo’s helmet. Poe Dameron and Finn are off on some high-speed adventure alongside a long-suffering C-3PO. BB-8’s got a new droid buddy, and Lando is back in the Falcon’s cockpit. Also, Leia’s there as a comforting presence and a medal from the end of A New Hope is back too. That middle chunk of the trailer basically lets us know that all those characters we know and love are back and there’s adventure waiting in the wings. Yes, it’s the sort of thing that really does go without saying, but it’s undeniably cool to see them all — we care about these characters and want to see what happens to them in the next stage of their journey.

And that’s where the final sequence of the trailer comes into play. Rey, Finn, and Poe are adventuring somewhere together (the sequel trilogy’s power trio in the grand tradition of Star Wars trios). This gives us some vague idea of at least part of the movie: there’s something that needs to be done and it’ll be done by these three. Past that though, not much is clear. Cue the Death Star wreckage sitting in a sea. It’s a delightful what-the-heck moment that offers up many more questions than it answers. Why are the three looking for the Death Star? Or why did they find it? Who knows?

As if that wasn’t enough, the trailer ends with the very familiar cackle of Emperor Palpatine, adding another ingredient to the mystery stew.

The best thing is that even after the trailer had run its course, we don’t know anything about the plot! Is Kylo Ren still the villain? What’re Rey and company up to? How’s Lando figure into it? Rather than giving us a blow by blow of the story, the trailer instead focuses on invoking a specific mood; we know how the movie will feel instead of what’ll happen. It’s an epic adventure, the sort that Star Wars is known for, coupled with a bunch of mysteries that need to be uncovered. By throwing so many elements into the mix, especially ones with no easy explanation like the Death Star and Palpatine, the trailer effectively whets our appetites to find out what happens next.

In summary: It’s a really good trailer that I’m gonna be rewatching a lot because dude it’s so cool and Jedi Rey gives me life.

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April 6, 2019 · 3:17 pm

Thursday Nights

I don’t know if you heard, but getting tickets for Avengers: Endgame was quite the trip. AMC Theaters’ website full-on crashed and they shut down their (also overloaded app). Other websites, like Fandango were showing errors if you tried to access showings for an AMC. As someone with that fancy-shmancy A-List subscription, this was a real pain (I ended up going to the theater in person to buy my tickets).

This isn’t the first time there’s been a mad dash for movie tickets. I had similar (though not quite as intense) issues when getting tickets for Rogue One and The Last Jedi. Midnight and Thursday night showings have always been a bit of a Big Deal, but these website-crashing hypes are a little more recent.

Now, it’d be easy to lambast companies like AMC for failing to account the wild demand for a movie like Endgame. But with it, there’s also the question of just how this urgency to catch a movie as soon as possible became the thing it is.

Now sure, there are the huge fans that have been waiting for the movie. There’s no denying that opening nights are fun, the crowd is excited and the atmosphere is electric. Yelling and cheering when something cool happens is a neat experience that you don’t get in many other showings. No doubt that that’s something special.

But I’d wager it goes further than that. Most of these website-crashing movies are sequels or at the very least the continuation of a franchise. There’s the want to find out what happens next, and with that, to not have it spoiled.

And, man, is it easy for stuff to be spoiled these days. I remember when the series finale of Lost aired years and years ago; I swore off Facebook, Twitter, and my beloved TVTropes until I had the chance to watch it, lest I find out how it ends. The internet has only gotten bigger in the last nine years and with it, the potential for spoilers. Even if you avoid social media and anything marked with spoilers, there are hosts of articles on the internet with leading titles along the lines of “That Character’s Shocking Return Explained” or somesuch that even if it doesn’t outright spoil the ending, at least hints at something.

Then there are the memes. My god, the meeeeeemes. Seizing on the pop-culture zeitgeist of the moment, these image macros waste no time in having fun. When The Last Jedi came out it didn’t take long at all for Ben Swolo — that is, the scene with a shirtless Kylo Ren — to gain traction. A quick check of Know Your Meme shows that BuzzFeed had a listicle of reactions by December 15th (the day the movie came out) and the name Ben Swolo was popularized by the 20th.

Infinity War also saw its share of memes, one of the most famous being parodies of the dusting that happens at the end of the movie. Keep in mind that this is a Major Plot Point at the end, when Thanos succeeds at killing half the universe, including many Avengers, with a snap of his fingers. It’s a really Big Deal. According to, once again, Know Your Meme, memes of various characters commenting that they don’t feel so good were online by April 29th; the Sunday after the movie’s release. Barely took a few days for the movie’s big ending to be a meme.

I’m not sure how I feel about all this. The mad dash to get tickets is a pain, but I also wanna see movies right when they come out (especially ones I really care about). Yet I remain of the opinion that spoilers don’t really spoil (though I enjoy a good surprise as much as the next person), so really, much of the fun of the opening night comes from that feeling of community and being able to make a big deal about it with friends (I bought out an entire row of the theater for The Last Jedi). So maybe I’m a part of the problem.

All that said, when Star Wars Episode IX comes out later this year, I’m gonna get tickets to the Thursday night I just hope the infrastructure is ready by then.

But seriously, don’t tell me anything about what happens in these movies.

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