SPOILERS + THOUGHTS
After ten years and 22 films, you would think that the executive decision makers at marvel would come to understand what their characters mean to the fanbase, and the importance of treating these characters with dignity and respect. And I don’t just meant those that have fallen.
The way that the Russos treated Thor, in my opinion, was indefensible. Over time, through adversity, that character has shown immense growth, as the other Avengers had. Thor understood the importance of what it meant to be a good man before being a great king. That was the encompassing message of his entire franchise. While his grief was initially understandable, and we all have our mechanisms of coping with it, the way he was unable to overcome it and was treated as nothing more than a joke throughout the film, was demoralizing to witness as a fan.
Not only that, but for him to abandon his own people, despite understanding that Asgard is not a place, it is a people, despite overcoming personal challenges that limited his understanding of his true potential, where he eventually acknowledged what it meant to rule, despite learning that he is a good man who is capable of being a good king, Endgame undermines everything the preceding movies had helped establish.
Thor didn’t even get a chance to properly deal with his grief, to say goodbye to his family, but was simply reduced to becoming the butt of all jokes, who in the end, ran away from his problems.
Natasha Romanoff deserved better. The first female Avenger deserved better. She received no closure, but was instead left as a forgotten memory. In the end, she died chasing a family, the marvel writers didn’t even have the respect to make functional. The audience, as well as Natasha, saw the Avengers spend more time fighting each other, then really bonding over commonality. Natasha died mourning people we never knew. Because for all intents and purposes, the family she had gotten to know, the Avengers, were still alive. She could have moved on with them. Steve was alive, Bruce was alive, Clint was still alive. Natasha died a tragedy, fighting a war she had never started, finding a family that had spent more time apart, then together. And yet she was reduced to just being an ‘Avenger’, never really being able to grow as her own, share her story, share her journey - simply becoming a mechanism/tool that furthered the other Avengers’ stories. Where is the justice for her?
Tony Stark. Where do I even begin with Tony Stark? My favourite comics character who I grew up with. The genius engineer that at one point in my life I had hoped to emulate. I have seen this character suffer for a very, very long time. Despite it all, one thing I’d always known, was that Tony Stark would keep going no matter what happened. He was a futurist, and always had a way out. To tell you the truth, at one point or the other, I’d always known that the comics would never do this character justice, and that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to see him get justice in the mcu. That this franchise, despite the grief aou and cw put us through, might save Tony Stark and give him his happily ever after with his family. Because as a kid, Tony was robbed of familial love, his father was distant and cold, and his mother… he didn’t get to have a lot of time with the one person that mattered so much to him. So he had to be raised by Jarvis, who wasn’t around for very long either, which lead him to be raised by Obadiah - the man who used him and manipulated him throughout his young adult life. So much betrayal, so much deceit. So alone. When Tony finally found his family come full circle with Peter Parker, and then his own child, he gets it all taken away from him. His fans are robbed of seeing that happily ever after.
No more Asgard, no more ironfam, no more original Avengers. No justice, no solace, no respect for the characters that carried this franchise for the past decade.
I haven’t even covered a fraction of everything going through my head. Of the loss. Of the years I will never get back.
In the end I am left feeling disappointed and embarrassed that I invested all this time in a franchise, that didn’t even have the dignity to treat their fan base with the respect they deserved.
