#fanwanking

I look back on the first Black Panther movie, the first two Cap movies, the Kenneth Branagh Thor films, and the first two Ant-Man movies and the Captain Marvel films as the only ones that I really enjoy rewatching on my Disney Plus app. I used to enjoy watching the first Avengers movie for some of the sight gags and silly dialogue, but it hasn't aged well.

As much as I love Tom and Zendaya in the Spider-Man reboot, I don't rewatch those movies because I hate knowing that Aunt May gets killed in the third one. It sours my enjoyment of the first two. It was the same problem that I had with the Andrew Garfield films. The first one was phenomenal, but then Sony shit the bed with the second one, making me upset with all of the things that they could have done not to ruin the franchise. The No Way Home movie was so good until that fucking ending. It fixed so many mistakes from ALL of the previous films but ultimately shit the bed AGAIN.

I think it's funny that Disney is mad that Marvel fans are more engaged with the shows than the big budget movies that they keep fucking up with bad marketing, bad release dates, overlapping releases, whitewashed casts, misogyny, and planting bits of rage bait into every new film so they can "filter" the fans they want to appeal to while stealing our money. I like the shows because I can happily watch those from my living room and process and savor them without the anxiety of trying to get a seat in the back of the theater because being too close to the big screen exacerbates my seizure disorder when there are flashing effects. I can also quietly dissect the worldbuilding and the character motivation and see all the Easter eggs from previous films. The shows, because maybe they are lower stakes to Disney, are also more diverse. More racial diversity, body diversity, gender diversity, more fluid sexuality, more characters of different ages, more religious and cultural diversity, more language diversity.

We didn't need Sabra in Sam's movie. Not when Leila Taylor was RIGHT THERE.

We didn't need them to kill off Ramonda in Wakanda Forever. Not when fans and the cast alike were already mourning Chadwick.

We didn't need the Fantastic Four movie to only show minority extras looking astounded and flabbergasted in the background of all the action scenes.

We didn't need Thunderbolts to woobify John Walker's racist ass. Or to kill Antonia. Or to sideline Ava Starr into glitching every time she used her powers when she was a badass in Ant-Man and the Wasp.

We didn't need to watch Gamora (one of the MCU's only arguably Black female characters) to die violently onscreen, or Natasha in the same fashion. That was a choice that someone greenlit TWICE.

Marvel Phase Six is about to keep on committing the same sins.

We're going to get more female characters being killed off to inspire the male leads. (Jane? Ramonda? Natasha? Gamora? Maria? Aunt May? Wanda, who I can't stand, but they still did her dirty?)

We're going to get more Black and brown people being knocked down and killed in the background of cityscapes and boss battles like we had in Civil War and Infinity War and Age of Ultron and the first Avengers (Lagos, Harlem, Wakanda, Johannesburg?).

What few minority characters they allow on screen are going to be cast with the Whitest-passing, fairest-skinned actors they can find.

Properties like Wonder Man aren't going to be given good promotion because they don't really want us to watch it. All of the teasers have more Ben Kingsley in them than anything else.

They're going to try to make us forget about queer characters. Agatha was great. Yet, Agatha is DEAD. They are going to nostalgia cast any X-Men properties and ignore the diversity of the actual comics, as well as the blunt queerness of the present runs. They're going to toss Kelsey Grammer back onscreen as Beast, when he's an avid Trump supporter.

They're going to shove more Benedict Cumberbatch down our throats.

They're going to give us Steve "the guy who wanted all those things went into the ice" Rogers as a family man, when that didn't work out well when they did it with Clint Barton in AoU. They're going to let RDJ pretty much run the show and hog the script and chew the scenery. Women in Doomsday will be very ancillary, props, or cannon fodder. Window dressing.

I don't want any of that.

When I open my Disney Plus app, I glance briefly at the things it thinks I might like based on my previous viewing, or whatever they are trying to promote, and I skip ALL of it. All of the choices depress me. I haven't rewatched any of these movies for the following reasons:

Ant-Man Quantumania: Jonathon Fucking Majors. NO. That, and I feel like half the actors in it forgot how to act. It was just a vehicle to introduce Cassie Lang as the new Wasp, but the story was bland.

Doctor Strange: Hated it the first time. That has since become the only time. We didn't need a bald White woman as the Ancient One. And a movie that is set in Tibet that hardly gives its Asian characters speaking roles. It was like the Shyamalan Airbender movie all over again.

Infinity Wars: Why do I want to rewatch my favorite characters getting dusted again? Once was enough. Thanos' aliens wrecking Wakanda's landscape wasn't all that appealing, either.

Endgame: Thor getting to kill Thanos when Nebula was right there and deserved the opportunity more? Nat dying? Heimdall dying after he saved everybody in Ragnarok? Having to sit through that much Tony from start to finish? The whole "it's all your fault, Steve, for abandoning us?" theme after Civil War happened? Excuse me?

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3: I hated it. Everything about it. I hate that the critics raved about it. It was made worse by the fact that the GOTG Christmas special was so lighthearted and funny and they followed with this grimdark slop. Cruelty to fictitious animals? The film's only minority character is the villain committing the cruelty? Hard pass. And I'm done watching Chris Pratt in anything, unless my kids want to watch the next Mario movie. (I'll only do it for them.)

Wakanda Forever: The music and costumes were nice. The introduction of the Talokan was nice. But again, why kill Ramonda? Why have Namor do that, after he lost his own mother?

Multiverse of Madness: Still haven't watched it ONCE. Don't need to. The spoilers were enough. Agatha All Along filled in all the blanks.

Ragnarok and Love and Thunder: I've given both of these a couple of rewatches each, and they both lose something with each rewatch. Just give me a Valkyrie solo show with Tessa Thompson and I'll be fine.

Fantastic Four reboot: Didn't hate it. Just can't explain why I don't really feel like watching it again? The actors did a great job with that they were given. But again, it was very whitewashed and vague and didn't fit well with the rest of the MCU. There was a certain weird, handwavy Messianic subtext to Sue and Franklin? I don't know if that was intentional? It felt very "our blue eyed blond lady and baby can do no wrong." That feels like it's going to be a prevalent theme for everything going forward (which it kind of was for Carol's character in the second Marvels movie, too, if I'm being honest).

Thunderbolts: I don't even have to explain why. Bucky in a bad wig, looking bored for most of the film? Red Guardian in all of his greasy glory? No Sam? More Valentina, whose character was already vaguely racist in TFATWS? And this movie dialed it up to eleven? The Incredibles Syndrome ending battle? No, I'm never watching it again. Not even to write fix-it fic.

When I started watching MCU movies and writing fics for that universe, it was fun because it was a refreshing change from the Fox X-Men franchise that only took canon as a helpful suggestion and cheerfully ignored it. The MCU made the comic characters three dimensional and nuanced, at first. Soaring musical scores, gorgeous and accurate costumes, and the scripts were written with a sympathetic hand. Now, though... I'm just so tired. The X-Men movies were originally "that way" because they were still getting their feet under them in how they approached a superhero movie based on a popular comic book, but as time went on, Fox kept doubling and tripling down on the series' flaws, like a disrespect for their own in-universe continuity, misogyny (women getting strangled in every film), whitewashing, watering down the female characters and removing their agency (and dialogue, in some cases), mistreating their minority characters (Darwin?!?!), straightwashing queer characters (Raven), and only using certain characters for optics (Emma, Angel, Warren, Raven, Piotr... the list goes on and on and on). The best thing that the Deadpool films did was dunk heavily on all of the X-films. How do you get the costumes and wigs so appallingly wrong? They had one job.

So I don't want this nostalgia grab of adding Marsden, Cummings, or Romijn or Grammer. The whole concept bores me to tears, when they could just give us a new X-Men film that they have been promising since they bought the properties back from Fox. They aren't going to give me an X-film property this time that will wash the taste of the old films out of my mouth, sadly. Chris Evans was better used as a washed up Human Torch in Deadpool. He was having a good laugh at his old self and we were laughing along with him.

I started cherry picking which Marvel films to watch in the theater after Endgame when I used to be a "completist" who just automatically paid opening weekend ticket prices to watch them right away. I think I've reached the end of the road with Doomsday. And that's fine. It's like when you stop wearing your old high school t-shirt when it gets so faded and full of holes and doesn't fit anymore.

It's okay to just fucking throw it out.

I want to watch other things with Mackie. Or X-Men 97 if they give us a second season. Or any of the Marvel properties that finally revisit my favorite characters with decent intent and real attention to their development.

Jon is forced to kill Dany after she goes batshit insane. Tyrion is either executed by her or rules a council to run Westeros afterwards. Jon takes off for the North to live amongst the Free Folk.

I see this as the most realistic ending. Like it or not, the narrative has been building to this for years as Dany progressively gets worse and worse and is willing to do more and more awful things. It also fits in with the mythology, which as Davos reminded us, still mostly remains a mystery.

Let’s go back to the original legend of Azor Ahai:

Darkness lay over the world and a hero, Azor Ahai, was chosen to fight against it. To fight the darkness, Azor Ahai needed to forge a hero's sword . . .with a heavy heart, for he knew beforehand what he must do to finish the blade, he worked for a hundred days and nights until it was finished. This time, he called for his wife, Nissa Nissa, and asked her to bare her breast. He drove his sword into her living heart, her soul combining with the steel of the sword, creating Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes.

That’s the first part. Here’s the second:

There will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.

The rumors about Jon stabbing Dany are very similar to this. Is it really a coincidence that the way this all goes down is almost an exact replica of the legend?

What if the darkness that flees before him is simply Dany’s madness if her reign would have to go unchecked? What if it had nothing to do with the Night King at all, but is all just a metaphor?

Or is that all there is to it? (More on that in a minute).

If events do unfold this way, I could understand Jon going “fuck this shit” and heading off to go live with Tormund and Ghost, free of all the misery and turmoil and death that power has brought him. I think it’s a happy ending: like he said to Tormund directly, he’d rather be there anyway. I know people will say that it’s giving up on life or randomly going off to be a lumberjack a la Dexter, but when your hero directly states that this is his true heart’s desire, why not let him have the peace and happiness that he wants?

We might as well give someone a happy ending.

Jon kills Dany. Tyrion is either executed or helps run the kingdom. Jon heads off to the North, either to man the Wall again or to hang out with the wildlings because . . . Dany is resurrected as the Night Queen, and Jon is needed to help balance out the cosmos between the two of them. Darkness cannot exist without light, ice cannot exist without fire. They’ll remain together either as a melding of the elements or as an uneasy existence until they’re fated to repeat the cycle of their doomed romance in the next Long Night.

I know, I know. A really crazy ass theory. But let’s go back to the legend of Azor Ahai:

Benerro has sent forth the word from Volantis. Her coming is the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. From smoke and salt was she born to make the world anew. She is Azor Ahai returned ... and her triumph over darkness will bring a summer that will never end ... death itself will bend its knee, and all those who die fighting in her cause shall be reborn.

Sounds like raising a zombie army to me. Maybe Azor Ahai is something they were supposed to avoid.

And I have to think back to the scene in 8.01, when Jon and Dany were by the waterfall, and she talked of staying hidden there for a thousand years.

It’s possible the Jon-kills-Dany surface theory (aka the metaphor) is just intended for the show and GRRM would do the Ice Zombie thing if he ever got around to writing it. But I’m sort of attached to the idea Dany as Queen Ice Zombie. 

Jon doesn’t kill Dany, and they are actually endgame in the completely mortal sense. Tyrion has been betraying them all along and he destroys most of King’s Landing by wildfire. He is tried and executed by the Starks. Sansa oversees his sentence. Dany and Jon either co-rule or run away to the North.

Of all the rumors floating around, the one that supports this theory has been dismissed as the most dubious. However, it also it is the only rumor to support the very detailed rumors about Tyrion’s trial/execution that have been out there for months and line up with verified information about the cast shoots.

There’s no payoff with the mythology, but I could see this happening.

This has been described as a “Disney ending”, but I don’t see it that way. If Tyrion is a traitor and condemned to death by Sansa, I don’t see how that fits in any way as an ending anybody wants. If this happens, it’s going to be absolutely devastating, and giving Jon/Dany a happy ending is not going to make up for it.

Of course, Tyrion could be executed and they could do Jon-kills-Dany as well (Dany and Jon are supposedly not present at Tyrion’s trial) but I just don’t see the show being that dark.

Leaving Jon and Dany to rule together as expected may seem like a happy ending, but there’s still a touch of tragedy to it: Jon’s true heart lies in the North with Tormund and Ghost, but he gives it up for love and duty. (I can easily see why GRRM would think this would be absolutely terrible). He thought he would be the one to sacrifice himself in the battles he’s fought since he was resurrected, but nope. Dany as well has to learn to manage her impulses and accept that she’s a ruler, no longer just a conqueror.

(Yup, pretty boring. I prefer the Zombie Queen theory).

I just don’t see Jon and Dany both rejecting the Throne and heading up North to hang out by the waterfall, but that’s apparently part of the rumors now. I’d dismiss this as completely unlikely if not for the fact that the trial stuff lines up with outside information.

I have heard nothing positive about Jaime and Brienne whatsoever. I remain optimistic and hope that he lied to Brienne and headed south to take down Cersei and will die doing so. I don’t really hope for much beyond that.