I've been tempted to do a rundown of all the endings I've watched lately: Game of Thrones, Avengers: Endgame, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, even Chernobyl. Some have been well done, others... well, not bad exactly, but maybe not the most satisfying conclusions to their respective sagas. I don't know if I have a grand unifying theory of endings to give here, but I suppose I can tease out some commonality if I go through them all, so...
I'm not one of those who were offended by the denouement of GoT. I covered my thoughts about the thought of it ending back in April, when the first episode had just aired and the dust hadn't yet settled. I then spent three weeks in Europe unable to watch the final half of the season (or rather, focused more on wrapping up Star Trek: Discovery). Because I was still perusing sites like the AV Club, I got the sense that crazy things were happening, and I was right.
If I have one complaint about the end of GoT, it's the rushed nature of certain things. Specifically, the bit where Daenerys torches King's Landing, and Jon Snow then has to kill her and the (surviving) nobles give the throne to Bran, the one person least likely to fuck everything up. All of these things, taken singly and indeed altogether, work, more or less. I just feel like it was all a bit rushed, which is odd considering that the season consisted of six 90-minute movies, effectively. But on the other hand, they could have cut them down to 60 minutes, developed the story a bit more, and given us ten episodes to digest the Siege of Winterfell, the sack of King's Landing, and all the fallout.
The other question is how much of this will be in the books, if they ever come out. The AV Club's "Experts" review touches on this, suggesting that the ending GRRM comes up with may not be this exact set of events, though it'll likely be the same emotional resonances, i.e. the main characters turning their backs on the past and finally forging their own futures, though with great regrets behind them. And the review notes, which I didn't notice at the time, how little Jon Snow had to do with anything apart from stabbing Dany. Hopefully in the books he's a bit more instrumental.
Contrast that with Endgame. I won't deny that Infinity War left me a little cold at the end. I knew the Snap was going to happen, because it's the starting point of the Infinity Gauntlet crossover from the 90s, so paradoxically the fact that they ended it there wasn't as much of a shock for me as it was for probably 99% of people watching.
On the other hand, I don't know how they fixed things in the comics, other than Adam Warlock ended up splitting the Infinity Stones among a bunch of weirdoes and having some sort of adventures that didn't last long. This means that Endgame had the capacity to surprise me, which probably helped me enjoy it so much.
Endgame also did a good job of calling back to previous movies in the series, bringing a number of ideas and characters back to tie them into the present - it even made me appreciate Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1, which I'd thought was so much gibberish at the start. And while looking back it also did a good job of pointing us toward the future, by inserting a new dynamic into Starlord and Gamora's romance, passing the shield and armor to successors of Captain America and Iron Man, and basically bringing back most of the box office draws like Black Panther.
Though I'm not ashamed to say that, as Ant-Man became the catalyst for solving the Snap, possibly the thing I'm looking to most is another film for him.
Then there's Dark Phoenix. Unlike the others, it's not exactly meant to be an ending, but the fact that Disney now owns the characters' film rights means this series is likely done. I remain a little ambivalent about that, because while the quality hasn't been as great as the MCU films, it has been fun to see some of the storylines and deep-bench characters show up, especially in the sub-series that started with First Class.
But if anything, the real ending for the X-Men movie series was Logan, given how it put a capstone on that character's journey and on mutants overall. If Dark Phoenix sits in that timeline, then it's even more of a downer because what we can expect is a sad, sad end for all these characters.
Though I still appreciate cool-dean Professor X, as played by James McAvoy, and his dynamic with Michael Fassbender's Magneto. Seeing Patrick Stewart opposite Ian McKellen in those roles was, of course, brilliant, but this set of movies did a good job of showing their frenemy-ship as it developed over the decades. Even if their ridiculous longevity was starting to wear a little thin.
I'm also ambivalent about the X-Men going forward, because I always thought they sat a little awkwardly in the wider Marvel universe, and each subsequent X-Men movie is going to either have to incorporate the Avengers or neutralize them in some way. Though I'm curious how the roles will be recast, if at all - they might use the multiverse teased in Into the Spider-Verse and the upcoming Spider-Man: Far From Home, to show the mutants occupying a separate Earth that they only visit when there's some planet-shattering... well, crisis, I guess you'd call it.
Which actually brings me to Arrow! I'd almost forgotten about it, since Chernobyl's the thing I've finished most recently (that might needs its own post). I just wrapped up watching season 7 of Arrow, and I have to appreciate the way they approached it - I read early in the season that the showrunners decided to treat it as a final season, which meant they could go a little crazy and kill or otherwise remove a bunch of characters (or bring them back; hi, Roy!).
It wasn't the most satisfying season of TV, especially because the previous season of Arrow had been a sort of return to form, but I appreciated the high drama of it all, as Oliver discovered a long-lost sister who turned out to be evil. It'll be interesting to see how the next season, which really will be the last and will run for only ten episodes, wraps up Oliver Queen's story.
It's interesting, looking back at all these, how much superhero stuff I watch, and how much it's come to dominate the landscape. Back in 2008, you'd have guessed Batman would be the thing to dominate, with the Dark Knight, but Marvel arguably did a better job by focusing on a second-string character like Iron Man - the very fact he's considered one of the big guys of Marvel is pretty much due to that movie.
And it's interesting to think that GoT, the one thing here not based on a comic, became as big a cultural phenomenon, given its origins as a niche fantasy novel. The way for Game of Thrones may have been opened by the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but even that couldn't compete as a cultural touchstone, given how many references to Khaleesi and Jon Snow I encounter in non-nerd settings. It's also opened the way for other adaptations, albeit of works that aren't always as accomplished as GRRM's work.
The 2010s, at any rate, have been dominated by these two colossi, and it'll be interesting to see in the decade to come what takes their place.
No comments:
Post a Comment