If given the chance, how would you rewrite the MCU?
I mean - okay, there’s a lot you have to keep the same just for the sake of like, continuity, clarity, and keeping the bones there.
I’d probably keep all the original movies in Phase 1 as they are with only minor tweaks. I’d fix the mess that was Iron Man 2. I’d give Black Widow and Hawkeye a movie of their own to establish their characters. Hmm, I can see that coming after the first Avengers, possibly.
The first Avengers film though, that’s where I would make the first major changes.
Loki’s characterization is a mess and not properly explained in canon. I’d put him more obviously under Thanos’s thumb. I’d fix Cap’s messed up characterization. I wouldn’t have Thor show up when he does because, hey - bifrost issues. We’d see him and Heimdall from Asgard trying to work on that problem and let them find a cogent way to get Thor to earth. So, he’d show up for the final battle and to take Loki home. He’d be the ace in the hole that helps allow the Avengers to assemble and overtake Loki.
Okay, so fix Iron Man 2. I can barely remember it but I know it needs fixing.
Cap 2 I’d leave intact. I might give Hulk a follow-up movie tbh, or rather, probably tie him in to the Black Widow and Hawkeye movie that would follow the first Avengers.
Also put more female heroes front and centre earlier on. And especially WoC.
Big issues arise by the time we get to Age of Ultron. Fix that hot mess of a movie.
Hawkeye doesn’t have a family and a farm. That was weird. Erase that shit. Don’t set up a romance between Nat and Bruce. Don’t -
Look, I mean no disrespect to Tony stans -
Don’t make every problem in the MCU something that was inadvertently caused by Tony. Because like every Iron Man movie involves a villain who felt scorned by him, and then AoU was caused by him messing with the Mind Stone (Bruce too, okay, but Bruce isn’t the one with the narrative trend here) and all the villains in the Spider-Man movies, and then there’s how shit played out in Civil War and -
Okay so fix AoU. Have the Mind Stone literally take on a life of it’s own and don’t fucking make it the fault of Tony’s hubris, okay. Make it more accidental and incidental than it was. Don’t make it something that happened overnight from tinkering.
And for the love of god, make it so that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver did not sign up to be experimented on, but rather keep their comic origins. They’re Jewish Romani PoC. Give them a narrative that’s authentic to those identities.
I also would not fucking kill off Quicksilver, what the honest fuck?
Actually also don’t just make up a random country and code it a given way and then destroy it. I know it’s an MCU movie and therefore actually needs a giant CGI battle at the end, but okay - Age of Ultron. Stretch that shit out. Make it more clever. Show some more subtle and almost… guerilla tactics from the Avengers, taking down Ultron’s armies? Instead of a single battle in a country we don’t know about and haven’t been told to care about from a narrative standpoint, have Ultron go after their friends and families, have them fight smart and mean but no less visually pleasing to watch. The Avengers don’t have the numbers on Ultron’s army, but they can (and do) recruit Wanda and Maximo and they fight their fight using all their resources - not just their fists.
iron Man 3 was great, but the whole bit with Pepper being kidnapped? Not that into it, personally. Also not into her getting powers and then getting them taken away. There was a lot to love about that movie, but so many Iron Man movies tease at this idea of Tony wanting to retire, or getting out, and they need to just back off that and let him own his heroism. That movie navigates so much so well so let it be.
Thor 2? Don’t fucking kill Thor’s mom. Friga deserves better. Stop motivating male characters by killing women. Let Loki and Thor come together by Friga being injured, by their dad dying, by a desire to bring their mother joy - whatever. Just - don’t kill her. I’m still pissed about how much they take from Thor over time.
I’d keep Cap 2 the same, and the only changes I’d make to GotG would be -
Okay wait actually. There are huge glaring issues with that movie. Gamora is poised to be the hero of these movies and finds herself as the damsel in distress or incapable whenever the narrative needs her to be. I fucking hate it. Let her shine more. Show instead of tell. Let each character develop in their own right rather than dropping some random backstory notes in expository dialogue. Build up to the notion that it’s super weird Quill can hold the Stone and actually like… acknowledge it in the movie. You can keep the story basically the same but fix things with Gamora’s narrative, please please please.
Okay Ant-Man is great. There’s a huge narrative issue within the entire MCU with how they exclude Janet Van-Dyne though, and how she isn’t introduced until now even though she should be a fundamental member of the Avengers. I would almost like, at some point in Phase 1-3, a movie with Janet at the helm, possibly (to keep their timeline intact), her working with Peggy, working with SHIELD, with a young Fury or something, and laying the groundwork for the Avengers. A lot of what Captain Marvel eventually did, but situated fully on earth, and coming much sooner in the MCU itself.
Civil War was a hot mess. They needed to actually explain and detail both sides and the problems with them. It functioned amazing as an introduction to Black Panther and I love it for that, but it wasn’t a Cap movie, not really, and I’m bitter about it. This movie should have focused around the Black Panther, Cap, Bucky narrative, and dropped the whole Civil War with the other Avengers stuff entirely.
Actually - Civil War needs to be either an entirely separate movie on its own or else… drop it. Deal with it differently. That airport fight was an embarrassment. Let the Avengers break down during Cap 3 if you need do, but make it more interpersonal and tense, and less throwing punches and locking each other up. Make it more human, more relatable, because those were the best parts of that whole divide. Make it real for the viewer, for fuck’s sake. Don’t have Tony (seriously what’s with them making him do villainous things and painting them as heroic) blackmail a literal child into a battlezone????
Okay - and Cap issues, they need to either set up Agent 13 aka Sharon Carter as a proper love interest sooner, or else drop that. They drop breadcrumbs of her in a few movies but that’s it. It feels hollow between them by the time they actually kiss. They should either keep their dynamic as “could have been but whoops, nope” or have done more to set them up together in Cap 2.
(Totally honest, total bias here - take out love interests altogether or let Cap be the bi icon that he should be and let him and Falcon hook up in Cap 2. Let the fact that he was in love with Bucky be canon but you don’t need to set them up as a couple. Let it be recognized that they love each other but god there’s too much there, too much mess, they don’t need to be together in the present to acknowledge that history. Either way keep the Bucky and Sam dynamic because it’s amazing).
Doctor Strange - fix the casting. The racism, appropriation - just - wow. Use this as an opportunity to introduce more Asian and East Asian characters and actors into the MCU rather than it being the appropriative mess that it is. Keep the cool visuals though, and the cape. The narrative itself isn’t bad, but spend less time establishing this asshole character and more time establishing the side characters and the dynamics between them because those are far more interesting.
GotG 2 - uhhhh… okay what was this? Peter Quill is Ego’s son, but how does that really advance anything in the MCU or about the character or … ? Just fix the whole goddamn plot, I don’t even know. Tie this shit into Thanos way better. Introduce that better. Make this movie more interesting, make Nebula the Big Bad of it, honestly. Dive into the other members of the Guardians and give them their backstories and plots that they deserve. Is this the Guardians or the Peter Quill show? I don’t know I just - just fix this, okay?
Thor Ragnarok and Black Panther need no fixing. Remember that in this version of the MCU, Thor’s mom is alive, so that’s there. She’s still on Asgard and with Heimdall and being awesome, and we get some awesome interactions between her and Hel because we fucking deserve that, okay? Also Valkyrie’s bi scenes aren’t deleted (fuck you, Marvel execs). I would love love love for Killmonger not to die at the end of Black Panther, personally, but I wouldn’t change much more than that.
Oh wait I forgot - with the whole Bucky in Wakanda thing? Fucking take that out or do something narratively with it. It’s the weirdest brushed-aside thing that serves no genuine narrative purpose. I’d err on the side of taking it out entirely, personally.
Infinity War is fine, leave it as-is more or less, except for -
Okay, so we need textual discussion and canonical pushback against Thanos’s ideals. Because so many people came out of that movie all “oh but he’s got a point - population is expanding blah blah blah” and it was such fucking bullshit. We needed Gamora to point out why Thanos was fucking wrong - why her people were not actually better off after he killed half of them, thank you very much. We needed Tony to point out “population doesn’t work that way, it’ll bounce back in 50 years - do you plan to keep doing this each time? why not double resources?”. We needed people to tell the audience not just that Thanos was bad, but why he was bad, and that there is no ‘random’ and he needed to be a monster and selfish and it needed to be way more clear that his was not a sublime ideal of a detached idol, but rather the ravings of an entitled man whose gone unhinged and hateful.
Okay. So that. And don’t make the final battle just decimate Wakandan soil and its army? Why do they have to fight Earth’s battles for it? Let that be a joint effort and not just a Wakandan one, jfc. I get that you had the set ready and all, but no, don’t treat Wakanda like that, it deserves better. If ever there was a time to blow the budget on a final fight, this would be it, so freaking do it and have that battle be in space and over earth and at many different locations but then zeroing in on where Vision is (which itself can be in Wakanda because it’s safest but yeah).
And honestly I wouldn’t make it so Gamora died, like wtf. I hated that. I hated the whole bit with the Soul Stone. I could swallow it if what they did was have Gamora turn into the Soul Stone - so that she could, as the stone, set up a sabotage to Thanos.
Okay - more on that. Let’s talk about Endgame. Endgame needs so much goddamn fixing. Holy fuck does it need fixing.
Okay - okay where do I even start. I make myself mad whenever I think about it.
Five years? Five fucking years? What the fuck is wrong with you, Russo brothers? Time travel? What - just -
I hated that movie with a passion.
Okay - so the Snap happened. Pick up right after. Give us the fucking shock and horror. Give us the attempt to regroup, just quick, the intense emotions - people punching walls. Show us snippets of the world quickly, news casts etc. This is a horror, let it be one. Own the shit that you did.
Give us a time skip-montage. A month out, the pressure is on to the Avengers to fix this. The Avengers are all traumatized. Clint doesn’t have a family in this version, and doesn’t go all terminator. Thor - he wouldn’t have as much time to spiral but let him get there, let him be unwell, unkempt, let him own his suffering because goddamn he’s lost so much. (oh I forgot, I actually wouldn’t kill Loki and Heimdall because wtf wtf I hate you Infinity War, but let’s move on - )
Five months - people are losing hope. There are therapy sessions. Cap is a mess. Everyone blames themselves. Tony “if I’d only made the call to Cap sooner, we could have worked together” (also he and Nebula make it to earth fast, none of that lost in space and starving stuff), Cap “if only I hadn’t been so arrogant as to not trade lives”, Thor “if only I’d gone for the head”, etc etc. let it be clear that it’s not just Thor’s fault and not just Peter Quill’s fault - that all of those in charge of decision making fucked up.
Ant-Man isn’t freaking saved by a rat, thank you. He comes out of the quantum realm on his own merits, some safeguard, only to realize shit’s messed up. He and Janet work together with the remaining Avengers. maybe Janet saved him from the quantum realm this time? what a nice parallel to him saving her. anyway, they use the quantum realm to find thanos. Or - fuck that, they use Nebula to find Thanos. She knows shit. What they use the quantum realm for is to realize that all the souls that were lost in the snap aren’t ‘dead’ dead, they’re in stasis. They’re in a liminal space - they’re in the Soul Stone. Because Gamora is the stone and she sucked up all those lives and is holding them, holding for dear life but she can’t hold on forever (make sure the stakes are high, they feel real, the clock is ticking). Captain Marvel teams up with them of course. they track down thanos.
“but Phyn” you say, “thanos still has all the stones? how can they defeat him?” great question! difficult to answer! i’m not sure! with the power of love!
okay but really - they have an awesome team. they need to work smarter than the enemy, not harder. they can take out thanos’s generals. they can use nebula to slip past defenses. if loki were alive, which he should be, they can use his magic. if friga were alive, which she should be, they can use hers. if heimdall were alive, which he should be, they can use his eyes. they can use the magic of all the magicians in the doctor strange films. they have captain marvel.
but they will never win on might alone, or magic alone - not against a full complement of infinity stones. not unless -
have you seen Avatar: The Last Airbender? if so - you know how Azula gets a little unhinged toward the end? she’s just a kid, i feel for her, but the point for here is that she does enough shit and gets what she (thinks she) wants and it takes a devastating toll on her. using the stones, clearing half the life in the universe - that took a toll on thanos. it was a terrible choice. he’s in denial, in self-deception about that. he’s coming apart at the seams. he’s not all chill about it, he’s spiralling hard. he lost half his army too, after all. and life doesn’t seem improved. he can hear the cries of the souls locked in the soul stone (not that he realizes what he’s hearing nor acknowledges it) and it’s like the beating heart under the floorboards. his crimes have left scars. he’s not well. physically, from the toll of the Snap, nor mentally, from everything else it took out of him.
let gamora save the fucking day. let her and Vision and their stones - hell, let Loki (maybe he’s fused with the tesseract and maybe thanos did kill him to acheive that, or maybe something else) - let the stones respond to people. to quill. to freaking Jane Goddamn Foster. let the stones’ connections to life undermine and corrupt thanos and his connection to death.
is it cheesy? maybe. is it better than time travel bullshit? definitely. because it uplifts. because it draws from heroes in all the movies, even unlikely ones. people who’ve touched the stones, held them, melded with them. it assumes that the stones aren’t static entities, that they are just as alive as us, in a way we can’t comprehend, and so much more. they resonate with the universe, and thanos has done something that scarred the universe. let this be rectified, not through the actions of a man’s sacrifice, but through the actions, big and small, of a ton of people, of unlikely heroes, of those who suffered personally at his hand, at the hands of the stones - let it be the will of half the goddamn universe to see thanos fall.
let the snap-back happen when thanos loses control over the stones (he’s been holding on tight this whole time, can’t let it slip, the stones have a ‘mind’ of their onw). let it happen again right before the final battle against his armies. let him not have the power to immediately re-snap, hand burnt by the force of the snap-back, and let thor take off his fucking arm this time. let nebula take off his fucking head. let there be a huge final battle with everyone alive and ready to go down swinging once again.
and okay, i’m okay with tony dying. i’d be game for him to die by destroying the stones, tbh - taking them out of existence henceforth so they can never be used like this again, even though it kills him. i think that would honestly be a really fulfilling conclusion to the narrative set up in the first Iron Man film - the reformed arms dealer destroying the ultimate weapons in the universe.
by this way - there’s been 5-8 months or something like that, not 5 years, but why not have Pepper be pregnant, why not have a little child who’ll get to live on after he’s gone, even if that kid won’t remember him? she’ll get to live in a universe that exists and is safe because of him.
i’d be okay with cap dying in this movie too (much better than him going back and stealing peggy’s life from her by changing her history, wtf wtf wtf). i refuse to accept nat dying in clint’s place, that was bullshit and totally not necessary in this version. gamora is also back, not from the past but from the present, and with her sister again. this time nebula got to save gamora, isn’t there some poetic justice in that?
okay okay that’s all that. whew.
I forgot about Captain Marvel. It was decent, I liked it. It wasn’t my favorite in the sense that it was laid out odd when it came to falling in love with this character. Like I wouldn’t change much of the plot but I’d change the… storytelling? The emotions used to connect us to Carol. Give us more of her past from the start, before you introduce her. Give us her childhood. And let Maria be her girlfriend, fucking please.
Okay - now we’re at Far From Home. I didn’t mention Homecoming before but the problem with both of these movies is one I mentioned earlier - that the villains are byproducts of choices made by Tony Stark. That’s a problem. There’s just so many goddamn movies in which that’s the ultimate villain and it fucks with Tony’s characterization so much. How am I supposed to love Tony (which I want to?) when he’s got satellites with drones that can attack anyone he names, tech not that unlike the tech Hydra was aiming to make. Sure, he won’t use it the same, but why the fuck does he have it? Giving it to Peter is all well and good, but - they have interacted maybe a grand total of 5 times?
The relationship between Peter and Tony is cute but if you stop for a second, it’s annoying as hell that it’s built up to what it is. Peter gets recruited by Tony, mostly works with Happy and not Tony in Civil War, and then gets ignored by Tony for months and months on end, then Tony shows up and scolds him and takes his suit, and then invites him to be an Avenger when he doesn’t fuck up, and then they go off to space and Peter dies, and then everyone comes back to life and Tony dies. Why the fuck would Tony entrust Peter with this Edith system that allows him to kill anyone on Earth? Actually, fuck that, entrust is the wrong word - why the fuck would Tony put that weight on the shoulders of a child?
Far From Home is great but Tony’s post-mortem role in it makes almost no sense. Let Peter’s movies be about Peter and not about the shadow and then the ghost of Tony Stark. Please. I love Tony, I do, but if you stop and think for one second, you have to jump mental hoops to absolve the shit Tony does in Peter’s movies, and for many of us, it leaves a really awful taste in our mouths.
anyway - i probably missed stuff. that’s just what’s currently top of mind. #whoops
