Fucking hate that I can't even talk about a guy that I think is cool without somebody thinking I have a crush on that guy :|

So... spoilery review of MoM after the cut (and you know me, it's going to get long).

I have like a thousand thoughts about this movie. My main concern was Stephen's characterization and that was fine, I liked it and they didn't ruin it which leaves me satisfied. But everything else? It felt like a punch in the gut.

So I have a lot of negative thoughts but let's start with the good ones first.

The Positives

Stephen's characterizarion is fine. He's snarky, he's kind, he's brave, he's so prepared to always help and be of assistance, he's such a diva with the way he left the wedding and changed into his robes mid-air, he's sweet and amazingly selfless (and I'm tired of no one ever acknowleding that in the movies, well, except America maybe). I love him dearly - and OMG that reverence to Wong? I had a huge smile on my face when he did that, that's my boy! (Come on, tell me again how arrogant he is).

I LOVED America. Every single scene she was in, oh she's absolutely wonderful. I really hope we'll see her again because she's fantastic. Her portals opening in the form of a star was pretty cute, too.

I'm happy they kept Wong as the Sorcerer Supreme, by the way. All hail Wong!

They mentioned Donna. They did. Oh boy, they did, I'm so happy. I was expecting a flashback or something but I would have probably shed tears so it's better that way.

Regarding the Illuminati, what a waste. Easily forgotten but this is the positive part of the post so I'll just say that I loved how Charles ignored everyone and showed some faith in Stephen (about damn time someone does!) and he said the line, he said the line™! (Not to be too nitpicky here but uh, Stephen didn't stumble and he didn't lose his way either so the line doesn't really make any sense since it doesn't apply to him but I'll let that slide because I LOVE that line).

And I'm going to put this in the positive side of things because I'm petty as all hell: I saw Peggy die after she said a bunch of words that DO NOT BELONG TO HER. And it was wonderful. I (silently) clapped in fact. Yes, I hate her. And yes, I was alone and no one saw me doing it lol

I suspect Charlize is Clea, right? I'm looking forward to that. Charlize Theron and Benedict Cumberbatch? YES PLEASE.

The Negatives

I had been tagging my posts for months with "Keep Waldron away from Stephen" for a damn reason. And I was right. At least there's a silver lining to it all: he didn't ruin Loki because he hated him, he ruined Loki because Waldron is a terrible writer.

First off, I will never forgive them for healing his hands.

(So as it turns out I was wrong about his hands and they didn't fix them which makes me very happy. What I wrote in this 1st part is removed now)

Second, I knew Waldron wouldn't understand his relationship with Christine. It's one of the BEST things about DS1, that they love each other so much but know they can't be together, it works in the origin movie because they arrive at a mutual understanding together - and they still keep that love for each other no matter what happens. But of course how the hell is Michael "kiss your fucking sister" Waldron going to understand platonic love? And friendship? Of course he doesn't! They spent the whole freaking movie linking Stephen's happiness to Christine which is so damn frustrating as if he couldn't find happiness in so many other ways, with any kind of relationship, through achievements, etc.

Especially when in the end they're not going to end up together anyway! What's the point, then? If you want to explore why Stephen isn't happy then do it, go back and truly dive deep into his life because the answer is right there. They mentioned Donna, and that's fine, but what about also talking about how that hurt him, changed him, shaped him, why he doesn't have any friends not even in Kamar-Taj, to the point of going to the wedding alone, not telling Wong about it either... you want to talk about his lack of happiness? That's awesome! But why is it that the only way Waldron refers to it is through (lack of) romance?

Third, the whole damn movie I kept thinking that Wanda was going through another WandaVision and Stephen was being given the Loki treatment. Wanda has no fucking arc whatsoever, she keeps saying "my boys" every 2 minutes when at the end of her series she understood what she had done was wrong and she has never wanted to hurt people willingly! Look, I really would love a chat with Waldron to explain to him the difference between morally grey vs villain because he doesn't get it. And at the end she's killed? Oh no, worse, she kills herself?

What's the point of her wanting to travel to the multiverse to her boys when she could just create another Hex with just her and her kids? And her descend to villainy is so sudden, as well. She left Westview accepting that she had been wrong, taking responsibility for it, apologizing for it, and she left to be alone with the Darkhold. And yes I know it corrupts people (I remember AoS and Aida) but still, Wanda was NEVER a villain. And if the point they wanted to make was that the book had corrupted her they could have done it so much better.

Also, I was under the impression Wanda was a Nexus being? I'm probably wrong but I was surprised there were variants of her in the multiverse.

And speaking of variants... Stephen's variants they're all evil, on the top of being arrogant of course, we shall never forget calling him that in every movie otherwise people might forget. And that chat with the Illuminati where they were basically telling him he's a piece of shit because the Stephen of their universe did something wrong... uh so are we blaming 616 Stephen for shit the 838 Stephen had done? It's the Loki series all over again!

Fourth, Peggy freaking Carter again. Look, it's a damn insult to Steve's character that they gave her his "I can do this all day". Shame on Feige, on Marvel, on Waldron, and anyone who had a say on that. How dare you give that line to a woman who willingly hired a nazi who had tortured and ruined Bucky's life to work for Shield and the American government. How dare you take that line from a man who spent his life fighting fascism and defending civil rights and protecting the weak and give it to someone who worked with nazis. Oh and they called her the first Avenger!

Fifth and last. Queer rep, huh? Absolutely non-existent. Well, America says she had two moms, that's what Disney and Marvel call representation. It's unacceptable that America Chavez, a character who has been a huge icon for the queers, has her sexuality completely erased in this movie. Not a damn word.

No wait, there's another, sixth. Stephen can read sanskrit but I'm supposed to believe he doesn't speak nor understand Spanish? Don't make me laugh.

There's probably more I haven't mentioned but this got long enough. Overall I'll give the movie a 5/10 only for not ruining Stephen's characterization + because I love America + both Christines were absolutely wonderful + Wong is still the Sorcerer Supreme. No more than 5 because Stephen is not the centre of the story and he's sidelined for the most part, and they turned Wanda into something she's not.

And one last thing that's not related to MoM but I feel like sharing: they showed the L&T teaser and the new Avatar trailer. The latter got a higher cheer than the former. Make of that what you wish...

i am respectfully asking for elaboration bcs it makes so much sense when i read it but i need to see your thought process 😍👀💜💜💜💜💜

OK SO BISEXUAL MOVIES LET'S GO

(spoilers under the cut ofc)

the old guard is pretty self-explanatory i think? the canon queer relationship aside, there is definitely an element of... romance? devotion? literal undying love? in the way andy speaks of quynh. the way they look at each other in that scene just before they're taken away!

like.... what is that!!! i'll tell you what it's not - it's not straight lmao. the tenderness! the love!! and idk in general there's just something about charlize theron that is automatically bisexual. maybe it's the haircut. maybe it's the clothing. maybe it's the way she built herself a family that all love each other unconditionally. maybe it's because she's charlize theron and i'm a weak woman. idk. you get it tho!

(also, nile. nile gives off chaotic bi vibes because i said so. you're telling me a straight person would yeet fictional martin shkreli off a building just to kill him? no i do not think they would.)

and then there's inception. i mean we were all there in 2010 when you couldn't open tumblr without seeing about a billion posts about arthur and eames being criminal dreamsharing husbands etc. etc. guess what I'M STILL THERE. the way arthur kept track of where eames was ("eames? no, he's in mombasa.") the way eames's reaction to hearing arthur's name was "MMMMMMM aaaarthur" and that Look. like there was always this implication that they know each other really well and there's something Between them that had them not on the best of terms initially. gut feeling says it's cobb, somehow. arthur is very loyal to cobb, while eames has no qualms calling him out on his bullshit. makes sense to me that eames would have Problems with arthur, an accomplished dream thief on his own, following cobb around like a puppy on whatever harebrained scheme cobb's cooked up this time to try to get back to his family.

also. the matching totems. eames constantly teasing arthur during the planning stage. then "you mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." the way arthur panics only when he's afraid eames might've been shot in the car chase on the first level, and doesn't panic so much about saito, the billionaire who's funding the entire thing. the way he helps eames with his IV on the second level, when he knows full well eames can do it himself. "security will run you down hard." "and i will lead them on a merry chase." "just be back before the kick." "go to sleep, mr. eames." THE INTRICATE RITUALS OF TELLING SOMEONE YOU CARE ABOUT THEM WITHOUT SAYING THE WORDS THEMSELVES. like not to make the entire thing about a ship but again, it's about the way they're so aware of each other. also, tom hardy's presence also makes everything bisexual. in fact considering the previous movie and this one i'm surprised i forgot to mention mad max so maybe that'll get an honorary mention later on.

also, whatever cobb and saito had going on. cobb pining after his dead wife but also going all fucking out for saito. yes yes i know he wanted to go back to his family, but what even is "take a leap of faith. come back, so we can be young men together again" like you only knew each other for what, two weeks before this?? "i've been waiting for someone from a half-remembered dream" for decades??? you had no reason to believe he wouldn't abandon you in limbo or lose himself? you waited all this while and like. limbo is supposed to turn your brain to, as eames so eloquently put it, scrambled egg, right? and yet. and yet here's saito, and he remembers cobb, all these years in limbo and he waited. an old man filled with regret waiting to die alone? what regret could saito possibly have had? ...other than cobb. and maybe saito thinks that to cobb it's just about the agreement, but the way cobb looks at him when he sees him again, "to be young men together again" not even "young men again." he said "young men together again." it's not straight, i am telling you. i am not a cobb enjoyer but i am SO fascinated by him and saito honestly. pretty sure fandom would've been all over this ship if it wasn't for cobb's entire personality.

then again tenet. mr. christopher nolan why are your movies Like this. the protagonist going along with everything neil says. the cryptic smile neil has when he talks to the protagonist. the way he looks at him when the protagonist isn't looking. so many unspoken things. neil knowing he's dead from the beginning of the story. neil knowing the protagonist will live. neil knowing the protagonist better than he knows himself. "well i prefer club soda" a smile. "no you don't." the protagonist wondering if there's any way to change things, to make it so that neil lives. neil knowing there isn't. a love story lived forwards and backwards at the same time. you're going to die in your best friend's arms and you play along because it's funny, because it's written down, because you've memorized it, it's all you know. i don't know man there is just something inherently bisexual about all these hyper masculine action movie heroes and the way they'd die for each other. the way they look at each other, the way they always choose each other. and robert pattinson plays it SO well. you know you're going to die and you are with someone who doesn't know you yet and you love him and one day you know he'll love you too but you will not be around to see it. time is a circle and love is a circle and you are always going to be on the opposite ends of the diameter of it. you will die to save his life and in the meantime you will yearn because you can't tell him. i am going to SCREAM.

which brings us to mission impossible 4 aka ghost protocol aka the one where tom cruise runs down the side of the world's tallest building aka the best MI movie ever there i said it. first of all can i just say that it's extremely funny to me how jeremy renner did not want to be in this movie and tom cruise literally kept calling him until he said yes. then there's also the story about jeremy renner doing the stretchy thing he does on set, tom cruise seeing it, and going like "oh we are SO putting that in the movie" and i thank him for it. thank you mr. cruise.

i mean this gif btw:

yes, tom cruise insisted on this being included in the movie.

N E WAY. right off the bat we get the impression there's something we don't know about brandt. helpless little analyst who watches his boss get shot in the head right before the car they're in is punted into a river, and he lets himself be rescued by ethan hunt. he's supposed to be out of his depth trying to save the world in the field as opposed to from behind a desk, and yet there's a competence to him that's frightening. something is not adding up. that fight scene in the burj khalifa was actually SO fucking sexy — brandt's competence showing up when needed. ethan seeing him take down people as easy as pie and going all "i am SO suspicious and also SO turned on right now." the gun scene when they're hiding from the sandstorm, the way brandt disarms ethan within seconds. AND THEN. the Secret. the Shared History. brandt revealing that julia hunt's death was on him. that's the singular incident that took him out of the field. the guilt of it is so overwhelming he can barely look ethan in the eye. ethan choosing to trust him anyway and brandt accepting that trust, doing everything he can to help. the fact that he's paralleled with ethan himself when he jumps down that shaft in mumbai (and when ethan broke into the CIA in the first movie). the relieved little laugh he does when he finds out ethan knew who he was all along, and that julia is alive. the way ethan tells only him that she's alive, and not benji who KNEW her, who mourned her. not even luther, who also knew and mourned her.

hell, even the sequel to this movie is bi as fuck. like you have these gorgeous women in these movies, i am telling you my crush on jane carter is fucking GINORMOUS, there's ilsa faust, and yet it's brandt that ethan continues to be compelled by. brandt that he has all these interesting narrative entanglements with. the way the fifth movie was set up to show us brandt's internal conflict — his job vs ethan, and then we find out it wasn't ever a conflict at all. he protected ethan and kept him safe even when everyone else thought he was a sellout and a traitor. he literally fed the CIA false information to keep ethan safe while also keeping himself there as a useful mole on the inside. he left it all behind when luther told him ethan needed them. and luther didn't even trust him, and brandt KNEW it. he KNEW no one in there thought much of him, and yet he went, and he risked everything, and he did what he could to help. the way the movie set up brandt and ethan to make us think brandt would betray him, the way we didn't know brandt's true loyalties at any given time even though brandt himself always knew, and ethan always knew. the reveal that brandt never betrayed ethan, that they'd been in on the whole thing together the entire time. idk it's just COMPELLING.

and like even aside from the plot. ethan hunt is this legend within the IMF, right. even his friends kind of look at him with this weird hero worship. look at how benji acts around him. luther doesn't, but luther has been with him so long and he's got this impression of like, ethan as some infallible being. he never really questions him because he has no reason to. in his experience, ethan has rarely been wrong. ethan is not used to being questioned by these people at all. there's that inequality in their dynamics always because they see him as this mildly insane man who'll live forever out of sheer spite and who's indestructible to them, so they always go along with whatever he says. and then along comes william brandt, and he can barely look ethan in the eye but he sure as shit can disagree with him, he can call him out when he's wrong, he can find a better way of doing things. he's the only one that speaks to ethan on an equal level because he doesn't consider ethan a god of some sort – he sees him as he is. he sees the person ethan is instead of the agent and idk it's just. he's an analyst, right. it's his entire JOB to know people. he can read them in seconds, he's intelligent as fuck, and he's the one person that challenges ethan. that tells him give me a reason to believe you, to follow you. prove to me you know what you're doing. i'll follow you to the ends of the earth - but i need you to prove to me why you deserve it. and that is fucking amazing, ok. i'll forever be mad we didn't get brandt in mi:6 and probably not in mi:7 too because his dynamic with ethan was far more interesting to me than ethan's dynamics with benji, luther, OR ilsa.

honorary mention: mad max

a dudebro film to some, a bisexual movie to others. either way, charlize theron and tom hardy is a powerful combination. a movie where the woman is the protagonist and the man is the supporting character? where he's a character in HER story? he's supporting HER mission. fucking amazing. they're fighting the Man and they're freeing the women he abused and they're allied with elderly lesbians on bikes. there are cars. there are car chases. there is the war machine. there is charlize theron's buzzcut. so much to love. so little heterosexuality. SO fucking here for it.

(1/2) Honestly, Hilary, you are a blessing. I want to scream about your amazing Fic, how I love Immortal Husbands and the whole Immortal Family and how I had more fun learning history from your writing than in my whole damn school. But I also want to appreciate your TOG answers and meta. All the more because my friends outside the internet saw TOG as some boring movie with shitty plot and I'm just here in the corner, wanting to scream at someone who will understand about FINALLY seeing...

"(2/2) ...some GOOD queer representation, without throwing stereotypes in our faces, and I can't even begin with the found family trope because THE FEELS. Anyway, what I was trying to say with this rambling: thank you. <3"

....I’m sorry what. Who. Who is saying this. Straight people? I feel like the answer is definitely straight people. Because they have had EIGHTY FUCKING THOUSAND shitty action movies with the Boring White Man Hero, the disposable Muslim-coded (or actually Muslim) villains, the equally disposable eye-candy female love interest who either gets fridged or is secretly evil, Grimdark Everyone Is Secretly Bad And Nothing Matters crap philosophy, Moral Hand Wringing Over Superhero Violence, on and on. So of course they can moan and whine about “iT’s nOt OrIGinAL” and apparently not sufficiently Grimdark and Amoral, and how the dynamics of the team are completely reshuffled in a way that actually doesn’t prioritize THEM, and like.... this is why I never trust media only beloved by straight people, and only ever watch anything after it’s been recommended to me by a trusted queer friend. Because sometimes I remember the difference, and WHOOF.

Because: the gays and people of color DESERVE formulaic action/superhero movies as much as the Generic White Bro (in fact, we can all agree, far more than the Generic White Bro). This is the trap where every piece of media that’s not made by a Mediocre White Man has to be the best all-time of its genre, apparently, rather than using some of the same well-loved storytelling tropes but recoding them and re-deploying them for a more diverse audience. Instead of the Hard Bitten White Man Action Hero, we have Andy and Nile (two women, and Nile as a young Black woman who literally cannot be shot to death, in the year 2020, is fucking revolutionary on its own don’t @ me). As I said in my first meta, even Booker, who comes closest to fulfilling that trope, is made the closest thing to a “villain” there is on the team and even then for entirely sympathetic motives that rest on him having teary-eyed conversations with Nile about how he misses his family and feels like he failed them. His emotions help drive the story in an actually GOOD and useful way, rather than sacrificing everyone else to coddle him through his feeble heterosexual manchildness (why yes, I AM staring directly at the Abomination without blinking). Nobody in the story is EVER penalized or made a fool of for loving their found family (itself an intensely queer trope, even before the queerness of the individual characters) or trying to do the right thing even in the middle of the horrors, and frankly, I just want to consume more media with that as the main message. I’M SO FREAKING TIRED OF GRIMDARK. GOD. IF I WANTED THAT I COULD JUST TURN ON THE NEWS.

And of course, my BELOVED Joe and Nicky: an interracial, interreligious gay couple that has been wildly in love for literal CENTURIES and gives me the opportunity to do things like write the most self-indulgent historical romance backstory fic ever with DVLA. They met in the embodiment of religious conflict and have transcended that, there are never any cruel jokes or expectation for you to congratulate the narrative for being so beneficent as to give you “an exclusively gay moment” (fuck you Disney!). Joe and Nicky’s love story is central both to who they are as characters, doesn’t revolve around them being suffering or being Tormented over being gay (when the cops pull them apart for kissing, they beat the cops the fuck up, WE STAN), gets to unfold naturally in the background of the story with these beautiful little beats of casual intimacy (the SPOONING /clutches heart) and since THEY LITERALLY CANNOT DIE, no chance of the “burying your gays” bullshit. Even when they’re captured first by the bad guys, and I briefly, upon first viewing, worried that they were going the Gay Pain route just for cheap emotional points, they remain constantly united and fighting together and able to do stupid things like flirt when they’re strapped to gurneys by a mad scientist. Then the rest of the team ends up right there with them, so it’s not something that happens to them alone, and Nile comes in to save everyone’s asses, and Joe and Nicky get ANOTHER beautiful moment of fighting the bad guys and being worried about each other and tender even in the middle of this chaos and GOD! MY HEART! MY WHOLE ASS HEART! I LOVE THEM!

And just the fact that it’s not the Evul Mooslim Turrorists or Boilerplate Scary Eastern Europeans or whoever else who are the bad guys, but Big Pharma, nasty white men with too much money and not enough ethics, the CIA (at least tangentially; they could have pushed a lot harder on that but I’ll give Copley individually a pass), and the very forces that want to stop the Old Guard and discount what they do (helping the little people) as worthless... GOD. That is fucking POWERFUL. They literally take the time to explain with Copley’s Conspiracy Wall that even the little things the team does, when they can’t see it themselves, spiral out through centuries and have positive effects down the line. And it’s NOT just in the Western world (no scene in the movie takes place in America, none of the main four characters/heroes are American, and they only go to England when the English villains capture them). They’re in Africa, in Asia, in South America, in all these places where the Western/imperial world order has harmed people the most and in a way that Euro/American audience often gets to forget. On the surface this might be an action movie with Charlize Theron beating up men (which I mean, that alone is fine if you ask me) but there are SO MANY WAYS in which it achieves these deeper moments of meaning and subversion of the narrative that we are so often fed and the ways it could have done this (i.e. the same old Mediocre White Man ways).

I love the fact that the team unabashedly LOVES each other as their family members (I will never get over them all liking to sleep in one room even in their safe house in France), even when they struggle, and that they continue trying to make it right and never consider leaving Booker behind, because he screwed up but they still love him (and he them). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that this movie gave me not just Joe and Nicky but Andy and Quynh: two completely badass queer couples who kick tons of ass and have romance and Drama and rich and well-realized lives outside being used as emotional manipulation or suffering porn for straight people. (I realise it’s only been two weeks since the first one released, but where is my sequel, I have Needs. Especially Andy/Quynh and Quynh/Joe/Nicky needs). I was disappointed that they’d gotten rid of Quynh in a Bad Medieval Way to cause pain for Andy and then shocked and DELIGHTED when she turned up alive in Booker’s apartment at the end of the film. I LOVE that this movie gave me Nile Freeman and everything that she represents in the middle of this hellish year. I even love Booker! BOOKER! When he’s usually the character type I can’t stand and have the least patience with!

So yes. I have watched it three times already. I am sure I am going to watch it several times more. It just makes me so happy.

"#she looks like Charlize Theron" You say it like that's a bad thing 😂 I LOVE that Charlene just DGAF what anyone thinks a princess should wear/do with her hair and is just doing what she wants. I figured she'd get bored with the fringed bob, she had it for a couple of months and the woman has NO PATIENCE when it comes to hair. And the mask and coat look like she raided Maxima's closet 😂 She's having fun, we all need a bit of that now, no? Glad they managed to have this event despite COVID.

Not at all, Charlize is a beautiful, gorgeous woman but above all talented. I'm sorry if that sounded like a bad thing or sarcasm. And yes, I love that charlene gives zero fucks and just do what she wants, wears what she wants to wear. It is refreshing and fun but at the same time it is surprising because we have this misconception that royals, especially women should only wear certain things. So go charlene! 😂