Episode
3: “What if one superhero fought THEMSELVES?”
At
last, Marvel’s love of having their superheroes fight one another reaches its
logical endpoint in this week’s episode, where we give up entirely on trying to
come up with a viable antagonist and just have Benedict Cumberbatch beat
himself up.
Of
course, we can’t just have him start wailing on himself without preamble like
some kind of uncultured barbarians, so the first third of the episode is a
shot-for-shot reenactment of 2002’s “The Time Machine”, right down to our
desperate protag’s motivations for failing to change the timeline and oddly
hilarious and unlikely ways his beloved keeps eating shit.
Luckily, Tilda Swinton shows up to give us some bullshit excuse for why there are now two Stephen Stranges, and on to the magical punching we go.
This
one partially makes up for what it lacks (utterly, utterly lacks) in narrative
creativity with visual flair, with Evil Stevil growing more monstrous as he
absorbs the power of various magical creepy-crawlies and with the Stephen twins
beating one another up in a variety of novel ways while the entire world goes
antigravity black tar thanks to Stevil screwing with the timeline.
It
also has the courage to follow through on its apocalyptic promise and end
things on a downer note as the entire universe collapses around the surviving
Stephen.
Q:
What if we completely changed the central motivation driving your life, from
recovering the use of your hands to saving the life of a loved one?
A:
Nothing. You’d still end up in exactly the same place with exactly the same
people, only looking a little sadder. I mean no, that’s not entirely fair, the
episode is about how Strange would become obsessed with undoing the
past, but I think it is a little odd that his entire life up to and including
becoming a wizard would be exactly the same.
Q:
What are the implications of Absolute Points in the timeline for the future of
the MCU?
A: None.
If you haven’t guessed I despise the kind of Thermian discourse that grows up
around shows like these, in which people pretend these stories about people in
colorful costumes punching one another are somehow grounded in any kind of
consistent, objective reality. The possibility to write stories set in
alternative universes has always existed until Marvel suddenly pretended it
didn’t so they could triumphantly announce it did again. Time travel in Marvel
movies will obey whatever laws the writers feel makes a better story.
Q:
Did you catch all the Easter Eggs?
A: I
think I see why “The Ending Explained” and “Easter Eggs Explained” and other
videos in this vein are so popular: It’s the only kind of coherent analysis
possible when the material itself is essentially theme-free. There’s not much
going on other than the mechanics of the plot, the gears and pistons pushing
one character this way, another that way, so that we can have the requisite
people punching one another in the requisite combinations. Look! The Thanos
Copter! Ha ha, wasn’t that great.
Q:
If you could go back in time—
A: People
like to say “no ragrets” but not me, by golly not me, no sir. Changes. Oh boy,
I’d make changes. So, so many changes. Utterly selfish and personal changes.
Gotten better haircuts, to start with. Dear Lord. And not dating any of my
ex-girlfriends. Just a series of horrific multi-vehicle highway pileup level
disasters weren’t they. Sorry ladies. Chosen to study something a bit more
lucrative than journalism in university.
What?
Baby Hitler? Eh. I got my priorities, you got yours.
So yeah, I do kind of get Stephen’s motivations in this episode.
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