Blossom/'Endgame'

Today was a good day. A long run in the morning followed by lunch at The Lunesdale, where Milly is working during the holidays: today was her last shift as she goes back to Lincoln, tomorrow. A pleasant afternoon at home, recording the radio show, and then...

Dan would have been about six when what we came to know as the MCU was launched in 2008, and he was hooked immediately. Suddenly our conversations had a new staple alongside his obsession with Ben 10, and I had an outlet for the accumulated knowledge of nearly forty years of comic reading. There was no question I could not answer and he was a willing audience for all of my Marvel memories.

Over the last 10 years, he’s been my companion for twenty of the twenty-one films that make up the MCU (we haven’t seen ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2’). He’s gone from the little fella who’d hold my hand as we made our way into the cinema to being my lofty, wise-cracking companion, but what has never changed is his appetite for popcorn or my delight in his company.


Tonight’s film, ‘Endgame’, is the climax of the MCU and, my God, it did not disappoint. I won't rehearse the plot here but it ticked every box we could have wanted and then some. We were both in tears as the lights came up as the final scene finished the whole story arc perfectly.

It's an extraordinary accomplishment and just how good a job they've done is illuminated by DC's generally catastrophic showing in the cinema. And I'm bewildered by the difference in their respective fortunes in the way that I once was by the difference between Apple and Microsoft's advertising: Apple gave us the Mitchell and Webb sketches, Microsoft offered to build a shop in your living room. Or something. 

And I always thought "You aren't advertising companies, it's a service you buy in, so how are you, Microsoft, failing so badly at this?" Equally, why don't DC choose decent scripts? I mean, their characters aren't inherently worse than Marvel's. (That said, with the exception of Batman, I always did find them more two dimensional.)

Anyway, all that said, it was a perfect evening and odd to walk back to the car realising that this was a unique moment, ten years in the making. And the lovely thing is that I think both Dan and I appreciated it for how special it was. 

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-10.9 kgs
Reading: 'How Art Made Pop And Pop Became Art' by Mike Roberts