On Endings, again, and on Captain America: The Winter Soldier

     We have a short post this week because I've been participating in the dress rehearsals for my church's Passion Play this weekend and so most of my time was spent doing that. I do want to mention a couple things, though

     First, a clarification on my previous post, in it I pretty strongly suggested that knowing your ending as soon as possible was key for a story to have a satisfying ending. I have heard it argued that the problem for the finale for How I Met Your Mother (Which I will remind you all is a show that I don't watch but the uproar surrounding it is partially what inspired my post last week) was that the writers planned their ending too far in advance and therefore ignored the developments that occurred later on in the show's run in order to have the ending as originally intended, regardless of what it would do for the character arcs. I would argue, admittedly based more on principle and what little I know of the show as opposed to experience with the series, that their problem was not over preparing their ending, but instead not preparing the audience for said ending properly.
     Regardless, I do want to mention that I admit that my advice was more given to those planning to write fiction of a one and done sort of deal. Ongoing fiction, such as comics or television series, can rarely be properly planned out. You may design a five season plan for your show, only for it to be cancelled halfway into season 3. On the flip side, you might figure that your show would last no more than three or four seasons, and write your stories accordingly, only for the show to take off and run for eight seasons. Predictability, in that case, is out the window, so in a situation like that, endings are a bit tougher to figure. You're on the bubble, do you gamble and go for a jaw dropping cliff-hanger that creates a stunned silence wherever it's seen? or do you wrap up a few  longstanding questions, so that if this is the end, at least there will be some closure to be found? I can't answer that directly, though I usually prefer somewhere in the middle.

Finally, I'll briefly mention that I also took the time to see Captain America: Winter Soldier this weekend. Excellent film for the most part, and thought the titular Winter Soldier was only in a handful of scenes, he did not fall into the trap I've seen far too many other Marvel villains fall into of being disposable, a la Whiplash in Iron Man 2, or Malekith in Thor: The Dark World. The film certainly made a perfect balance of pushing the Marvel universe forward in interesting ways while simultaneously telling a compelling stand-alone story, something I really think more comic book movies should aim for. I still really want to know what Hawkeye's been up to all this time, maybe Marvel will make my idea about him and the Hulk traveling across America and righting various wrongs like the best action shows of the 80's into a movie after all.