Hurts So Good: The Joys of Cinematic Trauma

"You’ll be swell, you’ll be great, gonna have the whole world on a plate!”

Our old record player crackled with Merman, Streisand, and Garland. My mother sang "Everything's Coming Up Roses", even though very little in our lives suggested roses were imminent.

But I believed her.

Or at least, I believed the song.

Movies and music were my first taste of magic and the easiest way to escape when I needed to.

And I needed to a lot back then.

I don’t remember the first time I saw The Wizard of Oz, but I remember the ritual. Once a year, my mother ceremoniously wheeled the television into my room, and we'd pile into bed with a mixing bowl full of popcorn - extra butter, of course.

And when Dorothy stepped into glorious Technicolor? Sigh.

Call me a movie nut, but I'm still a sucker for it. Not The Wizard of Oz, specifically (though yeah, obviously). I mean that moment when you're completely immersed, and something just gets you.

Case in point: I recently sobbed through the second half of Me Before You while my family looked on with concern and secondhand embarrassment.

I wasn't expecting much, but there I was, crying as if the ending had affected me personally.

It was awesome.

My cinematic education was eclectic, to say the least. I knew every word of Dance: Ten, Looks: Three before I even had boobs and truly thought When You're Good to Mama was about chores.

Thanks to VHS, I got completely hooked on Fame, A Chorus Line, and Staying Alive. I couldn't get enough of those big show endings.

But on those occasions that I actually got to go to the movies, it was even better. Nothing beats the feeling of a whole room getting completely caught up in the same thing.

Years later, my daughter and I created a movie tradition of our own.

She was eight when Iron Man launched the MCU, already a superhero nerd like her mother.

At that age, I was wearing out videotapes of Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Star Wars. So Marvel became our thing, one movie, one post-credits scene at a time.

We collected memories like Infinity Stones. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

And then we got to Endgame.

Opening weekend. Sold-out theater.

For three hours, we laughed at the inside jokes and basked in every full-circle moment.

When Nat sacrificed herself for the Soul Stone, we were stunned into silent tears.

When Mjölnir flew into Cap’s hand, the theatre erupted.  

Then, that static crackle of "Cap, on your left".

Chills.

Portals opened from Wakanda, Titan, New Asgard, the Sanctums, Kamar-Taj... One by one, the heroes returned, and the crowd lost its ever-loving mind.

When T’Challa yelled, “Yibambe!” we roared it back like we were all gonna throw down on Thanos.

And then:
“Avengers… assemble.”

Bigger chills.

People were screaming and high-fiving total strangers. It was like the Super Bowl, a Comic-Con reveal, and a biblical rapture all rolled into one.

That final battle earned every second of the eleven years it took to get there.

And then, this:

Oh, we were not ready. At all.

One second, we were riding this glorious high of victory, and the next, Marvel bitch-slapped us with the greatest loss in the MCU.

We'd grown up with this character. A decade of wisecracks, upgrades, close calls, bad decisions, and all the “I shouldn’t love him, but I absolutely do” moments.

Tony Stark wasn't just another character anymore. He was the anchor of the MCU for eleven years.

This thing lasted longer than my first marriage.

And then little Morgan said she wanted a cheeseburger at her father's funeral.

Ugh, my heart.

That's how they get you, and you freaking love it.

Years later, plenty of us would give anything to experience that again for the very first time.

I've been equally affected by Schindler's List, Children of Men, the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan, Artax sinking in The Neverending Story (hello, childhood trauma), and the last scene of The Father.

I've only seen The Father once. Once was enough.

It's exquisite, but it puts you right inside a mind that's deteriorating without even knowing it, and you experience the same confusion he does. By the end, you're just as disoriented and scared and helpless as he is.

I loved it.

I never want to watch it again.

That's the good stuff, getting so swept up in a story you forget you're even watching one.

What Endgame had that those films didn't was eleven years of inside jokes, silly debates, and all the little moments my daughter and I had along the way.

The post-Endgame years were a whole different story, and I've already written about that. For a while, I wondered if Marvel could ever pull off something like that again, or if Endgame had just been one of those supremely rare moments you don't get but once.

But either way, I knew I wasn't done chasing that high.

This summer, I flew across the country by myself for Comic-Con and spent an absolutely stupid amount of time trying to get into Hall H, just to see if I could.

There were lines. Dear God, there were lines, and not much sleep. I remember at one point guarding our position like we were holding the line at Helm's Deep (which felt perfectly reasonable considering what we'd gone through to get to that point).

I even found myself exhausted and wondering why the hell I was undertaking such a crazy, taxing weekend aside for the love of the game and the quest for content.

Then, I got in there.

My seat inside wasn't that good. I sat halfway back right behind a giant concrete pillar, which is so helpful when you're 5'2". Every time everyone in front of me stood up, I couldn't see shit.

Then Robert Downey Jr. appeared, and the room went completely insane.

So I stood on my chair to watch until I got yelled at.

I climbed down...eventually.

And every time that room erupted in screams and cheers, I remembered exactly why I'd subjected myself to such ridiculousness in the first place.

It was payoff to hear Victor von Doom's voice before the rest of the world. We saw Endgame: Encore and Doomsday footage that nobody else had seen.

The X-Men and New Avengers came out. Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool surprised us.

Before I knew it, Red Guardian, Ghost, and Beast were high-fiving me.

(Now that's something I never thought I'd say.)

Hours earlier, I'd whined over the phone to my husband that the whole weekend had been long, tiring, frustrating, and expensive, and I was too old for these shenanigans.

Afterward, I called him and told him I'd probably be coming back next year.

Had the same reaction the first time I gave birth.

I'm actually still on the fence, to be honest; probably why I only ever birthed one child. But I digress.

I was low-key pissed about my choice of seat until I learned about the hundreds of fans that somehow never made it inside. Then I felt grateful.

The shitty seat didn't matter anymore. We'd all put up with the same lines, lack of sleep, expense, and all the other ridiculousness for basically the same reason:

We wanted to lose our collective shit together.

So now, here we are, with Doomsday on the horizon, and I'm rewatching Age of Ultron with the startling realization that it's aged like fine wine. Details hit very differently now.

I'm discussing fan theories with my daughter and wondering if any of my favorite characters are gonna get killed off this time. (I swear to God it better not be Loki again).

I don't expect another Endgame. But I don't simply want something good, either.

I want to be cinematically bitch-slapped again.

Heather Papovich is the voice behind Unfinished Business. She's seen some things. She'll tell you about them.