Saw Avengers: Endgame last night.

Oh Yay, Superman you caught Lex Luthor.

We will send you a bill for destroying a city and killing 3 million people to catch that one bad guy!

 

I enjoyed it but it’s not a normal film. It’s a series finale and there’s a lot of minor silliness as an excuse to do a bunch of things that nod back to 11 years of Marvel movies. #3 on the best all time films on IMDB? Watched Gladiator again today (#43) and really no comparison... But not sure you need to. It’s a celebration of The Avengers/Marvel and manages to wrap that up in a fairly simple and interesting plot.

I’d hate to think that’s the pinnacle of storytelling, but the Russos have pulled of a minor miracle with these two films. They never seem overwhelmed by the sheer number of characters.

And the “girl power” bit mentioned earlier... Again, just a bit of silliness to celebrate and showcase what they’ve done over 22 films.

 

Took the wife and kids to see it last night as well.
Spent the money for 3D, popcorn and Dr pepper.
Well worth it.
We only see a few movies per year.
We are marvel movie people so it was an event for us.

 

Again spoilers...........

























Spoilers.....

















I have no problem with the idea or concept of that moment, but it could’ve been pulled off so much better. Just off the top of my head, have one of the non-superpowered women get the gauntlet, look at all the enemies in awe, then have all the other girls rally around her and have the camera pan up to Thanos’ ship, show Captain Marvel blasting through it, land her next to the rest of the girls, everyone looks towards the battlefield with steely determination and the scene proceeds ahead from there. Now the same moment can still totally happen and can still reference all the female characters across the series but in a way that actually makes a lot more sense!

Sadly the movie had many moments like that for me. I don’t wanna seem like a Monday morning quarterback but if I can quickly think of something more narratively satisfying than what was presented to us, the screenwriters really should’ve been able to do the same.

 

I saw it on Saturday and really enjoyed it. Stop with the spoilers! You’re ruining it for people!!!

The only spoiler I ever engaged in was regagarding The Titantic Movie. I told people that the boat sank at the end.

Damnit!

 

I haven't seen it yet, but don't mind the spoilers.

 

Without spoiling anything...I was rooting for the guy that lost.

 

I'll start caring about the MCU when they stop pooping all over the Hulk...

I'm sick and tired of the way the character has been mistreated.

If this is the vision they had for him just leave him out of the films entirely.

 

That would be funny if they dressed like super heroes less and less until they just became normal movies.

 

I am not a big fan of these kind of films to begin with, but I have seen most of them by now. I just can't feel any emotional ties to any of the characters, how do you connect with Gods and mutants on a personal level? Really, the only time a character ever seemed really interesting to me was Thanos and the solitude of the Hulk, but neither one is on the screen enough for me to care much about seeing this movie until it gets released to dvd later. I will likely see it at some point, but like Infinity War, there are just too many sub-plots going on for me to ever feel any emotion for the characters.

They have also over-played the abilities of Captain America and Black Widow while severely down-playing the ability of the Hulk. As a comic book reader 45 years ago, the Hulk leaps entire continents, triggers Earthquakes when he lands, and once held an exploding planet together...yet in the Avengers movie he is relegated to running alongside the other characters and smashing through a bunker or something. He should be the destroyer of worlds. Just shameful really.

 

A colossal waste of potential. Endgame is an unholy mess. Infinity Wars set up what should have been a helluva finish to what on the whole has been a good, sometimes great, series. What we got was the MCU imploding under it's own colossal weight. The more I think about it, the more I dislike it.

 

I saw it. And I was pumped going into it, because Infinity Wars was so good, and who doesn't love a good dose of Superhero whoop ass. But when in the first five minutes they manage to both kill Thanos and make the audience feel sympathy and empathy for him, the next three hours become somewhat redundant. Infinity Wars was the biggest cinematic d**k tease in history, we just didn't know it at the time.

 

Infinity War was a truly impressive film (in its genre), full stop. Stood on its own well. The fact this seems to approach things differently did disappoint me as it didn’t feel like the part 2 I wanted...

It’s more like a firework display than a film in some ways. And for me, that’s OK because they pulled it off.

I still feel a little sorry I didn’t get something that was as grounded and focused as Infinity War though. The character’s emotions drove the plot in that film. The plot in Endgame was more a vehicle for an anthology of smaller character moments, most tying up loose ends from other films. I enjoyed seeing that though. I guess you couldn’t do both so they picked the “grand tour” approach.

 

I didn't want fireworks though. After 20 odd films there's an emotional attachment to a lot of the characters, but they get some terrible send offs. The emotional impact at the end of IW was huge, the implications exciting - and they were mostly the lesser figures, and you kinda knew they were coming back. Still, it left you reeling. Endgame managed to make me not give a shirt about any of them. I mean, Iron Man died and I kinda thought, really? Frickin' Iron Man, and I could not have cared less.

It became a self congratulating spectacle, but lacked any kind of intelligence, and I've felt that way about the last few MCU films, apart from Infinity Wars. Capt Marvel was a pointless introduction. She added nothing. It seemed like $200m had been spent making Capt Marvel simply because they had an awesome idea for a Girl Power moment in the final Endgame battle. It seemed like another $200m had been spent making Ant-Man and The Wasp simply to initiate some hokey time travel nonsense. I can't find any other reason for those two movies to exist, other than they wrote themselves into a corner, and thought they'd make a couple of billion dollars profit getting themselves out.

 

I can’t disagree with any of that! One of my complaints was some characters got drafted in out of nowhere only to have big moments they didn’t earn from a plot perspective. It made that last big sequence much less satisfying than the very character-driven confrontation in Infinity war.

The other problem with the showcase/nostalgia approach is some arcs like Thor and Hulk felt unsatisfying because they didn’t get really strong defining moments. But I’m OK with the fact they needed to show the old team as ready for retirement.

#3 top film on IMDB top 250 films is nuts.