Fortuitously, I just this morning finished listening to a long review podcast, which I thought going in to be one hour and change, but turned out to be 2:26.
I will trickle in comments as they occur to me.
I liked how they treated time travel - it was mostly coherent and understandable, except Captain America's last jaunt which was contrary to that entire concept.
A good wrap-up to the story of Tony Stark; a multifacetedly bad one for Steve Rogers. He didn't even say a word of goodbye to Bucky? Seems to me the studio came down very strongly on "no homo" .
I sort of want to see this now, but I need to see the "Middle Game" movie first, don't I?
Meh. They peaked at Winter Soldier.
I mean, I'm intrigued by the whole thing as the apotheosis of the blockbuster business model, but the movies as movies lost me a long time ago.
I didn't see the one with Thanos where Ant-Man killed him by crawling up his butt and returning to regular size. It seemed too much.
Tony snapped half the universe's population back into existence five years later, but without undoing the intervening five years. So he probably condemned at least a quarter of the universe to death by starvation?
I'm going to read all the comments in this thread because of my dedication to the blog but I didn't watch the previous Avengers movie and I will probably never see this one either.
I realize I'm involuntarily and probably needlessly invested in all this.
I was very annoyed that Ant-Man popped out of the nanoverse in a storage space cage, labeled with his name even. Surely, I thought, most of the shit people would leave behind would be discarded after five years. But he did leave his daughter behind so it's just barely plausible she actively prevented that.
Why didn't they go farther back in time and kill baby Thanos?
10: That idea did in fact come up, but it didn't match how they were decreeing time travel worked. It got a little painfully genre-savvy.
11: They are probably saving that for when they reboot the whole thing in a few years.
Chris Evans died really well in Street Kings, opposite that genuine movie star, Keanu Reeves.
I really enjoyed the movie, but agree with 1.3.
I thought Endgame was easily the least good of the recent MCU movies, most of which have exceeded my expectations. The plot felt forced, there were no interesting twists, it was less humorous than most. There were some good action scenes but they were scattered into 3 hours of meh. (Not that I would have wanted 3 hours of action scenes. That would also have been meh. But the stuff between the action scenes needed to be better.)
I thought Endgame was easily the least good of the recent MCU movies, most of which have exceeded my expectations. The plot felt forced, there were no interesting twists, it was less humorous than most. There were some good action scenes but they were scattered into 3 hours of meh. (Not that I would have wanted 3 hours of action scenes. That would also have been meh. But the stuff between the action scenes needed to be better.)
The only recent MCU film that feels like it has zero potential rewatchability.
FWIW, that review was written by me but was endorsed in full by my sons, ages 12 and 10. (Except they would have probably been ok with 3 hours of nonstop action scenes.)
Like, Josh Brolin can kill half of all life in the universe? And Johansson is good with a handgun? Not sensical.
I think there was a glove. It's going to sound silly if you don't mention the glove.
Johansson is super cool. I bet she has a glove. Maybe even two.
The plot hinges on Jeremy Renner truly loving (in at least one of the -ically senses) Scarlett Johansson. He's such a smirking asshole it shows up in his facial lines now.
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The Mekong is important globally in terms of biodiversity--thirteen times more fish are caught annually from the Mekong than from all of North America's lakes and rivers combined.|>
Easily the best XO in Starfleet history.
Y'all are a bunch of highbrow grumps. Endgame was a lot of fun, and a fitting send-off for the folks who were sent off.
I don't even pretend to fish now. I just drink beer by a river.
except Captain America's last jaunt which was contrary to that entire concept.
My theory to make it consistent is: he didn't age into the modern day. He decides to stay with Peggy, either starting in 1970 or doing an extra time-hop to an earlier period to make the ages work out (although 1970 wouldn't be too far off). Then, he ages with her until she dies; canonically, that was 2016 during Civil War. Then he puts the suit back on and warps to our time, bringing along a fresh Captain America shield he pilfered from one of the other timelines. Note that this requires the rules letting him warp back to a different location in the same time-space, and him just doing it to maximize coolness.
There were some other inconsistencies, though: like, really, why can't they bring Black Widow back? They could grab her seconds before she sacrifices herself so she wouldn't even have the memory issues Gamora has. That doesn't apply to Vision, though, because that requires removing a stone.
He didn't even say a word of goodbye to Bucky?
He didn't know he was going to do it going in.
Anyway, the last battle felt like it was being narrated by a rich kid who owns all the action figures making them fight with each other.
Chris Evans died paralyzed choking on his blood so Keanu could have a crisis of conscience lalala.
32: DID YOU GET PAID SEVEN FIGURES THIS YEAR? DIDN'T THINK SO.
34: I mean, it wasn't bad. It just felt very much like "AND THEN CAPTAIN AMERICA FIGHTS THANOS BAM BAM BAM AND HE GETS MJOLNIR AND THEN IRON MAN FIGHTS THANOS OH NO POW BOOM POW AND THEN A PORTAL OPENS FROM WAKANDA!!!!!! HERES BLACK PANTHER! AND VALKYRIE FLIES IN NYUEERRRRRRRR AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN" etc. They had a lot of ground to cover.
How did people feel about the girl-power scene? Very forced, and a bit "hey! We DO have a bunch of (mostly secondary) female characters! We're not anti-feminist!" but the crowd I was with appreciated it.
I liked it, but I kind of agree with urple. The other Russo Brothers Marvel movies are like clockwork mechanisms that tick their way to their conclusions, while Endgame is where it got too much for them to control.
The most implausible part of the movie is the Joe Russo cameo where he goes on a date, and both people agree they miss the Mets. Nobody would miss the Mets.
35.2: My daughter, who I think is the target audience for these movies, loved it.
I liked it. I've only seen a couple of the other ones so I missed out on a lot of the subtleties and references, but just as a silly superhero action movie I thought it was well done, and even with the enormous length it didn't drag at all.
25: I too find it hard to watch movies without eventually getting bored and reading about global rivers. I get around this by skipping the "watch movies" step. One of my friends periodically harps on the wickedness of Marvel's CEO, but it seems very few other people care...
I probably read Wikipedia for about an hour a day. Keeps me behind on reading books.
40: Really? Are you going through it alphabetically?
No. Lately I keep reading about Nazi who got hung in the aftermath of World War 2. No idea why that's on my mind.
One of my friends periodically harps on the wickedness of Marvel's CEO, but it seems very few other people care...
I guess it must be this guy
The story was about Marvel Entertainment chairman Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, who was named in a bribery trial by former NYPD Sgt. David Villanueva. According to the New York Daily News, Villanueva testified that he helped expedite the renewal of Perlmutter's gun license. He also said that Perlmutter's assistant at Marvel gave Villanueva tickets to six Marvel premieres https://www.fastcompany.com/90273744/why-is-disney-mum-about-its-shadowy-marvel-entertainment-chairman
I don't remember having heard of him before.
Also https://www.propublica.org/article/ike-perlmutter-bruce-moskowitz-marc-sherman-shadow-rulers-of-the-va -- loads and loads of dirt.
Don't they just give gun licenses to any asshole?
He didn't even say a word of goodbye to Bucky?
He didn't know he was going to do it going in.
I mean after he came back old.
But even when he was setting out, there was no shortage of Pym particles, so unless we multiply off-stage entities like crazy, he had every opportunity once he had made his decision to come back and say goodbye to everybody. A extremely out-of-character asshole move.
Now, it might have been more poignant if they had run out of particles such that he let himself get trapped in 1945 so someone else could go home. But that wasn't the story being told.
So he says goodbye to Bucky off-camera. He didn't turn to dust. And I guess he could have come back and said: hey guys, I decided I liked the past, I'm going to stay there, hope you'll let me use the time machine for personal means. But, enh, the story telling gets more complex, he has to trust they'll actually let him, and anyway the entire point of that was a business-driven move that Evans is out and they want to set up Falcon as the next Captain America.
The entire "oh no we only have a few Pym particles!" motivation is, of course, nonsensical since they could have just gone back to Pym's lab in San Francisco at any time, even if they hadn't known about Camp Lehigh (inexplicably in New Jersey).
I've heard of Perlmutter, as a very 70s-ish Hollywood exec-type asshole, in the context though that he was preventing maximal fanboy masturbation, so who cares.
I feel vaguely the MCU business model offers opportunities for filmaking of a different kind, but thus far it's just churning out more pulp. I hold high hopes for the next Godzilla, but essentially that's more a standard sequel than a Marvel-style cross-marketing thing. I'm thinking, frex, what Warners might have done with their Arthurian thing if they hadn't given the first movie to Guy Richie (????). The source material on the face of it is ideal for the MCU approach. (In structure, not style, obvs.)
Filmmaking at the finance level, obviously, not the technical.
It makes sense someone like Perlmutter is helming Marvel since its main raison d'etre for a while has been has IP farm team for Hollywood.
Today is a good day for a Nazi to take the easy way out.
Can we talk GOT instead? Was totally hoping everyone would die, in increasing horror, until we're done to just Bran, who jumps back in time to do a timeline reset. Does something to make Cercie less evil, and she gets to be a hero too.
(GoT spoilers, obviously.)
I was wondering if the GoT people were annoyed that Endgame had the exact same mechanics of their big climactic moment. That is, bad guy and good guy tussle, good guy clearly loses and bad guy has won everything, but by slight of hand good guy wins absolutely.
Anyway, yeah, it's weird. Good payoff for Arya's character (and of course anyone complaining that she's a Mary Sue is just being sexist--that goes against her character arc, and even in that episode there were moments where her quite specialized skills only got her so far), but it puts an end to treating the dead as a metaphor for climate change. I'm very curious how they handle the next episode. Cersei (or for that matter, Dany) is an entirely different kind of problem, and it's going to be difficult to shift back to her after defeating an apparently unstoppable force of legend.
Dany and Jon really were made for each other: for whatever reason they can deeply inspire people, but they're both kinda idiotic.
7: My son is obsessed with the fact that some of the kids at Spider-Man's high school will be five years older than other kids in the same grade.
Also, do Spider-Man and all the other dead heroes come back to life when Hulk does a snap to reverse Thanos's snap, or are they all being hidden by Dr. Strange in someplace different and only come back during the final battle?
56: Maybe they'll deal with this a bit in the next Spider-Man movie? (Peter's friend Ned appears to have been snapped away too, so no issue between them, but presumably the school will be fractured.)
But yes, the various heroes were snapped back (I forget which big hero did the snapping at which time). Strange helped transport them all to the battlefield, and presumably also helped them communicate and organize.
The moment when the Night King raises the dead too fast for Jon to get to him was great. Arya killing him instead was very earned and it is hard to explain why some people thing Jon should have gotten the kill shot except sexism. Still, i was hoping dany would Dracarys the fuck out of that location, "on purpose" accidentally proving jon is a Targ to everyone when he walked out of the flames.
Here is the official explanation for Cap's time travel.
48: Maybe they could have found a stockpile somewhere, but what was the status of Pym's lab after Ant-Man and the Wasp? A briefcase? Pym was snapped, and he was paranoid about security and would have hidden or destroyed all his notes, so it would have been hard to make more without him. Bad scientific practice, of course. Maybe worse than experimenting on himself.
I think it's fair to complain about how Natasha died, but other than that I loved it, FWIW.
GoT was terrible, on the simple grounds that there was a solid hour of action in which I couldn't see a goddamn thing.
Maybe they could have found a stockpile somewhere, but what was the status of Pym's lab after Ant-Man and the Wasp? A briefcase? Pym was snapped, and he was paranoid about security and would have hidden or destroyed all his notes, so it would have been hard to make more without him.
They have a time machine, though. As long as they know where the particles were at any particular point in time they can go there and grab some.
Taken to extremes, since they ended up getting back versions of the stones that had been destroyed, and even had two Nebulas running around for a while, this would essentially let you create an infinitude of any desired resource by grabbing it from different universes over and over again.
Or, if you were a thinking man, become the best Amway distributor ever.
GoT was terrible, on the simple grounds that there was a solid hour of action in which I couldn't see a goddamn thing.
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I just figured out that Captain America is played by the guy who was the lead in Not Another Teen Movie. That wasn't bad, especially when (Spoiler Alert) Molly Ringwald shows up.
Inevitable twitter comment: "I know that you have to change a lot when you adapt a story from one medium to another, and I don't mind that. I'm not some sort of fanatical purist. All I'm saying is that I don't think Samuel Beckett would recognise much from his original play."
65: Didn't realize that. The MCU is so star-studded that there's a ton of stuff like that. I think The Avengers was the first thing I had ever seen Mark Ruffalo in. It was a bit weird to stumble on him in 13 Going on 30, Just Like Heaven, and other romcoms later, which was apparently what he was best known for until the MCU. Also Shutter Island - not a romcom but nothing like The Avengers either. (Some of those were released before The Avengers, but either I personally saw them after it, or I didn't even recognize Ruffalo from them.)
I think maybe that Robert Downey guy was in other stuff also.
66: Show a little respect. I'm huge on Twitter!
68: Fuck you! Marvel was nothing before me.
Tropic Thunder is the best movie made since Airplane!.
I just figured out that Captain America is played by the guy who was the lead in Not Another Teen Movie.
And in one scene in Scott Pilgrim, to join some threads.
Hugo Weaving is a good actor to join some threads.
67: I first remember seeing him as a minor character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think he was playing one of the creepy techs, but he still had the same general vibe that he brings to Banner. Said vibe being that of a flesh and blood Milhouse van Houten.
I was waiting for someone to go 66, or deeper with the recent Kurtág adaptation that was briefly streaming on some Hungarian website and which was pretty astounding if you like that mode.
73: He was good in the first Captain America. It's a shame he didn't come back for the later movies. I'm not sure why. Other MCU characters played by multiple actors: James Rhodes, Howard Stark, and of course, Bruce Banner. It's hard to imagine Edward Norton as Bruce or Dominic Monaghan as Howard now.
Reminds me of Natalie Portman - her character has had only one actress, but like Hugo Weaving and maybe some others, she left due to conflicts with management, and in her case it's because she was sick of being the damsel in distress. Can't blame her for that. As I've said, I obviously enjoy the franchise, but I think it would be fair to call it a bit sexist overall. Captain Marvel is the obvious exception. In hindsight I'm not sure what I wish they had done differently about Natasha, but there must be some way they could have handled it better.
In hindsight I'm not sure what I wish they had done differently about Natasha
They should've given her her own movie seven or eight years ago.
IMO the first half of Norton's Hulk was really good, about as good as a comic-book movie can get. Also, the scene where Banner sits down with Looney Tunes and a dictionary to teach himself Portuguese contains more genuine heroism than the rest of the MCU combined.
It also features Rickson Gracie's abs.
Also, the scene where Banner sits down with Looney Tunes and a dictionary to teach himself Portuguese contains more genuine heroism than the rest of the MCU combined.
If I were a university I would hire you to be a full-time scholar just on the basis of this one sentence.
66: Yglesias noted (also on Twitter) that the opening scene is actually pretty Beckett-y, but then they ruin it with an implausible deus ex machina and go on to do a regular superhero movie.
Weaving was working on the Hobbit from 2011 to 2012, and probably the heavy reshoots that took place later. And his MCU character was killed off. And didn't have his face. Makes sense to me on various fronts.
his MCU character was killed off.
Boy, have I got a spoiler for you. But as for scheduling conflicts and the fact that he plays the character with heavy makeup, point taken.
"Xenu's forces are massing in the East; his eye is fixed on Rivendell."
Boy, have I got a spoiler for you.
Am I wrong? In the technical sense.
48: It's in New Jersey because that's where they visit the abandoned SHIELD/Hydra facility where Zola has uploaded himself in Winter Soldier. (It's the same facility, pre-abandonment; they clearly reused some of the computer modeling when they entered.)
You should always save and reuse good bits of code you write.
86: I was just snarking on the name; the Lehigh is a right tributary of the Delaware entirely in Pennsylvania.
88: Oh, yeah, like the university. Hm. A cursory Google search tells me in the comics it's in Virginia; maybe they simply overshot when they were trying to correct that.