I don’t really agree with this – I think it is an overlong film, but, in some respects, it is what it is. It’s a film with a firmer three act structure than we’re often used to in our blockbusters (even if one of the acts is a big crash-bang-wallop fight scene), but I do think it stands as a complete work and would be weaker without its component parts.
I think people will tend to dislike one of the three acts depending on what they’re there for. I found the third act to be pretty par for the course, while the first two acts (mostly because of the film’s reduced character headcount) worked a lot more for me.
I also do suspect that this will be the case, although I think the litmus test for ‘is this peak Marvel?’ will only be Spider-Man: Far From Home. I suspect that film will be the warning-shot that Solo was for Disney’s Star Wars films – a film which won’t flop, but will underperform expectations and encourage either a break or a slowing of the roll to let the audience capacity build back up.
This is entirely a taste thing, but I feel like the rumored upcoming films don’t sound incredibly appealing, and profitable, with the exception of Black Panther 2
Shang-Chi? It’d be cool to have an asian led Marvel movie, but martial arts films are hard to make and I doubt they’re going to put the effort in if the general quality of fight scenes in these movies is any indication.
Doctor Strange? I like Strange as a character, but I feel like Ragnarok showed why he generally works better as a second stringer. His exploits are weird.
Black Widow prequel? Am I, like, the only who thinks Nat is kinda boring? And not suited to lead a whole movie?
I think a letdown is inevitable, if for no other reason than Endgame has already made over a billion dollars.
I’m less jazzed for the Phase 4 stuff already announced than I am for the potential Young Avengers seeds that were planted in Endgame, but I think Disney would have to be willing to accept a “mere” $100 million-ish type box office for that to happen and I’m not sure they are.
I know the internet needs to obsess over spoilers, but nothing happened in this movie that was such a shock and such a blow at least to me to justify the obsession over it. Like it’s been such a taboo forbidden topic, I think it’s just buying into marketing at this point. We’re creating our own “mystery boxes” by being so obsessed with the surprise. It overshadows any possible conversation about what this movie is and what it’s trying to achieve, other than “it’s gonna be a surprise when it does it!”
I find it particularly odd how many of the same people tweeting #DontSpoilTheEndgame live-tweet Game of Thrones like it’s a sporting event.
Personally, I am not spoiler-averse (I sometimes even seek them out) so maybe I am not the best judge, but there’s nothing in Endgame that would be especially ruined by spoilers.
Yeah, I understand people wanting to go into Endgame not knowing what happens—I am actually fairly spoiler-averse, and I do feel like I enjoy the tension that comes with not knowing what happens in a work. But in some ways it definitely does sell short a movie that I think will hold up on multiple viewings. It has enough substance for that, and I do agree with the idea that anything that’s dependent on not being spoiled usually doesn’t hold up on its own. It really does feel like a viral marketing tactic that just took over everything to do with how this film is talked about.
To be fair, I think there’s always been much more of a “hey, once it airs it’s fair game” mentality for television as opposed to movies, where people acknowledge that not everybody can go to the early hollywood premiere or the midnight showing or even the first weekend.
My feelings on Endgame basically boil down to: I am a sucker and I fell for everything they threw at me, hook, line, and sinker even when my brain recognized the obvious bait. Case in point: the all-female heroes, where I actively rolled my eyes when it happened and then watched the entire thing with chills down my spine anyway. I recognize that the Russos are throwing me a bone but I can’t help that I really fucking liked the bone. Same for everything else – you could see all the punches coming from a mile away; you see all the cliches; you think that it shouldn’t be this affecting; but it still was. It was ten years worth of investment paying off, and I can’t help that I fucking loved it.
I will say, though, that if I were more of a Thor fan I probably would’ve walked out of the theater ready to slap some Marvel higher ups… Then again, none of the team-up movies have ever known what to do with Thor – or Nat and Bruce, tbh (AoU had me ready to punch Joss Whedon in the FACE) – so that was… disappointing but unsurprising.
tell me off if I’m just being a jerk but, given that these people seem to want praise for including a two-line in passing gay character, I can’t see a movie of this team going well
A weird thing with this movie is the number of times it literally just does a thing from last movie and pretends it’s the first time it happened. The Dark Souls planet, the Wakanda VS Rubbish Thanos Minions battle, the weird “hey look we have women here too” scene, and there’s probably more I can’t remember because this movie was 3 hours long.
Honestly it was a movie where the high points were weird and exciting and great, but also there were low moments that had me rolling my eyes. It has a habit of expecting you to respond with way more emotion than it actually earns. But also I love time travel bullshit and also Nebula.
I think at least two of those instances are, in fact, explicitly intended to be seen as mirrors of the first time it happened - the Vormire sequence is explicitly an inversion, and doesn’t work without the first Vormire sequence in Infinity War; and Wakanda v Thanos Guys is played at several points in reference to the previous version of the battle.
(I think it was Feige who said that he wanted Endgame to be in a similar space as the last TNG episode, “All Good Things” - and it sort of is, including being an excuse to literally and metaphorically look back at all the things which happened in the MCU, and reference them / affectionately mock them / slightly retcon them.)
but I do agree that Endgame expects you to be Deeply Emotionally Invested in the MCU, so that you’ll strongly emotionally respond to all the beats in it because “its your favourite characters”. I don’t begrudge anyone who did that, but honestly, the most emotionally affecting moment for me in the entire film centred on a character who literally doesn’t exist until this movie…
I had an absolute blast with Avengers: Endgame. I think what I liked most about it, is that whilst most of these movies have been about progressing the franchise, this one felt as if it was bringing about some definite closure on about 10 years worth of movies. Endgame nails this and it is these moments that the movie is at it’s best.
I was kind of meh on Infinity War, as I didn’t sympathise with Thanos and think he was that deep as a character. He’s a genocidal maniac masquerading as a warrior monk, he’s an edgelord baiting villain injected with a degree of humanity thanks to Josh Brolin. Depite the downer ending of Infinity War, it did just feel like the end of the first part of a Doctor Who season ender and though you may feel the impact of the loss on the core characters, you knew things would eventually turn up Millhouse in the next movie.
I would recommend seeing this movie with a full house of fans. People were cheering and crying and it was just the perfect communal cinema experience. Everyone was game for it and everyone seems jubilant about it, which seems rare in this day and age, especially when you consider the internet consensus on the latest crop of Star Wars movies.
God help anyone who is going into this movie with little knowledge of the previous 20 something movies.
You mean people screeching about feminism and social justice, or the same few boring cis white guys constantly dunking on one movie in a confused manner that always seems to come back around to being confused by the existence of Irish or Korean people in a Star Wars movie (coucoughmikefromredlettermediacoughcough)? Guessing you haven’t been on Twitter because this has also been a massive problem for Marvel movies, especially lately with Captain Marvel’s entrance. Audience screening reactions and internet takes are usually things that exist in two different planes of existence.
I was disappointed by the Doctor Strange movie with exception to Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One. He’s yet to grow on me as a character but I do think he has been better in a secondary role in Ragnorak and Infinity War.
I was hoping it would be weirder like the comics, like the inside of the santorum was just this interdimensional mess. Everything to do with the sorcerers felt regimented like an army - like another SHIELD like entity.
In the Way of the Weird, he’s more of an actual eccentric doctor helping people with their problems through which interdimensional parasites feed off. Yet to anyone else he’d just appear as this loon on the street.
Oh also, I am pretty horrified by those articles about “the first gay MCU character”. Like, really?? You’re gonna celebrate having one guy with two two lines as a big step towards equality? You’ve done less than the least you can do, and you think this is heroic?
They might as well have Dumbledore’d and said “oh yeah, Jeff Bridges’ character from Iron Man 1 was actually gay.” Are you kidding me?
I honestly left Endgame not caring at all about any of the superhero stuff which is basically rote at this point. There were some cool moments, but just as many of them were undercut by the decisions made (Joe Russo playing one half of a pre-buried Bury Your Gays trope, Thor, Nat, the eye-rolling moment with all the female heroes helping Captain Marvel who literally just destroyed a giant warship single-handedly, the last third being the world’s worst looking football game). I guess I’m glad that I don’t have to worry about Iron Man and Captain America dominating every movie anymore. At least they got a nice sendoff.
What I want to see going forward, probably in Spider-Man: Far From Home, is a focus on the repercussions of the snap, especially in light of this film’s resolution. Clearly 50% of people disappearing had a huge effect on the world, as evidenced by Scott’s trip through SF. Now you’ve got literally half the population showing up in a world 5 years later. What does that mean for working class people whose jobs either disappeared since then or who got replaced in the workforce. Will governments create “SNAP” benefits for those who reappeared? This is something that the Leftovers tackled in an interesting way and I wonder if Marvel will try something similar or will it ultimately just be more window dressing. I’ve always found the implications for regular people way more fascinating in these stories and it’d be a shame for them to do something so drastic, only to basically waste that opportunity.
Thinking a lot about how prior movies inform your investment in this movie. For me, for example, I really loved Thor’s arc in this movie (I see there’s a lot of criticism of it, but I need to see the movie again or else just read like a really good breakdown of it to get into that crit) and it’s probably because I like Thor the most out of him/Cap/Tony. I liked how Cap’s and Tony’s stories ended but I was most deeply affected by Thor’s. I also really loved Cap wielding Mjolnir tho
This movie really worked for me, I felt like it was a little long right in the middle when Nebula is captured - that was the one sequence where it felt like it dragged for me. Overall it does feel like the best form of fan service - we’re sending everyone off so it’s time to see every fucking cool thing we can do before we move on. And it tells a good story, too.
I hope Thor comes back and we get Asgardians of the Galaxy, and I hope we see more Valkyrie + Thor, too.
How’d they make a fuckin’ gun-nut raccoon so emotionally resonant, god damn.
I really like Thor (and prefer him to Steve and Tony, too, especially with his performances in Ragnarok and Infinity War). I was… conflicted over his arc in Endgame, but mostly because it felt like movie didn’t really know “what Thor’s emotional arc” was. Steve and Tony have clearly, ish, defined character arcs - even if Tony’s development in Iron Man 3 backslides - but Thor’s life lessons have always been a mess.
(He learned ‘to be responsible and not egotistical’ in Thor, ‘that he should be himself, not what people think he should be’ in Thor 2, had a weird vision quest in Ultron… which somehow led him to not return to Asgard at all until the start of Ragnarok (despite it being about the destruction of Asgard), learned ‘that the power was inside you all along’ in Ragnarok… and then promptly forgot that in Infinity War… goes through a completely understandable PTSD-related breakdown in Endgame… but somehow is helped by learning the same lesson he learned in Thor 2 again, and being able to summon a hammer which he knows now was kinda a trick, rather than getting the actual therapy he really needs at this point, poor guy)
And, some of the issues in Endgame are definitely affected by the tone of the audience. my audience started laughing at PTSD Thor at the first appearance, and they detracted from any tragic elements that they tried to include
I really couldn’t ask for much more from this movie. I went in thinking I wasn’t going to be too into it but after the first 15 minutes I was sold, and ended up really enjoying the movie. One of my biggest problems with Marvel movies is that they forget what they’re about by the second of third act but the story actually cleared that low bar. It was genuinely funny and sweet.
Did anyone else get real strong Mass Effect vibes from the soul stone scene?
A scene on planet V*rmire where one of the two wack characters is definitely going to die? Even the time travel suits looked a little N7-ey
