Avengers: Endgame (a movie review post)

 

MCU #22

My original Endgame review, in which I mostly don't talk about the movie but still manage to get in a dig at Edward Norton.

I'm just going to say it: Endgame is the greatest achievement in cinematic history. This is not an opinion on the quality of the movie. Even if it had been a terrible movie, it would still be the greatest achievement ever in movies: the culmination of one storyline carried through more than 20 movies over the span of more than a decade. It's rather mind-blowing when you think about it like that. It also happens to be a great movie.

Here is what I'm going to say about that: It is not a movie you can legitimately watch or appreciate unless you've seen, minimally, all of the Avengers movies, but you really need to have seen everything MCU to... feel the full gravity of it. Not all pieces of entertainment are designed to stand on their own, and that's okay. In fact, it's good. It allows for more complex and interesting stories. You can all thank Tolkien for this. Prior to the release of The Lord of the Rings, it was thought by publishers that "the audience" wouldn't be interested by anything long and complex. Even once the concept that some people really enjoyed long, complex stories was introduced into books, it took a long time for movies and television to catch up. And you can probably thank Lucas for that because, without Star Wars, who knows when that idea would have worked its way into movies.

I am not one to cry at movies, not much or often, but I had tears during Endgame. The scene where Happy is sitting with Morgan before Tony's funeral is so touching. Not to mention the moment Peter has with Tony as he dies. It's hard stuff to watch. And it's part of what has made the MCU great. Real moments that can't be taken back or undone. Actions with consequences that the heroes have to live and deal with. We've learned over the years that you can't depend on that in comic books; comic books revert, always, to status quo, no matter who dies or what happens. The MCU is not like that and, I think, it elevates the MCU above the comics. Tony Stark died. Deal with it.

Not that he was the only one; he's just the example.

Endgame hits hard from the opening scene. It's also terribly difficult to watch Clint lose his entire family. This movie is, more than anything, about loss and how we deal with it. How to deal with it. Steve Rogers runs a support group. Barton murders survivors whom he has decided didn't deserve to survive. Both extremes are understandable. Everyone is dealing with their loss in the best way they can.

But you know that the heroes somehow have to win...
I do like that when they "fixed" "the snap" that they didn't just put everything back to the way it was. This, again, is living and dealing with the consequences, stuff we're getting to see play out in the various Disney+ series. It's a much different way than in The Infinity Gauntlet, which returned things exactly to how they were.

Anyway...
Favorite moment, and this is my favorite moment from the entire MCU:
When Captain America, after having his shield broken to pieces by Thanos, picks up Mjolnir. It's powerful.
And Thor's reaction is pretty priceless as well.

Endgame may not be the MCU movie I would pull out to watch for fun on any given night -- it's not that kind of movie -- but I do think it's the best of the MCU. Every character has a moment. The heroes win but not without cost. It's powerful and heartbreaking. It's great.

[One thing to point out: It's great in a way that, say, Return of the Jedi is not but possibly could have been. Lucas originally planned for Calrissian to die in the Falcon in the destruction of the Death Star but, in the end, Lucas couldn't go through with it. He didn't want the movie to end on a bummer. Endgame doesn't shy away from it.]

The new rankings:

1. Avengers: Endgame

2. Captain America: Civil War

3. The Avengers
4. Captain America: The First Avenger

5. Avengers: Infinity War

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
8. Iron Man

9. Captain Marvel

10. Black Panther

11. Doctor Strange

12. Ant-Man

13. Thor: Ragnarok
14. Thor: The Dark World
15. Thor

16. Guardians of the Galaxy

17. Ant-Man and the Wasp

18. Avengers: Age of Ultron

19. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
20. Iron Man 3
21. Iron Man 2
22. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton's ego is so strong that it actually survived the snap despite being part of the 50% chosen.)

We're Not Worthy (a pop culture post)

Okay, so, probably, we are. Worthy, that is. After all, no one's gonna turn you away from a movie you're paying money to see, right? Well, at least not very often. Unless the theater is full. Anyway...

I don't know how I get off on these things. Okay, that's not true, but... Look, quit interrupting and let me get on with the review, okay?
Good.

As I alluded in my review of Iron Man 3, I've suffered a bit of a paradigm shift in my approach to the Marvel Studio movies. See, they did such a great job of adapting the comics, initially, I expected them to keep doing that. Iron Man And Captain America are excellent adaptations of the source material, almost perfectly capturing the tone and feel of the comic characters. Thor is also very good at that, although not quite as good as Cap and Iron Man. So, for a while, I expected the Marvel movies to continue to "adapt" the comics, staying true to the source material across the board.

But it's more like that was just the opening they used to create the Marvel Movie Universe, which is not quite the same as the Marvel Universe of the comics. So, in Iron Man 3, we get a Mandarin who is the front man for a terrorist group rather than a super villain, and, in Thor: The Dark World, we get Malekith after the Aether rather than the Casket of Ancient Winters. And, after some amount of consideration, that's okay. More than okay, actually.

It's more than okay, because Marvel is re-creating what they did to create The Avengers, right now, with their Infinity Stones sub-plot. It's just introducing a piece at a time as they build up to something bigger. In The Avengers, we got our first view of Thanos and his attempt to take control of the Tesseract, which, in The Dark World, is revealed to be one of the six Infinity Stones, artifacts predating the origins of the universe. And, also on The Dark World, Malekith is after the Aether which is another of these "stones" although it actually takes on a fluid form.

This all sounds like it's leading up to an Infinity Gauntlet kind of scenario,

which would be pretty darn cool and pretty darn cosmic. The fact that Guardians of the Galaxy is coming out next year only strengthens the case for all of this. I would expect another of the Infinity Stones to show up in that one.

Of course, none of that actually relates to whether Thor: The Dark World is any good in and of itself.

Actually, Thor 2 is better than Thor. This one just seemed more "Thor" than the first one, although I don't have a good reason for feeling that way because there was an awful lot of Thor-ness about the first one, too. Maybe, it was just that this one flowed more smoothly whereas the first one definitely seemed to have its "Earth" parts and its "Asgard" parts as separate things. If you're doing Thor as Thor (not Thor trapped in the body of a mortal), he definitely needs to have the full range of being Thor.

And there were a lot of cool moves with Mjolnir in this one, things like Thor leaping off of balconies as the hammer came whizzing over the building and into his hand. They definitely did their best to show the connection between Thor and the hammer.

The acting was great, even Christopher Eccleston, whom I'm not particularly fond of as an actor (Doctor or not). His range seems to be quite small, but his role as Malekith was a good fit as it didn't require a lot of emotion and even less facial expression. Zachary Levi also did a pretty good job as Fandral, although, as partial as I am to Chuck, I think he didn't quite fill out Josh Dallas' shoes. There was just some ineffable quality about Dallas that made him more Fandral. Portman, also, seemed to wear the role of Jane Foster much more easily in this one, so that was nice.

The thing that really made the movie work, though, was the chemistry between Hemsworth and Hiddleston. Even when not onscreen together, they pulled off the roles of warring brothers perfectly. The sibling rivalry was perfect. There's this one moment where Thor is about to hit Loki (hey, it's not really a spoiler, okay (well, kind of, but, well, deal with it)) and Thor pulls away saying, "Mother wouldn't want us to fight," and Loki smiles and says, "But she wouldn't be shocked." The relationship is perfect.

The movie also has a bit more humor in it than the last Thor, and it's not all at the expense of Darcy this time, though she does have her moments. The only real negative I'd say the movie has is that the humor breaks the tension a little too much every so often. But those are only minor bumps on the road and barely memorable once past them. It does pull you right back in.

Overall, the movie has an epic feel to it that seems appropriate to a story about gods, and it does it while keeping the movie personal. That all by itself is quite an accomplishment. So, yeah, I think Thor 2 is a step above the first one, something that's not all  that common with a sequel. It doesn't make it up to the level of the first Iron Man or Captain America movies, but it does surpass both of the Iron Man sequels. If you've been following the Marvel movies at all, you certainly don't want to miss this one.