Avengers: Infinity War (a movie review post)

 MCU #19

I think it's fair to say that Avengers has been the most ambitious movie franchise of all time. The Avengers, itself, was possibly the most ambitious movie ever made but, then, Infinity War goes way beyond that. The culmination of 18 other movies, with clues about it going back to... what? the first Captain America movie? I don't remember if there was any hint about the infinity stones before that or not. That's a lot of movies to build one story on, and Marvel pulled it off. Magnificently.

And, then, killed half their characters.
That's a bold move.
Seriously bold.
I was reading back through my previous reviews for this movie (yes, reviews; it was so big, I had to do two) and was reminded at the furor it caused and how upset people were. It's amazing to me in retrospect. Actually, it was amazing to me in "spect." I mean, the first time.

Not even to get to how the movie ends, but it opens with Thanos slaughtering refugees. How much more harsh can you get? These people just had their homeland destroyed and in walks Thanos killing them wholesale. Along with Loki! Possibly the most popular of all of the MCU characters, and Thanos mostly casually snaps his neck and tosses his body aside.

The only drawback to Infinity War is that it is really the first of the Marvel movies that you really can't watch unless you've seen a good number of the other MCU movies. Probably not all of them, but I can't see Infinity War as making much sense to anyone who hasn't been following the story at least somewhat. However, it's also unfair to call that "requirement" a "drawback" since that, really, is the point of the film. No one would expect that you should be able to sit down and watch (or read) Return of the King without consuming the first two parts of Lord of the Rings.

Here's the thing: I've been immersed in Marvel since I was... four? three? Since I first discovered Spider-Man. I read Infinity Gauntlet when it first came out. I know how comics work, and I knew, generally, how this pair of movies was going to end. Knowing all of that, when it got to the part where Peter is "dusted," it still brought me to the brink of tears. And that was watching it this time. I don't remember crying when I saw this the first time, but I know I teared up. That scene was heartbreaking.

And that is saying a lot.

I don't know... Thinking about all this... This movie has a lot of characters in it. A lot. And, yet, Marvel manages to pull that off. It did take them 18 movies to form the foundation for it, but they did it. And, then, I think about -- look, it's not that I want to think about DC, but I can't help making the comparison -- DC and how they seem to think that throwing in more and more characters is how you make a great movie. Or, maybe, they're just using their characters like spaghetti and throwing them at the audience to see what sticks. The characters and the actors. How many different Batmans and Supermans have we had? What I'm saying is that the movie could have gotten bogged down with so many characters, but it didn't. It's a long movie, but you don't feel it. It moves along without having to deal with a bunch of exposition to keep people from getting confused. It's... masterful.

Look, as a writer, I'm telling you this is some good storytelling. That's my expert opinion.

Oh, also, Doctor Strange works out the plan by using the the Time Stone totally knowing he's going to get dusted and goes through with it anyway. That takes some real... I don't know... Courage doesn't cover it. Look at Quill. He knew the stakes and, yet, when they have almost gotten the glove from Thanos, Quill gives into his rage and hands Thanos the victory. Strange stared it all down and hands Thanos the Time Stone, anyway. Man...

And, if you want (almost) all of your favorite MCU characters in one movie, this is the place to see it.

The real test? I just watched this but would not protest watching it again right now. It's that good. Which is true of most of the MCU. Not all, but most. There are a few I feel like I don't need to ever see again, one in  particular (you hear that Norton? (yeah, this is my Norton dig for this post)) but, for most of them, even after just watching them, I would happily watch them again.
So let's get this one ranked!

The infinite ranking:

1. Captain America: Civil War

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

4. Avengers: Infinity War

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

8. Black Panther

9. Doctor Strange

10. Ant-Man

11. Thor: Ragnarok
12. Thor: The Dark World
13. Thor

14. Guardians of the Galaxy

15. Avengers: Age of Ultron

16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
17. Iron Man 3
18. Iron Man 2
19. Incredible Hulk

(I discussed with my family what they thought about the placement of A:IW on the list, and I have gone against popular opinion. Well, their popular opinion, anyway, although it seems that a lot of popular opinion has A:IW in the top two of MCU movies. I have my reasons, though, for the placement, most of which have to do with tightness of story. But, man, it was difficult for me for it to fall between Cap and Spidey after the two of those were tied for a while.)

Avengers: Endgame (a movie review post)

Pre-movie thoughts:
We're going to be seeing Endgame in just about two hours from now. This is almost the most anticipation I've ever had for a movie. Other highly anticipated movies of note: The Phantom Menace, Spider-Man (maybe my most highly anticipated movie ever), Fellowship of the Ring. People who know me (or who have followed along here for any length of time) will know that Star Wars is my "true love," but it wasn't my first love. No, my first love, through Spider-Man, was Marvel. And, well, what has happened with Star Wars since Disney let Kathleen Kennedy have control of it has somewhat tarnished my love for Star Wars. Sorry, Star Wars, it's not you... oh, no, wait... it is you.

At any rate, this, this waiting to go see Endgame, feels a little like a return to my first love. Even if Spider-Man turned to dust in the last movie. What Marvel has done here over the last decade or so and 20+ movies is... astounding. It's what Star Wars should have been, because it was Star Wars that proved that people would come back to "to be continued" movies in the first place. So... here I am, sitting here, actually, more than a little like my 13-year-old self waiting to go see Return of the Jedi, which, yes, I left off that above list because the anticipation you feel for something as a kid is rarely the same as it is when you're an adult.

Anyway... It's time to go. I'll let you know what I think.

Post-movie thoughts:
That was a very fast three hours. There was nothing to mark the passing of it beyond the fact that my butt started to hurt at some point. The theater we usually go to recently went through this big renovation thing and put in these overly large reclining chairs, and they're still not comfortable! Is there some rule about not having chairs that are comfortable? Or maybe it's because my butt is already worn out from sitting on bleacher seats all week at the four softball games my daughter had this past week. Whatever, my butt hurts.

Yeah, I'm just avoiding talking about the movie, because, really, what am I supposed to say about it? You can't talk about this movie without it being some kind of spoiler. Can't talk about the opening scene because... See? Can't even talk about the Stan Lee cameo, the last one of him EVER, because even that's spoilery. And I certainly can't tell you my favorite scene because Mark Ruffalo would probably show up at my house and yell "NO SPOILERS!" in my face, which would be fine if he just showed up as himself, but I'm not sure he wouldn't HULK out on me and smash some thing.
No, none of that has anything to do with the movie.

Now, I'm not going to say it was the best movie I ever saw, though it did make me cry a bit and make my wife cry a lot. It wasn't life-changing or anything like that. I guess I'm too old for that kind of shit these days. It was pretty perfect, though. A perfect ending, a perfect wrap up, a perfect whatever you want to call it. I mean, look, here's the thing: As I've mentioned before, I've read The Infinity Gauntlet, the source material for all of this... stuff, and I was at a loss for how they were going to wrap it up without just copying the story, and they managed to pull that off gloriously. It was a great job on the part of the writers.

Even my younger son, who has the capacity to be even more critical of things than I am (he's young; I'm sure he'll mellow out with age; I did) said after the movie something along the lines of, "I'm trying to think if there were any faults in [Endgame], and I can't think of any, not even with the <spoilery content removed>." So... there you go. There are no faults with this movie. Unless you just don't like super heroes but, then, that's a fault in you, not the movie.

I suppose, in the end, my recommendation doesn't matter one way or the other anyway. Either you're already planning to see it (if you haven't already) and nothing I say is going to keep you from it, or you've already foolishly gone against the Marvel movies and are living a piss poor life because of it. Justice League doesn't even rise to the level of a bad joke in comparison.

I guess what I can say is that the actors deliver the kind of performances we've come to expect from them. With the exception of Edward Norton as the Hulk 11 years ago, they have been spot on with their casting, and the fixed that error with Ruffalo. It's difficult to imagine anyone doing that role better at this point. Well, I can't imagine it, anyway.

So, yeah, great movie. You should see it. I mean, if you do, then I can actually talk about stuff from the movie in a few weeks... like <censored> and <censored> and wasn't it AWESOME when <censored> and who the <censored> at <censored>?!?!

Ant-Man and the Wasp (a movie review post)

It's probably fair to say that Ant-Man is the least of the Marvel movies.
But this isn't all about size.

Seriously, though...

As far as Marvel movies go, the Ant-Man movies are a bit of lighthearted fun. Which is not to say that they don't deal with some serious topics, but humor is rather more infused in these movies than in the rest of the offerings from Marvel. Even more so than the Guardians movies.

This is not a bad thing. Really, it means that Marvel provides something for everyone.

Except a rom-com. You could probably make a case for the first Ant-Man filling the rom-com slot, but it's a heist movie and doesn't really hit all the rom-com notes. Man, now, I think Marvel needs to do a rom-com. Maybe with Dazzler once they get the X-Men back from Fox.
Yeah, I'm into this idea...
But I digress.

This movie has Boyd Crowder!!! Um, I mean, Walton Goggins! Have I mentioned before that I love Walton Goggins? Well, I do. Because Justified, the best TV show ever.
Um, where was I...?

In Marvel, actions have consequences, which is one of the best things about the MCU so far (something that Warner Brothers/DC still haven't picked up on), and we pick up with Scott Lang suffering the consequences of getting caught while helping Captain America in Civil War, which also serves as an ongoing conflict throughout the movie: When do you do something because it's the right thing to do even when it's breaking the law? A good thing to be thinking about in our current political climate, I think.

Mostly, though, the movie is a lot of good fun, full of people stealing things back and forth. While the good guys try to rescue Janet Van Dyne from the quantum realm.

The cast, as continues to be the case in all of the Marvel movies, is perfect and amazing. I love Paul Rudd and Michael Pena, and they are great together in these movies, though there's not quite as much of them together in this one as the last one. Did I mention Walton Goggins? WALTON GOGGINS! Randall Park is a lot of fun, too.

Possibly, actually, the weakest casting Marvel has had so far was Corey Stoll in the first Ant-Man movie, which has nothing to do with this one, but it's the only bit of weak casting I can think of in the whole franchise so far.

Anyway...

The movie is a lot of fun. It's probably not quite as good as the first one, but I can't say that with certainty. If you liked the first one, there's no reason you shouldn't like this one and, if you haven't seen the first one, you don't quite need to to see this one, though I would say you should anyway, just for the FUN of it. Oh, and, yes, there is a bit of lead up and crossover with Infinity War, which is not quite a spoiler, but it's something to be aware of if you're into the Avengers but dissed on Ant-Man. It's not like you'll need to see this one before the next Avengers movie, but, again, you probably should. Just for the fun of it.

Die Walkure (an opera review post)

"Ride of the Valkyries" is one of the most famous pieces of music in the world. It's entirely memorable, and it's been used in everything from Apocalypse Now to Looney Tunes, so it would be surprising if you've never heard it. I have to say, the arrival of the Valkyries in this production was amazing. They came in by parachute! Okay, not exactly literally, but they "fell from the sky." On parachutes. Amazing.

The Valkyrie is a jump ahead from The Rhinegold. Some unspecified amount of time jump. Long enough ahead that Wotan has a whole slew of kids, all grown up and immortal. Well, most of them are immortal. Two of them, twins, are the offspring of some mortal woman Wotan decided to have a fling with and are not, therefore, immortal. And they don't seem to have gained any specific benefits by having a god as a father, either. Fricka, Wotan's wife, isn't happy about any of Wotan's offspring, since none of them are hers, but she's especially not happy about Siegmund, one of the twins. He's Wotan's favorite and, evidently, the only male offspring Wotan has. At least, he's the only male mentioned.

Still, everything might have been fine except... well... Look, Siegmund and Sieglinde were separated as young children and hadn't seen each other in, like, two decades when they came across each other. It's not exactly their fault that it was love at first sight. Except that, after talking about their fathers, they come to realize it's the same father and realize they're twins and, instead of having an "ewww! gross!" response, they're like, "We're twins! Even better!" As my wife put it: twincest.

And thus ends Act One.

Which left us with a crawly feeling and me wondering if we were somehow watching Flowers in the Attic by mistake. I mean, was this a thing Wagner felt was okay?

But, no... Well, at least, maybe not. Act II does pick up with Fricka questioning the morality of twincest. Of course, she's using it as a ploy because she hates Siegmund, and Wotan defends the relationship because "they're in love." It's difficult to know where Wagner actually stood on the issue from the content of the opera (and I'm not going to go researching Wagner's life, at the moment; I don't care about it that much). At any rate, it's an interesting plot point for the opera, especially since everything that happens after could have been accomplished if the twins had, well, not been twins.

The real takeaway from Die Walkure is that Wotan is a horrible father. He abandoned Siegmund and Sieglinde before they were old enough to know who he was, and he doesn't have any care at all for Sieglinde. Siegmund might be his favorite, but it's only from a distance. His other children, the Valkyries, are just tools in his quest to fill Valhalla with heroes with which to defend it. Brunnhilde is the only one of his children with whom he has any kind of relationship, and he uses her more harshly than any of the rest, in the end stripping her of her immortality -- among other things -- and that was a punishment for her doing what it was that Wotan wanted her to do.

Yeah... Harsh.

Greer Grimsley is one of the best opera performers I've seen at this point. Wotan is an asshole. Wait. Wotan is an Asshole. And, yet, Grimsley manages to play the character in such a way so that he's also sympathetic. He's doing horrible things to people and manipulating... everything... and you feel bad for the guy. It's like in Infinity War when Thanos throws Gamora down in the pit as a sacrifice except Grimsley makes you feel bad for Wotan as he's cursing Brunnhilde. I never felt bad for Thanos. Huh. There's a lot in the whole Infinity War plot that very much resembles the Ring Cycle. What did I tell you about the influence on pop culture this piece has had?

To Infinity (War) and Beyond! (more thoughts)

Okay, actually, not beyond. We're gonna stop right here and talk some more about this movie.

Or, more precisely, we're going to talk about stupid things people keep saying.
And, yes, I'm not going to be wary of spoilers, so you've had all the warning you're going to get.

Look, I understand if you're upset by all the deaths.You should be upset by all the deaths. Death is upsetting. BUT!
1. They're fictional characters.
2. There's another movie coming. Oh, wait, you didn't realize this was just the first part of two movies? Well...

• A. Where have you been?
• B. This is just the first movie of two.
• C. Even if you didn't know that, the end-credit scene should have clued you in that something was going on.
• D. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

In regards to all the death and the general bleakness of the ending, I have seen people protesting that it's a violation of the genre.

Wait... What?

What genre? The super hero genre? Because if that's what you're saying, you're obviously not very familiar with the actual super hero genre and only know about super heroes from movies. Comics have dark endings (and dark stories) all the time. ALL THE TIME! This movie doesn't stand out as an exception in that respect. Now, if you're saying it doesn't have the typical happy Hollywood ending, well, that's true. But, then, Marvel hasn't been doing anything the typical Hollywood way from the beginning. If they had been, we would never have arrived at this movie juncture. In fact, we would never have had Iron Man, either. Or Thor. And certainly not Ant-Man. Hollywood wisdom also said Black Panther was a movie that would never succeed. There's been a push for a Black Panther movie since the 90s and, even now, with all of the other Marvel successes, "Hollywood" believed the movie wouldn't succeed.

But as for genres, make sure you know what you're talking about before you open your mouth.

Speaking of genres, though, can we even call "super heroes" a genre anymore? Like sci-fi, I think it has to be more like a broad category in which you can write other genres of stories. Marvel's movies alone should show that. Hulk is a monster movie. Ant-Man is a heist flick. Captain America is World War II movie. None of them are really what you would call "super hero" films; they just happen to have super heroes in them. It's like Asimov said about sci-fi: It's just a framework to allow you to tell whatever kind of story you want to tell, whatever kind of genre you want to use.

So, no, Infinity War is no violation of genre.

But, yes, it has a sad, even depressing, ending. Heroes die. Because, you know what? The good guys don't always win. Our current political situation, with a wannabe dictator as president, should show you that evil sometimes, even frequently, wins. So, yeah, the bad guy wins. Thanos wins. And the movie ends with him enjoying his victory. You think Trump (#fakepresident) didn't enjoy his victory? You think he didn't go around pissing (figuratively, I hope, though with him it's hard to tell) in every corner of the White House?

I do understand that people are not used to movies where the antagonist wins and we haven't had a movie like this since, probably, The Empire Strikes Back, but people are acting as if this is it. The end of the story. The end of the franchise. No more movies from Marvel. BAM! All your heroes are dead, Suckers! So suck on that! It's the fucking end of the world!

Really?

I mean, really?

Haven't you learned from watching the... how many Marvel movies are there now? 18? Haven't you learned that they're all connected and that there are more movies coming? Wait and see what happens. IT'S NOT THE END OF THE STORY!

geez

And speaking of Thanos, I've heard people complain about the attempt to make Thanos a sympathetic character... What the fuck? What attempt to make Thanos a sympathetic character? Because he cried when he killed Gamora? That makes him sympathetic? Because he cried?

No! It makes him an asshole.

Let's look at this a moment:

Thanos lives on Titan, and Titan is on the verge of environmental collapse. Thanos tries warning everyone and even has a solution: put half of the population to death. Needless to say, the population doesn't like that idea and, evidently, they never figure out anything better. The planet ends up a lifeless husk with Thanos as its only survivor with a, "Well, I told you so," attitude about it. That's as constructive as he gets over the situation.
Except for then deciding that he'll put his "extinguish half the population" plan into effect on the entire universe.
NONE of this makes Thanos a sympathetic character. It makes him a conceited, small-minded asshole who can't think outside of his own box for other, more workable, solutions.

Then!
To get the Soul Gem, he has to sacrifice the thing he loves, which he happened to have with him: Gamora. The one thing Thanos loves. So he has an option, the Soul Gem or Gamora. Let's put this another way:
He can choose the good of himself by throwing Gamora in the pit and taking the Gem, or he can choose the good of Gamora by letting her live. That would be actual love, by the way, choosing the good of someone else over yourself. But what Thanos shows is that what he really loves above all is himself, so he throws Gamora in the pit. Asshole. There's nothing sympathetic in that action, either. And I just have to say, if that scene causes you to feel sympathy for Thanos, you need to do some soul-searching of your own.

There is nothing in this movie to make Thanos any kind of sympathetic character. He shows that he himself has no empathy or sympathy for anyone else, and I'm not really sure how anyone could arrive at the conclusion that anything shown about him was meant to do anything other than show just what a monster he is.

All of that said, I don't care whether you liked the movie or not, just have a valid reason for it, even if that valid reason is your emotional reaction to, say, Spider-Man dying and blowing away in the end (man, that one hurt, especially since there were little piece of Peter-ash all over Tony afterward). What you should not do is try to rationalize your reason by making shit up. It's fine for you to say, "I didn't like it. They killed everyone." And it's also fine for the rest of us to tell you you're crazy.

This Means (Infinity) War!

Discussion ahead. I'm not going to avoid spoilers.
You've been warned.

Other than Lord of the Rings (which is arguably one 10-hour+ movie rather than the three movies released in theaters), this is probably the "biggest" movie ever made. It, too, was too big to be one movie, not to mention that Marvel Studios spent a decade building up to this. That has never been done before (and is a good illustration of why, despite making decent money at the box office, DC movies continue to fail (you can't set up for an "epic" Justice League battle by having Batman say "something's coming" and allowing that to be your entire setup)).

Now, let's just get it out of the way that I thought the movie was Incredible, Amazing, Spectacular, Fantastic (even though they're not in it), Invincible, Mighty... um... there's probably more of those superlatives that I'm forgetting, but those are the one's off the top of my head. Oh, it's also Uncanny.

But I also understand why some people are freaking out, though I do find the number of people responding to it with, "The ending sucked! I'm never seeing another Marvel movie ever again!" more than a little amusing. To go with the most prevalent comparison, I don't remember anyone saying that about Star Wars after Empire came out.

Maybe this is one of those movies where it really does help if you've read the source material. One of the things that Marvel has excelled at is making their movies accessible to people who have never read comic books. They've taken these outlandish (sometimes literally (Thor/Guardians)) ideas and characters and made them believable in a modern world and taken away the need to have a comic book background to be able to understand and appreciate what's going on (again, as opposed to DC and Warner Brothers who continue to take shortcuts by assuming their audience knows the background for their characters and dispenses with giving anything any amount of credibility). And you don't need the comic books for this one, either, but maybe people wouldn't be freaking out so much if they'd read The Infinity Gauntlet. Not that I believe everything's going to be "okay" at then end of this. The MCU, after all, is not the same as the Marvel Universe in the comic books. In comic books, you can depend on characters not really ever dying and things mostly going back to the way they were. Consequences in the MCU tend to be a lot more permanent. That said, having read Infinity Gauntlet, I know how everything's supposed to shake out at the end, so I'm not freaking out about all the deaths. I expected it. Some of them still almost brought me to tears.

The only weakness of the movie, if you can call it that, is the motivation of Thanos. Maybe it's only a weakness because that is the one thing they really provided no background for. That and you can't really make a case that killing half of the souls in the universe brings any kind of balance. However, Thanos is called "the mad Titan" (in the comic books) for a reason. There doesn't have to be any kind of logic involved. Especially since he seems to think that people will come to love and worship him for his actions.

To be clear, bringing balance to the universe is not his motivation in the comic series. No, in the comics, he does it all for love, which, still, is a thought that amuses me. It amuses me because it's so true. See, in the comics, Thanos is in love with Death (not death, Death), she who embodies the ideal of death. He's in love with her, but she won't give him the time of day. He decides that if he can bring her an offering of half the souls in the universe that that ought to make her love him. heh
I'm not going to tell you how that works out.

Which brings us to Adam Warlock...
Except not, since he's not in the MCU, at least not at this point. It's Adam Warlock who puts things right again at the end of Gauntlet, not that someone else can't serve that function, and I was hoping he would show up. Maybe he can't though, since he may be a part of the Fantastic Four branch of the Marvel Universe (like the Silver Surfer) and currently under the control of Fox. Yes, I'm sure I could look that up; I'm just not going to. But I digress...

What I'm sure of, absolutely sure of, is that the next Avengers movie, the one that is the sequel to Infinity War, will be a permanent restructuring of the MCU. While some of what happened will be fixed, there will be some things that are permanent in a way they never are in comic books. Chris Evans is not renewing his contract as Captain America. Chris Hemsworth is almost certainly not renewing his contract as Thor. Robert Downey, Jr., though he's stated that he's willing to continue being Tony Stark, has also stated that he no longer wants to play Iron Man, and his contract is also about to be up. None of which is to mention that if the deal goes through with Disney buying Fox, whole new areas -- X-Men and the Fantastic Four -- will suddenly be open to the MCU. Will I be sad to see the permanent departure of some of these specific characters from the MCU? Sure. But I'm also looking forward to the idea that characters may die permanently. For good. Forever. It makes these kinds of stories much more... satisfying, if that's a word that can be used for this. It makes the stakes real, and, thus, it makes the victory, even if it's Pyrrhic, real, too.
Even if it is fiction.

Oh! And all of the performances are as awesome as can be expected.