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Avengers: Infinity War
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
If I had any outstanding criticism for The Avengers, it would be that too much of it is occupied by characters just standing around talking. Not being superheroes, just being boring. At it's peak, it was solid popcorn entertainment, Loki acts like an irrepressible douchebag throughout the whole movie and gets his **** pushed in by the Avengers just being your friendly neighborhood superheroes. Queue Tony Stark quip, queue Captain America being an uptight melodramatic dick. You win some, you lose some.
Infinity War smashes this fault to pieces by consisting almost entirely of setpiece action sequences, and even when the action dips the dialog and plot development is fast and informative enough to keep us up to pace with just enough room to breath before plunging us back in for more. Immediately as the movie opens, we're greeted by the big purple villain himself as he beats the **** out of Thor, Hulk, and straight up kills Loki. Just having seen the first movie is enough to cement him as a threat and that major characters can die in this movie, and that's no great farce, Loki isn't sacrificed for a mere hook, Thanos kills multiple major characters throughout the movie, death is real insofar as he wills it.
I was hoping he'd have more depth as a character overall, but Thanos, lacking the distinctive voice or personality of noteworthy villains like the Joker or Darth Vader, is helpfully supported by a decent script which gives him some reasonably appealing lines, and it's good that they exist because the only things really holding him up are is design concept and his dialog. His motivation is about as bog-standard as it comes for universe villains; "I must genocide trillions to preserve balance". He delivers some thoughtful points on unchecked population growth which reminds me of Thomas Malthus (given the other economic references he's been memed into), but overall his evil plan is as bland as a superhero origin story... which is why I didn't watch all the garbage they shoved out in preparation for this movie.
Most of the major characters in these movies have origin stories, but if you've seen Iron Man, and you've stomached Avengers, and didn't put a bullet in your brain already for the number of times "I am Groot" has already been uttered in the English language, then you'll be fine watching the movie with at least a peripheral understanding of everyone's roles and relative capabilities. About the only character that really threw me off was Vision, who apparently is introduced in Age of Ultron. I hope he's not a worthless damsel in that movie cause he sure felt like it here, it's like every other scene he's in he gets stabbed in the gut by a spear. It gets ridiculous.
I like that Doctor Strange featured heavily, which is one of the few Marvel origin movies I actually had some interest in seeing, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Spider-man, who I forgot appeared in Civil War. Spider-man probably being top of my list of tolerable superheroes. But it's not just Spider-man, it's IRON SPIDER-MAN, out of nowhere, Stark just had an Iron Man suit made for him which gives him robot spider-legs and ****, and Iron Man's suit is made of NANO-MACHINES now...
This movie had a lot of WOW moments for me. Perhaps it was because this new stuff wasn't spoiled for me in previous movies, but not since Final Fantasy VII Advent Children have I been satisfied seeing normal-sized people beat the **** out of each other with skyscrapers, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
The best fight scene in my opinion was when Stark, Strange, Spider-man and the Guardians team up to ambush Thanos. It sounded like a ****ing retarded plan,
"Thanos can't get the Time Stone!"
"I've got an idea, let's go to Thanos."
"Okay sure, let's do that."
...and it was, but it opens with Iron Man dunking a ******* spaceship on Thanos head and the whole fight exploding into a cluster**** of lasers, energy beams, telepathy, webs, gunfire, anything to incapacitate Thanos and keep him from manipulating the Infinity Gauntlet. Course, it's all Starlord's fault that they didn't totally subdue him cause he couldn't keep his emotions under control. The consequences of that punch to the face were untold.
Something I also appreciate from this movie is that they very explicitly set up Thanos goal to rid the universe of half it's life, that if he had all 6 stones that he could do it with a snap of his finger.
And he does. It's a slow build-up to Thanos acquiring all the stones, I think they could have done a much better job highlighting each little step towards the end, but when he finally gets there he literally evaporates half the life in the universe. Boom, half the cast of supers is reduced to dust. Vision's girlfriend, yeah okay, a bunch of Wakandan warriors, yeah okay, but Black Panther? The Guardians? Doctor Strange? SPIDER-MAN?
Sure, most of the big players like Stark, Thor, and Hulk remain intact, I wouldn't have it any other way, but these are still BIG character deaths! This single movie puts a canon end to more spin-off franchises than anything else I can think of.
And it ENDS that way. Thanos wins. End credits.
The ******* balls on that writer. I can't help but respect this movie not just for neatly assembling the stars of well over a dozen other superhero movies with merits in their own right, but throwing them together in such an explosive team matchup against the comic-book equivalent of Toguro from Yu Yu Hakusho, and then killing half of them off, including multiple fan favorites.
Bravo. I don't even care that they lost, I'm just happy to have seen it happen.
What I wasn't happy to see was the after-credits scene which obviously teases Captain Marvel coming in to save the day in the sequel. Both Black Panther and Captain Marvel were unforgivably plagued by race and sexual politics. I can forgive Black Panther's presence in this movie because the topic isn't brought up at all and he serves as a sort of ambassador to a nation with technology ostensibly powerful enough to be plot critical. That's fine, I have no issues there, he's still stupid caricature of a superhero, but he blends in with the rest of the cast well enough. Equality, that's all I want.
But now, Captain Marvel's supposed to swoop in, with what is perhaps the worst superhero name and the most Mary Sue (or shall I say "Superman"?) of superpowers to save the day, Miss Smash-the-Patriarchy herself?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I like strong female characters, it's part of why I like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, it's part of why I like Charlize Theron in Fury Road, they're badasses and still human in their own way, in an industry that normally suffocates the genre in big burly dudes. Well here I am rooting for the big burly dude, because I have no interest in such a cheap political character being the convenient foil to fly in during the final act to ruin the fun because "**** you, girl power".
I'm not convinced Endgame can live up to Infinity War, the central stone collection arc is over, creative options have been explicitly reduced due to major character deaths, and here, before the end at least, there was still some semblance of the goofy old Marvel comedy bristling around the edges to keep things light. A darker finale with fewer likable characters, no pre-built-to-break plot pressure, and a cheap Mary Sue ready to swoop in and girl power all the bad guys away?
It looks bleak, but I'm more interested than I was before.
Final Verdict: [Great]
Avengers: Infinity War
Superhero Action / English / 2018
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
I've become increasingly intrigued by the villain of Thanos who's been hyped up to be one of the arch villains of the Marvel universe. I've never been a fan of the superhero genre and remember watching the first Avengers, liking it, and learning second-hand that the character teased during the credits of the first movie was some bigwig. I just thought he was another instance of "OMG NOSTALGIA", but the more I learn about his whole arc around collecting some 6 "infinity stones" which govern the universe and would confer upon him the power to snap life out of existence, the more I want to see him be a great villain.
I had no interest in Age of Ultron so I skipped that, and I didn't see Captain America: Civil War either which I understand to be like an Avengers 2.5. The only Avengers: Infinity War related movies I've seen up to this point are Iron Man 1 & 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers. Also The Incredible Hulk, but I barely remember it. I've read zero of the comics.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
I had no interest in Age of Ultron so I skipped that, and I didn't see Captain America: Civil War either which I understand to be like an Avengers 2.5. The only Avengers: Infinity War related movies I've seen up to this point are Iron Man 1 & 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, and The Avengers. Also The Incredible Hulk, but I barely remember it. I've read zero of the comics.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"We're in the Endgame now."
If I had any outstanding criticism for The Avengers, it would be that too much of it is occupied by characters just standing around talking. Not being superheroes, just being boring. At it's peak, it was solid popcorn entertainment, Loki acts like an irrepressible douchebag throughout the whole movie and gets his **** pushed in by the Avengers just being your friendly neighborhood superheroes. Queue Tony Stark quip, queue Captain America being an uptight melodramatic dick. You win some, you lose some.
Infinity War smashes this fault to pieces by consisting almost entirely of setpiece action sequences, and even when the action dips the dialog and plot development is fast and informative enough to keep us up to pace with just enough room to breath before plunging us back in for more. Immediately as the movie opens, we're greeted by the big purple villain himself as he beats the **** out of Thor, Hulk, and straight up kills Loki. Just having seen the first movie is enough to cement him as a threat and that major characters can die in this movie, and that's no great farce, Loki isn't sacrificed for a mere hook, Thanos kills multiple major characters throughout the movie, death is real insofar as he wills it.
I was hoping he'd have more depth as a character overall, but Thanos, lacking the distinctive voice or personality of noteworthy villains like the Joker or Darth Vader, is helpfully supported by a decent script which gives him some reasonably appealing lines, and it's good that they exist because the only things really holding him up are is design concept and his dialog. His motivation is about as bog-standard as it comes for universe villains; "I must genocide trillions to preserve balance". He delivers some thoughtful points on unchecked population growth which reminds me of Thomas Malthus (given the other economic references he's been memed into), but overall his evil plan is as bland as a superhero origin story... which is why I didn't watch all the garbage they shoved out in preparation for this movie.
Most of the major characters in these movies have origin stories, but if you've seen Iron Man, and you've stomached Avengers, and didn't put a bullet in your brain already for the number of times "I am Groot" has already been uttered in the English language, then you'll be fine watching the movie with at least a peripheral understanding of everyone's roles and relative capabilities. About the only character that really threw me off was Vision, who apparently is introduced in Age of Ultron. I hope he's not a worthless damsel in that movie cause he sure felt like it here, it's like every other scene he's in he gets stabbed in the gut by a spear. It gets ridiculous.
I like that Doctor Strange featured heavily, which is one of the few Marvel origin movies I actually had some interest in seeing, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Spider-man, who I forgot appeared in Civil War. Spider-man probably being top of my list of tolerable superheroes. But it's not just Spider-man, it's IRON SPIDER-MAN, out of nowhere, Stark just had an Iron Man suit made for him which gives him robot spider-legs and ****, and Iron Man's suit is made of NANO-MACHINES now...
This movie had a lot of WOW moments for me. Perhaps it was because this new stuff wasn't spoiled for me in previous movies, but not since Final Fantasy VII Advent Children have I been satisfied seeing normal-sized people beat the **** out of each other with skyscrapers, IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?
The best fight scene in my opinion was when Stark, Strange, Spider-man and the Guardians team up to ambush Thanos. It sounded like a ****ing retarded plan,
"Thanos can't get the Time Stone!"
"I've got an idea, let's go to Thanos."
"Okay sure, let's do that."
...and it was, but it opens with Iron Man dunking a ******* spaceship on Thanos head and the whole fight exploding into a cluster**** of lasers, energy beams, telepathy, webs, gunfire, anything to incapacitate Thanos and keep him from manipulating the Infinity Gauntlet. Course, it's all Starlord's fault that they didn't totally subdue him cause he couldn't keep his emotions under control. The consequences of that punch to the face were untold.
Something I also appreciate from this movie is that they very explicitly set up Thanos goal to rid the universe of half it's life, that if he had all 6 stones that he could do it with a snap of his finger.
And he does. It's a slow build-up to Thanos acquiring all the stones, I think they could have done a much better job highlighting each little step towards the end, but when he finally gets there he literally evaporates half the life in the universe. Boom, half the cast of supers is reduced to dust. Vision's girlfriend, yeah okay, a bunch of Wakandan warriors, yeah okay, but Black Panther? The Guardians? Doctor Strange? SPIDER-MAN?
Sure, most of the big players like Stark, Thor, and Hulk remain intact, I wouldn't have it any other way, but these are still BIG character deaths! This single movie puts a canon end to more spin-off franchises than anything else I can think of.
And it ENDS that way. Thanos wins. End credits.
The ******* balls on that writer. I can't help but respect this movie not just for neatly assembling the stars of well over a dozen other superhero movies with merits in their own right, but throwing them together in such an explosive team matchup against the comic-book equivalent of Toguro from Yu Yu Hakusho, and then killing half of them off, including multiple fan favorites.
Bravo. I don't even care that they lost, I'm just happy to have seen it happen.
What I wasn't happy to see was the after-credits scene which obviously teases Captain Marvel coming in to save the day in the sequel. Both Black Panther and Captain Marvel were unforgivably plagued by race and sexual politics. I can forgive Black Panther's presence in this movie because the topic isn't brought up at all and he serves as a sort of ambassador to a nation with technology ostensibly powerful enough to be plot critical. That's fine, I have no issues there, he's still stupid caricature of a superhero, but he blends in with the rest of the cast well enough. Equality, that's all I want.
But now, Captain Marvel's supposed to swoop in, with what is perhaps the worst superhero name and the most Mary Sue (or shall I say "Superman"?) of superpowers to save the day, Miss Smash-the-Patriarchy herself?
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I like strong female characters, it's part of why I like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, it's part of why I like Charlize Theron in Fury Road, they're badasses and still human in their own way, in an industry that normally suffocates the genre in big burly dudes. Well here I am rooting for the big burly dude, because I have no interest in such a cheap political character being the convenient foil to fly in during the final act to ruin the fun because "**** you, girl power".
I'm not convinced Endgame can live up to Infinity War, the central stone collection arc is over, creative options have been explicitly reduced due to major character deaths, and here, before the end at least, there was still some semblance of the goofy old Marvel comedy bristling around the edges to keep things light. A darker finale with fewer likable characters, no pre-built-to-break plot pressure, and a cheap Mary Sue ready to swoop in and girl power all the bad guys away?
It looks bleak, but I'm more interested than I was before.