HOWEVER, if you're one of the few people left who still hasn't seen it yet, by all means, avoid this post. I'm not going to make any effort to avoid spoilers.
And... for that matter, I'm going to assume that if you want to read a review where we discuss whether or not the movie is good, fun, well-crafted, etc. that you can find dozens of them within seconds without any problem. I'll mention that yes, it is most of those things, and that I highly recommend it (I've already got tickets for a second showing with my wife later this week). The movie is fun. The plot is pretty good. But, as always, it's less about the plot and more about 1) the interaction of charismatic characters who have good chemistry and are fun to watch together, and 2) slam-bang superhero action scenes. As long as the movie has those two things, the only thing that we require of the plot is that it be serviceable, not necessarily that it be brilliant.
And that's probably true. I tend to not like time travel story lines very much, and this clearly is one, so the plot has already got issues from my point of view, but they do a good job of not making that too strange and bizarre and full of deus ex machina, which are major concerns for time travel stories. But honestly, the plot kind of takes a back seat to just going along for the ride for large chunks of the movie.
It really is divided into three acts which are very, very different types of movies; the first is a solemn, somber, and rather slow drama as characters come to terms with the fact that half of all people, randomly selected, are dead. When a possible solution presents itself, the movie turns into a heist movie, as various teams time-travel about gathering the Infinity Stones so that Thanos won't be able to get them. This does work, and the people are brought back, but of course there is something that is overlooked, Thanos gets wind of what's happening, and shows up with his whole army to put a stop to it at the rural Avengers headquarters in New York. This third act is the huge, big, superhero action movie, and it's spectacular, long, features lots of characters, and giving many of them at least a brief moment to shine. Although "everyone" is brought back by the magic of the stones, that's not literally true, of course, and a few characters have to sacrifice themselves heroically—something that today's entitled, self-absorbed generation probably doesn't get; the idea of two or three soldiers dying in a war of defense doesn't make sense to a generation who thinks that everyone should win without any personal sacrifice. I was a bit worried that they'd drop the ball on this, given the recent Captain Marvel movie and it's focus on exactly that—that she never earned anything, she just always had it handed to her. But here, that's not the case, luckily—MAJOR SPOILERS—both Black Widow and Iron Man are killed for real, and the Hulk is seriously injured, maybe permanently (?) Captain America phases out by using the time travel mechanism to go back home to his own time and have the life that he didn't get to because of being frozen in the ice. This nicely deals with the fact that both Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. have now made all of the Marvel movies on their contract and don't want to renew; so their characters are nicely handled, written out in a way that isn't cheap, and which works very well.
OK, OK, so now, what are people on the Right saying about this movie, and how valid are their criticisms? And since the Right is right, what does that mean for the franchise in the future? That, I think, is a more interesting discussion than whether or not the movie is "good"—it is, but you can hear that from hundreds of other voices. Here, there are a few points to be made:
First, there are two moments of over-the-top, in-your-face virtue-signaling wokeness, but they are so forced, obvious, and mercifully short that they are almost more comical than irritating. (Almost). When one of the Russo brothers (the directors) makes a cameo during an AA-like therapy session, and is talking about going on a gay date and how sad it is because everyone's sad because so many people are gone, it's a little absurd, and when every single woman character makes a ridiculous pose, claiming that they'll protect Spider-man (or whomever it was at that point) during the final battle, it was comically unserious. They also keep throwing Wakanda around as if it's the most interesting and realistic and desirable society on earth instead of a bizarre fantasy based around both an idea and a character who simply aren't very interesting. But luckily, these strange woke-signals aren't sufficient to ruin the movie, although a much better cut would get rid of them altogether. My assessment? Minor irritant and something to keep your eye on for the rot that will probably destroy the franchise in the near future, but someone, whether it was the Russos or Feige or someone else, had sufficient discipline to keep the SJWs from ruining this movie, at least.
Second, Captain Marvel. It certainly looked like Captain Marvel was all set to swoop in and deus ex machina this movie, ruining it at the literal goal-line, but luckily, her presence is incredibly muted. Some idiot feminist SJWs are running around complaining that she only got fifteen minutes of screen time compared to hours for Iron Man and Thor and Ant-Man and Captain America. Not only is that stupid, it's surprisingly, understated. I doubt she even got that much screen time. Which is good, because she is, amazingly, even more unlikable in this movie than she is in her own movie. She's like some kind of cancer, destroying everything that she touches. The Russos—or someone, at least—saw this, in spite of the propaganda that everyone loves Captain Marvel and her movie was a big success, and wisely kept her on the bench as much as possible, and made her role in the resolution of the plot that had literally been building for decades, nonexistent. As it should have been.
Third, the idea I've seen floated around a lot this last few days or so is that the message of the movie is something to the effect of, "OK, white males, if you accept your role as subservient until you die out and are replaced, we'll let you go out with some dignity at least." This is primarily based on a few things: Captain America choosing Sam Wilson (Falcon) as his successor, when he comes back at the end is a very old man, while Bucky looks on and the audience wonders why he wasn't picked instead, and Thor acknowledging that the Halfrican "Asgardian" Valkyrie has been the de facto ruler of the small community of refugee Asgardians anyway, and he abdicates in favor of her. And finally, the assumption that Captain Marvel herself would take on a much bigger role as the chief amongst the Avengers, as well as the focus on Wakandans as the stand-ins for people of Earth instead of Americans, which would have been normal for a movie made in America by Americans for Americans as recently as even a few years or so ago. But this is both true and untrue at the same time. Let me break this down just a bit more.
- Yes, Marvel is banking big-time on the supposed popularity of Black Panther and Wakanda, I think, because the first Black Panther movie was a big financial success. I think this is foolish. The success of the Black Panther was due to a perfect storm of minority identity politics and virtue-signaling, married to a movie that was better than average. But I think future installments will stall out; you can't get people to virtue signal how wonderful Africans are forever, and as a big block, Black people in America are notoriously difficult to pin down and get to focus for long on a political or social agenda more complicated that, "I hate white people and want their money and women." Meanwhile, few of the characters in this sub-franchise are really very interesting; the best thing Black Panther as a character did was in his debut movie, Civil War, where his revenge fantasy vibe, and then willingness to let it go, was probably the most interesting thing that could or will ever happen to him. My assessment: this can survive as a much reduced "rump state" of the Marvel franchise, probably regardless of what they do, but if they resist the temptation to go too woke and drive away everyone in their audience who isn't a shrieking weirdo or a black person, it can still be reasonably successful. It will never again achieve the heights of the first movie, though.
- Captain Marvel as the entitled, bratty, narcissistic girl Superman of the MCU is a non-starter. Sure, sure, the official narrative is that her movie was a big success and made tons of money. We all know the score, though. If Disney can't improve the character and rein in Larson's bigoted, hateful comments in public, Captain Marvel as an important character will be infamous as a failure to launch. The interesting thing is the gossip flying around the internet about her supposed inability to even manage to get along with the rest of the cast, with Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olson and Chris Hemsworth all having moments publicly where very awkward body language and dialogue in interviews seems to make this obvious, in spite of the professional denials.
- Thor abdicating is actually one of the few good things that we can see in the future for the franchise. It means that Halfrican Valkyrie will be relegated to cameos, most likely (if even that), while Thor himself is now free to go adventuring with the Guardians of the Galaxy, which should make for a reasonable bright spot in the forecast for future Marvel films. That, and maybe Spider-man. The latter is saddled with a relatively bad cast of unlikely supporting characters, but Tom Holland as Spider-man himself is great. Actually, if they can get rid of Zendaya as a younger, browner version of Brie Larson as his completely unconvincing "love interest" Spider-man could have a bright future. But I doubt that they will. They're committed to the woke message of having someone like Zendaya there, so the fact that she's a completely unlikable character played by a completely unlikable actress and that there's no chemistry there at all is unlikely to end up mattering, or even penetrate the minds of the movie-makers that it's a possible issue in the first place.
- Captain America getting old and abdicating his role to, as my son called him flippantly, Blacktain America is not going to be a good move for the franchise either, but it makes some sense in movie, at least. What few have pointed is that after sampling Diversitopia for a few years, Captain America would much rather just go back and live the life that he had before in a non-diverse America where he could be surrounded by his own people living their own culture more or less unmolested by others (more or less, anyway.) That's obviously not a message that the movie is trying to convey, but it's there nonetheless. Sam as new Captain America is also a non-starter. He's just not really very interesting, and his only defining character trait is his loyalty to Steve Rogers personally. I can't imagine that he can possibly make for an interesting choice in any way whatsoever, or that in attempting to make him interesting and develop him as a character that they could possibly find any direction to go that isn't steeped in wokeness.
Another odd fact is that this movie so nicely wraps up everything that there really isn't any longer any compelling reason to see another Marvel movie, necessarily, and I strongly suspect that a lot of audiences will take it at that and not worry about seeing any more, or at least not religiously expecting to see them all. There are no credits teasers, there's nothing in the works, and the major plotline is all resolved. They need to start from scratch, and it's unclear what they could possibly do that would be as well-received. I suspect most people will see the coda, Spider-man: Homecoming, which is actually a Phase 3 movie, even though it's after the finale of Phase 3. It will play the role of a kind of encore, I suppose. What does Phase 4 look like, and how likely is any of it to rise to the heights that Phase 1-3 Marvel did? Let's have a look at what we know:
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3, now with Thor on the ship too. Guardians 2 was a step down, in most respects, from the first one, but it was still entertaining. More curious was the firing of James Gunn, Guardians creator, because he's a pedophile (or at least obsessed with it in a creepy way), which was, of course, "not in line with our corporate values" as said by Disney. However, he was of course subsequently rehired quietly, and has an executive producer credit in Endgame too. (I guess pedophilia is a Disney corporate value after all. Although publicly admitting it isn't a Disney corporate value.) That said, as much of a disgrace and terrible person as Gunn seems to be, it's hard to deny that his vision for the Guardians movies and space-Marvel overall hasn't been pretty entertaining. This is the one sub-franchise about which I am actually still kind of excited to see where they go. Speaking of which, rumors are thick that the arrival of Nova will be a major plot point in the next movie, while teaser scenes in the trailers have hinted at Adam Warlock and the old Guardians team, headed up by Sylvester Stalone having roles in the future too. There's actually quite a bit of interesting stuff in space-Marvel, and now that Disney have gobbled up Fox and own the rights to the X-men related stuff (like the Shi'arr) they could potentially keep a subset of Marvel as a space opera franchise going for a long time. Honestly, I think that's by far the brightest future for the franchise.
- Kevin Feige confirmed "off hand" that a Dr. Strange 2 is in the works, but I'm not quite sure that Strange has risen to the level where he can be anything more interesting than the straight man off which Tony Stark played his jokes.
- Black Panther 2 has been confirmed, but I've already given my analysis of what kind of legs I believe that franchise to have.
- A Black Widow solo is confirmed, presumably a prequel. Could be fun, but where does it go, and how does it tie into the rest of the broader franchise?
- Shang-Chi is supposedly confirmed, although I can't imagine that anyone at all cares.
- An Eternals movie is in the works, supposedly, although again, I have no idea where they go or what they could do with this. Then again, Thanos was an Eternal (assuming that that's carried forward into the MCU) and even though the Eternals haven't necessarily been super popular, they have been super important as background characters, supporting characters and occasionally villains, and as Guardians of the Galaxy (and for that matter, Thor, Captain America, and Iron Man themselves) show, the MCU can take a low popularity comic book and turn it into a highly successful movie, if they do it right.
- Although nothing has been announced, Disney's acquisition of Fox allows for the full, final integration of the mutant and Fantastic Four stuff into the MCU, which of course, opens up lots of possibilities that no doubt they've already given loads of thought to. Although with the exception of about half of the X-men movies, I'd suggest that the bankability of those properties is a long way from a confirmed thing.
As Disney+ gets ready to go and Disney takes on Netflix head-on, they're trying to put their best foot forward and develop content for that too tied to the MCU, including:
- A Loki show
- A Hawkeye show (with an apprentice or squire or whatever you want to call her, in training)
- WandaVision, with Scarlet Witch and the Vision (how does Vision come back, anyway? He didn't in Endgame.)
- A Falcon and Winter Soldier show. Maybe that's the way to actually develop Falcon in a venue where he could possibly have some success.
Of course, some of this assumes Disney actually knows how to create good content, and given the fiascos with LucasFilm in recent years, some recent scares with the MCU, and the generally dismal performance of MCU-tied TV shows in general, that may well be giving them too much credit.
Overall, it's fair to say that I'm fairly bearish on the prospects of the MCU. I think it peaked this last weekend, and that it's decline and shrinkage will be both marked and rapid, as will be its turn towards radical anti-white, anti-male wokeness. Which, of course, will only hasten it's decline even more.
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