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Avengers Endgame with spoilers


Bazza

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33 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I would really like it if they'd make a movie about Spider-Man actually be about Spider-Man and not Iron Man again.

 

I'm looking forward to this, but it is clear that this is the movie for "Ok... RDJ is gone, we need a new lynch-pin character to carry the MCU for the next ten years."

 

Good luck with that Tom!  

Seriously, though, this is probably the most organic story telling of that kind of "pass the torch" we are likely to see in this. The relationship between Tony and Peter was cornerstone to a lot in the final storylines and it is the point of transition between the old guard and the new, clearly. 

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Finally got to see Endgame.

 

It had a ton of great moments, all which have already been mentioned by folks here, but it leaned on time travel as the linchpin of the plot, and none of it made a lick of sense. For that alone, I have to dock the movie a full grade.

 

I also wasn't fond of Lebowski Thor. And it bugged me that they threw characters into the big battle at the end who had little to no battlefield capability and would have been torn to shreds in seconds (Mantis, Shuri). I mean, there's a shot where Mantis is just standing there doing nothing, and you know why? Because she has no powers that are suitable for that kind of combat environment. In the comics Mantis is one of the most lethal martial artists in the galaxy, but in the MCU all of that has been stripped from her.

 

The kids in the theater I was in were all kinds of bored and fussy during a lot of the first two hours of the film. There were times when even I was tempted to look at my watch, and I question the need for it to be three hours long. I was also unfortunate enough to see this movie in Los Angeles. I'm pretty sure that in every other city in the country, numerous moments in the movie were received with rousing cheers by the audience, but Angelinos are Too Cool for School and don't react to much of anything. There was some polite clapping at the end when the closing credits began, but that was about it. This only added to my overall sense that the movie was every-so-slightly a let-down (expectations were set way too high from reactions to the movie after the first weekend, and that didn't help either). But it's not the movie's fault that I live in a city that sucks arse when it comes to fellow audience members.

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52 minutes ago, zslane said:

I also wasn't fond of Lebowski Thor. And it bugged me that they threw characters into the big battle at the end who had little to no battlefield capability and would have been torn to shreds in seconds (Mantis, Shuri). I mean, there's a shot where Mantis is just standing there doing nothing, and you know why? Because she has no powers that are suitable for that kind of combat environment. In the comics Mantis is one of the most lethal martial artists in the galaxy, but in the MCU all of that has been stripped from her.

 

The Dude of Thunder left me physically ill. I mean, I realize this is a different incarnation of Thor, and it plays to Chris Hemsworth's strengths, and much of the non-comic-reading audience seems to like it. But comic-book Thor is my favorite superhero, and the movies are moving farther and farther away from what I love about him. But that's just me.

 

I agree with you about Mantis, but I suppose they wanted to show that she's back. But Shuri has proven to be pretty effective in a fight with those sonic gauntlets of hers. She was probably packing some other useful Wakandan gadgets, too.

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But Shuri has proven to be pretty effective in a fight with those sonic gauntlets of hers. She was probably packing some other useful Wakandan gadgets, too.

 

Because, naturally, being smart and able to make gadgets means you're combat ready!  This was always a flaw with Iron Man. Just cause you can make something doesn't mean you use it well.

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In the Bond franchise, Q is good at making gadgets too, but he wouldn't take a briefcase full of his toys to the Fulda Gap (to find a Cold War battlefield that was at least remotely similar to the Endgame battefield) and fight side-by-side with NATO troops while Warsaw Pact armored divisions came crashing across the border in countless numbers. And if he did, his presence would be good for little more than comic relief as he desperately ran to hide behind the nearest tree, praying to survive the day.

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50 minutes ago, mattingly said:

The difference being that all life everywhere was about to disappear and remade in Thanos' image.

Combat-ready or not, there's not much to lose by being in the battle.

 

Sure, but when you have valuable support role abilities that could contribute decisively to a battle, you don't go out onto the field like a common foot soldier and throw your life away like so much cannon fodder. The only reason the writers did that was to simplify the final battle sequence so that they didn't have to think too hard about how to make non-combat characters contribute in ways commensurate with their unique abilities.

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3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

The Dude of Thunder left me physically ill. I mean, I realize this is a different incarnation of Thor, and it plays to Chris Hemsworth's strengths, and much of the non-comic-reading audience seems to like it. But comic-book Thor is my favorite superhero, and the movies are moving farther and farther away from what I love about him. But that's just me.

 

I agree with you about Mantis, but I suppose they wanted to show that she's back. But Shuri has proven to be pretty effective in a fight with those sonic gauntlets of hers. She was probably packing some other useful Wakandan gadgets, too.

My impression was that, while Dad Bod Thor may have been played for laughs, the subtext of it was that Thor had suffered so much profound loss, with no way to resolve in a satisfactory way, that he had kinda given up and sunk into a deep depressive state post-snap.  He lost his parents, his brother, half his Asgardian brethren, Asgard itself, and many mortal friends and allies.  That's some serious PTSD!  So I was fine with it, and I am also a huge fan of comic book Thor.  

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3 hours ago, zslane said:

In the Bond franchise, Q is good at making gadgets too, but he wouldn't take a briefcase full of his toys to the Fulda Gap (to find a Cold War battlefield that was at least remotely similar to the Endgame battefield) and fight side-by-side with NATO troops while Warsaw Pact armored divisions came crashing across the border in countless numbers. And if he did, his presence would be good for little more than comic relief as he desperately ran to hide behind the nearest tree, praying to survive the day.

 

Except that's what Shuri has already done.

 

 

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3 hours ago, massey said:

Shuri is not important.  Mantis is not important. They barely deserve the screen time they got.

 

They are not important to you. You aren't the only person the movie was made for.

 

And as far as Shuri being combat capable goes, she's a princess in a country where rule can be determined by martial prowess. It's pretty likely that she has extensive combat training.

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10 minutes ago, Dr.Device said:

 

They are not important to you. You aren't the only person the movie was made for.

 

And as far as Shuri being combat capable goes, she's a princess in a country where rule can be determined by martial prowess. It's pretty likely that she has extensive combat training.

 

No, they weren't important to me.  And they weren't important to anybody else either.  You see, it's not their movie.

 

zslane's criticism was that the writers didn't want to spend any time thinking of things for Shuri and Mantis to do in the big battle.  That's true, they didn't want to spend time thinking about it, or spend time showing it.  They are minor supporting characters.  They'll get to appear in later movies, the only thing we really needed to see in Endgame is that they're alive again.

 

What about Maria Hill?  Should she have had a bigger part than just standing there at Tony Stark's funeral?  What about Janet Van Dyne?  What about Betty Ross? Isn't it time for a Liv Tyler reappearance?  See, we can go through and pick out all sorts of supporting characters and demand that they get more screen time.  The truth is, this movie is about the original six Avengers getting revenge on Thanos, correcting their one failure, and then riding off into the sunset.  That's what it's about.

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4 minutes ago, massey said:

 

No, they weren't important to me.  And they weren't important to anybody else either.  You see, it's not their movie.

 

 

As hard as it may be to believe, you are not the universal arbiter of importance. I'm not saying they needed more screen time. I thought Shuri being in the battle made perfect sense, and I don't have a strong opinion on Mantis. If all you're saying is that it wouldn't have made sense to spend more time on them away from the battle, given their place in the story, I have no problem with that. But to just flat say that the characters are unimportant is dismissive of the people out there who do care about those characters. Those characters are important to them, and their view of the movie matters just as much as yours.

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Saw it, it was okay.  The middle part was pretty fun but the first part was... long and kind of dull and slow.  I understand they wanted to set up a sadness and so on but it was not very interesting stuff.  If I ever watch it again, lots of fast forwarding going on.  There were serious plot holes and writing issues (we've ran deep space scans and saw nothing!  Except this something Rocket mentions happened two days later solving the problem instantly).  I was disappointed with what short shrift some characters got such as Falcon and Starlord.  Dr Strange was little more than a taxi but he wasn't an avenger, but Star Lord was knocked out, kicked in the beans (twice), and basically a waste of space.  One almost gets the impression that the writers don't like him (or perhaps his actor). 

 

I liked Ant Man, who despite the open, raging contempt he's treated by everyone who bothers to speak to him was the guy with all the best lines and was endlessly optimistic, upbeat, and helpful. He was solidly heroic.  Spider-Man definitely has no danger sense in this universe for whatever reason, and that's annoying.  I don't understand why Steven Rogers aged so much since the 70s, the Super Soldier serum is supposed to retard aging too but whatever.

 

I wasn't particularly happy with the Thanos fight, tearing up the indestructible shield and knocking Cap flying by hitting his shield that absorbs all impact was kind of ridiculous, and they showed not only almost no teamwork but they turned into bad guys in a martial arts movie: one at a time even if that mean they are standing around doing nothing off screen for no reason other than "well then they might beat Thanos."

 

And yeah mopey loser Thor sucked bad.  Awful choice.  Almost as bad as Hawkeye's awful haircut.  I get the reasons but for crying out loud, the guys literally THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD he has dealt with problems and loss and sadness before.  The dude has experience we can't even begin to understand.  

 

It was entertaining, and better than the previous travesty of a film, but still too long.

 

Edit: oh yeah, one more thing: Hawkeye almost never used his bow in this movie, and fought with a sword, which somehow he's an expert in.  He couldn't beat the monsters in those... whatever tunnels they were supposed to be... with his arrows but cut them in half with his sword, while off balance, while jumping out of a pit, with one hand.  Um...  Now he's the Swordsman, I guess?

 

Oh, and Mjolnir doesn't create electricity.  Thor does.  Mjolnir is just a magic hammer.

 

One more bit: Tony REALLY doesn't believe in any radar or defenses for his bases.  Twice now some flier has just flattened the place without warning or any defense whatsoever.

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36 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

I don't understand why Steven Rogers aged so much since the 70s, the Super Soldier serum is supposed to retard aging too but whatever.

 

I wasn't particularly happy with the Thanos fight, tearing up the indestructible shield and knocking Cap flying by hitting his shield that absorbs all impact was kind of ridiculous,

 

Steve Rogers didn't go back to the 1970s. He went back to the 1940s, to be with Peggy after WW II, picking up his life where he left off when he was frozen. That's clearly the era depicted when we see them dancing together at the end of the movie. For a man a hundred years old (born 1918), I thought he looked pretty good.

 

Cap's shield in the MCU isn't the unique alloy from the comics, it's "just" vibranium, and no more "indestructible" than any other vibranium. Granted, that's still very tough. MCU Cap has also been knocked flying before when his shield was hit with powerful explosions. Besides, the shield being shredded is a classic image of Avengers defeat, including during his fight with Thanos in the Infinity Gauntlet comic series; not to mention a callback to Tony Stark's vision in Age of Ultron.

 

34 minutes ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Oh, and Mjolnir doesn't create electricity.  Thor does.  Mjolnir is just a magic hammer.

 

True. However, "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." Odin's own words during the first Thor movie.

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Steve Rogers didn't go back to the 1970s. He went back to the 1940s, to be with Peggy after WW II, picking up his life where he left off when he was frozen.


He said 70s, it was the time he was sent to in order to return the stone.  The house was old, but heck the one I live in was built in 1919.  Also, Bucky is the same age but the only thing that changed on him was the length of his hair.  Yeah he was on ice a lot, but that only slows aging, not suspends it, and he was active a lot, too.

 

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MCU Cap has also been knocked flying before when his shield was hit with powerful explosions.


And it was idiotic then, too.  Particularly when its been depicted as utterly absorbing impacts that were far greater in other instances (Thor doing a move through with Mjonir, for instance).  I'll buy that they're inconsistent but that doesn't make the writing any better.

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Wow... it’s amazing how a fairly enjoyable movie falls apart so... quickly under you guys’. Scalpel and microscopes. The cynic in me thinks, that this “clearing of the decks” is going to cut future box office anyway. The sad thing to me, is there is 50 plus years of lore and stories they could still mine from for movies, but I don’t think Marvel and Disney have it in them any more. I could be wrong, but then I look at what Star Wars became. 

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I loved Endgame for what it was: an almost perfectly executed resolution to an epic superhero story arc that included one of the darkest cliffhangers in movie history. And I know it was almost perfect because of how hard people have to work to find something to complain about. Mantis and Shuri didn’t get enough frames in a film that included literally every major character in the MCU? Thor was overweight?  Paradoxes resulting from time travel? This was a superhero movie that literally made people weep with joy!  

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I view movies objectively, as their own product.  If the writing and plotting, acting, directing, whatever don't stand up to scrutiny on their own merits, then they don't.  It doesn't matter how much I like the characters or how much nostalgia is wrapped up in the content, if its poorly written, then its poorly written.  Avengers 1 has some minor plotting issues but overall holds up extremely well because its so well done.  Just having momentum and characters you like isn't enough for me.

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