Technically speaking this post contains a few spoilers, so be aware.
Avengers: Endgame is the second and final part of the "Infinity War" two-parter, and a culmination of the so-called phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and in many ways of all the three phases so far). It's a rather impactful entry in the entire movie series in the sense that it has, perhaps, the most radical changes to the entire series (with, spoiler alert, actual permanent deaths of several major characters.)
The movie broke a whole bunch of box office records, being not only the most successful MCU film of them all, but in fact becoming the most profitable movie of all time (at least if talking about nominal dollars of revenue, ie. not inflation-adjusted), besides breaking all kinds of other box office records (such as fastest to 1 billion dollars of revenue).
Because of all these box office records, one would think that it's one of the greatest movies ever made.
Yet... I didn't really like it. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I don't mean it was a bad movie per se. I just didn't like it mainly in terms of story, worldbuilding, and especially fidelity to the source material. The first part was much more ok (even though it, too, had some more minor problems in those fields, but not as bad in my opinion), but this one just left me rather disillusioned and unenthusiastic. It may be technically one of the best MCU movies, but in those mentioned terms I consider it one of the worst.
Let's start with the more minor nitpicks, and build up to the really bad stuff.
For starters, I really, really hated Captain Marvel in this movie. In a previous post about the Captain Marvel movie I pointed out how, to my surprise, I didn't actually hate the movie even nearly as much as I was expecting and led to believe. While there was a bit of SJW message shoved in, it wasn't even nearly as bad as I thought, and other than that, the movie was actually passable.
In this movie, however, I really learned to hate that character. Luckily (and famously) she only has quite little screentime, appearing only for some minutes at the beginning, and then at the end, and that's it. But those minutes she appears, I hated every single one of them.
Why? Because she's an arrogant Mary Sue character who thinks too much of herself, and is not taught nor learns any lesson. From the very start she's presented like some kind of divine savior, like a goddess. And the first speaking lines she gets are pretty much immediately her arrogantly saying that she's just going to kill Thanos, in a really smug manner, as if that were nothing to her. She acts all high and mighty, and doesn't seem to think much of the other characters, as if she were far above everybody else. In other words, she comes out as an arrogant asshole.
In a normal story this kind of arrogant self-important asshole would have her comeuppance. She would be humiliated in some manner and taken down a peg or two, and (most often) she would eventually learn her lesson and become a bit humbler and appreciative of her own shortcomings and more respectful of others. (In this movie the most logical way for this to happen would have been, rather obviously, if Thanos had beaten her up to a pulp, and made her limp back beaten and defeated.) But not here. No comeuppance of any sort ever comes. She never learns any humility or lesson, and remains an arrogant asshole to the end, with no displayed flaws of personality or powers (in other words, she's a Mary Sue character). Luckily we had to suffer her only for a few minutes, but every one of them was annoying.
The next disappointing thing about the movie (again, spoiler alert), at the very beginning parts of it, is that they find Thanos in order to take the Infinity Stones back... and all they find is a Thanos that has essentially given up on life, does not fight back in any way, and is easily killed... well, murdered, just like that.
In the source material, the original comics, Thanos is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, even without the Infinity Stones. He's also a bit insane to some degree. I don't think the Thanos of the comics would ever just give up and let himself be killed by a bunch of lowly superheros who aren't even as powerful as him (assuming he even could be killed).
I suppose that Thanos at his strongest (before getting the stones) in the Infinity War movie is perhaps in the ballpark (eg. in that movie the Hulk attacks him with everything he's got, yet Thanos easily beats him, with no problem). However, here he's just a shadow of his former self, given up and providing no resistance whatsoever, and easily killed.
Which, by the way, ties to another problem both with this movie and especially the first one. In the source material, the comics, the Infinity Stones are immensely and unimaginably powerful. Take the depicted power of one stone in the movies and multiply it by a million, and you might be getting to the ballpark. In the comics, Thanos with just one single Infinity Stone is way, way more powerful than all the Earth superheros combined. The superheros have absolutely no chance. It's like a bunch of ants trying to kill a rampaging elephant. And that's just with one Infinity Stone.
When Thanos gets all six stones in the comics, he essentially becomes the most powerful being in the entire universe. More powerful than Galactus, more powerful than Death, more powerful than all the Cosmic Entities combined. He becomes so powerful that he could just wish the universe out of existence, and it would happen, or make any change to it he wants, without limit.
There's absolutely no way any superhero could have anything to say in this. Even the most powerful Earth superhero attacking him in this state would be like a mosquito trying to bite a tank. A tank that's a hundred billion degrees hot and consists of neutron stars. (The only reason why he ended up defeated in the comics was because he lost the gauntlet because of his own foolishness, fully because of his own doing. Essentially he tried to ascend into a godlike non-physical being without realizing that the gauntlet would not follow him, and remained in his now empty physical body.)
In the movies, however, this was toned down to a minuscule fraction. Sure, all the six stones gave him the power to wish living beings out of (or into) existence, and change things, but this power was depicted as very inconsistent. It was depicted as if that's the only thing the six stones were capable of doing, and did nothing else (such as giving him god-like powers making him orders of magnitude more powerful in battle). If the movies had been more faithful to the source material, Thanos would have been completely unbeatable even with just one stone, and absolutely beyond any reach with all six of them, the very microsecond he got the gauntlet. And the finger-snapping thing was just completely silly. (Why would wishing things out of existence require finger-snapping? Why would stopping him from snapping his fingers essentially nullify all the powers he gained from the stones? That makes absolutely no sense.)
Of course Thanos and the stones are not the only things that have been toned down considerably in the movies. Another one is the Hulk.
One particular core characteristic of the Hulk in the comics is that he has, when in the Hulk form, an extremely powerful healing factor. For example, in one comic he was blasted to almost a skeleton by some power rays shot by an enemy. The Hulk advanced towards him nevertheless, hit him unconscious, and then got healed in mere seconds, with all his flesh growing back.
Not in this movie. Here he gets severely injured by the gauntlet... and remains injured for the foreseeable future.
Overall, none of the movies after the first Avengers treated Hulk very well. In The Avengers he was well used as a powerful character. In pretty much all the subsequent movies where he appears, including this two-parter, he's just on the sidelines, even a pushover, not really doing much. In many movies Bruce Banner has much more screentime than Hulk, and I can't understand why. In Endgame he does pretty much nothing (other than get permanently injured, against the source material canon).
What about Captain America wielding the Mjolnir? Is this a departure from the comics? (Mjolnir is rather famous, both in the comics and the MCU movies, that it cannot be lifted by anybody else than Thor. For example in one comic famously the Hulk tried to lift it with all of his strength, and he couldn't.)
This isn't so clear-cut. Captain America has been shown being able to lift Mjolnir exactly twice in the entirety of the history of Marvel Comics. Both instances were very brief (one of them was him lifting the hammer and throwing it to Thor, the other was some kind of show-off after Thor had been killed.) So the comics do set the precedent that Captain America is considered "worthy" of wielding Mjolnir.
However, there is no storyline in the comics where Captain America actually wields it and uses it for battle for extensive periods of time. The only two instances that it happens are both very brief. This movie, while arguably based on these two instances, takes this concept far beyond.
According to comic canon it's not something impossible, so I suppose it gets a pass. However, I still feel like it goes a bit against the spirit of the comics universe.
And speaking of Mjolnir, Thor was completely unlikeable and disgraceful in this movie. (This was, of course, done deliberately, although I think quite unnecessarily, and he doesn't really get better even by the end, even though they tried. They tried, and it still felt hollow.)
One of the things I least like about the movie was all the time travel shenanigans. While it led to some funny scenes, the concept of the time travel itself just felt like a cheap deus ex machina. It was, in the end, too easy, too cheap, and completely arbitrarily done. And, ultimately, rather unnecessary. (After all, the movie itself establishes in the end that all the people weren't brought back by the time traveling and changing the past, but by re-retrieving the Infinity Stones. This makes the whole time traveling shenanigans pointless in the sense that it's unnecessary for that solution. Just have Thanos not destroy the stones, and make them retrieve them otherwise, or something.)
Most of the (permanent) deaths felt hollow and meaningless. I felt no emotion with them. They felt rather pointless. (The only death that would have made me feel some emotion, if it had happened, would have been that of Captain Marvel. And the emotion would have been joy, of course.)
Overall, I didn't like this movie much. It left a sour taste in my mouth, and I didn't like at all how much it deviates from the comics canon, and how many deus ex machina cheap moments it had, among a myriad of other things.
Avengers: Endgame is the second and final part of the "Infinity War" two-parter, and a culmination of the so-called phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (and in many ways of all the three phases so far). It's a rather impactful entry in the entire movie series in the sense that it has, perhaps, the most radical changes to the entire series (with, spoiler alert, actual permanent deaths of several major characters.)
The movie broke a whole bunch of box office records, being not only the most successful MCU film of them all, but in fact becoming the most profitable movie of all time (at least if talking about nominal dollars of revenue, ie. not inflation-adjusted), besides breaking all kinds of other box office records (such as fastest to 1 billion dollars of revenue).
Because of all these box office records, one would think that it's one of the greatest movies ever made.
Yet... I didn't really like it. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I don't mean it was a bad movie per se. I just didn't like it mainly in terms of story, worldbuilding, and especially fidelity to the source material. The first part was much more ok (even though it, too, had some more minor problems in those fields, but not as bad in my opinion), but this one just left me rather disillusioned and unenthusiastic. It may be technically one of the best MCU movies, but in those mentioned terms I consider it one of the worst.
Let's start with the more minor nitpicks, and build up to the really bad stuff.
For starters, I really, really hated Captain Marvel in this movie. In a previous post about the Captain Marvel movie I pointed out how, to my surprise, I didn't actually hate the movie even nearly as much as I was expecting and led to believe. While there was a bit of SJW message shoved in, it wasn't even nearly as bad as I thought, and other than that, the movie was actually passable.
In this movie, however, I really learned to hate that character. Luckily (and famously) she only has quite little screentime, appearing only for some minutes at the beginning, and then at the end, and that's it. But those minutes she appears, I hated every single one of them.
Why? Because she's an arrogant Mary Sue character who thinks too much of herself, and is not taught nor learns any lesson. From the very start she's presented like some kind of divine savior, like a goddess. And the first speaking lines she gets are pretty much immediately her arrogantly saying that she's just going to kill Thanos, in a really smug manner, as if that were nothing to her. She acts all high and mighty, and doesn't seem to think much of the other characters, as if she were far above everybody else. In other words, she comes out as an arrogant asshole.
In a normal story this kind of arrogant self-important asshole would have her comeuppance. She would be humiliated in some manner and taken down a peg or two, and (most often) she would eventually learn her lesson and become a bit humbler and appreciative of her own shortcomings and more respectful of others. (In this movie the most logical way for this to happen would have been, rather obviously, if Thanos had beaten her up to a pulp, and made her limp back beaten and defeated.) But not here. No comeuppance of any sort ever comes. She never learns any humility or lesson, and remains an arrogant asshole to the end, with no displayed flaws of personality or powers (in other words, she's a Mary Sue character). Luckily we had to suffer her only for a few minutes, but every one of them was annoying.
The next disappointing thing about the movie (again, spoiler alert), at the very beginning parts of it, is that they find Thanos in order to take the Infinity Stones back... and all they find is a Thanos that has essentially given up on life, does not fight back in any way, and is easily killed... well, murdered, just like that.
In the source material, the original comics, Thanos is one of the most powerful beings in the universe, even without the Infinity Stones. He's also a bit insane to some degree. I don't think the Thanos of the comics would ever just give up and let himself be killed by a bunch of lowly superheros who aren't even as powerful as him (assuming he even could be killed).
I suppose that Thanos at his strongest (before getting the stones) in the Infinity War movie is perhaps in the ballpark (eg. in that movie the Hulk attacks him with everything he's got, yet Thanos easily beats him, with no problem). However, here he's just a shadow of his former self, given up and providing no resistance whatsoever, and easily killed.
Which, by the way, ties to another problem both with this movie and especially the first one. In the source material, the comics, the Infinity Stones are immensely and unimaginably powerful. Take the depicted power of one stone in the movies and multiply it by a million, and you might be getting to the ballpark. In the comics, Thanos with just one single Infinity Stone is way, way more powerful than all the Earth superheros combined. The superheros have absolutely no chance. It's like a bunch of ants trying to kill a rampaging elephant. And that's just with one Infinity Stone.
When Thanos gets all six stones in the comics, he essentially becomes the most powerful being in the entire universe. More powerful than Galactus, more powerful than Death, more powerful than all the Cosmic Entities combined. He becomes so powerful that he could just wish the universe out of existence, and it would happen, or make any change to it he wants, without limit.
There's absolutely no way any superhero could have anything to say in this. Even the most powerful Earth superhero attacking him in this state would be like a mosquito trying to bite a tank. A tank that's a hundred billion degrees hot and consists of neutron stars. (The only reason why he ended up defeated in the comics was because he lost the gauntlet because of his own foolishness, fully because of his own doing. Essentially he tried to ascend into a godlike non-physical being without realizing that the gauntlet would not follow him, and remained in his now empty physical body.)
In the movies, however, this was toned down to a minuscule fraction. Sure, all the six stones gave him the power to wish living beings out of (or into) existence, and change things, but this power was depicted as very inconsistent. It was depicted as if that's the only thing the six stones were capable of doing, and did nothing else (such as giving him god-like powers making him orders of magnitude more powerful in battle). If the movies had been more faithful to the source material, Thanos would have been completely unbeatable even with just one stone, and absolutely beyond any reach with all six of them, the very microsecond he got the gauntlet. And the finger-snapping thing was just completely silly. (Why would wishing things out of existence require finger-snapping? Why would stopping him from snapping his fingers essentially nullify all the powers he gained from the stones? That makes absolutely no sense.)
Of course Thanos and the stones are not the only things that have been toned down considerably in the movies. Another one is the Hulk.
One particular core characteristic of the Hulk in the comics is that he has, when in the Hulk form, an extremely powerful healing factor. For example, in one comic he was blasted to almost a skeleton by some power rays shot by an enemy. The Hulk advanced towards him nevertheless, hit him unconscious, and then got healed in mere seconds, with all his flesh growing back.
Not in this movie. Here he gets severely injured by the gauntlet... and remains injured for the foreseeable future.
Overall, none of the movies after the first Avengers treated Hulk very well. In The Avengers he was well used as a powerful character. In pretty much all the subsequent movies where he appears, including this two-parter, he's just on the sidelines, even a pushover, not really doing much. In many movies Bruce Banner has much more screentime than Hulk, and I can't understand why. In Endgame he does pretty much nothing (other than get permanently injured, against the source material canon).
What about Captain America wielding the Mjolnir? Is this a departure from the comics? (Mjolnir is rather famous, both in the comics and the MCU movies, that it cannot be lifted by anybody else than Thor. For example in one comic famously the Hulk tried to lift it with all of his strength, and he couldn't.)
This isn't so clear-cut. Captain America has been shown being able to lift Mjolnir exactly twice in the entirety of the history of Marvel Comics. Both instances were very brief (one of them was him lifting the hammer and throwing it to Thor, the other was some kind of show-off after Thor had been killed.) So the comics do set the precedent that Captain America is considered "worthy" of wielding Mjolnir.
However, there is no storyline in the comics where Captain America actually wields it and uses it for battle for extensive periods of time. The only two instances that it happens are both very brief. This movie, while arguably based on these two instances, takes this concept far beyond.
According to comic canon it's not something impossible, so I suppose it gets a pass. However, I still feel like it goes a bit against the spirit of the comics universe.
And speaking of Mjolnir, Thor was completely unlikeable and disgraceful in this movie. (This was, of course, done deliberately, although I think quite unnecessarily, and he doesn't really get better even by the end, even though they tried. They tried, and it still felt hollow.)
One of the things I least like about the movie was all the time travel shenanigans. While it led to some funny scenes, the concept of the time travel itself just felt like a cheap deus ex machina. It was, in the end, too easy, too cheap, and completely arbitrarily done. And, ultimately, rather unnecessary. (After all, the movie itself establishes in the end that all the people weren't brought back by the time traveling and changing the past, but by re-retrieving the Infinity Stones. This makes the whole time traveling shenanigans pointless in the sense that it's unnecessary for that solution. Just have Thanos not destroy the stones, and make them retrieve them otherwise, or something.)
Most of the (permanent) deaths felt hollow and meaningless. I felt no emotion with them. They felt rather pointless. (The only death that would have made me feel some emotion, if it had happened, would have been that of Captain Marvel. And the emotion would have been joy, of course.)
Overall, I didn't like this movie much. It left a sour taste in my mouth, and I didn't like at all how much it deviates from the comics canon, and how many deus ex machina cheap moments it had, among a myriad of other things.
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