It took Liz and me awhile to see it because we were out on vacation…but I do have to say: it was worth the wait. What a colossal project to put together and make work…and I enjoyed it!
THE BLURB:
Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and the rest of the Avengers unite to battle their most powerful enemy yet — the evil Thanos. On a mission to collect all six Infinity Stones, Thanos plans to use the artifacts to inflict his twisted will on reality. The fate of the planet and existence itself has never been more uncertain as everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment.
WHAT WORKED:
Man…the overall STORY. It was Space Opera and I was THERE for it. The various storylines were excting, fun, unpredictable, they put our beloved characters in interesting situations…in a word: it WORKED.
Keep in mind when you’re going to see this movie that it is part ONE of a longer two-part story. Or maybe even more parts than that, since we have at least one movie (Ant-Man) coming out before we see the next Avengers installment. That is to say, this movie ends on a cliffhanger with our characters, nay the UNIVERSE, in peril. It’s not a happy ending. I did know this going in, and I wonder if I’d have felt differently if I hadn’t. Probably not 😛
We got to go back to Wakanda, which was dope. The Guardians got to hang out with Thor, which was dope. More Spider-man/Iron Man stuff, which…was dope. Even Doctor Strange was more interesting in this movie than he was in his own movie.
Thanos is a pretty worth villain, too, and well-played by Josh Brolin (who’s also playing another Marvel villain this summer in the next Deadpool movie). I do have some quibbles with Thanos that we’ll get to…but overall, the movie did such a good job balancing our heroes and putting them in interesting situations–and making things actually funny when they’re supposed to be funny–that I just accepted the villain, I guess.
It really, truly is amazing how much good will you can engender with an audience when you have a cast of characters and actors that the audience truly and whole-heartedly love…and Marvel has done that more than any other cinematic universe in Hollywood history. I was in on this movie because I was unconditionally in with THEM.
I mean, when this movie goes dark and some things go down…there were people crying out “No!” to the screen watching it happen. That’s the currency, right there, with which we buy stories. Bravo.
WHAT DIDN’T WORK:
Mainly, I have to say Thanos. I don’t get him. I mean, I definitely get what his PLAN is, I’m not saying it’s confusing. What I’m saying is I don’t understand the WHY of his plan at all. They do explain it, but it doesn’t make sense. It seems thin and arbitrary, and I guess, not REALISTIC. It’s also completely unclear how this catastrophe back on his home planet then applies to the rest of the galaxy, or why he’d become hellbent on exacting his plan on the rest of the universe.
All of that is to say that Thanos is not enough of a monster…and when we’re supposed to believe that he might NOT be a monster, we don’t believe that either. And the latter, which is a scene with his daughter Gamora, is a HUGELY crucial scene in the movie that I just did not believe whatsoever.
The other weakness, surprisingly, was Peter Quill. No so much as a fault of Chris Pratt, who plays Star Lord with the same characteristics he always has…but in how they WRITE Quill, and the decisions they have him make throughout the flim. They make him really, really weak, and because of that, unfortunately annoying. They also do something early on with Loki that I thought was too big, ham-handed, and early on in the narrative for us to grasp or care what just happened.
This is easily the second-best Avengers movie, which, admittedly, isn’t saying a ton given that Age of Ultron was pretty fucking disappointing. This one is NOT disappointing. It’s fun. It’s exciting. Stuff goes wrong, horribly wrong, and it makes me want to continue watching to see what happens next. Plus…it’s comic-book Space Opera. How can I not love it??? 🙂
7 out of 10 – enough fun for everyone