Avengers: Endgame Review
Avengers: Endgame
This review contains spoilers.
Endgame is the capstone to a 22-movie cycle of superhero films set in a singular self-contained universe, starting in 2008. In 11 years, two movies have come out each year, some of them origin stories for newly introduced characters, others sequels that told more about the adventures, and included team-ups and crossovers. This final piece, does have some strong potential, but rather than the film focusing on the strength of characterization, the film literally rests on its laurels, looking backward, rather than making a coherent and progressive film within its genre.
Through the three hour piece, which I believe was far too long, I sequestered three sections of the film: 1) Infinity War aftermath, 2) Time Heist 3) The final battle.
The film begins with Iron Man, War Machine, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Rocket Raccoon, Black Widow, and the newest member to the team, Captain Marvel, as they find out where Thanos is, but it is too late, and he has already destroyed the magic gems that has killed all their friends. In a fit of rage, Thor kills Thanos.
Five years pass, and the Avengers sit and mope, accepting defeat, and trying to move on. The first hour of this movie was filled with dreary, dark landscapes. The characters speak to the audience like action figures, their lines pulling from years of context and easter eggs, rather than speaking to any sort of character development and actual human involvement. The writers were more interested in making a joke that Dr. Strange lived on Bleeker Street in Manhattan, rather than ever acknowledging Thor murdered Thanos in the first 20 minutes of the film. The actor’s lines were stale, blurting out plot details that seemed to be for the sake of the plot than have anything for the actors to do. Most of the cast were going through the motions and speaking with plastic, generic lines. Not one point did I feel like they really lost something. I was just being told it by these broad strokes of character development. I would argue you could exchange the lines of Black Widow with Captain America, or Ant-Man with Iron Man, and there would be little to no difference at all.
The second hour, the time heist, was something unique to the films, with the characters traveling to different eras of the MCU, such as the Battle of New York from the first Avengers film, or the planet where Star Lord finds the Power Stone from Guardians of the Galaxy. While I enjoyed the trip that they took, I also felt like it was a self-indulgent masturbatory romp through their past films. In one end, it could be interesting to see Hulk see how frightening he once was when he had less control of his powers. Or Iron Man seeing at one point where he nearly died in New York. But instead, the film brings more attention to calling out easter eggs, and revisiting past favorites played in different angles. Most of these scenes felt like they were just for the audience to say, “Hey, remember this,” and reward the viewer who can sing along to the Guardians soundtrack, and name every line from Avengers.
That isn’t to say everything is so bad. There’s a strong sequence where Tony Stark goes back to the 70’s and sees his father, while Cap enters the office of Peggy Carter, his love interest from a film that came out in 2011. To me, these were the highlights of the second hour, and for a brief moment, you remember that Tony Stark once built armor in a cave, with a box of scraps, because he needed to live for himself, not because he had to save the world.
All of this leads to Endgame being just a love letter to a world that was created, rather than focusing on the individual heroes who elevated it. What I think I enjoyed the most about Infinity War was that it was a twisted hero’s journey. Thanos was the main character who grew and progressed in order to achieve his goals, killing his own daughter in order to save the universe. Although his concepts of morality were as unrealistic as the MCU’s concept of space travel, he was about as developed as any other superhero that these movies had. Yet, when Thor kills him in the beginning of the movie, all of that is wiped out. Thanos could have been replaced with Ronan from Guardians, or anyone else, and it would have made little difference. In that last hour, he became just another emotionless space villain to the audience.
The final battle is a spectacle. Every character gets an action moment. Pepper Potts dons Iron Man armor. Black Panther runs, jumps, and kicks through a crowd. Spider-Man turns on an instant kill function in his suit. Every character pretty much gets a shining moment. Even Captain Marvel returns to go toe to toe with Thanos at one moment, a fight that many fans were waiting for. It’s a little bit of a shame the film resorted to washed out grey tones and dark colors, replacing what was supposed to be upstate New York with a nameless dirt battlefield, making the entire fight a series of grey blobs punctuated with the occasional laser beam. Where are the bright, exciting colors that made the battle of New York in Avengers so great? Or the vibrant orange and greens from Guardians? It was great seeing robot arms pop out of Spider-Man’s suit, but unfortunately, it was so dark and bleak, it looked like a bunch of grey sticks poking through play-doh. Thrilling stuff.
Of course, at the end, there are some deaths, both good and bad. I wasn’t particularly emotional at the end, but I understand it’s a goodbye to a character. Heroes live. Heroes die. Heroes grow old.
This was a Marvel movie that was about the Marvel movie. An ensemble piece at its best, or perhaps its worst. It has some good moments, but overall it is overstuffed, overfluffed, rewarding the the viewer for lasting 11 years, 21 movies, and three hours, at the cost of a good story with characters that were defined by better movies that than this one.
Back in the day, Marvel Comics used to give out something called a “No Prize” to readers who figured out obscure trivia, or spotted certain references. Receiving a No Prize is a badge of honor for the nerdiest and self-indulgent. Like the fabled No Prize, Endgame is a slip of paper, that does very little other than titillate the mind of the individual who gets gratification for being the ultimate fan.
Giveaway Contest: We’re giving away fifteen vintage paperback classics by Edgar Allan Poe, J.D. Salinger, Aldous Huxley, Nevil Shute, Shakespeare, and others! Won’t this collection look lovely on your shelf? :D
To win these classics, you must: 1) be following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblog this post. We will choose a random winner on May 20, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. And yes, we’ll ship to any country. Easy, right? Good luck!
The collection, due to be published in April 2017 by Simon & Schuster imprint Scribner, is mainly drawn from stories written in the mid and late 1930s. It ranges from work that Fitzgerald was unable to sell because its “subject matter or style departed from what editors expected of [the author] in the 1930s”, Scribner said, to writing that he submitted to magazines, and which was accepted for publication but never printed.
Scribner promised the collection featured “Fitzgerald writing about controversial topics, depicting young men and women who actually spoke and thought more as young men and women did, without censorship”.
The US publisher added: “Rather than permit changes and sanitising by his contemporary editors, Fitzgerald preferred to let his work remain unpublished, even at a time when he was in great need of money and review attention.”
The title story of the collection, I’d Die for You, draws from the time Fitzgerald spent in the mountains of North Carolina, mired in alcoholism, his wife Zelda in a sanatorium nearby.
I’m on a gamble for this… it could be good, but it may just be a lot of crap. You don’t know whether the editors didn’t like his stuff, or maybe he was just bad. We’ve waited 80 years for these stories. I can wait for the reviews to see if it’s worth it.
Adult Swim Singles presents: Run The Jewels “Talk to Me”
FROM THE UPCOMING ALBUM RTJ3
Two-page Kamandi spreads by Jack Kirby. Incredible.
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Oh hey wwj
I liked this movie, but this stuff is better than the movie
David Bowie on the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1975. Photo by Steve Schapiro
yummy
“Getting” yourself to write
Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.
Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.
But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.
Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.
We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.
The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.
So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.
Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.
Daniel José Older, in my favorite article on writing ever, has this to say to the people who admonish writers to write every day:
Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.
The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:
For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns its being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.
Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we want to do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!
Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.
Next post: freewriting
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I need to read this again and again and again
I like this