Like most successful businesses since the dawn of capitalism, Marvel has become hyper fixated on growth. Once a few movies broke a billion dollars at the box office, now every movie needs to be a homerun. Bigger stakes, bigger explosions, bigger ensembles, more explosions, more jokes, more CGI. More films, more TV. Bigger and more. More and bigger.
In 2012, part of the fun of the buildup to The Avengers was excitedly wondering, “how is all of this going to fit together?” That was a legitimate question because all of the initial films were relatively standalone. Tony in Iron Man and Bruce in Incredible Hulk lived in our world, but their own parts of our world. The stakes of those films essentially were, “is my boss/father-in-law going to kill me because I’m super?” Now, 30 films or whatever in, the world is no longer our own, it’s the MCU, a world where half the world’s population disappeared for 5 years and came back and where a Nazi hacker group unleashed everyone’s data and where a giant statue appeared in the ocean and where aliens attacked New York City and where Norse Gods are real and magic is real and so on.
The world is so much not our world that each new movie has to remind us what happened before. And they have to tell us what is happening next. The movie can’t just be the movie; it’s also a backdoor pilot to a TV show you may or may not watch and a sequel to 7 different movies over the past 15 years.
And since each subsequent movie has to be bigger, even successors to the good ones like Guardians 1 have to add new characters to the ensemble and give them each their own little arcs. Which is how we end up with a 2.5 hour Guardians 3. (Which is fine, a story should be exactly as long as it takes to tell). The Guardians are no longer 5 well thought out characters, there’s like 12 of them. More. And they all need to be part of the story, so there’s more arcs. More. And all those arcs have to tie up together (that’s just how stories are told), so the climax is now even bigger. Bigger and more.
And this wouldn’t be a big deal if I actually wanted more. But most of the new members of the team were not part of the original fivesome for a reason. The best part of the team has always been Rocket and for some reason he’s unconscious for most of the film. So instead of spending time with the best character we spend time with bad characters like Nebula and Kraglin and one-note characters like Drax and Mantis (they each have one joke and Gunn tells that joke like a dad supervising a sleepover).
This movie isn’t bad by any means. In fact, it’s probably the strongest film Marvel has put out since Shang Chi (in my opinion; dumber minds disagree). People who love the first two will certainly like or love this entry. It still has the same strengths as the best Marvel films with the same faults as the worst. But a CGI explosion and scream fest amped up to 11 numbs the senses to the point I barely registered the strong emotional beats of the Rocket story that probably should be the highlight of this entire Marvel Phase. Fortunately, Gunn’s pull with the studio was able to limit the amount of Easter eggs/acknowledgements/winks that the rest of the phase feels emboldened to; winks that only serve to please fans who get validation from recognizing something.
Those fans will like the inclusion of this still despite the fact I’m mocking them.
Regardless, basically all of the current Marvel films are bogged down with being sequels and stepping stones to the next thing all at the same time, wasting scenes and dialogue catching viewers up and preparing them for what is next, problems the original Iron Man was free from, save for an at-the-time fun post-credits scene teasing the future. And with G3, Gunn took this as a closing chapter, so the story also has to be a fond farewell to the characters, adding even more baggage to an already full plane. Where the MCU films used to be tight, well-oiled machines, they’ve become Howl’s Moving Castle. It gets where it’s going, but is a plodding monstrosity on its way there.
One good thing: the running “bad dog” bit.
One bad thing: whatever the hell Will Poulter’s character was.
69/100. Nice.
Please stop making these movies for like 5 years. Let us miss them for 10 seconds.
Starring Tom Holland, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zendaya, and Samuel L. Jackson
Seen in theater on Independence Day with friends for once
Non-spoiler thoughts
I’m pretty mixed on this one. Overall, it’s a pretty good movie (very good when compared to most modern action movies) and everything on paper is Grade A material. But for some reason the themes and intended emotions didn’t really come together. The action set-pieces are often very good (and only occasionally meh) and the plot itself is actually well thought out and is carried out in ways I haven’t seen before. And the small-scale personal problems Peter deals with in the movie are 100% appropriate and in-tune with the Spider-Man character. The issue I have is that the small scale and large scale problems felt forced together and didn’t really compliment each other or flow seamlessly together. I think if I watched this movie in 4 minute clips I would think they were all amazing. I’m just not convinced the 30 clips come together to form an altogether amazing film.
Again, on paper, I give all high marks. The acting is consistently good to great. Between this and Euphoria on HBO, Zendaya is clearly letting it be known she’s a talented actor. As every 14 year old in America will attest to, Holland is one of the MCU’s best finds. And Gyllenhaal always brings his A-Game and does some very entertaining things in the back half of this movie.
I just wish the movie worked a little better. The prior movie (Homecoming) hit a near perfect tone, making the movie both an action and a high school teen movie. This sequel (the 3rd Spider-Man 2 I have seen in theater in the past 15 years) tries to carry this tone over, but often ends up being just kind of goofy and loose. None of the scenes are bad, they’re just sort of strong filler. Like the writer thought, “I introduced these teachers to the story, I guess I should give them something to do” and that’s that. The movie ends up stuck in a weird limbo. Spider-man is the “friendly neighborhood” hero, but he’s in these massive cities dealing with oversized and overpowered threats. They’re complaining about small problems while running from monsters. As a result, the secondary characters have actions that are technically justified but seem slightly out of place in this film. And there’s a lot of this over the two hours, so there’s a lot of film that feels slightly off.
It’s hard to really explain my thoughts without going into spoiler territory. Which brings us to:
Spoiler thoughts
Everyone* only cares about twists and end credit stuff. I’ll get the end credit stuff out of the way. I don’t care. I never care. If one of the most notable things about your movie happens in or after the credits, your movie is a failure. If the information uncovered is important to the film I just watched, it should be included in the actual film. If it’s important to the next film, then I’ll care about it once I start watching that next film. I don’t need to be teased along to a movie that doesn’t even exist yet. I’ve never watched a sequel because of the teaser tacked onto its predecessor. And yes, I know why the studios do it. I don’t know why so many people fall for it. So yes, people now know Spider-Man’s real name. Cool, I’ll think about again when Spider-Man 3 comes out. And that wasn’t really Nick Fury the whole time. Okay? Is that supposed to change the way I viewed the film? Then include it in the film. I’m glad Ben Mendelsohn got another check, though. He deserves it. Oh, it was fun seeing JK Simmons again. I have no problem with that (I have no problem with any of it existing, I just don’t care about it being tacked on). But seeing JK Simmons for 40 seconds doesn’t make this movie any better or worse. It’s just reminding me of another set of films. Great work! I’m not a director, but if I was, I would want people thinking about my film, not the film this is a reboot of. So now back to the actual film we all saw:
The twist was pretty good. Nothing mind-blowing (we’ve seen plenty of switch-a-roos before in this franchise) but the execution was good. Obviously, comic fans will already know Mysterio’s character, but I wasn’t sure how he was going to be used in this movie. I assumed upfront he was the villain but had no problem accepting he was a good guy; maybe he’ll turn later. I did think the character was sort of a waste of Jake’s talents at first, but once the flip happens, you totally understand why he took the part (other than the bump in his bank account). Ham doesn’t often work on screen, and Gyllenhaal nails the ham. His character is a bit eccentric and theatrical and he brings it all out at the right times. His scene in the fake bar where he toasts his minions is probably my favorite of the movie. Marvel villains are often weak (as detailed in my thoughts on Captain Marvel) with hard to understand motives, and I think Far From Home makes a compelling enough case for why Mysterio would do this. He saw the void left by Iron Man and felt he had the resources and desire to fill it. It’s unclear how pure his motives were, but it all makes sense. It was done a bit better in The Incredibles, but that’s true for most aspects of filmmaking. And they did a nice job of connecting his and his minions motives back to earlier films without hitting us over the head with it (something Endgame failed at miserably).
The droid tech and illusion stuff was all really cool. I wish these movies embraced science fiction more and this movie really came through. I know we don’t yet have that technology, but it’s actually a little frightening thinking about how entire events in your life could be completely falsified and you’d have no idea none of it was real. Terrorist attacks could be faked or thwarted. Maybe this was a commentary on Fake News? Anyway. A couple of the scenes where Mysterio essentially fights by making Peter see things that aren’t really happening were awesome. It really went away from the cliches these films tend to fall into. And I liked that Peter solved it in a way only Spider-Man could. With his super intuition. It was cinematic and exciting. In fact, this movie, despite its flaws, made me realize that Spider-Man is probably the most cinematic of all the MCU characters. I think he’ll shine in even the worst written movies. (Thor is second place.)
My main issue, as discussed above, is just that the themes and subplots are not worked well into the greater story. Sadly, I think this is one of the MCU’s weakest scripts. This movie could have been pretty bad if such talented actors weren’t saying the lines. I think the screenwriter knew the themes weren’t working because he has Peter literally state his personal goals (a standard aspect of screenwriting is giving your character personal goals to deal with along with the big picture goals). Obviously Peter has to try to save the world and everything. That’s big picture. But he also wants to be on vacation and tell MJ how he feels. Do you know how I know this? Because he says it outloud like four times. Once alone would have been poor screenwriting. And he says it in every act to several different characters. Even the big picture conflict had to be awkwardly stated. Peter tells Fury to his face that he doesn’t want to help fight bad guys this summer, and Fury makes him. What’s weird is that the writers seemed to forget this conversation happened because when Peter is later distracted in battle, Fury chastises him and says he’s acting like he doesn’t want to be there. Well yeah, he tried to get out of it and you forced him to come. The whole exchange was inorganic and contrived, even for a superhero story.
Lastly, I hope this is the end of the Tony Stark love letter. This spring we got a 3 hour film about how important Iron Man is, which is fine. Whatever. People loved it, and he’s a great character. So what do they follow it up with? A 2 hour film about how important Tony Stark was. I actually really liked that this movie dealt with the aftermath of Infinity War and what that would do to real people, and of course they had to acknowledge that characters like Peter would be very broken up after the funeral. But Iron Man was almost an invisible character in this movie. Homecoming is almost a two-hander, a team up movie between Peter and Tony (and it’s great). The sequel didn’t need to be so much about Tony again. It all worked, plot wise, but I got a bit weary of it. So I hope that’s the end of it.
Also, I hope all the people who keep talking about Endgame like it’s the end of the MCU will stop that asinine narrative. This movie is a DIRECT sequel to it. Stop being daft.
*I know, not everyone
One good thing: There’s a nice moment after Peter says he can’t fill the Iron Man shoes where he’s working with the Stark tech exactly how Tony would and Happy is glad to have that back in his life.
One bad thing: Does anyone happen to know if Peter wanted to do anything in particular while on vacation? I wish he had told us…
Should you care? It’s a Marvel movie. I bet you already know. It’s Spider-Man, so it’s one of the better recent ones.
74/100 I guess? Mid-tier MCU, the best one since Black Panther though.
If you haven’t yet, definitely watch Into the Spider-Verse; currently on Netflix, forever in our hearts. It’s (pardon the pun) Amazing.
Seen opening day in a packed but yet sorta muted theater
Spoiler-y thoughts
I read recently that Roger Ebert said something along the lines of “it’s not what the movie is about, it’s how it’s about it.” It’s basically all I think about now. With that said:
I tried to go into this movie open-minded. Infinity War was so alarmingly well regarded that I assumed my mixed response to it was just a “me” thing, so I tried to put myself in the mindspace that this follow-up would surely be a better experience. But then the prologue happens. 20 minutes or so of nearly egregiously bad scenes, featuring some career low performing by Robert Downey, Jr. Then I see it’s just to catch us up from IW, so whatever. But it is then followed up with 40 more minutes of mediocre material. The movie indicates this story is serious, but gives us a bunch of goofy side plots and dumb character moments. I would have expected some of these ideas on the cutting room floor of Saturday Night Live. “Hey, what if Hulk, who either really cool or really smart, is instead willingly stuck in the middle as a jolly amusement park character? And he won’t fight or be good at science, he’ll just be in the way!” “Hey, what if Thor wears a bad fat suit and an even worse wig the whole movie and his character just wanders around like he’s in a bad 80s sex comedy?” Actually, that sounds much better the way I wrote it than it played on screen. Fortunately Chris Hemsworth gives a solid-gold performance with the awful material he was given. (He’s easily my favorite character in the MCU and I hope he gets some great non-MCU roles soon). I always wasn’t a fan of the “Ant-Man turns into a baby and pees himself” bit but it wasn’t facially awful, I just didn’t think it quite worked. It’s the rare single in an hour of foul balls and infield flies.
What’s a shame is that this first hour, once it does the five year jump, gives us a taste of what was going on during this lost time period, and so many of the ideas were much better than the story we end up getting. Black Widow running a new version of the Guardians, led by Captain Marvel? Where’s that movie? Hawkeye is an angry and depressed vigilante? Seriously awesome. I can’t believe Jeremy Renner only got to fake be in that movie. Even Captain America working as a grief counselor was really good.
Fortunately the second hour is pretty good. Not top tier MCU, but good enough. I like that it veers more into adventure and not pure action. Splitting the group up makes sense and the three different settings and time periods helped keep the story interesting. It was probably pretty fun for the actors to get to replay scenes from the early films. But at this point the movie really becomes self homage. Homage is fine, and really in style the past few years in blockbusters, but it’s one of my least favorite things for a franchise to do. “People liked this, so instead of evolving from that, let’s just do it again. Afterall, we know they already like it!” Some of the moments were nicely done (especially the Cap elevator allusion), I just got a bit weary of it after a while. One (weird) complaint of these movies is that you need to watch so many others before watching this, and this essentially says “hey you don’t have to watch the others, we’ll just show it all again here.” But I did see the movies. I don’t need 40 minutes of flashback and catch-up. This will be an unpopular reaction. I loved Iron Man and Guardians 1 because it was fresh and clever. This was the opposite of that. It’s fun, though, which I know is important. And I know I’ve been negative, even though it’s the strongest chunk of the film.
I have to say that final battle was a huge letdown. I get it on paper: literally everyone shows up, standing in a line, facing down the enemy, and they charge together. But it essentially is just 20 minutes of CGI punching of faceless creatures. The main Avengers themselves are apparently unable to even do much other than punch, until Captain Marvel comes back as a pseudo Deus Ex Machina to save them. What should have been exciting ended up as just a jumbled mash of computer graphics doing cliche fighting. It looked like an extended PS4 cutscene. I’m just a bit disappointed they couldn’t do anything a bit more creative for the last big moment. If you had asked an unimaginative 6th grader to guess how the movie would end, they probably would have ended up being right. Shame.
There are two great moments in the movie. The obvious one is Cap using Thor’s hammer. Very cool. It pays off the only good moment in the bad Avengers: Age of Ultron. The other was also Cap, when he’s forced to fight his younger self back in New York. Chris Evans does a good job playing the two slightly differently, with the older Steve being emotionally exhausted. I also think it is one of the better filmed fight scenes in the movie.
However, there are a couple of bad scenes, and movies like this should have exactly zero bad scenes. The main offender is the truly awful scene of Tony walking around with his father discussing parenting. It’s forced dialogue and hamfisted themes take away from an otherwise good scene in a time period the franchise hasn’t actually spent any time. What’s annoying is that it’s played simultaneously with Steve stumbling upon Agent Carter’s office, and him choosing to leave after getting a glimpse of her. I know that moment pays off later, but it’s also just much better done than Tony lumbering around.
And look, time travel is tough to use well in a movie. It almost always is nonsense. It generally only works if the point of the movie is the time travel (like the oft mentioned Back to the Future) and not as a solution within the movie. And I know what some fans who want to explain away all flaws will say: “who cares if the time travel makes sense? It’s not the point!!!” Sure, if that works for you. Sometimes that’s an adequate explanation. As long as it’s not the point. But the movie itself goes to a lot of trouble to try to explain how this time travel works and why it works and what will happen if it doesn’t work. For certain emotional and mechanical beats to work, we the audience have to care about the time travel. If we don’t care how it works, then we don’t really care if they screw something up in the past. Because why would we care; it clearly doesn’t matter, right? And beyond the multiple scenes dedicated to explaining time travel not being very engaging movie watching, I’m just not sure the explanations make sense. So you can go into the past of your own timeline, seriously change things, then go back to your own timeline with nothing being different, but you must go fix the things you changed (but only fix certain key things) or you will mess up the future of other unrelated timelines? Yeah, okay. I’m really glad this poorly conceived version of time travel is key to the universe’s salvation. And maybe I’m nitpicking (I don’t think I am) but if you can change things in the past without affecting your timeline, then how was Steve able to stay in the past but still come along in the current reality of the film? I know, it was a very nice moment, I just wish it had fit in with the rest of the “science.” And what happened to Loki?
One last thing: Captain Marvel is so poorly used. She’s a cool superhero for sure, and Larson is pretty good in the role, but they clearly felt she was too strong for their to be any real conflict. She shows up at the last second to save Tony (okay fine), flies them across the galaxy in mere hours, follows along for 5 minutes, then makes a vague excuse to leave for the rest of the movie. Why? Because she’s too strong. She could single handedly get all 5 stones without suffering any damage, be able to wield the infinity gauntlet (since she herself is composed of similar power), and just kill Thanos again if needed. They even show her get hit by Thanos without budging. So I get it, she has to leave. But then why even introduce her to the franchise if you can’t use her? But then she’s brought back at the last second to save the day. Come on.
One good thing: Paul Rudd killed it. Chris Hemsworth is once again the MVP.
One bad thing: It’s about 80 minutes too long.
Should you care? I bet you already have your mind made up on this one.
69/100, quite a letdown. Not a bad movie, but not a good movie by any means.
Starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jude Law
Seen in IMAX opening weekend
Non-spoiler thoughts
When people dismiss these movies as “just a Marvel movie,” the quality of Captain Marvel is what they’re referring to. And it’s often not fair. Black Pantherand Thor Ragnorak are much much better than “just a Marvel movie” for instance. But the movies are never bad. Some are a mess or merely nothing special, but they’re all at least all right, even stuff like Age of Ultron or Thor 2. And Captain Marvel is definitely better than “all right.” But it’s not really anything special beyond what it means to people in real life. There are no bad scenes and a few interesting ones. And then a lot of standard Marvel filler. And really it’s probably unfair of me to say this is standard Marvel stuff, because the two main criticisms of this franchise are that the villains are undeveloped and that that the villains are simply a bad person with the hero’s identical powers. (I guess the MCU just has a villain problem). Captain Marvel doesn’t have either of these villain issues. The issues it has are that there are a lot of clunky dialogue exchanges, some wasted side characters, and a lot of on-the-nose thematic points. Not bad things, just not great things. And of course, there’s plenty of boring CGI fight scenes. But that’s what these movies are. Even the best ones have this going against them.
Overall, this is a lower tier MCU film, but not a bottom tier one. You can’t hit a triple every time.
One good thing: The chemistry between Carol and Fury was the strongest part of the film.
One bad thing: The eye thing was stupid and a big letdown.
Should you care? It’s a Marvel movie. I’m sure you either care or you don’t.
70/100
If you liked this, I’m sure you can find about 20 more movies of the same ilk floating around out there.
I’m sorry. I wish I liked this movie as much as you do. I really do.Non-spoiler thoughts:
Don’t get me wrong, the movie is fine. There’s a lot I like in it, and it isn’t bad. It’s just not very good. There’s a difference between having a good time watching a movie, and the movie being good (I didn’t particularly enjoy watching Schindler’s List for instance, but it’s a great movie). The ending is very bold, and unexpected, and I suspect most people are only really remembering that about the movie. Because nothing really happens in the first 140 minutes of this movie. Again, it’s not bad stuff, but just a lot of hollow action scenes. I keep seeing the movie being praised for handling 20 important characters and bringing it all together in the end. You know why they did this so easily? Because 15 of those characters do virtually nothing the whole time. What was your favorite Captain America moment? When he stood there, or when he jogged across the screen? Or his single joke about hair? Black Panther was cool that time he…jumped.
This is Marvel number 19, and it has to be the worst acted one to date. Chris Pratt is bad. Chris Evans is bad. Mark Ruffalo, in the biggest twist of the movie, has probably the worst performance of his career. Chris Hemsworth fortunately is good, and is clearly the MVC (Most Valuable Chris). Cumberbatch is good. Tom Holland is excellent. Zoe Saldana is good. Elizabeth Olsen didn’t even attempt to a do a Russian accent anymore, but is otherwise good (for the 400 seconds she’s on screen). Robert Downey Jr. gives his least interesting version of Tony yet. The only people who seemed to care about their performances were the voice actors (Cooper and Brolin are each very good) and that’s probably just because they were allowed to sit down. Everyone else is just there. Maybe they filmed dress rehearsals and didn’t tell everyone? You just can’t have an ensemble movie like this and let half the cast mail it in because the ending is cool.
I know I’m being very negative; there are plenty of good thing, too;. Most of the Spider-Man stuff is great. Him and Thor are the best members of the team, and the only ones who have been good in every movie so far. Spider-Man’s jokes and nervousness come across as very natural and always fit the situation. Everything the Guardians team did in Infinity War is better than everything in Guardians 2 (which isn’t saying much). Thanos was well developed (and I don’t just mean his massive shoulders) and carried the film well, especially since this is essentially his introduction to the greater audience.
Spoilers:
My biggest criticism is that most of the cast do nothing the entire movie. Chris Evans had so little to do, he didn’t even bother to cut his hair and beard for the role. And he’s inarguably one of the two main characters of this series. The credits say Scarlett Johansson was in this, but there’s little evidence that’s true. Black Panther was basically a well dressed butler (“Welcome to Wakanda, I’ll be in the corner if you need anything.”) They didn’t even bother bringing in Ant-Man or Hawkeye, but only because there was no standing room behind the 4 people who actually do something in this story. Hulk’s entire subplot is that he isn’t able to actually participate. I mostly bring this up because I keep seeing people praise this movie for juggling so many characters and storylines. This movie was like a football game. There’s a ton of guys on the team, and they all showed up for the game, but most of them just stand on the sideline all game and hope their team wins.
Speaking of Hulk’s storyline; what was that? It was so dumb. It’s the only storyline in the film I actively disliked. It was clearly a forced solution to a writer’s problem. We need Thanos to be the strongest character, but Hulk is too strong. So now Banner suddenly is unable to turn into the Hulk anymore. Doesn’t matter if he’s mad, upset, scared, or anything. He just can’t anymore. There’s no evidence or buildup over the last 10 years that this might become an issue. Ragnorak occurs probably mere days before this movie starts, and Banner has none of these issues. Beyond that, this irHulktile dysfunction is played for laughs over and over again. It got grating and I couldn’t take it seriously. This is a serious problem for a superhero to have, and Banner barely seemed to care. I get it, Hulk is too scared of Thanos. It’s unearned and a lazy writer’s decision.
The movie is 90% action, soit’s hard to quickly pinpoint specific fight scenes. Mostly because they’re all so bland they blur together. But three pivotal sequences bothered me by how lame of solutions they were. 1) Tony and Spider-Man are fighting Ebony Maw (Thano’s awesome minion) in a spaceship, and they kill him by secretly blowing a hole in the side of the ship, and having only him fly out, despite the fact he has insane telekinetic powers. Spider-Man, however, in a brand new suit, survives. Cool. What a lame end to a great character. 2) In an attempt at an emotional scene, the space gang has tied up Thanos and StarLord yells at him while everyone pulls at Thano’s hand in the background for 3 straight minutes. There was no attempt to use their collective powers to get his glove off. They just…pull on it. Cool stuff guys. 3) Thor goes to pretty intense lengths to get a weapon to kill Thanos. He knows the gravity of the situation. And he chops Thanos in the chest. Not the head. Not the glove that holds all the power. In his 4 foot deep chest. Thor loves killing people. He wouldhave gone for the neck. (The last one is nitpicky, but they should have done something better.)
I have a few other issues I won’t go into detail on. Thanos has searched for these stones for 10 years, and collects them all in like 8 hours. Wanda apparently loves Vision (who sucks, and needs to stay dead) which is fine, but she is willing to risk having half of all life destroyed to try to keep him alive? She’s the only person strong enough to ensure Thanos doesn’t get this stone, but let’s wait til 11:59 and 59 seconds on the doomsday clock before going for it. Great job Wanda. I just don’t buy it. Makes the ending cheaper.
Fans will say I’m nitpicking, but I don’t think my criticisms are any more egregious than people sweeping the flaws under the rug just because the end is so cool.
Thor is the best part of the movie. Iron Man is probably the coolest of the main team, but after a few movies, his fight scenes start to lose their luster. There’s only so many ways to hover and shoot missles. But Thor is just so cinematic. Every time he calls lighting and slams the ground it just works on screen. Hemsworth has been good since Thor 1, and he gets better and better with each movie.
But Greg, what about THAT ending???
Eh. I didn’t expect it and I love that they’re really going for it. But I just don’t buy it. For one, it only looked okay (and movies are a visual storytelling medium. If you don’t care about the visuals, just read thesynopsis on wikipedia and save yourself 3 hours). It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t do much for me. QUICK SPOILER FOR HARRY POTTER (Voldemort died the same way. It wasn’t satisfying then either). END SPOILER OF HARRY POTTER
But mostly, it so obviously is a fake out. If 3 or 4 of them died, that would have my interest. But basically everyone but the original Avengers (how convenient)? It’s just too much. I’m as curious as you are on how Captain Marvel and Tony save everyone and reverse the genocide, but 0% of me thinks these characters are actually dead. I got the feeling the end was supposed to be emotional, but emotional about what? Oh no, these characters are gone, until…(checks imdb) next spring when Untitled Avengers Movie comes out. When Tony and Cap finally sacrifice themselves for the team (and for the chance to make different movies again) I’ll be actuallysad (hopefully). But until then, meh.
A good ending doesn’t mean the rest of the movie was good. And the rest of the movie was only okay. I’m probably wrong. I often am. But before you get mad, what parts of the first 2 hours of this movie do you think are top scenes in the MCU? I can’t think of many.
Directed by Ryan Coogler, starring Chadwick Boseman (who you may have seen as 200 famous black people in lackluster biopics) and Michael B. Jordan, who looks like Tristan Thompson.
Venue: a packed movie theater at 10am on opening weekend.
Vague thoughts: Cool movie. I don’t really get excited about comic book movies any more, but I was looking forward to this one because Black Panther was hands down the best part of Civil War, which certainly was a movie I saw. There’s 2 main reasons why this movie was better than average: 1) the villain is fully fleshed out, has understandable goals, and is fun to watch. 2) there’s some really cool sci-fi in this movie. It doesn’t go overboard (no time-travel or making an OS turn into a dumb-looking flying being of truth), but is actually thoughtful in where technology could go if we had an unlimited supply of whatever vibranium is. Also, this movie actually uses its jokes well. Sure, they’re all not very funny (weird soundcloud joke) but they’re used at the right times, and the right ones hit when they need to. So if you liked Last Jedi, you’ll probably hate this, because it’s basically the opposite of that.
Spoilery thoughts: Letitia Wright is the best part of the movie (as BP’s younger sister Shuri). I’ve never been mistaken for a James Bond fan, but her scene as Q worked really well. So many of these movies just feel like stepping stones to another more important movie, and Black Panther seems like it was made with a purpose. Shuri and BP’s conversations made Wakanda feel like a real place inhabited by real people. And her tech was so cool. The warrior women’s staffs, the necklace suit that absorbs energy, and especially the hologram vehicles. I’ve seen all that stuff before, but never as cool as here. Action movies often suffer because the characters have plot armor keeping them around. “How could you survive a car crash like that? They obviously just wanted a cool explosion, but needed so-and-so still alive.” It’s lame, and I hate it. Stop making excuses for bad writing. Anyway, with the hologram vehicles, they were able to have the explosions Disney wanted but had an in-universe explanation for why Martin Freeman didn’t die in that explosion. Because he was never in the real plane, as we knew the whole time. Its the way science fiction is supposed to be used.
(BIG SPOILERS HERE) More importantly, Michael B. Jordan was so interesting as Killmonger. First off, I really liked how they switched villains part way through. Serkis was great as whatever he was, but the tradeoff in focus to Killmonger just added so much more to the film. Again, there’s 2 main reasons why this villain worked for me (beyond just being cool, which shouldn’t be an accomplishment with 80 years of comic-villains to choose from). First, he actually hurts people of consequence. I mentally gasped when he shoots his girlfriend. We didn’t really know her, but villains don’t usually kill their girlfriends just to save some trouble. But then again, villains usually aren’t that good, which is my point. Next, he kills Serkis, who until then we thought was important to the story. This gave some heft to Killmonger. We weren’t just told he’s ruthless, we see him literally monger murders. I never actually thought BP was going to die, because they (almost) never do, but I allowed myself to believe it was possible Killmonger would legitimately try to kill him. Second, and I’m stepping way outside my expertise here so feel free to ridicule me, but Killmonger was a great mirror to the idea of a “Black Panther.” Bear with me. In the movie, Killmonger wants to be king, and therefore become the Black Panther. Obviously we don’t want this, because he uses violence to promote his ideals. You might not know this, but once upon a time there was a group of people who sometimes acted violently in order to promote their own civil rights. They happened to be called the Black Panthers. So I took this movie as showing someone sorta in the vein of the violent and angry Black Panthers battling the benevolent and cautious modern Black Panther. Because of this movie, a lot of kids aren’t going to grow up with a negative connotation to the term “Black Panther.” Who knows, maybe this is a stretch, but I thought it was pretty cool
One good thing: This works as a stand-alone story. You don’t need to see the ones before and after this to appreciate this. There’s no homework or encyclopedias necessary.
One bad thing: There’s a lot of standing around punching each other. Several of the fight scenes are lackluster. In the climax, I’m not even sure what “move” he did that was apparently unexpected. Whatever.
Should you care? If you like action movies and care about pop culture, then duh. This will probably be one of the 10 highest grossing movies of all time and will have sequels and spin-offs for the next 15 years.
80/100 (that’s a good score for an action movie) up there with the first Iron Man, first Avengers, and Winter Soldier.
It’s not a masterpiece, but there’s a lot to like.
Greg Watched That 
