Avengers: Endgame - mind the spoilers!
May. 7th, 2019 01:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearLast night, we went to see Avengers: Endgame, which I had been keenly anticipating.
Overall, I really enjoyed the film. It didn't feel like it was three hours long and it didn't drag at all. I was impressed by the focus on emotional fallout from Inifity War, rather than focusing on action. And it was good to see the various characters having the chance to talk and reflect on what was going on.
But what was going on made very little sense. They went on a lot about time travel not actually following the usually accepted rules, but that made it impossible to figure out how anything they did in the past might affect things. And there was no real exploration of what half the population suddenly popping *back* into existence would mean - some of the affected people would have moved on in ways that wouldn't necessarily accommodate the other people coming back, some of the affected people would be adversely affected by the other people coming back. Five years is a long time and the global implications of it all weren't considered at all.
I was also disappointed in Thor's presentation and arc over the course of the film. I liked that the effects of his guilt were shown in his deterioriation. But trauma shouldn't be played for laughs and he was very definitely portrayed as a figure of fun because of his weight gain and drinking problem.
The sadder aspects of the story didn't really get to me that much, though it was annoyingly predictable that Stark's reasons for not wanting to get involved in the time heist would come back to bite him in the end. Still, it would have been unrelistic for everyone to come out of the film unscathed, and I didn't find the losses too devastating.
I did laugh a lot, and I thought the whole thing was visually stunning and very exciting in places. It was a shame the female characters were so marginalised (giving them one shot of solidarity in the final battle doesn't make up for the fact that most of them were barely in it). The film also had some similarities to Return of the King in that it was very long and had about six endings.
I liked the emotional complexity of Hawkeye's arc, and will likely be adding to my series of Avengers fanfic on this soon.
So, some issues, but largely a success. I'm not sure where things go from here, but I'm still very much looking forward to more Spiderman, and will likely go and see other Marvel movies as and when they come out.
Overall, I really enjoyed the film. It didn't feel like it was three hours long and it didn't drag at all. I was impressed by the focus on emotional fallout from Inifity War, rather than focusing on action. And it was good to see the various characters having the chance to talk and reflect on what was going on.
But what was going on made very little sense. They went on a lot about time travel not actually following the usually accepted rules, but that made it impossible to figure out how anything they did in the past might affect things. And there was no real exploration of what half the population suddenly popping *back* into existence would mean - some of the affected people would have moved on in ways that wouldn't necessarily accommodate the other people coming back, some of the affected people would be adversely affected by the other people coming back. Five years is a long time and the global implications of it all weren't considered at all.
I was also disappointed in Thor's presentation and arc over the course of the film. I liked that the effects of his guilt were shown in his deterioriation. But trauma shouldn't be played for laughs and he was very definitely portrayed as a figure of fun because of his weight gain and drinking problem.
The sadder aspects of the story didn't really get to me that much, though it was annoyingly predictable that Stark's reasons for not wanting to get involved in the time heist would come back to bite him in the end. Still, it would have been unrelistic for everyone to come out of the film unscathed, and I didn't find the losses too devastating.
I did laugh a lot, and I thought the whole thing was visually stunning and very exciting in places. It was a shame the female characters were so marginalised (giving them one shot of solidarity in the final battle doesn't make up for the fact that most of them were barely in it). The film also had some similarities to Return of the King in that it was very long and had about six endings.
I liked the emotional complexity of Hawkeye's arc, and will likely be adding to my series of Avengers fanfic on this soon.
So, some issues, but largely a success. I'm not sure where things go from here, but I'm still very much looking forward to more Spiderman, and will likely go and see other Marvel movies as and when they come out.
