End Game

I just saw End Game today and what a show it was. After my friends cancelled three times I decided to break out on my own and watch an early morning 10am showing in Dolby at AMC. The seats were very comfortable, and they reclined, perfect and much needed saying since this movie is clocking in over three hours.

This movie is the movie that ends most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Chances are you might have missed a couple of the Marvel movies before you saw this one. You definitely need to see Avengers, Avengers Age of Ultron, and Avengers Infinity War before you see this movie. Now before we get into the nitty-gritty, stop reading this if you don't want spoilers. 

Okay, a brief synopsis. So half of the population has been wiped out by Thanos. Ant-Man gets out of his quantum realm with the help of a rat [funny, nice touch]. He comes to the present time-line only to find out that a lot of people are dead, including himself. He teams up with the Avengers and they come up with the idea of a time machine. It's actually Ant-Man's idea.

Captain Marvel brings Stark [Iron Man] back to Earth and Stark helps them develop the time machine. Time travel is always messy and it definitely doesn't make sense in this movie, but hey, who am I to argue? It's very cliche, and its a super old science fiction trope that doesn't hold up well in this day and age, going back to 1820-The Time Machine by HG Wells. Great idea for 1820 not so much for 2019. But I digress.

Anyways, they branch off into small groups and fetch the infinity stones from the past, so they can bring it to the present, use the infinity gantlet to bring everyone back. There's a scene I like that reminds me of the comics where Steve Rodgers [Captain America] is a double agent. He grabs the stones and tasseract from the bad guys who are from Hydra, evil Nazi's. Cap says, "There's been a change in plans. I'll take care of the goods." Then he whispers to the bad guys,"hail Hydra." I liked how they sneeked that in there. 

Thor is fat and depressed. Natasha [Scarlett] feels that her only purpose is to bring everyone back with the Avengers. Brie Larson is snarky, just like in Captain Marvel. Nebula takes on a more serious active role, helping the Avengers go back in time to grab the stones, only to be kidnapped and then her doppelganger from the past comes to the present and messes everything up-you got all that? One thing that should be noted is that the jokes are few and far between. This is a much more serious Avengers team. Rather than their typical snarky smart ass selves they portray in the other movies.

Okay, so this movie is sort of all over the place and the first 2 hours and 45 minutes are just them going back and forth for the infinity stones. Then Thanos from the past comes to the future to do what he did in the present-again! Why, because this is fate, he says. But we're not stupid, we know that the script is written that way so that he can get his ass kicked-again. Actually Thanos dies in the first thirty minutes of the movie. Thor chops his head off, the blood splashing across Nebula's face. "I aimed for the head." Nice bit of gore there.  

The last twenty-thirty minutes is straight-up superhero fanfare. Hulk uses the infinity gauntlet to bring back everyone, bringing them on a huge battlefield against Thano's army, that he brought from another time-line thanks to evil Nebula from the past time-line. Captain Marvel destroys Thanos' ship in one fell swoop. Thanos is desperately trying to get the infinity gauntlet [which has all the stones] but Stark quickly puts on the glove.

Thanos [putting on the guantlet]: I am inevitable. 
Stark [who somehow had the rings with a makeshift Iron Man suit guantlet]: I am Iron Man.

It doesn't seem like a powerful line but it is. And it was his last line of the film, and the franchise, because Stark ended up dying after he used the gauntlet. Apparently humans aren't strong enough to wield the power of the infinity stones. Even after Thanos used it, he was old and dying on a planet somewhere, his energy wasted from the stones. When Hulk used it, he burned up his arm and upper body, and he's the strongest one out of all of them. 

The fighting was great. Especially Cap. Thor is about to get sliced by his own blade by Thanos. Then out of nowhere Thor's hammer flies into Thanos' skull-its Captain America's doing. 

Thor: I knew it! 

Cap wields Thor's hammer like a god. Like Achilles from the Iliad. He's swinging the hammer in his left hand and holding his shield up in his right, like a true warrior. Not only that but he's commanding lightning strikes with the hammer as well. That was my favorite moment of the film, it was great to see that not only is he worthy of Thor's hammer, but he can use it just as well as Thor too. The female heroes had their moment in the sun too. They're protecting the infinity stones as Spiderman says, "Uhh, be careful, you might need some help." "We have plenty of help right here," the female Wakanda warrior says as the women beat and bash their way through enemies.

The end is what this movie is truly about. "End Game". Thor joins the Guardians of the Galaxy. Stark dies. Natasha sacrifices herself so the team can get the soul stone, a very sad and tragic death. That one was a real tearjerker.  Hawkeye gets his family back. Captain America goes back in time and stays there with his sweetheart, becoming in the present an old man. 

At the end of the movie where we see Cap dancing with his sweetheart back in the 40's I had a sort of epiphany that the whole point of superheroes is for people to do normal things like that-have a simple and loving life. The thing I realized is that you don't need superheroes to enjoy that kind of stuff, you don't need all the action and the rigamarole, the twenty-two movie fanfare. If the Marvel movies had more of that and less of all the other stuff, it would've been a much more thoughtful experience. More acting, less fighting. Maybe that could become the new norm for superhero movies? I wish.

With all that being said, "Avengers assemble!"

Check out my reviews for all the other Marvel movies I've seen. 
 Antman and the Wasp https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2018/07/antman-and-wasp.html
Avengers Age of Ultron https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2015/05/avengers-age-of-ultron-thoughts.html
Avengers Infinity War https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2018/05/avengers-infinity-war.html
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2017/05/guardians-of-galaxy-2.html
Spiderman Into the Spiderverse https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2019/01/spiderman-into-spiderverse.html
Deadpool 2 https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2018/06/dead-pool-2.html
Thor Ragnorak https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2017/12/thor-ragnarok.html
Doctor Strange https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2016/11/time-will-tell-how-much-i-love-you.html
Deadpool I https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/search?q=deadpool
Venom https://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/2018/10/venom.html 

Venom

Venom got a lot of bad reviews in the press. In fact, I asked a lot of friends and peers what they thought of the movie and most of them had mixed reviews. However, they still thought it was fun and 'good', albeit in a broad generalized way. I only read maybe two reviews before I saw it. I already knew most of the plot and details from friends but didn't know exactly how it would be displayed. I wasn't disappointed, I thought it was good. 

Tom Hardy's Venom is a kin to the common-man trope in many stories, be they science fiction (Phillip K Dick's characters), comic books (Peter Parker, nerd), or fictional Horatio Alger stories (stories of the great American canon). Tom Hardy is a reporter who's life goes to shit when he loses his job, his girl friend, and all ambition. Venom, a symbiotic form from space attaches to him during this time of crisis, not only that but he identifies with Hardy, saying, "where I'm from I'm a loser like you, but here 'we' can be something more." This is a further identification with the common-man trope, or in this case common-alien. 

Tom Hardy does a great Venom voice, deep and vicious with jokes sometimes and serious threatening behavior the next. Venom likes to eat tater tots and chocolate, which was kind of funny. Venom even eats people, biting their heads off, which of course freaks out Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy's character). I like the way Venom is portrayed here. Yes, he admits to being a 'loser', but he's also a bad ass character, a strong fighter, who develops a sort of labored love towards Eddie Brock, and even his girl friend, who when Venom takes control of her, kisses Brock as She-Venom, quite an intimate kiss. Oui la la. 

My biggest criticism of this flick is that the villains were boring and one dimensional. Donald Trump makes a better villain than any of the characters here. Venom has his evil tendencies, but in the end he becomes an anti-hero, willing to live, take care of, and be a willing part of Eddie Brock's life. First off, that bad guy who finds the symbiotic goo that is the Venom strains (there are millions of them, just like Venom), he's this Silicon Valley type Elon Musk guy named Carlton Drake. That guy is one of the worst villains I've seen in a Marvel movie. Elon Musk is actually much more of a d-bag villain, especially when he called a guy a pedo a while back. 

Anyways, this character was so generic it was laughable. They try to make it more interesting by giving him a symbiotic parasite too, named Riot. But Riot ends up being kind of generic too. Other than the fact that Riot and Venom have an epic fight to the death (with Riot and Elon Musk-alike getting blown up), there's not a thing interesting about these characters. The bad guys need to be better, have better motive, other than typical generalized ideology.  

Lastly, I would say that they captured Venom pretty well. The way he runs up walls check. The way he's like a glue that attaches to Tom Hardy's body check. His jump from Marvel Vs Capcom 2 check. His "we are Venom" characteristic voice-line check. They did Venom right. He comes across as bad ass. I thought the movie was bad ass, in the sense that the action was great, the voice lines were strong, especially the "have a nice life" line. The love interest is sort of down-played in this movie and my friends even said that the actors didn't have much chemistry. Its true, but I don't think the luke-warm relationship hurt the action-packed scenes or the exciting nature of the human-symbiotic relationship. 

As a kid I used to love reading Spiderman, Venom, Carnage, those three were some of my favorite superheroes, antiheroes, and villains, mostly because they're from the Spiderman universe and I always liked Spiderman. The Venom movie is a lot different from the comics but I would still say its does a decent job of not straying completely off base from the comics. In that sense, its a safe portrayal, ultimately a decent one of the classic antihero. 

Overall I think Venom is a pretty damn good movie. I thought a lot of it was humorous but it was also action-packed. This is a better movie than Ant-man and the Wasp, the last Marvel movie I saw. I recommend the movie to comic book fans, Spiderman fans, and Carnage fans for sure. Carnage even has a cameo after the credits so make sure to stay after the credits to see this ginger talk about "bringing carnage."  

Justice League

Hey, its been a while. I've been busy reading different sorts of books and playing a lot of music. But I finally got around to seeing to the Justice League movie. It was quite an enjoyable two hours of cinema. Here's why.

The movie takes its time with gainful setup. The movie doesn't meander anywhere and it seems to have a purpose for most scenes. The beginning of the film features Batman looking to assemble his team (like an Overwatch team) of superheroes with powers (which he lacks, but has resources and leadership abilities) to defeat this new threat called Stephenwolf but honestly it doesn't matter who they're fighting, they just need an excuse to kick some ass.

Batman is portrayed in a smarter light in this movie as opposed to Batman V Superman where he came across as a violent maniac. Gal Godot is sexy and straight to the point, just as you would think an Amazonian warrior would act. The Flash is nerdy and quite green here. Cyborg is disillusioned with his mechanical body but otherwise quite nice. And Aquaman is a strong dude with a lance. There's the team, now fight! Superman gets raised from the dead to help defeat Stephenwolf and he's the most emotionally expressive character in a sense. He picks up Batman once he's revived and says, "Do you bleed", an ode to the Batman V Superman movie where Batman says that to him and hits him with a kryptonite lance. That was a nice Easter egg. 

The action scenes in this movie are quite good. Its nothing we haven't seen before in superhero movies but it is quite thrilling. My favorite part was probably when Superman was fighting the Justice League team when he was revived because he didn't know who he was or where he is, he was just raised from the dead, like Jesus Christ or something. Batman played God in this movie and it worked out for him but I have my doubts about some sort of after effect happening-Bizarro anyone? They ended up reviving Superman with this thing called a Motherbox, some kind of multidimensional box that contains "deep power", or whatever they want to say it does.

Superman was portrayed in the most human light in the film. Hell, Batman even remarks, "He's more human than I am." After he realizes who he is Lana Lane (Amy Adams, whom I love because of her performance in The Arrival) comes and they go to his childhood home on the farm. They talk and catch up. Lana says she wasn't strong when he died. They kiss and hold each other. Its the most emotional scene in the film. Superman eventually realizes he has a job to do and takes off. But that scene made the movie more interesting and contrasts with the darkness of the film, a feeling a hope that wasn't present before.

It should also be noted that the film portrays a dark atmosphere. This is not the Avengers, where everybody is laughing and joking around with each other. There's jokes here but they're a little forced and not quite that funny (nobody in the audience laughed at anything). The opening song of the movie has a woman singing, "Everybody knows the world is over, everybody knows the good guys lost." Its the perfect music to setup this dystopian superhero adventure. In essence that's what the movie is. Its not meant to be the best Justice League movie, its just meant as a stepping stone for other DC movies to come, hopefully featuring more superheroes (Martin Manhunter and Green Lantern please) and the Justice League fighting more interesting enemies (after the credits there was a scene with Lex Luthor talking about forming his own team of bad guys).

Although the plot was exceedingly simplistic its reasonable to say its to be expected from this sort of action superhero movies genre. What this movie does better than the first Avengers film is that it keeps your attention on the different scenes and animation techniques, something I looked at with great detail. In Avengers there's so much fighting going on that you forget that there's even dialogue sometimes. In this movie dialogue is used in a smarter and more effective way.

The good guys have won for now. But can they withstand the onslaught of the enemy team of ragtag super villains? We'll find out in the next film.

Deadpool movie

     Today me and the lads went to go see the Deadpool movie. I was not dissapointed. This movie is terrific, action packed, and contains an origin story that leaves the watcher sympathetic to the character. Deadpool isn't really seen as a hero or a villain, he's just a guy who's out for revenge against the guy that scarred his face. He was told that they were going to cure his cancer and turn him into a super hero but instead they fucked up his face instead (they being Ajax). In the end his cancer was cured and he did have super powers.
     He decapitates guys with his swords, guns them down with pistols, and isn't a bad fighter when it comes to hand to hand combat. The cool thing about Deadpool is that he virtually can't die. There were moments like when he was fighting Colossus (from the X-Men, a cameo) and his body just got crunched and turned into a lump of meat. But then he was able to regenerate his broken bones, it was awesome! Kind of reminded me of the Pillar Men from JoJo's Bizarre Adventures if you've ever that. I guess this is Deadpool's mutant abilities at work. All I knew about Deadpool before I saw this movie was that he was a cool Marvel character in Marvel vs Capcom 3, that he liked chimichangas and Spiderman, and that Ryan Reynolds played him in X-Men first class. Now here he is with his own movie! Let me break down the movie.
     Basically the movie goes in a backwards order which reminded me a bit of Pulp Fiction because the story wasn't a linear progression. Deadpool is out to kill Ajax, this baddie that forced a mutation on Deadpool by giving him non-stop torture. Don't ask me how constant torture somehow brings out the genes for super powers but that's how they explained it in this movie. Deadpool is seen as a jokey straight up killer but he actually loves his girl friend and his whole fight in this movie was for her. The story isn't anything great but the action packed scenes more than make up for it. This is a straight up action flick with a lot going on. There are moments when people get messed up horribly but I wouldn't call this a gory movie. However, this isn't a movie you should take a young kid to. There are decapitations, torture scenes, and boobs! Haha, but seriously this is rated R for a reason. If they went with a PG-13 rating this movie would not have been as great as it was. It's great to see something from the Marvel camp that isn't just PG-13 Avengers.
     When I watched this movie there was a sense that everything just flowed well. It was like a perfect super hero movie. Although you can't really call Deadpool a super hero. He's kind of his own kind of hero ya know? I really like that about him. He's not a bad guy necessarily but that doesn't stop him from being a killing machine. Colossus even kept saying that he would make an X-man out of Deadpool yet. So there's still hope for Deadpool to turn to the light side. Things to look forward to when watching this movie; Ryan Reynolds' great acting and hilarious banter, cool action scenes, the strip club scene (which was very random), and a unique origins story. This is how you do justice to a comic book character in film form. It's just that good. Go see this movie as soon you can! 
     Lastly, I've been playing Street Fighter V and the issues that the game had seem to have been fixed. I haven't played any matches online but tomorrow I'll try to play my friend online. I've kind of found an interesting character that I like, Necalli. I thought he was some kind of vampire at first but he's actually some kind of Aztec warrior. Which seems just as awesome! He's become my favorite character just today but I'll probably play a lot of Ryu as well to learn the basics. In addition, I'm looking forward to going to a Smash tournament tomorrow. I'm going to go ham as Zero Suit Samus. I was working on my tech skill, perfect pivots and teching. I've also been working on not rolling so much. I need to completely change my style to remove all my bad habits in order to play better at the competitive level. Wish me luck!