Recently Watched Films

I think the two Ant-Man films are about on the level with each other personally. So you probably won't like it if you didn't like the first one, but hopefully you won't hate it even more either.

You can totally watch Captain Marvel first though, even though Ant-Man and the Wasp came out before it. A lot of people had issues with that film though, but I thought it was solid. And it's not an MCU comedy. 

If you really, really don't get on with it you could probably get away with just reading a synopsis. But I would have to warn you that a third film is coming in Phase 4 and that looks like it's going to feature a major Thanos replacing Big Bad who has already been teased in Loki season one. 

 

Well, it just about met my expectations, which is the best thing I can say about it. I do think it had some good ideas, and a few good scenes here and there, but I spent well over 75% of it groaning in pain and checking the time to see if it was any closer to ending, lol

I think I see the connection to Endgame, though. I was slightly misled, though, because Disney+ lists it as taking place before Infinity War, but based on the timeline it feels like it takes place around the same time, and then the mid credits scene is clearly at the end of Infinity War.

Pretty solid. That marks the end of the fourth set and my posts on them until the fifth one comes out next month. 

And possibly the last Three Stooges extra, since unless it's just a misprint none are listed as appearing on volume 5:

The trio is in triplicate playing three sets of brothers who haven't seen each other since before the war, despite living in the same city. Chaos ensues once the group's women start mistaking one trio for the other. 

A bit slow paced to be honest. 

Crazy movie. Just got a really nice collector's edition of it. My previous DVD copy didn't do these visuals justice. 

I remembered very little about this movie, but it's more passable than I thought it was. Just boils down to same shit, different planet. 

Well, it didn't disappoint! There were some pacing issues (though I do think the slow parts were done and interesting in some ways, just a bit dragged out), and I don't think I agree with a couple decisions they made here and there, but overall I loved it, and I thought the last hour or so was pretty much perfect.

 I actually didn't see one death coming, and it was bigger than the one I did know about, but it worked for me 100%, tbh. The one I had known about also worked, imo, even if it felt a bit rushed. 

Now you've watched it I can freely address the two problems I had with this film. Anyone else who cares may want to flick off of this post now if they've not seen it...

1. Nat's death. It was obvious that some characters weren't going to survive Endgame, but there was one character out of a huge cast I thought it would have been a massive mistake to kill. And they killed her. 

There are two main reasons for this. The first reason was at this point we already knew a Black Widow solo film was finally coming. Even knowing it takes place after Civil War, it harmed that film by killing off the character, because suddenly the first Phase 4 movie has no stakes going forward for its star, who is already dead. 

The second reason happens in Endgame itself. During the final battle, they line up a shot of the women of the MCU. And the First Lady of the MCU is missing, because they decided to kill her early. 

A third lesser reason is that they wrote it in a way that it was either her or Hawkeye not getting out alive. And hardly anyone gives a crap about Hawkeye. He's the permanently upstaged Avenger, even in his own Disney+ series. 

Over time I've become more accepting of them killing Nat off, even if I still think it was a colossal mistake (to me, she should have remained a central figure of the Avengers in Phase 4, possibly even taking more of a Nick Fury type role). But if they were going to do it, they should have done it much later in the movie than they did. 

What's more, she doesn't even get a heroes send off, unlike Tony Stark. 

2. This has to do with another female character actually. But this one survives. Captain Marvel. A really big fucking deal was made out of the impending arrival of Captain Marvel in the MCU in the wake of Infinity War. The mid-credits scene of her own movie seemed to only add to this anticipation. 

Captain Marvel was touted in marketing as being the most powerful hero in the MCU, pretty much made out to be the one who was going to swoop in and save the day, getting set up as the new lead Avenger in the aftermath of losing both Iron Man and OG Captain America, which we all knew was coming in some form in this movie due to contracts expiring and actors wanting to move on.

And then she buggers off for most of the movie, not even taking part in the time heist. And who is it who actually saves the day? Or at least gets the ball rolling to save the day? Fucking Ant-Man. 

I don't dislike Ant-Man the way you do Travis, but the misdirection with the marketing really pissed me off. The MCU is by a large a sausage fest, and it was exciting to see them finally giving their female characters more spotlight, since I tend to find female characters more interesting in genres like this, due to the general assumption of 'dude needed to save the day'.

Endgame managed to throw both of them, the female character who got a solo film already and the female character who had a solo film coming after just one movie after this, under the bus. 

This is still an epic movie and overall a massive payoff of over twenty films to get to that point, but it contains the only two times the MCU has managed to actually piss me off. In the end, once again it was a dude needed to save the day...imagine just how much more impactful Nat's death would have been if against expectations it was her to give Thanos a taste of his own Snap and die as a result of it instead of Tony? Tony was one of two incredibly obvious choices for that moment (the other being Steve). Though I do acknowledge that getting to say I Am Iron Man again was hell of a moment, I'd have rather the battle was ended by an unexpected character. If they'd done this, I'd have said that killing Nat was much less of a mistake. In fact I tell myself that now the MCU is moving into the multiverse (I actively call it the MCM now), that there's some universes in the MCM where this exact thing happened. 

Obviously you´ll have to have watched all seasons and episodes of the Ray Donovan tv-series before watching this concluding movie. It ties up a couple of loose ends and wraps up the series, which unfortunately ended a little abruptly, as it was cancelled.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14124268/

For the first 30 minutes or so this was looking like an Ant-Man level cringey comedy, but somehow it ended up winning me over fairly quickly, and then it got better as it went on. There were some dumb parts here and there, but it's pretty telling that by the end I was finding the comedy more fun and charming than annoying, and I really enjoyed Mysterio a lot as the villain, as well as the overall story, and I think this version of MJ is pretty solid, after not really getting to see much of her in Homecoming.

Oh, and I had a certain returning actor from a previous incarnation of Spider-Man spoiled, but even in just 30 seconds or so at the end, he was absolutely glorious 

I can definitely see how they screwed up big time on the release scheduling for this one. It feels like traveling back in time to a couple years ago from where I was in the timeline, despite being the start of Phase 4 

I actually had a lot of fun with it, though. It's definitely a bit cheesy, and some of the CGI usage is ridiculous (that ending sequence is insanely fake looking even by MCU standards, LOL) but I guess I love Nat as a character too much to not get some enjoyment out of this, plus it was cool learning more of her backstory, and I liked most of the other major characters a lot as well. Having David Harbor as comic relief was also great, though if having him play a Russian specifically named Alexei wasn't an intended in-joke, then that is one of the craziest coincidences ever 

Okay that was actually a lot better than I was expecting. A really good action sci-fi that was harmed a lot less by the removal of Linda Hamilton than expected. It's not a patch on either of the first two of course and I still kinda prefer the alternate ending I saw yesterday for Terminator 2 (which again removes the possibility of any sequels), but this was quite a satisfying conclusion to the original trilogy. It seems like this franchise really gets fucked up after this point with the next trilogy stalling after one film, a reboot, then Dark fate overwriting this. I'm not sure I want to continue with them from here.