Avengers: Infinity War Review

It’s all been building to this. A film 10 years in the making. With 18 previous movies setting it up, it is easily the most ambitious crossover movie ever attempted. With well over 40 characters in leading rolls, and on a far grander scale than we’ve ever seen, it is Marvel’s Magnum Opus. Let’s jump into it.

So, I just got back from watching Avengers: Infinity War, and… wow. I seriously mean wow. I really don’t even know where to start. As a longtime fan of the MCU, this movie had a ton riding on it, and I firmly believe that the Russo Brothers completely knocked it out of the park with this one.

SUMMARY: ***Spoiler Free***

Thanos is the most dangerous being in the universe. His goal is to bring balance to all of life by destroying half of it. In order to do so, he must first acquire the six Infinity Stones, which will grant him supreme power to accomplish his plan. It’s up to the Avengers to stop him, but can they contend with a person of his power?

THE GOOD:

It’s kind of funny. Usually when I look at a movie and think to myself: “what’s the best part about this movie?” I can pretty easily pick out 2-3 things that stand out from the rest. Not so with Infinity War. Everything is just so well handled it’s difficult to pick something exceptionally good. Let’s start with the actors. Everyone nails their parts. Robert Downey Jr. returns to his role as Iron Man, and seeing him come to terms with what he’s been afraid of since Avengers 1 is stunning. Tom Holland and Benedict Cumberbatch are both great. The real standout here, is definitely Josh Brolin as Thanos. Despite being mostly CGI, he delivers a spectacular performance. He’s sympathetic, but also evil. He really gets across the character’s motivations, and while you still don’t like what he’s doing, you can see why he wants to do it. There are a handful of truly heartbreaking scenes involving Thanos that I won’t get into here for fear of spoilers, but suffice it to say, Brolin is phenomenal. Next, the effects and the score. The CG in this was almost perfect (save 1-2 shots). You’re never taken out of the story, and it’s never so jarring that you think to yourself “That’s fake.” The score perfectly accentuates every shot. From the big swells when a character makes an entrance to practically forcing tears down your face during gut-wrenching scenes, Alan Sylvestri plays your emotions like a fiddle, and it adds so much to an already powerful movie. Last but not least, the plot. There is so much going on in this movie at any given point in time that I’m legitimately shocked they managed to pull it all together. At any given point in time there will be 3-5 different plotlines running, and somehow they keep it all together as a cohesive plot. The story is executed near-flawlessly. I really don’t know what else I can say about it, which brings me to

THE BAD:

Really, there wasn’t much in this that rubbed me the wrong way. All I have are a handful of nitpicks. A handful of jokes rubbed me the wrong way, mostly Spiderman’s pop culture references got a little old. A couple of shots with Bruce Banner looked off. The only real issue I take is that Rhodes (War Machine)’s injury from Civil War really doesn’t affect him at all. That was a major point in Civil War, and here he’s pretty much acting like nothing happened. Other than those minor nitpicks, there’s really not much else bad I can say.

CONCLUSION:

This pretty much wraps up my spoiler free section. Altogether, it was an extremely strong movie. The characters are fun to watch, and interact well with each other, the story is strong, and keeps you interested, on the edge of your seat, and leaves you yearning for more. I’d definitely recommend seeing it in theaters, and can rate it a solid 9.5/10

 

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’d suggest not reading any further. Seriously. MAJOR SPOILERS are ahead. This isn’t some Iron Man 2 or Thor Dark World kind of movie. This is the culmination of 10 years of movies, and has some huge spoilers, so I’m sort of required to let you know before I start discussing them that “HEY, THERE ARE SPOILERS.” All good? Great. Let’s get started. From the very beginning, the tone of the movie is established through Loki’s death and the extermination of Asgard. It’s a very dark, bleak movie. All of the characters are ridiculously outclassed, and get more and more hopelessly outgunned the further on it gets. As Thanos slowly and methodically acquires the Infinity Gems, your anticipation and dread grow. On the one hand, the stakes are getting raised higher and higher, so a massive fight is about to take place. On the other hand, your favorite characters are almost guaranteed to die. Thanos is absolutely terrifying. The strongest part of the movie, at least for me, was the fight on Titan between Thanos, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Spiderman, and the Guardians. It’s absolutely gorgeous to watch, the stakes are insanely high, and it all culminates in one of the most horrifying moments from the entire series with Tony getting impaled. Possibly the other best scene has to be the acquisition of the Soul Stone, and Gamora’s death. It leads to a great Red Skull cameo, and probably the second saddest scene, as Gamora is hurled off a cliff by Thanos. But the most depressing scene is really easy to figure out. The most iconic moment from the original comic. The moment the entire movie is building up to, and you wonder if Marvel will actually be willing to do it: The Snap. When Thanos has finally acquired all 6 stones, he snaps his fingers, and wipes out half of all life in the universe, successfully accomplishing his goal. The bad guy wins, and most of our heroes crumble to ash. Watching Rockets reaction to Groot hurt, but what really was just emotionally devastating was Peter Parker clinging to Tony as he slowly fades away. The entire sequence at the end took an already incredibly strong movie to the next level, and cements Infinity War in a #2 spot, possibly tied as #1 with Winter Soldier. My rating stands at 9.5/10.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi Review

Ordinarily, I’m pretty decisive on my opinions when it comes to movies. I love them or I hate them. They’re good or bad. But sometimes, on very rare occasion, I see a movie that I really just don’t know what to do with, and that movie is Star Wars the Last Jedi.

SUMMARY:

So, without getting into spoiler territory, let’s begin. The story is somewhat simple: The Rebellion is being chased by the First Order. Their fleet is mostly wiped out, and it’s up to Finn and Poe, with the help of a mechanic they recruit named Rose, to break into an Empire, I’m sorry, First Order flagship to disable a tracking device, allowing the remains of the rebel fleet to escape. Meanwhile, Rey has found Luke Skywalker and attempts to convince him to assist the rebellion, and to train her in the ways of the Force.

THE GOOD:

So, there was a decent amount of good stuff in this movie. Kylo Ren was definitely much better here than in the previous installment. His internal struggle was handled moderately well, and Adam Driver is definitely trying his hardest, so I can’t really fault him there. Kylo Ren was definitely better than last time. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher both had good scenes. There’s a big fight scene in a crucial part of the movie that’s probably the best part of the whole film, basically a 2v6 fight. The music in this is really good. In this respect, it felt like a truly new installment into the franchise, rather than the complete rehash from the first film. Other than that, the only other thing I can say is really good are the special effects about 70 percent of the time.

THE BAD:

Look, I tried. But my God. This movie had some absolutely prequel tier garbage in it. To start, the dialogue is downright atrocious. I haven’t heard lines this horrendous since Attack of the Clones. It genuinely hurts to watch, because there’s some legitimately good talent onscreen. Unfortunately, there’s no Ewan McGregor to be found, and no one is anywhere near charismatic enough to make such terrible lines work. Poe is basically Tom Cruise from Top Gun. He’s some confident schmarmy douchewad there to fill the movie’s quota for Han Solo stand-in. He spends half of his time either creating forced conflict, or acting like he’s in a Marvel movie, throwing out quips and one-liners. Finn and Rose have probably the most useless sub-plot in the story, a plotline that takes up about a full hour of runtime. They’re tasked with going to this casino-planet to find an elite hacker to assist them. At the end of their mission, absolutely nothing is accomplished, and the segment seems to exist for no reason other than filling space. Normally I’d have no issue with this, so long as the opportunity was taken to develop the characters through their interactions, similarly to the Farmhouse from Avengers Age of Ultron. Unfortunately, this entire subplot brings the movie to a grinding halt, bores the audience, and doesn’t even have the decency to really develop any chemistry between the characters of Finn and Rose. Speaking of Rose, I really hated her character. She felt like this unnecessary extra character added for no reason. I never really was able to connect to her in any way. She existed for the sole purpose of further developing Finn, and she failed there, making her a truly pointless character that left no lasting impact. My last big gripe character-wise is Rey. I’ll be honest. I didn’t care much for her in TFA. She was overacted there, and it’s just as bad here. If Hayden Christensen underacted Anakin, Daisy Ridley overcompensates and ridiculously overacts Rey. She’s annoying, and painful to watch, and watching a movie where you can’t stand the main character is pretty difficult. Moving on from characters for the moment, let’s talk about the tone of this film. It felt so incredibly lost. It seemed like it was trying to be a Marvel movie half the time, and that really hurt it. The first half of the movie felt like more of a parody than anything else. Characters make incredibly stupid decisions all the way through. Villains make even more stupid ones. There were a few points where I thought to myself “Okay, if the First Order messes this one up, then they really deserve to lose.” The second half was better, but still extremely flawed. The humor was terrible slapstick, with random CGI aliens doing ridiculous things in the background, or right up in front of the screen. It tries too hard to be cutesy for the little kids, and instead just comes across as Jar Jar Binks/the Ewoks. It just doesn’t work. The plot was a convoluted mess, jumping back and forth between plotlines with no real sense of flow. Certain scenes just came across as a giant slap in the face to fans of the franchise, or as blatant ripoffs of other popular franchises. It was painful to watch quite a bit of the time. Last but not least, half of the characters in this feel like their existence was justified by the need to sell toys. They serve little to no purpose other than merchandise. And no, Disney. Porgs are not going to be the new Minions. This is a good thing. Leave it at that.

CONCLUSION A:

Normally, this is where I’d write my full conclusion and be done with it. Buuuut normally I’d also include a spoiler section. Due to this being such a massive movie, I’m going to do something a little different this time. Below I’ll include a spoiler section, which’ll also include probably my biggest gripes with the movie, and a final conclusion. However, here’re my (spoiler free) final thoughts. As I walked out of the theater, I remarked that Last Jedi felt like the Phantom Menace of the new trilogy. Not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination, but with some great scenes, and enough redeeming factors to make me want to come back. The action is decent for the most part, the characters who’re bearable are interesting to watch. If you’re a big Star Wars fan, be wary going in, and lower your expectations. If you’re more of a casual viewer, I guess it’s a fine movie. There’s nothing overly offensive, or too much of a slap in the face. Based off this, I’d give it a solid 6/10.

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I’m warning you now, Spoilers are ahead. I’m saying this to give you enough time to leave, and not see something that’ll ruin the movie for you before you get the chance to see it. That being said, let’s get down the the real meat of the movie. Certain decisions in this seemed like less of a slap in the face, and more of a giant middle finger to the audience. In the very beginning of the movie, we get a fake-out where the First Order destroys the Rebel Flagship’s bridge, jettisoning Leia into space. She’s shown floating, frozen, when she suddenly comes back to life and uses the force to fly back inside the ship. I think I can safely quote Han Solo here when I say “THAT’S NOT HOW THE FORCE WORKS.” It was stupid and unnecessary. Next up on the chopping block: the villains. I thought we learned our lesson from Spiderman 3. Too many villains with no real payoff is a bad formula for a movie. In TLJ, we have 4, two of which are barely in it enough to count, and the other two are Supreme Leader Snoke and Kylo Ren. I already said I didn’t mind Kylo Ren too much. He’s a bit of a whiny brat, but it works well enough. The other three on the other hand…. We have General Hux, the over-the-top leader of the First Order. He’s an overacted villain with no presence. I’ve seen people wondering why he doesn’t work as a bad guy, but Grand Moff Tarkin from the original movie did. It’s pretty simple: Tarkin had presence. You could tell from his demeanor that he was in charge, and people would listen to him. He was calm, collected, and powerful. Hux screams half his lines, and has no sense of calm, or dignity at all. As a result, he has no power, and fails as a villain. Next is Captain Phasma, the chrome plated commander of the stormtroopers. She’s incredibly shoe-horned in towards the end. We never learn anything about her. She just exists to give Finn someone to fight in the end of the movie, then she dies. Finally, Snoke. This character had so much potential. He’s built up an extremely powerful ancient being with control of the force greater than even the Emperor. We meet him here, and he’s pretty cool for a while. I’ll give it to Andy Serkis: he knows how to play a villain really well. Unfortunately, he serves as nothing more than a plot device, as they kill him halfway through the movie. No explanation to who he is, where his power comes from, how he seduced Ben Solo to the Dark Side, no nothing. He sits in his chair, monologing to Rey and Kylo, and gets axed off by Kylo Ren. It served as nothing more than an excuse for Kylo Ren to rise to power, and a testament to Rian Johnson’s laziness and refusal to expand on a concept for a character. Up next? Luke. Mark Hamill tried. You can definitely tell, he tried his hardest here, and he did a good job. Unfortunately, this was not Luke Skywalker at all. Everything he does and is portrayed as in the original trilogy seems completely forgotten about. He’s just off on a planet by himself waiting to die. He created Kylo Ren by trying to kill him, causing him to destroy Luke’s Jedi Temple and join Snoke. This is so out of line with Luke’s character it’s not even funny. It just felt like a giant middle finger to an iconic well loved cultural icon. Then they kill him too. Yep. You read that right. They kill off Luke Skywalker. After the Rebel’s escape to a planet with an old rebel base on it, Luke appears, and steps out in front of the entire invading force of the First Order. Kylo Ren comes out, and after Luke toys with him a while, it’s revealed that Luke is still on his planet, but using the force to Astrally Project himself to Kylo Ren. Aaaaand this somehow drains his life force, and after stalling for time so that the remaining members of the Rebellion can escape, he leaves Kylo, returns to his body, and disappears Yoda style. So, yeah. They kill off Luke Skywalker without having him really do anything terribly useful. Also, they use force-ghost Yoda, and it’s one of the worst effects in the movie. That about does it for my spoilers, so let’s move on to

FINAL THOUGHTS:

So… needless to say, there were several parts of this movie that genuinely infuriated me. But the good parts were there too. The handful of good scenes will probably keep this movie mostly watchable, as long as you can stay awake for the boring, stupid, horribly written parts. Seeing Rey and Kylo team up for 5 minutes to kill the Royal Guards after Snoke’s death was awesome. The exchange of dialogue directly after? Not awesome. Luke Skywalker walking out in front of a dozen AT-ATs, and shrugging it off when they all open fire at once? Pure awesomeness. Luke dying without doing much of anything? Not cool. The abundance of plot holes, forced plot lines, terrible dialogue, and bad humor make this an easy tie with Phantom Menace for second worst Star Wars film of all time. But hey, it’s still better than Attack of the Clones. Check it out if you think your hopes are low enough to not be mortified at this travesty. Final verdict? 5/10

Justice League Review

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, and oh boy… what a movie to jump back into this with. So, I just got back from Justice League, and I’ve got to say, I’m torn. Half of my brain saying this film was a disaster of epic proportions, and the other half saying its an incredibly fun movie. So, let’s just jump into this.

Also heads up, some minor spoilers will follow

SUMMARY:

The plot of the movie is that an alien named Steppenwolf had tried to take over the earth centuries ago, using three cubes called “Mother Boxes” to terraform the earth into a new kind of world. He’d been defeated LOTR style by all of the races and groups on the earth banding together and banishing him. Now, Steppenwolf has returned in the wake of Superman’s death to try again, and Batman assembles a team of powerful heroes to stop him, consisting of himself, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman. They figure out they can’t stop Steppenwolf themselves, so Batman comes up with a plan to revive Superman. Superman is resurrected, they fight Steppenwolf, destroy his giant sky beam, and get rid of his army of generic faceless alien soldiers, tease future sequels, roll credits.

THE GOOD:

So, believe it or not, there was some stuff I really enjoyed in this movie. It’s thoroughly entertaining to watch, even though it’s not all that good. The characters have decent chemistry, and some of the action scenes are good. The characters I was most hopeful/nervous about were Aquaman and Flash. Aquaman because he’s never been adapted well onto really most any screen, and has always been the butt of jokes, and Flash because we already have a good depiction of the Flash on TV, and doing yet another version of Barry Allen feels disrespectful to the already developed one that’s been on for the last couple of years. That being said, these two were definitely the most entertaining parts of the movie. Flash has several great one-liners, and the scenes where he goes fast are cool. In the scene where Superman is revived, Superman acts more like Bizarro than himself, and has a brief scuffle with the rest of the team before remembering who he is. This scene has probably my favorite moment in the entire movie, when Flash enters, trying to get behind Superman and attack him, and Superman’s head turns following Flash in perfect time. It’s an intimidating moment, and legitimately cool. Aquaman was a huge relief to see done well. There are a few hiccups, but he comes off as a truly powerful character, and a fun one too. I’m really looking forward to seeing his solo film next year. Cyborg was cool for the most part, but I’ll get into my gripes with him in the next session. Other than that, Batman was mostly pretty cool. I think BvS did him better, but Affleck delivered again. We got to see more of Bruce Wayne this time around, which was interesting to see. Otherwise, that’s about it for my positives, so let’s get on to

THE BAD:

So, for as much fun stuff is in this movie, there’s a whole ton of garbage. First up on the chopping block is the directing. For those who don’t know, during production of the movie, Zack Snyder (the director)’s daughter committed suicide, leading to him stepping out of the director’s chair and handing over the rains to another director. Unfortunately, this director was Joss Whedon. Just a quick disclaimer, I vehemently despise Whedon, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I like some of his work, but most of it I can’t stand. My point is, Whedon took over directing, and was given more or less free reign to do what he wanted. As a result, he did major re-writes to the script, adding in unnecessary plotlines, and making it “just another Joss Whedon movie.” Don’t get me wrong, there are bits that you can tell have Snyder’s hands all over them. But with the two completely differing styles, it completely disjointed the movie. But Whedon leads me into my next huge complaint: Wonder Woman. Now, I loved the WW movie that came out earlier this year. I loved every little bit of it, even the stupid stuff. In the end, she was an awesome warrior, a good character, and a strong female lead. Joss Whedon has wanted to direct a WW movie for years. He was even slated for one a while ago, but had it taken away from him because he didn’t understand the character. I 100% see why here. All he tried to do was turn WW into Buffy. Now, I like Buffy, don’t get me wrong. But seeing a several hundred year old Amazon warrior acting like a bratty teenage California girl was infuriating. I had to remind myself I wasn’t watching Buffy getting over Angel when Wonder Woman starts whining about Steve Trevor, who died almost a hundred years before. It was stupid, and a complete injustice to an amazing character. Another trope of Whedon I need to point out that only served to pad runtime was an obvious addition of a family near Steppenwolf’s Sky Beam. Whedon likes to do this: he’ll add in a random character that has no connection at all to the plot, and no connection to any of the characters. The idea behind it being to make the audience care more about the innocent civilians. It’s annoying, and it’s pointless. Getting off the subject of Whedon for a minute, let’s get onto the overarching plot of the movie. Simply put? It’s incredibly weak. Big Bad CGI monster with no personality has a Sky Beam capable of destroying humanity. He has a big faceless CGI army, and a fancy glowing alien artifact that powers said Sky Beam destroy the artifact and the Baddie is powered down. Kill/defeat the bad guy, and his entire army disappears, and the world goes back to normal. It’s the plot of Avengers, Avengers 2, Suicide Squad, Pirates of the Carribean, and most other hollywood blockbuster films that come out nowadays. It’s lazy storytelling, and it’s boring and annoying. My next issue? The special effects. This was one of the major issues I had with the movie. Sure, parts were good, but mostly, the CG was atrocious. Like, 2011 Green Lantern atrocious. Steppenwolf and Cyborg, the two most important characters with special effects were awful to look at. For as well acted as the part of Cyborg was, I was horrified at how bad his character looked. It was so clearly fake I had a hard time watching it. The aliens were decent enough, but even then, you’ll never remember them. They’re just bland generic monsters for the heroes to kill without feeling bad. The most hilariously stupid issue came with Superman. So, by the time Joss Whedon took over and did his re-writes, Henry Cavill had already filmed his bits, and was off to work on Mission Impossible 6, so he had to be called back for reshoots. The problem with this is, he had to grow a full mustache for his role in MI:6, and wasn’t allowed to shave it off for his role in JL. So, the special effects department took over, and CGI’d his upper lip to get rid of the ‘stache. And it’s PAINFULLY obvious. Laughably so. My last big problem has to be with the dialogue. All I can say is THIS ISN’T THE AVENGERS, THIS IS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. When we have Batman and Wonder Woman quipping back and forth, and all of these characters exchanging playful banter (poorly written playful banter at that), it takes away from the gravity of the situation. I’m not saying I want a boring, emotionless film with no life or color. Some humor is fine, but make it match the universe they’re trying to set up. One of the major issues comes when they hire the guy who did Avengers, Firefly, Buffy, and a million other franchises that consist mainly of characters just snarkily quipping back and forth, don’t be surprised when you get Justice League done as if it were an Avengers film. Other than that, I think that’s about all I’ve got in terms of negatives.

CONCLUSION:

So… was Justice League a particularly good movie? No. No it wasn’t. It had a bland generic plot, bad special effects, and a complete mess of directing. That being said, I didn’t hate it. The characters were decent enough together. The action was serviceable for a DC movie. The decent thing about a plot this generic and simple is it makes it easy to follow. All in all, I think they tried setting too much up at once again, and steered the franchise in a direction I personally believe it shouldn’t have gone. I’d still say it was fine, and I’ll probably watch it again, especially if we get an uncut version, or a director’s cut version when Snyder is in better condition to finish his movie. If you aren’t a DC fan, you’ll probably enjoy it enough, and if you’re a Marvel fan, you’ll enjoy the change in tone from the last few movies. But if you’re a DC fan, this’ll be a fine/decent movie you’ll either love or hate. I’d personally rank it as better than BvS and Suicide Squad, not as good as Wonder Woman, and probably about on par with Man of Steel. 6/10