Creating a television series out of the indie cult hit What We Do in the Shadows was not obviously going to work. While the movie mines a great deal of comedy out of its portrayal of a bunch of dorky, out-of-touch but nevertheless deadly vampires, it wasn't clear if it was the premise or the particular characters - two of whom were played by the film's creators - that made the movie so fun.
The show takes place in the same fictional world, and indeed we eventually see Viago, Vladislav, and Deacon pop up in a late-season episode to confirm this fact, but instead we follow three other vampires (actually four, counting energy vampire Colin Robinson, who's operating on entirely different rules but is still a vampire) whose dynamics and personalities are entirely different from the three of the movie. Yes, they deal with similar issues like rivalries with werewolves and the baggage of being centuries old in a modern world, as well as, you know, finding people to murder and drink their blood.
To a large extent, I think that the show does manage to replicate the charm of the original film, though its episodic nature means that sometimes it lands perfectly while at other times it comes up a little short.
But the developments of the finale, "Ancestry," promise exciting things moving forward in the next season.
I don't know that I'd really consider this a spoiler-heavy show, but just in case you feel that way, here's a spoiler cut.
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Barry Season One and Protagonist-Centered Morality
I've just finished the first season of Barry. Despite ostensibly being a half-hour comedy, the show that I'm finding a desire to compare it with is Breaking Bad. I realize that might appear to be unfair to Barry, given that Breaking Bad has gone down as one of the best TV shows of all time, but I don't actually mean to say Barry compares poorly to it. Barry is doing similar things - a criminal character balancing their violent life with a mundane one - in opposite ways.
The premise: Barry is about the eponymous hit man (Bill Hader), a veteran of Afghanistan who has been working for a man named Fuches (Stephen Root), a friend of his (presumably deceased) father's who effectively acts as his agent, taking a 50% cut as he sells Barry's services to various people willing to pay.
Barry is sent on a job to Los Angeles to kill the guy who is fucking a Chechen gang leader's wife, but in tracking the guy, he comes across an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and, like so many who come to Hollywood, is entranced by the idea of acting. He meets Sally (Sarah Goldberg), one of the students in the class, and becomes invested in the idea of redefining himself, becoming an actor, and quitting his violent professional life.
Tonally, the show begins by milking the comedy out of such a premise, with jokes about the vapidity of Hollywood and a number of bizarre figures in the world of crime (NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), one of the Chechens, is a stand-out the way he embodies a dopey, ultra-friendly face to the banality of evil.)
But even as we watch Barry, who is convinced that he is a good guy who kills bad guys, and that he's not fundamentally evil, grapple with his struggles to quit this life, we're invited to question both whether that's actually true and also whether Barry actually deserves redemption.
While Breaking Bad revealed relatively early that Walter White was a bad man looking for an excuse to do bad things, Barry clearly sees himself as someone who should and will at one point be able to life the life he feels is his destiny - to simply be an ex-Marine who served his country faithfully, and who now is settling into a happy life as a successful actor with his girlfriend Sally.
He's a man who wants redemption, but at the same time he's in denial about the monstrous things he has done. We like Barry - we see his goals and desires, and if it were any other person, we'd feel no conflict in sympathizing. But redemption requires acknowledging the problem. Barry wants to escape this violent world with his soul unscathed, but it's already scarred over.
Spoilers coming up.
The premise: Barry is about the eponymous hit man (Bill Hader), a veteran of Afghanistan who has been working for a man named Fuches (Stephen Root), a friend of his (presumably deceased) father's who effectively acts as his agent, taking a 50% cut as he sells Barry's services to various people willing to pay.
Barry is sent on a job to Los Angeles to kill the guy who is fucking a Chechen gang leader's wife, but in tracking the guy, he comes across an acting class taught by Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) and, like so many who come to Hollywood, is entranced by the idea of acting. He meets Sally (Sarah Goldberg), one of the students in the class, and becomes invested in the idea of redefining himself, becoming an actor, and quitting his violent professional life.
Tonally, the show begins by milking the comedy out of such a premise, with jokes about the vapidity of Hollywood and a number of bizarre figures in the world of crime (NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan), one of the Chechens, is a stand-out the way he embodies a dopey, ultra-friendly face to the banality of evil.)
But even as we watch Barry, who is convinced that he is a good guy who kills bad guys, and that he's not fundamentally evil, grapple with his struggles to quit this life, we're invited to question both whether that's actually true and also whether Barry actually deserves redemption.
While Breaking Bad revealed relatively early that Walter White was a bad man looking for an excuse to do bad things, Barry clearly sees himself as someone who should and will at one point be able to life the life he feels is his destiny - to simply be an ex-Marine who served his country faithfully, and who now is settling into a happy life as a successful actor with his girlfriend Sally.
He's a man who wants redemption, but at the same time he's in denial about the monstrous things he has done. We like Barry - we see his goals and desires, and if it were any other person, we'd feel no conflict in sympathizing. But redemption requires acknowledging the problem. Barry wants to escape this violent world with his soul unscathed, but it's already scarred over.
Spoilers coming up.
Friday, May 24, 2019
Why People Are So Angry About Entertainment These Days
I realize that title is a very ambitious one, and I'm not going to be able to get a totally satisfying explanation in this humble blog. But I think that there's a lot of vitriol and passionate anger over the direction various pieces of entertainment are going that seems worse than usual.
And maybe that's just the fallacy of things feeling more intense while they're happening.
Consider the Star Wars prequels. These days, it seems as if most people remember them as catastrophic artistic failures doomed by a brand and a creator who had grown beyond the reins of creative limitations and outside opinions. My recollection - as a middle schooler, at least when Phantom Menace came out - was that the initial response was positive. But over time - and not a ton of time - we kind of reevaluated the movies and started to question the decisions made in making them. My personal position on them is that I think George Lucas had grand ambitions for the prequels to represent a more complex, politically relevant, and nuanced backstory to his grand epic, but did not have the writing chops to make his characters feel real amidst the ideas and spectacle he wanted. So, while I don't mean to say there was no cynicism in those movies, I think that they were trying to be good and just, you know, failed to be.
Yet in a lot of ways, I think that the response to the prequels set the stage for the current outrage culture.
To be clear: outrage culture is not confined solely to entertainment. The current political moment (please let it end) is fueled by outrage. And the internet being, to paraphrase the Simpsons, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, it has formed communities out of shared outrage. Indeed, disliking something grants people a kind of identity, whether it's the prequels, the new Star Wars movies, the state of World of Warcraft, the last season of Game of Thrones, or, you know, one political party or another. Or one ethnic group or another.
Yeah, that's the darkest extreme of this outrage culture. Racism is, I think, largely born out of a desire to identify with a group, and by defining yourself as the ones who want to, say, keep people who look a certain way or follow a certain religion out of your country, you can derive a sense of belonging.
But to step back from that can of worms, I think there are other elements at play as well.
One big one is franchising.
Sequels are nothing new. But a lot of the time, movie sequels were sort of afterthoughts. I don't think there are many people who liked the Lost World more than Jurassic Park. Similarly, while Men in Black was revelatory in how fun and funny it was, I imagine most people don't even remember what Men in Black II was about.
Basically, sequels of the post-Jaws/Star Wars era were largely bad, or rarely more than "meh." Star Wars was the big exception - even though I think some older fans found Return of the Jedi disappointing, Empire Strikes Back is seen as the gold standard for expanding a series, worldbuilding, and playing with tone.
But Star Wars also created a model that would shift the way we consume these stories, and I'm going to finally start getting to the point I actually intended to make with this post.
Star Wars started as a stand-alone film, but when Empire was announced, they also knew that Jedi was going to come after it. Empire came out in 1980, and Jedi in '82. Which means that watching Empire Strikes Back, you needed to form an opinion about a story that wasn't finished yet.
Twenty years later, the Lord of the Rings movies came out in December of 2001, 2002, and 2003. There was no question, when finishing the first movie, that there were two more coming later. They took a series of books that had been written together as one massive epic and kind of replicated the process in filmmaking. You knew that there was more of this story to tell because it had actually been shot as one massive film.
Not everything can be done that way, though.
Consider also the rise of prestige television. TV has become far more serialized, and Game of Thrones was a new strategy for adapting an epic fantasy series. With production design and visual effects you'd expect for a big-screen feature, Game of Thrones told its story over a course of time that dwarfed the 12-ish hour epic that was Lord of the Rings.
And given that we watched it over the course of nine years, it meant something very important:
We had to decide whether we liked it a long time ago.
Basically, when Ned Stark was getting his head cut off (spoilers?) most viewers had to, at that point, decide whether they were invested.
Now, certainly some people got off the train later, but it became something of an identity. OK Cupid, before the last season, allowed people to add a banner to their dating profiles identifying them as Game of Thrones fans.
Art is something people identify with. Think about how music genres tend to have their own fashions, despite there being no direct relationship between sound you generate and the clothing you wear.
And so, while hyping oneself up to expect perfection from some movie or show you like can lead to disappointment, the thing that turns that disappointment into rage is that people feel like there's some part of their identity that they've lost.
I mean, the Simpsons was a huge part of my childhood, up until about 2000. I think that stretch of the show is maybe the greatest television comedy of all time. But as the show changed and its humor lost its cleverness, I had to let go of it. It was painful.
But on the other hand - artists are constantly doubting themselves and struggling just to get the work done at all. Art is created by humans, and it's also subjective. You might have derived a certain meaning from a piece of art that is at odds with the artist's intentions. And while that can be just kind of interesting when you have a finished piece to examine, with a work in progress like a long-running series, it can lead to painful cognitive dissonance when you find that you and the artist were on diverging paths.
But no artist can anticipate every audience member's reactions and what they'll specifically invest in. I think it's on us to be able to take a step back, take a deep breath, and simply express rational disappointment if a series ends in a way we find unsatisfying. Anger is not the right emotion to derive from such an experience - or at least, if we do feel that way (we can't really help which emotions we feel) we need to recognize it for what it really means, and not, you know, send death threats to people involved in the production.
And maybe that's just the fallacy of things feeling more intense while they're happening.
Consider the Star Wars prequels. These days, it seems as if most people remember them as catastrophic artistic failures doomed by a brand and a creator who had grown beyond the reins of creative limitations and outside opinions. My recollection - as a middle schooler, at least when Phantom Menace came out - was that the initial response was positive. But over time - and not a ton of time - we kind of reevaluated the movies and started to question the decisions made in making them. My personal position on them is that I think George Lucas had grand ambitions for the prequels to represent a more complex, politically relevant, and nuanced backstory to his grand epic, but did not have the writing chops to make his characters feel real amidst the ideas and spectacle he wanted. So, while I don't mean to say there was no cynicism in those movies, I think that they were trying to be good and just, you know, failed to be.
Yet in a lot of ways, I think that the response to the prequels set the stage for the current outrage culture.
To be clear: outrage culture is not confined solely to entertainment. The current political moment (please let it end) is fueled by outrage. And the internet being, to paraphrase the Simpsons, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems, it has formed communities out of shared outrage. Indeed, disliking something grants people a kind of identity, whether it's the prequels, the new Star Wars movies, the state of World of Warcraft, the last season of Game of Thrones, or, you know, one political party or another. Or one ethnic group or another.
Yeah, that's the darkest extreme of this outrage culture. Racism is, I think, largely born out of a desire to identify with a group, and by defining yourself as the ones who want to, say, keep people who look a certain way or follow a certain religion out of your country, you can derive a sense of belonging.
But to step back from that can of worms, I think there are other elements at play as well.
One big one is franchising.
Sequels are nothing new. But a lot of the time, movie sequels were sort of afterthoughts. I don't think there are many people who liked the Lost World more than Jurassic Park. Similarly, while Men in Black was revelatory in how fun and funny it was, I imagine most people don't even remember what Men in Black II was about.
Basically, sequels of the post-Jaws/Star Wars era were largely bad, or rarely more than "meh." Star Wars was the big exception - even though I think some older fans found Return of the Jedi disappointing, Empire Strikes Back is seen as the gold standard for expanding a series, worldbuilding, and playing with tone.
But Star Wars also created a model that would shift the way we consume these stories, and I'm going to finally start getting to the point I actually intended to make with this post.
Star Wars started as a stand-alone film, but when Empire was announced, they also knew that Jedi was going to come after it. Empire came out in 1980, and Jedi in '82. Which means that watching Empire Strikes Back, you needed to form an opinion about a story that wasn't finished yet.
Twenty years later, the Lord of the Rings movies came out in December of 2001, 2002, and 2003. There was no question, when finishing the first movie, that there were two more coming later. They took a series of books that had been written together as one massive epic and kind of replicated the process in filmmaking. You knew that there was more of this story to tell because it had actually been shot as one massive film.
Not everything can be done that way, though.
Consider also the rise of prestige television. TV has become far more serialized, and Game of Thrones was a new strategy for adapting an epic fantasy series. With production design and visual effects you'd expect for a big-screen feature, Game of Thrones told its story over a course of time that dwarfed the 12-ish hour epic that was Lord of the Rings.
And given that we watched it over the course of nine years, it meant something very important:
We had to decide whether we liked it a long time ago.
Basically, when Ned Stark was getting his head cut off (spoilers?) most viewers had to, at that point, decide whether they were invested.
Now, certainly some people got off the train later, but it became something of an identity. OK Cupid, before the last season, allowed people to add a banner to their dating profiles identifying them as Game of Thrones fans.
Art is something people identify with. Think about how music genres tend to have their own fashions, despite there being no direct relationship between sound you generate and the clothing you wear.
And so, while hyping oneself up to expect perfection from some movie or show you like can lead to disappointment, the thing that turns that disappointment into rage is that people feel like there's some part of their identity that they've lost.
I mean, the Simpsons was a huge part of my childhood, up until about 2000. I think that stretch of the show is maybe the greatest television comedy of all time. But as the show changed and its humor lost its cleverness, I had to let go of it. It was painful.
But on the other hand - artists are constantly doubting themselves and struggling just to get the work done at all. Art is created by humans, and it's also subjective. You might have derived a certain meaning from a piece of art that is at odds with the artist's intentions. And while that can be just kind of interesting when you have a finished piece to examine, with a work in progress like a long-running series, it can lead to painful cognitive dissonance when you find that you and the artist were on diverging paths.
But no artist can anticipate every audience member's reactions and what they'll specifically invest in. I think it's on us to be able to take a step back, take a deep breath, and simply express rational disappointment if a series ends in a way we find unsatisfying. Anger is not the right emotion to derive from such an experience - or at least, if we do feel that way (we can't really help which emotions we feel) we need to recognize it for what it really means, and not, you know, send death threats to people involved in the production.
Monday, May 20, 2019
The Game of Thrones Comes to an End
I had two simultaneous feelings about the finale of Game of Thrones.
As an episode, aside from a couple logical leaps and one or two lines that seemed to say "eh, I know you'll have questions about this, but don't think about it too much," I thought the state of the world as things ended pretty much worked, given what had come before it.
But it's that "what came before it" that makes me feel a little less comfortable giving the series the golden seal I wanted to.
Obviously, we're going into spoiler territory. Pretty soon, GoT will be seen in its totality, as a fixed thing (which it already is, of course.)
But we're still well within the statute of limitations. So here comes the spoiler break.
As an episode, aside from a couple logical leaps and one or two lines that seemed to say "eh, I know you'll have questions about this, but don't think about it too much," I thought the state of the world as things ended pretty much worked, given what had come before it.
But it's that "what came before it" that makes me feel a little less comfortable giving the series the golden seal I wanted to.
Obviously, we're going into spoiler territory. Pretty soon, GoT will be seen in its totality, as a fixed thing (which it already is, of course.)
But we're still well within the statute of limitations. So here comes the spoiler break.
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
What We Do In the Shadows and Barry
With Game of Thrones rushing so quickly to its end that really devastating turns in character arcs are feeling unearned (ahem,) I've naturally got to be on the lookout for new shows to get into. The active shows I consider myself to be watching are Game of Thrones, The Good Place, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Expanse, and Legion, the latter of which is also heading to its final season soon. So here are two new ones that I've started watching!
What We Do in the Shadows is the long-teased television adaptation of the awesome cult-classic indie comedy by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (the former known for Flight of the Conchords and actually Legion too, come to think of it, the latter probably best known now for directing Thor Ragnarok but who also directed a bunch of Conchords episodes.)
The movie and show are mockumentaries. The film follows a trio of vampires who live in Wellington along with their profoundly ancient fourth roommate Petyr, who is also a vampire but doesn't play as big of a role in the story. Basically, it's a bunch of blood-sucking monsters who nevertheless have all the usual problems of adult roommates living together more for convenience than anything else, and trying to get by in the modern era despite having grown up centuries ago.
The formula of the show is similar, in this case giving us a different spread of weirdly pathetic vampires in Staten Island. Laszlo is a foppish pervert, Nadja is a hopeless romantic, and Nandor is weirdly meek for a former warlord. Along with them is Colin Robinson, an "energy vampire" who doesn't have to follow the rules (like he can walk into the sun without bursting into flames) and feeds not off of blood, but off of the energy he drains out of people by boring them. There's also Guillermo, Nandor's familiar who is, like apparently all familiars, being strung along with the promise of becoming a vampire so that the vampire can have a devoted servant.
While it takes a couple episodes to get up to speed, the show basically works if you liked the movie - introducing new ideas and scenarios that our hapless vampiric friends stumble their way through. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, especially the most recent one I've seen, which involves a vampire trial that ropes in a ton of actors who have played vampires in movies and TV.
The other show I've started (four episodes in, I think,) is Barry. Starring Bill Hader, the show is about a hitman who, after being sent to LA to kill a personal trainer/aspiring actor who has been sleeping with some Chechen mobster's wife, winds up accidentally getting roped into an acting class and decides, like so many who come to our sunny burg, that he wants to give up his career and become an actor. Only that his career is murdering people.
The show strikes a remarkable balance between being an outrageous comedy while hinting at the tragedy of its protagonist's life - he's a veteran who clearly suffers from some sort of PTSD, and he's been manipulated into this violent lifestyle by someone who has offered to give him a sense of purpose.
The show's got Stephen Root and Henry Winkler. What more could you ask for?
Anyway, assuming I keep liking these shows, you might see more posts about them moving forward.
What We Do in the Shadows is the long-teased television adaptation of the awesome cult-classic indie comedy by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi (the former known for Flight of the Conchords and actually Legion too, come to think of it, the latter probably best known now for directing Thor Ragnarok but who also directed a bunch of Conchords episodes.)
The movie and show are mockumentaries. The film follows a trio of vampires who live in Wellington along with their profoundly ancient fourth roommate Petyr, who is also a vampire but doesn't play as big of a role in the story. Basically, it's a bunch of blood-sucking monsters who nevertheless have all the usual problems of adult roommates living together more for convenience than anything else, and trying to get by in the modern era despite having grown up centuries ago.
The formula of the show is similar, in this case giving us a different spread of weirdly pathetic vampires in Staten Island. Laszlo is a foppish pervert, Nadja is a hopeless romantic, and Nandor is weirdly meek for a former warlord. Along with them is Colin Robinson, an "energy vampire" who doesn't have to follow the rules (like he can walk into the sun without bursting into flames) and feeds not off of blood, but off of the energy he drains out of people by boring them. There's also Guillermo, Nandor's familiar who is, like apparently all familiars, being strung along with the promise of becoming a vampire so that the vampire can have a devoted servant.
While it takes a couple episodes to get up to speed, the show basically works if you liked the movie - introducing new ideas and scenarios that our hapless vampiric friends stumble their way through. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, especially the most recent one I've seen, which involves a vampire trial that ropes in a ton of actors who have played vampires in movies and TV.
The other show I've started (four episodes in, I think,) is Barry. Starring Bill Hader, the show is about a hitman who, after being sent to LA to kill a personal trainer/aspiring actor who has been sleeping with some Chechen mobster's wife, winds up accidentally getting roped into an acting class and decides, like so many who come to our sunny burg, that he wants to give up his career and become an actor. Only that his career is murdering people.
The show strikes a remarkable balance between being an outrageous comedy while hinting at the tragedy of its protagonist's life - he's a veteran who clearly suffers from some sort of PTSD, and he's been manipulated into this violent lifestyle by someone who has offered to give him a sense of purpose.
The show's got Stephen Root and Henry Winkler. What more could you ask for?
Anyway, assuming I keep liking these shows, you might see more posts about them moving forward.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Game of Thrones... Uh... Boy
Well, after the climactic battle at Winterfell, we've come to the other major climax the show has been building to - the confrontation between Daenerys and her forces with those of Cersei.
And things go... differently than you might have guessed.
Big spoilers to follow, so, you know, beware.
And things go... differently than you might have guessed.
Big spoilers to follow, so, you know, beware.
Monday, May 6, 2019
With a New, Spoilery Trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home, We Prepare for the End to Phase 3
Endgame was the culmination of eleven years of movies, the climax to a saga that had been building up ever since Tony Stark first built a mechanical suit in a cave in Afghanistan. But actually, echoing some of my thoughts about Game of Thrones, sometimes you need a big denouement for a story as large as these, and it seems like Far From Home will, in a way, serve as a bit of an epilogue to what has come before.
Naturally, we'll be getting more MCU movies, but Endgame's effects were so broad and huge that it makes sense for us to take some time and look at the repercussions. At the same time, Far From Home will of course have to be its own movie as well.
Now, this is ultimately a reaction to a trailer, but it's a trailer with spoilers for Endgame, with even a disclaimer by Tom Holland at the beginning telling you not to watch it if you haven't seen Endgame.
We are definitely still well within the statute of limitations on spoiling Endgame, so I'll make a cut.
Naturally, we'll be getting more MCU movies, but Endgame's effects were so broad and huge that it makes sense for us to take some time and look at the repercussions. At the same time, Far From Home will of course have to be its own movie as well.
Now, this is ultimately a reaction to a trailer, but it's a trailer with spoilers for Endgame, with even a disclaimer by Tom Holland at the beginning telling you not to watch it if you haven't seen Endgame.
We are definitely still well within the statute of limitations on spoiling Endgame, so I'll make a cut.
Hey Guys, There's Still a Chance for Death on Game of Thrones!
The Long Night felt like the climactic episode that all of Game of Thrones had been building to in its 8 seasons. Was it flawed, with a number of questionable decisions on the parts of the writers and staging? Certainly. Was it also big, epic, and thrilling? Also certainly. You'd be forgiven for thinking that the next three episodes were basically just denouement for the series.
Indeed, when you consider the proportion of time a feature film has to dedicate to its post-climax runtime, compared to what we usually expect from epic TV shows - in which one generally expects the series climax to happen in its finale, and then have to pay everything off in a much shorter span of time before you even consider the proportions of total story to time wrapping things up, it actually would make a lot of sense for shows to get their biggest climax out of the way a few episodes early.
In Breaking Bad, for example, I think you could make a solid argument that its ante-penultimate (that's third-last) episode Ozymandias is really the series climax. But it's still in the show's true finale that we get the final burst of action and resolution.
Tonight's episode, The Last of the Starks, feints at being pure denouement. Indeed, I had initially gotten the sense that they might have decided to kind of sandwich the Long Night between two much quieter episodes.
It doesn't really go that way.
Let's discuss after the break.
Indeed, when you consider the proportion of time a feature film has to dedicate to its post-climax runtime, compared to what we usually expect from epic TV shows - in which one generally expects the series climax to happen in its finale, and then have to pay everything off in a much shorter span of time before you even consider the proportions of total story to time wrapping things up, it actually would make a lot of sense for shows to get their biggest climax out of the way a few episodes early.
In Breaking Bad, for example, I think you could make a solid argument that its ante-penultimate (that's third-last) episode Ozymandias is really the series climax. But it's still in the show's true finale that we get the final burst of action and resolution.
Tonight's episode, The Last of the Starks, feints at being pure denouement. Indeed, I had initially gotten the sense that they might have decided to kind of sandwich the Long Night between two much quieter episodes.
It doesn't really go that way.
Let's discuss after the break.
Friday, May 3, 2019
My Only Big Problem With Endgame
Ok, as I said in the previous post, Avengers: Endgame was an incredibly well-executed finale to what has essentially been a 22-movie series - or, as my friend put it, the end of a 50-hour movie. It was suitably epic without losing sight of the characters and giving us enough fun and humor while still keeping the stakes the highest they've ever been.
You could hardly ask for a better ending to this saga. But, though hardly, there is one major flaw I see in with it. I don't want to talk about that flaw until after the cut, but there is a certain matter of emphasis that feels skewed. Let's just get into spoiler territory.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
You could hardly ask for a better ending to this saga. But, though hardly, there is one major flaw I see in with it. I don't want to talk about that flaw until after the cut, but there is a certain matter of emphasis that feels skewed. Let's just get into spoiler territory.
SPOILERS AHEAD.
Thursday, May 2, 2019
Avengers: Endgame
The MCU long ago cemented itself as one of the most important blockbuster film franchises in cinema history - standing amongst the likes of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and James Bond (who, let's be clear, is also a superhero.) But the degree to which this 11-year, 22-film project feels of a piece, and for it to come to such a massive, climactic conclusion (even with the promise that this is not the end,) is unprecedented.
Endgame is unprecedented in just how big it feels, which is impressive given that there's actually not a ton of action. Indeed, one of the real strengths of the Marvel movies is that they've known that the best action movies do the legwork to earn that action (with some exceptions that are almost pure action, like Mad Max: Fury Road.) The thing that's kept us invested in this utterly ridiculously massive franchise is the characters. We like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and the rest just as much if not more than we like Iron Man, Captain America, or Black Widow.
It's something that a lot of imitators, trying to create their own cinematic universes, haven't been able to nail - they like the idea of the big, interconnected meta-series (and the obscene amounts of money that such a thing earns) but they don't have the mastery of coordination and the discipline to drill down to the core and ensure that at the very center are the human characters.
Naturally, everyone will find quibbles with any artistic project, and some will simply be disappointed that it wasn't the movie they had imagined in their head, or perhaps no movie could have lived up to their expectations.
But for me, and I imagine for the vast majority of people, Avengers: Endgame sticks the landing, giving us an epic, emotional culmination that feels powerful. So often, the endings to this sort of epic wind up feeling vaguely underwhelming for one reason or another. But you can feel the weight behind Endgame, and that it lands where it does is a remarkable feat.
Let's spoil things, shall we?
Endgame is unprecedented in just how big it feels, which is impressive given that there's actually not a ton of action. Indeed, one of the real strengths of the Marvel movies is that they've known that the best action movies do the legwork to earn that action (with some exceptions that are almost pure action, like Mad Max: Fury Road.) The thing that's kept us invested in this utterly ridiculously massive franchise is the characters. We like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, and the rest just as much if not more than we like Iron Man, Captain America, or Black Widow.
It's something that a lot of imitators, trying to create their own cinematic universes, haven't been able to nail - they like the idea of the big, interconnected meta-series (and the obscene amounts of money that such a thing earns) but they don't have the mastery of coordination and the discipline to drill down to the core and ensure that at the very center are the human characters.
Naturally, everyone will find quibbles with any artistic project, and some will simply be disappointed that it wasn't the movie they had imagined in their head, or perhaps no movie could have lived up to their expectations.
But for me, and I imagine for the vast majority of people, Avengers: Endgame sticks the landing, giving us an epic, emotional culmination that feels powerful. So often, the endings to this sort of epic wind up feeling vaguely underwhelming for one reason or another. But you can feel the weight behind Endgame, and that it lands where it does is a remarkable feat.
Let's spoil things, shall we?
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