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The Endgame - BostonCard - 04-26-2019

So, as someone who to an extent avoided the superhero movies, I am wondering whether it would be worth watching some of the 22 MCU movies out there and then, once things have died out a bit, going to see the avengers endgame movie.  For those who have, is it worth it, or is the genre already overplayed?

BC

RE: The Endgame - Snorlax94 - 04-27-2019

Well I *love* these (Marvel Cinematic Universe) movies. I think they’re entertaining, sometimes very funny, and usually visually mesmerizing. I collected comics as a child, so the characters and their stories were usually somewhat familiar to me. I would also argue the movies are innovative in the art of onscreen hand-to-hand combat — I really enjoy the aesthetics, choreography and cinematography of watching one supebeing fight another, and as a lifelong watcher of action movies, I would argue these films are excellent in the action genre (including, say, Bond movies, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Old Boy, etc.)

Guardians of the Galaxy was the most entertaining movie I have seen in the last 10 years, and I would argue Black Panther, Iron Man I, and Captain America 2 are legitimately good movies with substance. Thor 3: Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and the Ant-Man movies are also funny, and Spider-Man: Homecoming is a nice high-school movie (my wife disputes this but I think it could be described as Jonathan Hughes-esque).

The sort-of good news is that you don’t need to watch all the movies.

If some of these sound appealing to you (plus the possible “water cooler” benefit), and you are interested, yes, I say watch some. Avengers Endgame is the Star Wars of these times.

If nothing I have said has piqued your interest, I suggest you walk away now.

If you are on the fence, I suggest you watch Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and see if you enjoy it. It can be watched pretty separately from all the other movies, the only requirement being that you watch it before the Infinity War.

Below is a list of the movies I would recommend seeing, in chronological order of release, next to a score for how important it is to watch, with a priority of 1 being the only movie you *have* to watch, and priority 10 being very optional.

Iron Man 1 - priority 14
Thor 1 - priority 15
Captain America 1 - priority 8
Avengers 1 - priority 4
Thor 2: The Dark World - priority 12
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier — priority 5

Guardians of the Galaxy 1 - priority 3, many key characters and concepts introduced

Avengers 2 - priority 11

Captain America 3: Civil War - priority 2, plot leads directly to Avengers 3

Doctor Strange - priority 9
Spider-Man: Homecoming - priority 13
Thor 3: Ragnarok - priority 7
Black Panther - priority 6

Avengers 3: Infinity War - priority 1, if you watch only 1 movie before Endgame, this is it

Ant-Man and the Wasp - priority 12
Captain Marvel- priority 10

It’s a lot, I know. But you’d do fine just watching the most important 3-4 beforehand.

Watching the key 8 movies would set one up quite nicely.

RE: The Endgame - TreeWeird - 04-27-2019

I have almost no interest in superhero movies, but also agree that Guardians of the Galaxy is hugely entertaining.  I happened to walk in when my 20-something daughter was just about to start it.  I loved it and happily stayed to watch GG2. 

I also loved Deadpool and its sequel, although I don't think he's really part of the Avengers universe.

The GG and Deadpool movies are clever, witty, different that what you might expect, and don't require knowledge of the rest of the "universe"

FYI, I'm 59 and haven't cared much about superhero movies since my kids were old enough to go to theaters themselves.  Other than the GG and Deadpool movies, the last superhero movie I saw was original Iron Man.  

If you want to invest minimal time but still get some idea what this cultural phenomenon is all about, NY Times has a piece:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/24/movies/avengers-endgame-recap.html?searchResultPosition=1

This morning I got my own summary of Endgame itself from my daughter, who went to an 11:00 show last night.  I got the spoilers since I have zero interest in actually spending 3 hours to watch the movies.

RE: The Endgame - cctop - 04-27-2019

BC, if you haven't watched most of the other Marvel movies then don't bother with Endgame.

Much of the pleasure of Endgame comes from wrapping up character arcs that have been a decade in the making.  If you don't know the backstory, it would be like watching the series finales of Game of Thrones/Breaking Bad/The Sopranos/etc. without having watched the shows.

I don't think the superhero genre is played out yet, at least not the Marvel movies which have more humor and humanity than the DC films.

Snorlax has a good writeup but I disagree with him on the need to see several of those films.

Knowing what I know about your general age and interests, if you just want to see if you're interested then try these two films first: If you like them then then move on to these three: These three are fun but not all that important to the overall story.  They're OK to watch with family though they might be a little scary for younger kids: If you're still interested, go back and watch these films which range from pretty good to just OK: These films are not as entertaining as the rest.  There's no need to watch them unless you're seriously invested in the character arcs: Know that most Marvel movies have extra scenes in the middle of the credits and at the end of the credits.  It's fun to stick around to watch them.

Also it's not a part of this larger story arc, but as superhero movies go "Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse" is wonderful.  It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature this year.

RE: The Endgame - Mick - 04-28-2019

Random MCU thoughts...

* I'm 56 years old, and the last time I read a comic book was probably age 20.  That said, the stories of virtually all of the MCU movies are from the late 1970s and 1980s.  

* Marvel always greater humanity, dialogue and character than the DC universe.  The characters had far more foibles and were far more relate-able.

* It's interesting to me that the MCU movies retained the Marvel Comics' preference of keeping the mutant superheroes (X-Men) separate from the non-mutants (Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, etc.).  Then there's Deadpool, even more separate in the comics, but he ties in with the mutants pretty regularly.

* Supposedly Robert Downey Jr. had a great deal to do with the ongoing scripts being so entertaining and watchable.  There's a great deal in the movies that isn't in the comics.

RE: The Endgame - BostonCard - 04-28-2019

Thanks for the advice folks.  I have seen a couple of the movies that are not directly tied to the story line (usually on transatlantic flights where they offer a decent way to pass a couple of hours).  They are entertaining, but, at least to me, not much more than that.  Now, I didn’t grow up with the comics, so I am missing that bit of nostalgia but I feel the story lines are a bit played out and the tropes well-worn.

Since I have Netflix, I looked through the MCU movies currently on rotation, watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  Aside from the charming humor (which provoked more than a few wry smiles), I hate to say it, but I thought it fell flat. Maybe it would have been better had I seen the first one, but it didn't take especially long to orient myself.  It just seemed to alternate between boring and WTF?

I did like the two Deadpool movies (though not ones to watch with my kids), mostly because they were half-parodies.  That was the one thing I liked about GotG2, which was when the movie allowed itself to be in on the joke.  For Deadpool, the self-awareness was the whole point.

BC

RE: The Endgame - cctop - 04-28-2019

(04-28-2019, 06:58 AM)Mick Wrote:  * It's interesting to me that the MCU movies retained the Marvel Comics' preference of keeping the mutant superheroes (X-Men) separate from the non-mutants (Avengers, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, etc.).  Then there's Deadpool, even more separate in the comics, but he ties in with the mutants pretty regularly.

There actually is a practical (not creative) reason the X-Men are separate.

Back in 1996 Marvel declared bankruptcy and sold the movie rights to their most popular characters.  Sony bought the rights to Spider-Man for $8 million, when they could have bought the rights to every character for $25 million!  Fox bought the rights to Fantastic Four, X-men, and more.

When Marvel decided to start making their own movies, they had only their 2nd-tier characters to choose from. They decided on Iron Man first.

With the success of the Marvel franchise, Disney/Marvel came to an agreement with Sony to allow Spider-Man to appear in the Avengers movies, but otherwise the Spider-Man movies are still being done by Sony.

Disney just completed their acquisition of Fox and thus got the rights to X-Men back, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see some X-Men crossing over into other Marvel movies.

(04-28-2019, 06:58 AM)Mick Wrote:  * Supposedly Robert Downey Jr. had a great deal to do with the ongoing scripts being so entertaining and watchable.  There's a great deal in the movies that isn't in the comics.
While in hindsight Robert Downey Jr. was brilliantly cast, at the time it was considered a big risk because of his substance abuse problems.  But those problems are what made him a perfect Tony Stark, who had all the same problems in the comics.

RE: The Endgame - FarmBoy - 04-29-2019

(04-28-2019, 11:01 PM)cctop Wrote:  
(04-28-2019, 06:58 AM)Mick Wrote:  * Supposedly Robert Downey Jr. had a great deal to do with the ongoing scripts being so entertaining and watchable.  There's a great deal in the movies that isn't in the comics.
While in hindsight Robert Downey Jr. was brilliantly cast, at the time it was considered a big risk because of his substance abuse problems.  But those problems are what made him a perfect Tony Stark, who had all the same problems in the comics.

Was that still true at the time Iron Man was made? I was thinking the other day how RDJr's career almost wasn't because of his drug addiction. Pretty amazing when you look back on it, that he was apparently one more arrest away from being locked up for a very long time if he screwed up again. Kudos to him. But I thought he had developed a track record of remaining sober by the time Iron Man was made. But I guess there's always a risk with addicts.

RE: The Endgame - cctop - 04-29-2019

(04-29-2019, 09:00 AM)FarmBoy Wrote:  Was that still true at the time Iron Man was made? I was thinking the other day how RDJr's career almost wasn't because of his drug addiction....I thought he had developed a track record of remaining sober by the time Iron Man was made.

In hindsight it's easy to forget how much of a gamble both an Iron Man film and RDJr were.

RDJr had been sober for about 5 years when he was cast as Tony Stark.  But the director, Jon Favreau, had to fight for him.


There was a lot riding on the film.  At the time Marvel was still struggling to emerge from bankruptcy.  If the film failed, they were pretty much done.

Iron Man wasn't a known character to people who hadn't read the comics.  That's why Marvel still held the film rights to him.  (Technically they had sold the rights, but a film didn't get made so the rights had reverted to Marvel.)

From a production perspective, RDJr had never been the sole lead in a big-budget film before.  On a film with a $30 million budget the studio will pretty much leave you alone to make what you want.  On a $140 million film, careers are on the line and everyone is watching your every move.  It's a lot of pressure on the lead actor, and the fear of relapse was real.

RE: The Endgame - Bruce Wang - 04-29-2019

Endgame is the greatest cinematic achievement of all time. To tie up all 20+ movies in this way is incredibly difficult to pull off. 

I was going to originally going to say that you don't need to see all the movies to fully appreciate it but as I thought through all the plot points and references, I think the only one you can skip is Iron Man 3, which is a good movie and better than Iron Man 2.  The only MCU movie I didn't enjoy was Thor 2: Dark World, but it's good to see this one in the context of Endgame.

It will be hard to top Endgame, but it's possible.  During sleep training my infant children, I caught up on 30 years worth of comic books.  (My brain was so fried I couldn't read anything complex and I didn't want to expose myself to a screen so I could fall asleep as soon as the babies finally settled down.) There are two event series out there that have the potential to be better: Secret Wars 2015 and X-Men v Avengers.  Both are vastly superior to the original source material for Infinity War/Endgame.

RE: The Endgame - BostonCard - 04-29-2019

Regardless of whether Endgame is the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, it is clearly the greatest box office achievement of all time, and no one else is, pardon the pun, in the same cinematic universe.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/04/29/avengers-endgame-is-already-the-years-highest-grossing-film?cid1=cust/dailypicks/n/bl/n/20190429n/owned/n/n/dailypicks/n/n/NA/233762/n

The $350 million domestic box office estimate is not just the single biggest opening in box office history, but Endgame, by itself, brought in more money than the American box office in its totality has ever generated in a single weekend (and it wasn't even particularly close).

I suppose I will watch whatever remains on Netflix that I haven't seen yet (I believe Thor 3 and Infinity War) and at some point watch endgame.

BC

RE: The Endgame - Snorlax94 - 04-30-2019

If you plan to eventually watch Infinity War and Endgame, and if you are planning to watch only the remaining movies on Netflix, I suggest you watch the final 4 Netflix movies in order of release:
Thor 3, Black Panther, Infinity War, then Ant-Man and the Wasp. (And, if you have Amazon Prime, Iron Man 2 is currently free, and would precede those other movies).

Incidentally, if you want a low-commitment way to watch any other movies (like Avengers 1, Guardians of the Galaxy 1, and the Captain America movies), many of the movies are available on Redbox (if you like renting discs) and all of them can be rented on Amazon Prime. These two methods are how I got my wife and kids caught up for Infinity War.

RE: The Endgame - Bruce Wang - 04-30-2019

(04-29-2019, 06:04 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Regardless of whether Endgame is the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, it is clearly the greatest box office achievement of all time, and no one else is, pardon the pun, in the same cinematic universe.

I expect Endgame to break Avatar's global box office record and has a shot at breaking Gone With The Wind's inflation adjusted record.

RE: The Endgame - Mick - 05-04-2019

(04-30-2019, 07:47 AM)Publius Wrote:  
(04-29-2019, 06:04 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Regardless of whether Endgame is the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, it is clearly the greatest box office achievement of all time, and no one else is, pardon the pun, in the same cinematic universe.

I expect Endgame to break Avatar's global box office record and has a shot at breaking Gone With The Wind's inflation adjusted record.

Worldwide gross is already over $1.8 billion.

RE: The Endgame - needle - 05-04-2019

I grew up reading comic books, have seen all the Marvel movies, and think Endgame is easily the most overrated movie of the year (possibly decade).

The Marvel Cinematic Universe peaked in 2014 with the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, a funny and fresh take on superpowered buddy comedy, and Captain America: Winter Soldier, a noir-ish action-drama that built up the stakes without speechifying or (much) CGI.

Since then, the stories have been stale and the characters (both the newly introduced and the familiar) pretty sterile.

Leftcoast - Leftcoast - 05-04-2019

I’d love to see Robert Downey, Jr get an Oscar nomination for End Game.  It’s his portrayal that provided the soul and character arc that carried this incredibly successful set of movies.  

Give the man a shot at that gold plated tin-man!

RE: The Endgame - Mick - 05-05-2019

(05-04-2019, 10:59 AM)needle Wrote:  I grew up reading comic books, have seen all the Marvel movies, and think Endgame is easily the most overrated movie of the year (possibly decade).

The Marvel Cinematic Universe peaked in 2014 with the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, a funny and fresh take on superpowered buddy comedy, and Captain America: Winter Soldier, a noir-ish action-drama that built up the stakes without speechifying or (much) CGI.

Since then, the stories have been stale and the characters (both the newly introduced and the familiar) pretty sterile.

Just saw Endgame.  I completely agree with this entire post.  Really didn't care for it.  Maybe I just got old right at this moment.  there were individual parts that I really enjoyed.  But by and large, i didn't care for it.