Went to see it with my son (it was his second run already) last Sunday, May 5. I actually enjoyed it far more than I expected, so I guess it deserves a solid 6/10.
I’ll give some impressions and then talk about some little things I have not seen anyone comment.
First, I kind of enjoyed the Thor way, since, if not for that, the scene with his mother would probably not be so intense. The jokes in the room, particularly the Fortnite ones, are annoying as heck, though.
Second, I hit the bullseye right in the middle when I said to my son one year ago that they would merge Hulk with Banner. Considering the way they had been criminally nerfing him in a continuous way after all the green power displayed in vanilla Avengers (I mean, getting beat by Thor made sense in the comics and did a bit in 2017, as Ragnarok was supposed to show the unveiling of the blonde’s true potential; getting beat by Thanos was maybe also ok, if Thanos was already as OP as they showed him to be in Endgame, plus he had a stone with him at that time; but being beat by the Hulkbuster in Ultron? So many years later I still cannot digest that lol), it was no surprise to me that he would not get another great powershow (the child in me is disappointed, but the adult maybe understands that).
Even so, all the things Hulk does in the movie are of gigantic impact and they make peace with the importance of the character, so I’m also ok with him in the movie (extra points up for the revival of the “Secret Wars” scene when Hulk alone prevents the other heroes from being crushed by tons of debris, except he was holding a whole mountain then and now it was “only” a large building, and with just one hand, no less; I still don’t get the lack of explanation for it taking so long for his arm to heal lol. Maybe the stones were preventing it, or whatever).
Captain is not irritating as frigg here like he was in Civil War (horrible, stupid movie btw) and that alone deserves a commendation.
They handled the whole Cap Marvel power quite well and Iron Man had a fitting, honorable end to the character/actor that was greatly responsible for all this to be possible.
So, nice show, much better than I thought it would be, but just one major consideration, that I have not seen elsewhere:
The script, as it is, relies a lot on human interaction and that required a much, much better direction for the actors, something that the Russos simply are not cut off to do. Ultron had the talent in the hands of Joss Whedon, but a horrible, atrocious script made everything be the huge mess that it turned out to. The Russos had a better script on that matter, but not the talent to extract the best from the actors when they most needed it. Simply put, this movie needed someone like Joss or, even better, Sam Raimi.
Finally, some minor nitpicks:
The rhythm is very inconsistent, something the directors handled very well in IW but not so much here;
Time travel to solve things is just as cliché as it gets. Didn’t care much for this solution, and the holes got ginormous;
The Ronin side of the movie is too far-fetched and not worked well enough to make the impact it was supposed to;
Spider-Man, even as a “kid”, was treated pathetically both here and in IW, what is inconceivable to be done to the best, and most famous and beloved, Marvel superhero (which he was, at least up to the beginning of the MCU; now, if only the movies are to be accounted, it will probably be IM).
Well, to close it up, it is very enjoyable, even if I think it is going to be easily forgotten in the future as a movie, but as an entertainment composition of a (very) large previous construct that we could see happen in the past decade, it is impressive. Even some parts extracted from the hedious Civil War come together in some harmony here. The original IM is still the best MCU movie (I mean movie, one you go back and see again from time to time, not an event) by a long shot, and it could have been close to perfection if it wasn’t for the big, foolish, Bay-like-transformers fight in the last act. The two others that come closer to IM1 in quality are the first Avengers flick and then TWS. Infinity War is somewhat behind those three and this one comes close to IW. Solid entertainment that mostly lacked better direction for the actors to have the emotional impact it could have had.
P.S.: If you are wondering on what basis I judge this kind of film, Spider-Man 2 (2004) is the best superhero movie ever made.
My 1000th post: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9368779
