The Rise of Skywalker was awesome - FIGHT ME! (spoiler free)

[S.Peelman]

I’ll do you one better. This will probably be an unpopular opinion.

I watched Avengers Endgame for the first time this week, after having seen Infinity War for the first time last month. And I have to say I had a lot more ‘fun’ watching Rise of Skywalker than I did Endgame. Obviously, Endgame, Avengers and the Marvel series as a whole is much more well written, more consistent and has a clear objective, but if it’s about fun, I’d say the latest Star Wars actually tops it. And looks too, I get that Marvel’s color scheme and CGI effects are supposed to look comic booky, but I think the more realistic and gritty look of Star Wars is more pleasing. For one I don’t get for example why Thanos isn’t primarily make-up and prosthetics for close-ups.

The biggest problem though is that I thought Endgame was much too long, by the time of the final battle it has basically become a chore to watch. Then in the battle it takes to long to finally beat Thanos, hero after hero tries but gets smacked away, which got kind of annoying. We get it, he’s strong. With a runtime of almost three hours, I think that they could’ve trimmed about half an hour. There’s also too much going on to keep track off, with the many different locations and time travel. Time travel is always risky, they make a joke about it by wondering if works like in Terminator or Back to the Future which is nice, but I doubt Endgame did it ‘right’ either. Especially with how it ends, a pretty big change to history. From a character point of view though Captain America’s send-off was satisfying. I think Infinity War was way superior, with better pacing and more to the point.

Obviously Endgame is a good movie and a big cinematic achievement, but it’s kind of a chore to watch, which Star Wars Rise of Skywalker isn’t. That one is just ‘fun’, which means I’d sooner rewatch that than Endgame. In fact I evidently already did. As a sidenote, I’ve been on a bit of a Marvel binge the last few months, having watched the ones I never watched before. Most notably, Captain Marvel, which I though was fun, Black Panther which I thought was so-so, and both Guardians of the Galaxy which I thought were great actually.