The Golden Compass

So the first thing to note is that I have not read The Golden Compass. While it's a series I have had some interest in, it wasn't the fantasy series that I was into as a kid. I know some background on the series and the author that I have some thoughts on. I might discuss that a little bit, but I do want to focus on the elements that I do know a lot about, and that would be my viewing experience of this film as well as my troubled anticipation of the HBO series coming out later this year.

The Golden Compass was the first book in a series known as His Dark Materials, written by Phillip Pullman. In doing a little bit of research on the series and Pullman himself, I find him very interesting as a person and the motivation for His Dark Materials to be really interesting. It's got high fantasy elements but then elements of physics, theology, and philosophy is thrown into it with the series being compared to Paradise Lost. Pullman is highly critical of religion and even took aim at C.S. Lewis, calling The Chronicles of Narnia religious propaganda.

Unfortunately, that has made His Dark Materials both a really interesting yet kind of annoying series. On one hand, it is a really interesting perspective and I love it when authors take elements of philosophy and theology and throw it into the fiction/fantasy work, I think it adds a level of complexity.

On the other hand, I've never been a fan of the idea that His Dark Materials was written in part to create a counter argument to The Chronicles of Narnia. It's one thing to write a series based off of religion or your philosophy, its another to write in total retaliation to other people's work.

However, I find the concept of the story really interesting. Just because someone might have a particular thought on religion doesn't discount them in my mind. Stephen King has plenty of things to say about religion but I still love his work.

On top of that, whether its been through this particular film or just what I've heard of the series, this kind of fantasy does interest me. I'll talk about it more when I talk about the aesthetic, but I did want to preface this review with the fact that there is some biases I hold towards this series. However, I am intrigued by the series and will be checking out the HBO series when it comes out later this year.

The other element that I should mention is that no matter what my thoughts on the series are, that doesn't really change the execution of this movie... because this movie is a bit of a mess.

In an exposition dump in the first 2 minutes of the film, the setting is established as a parallel dimension where people's souls live on the outside of their bodies in the form of an animal. This dimension looks like ours except for some differences like steam-punk-like fantasy mechanisms, witches, Ice Bears, and a race of people called Gyptians.

Despite being an exposition dump, there are a lot of questions you'll have during this movie that will never be answered. Just so you're aware.

But the movie mainly centers around a young girl named Lyra (played by Dakota Richard Blue), whose Uncle, Lord Asriel (played by Daniel Craig), is on the cusp of a discovery of the origins of something called dust, an element that would disrupt the world order of the governing Magisterium (probably the biggest allegory for the Catholic Church in cinematic history).

While Asriel goes on what is clearly the more interesting story here, to go north and find the source of the dust and travel across dimensions (because nobody would ever want to see that story), his brat of a niece Lyra is wisked off on her own adventure through a series of circumstances.

First she's lured into the company of the mysteriously devilish Mrs. Coulter (played by the stunning Nicole Kidman), then she's given a Golden Compass in which she is told it helps people find the truth and that Mrs. Coulter should never know she has it, then she gets thrown into a larger adventure about saving some children and she odysseys from place to place, kind of aimlessly until the end where she flies off into a sequel we'll never get to see.

Are parts of it interesting? Yes. For sure. The visuals and the world they build out is actually pretty impressive. One thing I should give this movie credit for is going through a lot of places, introducing a lot of elements to the world, and making me curious. The movie is also really good at no context exposition dumps.

The first 30 seconds of the movie is Eva Green (who adds absolutely nothing to this film by the way, but she's Eva Green, she's got a cool voice and she looks badass) explaining how this takes place in an alternate dimension where people's souls live outside their body in the form of an animal.

There's a lot more she says with no explanation, like what Gyptians are, what armored bears are or how they're different, and some of it is explained, but the animals is a good example.

That raises a lot of questions, that they never really explain. When a person dies the animal vanishes but what happens if the animal dies? What does a certain animal tell you about a person? What does having a monkey tell you about Mrs. Coulter? Why doesn't her monkey talk and Lyra's daemon does? Do Daemons have alternate personalities than their owner? Are there monkeys in this world who are not daemons? Why does Kathy Bates voice Sam Elliot's daemon and what does that say about him?

Not all of these questions are super relevant but I hope you get what I'm going at. If you have quite a bit of mythology to explain, just rushing through the plot as fast as you can and hoping that the audience is catching on as you go doesn't make for a very interesting story because you don't know the rules.

That fits into another issue, the pacing.

The movie clips by very fast that we're not really allowed to get to know the majority of the characters and the characters we do get to know very well, which is essentially just Lyra, aren't that likable.

Take Lyra and Lorek Byrnison for example. One we get to know from the get go. She's the stereotypical tomboy who hates being called a lady and is ready to fight the system. But in multiple scenes she just comes off as a brat and since she's the main character, we get to see this asshole the entire movie. And it would be one thing if that was a character flaw that she needs to work through, to gain compassion. But no, she's just an asshole but she's the main character so they just kind of accept it as her personality.

Now take Lorek Byrnison. We meet him around the half way point and because he's so late in the game, they have to spend cram in his entire backstory and his motivation for joining Lyra in a matter of a couple minutes. Unfortunately, a lot of the characters fall into this category. Sam Elliot, Eva Green, Daniel Craig, all the Gyptians, they're backstory gets crammed into very few scenes and at the end of the day, they're just people in cool costumes following around a bratty young girl just because she's the one who can read the mcguffin, the Golden Compass.

Another point on pacing is how this movie doesn't follow the classic structure of a film and it turns out awkward. Breaking traditional structure is okay, but it makes certain parts of the film seem uneven.

So the beginning starts with Mrs. Coulter taking Lyra away on a trip, treating her nicely, and as an adult I'm realizing that she's most definitely being held hostage and seems more like the B story to a more interesting A story with Lord Asriel, but whatever, that wasn't the story.

The problem is, at the 15 minute mark which is when the hero is supposed to be heading off on their mission, that happens. Lyra leaves with Mrs. Coulter but doesn't totally understand why.

At the thirty minute mark she realizes Mrs. Coulter's cruelty and runs away. Now, you could say this is the point where Lyra realizes her quest where a usual movie would, but she's just running away. She's not going to help any children which kind of becomes the main plot, she's not going to find dust which was probably going to be the plot for the movie franchise, she's just running away.

And that's the main problem, the objective of the movie is split between this larger objective of dust and taking down the magisterium, and the smaller but probably more actionable objective is saving the children. Yes they are somewhat related, but one was an objective that wasn't going to be solved in one movie, dust and taking down the magisterium, and the other wasn't paid enough attention to.

It's the classic DC blunder, trying to make a franchise before you make a good movie.

The last issue I wanna bring up is the fact that the villain is not clearly defined in this movie. Mrs. Coulter is set up as a bad guy in the beginning but after Lyra escapes, Mrs. Coulter shows up once to slap the shit out of a monkey (hilarious) and then she shows up at the end where she's revealed to be bad... but not that bad.

The main villain is supposed to be the magisterium, at least the overarching bad guy for what would have been the movie franchise.

The problem is, and hear me out here, there's nothing to indicate to the characters that the magisterium is that bad of a government. They make them out to be like the evil Empire from Star Wars, but lets take a look at the bad things the magisterium does in this movie.

They send a guy to assassinate Daniel Craig, fair but it goes by so quick and is downplayed so much that it's hard to even say that guy was representing the magisterium, and even if he did does that mean the entire organization is evil?

Mrs. Coulter was mean. Yes... but so? Lyra was being a dick!

The one argument in the story is that they kidnap children to separate them from their daemons which they even try to play off as a kindness to save them from dust (which we never really get an idea of what it is to begin with in this movie).

Now listen, I know that Derek Jacobi, Nicole Kidman, and the great late Christopher Lee are the villains in this film, it's obvious

They threw Saurman in this movie for absolutely no reason, but he's very villainy.

But in the logic of the movie, for the majority of the film, there is no indication that the Magisterium is this downright evil force. For example, in The Hunger Games which came out a year after this, the main focus of the movie and the crux of why the Capital is evil is the games where they pit children against each other for sport... pretty obviously they're evil. The Magisterium kidnaps children sure but it's never really made clear why. If they're evil, they're kind of stupid evil.

I won't jump to too many conclusions because I haven't read the book, but if this movie was criticized for being hyper critical of the catholic church, I'm also not gonna play dumb and say that the Magisterium isn't the metaphor its trying to be and it feels like the perception Pullman had of the church constituted to him as evil, but I don't think that's going to translate 100% to everyone else's sentiments.

Honestly, this movie makes me want to read the book and check out the HBO series because of the world that this takes place in. It's got these really interesting fantasy elements, interesting characters that I'm sure they spend more than 2 minutes explaining, and they actually have time to develop their character arcs.

As a movie, it's visually beautiful. I love the visuals, the fantasy elements, and some aspects of the story. I think it's a really creative and innovative world that oddly makes me want to explore it more. But the movie is a bit of a mess. The pacing is way off, the characters are either underdeveloped or unlikable, and the movie can't decide on the exact plot or message its trying to convey. Now I did read that the movie was edited to take out some of the more anti-religion parts. I'm sure that was a pain in the ass. I think while this movie was really a trainwreck, it does make me more interested in the direction the HBO series will go. Will they lean into the fantasy elements? Will it lean into the criticism of religion? Will it find an in between? I don't know.

I might revisit this source material down the road and some of my thoughts might change. But until then, I can say The Golden Compass is a bit of a mess, but if you're looking for some good visuals and don't care too much about the story or the mixed up messages, it might be something to check out. Otherwise, wait for the HBO series.

But what did you think of The Golden Compass? How does it compare to the books? Are the books worth reading? Why? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Hellboy (2004)

Before you ask, no I haven't seen the Hellboy film that came out this year. I honestly don't know anybody who has.

The concept of Hellboy has never appealed to me. It came out in an awkward time for superhero films before the Nolan Batman movies and the MCU where we were still trying to find the right way to do a superhero film. Not that they were all bad around this time. The Raimi Spider-man films were at the height of their powers and the original X-men trilogy were proving that superhero films could be done. But at the same time, you had Ang Lee's Hulk, Catwoman, Ben Affleck's Daredevil, and Spawn trying to bring some dark credence to the genre and failing. And somewhere in between the campy, wink and a nod vibe of the Raimi Spider-man films and the bruiting WAY TOO SERIOUS Daredevil, you had Hellboy.

The movie starts out with an origin story that I really like. During World War 2, Hitler begins toying with the paranormal. After a platoon of US Soldiers distrupt a ritual to open a portal to hell (or another dimension with demons and shit), they find a baby demon and name him Hellboy.

Years pass and the FBI creates a covert branch focused on fighting the paranormal and the weapon they use to combat these creatures from hell is Hellboy (played by Ron Perlman in some amazing prosthetic and makeup, seriously, I think he looks great)

And on top of the fact that the makeup looks great, Ron Perlman is a treasure and is perfect for that role.

Hellboy is both tough and smooth, but at the same time he's a stunted man child who likes cats... a lot. He is gritty and fights demons but at the same time has a complicated relationship with his adoptive father Trevor Bruttenholm, the scientist who found him (played by the late John Hurt).

There's a lot to like about this character and for playing a character that I don't think a lot of people know, I think Ron Perlman does a really good job.

The movie is mainly seen through the eyes of a new FBI agent who is assigned to be the partner/attendant to Hellboy, Agent John Meyers (played by Rupert Evans). Oh boy is this guy boring

and very useless to the plot. I haven't seen the sequel to this film but I'm glad they got rid of this guy because he adds practically nothing besides a vehicle for the audience to get to know this wacky supernatural world that we're entering.

He gets more pointless as he perpetuates a sort of love triangle between Hellboy and Selma Blair's character that in my opinion came out of no where. Meyers is being a good guy and helpful to Hellboy and then he takes Selma Blair out for coffee and makes a move on her when he's very aware that Hellboy has a thing for her... that didn't make a whole lot of sense to be honest and was kind of dumb.

The far more interesting parts were when the movie delved into the weirder supernatural parts and characters.

Hellboy is clearly interesting, but then you have Selma Blair's character who has pyrokinesis abilities or the fish creature who would later star in the Shape of Water in 2018 (and I'm only sort of joking with that, while he's voiced by David Hyde Pierce, he's motion captured by Doug Jones who played the fish creature in Guillermo Del Toro's Shape of Water).

When Hellboy is interacting with these characters or John Hurt, it gets really interesting. As boring as Meyers is, for the majority of the movie he's just along for the ride and witnessing all the crazy supernatural stuff going on, like the villains.

The villains on paper were probably really great, but in execution they're pretty paper thin. Karl Roden plays Rasputin who I guess was possessed by a demon who wanted to open the gate to hell or something? He's got a random blonde lady and a Nazi assassin who was clearly the best villain, both in action and design.

Honestly, the story and plot of the villain was kind of hard to follow in detail but getting the jist of it isn't hard. Rasputin wants to release hell hounds into the world and eventually open up a portal to hell. Hellboy tried to kill the hell hounds and stop that from happening. Cool? Cool!

One of the coolest things about this movie was the creature design and practical effects used in this film. In a time where CGI was just starting to be the paradoxically good and bad monster it would eventually become, Guillermo Del Toro tried to utilize creature prosthetics and practical effects throughout this movie and it's kind of a wonder.

Do I know that that monster to the left is fake, yes. But the way it was designed and the way it moves was fascinating, especially in the world we live in where CGI is everywhere. When JJ Abrams uses practical effects in Star Wars everyone gives him a round of applause while Guillermo Del Toro has been doing that for years.

I am not a huge connoisseur of Guillermo Del Toro but the costume design and monster design in this movie just beyond amazing that I want to delve more into his films and see them just for that element alone.

Now unfortunately, because there are so many practical effects,  the action has its moments where it becomes very slow and lethargic. While it can be good because it provides weight and meaning to punches and such, it does kind of date itself as a film. Is it horrible? No. But you're not going to find high octane action in Hellboy. On top of that, the times where CGI is used, it's pretty obviously 2004 CGI.

Oh also...

I don't care how pointless or fake this part looked, having that animatronic zombie on Hellboy's back might have been one of my favorite parts.

Hellboy is just a wacky concept overall. A demon who is raised to fight the paranormal Nazis with the help of a telepathic fish monster named Abe Sapien and a girl who starts fires is a pretty weird concept for 2004. Oddly enough they really lean into that wackiness and make the execution just as crazy and wacky as you could in 2004. I understand the appeal. It was a different time so I could see something like this having a real appeal, especially if it was the darker story that was actually good unlike Catwoman or Spawn, that wasn't campy or too mainstream like Spider-man or X-men.

Hellboy filled an intriguing counter culture at a time where the mainstream superhero culture was still being defined. While the story is a little bit of a mess and hard to follow, the up and character interactions were so weird and fun that I almost didn't care. It's not a perfect movie by any means but I am glad I can say I've experienced this area of superhero films, at least a part of it.

Am I going to see the new one now? No, that looks terrible...

But what did you think of Hellboy? If you saw it in 2004, how does it hold up today? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

John Carter

So originally, I was going to go into this review saying that this is a deeply flawed movie, but at the same time being very surprised that people have barely talked about it over the past 7 years at all. But then I looked at the movies that came out in 2012 and suddenly it made total sense that this movie got overshadowed. The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, Argo, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, The Amazing Spider-man, that is quite a stacked year so yeah, I get it that a lot of people didn't check out what looks like Conan in space. That's not what the film is, but I get it.

I will not claim to know the backstory of John Carter of Mars and I'm not gonna lie to you and say I did a lot of research into the story. I know that it's based off old pulp magazine stories from the beginning of the century and those stories kind of inspired Flash Gordon which would eventually inspired Star Wars.

And on one hand, that's kind of interesting. Those early pulp magazine serials were early steps to take Greek Mythology and integrate it into science fiction and the pop culture zeitgeist and you can see it in the google images you find of the old magazines as well as in this movie. The costumes and Odyssey-like feel of the civilizations and mythology of Mars in the movie do reckon back to Greek Mythology and the natural interesting stories that came out of that pantheon of literature.

However, on the other hand, John Carter almost feels like a missing link rather than a form of science fiction fantasy evolution. It's awkward, it's campy, and especially in this film, it rides this weird line of trying to make the film epic in line with the Lord of the Rings and Marvel superheroes that were coming out at the time, as well as create an epic in line with The 10 Commandments or the great big production films of the 1930s and 40s.

It is clear that Disney wanted this to be their big blockbuster science fiction fantasy vehicle before they acquired Lucas Films. Disney had made failed attempts to launch franchises before like Prince of Persia and other films, but there was something about the music, the effects, the style, and even the story that I think if this movie came out today with some updates could actually be somewhat successful. I can really appreciate what this movie was trying to accomplish, but this movie is a little bit weird to say the least and I'm not really surprised it didn't blow up into something bigger like I know they wanted it to be.

 There is some exposition and story framing that is done at the beginning of this movie that I will talk about later, but essentially, John Carter follows the story of the titular character (played by Taylor Kitsch). He is a former military Captain in 1868 (or something like that) who just wants to be left alone to prospect for gold. Through circumstances, that 45 minutes in you'll honestly forget about, he ends up being beamed up to Mars and goes on a wacky space adventure.

I'll get to that in a second but I do want to talk about the character of John Carter because there is a lot to talk about here.

First off, I feel bad for Taylor Kitsch. This was around the same time that he and a couple of other generic white dudes (Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, etc.) were really trying to make it big and star in their own franchise. For Kitsch, he was cast as Gambit, the superhero role of a life time... in probably the worst superhero film ever created. And in this movie, he's cast in the lead role of a major blockbuster hit sponsored by Disney... and nobody saw it. Years later he was in the follow up season of True Detective, a highly regarded HBO series... but it's considered the worst season...

But on top of that, John Carter is not really a likable guy...

Put aside the minor (largely insignificant but funny) fact that he's fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and they just breeze past that (weird flex Disney), he's got a very familiar motivation that all he wants is money. Of course, he has a turn and ends up wanting to help people and become the generic white dude hero.

He's not... god awful in this movie. But he doesn't bring anything really outstanding to the role. You could switch him out for your Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, and the role would be one hundred percent the same. He's not very compelling, he's just the generic hero shell that the audience can experience the space adventure through his eyes.

Putting the Title Character aside though, Mars starts off as a really interesting world.

Despite being just a desert wasteland, the first five minutes of the film had me interested because visually this movie is actually pretty good. Maybe its just the spaceships but the first exposition drop about warring factions of Mars actually fooled me into believing there was some interesting politics or warfare that could be going on. Then they introduce the villain in the guy who plays McNulty in the Wire (Dominic West) who is granted a weapon from these deity-like aliens called Therns (The lead one played by generic villain #1 Mark Strong).

But then we go to 1800s America and the movie slowed down... A LOT. Side note: Disney has never and probably never will be good at portraying Native Americans... I'm not sure why they keep on trying.

So much that when they get back into the politics and warfare, I didn't care anymore... possibly because they introduce the love interest and stereotypical female badass of the film played by that chick from Wolverine Origins (Lynn Collins).

Lynn Collins is... bad. Like real bad in this film.

Part of it is her script. She plays the stereotypical warrior Princess who isn't as elegant or feeble as society as led you to believe. She's kind of an example of how we're still bad at writing women in science fiction even though we try to be better. At the end of the day, she's arm candy and doesn't add a whole lot to the film. Also Lynn Collins isn't that great of an actor, at least not in this or Wolverine: Origins.

While on Mars, John Carter inserts himself into this interplanetary war and runs into the multiple factions to include the human-like people that Lynn Collins is in charge of, the bad guys who don't look very different from Lynn Collins faction, and then there's the green alien looking people, led by one who is voiced by Willem Defoe. The Tharks are desert dwellers who don't concern themselves with the wars and politics of the human-looking people of Mars.

Hands down, these were the most interesting parts of the movie. This was a display of how weird this world could get. The Tharks community follows different rules, cultural traditions, and have different motivations and customs. I was legitimately interested in learning about their culture and I wanted to know more.

The problem? Well there's a couple. The CGI for these guys does not hold up. They look fake, but whatever, I'm not a huge CGI stickler. The other issue though is that they live in the desert where everything is this beige color and it was just kind of boring after a while. I was still interested in how different the culture was. I didn't need an exposition drop, just things like throwing the babies on the ground and having the aliens fight for who takes care of them. The challenge system for who will be leader was kind of interesting, and Willem Defoe's character's interest in John Carter as he's able to jump really high and is granted super strength for... reasons?

They never really delve too much into why John Carter is this badass on Mars. I think they say something about gravitational properties or something, but he's really just a guy.

On one hand, if that's the case, I guess I could go to this version of Mars and be the hero. But on the other hand, if anybody can be that, they just have to be from Earth, then why am I supposed to connect with John Carter? What makes him important?

And that's the overall issue with this film, there's not enough to really care about. There are some intriguing ideas, concepts, visuals, and scenes in the film. I mentioned it before but I think they trying to make this a big 2012 block buster franchise (you can definitely tell it from the ending), but at the same time the camera angles, the music, and just the overall feel made it feel like an epic high production film from the 1950's like The 10 Commandments or Ben Hur. This movie had something that felt at least a little bit different than the block busters of the late 2000s to early 2010s.

Unfortunately it really doesn't back it up with a lot of substance. The politics and warfare don't carry the movie like I thought they might, John Carter and the main characters around him are pretty paper thin, and the visuals, while innovative and probably cost Disney a fortune, can't carry a film to success, it's no Avatar.

Also, Bryan Cranston was in this movie at like the height of Breaking Bad and you wasted him Disney.

It's comical how little impact Bryan Cranston had on this film. But he does bring up the comic elements of this movie that they don't really talk about. Bryan Cranston gets shot right before John Carter goes to Mars. John Carter leaves him wounded in a cave and the next time John Carter is in that cave all you see is Bryan Cranston's skeleton. I find that hilarious.

I'll also mention how funny it is that John Carter fought for the South and probably was going to go back to Mars to be king and instituted slavery or something. Again, this movie is weird to say the least.

But those are my thoughts on John Carter. What did you think? Did you see this movie in 2012? Does it hold up? Do you even know what movie I'm talking about? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Avengers: Endgame (Spoilers)

So I wanted to wait until I had seen Avengers Endgame again to do this review. After the first viewing, I knew it was something that I'd need to see again to soak up all the goodness Marvel threw into this movie, but I also felt like it was an opportunity for me to think about this movie honestly and not just fall prey to the nostalgia haze that Marvel is very good at casting over its audience.

That being said, it's a 3 hour movie. It's basically an evening to go see this movie that I've already seen. As much as I don't mind making an evening of it, I have had responsibilities that have pushed out my ability to go see this movie again. I've seen people who say they've gone to this movie 3 or 4 times. That's 9-12 hours I don't have unfortunately

However, I did take some spoiler notes the first weekend and I do remember the highlights I wanted to talk about.

From the top, I loved how they handled Thanos in this movie for multiple reasons. At the beginning of the movie, Thanos has won. He's doing his farming on a random planet and hangs it up.

So even when the Avengers (now with Captain Marvel who saves Tony, which despite what I'll say about Captain Marvel in this review, was I think probably one of two of the best uses for her in this movie) show up to try to get him to undo the snap, he simply says that he can't. The stones are reduced to the quantum level and there's no undoing the snap.

Right before Thor cuts his head off. I can't speak highly enough of this cold open because it is strong. It sets up all the characters, and sets them on the path for where they'll be when the movie jumps forward 5 years. If you're looking at this movie and Infinity War as one 5+ hour movie, this is where the Avengers are at their lowest. I know people have said that this movie doesn't display Thanos as masterful as it did in Infinity War, but you still get the villain vibe from him in the beginning and the display of his real strength later in the movie, which I'll get to later.

And then the movie jumps 5 years into the future.

What follows is a phenomenal and unique progression of what these characters go through in the five years after the snap. Captain America remains mostly the same but runs a support group to help people cope with the losses from the snap.

Black Widow runs a form of the Avengers but one that spans across the galaxy, which is a really interesting idea. Rocket and Nebula as a team and Captain Marvel help other planets who suffered the same losses while War Machine and Okoye and Wakanda try and maintain order on Earth. Does it make sense that Rocket and Nebula could come back for the Time Heist and new short haircut Captain Marvel couldn't? No, but again, I'll talk about Captain Marvel in a little bit.

Bruce Banner has a reconciliation with the Hulk and the two come together. I wasn't expecting this. I get the feeling that people could guess that that happened but I really liked it nonetheless.

I think it gave Mark Ruffalo a little bit of a different angle to approach his character and I think that's great. He never did a bad job or ever got boring, but I think that's a really great character arc overall and at the end of the day, that's kind of what this movie is about, completing characters arcs.

That's why the character progression of Thor was definitely for me by far the weakest part of the film.

Up until Ragnarok and Infinity War, Thor was a pretty boring character. His movies were probably at the bottom of people's lists and it wasn't until Taika Waititi came in that they figured out that he could be utilized for some really funny comic relief. However, I felt like they took that comic relief to an extra level and at certain points kind of left the character in a stagnated course.

Thor's arc in Ragnarok and Infinity War was kind of about getting his mojo back and while I enjoyed the comedy that came out of thick Thor, I think it reached the level of being overplayed at a certain point in the film and it just got annoying.

This movie is hard to cut down, but I think if there were any moments that I would have cut, it would have been some of the moments with Thor. The scene in Asgard when they return to the time of Thor: The Dark World where he's having a pep talk from his mom is by far the slowest scene in the movie and I recognized it the minute it happened. It was in the second act where things were moving fast and I felt like that scene really slowed down the movie. It was bad.

Also, I think it was weird that in the final battle he stayed fat and had a John Travolta Battlefield Earth look going for them. I'll talk more about Thor when I talk about what's gonna happen after Endgame, but overall, I think if there was a weak link from this movie, it would be Thor.

Hawkeye is back and I swear, every time Hawkeye isn't in a movie, we all think to ourselves, "Why did we have Hawkeye in the first place?" And then he comes back and we're all like, "Oh Yeah, that's why".

He's by no means nobody's favorite, but we kind of forget that Jeremy Renner is fun and does a good job in these movies. I really liked him and Black Widow being reunited and I liked how he was the every man that was affected hard by the snap.

The scenes with him and Black Widow are probably the scenes that most people will forget about because while they're good, they're a little more subtle and you kind of forget about them a little bit in the movie.

That being said, I really like these two and it works really well when the two are essentially fighting over who is going to sacrifice themselves to get the Soul Stone. While I've noticed that Hawkeye doesn't exactly change his ways after being sent down a dark place after the snap, I still liked the dynamic between these two and Black Widow's death actually surprised me.

The crux of the story, as it's always been was the story lines of Captain America and Tony Stark.

I thought the fact that they gave Tony a daughter and actually made his experience from the snap not that bad made for a really intriguing dynamic. If the timeline of the movie took place right after the snap and everyone knew they could go back in time, everyone would have gone back in time right away and changed the past. However, Tony's one and biggest condition to coming back into the plot is that they bring everyone back, not change the past because he doesn't want to lose his daughter or anything he and Pepper have built in the past five years.

From the beginning, the relationship with him and Steve Rogers is phenomenal and I remember thinking in multiple moments of this movie that I wasn't ready for these two to be done with this role. They're both so good and have defined the character far more than I think anybody imagined.

The execution of time travel was done incredibly well. The cynical side of me thinks that time travel could be seen as a cop out but I loved how it was used. Especially since the movie is essentially a really story driving recap of the greatest hits of the last 22 movies, I think time travel was important and I loved it.

Does it make sense? No. But Time travel never makes sense in movies. It doesn't matter what the subject is or how they handle it, there are going to be contradictions. How does the present Nebula live if she shoots 2014 Nebula when she comes to 2019? How does Thanos get to the point where he snaps half of existence away if 2014 him travels to 2019 and gets snapped out of existence himself? How do you return a Soul Stone to Vorimere? How does bringing the soul stones back save timelines from going screwy? There are too questions that you could care about but... why would you? It's the freaking Avengers?

On the return to the topic of Thanos...

Thanos only becomes cooler in this movie. Maybe not more compelling as a villain who doesn't see himself as the villain, but more in the sense of defining him as the villain that Thor, Captain America (with Thor's hammer, I won't go too into depth on that, but that was pretty rad), and Iron Man could barely get the better of without the Infinity Stones.

And Thanos had scary or tense moments. When 2014 him figures out that he succeeds and they're trying to undo his work, there was a new level of intensity that got me pumped for the finale.

And oh boy, that finale.

I'm going to tie this part together with the ending because this is going to be a long rant to begin with. Somehow, Marvel was able to give everyone their moment and show the wide breadth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a way we probably won't see for another decade.

From the awesome moments of all the resurrected heroes coming through the Doctor Strange Portals (a moment that had people in my theater cheering), to them playing hot potato with the new gauntlet, to the admittedly a little contrived female Avenger shot, this scene was just pure adrenaline and gave everyone their moment and it felt one hundred percent earned. Everyone on screen was someone you had formed at least a little bit of a connection with and while the fight jumps from character moment to character moment very quickly, no one feels like they didn't need to be there. Even Captain Marvel had an awesome moment and utilizing her powers probably giving the best measure of her powers to that moment.

And on a quick side note, I do need to talk about Captain Marvel because I'm still conflicted on her. On one hand, I don't think she's at all necessary to the film. Everything she does in the film could be replaced with quick script adjustments and her role in the film is very, very small. On top of that, there's still not much of a character there. Now I don't think that's Brie Larson's fault. I'm willing to defend her on that. I still think she's a good actress, I just think the character of Captain Marvel is just an outline of boxes Marvel is checking what they think a female superhero should be. They check as many boxes as they can, but without that content that they've been so good at fleshing out in past iterations, all you see is an overly strong, but really hollow character that is poorly written.

Honestly, you could take Captain Marvel out of the film and it wouldn't make much difference. Now to be fair, that can be said about a lot of characters in this film, especially those who show up just for the battle at the end. However, the difference is that the other characters were snapped in the previous film and were more there to represent people who really liked their film and show how they got back, or they didn't have a previous solo film and were just a fun cameo.

Captain Marvel was built, even in this movie, as the thing the Avengers needed to defeat Thanos and that's just not true. She has one moment in this film where I saw a little bit of that personality that I only saw glimpses of in her movie. It's the scene where she gets the gauntlet from Peter Parker. I kind of liked that.

I do want to go back and watch Captain Marvel again because I know there are some redeeming qualities about her and that movie overall wasn't out right bad. But I would find it interesting to study how that movie fits into the larger MCU and whether or not Captain Marvel will continue to just have that off feeling. How much of that alienation is troll hate, and how much of it is poor planning and writing. I'll let you know.

The ending was nothing short of epic and really got me in the feels. Everyone showing up from Doctor Strange portals, to the fight with the trio of Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America, to Captain America using Mjnoir, to Scarlet Witch being such a bad ass that Thanos thinks he needs to nuke his own people to survive, to Tony sacrificing himself and being lulled to rest by Pepper at his side and Spider-man losing it.

Tony's funeral, to his hologram telling his daughter he loves her 3000, to Captain America going back in time to return the infinity stones and deciding to stay. Man, it was just so well done! I'll talk about Thor and the future movies they kind of allude to in another post because this one is getting too long already, but if anybody had issues with the first two acts of the film, the third act makes up for it all.

If I had to change anything, it would have been to have an actual end credit scene at the end where Ryan Reynold's Deadpool is sitting in a theater, wiping away tears and giving a slow clap. He gives one quip and its done. It doesn't need to allude to a particular movie, just acknowledge that that's our future right there. I know they probably didn't have the time, but man was that the only risk they didn't take in this movie and that's why I don't have a lot of bad things to say about this film.

I'm finding with this movie and the final season of Game of Thrones that I'm sure there are things that I could complain about but I don't really see the point. We all have our expectations of what these movies and TV shows look like, but when there's so much time that has gone into these movies, I do think they deserve a little bit more praise that criticism. I'm probably going to go see it again on Friday and I am so excited!

Overall, it's just a great movie. I didn't talk about a lot. I didn't talk about Ant-man, or Nebula (that was something I could probably add a lot more about). I didn't talk about how Black Panther's only real contribution to this movie was looking bad ass and dropping the gauntlet 4 minutes after he took it from Hawkeye who had been playing keep away for like 10 minutes and crushing it.

 I think I've made it pretty clear that I think this movie is pretty special. Is it a perfect movie or worthy of an Oscar? No! But it's pretty great and it's an event that I'm not sure we'll see something the likes of this for at least another 10 years. That's something to really feel accomplished of.

Well done Marvel, and Thank you.

But those are my spoilers thoughts on Avengers: Endgame. What did you think? You can send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get upddates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for readin!