Well, after 10 years and a ton of movies, the penultimate movie has supposedly come out. I should warn, there will be SPOILERS ahead. We were told the stakes would be high, but are they? I finally watched Doctor Strange over the weekend and you know, he has the time stone, a magical element that he can use to manipulate time, undo whatever has happened in the past. Imagine how helpful that would be if something awful happened, to say, all, or half, of our favorite characters. The movie starts of where Thor Ragnorok ended, and we are aboard the ship of what is left of Asgard. Loki is on his knees, pleading with Thanos about not killing Thor, not wanting to give up the Tesseract (another infinity stone) – if you missed it, there are 6 magical stones, the big bad, Thanos, has one, as far as we know, but gets the second from Loki, who stole it before Asgard fell. The ship they’re on gets destroyed and that’s how Thor ends up with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Hemdall, Idras Elba, gets Hulk off of the ship, back to NYC and he lands in Doctor Strange’s sanctum. And this is the first time Banner is back, and he isn’t the Hulk and we don’t see the Hulk throughout the movie. I don’t want to skip over anything, but the story with Vision I found very annoying. And his love story with the Scarlett Witch bored me. I know that sounds bad, especially because he has the infinity stone in his head, and it’ll likely cost him his life. But I’m going to change gears.
For several movies we’ve heard nothing but fear and anxiety about Thanos. This movie finally gives us a glimpse into some of his origins. It doesn’t delve deeply enough, into what makes him think that he’s right, but we see a flashback of him taking Gamorra from her home world and adopting her, sort of. There is a moment, towards the end of the movie, that Thanos is explaining to Iron Man/Tony Stark, what happened to his home planet, Titan. This, to me, was the most important scene. Thanos says he noticed how wonderful Titan was, how prosperous it was, how overcrowded it was. He said he made a suggestion, or something, to decrease the number of people, to kill off a large group, but not based on wealth or status, just random. That encapsulates the ending. As you expect, Thanos gets all of the stones, has the completed gauntlet and does exactly what he says he’s going to do. And poof, like that, half the heroes are gone. But not any of the original Avengers, not they’re all fine. And that’s what makes this so empty. The can kill of Black Panther or Spidey, but we know they have more movies coming out, so we know they’re going to be fine. So what have we been waiting for, really? I’m not sure.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a good scary movie. This was a good one, but with all the hype, I expected something to stay with me, and it really didn’t. This movie reminded me a lot of Signs. That was an M.Night Shyamalan movie, so that shouldn’t be lost on you. For those of you trying to avoid SPOILERS, it is worth watching, for those of you that want to know more, read on.
The popularity of post-apocalyptic movies seems to have no end in sight. In this movie, the story starts out with a family foraging for meds for one of their kids. Clear in the first scene, you see all the chip bags untouched by the family, by anyone, which is interesting given that in that time, you’d think it’d be hard to find food. So, the family leaves the store, all using sign language. The one kid wants to take a noisy toy, but the dad says no, but one of the kids lets him take it, this doesn’t end well. The scary thing shows in the first few minutes and the dad can’t get there in time to stop the kid from getting eaten. The movie moves up about a year and the mom is prego. How she can have a baby and be quiet is beyond me.
Anyway, of course, the family goes in separate directions, to collect food, or something, and wackiness ensues. I don’t want to give away the last mystery, but it does keep you on the edge of your seat. The scary things aren’t nearly as scary once you’ve seen them a few times, but they’re still creepy looking. The acting was well done. The entire movie was white. There were no people of color, but movies like this tend to get away with that. The two women in the movie were sort of strong, but not really. For diversity, this movie gets a hard fail. For strong female characters, it also doesn’t get a high passing mark.
This was a good horror movie, but it left a lot to be desired. The ending was just as gut wrenching as the beginning, but just like Signs, the movie gives you slight hope, in the end.
