Movie Review: Avengers Infinity War

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.

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy 2

A sequel can rarely, if ever, live up to the original. The fact that the source material for this piece is so little known helps with the overall effect. I didn’t know anything about Peter Quill and crew until seeing the first movie and was pleasantly surprised where the second movie picked up where the first one left off. If you’re unfamiliar with Guardians of the Galaxy, you might be missing out on a diamond in the rough of oversaturation of comic book movies. On the one hand, I do wonder if Marvel and ABC are just bringing anything and everything out because they can make it marketable. On the other hand, the movie is well done and the characters are fully developed, even if we don’t always know as much as we would like of them.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 picks up with the group working for some superior alien race, protecting their batteries from another alien. It isn’t long before wackiness ensues and the team breaks up into smaller groups, only to be reconnected later in the movie. I will do my best to avoid any SPOILERS, but there could have been far more scenes with the core cast than there were, yet still, the breakoff groups were equally effective. It was nice to see more from Drax and a newcomer, Mantis. Together, those two were quickly stealing the scenes that were previously stolen by Rocket and Groot. Seeing a baby Groot made things cute, but also made me wonder about the whole BB-8/Groot dynamic, having a character that can’t really communicate but is cute. Isn’t that a staple of everything Disney?

I really had little to complain about. I would say, as far as the Hina test goes, this barely gets a passing grade. Most of the movie centered around white men. There were other alien races, but for the most part, they were either wearing tons of makeup or looked white/gold. The Alt Right was perfectly represented by the golden aliens from the beginning. Even if Gamora had a prominent role, it still felt like she was firmly in second place to Peter Quill. I couldn’t tell someone not to watch this movie, but by that same token, I couldn’t tell you it was must see either. I enjoyed it and that’s really all I can take away from the experience. 

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Since Joss Whedon has got involved with Marvel and Disney, there is a different sort of expectation to all of the movies.  The Avengers, which feature the likes of Iron Man, Captain America and other star-studded characters and actors is the franchise that mints money for Marvel and Disney.  The latter knows how to milk a profitable cow and so they’ve delved further into the comic giant’s archives and unearthed the lesser popular Guardians of the Galaxy.
The story is one I haven’t heard, a comic I’ve never read and characters I’m utterly unfamiliar with.  This is usually a good thing for comics, less so, it seems, for independent properties.  There is some hidden depth to comics that I can’t quite quantify, something that Hollywood has yet to replicate with their big-budget movies.

The Guardians of the Galaxy starts with our title character, Peter Quill, watches his mother pass away and is abducted from Earth in the span of a few short minutes.  The story then picks up with Quill all grown and a bit of a roguish character.  He steals something that is sought after from around the universe and the chase begins.

The trailers don’t do the movie, or characters, enough justice.  The mixing of characters, their introductions and weaving of the friendships of the characters is heartfelt and a few napkins might be helpful while watching.  There are some very predictable elements to the story and the execution of the scenes by the able cast makes the whole thing feel like a surprise throughout.  It is nice to feel surprised and see things that pull at you, either to laugh or cry.  Hollywood has lost that effect on me for the most part, but it was nice to enjoy it once again.  I saw this in 3D and it was good enough that I’d say you might enjoy it as such.

The movie was fun.  The actors were superb.  I didn’t know Chris Pratt at all and he made Quill a relatable character that you wanted to root for.  Bradly Cooper was utterly outstanding as the voice of Rocket, the raccoon, and his performance (once again for me, as he was the only redeeming quality to Silver Linings Playbook), is just sublime.  That man brought this pint-sized character to the forefront of the movie and the heart and soul of the story.  This is one you won’t want to miss on the big screen.