My (not so) hot take:
I liked happy Hulk.
My (not so) hot take:
I liked happy Hulk.
With the DVD coming out, there are lots of behind the scenes stuff cropping up here and there. I think my favorite so far involves when Professor Hulk goes back to the original Avengers movie and hilariously pretends to be stupid, rampaging Hulk. Apparently, that was not in the script at all, it was just something the digital effects guys made up as a joke. They animated it as a prank on the Russo Brothers and when the Brothers saw it they immediately called Mark Ruffalo and had him act it out so they could actually put it in the movie. Supposedly, the screenwriters knew nothing about it until they saw the final cut of the film and they immediately kicked themselves for not thinking of it earlier.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Watched it last night after wife said she had no interest. Great stuff, hard to think of a more ambitious cinematic vision realized as the building and execution of the Avengers has been.
The only thing that really took me out of the movie was what appeared to be a change in level of powers from one movie to the next for a couple of characters. I guess happy hipster Hulk and fat Thor just aren't as powerful while Thanos sans stones + dual blade thing-y is just as powerful?
I suppose the time travel elements could give me pause if I thought about it but when movies deal in time travel I'm mostly content not to and just accept it for the sake of enjoyment.
Awesome conclusion (for now) to the story!
So I finally saw it this weekend on streaming. Suitably epic, though I spent about half of the movie wondering exactly how Thanos was going to come back for the final battle (previews spoiled that the fight was going to happen).
I wasn't too bothered by the relative power levels of Thanos and the heroes. Scarlet Witch had Thanos dead-to-rights if it hadn't been for the barrage from the ship. Captain Marvel seemed to have the upper hand until he used the Power(?) stone to knock her out of the picture. Even Cap by himself had Thanos back on his heels when he first picks up Mjolnir. The only one that was really "off" was perhaps Thor, and he seems to vary a lot in his abilities. That's kinda standard comic book practice, after all - adjust the characters' abilities and strength to fit the narrative as needed.
Time travel always creates problems. Initially, I thought they were going for a single-timeline-this-is-what-always-happened "Lost" version, but Tilda Swinton's character (the Ancient One?) nixed that. It seemed to me they were deliberately vague about the "rules", like what is sufficient to create an alternative timeline. In a true "Many Worlds" scenario, every possible scenario coexists anyways, down to the quantum level, but the Ancient One implied there was something about the stones that created the possibility. They were pretty forceful about no "Back to the Future" rules, both in speech and by Nebula (seemingly) killing her earlier self.
I haven't seen anyone here mention it, but the part of Ironman's death that got me the most (in addition to the "Love you 3000") was Pepper's last words to him: "We're okay, you can rest now." What an end to a hero's arc. To some degree, could we call all of the MCU to this point The Ironman Saga?