WATCH THIS SPACE.
Not a tease.
I went to catch a late night premiere, so I could have something up early Friday. No dice.
Ten different screenings between 10PM and 12:30AM were completely sold out, except for 2-3 seats in the frontmost row.
Not desiring to spend two hours in back-killing contortions just to look up Ironman's nose, I'll catch an early show tomorrow.
If tonight's audience turn-out is any indication, after a months-long drought of craptastic offerings, this weekend's box office for this flick is going to be yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge.
I should have an after-viewing write-up between noon and 1PM PDT Friday, early enough for anyone thinking about it to make a decision for the weekend.
And no, I'm not giving you any spoilers.
---
Friday Afterwards:
So, it turned out the first 10 showings in the morning were sold out as well.
I can count sold out shows in the last 10 years on my thumbs.
Go long on Disney stock this season. Between this, and StarWarsLand (or whatever they're calling it) opening at Disneyland just before Memorial Day (nice going bozos: you had three years' lead time, and you still couldn't get your crap together for a 5/4/2019 May The Fourth Be With You opening?!?), the Mouse is going to be rolling in acres of cash like Scrooge McDuck by the 4th of July.
First, a couple of tips:
Eat, and take a potty break, before you go. And don't buy the bladder buster-sized drink. This flick is every bit of 3 hours, start to finish.
Second, when the credits roll, split. No, really.
There are no teasers, no easter eggs, no nothing. Unless you want to see the crawl of the 4000 people it took to make a $300M movie. Don't worry about those folks; their checks all cleared 6 weeks to 6 months ago, when it was done in post-. When this one is over, it's over. Which is likely true for the franchise as well.
Stan Lee gets in his last cameo. (R.I.P., maestro.)
Everyone else is in this. Everyone.
They won't all be back. Which ones? Go see the movie.
If you've never seen one of the Avengers pics, don't start with this one. You're already twelve movies behind the curve.
If you have seen them, this one will be vastly more satisfying than the wholesale slaughter of characters at the end of Infinity War, which was nothing but an elaborate set-up for this slam dunk-fest. They had a lot of ground to cover with this one, and they only got caught milking it for pathos a few times. You will enjoy nearly every minute of this one.
So go see it, and enjoy the last good ride you're going to get.
If they make any more, rest assured some of your favorites are outta here permanently.
And Stan Lee is dead.
Which portends, if other franchise experiences are anything to judge by, with their usual hamfisted deft touch, the PC warriors at Disney are going to beat you over the head with Diversity! and GurlPower! from here on out. They mercifully kept it to a couple of token shots this time out. The next time around (and Hollyweird will milk a franchise until it's a dry husk, and then double down for half the budget), they will do to this what they did for Star Wars: i.e. destroy every tenet that made it great, and watchable, pee on your head, wipe their backsides with prior scripts, and then tell you it's what you have coming.
So enjoy what's probably going to be the last great ride in the Marvel-verse in forever, before Kathleeen Kennedy and the Disney tone-deaf SJWs get their moldy little fangs into this franchise, rip the guts out of it, and make it sound like a script brainstorming session between Ellen, Oprah, and TheSpew, because they can.
This is your last chance.
My rating: One Last Hurrah, No Encores
21 comments:
Aesop,
I know that there is a tremendous amount of work...real effort, into maintaining this blog. But reviewing comic-book movies? With all respect I would rather hear an account of your last colonoscopy. Accounts of your work life have real value. Your opinions of the latest outrages in our culture also are of interest. Thank you.
Aesop,
I disagree completely with Anon 8:33 am. Write about whatever you want. Any day with a new post from Aesop is a good one.
Opie Odd
I just want to see if you agree with Michael Heaton (yes Patricia's brother) who is our Minister of Culture here in Cleveland.
He says it's a) worth the wait we had
and b) WORTH the TIME in theatre seats!!
He loved it.
As always, I'm too cheap to buy a movie ticket, so I'll just wait for the DVD.
(ergo..spare the spoilers please.)
Haven't seen the movie (I can wait a couple of weeks), but I'm going to bet that the Avengers don't lose. Haven't even seen any previews...but I can imagine that Nick Fury called on Captain Lesbo, errr, Marvel, and that she and the surviving Avengers alter time to restore the universe and defeat Thanos.
Just my speculation, but they kind of HAVE to resurrect the dead Avengers or the entire series takes a YUUUUUGE financial hit...and that is less likely than Thanos appearing in front of me right now and giving me all of the Infinity Stones and the winning Power Ball numbers for the next 20 years.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, or maybe I'm just weird, but I liked the first films of each part of the Marvel franchise: the ones which featured one (1) superhero and not a cast of thousands of them.
So I liked Iron Man; Captain America, The First Avenger; Thor; Spider-Man; Wonder Woman; and so on. I even liked the Guardians of the Galaxy, though I thought it had too many protagonists, but liked the sequel much less. When they start having so many superheros that it's difficult to even know how many there are involved, and the CGI means that the situations don't even have to be believable, then I lose interest. I much prefer old movies, where real people did real stunts; sometimes it was even the hero doing his own heroism, what a concept!
Therefore I don't care about this latest effort at all, and I've read enough about Captain "Perfect Woman" Marvel to know I wouldn't care for it either, so it looks like my interest in Marvel films has fallen dead at about the same time as Stan Lee.
Still- Aesop, you could write about a phone book and make it interesting and informative, so I am looking forward to what you've got to say about Endgame: The Last Marvel!
FWIW, I'm figuring on a Tuesday morning matinee. Retiree privilege and all that. We should be able to walk up, buy tickets and go in.
At the end of infinity war last year, before I even knew who Captain Marvel was, I had to assume this is either completely reversed except maybe for some of them whose contracts might be up or who are thought to not be worth the increase.
As I understand it, most of them start out with three movies planned. Each movie pays the lead a little more, and the actors the research shows are the best audience attracters get more.
@ Anonymous 8:33
I share your opinion of comic-book movies generally.
The list of stinkers is long, and distinguished.
The entire Marvel-verse has been the exception that proves the rule.
@10:29
Michael Heaton is correct
@Texan
I stick with no spoilers aas policy, unless a flick is so bad it starts out spoiled by being made.
this is no such movie.
@Eskyman
Marvel did this at the genius level. They made four decent flicks on their own, then joined the streams, and struck literal gold. And haven't fumbled much (until the last 3-4, and despite a couple of miscues, all of them made their nut and then some).
Going forward, Disney should be thankful and eternally grateful for Stan Lee, as someone in the creative model of Walt himself, and let it die with him.
But they won't, so the worst is yet to come.
@SiG
I think this is less about contracts than story arc, and some people knowing the ride is over, and getting off before it all turns to shite.
Anything after this is liable to require an intervention from the ASPCA to stop the wholesale pooch-screwing that will occur.
So enjoy it.
But you might want to re-think the "walk up and go in" on Tuesday Plan, if this weekend's box office was any indication.
My theatre had online sales and assigned seats, and I got the last good seat for the 11th show of the day, after it opened there at 10AM yesterday on a dozen screens out of 20 or 30, with a show every 15 minutes. That means they sold out 71 shows before I walked in, on Friday before noon. Call it $18K/screen/per day, or about 3X what Solo was pulling on opening weekend, and a little ahead of The Last Jedi.
I haven't seen anything like this anywhere since about Memorial Day Weekend, 1977.
I was already too old for the Marvel Comics era when it arrived.
I continue to not understand the attraction.
I shan't be giving any of my time or federal reserve fiat notes to an anti-white, anti-male, and anti-Christian industry like hollywood. If it's spectacular I may condescend to torrent it.
ADS, if having FRN's taint your digital bank account, feel free to send them to me.
I have seen it as well.
If you enjoyed any of the prior ones (with the notable exception of Captain Marvel), go see this one. It has one cringe moment that is Captain Marvel related, but other than that, it is a great bookend to what has come before it.
Don't plan on seeing any more, though. Captain Marvel is the direction MCU is going. Kevin Feig is already on record stating he is going to follow the comics into SJW wokeness.
Just came back from watching it. Lots of cheering (and some crying). I might have done both.
I have nothing to add to Aesop's summation, except to say, just think: this all began because Jon Favreau took a gamble on casting a washed-up, in-and-out-of-rehab actor to play what was definitely a second-tier (or even third-tier) Marvel character.
That one decision made the last decade of Hollywood history.
Well I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm sure your rating reflects that it was in fact a...ahem, killer movie but frankly none of these comic book flicks interest me. Well except Nolan's Batman trilogy. But I also was a DC(and EC) kid.
The Dark Knight trilogy, and a couple of the first Superman movies were good stuff. The rest of the DC-verse is the example of why comic book movies are a bad idea, at least if WB is doing them. Until Marvel cracked the code (story, Story, STORY!), I gave 90% of them a wide pass, because they almost always sucked, hard.
As Marvel's will shortly, I expect, now that the Lee is dead, and the SJWs are running the show (into the ground).
Piss on Hollywood, all of em. Haven't spent a cent on movies in decades, will never again. Money wasted better spent on mags and ammo. Why give your money to people who hate you?
A) Because that's myopic and self-defeating.
B) Because the underlying themes in most of the Marvel flicks have been root conservative themes.
C) Because good culture drives out bad culture.
D) Because one movie will outlast a hundred documentaries, a thousand books and essays, and ten thousand blogposts, penetrate straight to the roots of memory and consciousness, and wear furrows there.
E) Because movies are the uniquely American art form of the last century.
F) Because they penetrate into parts of the world where reading the Declaration of Independence or Bill of Rights would get you shot or jailed.
G) Because yielding the medium to the lunatic communists is a recipe for losing it forever, and then the culture, and finally society and civilization itself. How's doing just that been working for you for the last 50 years?
H) Because (say it with me): politics is downstream from culture.
You give your money to people who hate you because they're distributing your message to the ends of the world, and making it hip and cool.
And because your mags and ammo haven't killed any communists, have they?
Shall I go on, or is that Baby Harp Seal of an isolationist argument dead enough for you already?
None of this should be news to anyone.
Aesop did you ever get the chance to work on any of the movies?
Yup, I felt exactly the same way - we've hit peak Marvel. What comes after will not be as successful, and it won't be as fun. I expect we'll see movies filled with preaching and party line. Success makes people think they can do anything.
Hubris.
That being said, I haven't produced any billion dollar movies recently . . . :)
OK Aesop, I had my Tuesday morning time at the movie. I have no idea how many seats the theater holds, but about a fifth of them were taken. Maybe a tenth. There was nobody buy my wife and I in our row, two people in the row in front of us.
This is the advantage of living in a city of 120,000.
This was the best, the most fun of any of the MCU movies since Thor Ragnarok. I laughed like crazy. No spoilers, but the ones that bought the farm were uniformly those I didn't expect to lose. I couldn't help but notice that the replacements (where understandable) were all "minorities".
I think that a billion dollar opening weekend might tell someone there that people like escapist entertainment. Fun, action, nice CGI goes a long way, but the big word is Fun - escapist entertainment. Being lectured to doesn't go well with the concept of Fun. I'm hoping they realize that.
Yeah! What a-non/8:33 said...NOT! and i might NEVER see ANY avenger movie...but your review of “the force awakens” was immensely helpful, in that it *realistically* lowered my expectations for that movie *SO* much, that when i finally was able to watch, i actually ENJOYED it! so thank you for what you do! (and there are some posts that i don’t care all that much for...most times i keep my trap shut! a few other times i dare say you deleted -or- did not post my comment which you HAVE mentioned you reserve the right to do so...)
-ncgreg231Lc2
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