Marvel Studios Archives - GeeksHaveGame

May 5, 2023May 9, 2023

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 3 [Review]: Hooked On A Feelings.

“El Sacerdote” J.L. Caraballo Twitter @captzaff007

I’m a sucker for animals. I donate to animal shelters and rescues, and have had a zoo’s worth of weird pets. At various points of my life, I’ve cohabited with a rabbit, a rat, a cat, a gecko, several parakeets, some Siamese fighting fish, rescued at least 2 wild birds in my childhood, have lived with at least 3 dogs (one of whom is a rescue), no less than 5 turtles, and a grumpy, late hedgehog. You want me to pay attention, shove an animal in my face, is the point.

James Gunn must have been following me around throughout my life, because Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 3 is chock full of animals, anthropomorphic and otherwise, and pulls at the heartstrings in a way that at first seemed natural, but, the more I think of it, feels more like a safe bet. Does that take away from this film, featuring probably my favorite group of the Marvel Studios’ characters? No. But, again, this film feels like an easy, safe bet.

Picking up some undetermined amount of time after Vol. 2, which had a post-credit stinger revealing that Ayesha (Elizabeth Debicki) had created the overpowered, under-matured Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) to go after the titular Guardians, following their absconding with their batteries, this film opens with Warlock attacking the group in their home base of Knowhere, where they’d settled in quietly. Warlock’s attack leaves Rocket (Sean Gunn/Bradley Cooper) gravely injured, and on the verge of death, but with the rest of the Guardians unable to render aide due to a built-in kill-switch that was installed during one of the many experiments that granted Rocket his sentience and intelligence, at the hands of the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji), a scientist obsessed with creating a universe of “perfect” organisms, and doesn’t care how many living beings he has to rip apart and rebuild to do so.

As all this is unfolding, the remaining members of the Guardians are dealing with their own growing pains, in particular Gamora (Zoe Saldana), who, being a past version of herself, lacks the emotional connections to her teammates; and Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), who is drinking himself into a stupor since this version of Gamora no longer loves, knows, nor cares for him.

The stakes are a bit lower this time out: no real “We need to save the galaxy, guys!” stakes this time out, which is a bit refreshing. Lately Marvel’s output has been upping the stakes so much that it is becoming harder and harder to actually care about what happens to these characters. But even with that in mind, it’s hard to really feel anything for the High Evolutionary. Iwuji’s performance is a bit over-the-top and scene-chewing, and at times it makes sense, given how insane the High Evolutionary is; but the performance seems to cut against the grain of how cruel this movie can be towards some of the animal characters (keep in mind how I opened this review: I’m a sucker for animals and extremely uncomfortable with animal cruelty and actively do what I can to remedy that).

My main caveat is that the scenes of Rocket’s backstory — which delve into animal experimentation, and vivisection, and some body horror, of all things — cut against the grain of what this mini-franchise had built itself on, and, the more I think of it, played off as slightly manipulative. It’s easy to feel strong emotions when a test subject is a wide-eyed otter or rabbit…but change that animal to a monkfish or some other hideous-looking thing, and see if you can wring the same emotion out of your audience. What’s my point in this? Animal cruelty is an easy way to wring some tears out of your audience. And it’s very effective here…but still, a VERY easy target to hit.

The cast is about perfect as can be, as they’ve always been. Pratt’s performance feels a bit more desperate this time out, which was a bit surprising, since this is ostensibly Rocket’s show. Quill’s actions and reactions to the plot have the sense that he’s trying against everything to keep some semblance of normalcy, some sort of stability, desperate to just maintain what he has; it isn’t hard to imagine that he hasn’t slept for days, except for the times when he drinks himself into unconsciousness. And it works.

The High Evolutionary suffers from that most annoying Marvel Studios trope, but the one that has become so much more pronounced during this current Phase: the villains are evil because they’re the villains, and the plot just occurs because it needs to occur. There’s no real “story” being told here; it’s just continued installments leading to the Next Big Event, and, yes, that can be exciting, but if I can’t care about the stakes of the individuals, it’s not going to add up to anything much larger just because now every character is in the same movie.

(L-R): Will Poulter as Adam Warlock in Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Photo by Jessica Miglio. © 2022 MARVEL.

Prior to this, the only Marvel film this Phase that generated any amount of emotion was Spider-Man: No Way Home. The more I think of it, the more that film coasted by on nostalgia, and emotions of stories told that had absolutely nothing to do with the story being told at the moment. Here, it seems like the emotions being sold were genuine, but brought about by slightly manipulative means (which, again I must admit fucking worked like gangbusters).

James Gunn created another gonzo story in the weirdest corner of the Marvel Universe, the one that remains my favorite (how much so? Guardians Of The Galaxy is the only franchise of which I own physical copies…along with my steelbook of the first Iron Man). Once again, he has an impressive ear for what to include in his soundtracks (who the fuck thought Florence & the Machine would feature in a major film made by someone who cut his teeth working for the studio that made fucking Poultrygeist?!), and composer John Murphy amends one of the few modern superhero film soundtracks whose main theme I can actually recognize and hum to myself.

This is the last time we’ll see the current incarnation of the Guardians of the Galaxy together, but hopefully not the last time well see them individually. But if this is the end of the road, it’s been worth the trip.

3.75/5 Nebulas opening the fucking door!

-J.L. Caraballo

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 is now playing in theaters everywhere.

November 14, 2022November 14, 2022

BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER [Review] – The Land, the Sea, and All the Tears Underneath.

One of my favorite parts of Opening Night for Marvel movies is the opening titles fanfare. You know that deal where some pages and panels flip by, then the camera starts zooming out while key moments from the franchise’s history play out in rapid succession over a powerful Michael Giacchino score.

Some time around 2016, this thing really started picking up a critical mass of narrative weight where the Previously . . . in the MCU run-through always packs quite the punch when montaged in half a minute. I always get a little choked up during this part because it’s a connection to the nexus of all the other times I’ve sat there on Opening Night (30 times?! Can that be possible?) still just so thrilled and unbelieving every time that one of the great passions of my childhood is being served up as the most successful franchise in cinematic history.

CHADWICK FOREVER

That’s not what we got Thursday night for BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER. Everyone knows that Ryan Coogler and his cast had a nearly impossible task ahead of them when lead actor and seemingly real-life superhero Chadwick Boseman died suddenly in 2020, so certain that he was going to beat cancer with his indomitable spirit that he didn’t tell anyone in the film industry that he even had it. Should King T’Challa be recast? Should the character be killed as well? Onscreen or off? Could it possibly be a good idea to assemble a final performance out of existing footage with maybe a little bit of the CGI deepfake technology that the Star Wars franchise has employed with varying degrees of success this last little bit?

In the end, they made the best choice possible. We open on Shuri, T’Challa’s brilliant little sister played with such charisma by Letitia Wright, in full-blown red-alert Crisis Mode, using all of her brilliance and futurist technology to save her brother, who’s in the next room where we never see him and fading fast. It’s a devastating set-up and Wright plays her focused urgency to perfection, just almost managing to convince us that in defiance of what we know about reality, there’s somehow still a chance that this will end well. This makes the scene’s inevitable resolution crash down on the viewer that much harder. I didn’t realize until that moment that I had only mourned the man, the actor, whose smile lit up the world after the cameras stopped rolling, but the real-world loss was so seismic, I hadn’t even begun to process the death of T’Challa, King of Wakanda. The standard Marvel opening fanfare was gone. No Giacchino score. Just shot after shot after shot after damn purple shot of Boseman in character as T’Challa. I looked to my right and the woman down at the end of the row had her face buried in her hands. The guy to my left was just shaking his head. Most folks within earshot were openly weeping. Friends, your correspondent in seat C12 was certainly no exception. A devastating and cathartic experience.

Only, then we had two and a half hours of movie to make it through.

THE PERFORMANCES

Everyone, of course, showed up and delivered top-tier work. Wright continues to carry the narrative over the course of the film. Angela Bassett has never been more majestic or grand as Queen Ramonda, just letting the U.N. Security Council have it in an early scene. It’s not wild to suggest that she could pull an Oscar nomination for her performance; she certainly deserves one. Danai Gurira continues to delight as General Okoye with some of the liveliest and most animated facial expressions I’ve seen in recent memory. Lupita Nyong’o has a smaller but crucial role to play as Nakia. There’s such a deep bench of talent here.

Winston Duke is hilarious as M’Baku of the Jabari, barking and talking noise at everybody. He finally gets a couple of action scenes, but I could absolutely devour a series of shorts of him and his crew just hanging out reacting to news of the MCU as it trickles in, what he thinks about the Eternals or Shang-Chi or Moon Knight messing around in Egypt or Jennifer Walters’s latest antics. Michaela Coel does a great deal with very little screen-time, Dominique Thorne sets up her upcoming IRONHEART series via excellent chemistry with Wright, Martin Freeman remains solid as the Tolkien White Man (I’m sorry! It still lands!), and there are a couple of surprise appearances I won’t spoil. But let’s talk about Namor.

AQUA DRIP

Tenoch Huerta Mejia has a great deal of heavy lifting to do here in his role as antagonist ranging the spectrum from sympathetic and charming to terrifying and consumed by enough rage to invade the entire surface world. Huerta carries it all off with deft chops, toggling from enchanting sincerity to brooding to murderous with apparent ease. Much has been made of the decision to fold in Mayan culture into the MCU Atlantean aesthetic; I’m usually dubious about such decisions, but it’s a good fit here. The designs look tremendous up on the big screen. Shoot, they don’t actually even call the place Atlantis! We get Namora and Attuma, but the only named undersea location is Talokan. It is a little bit funny, Black Adam and Namor look very similar to one another in the comics, but getting these movies just weeks apart, neither of the actors looks anything at all like the source material. I’ve got to say, though, Huerta has so much gravitas and magnetism, I was immediately hoping that his great love for Sue Storm makes the transition to film here as the decade rolls by. And he’s an absolute airborne terror when the fighting gets going.

All in all, Coogler and the cast succeed on every level and deliver a film that’s the most focused and soulful of Phase 4 by a pretty long shot. They pack an enormous amount of plot and character beats into 161 minutes, keeping a couple of plates spinning in the game of perpetual MCU-setup while never losing sight of making this own unique film a satisfying experience in and of itself. And they accomplish this while paying proper tribute to the enormous talent who left us way too young, honoring him in the most tasteful way possible, definitely enough to just wreck everyone all over again on the way out at the end of the film. CHAD BOSEMAN FOREVER!

5/5 Flapping Little Ankle-Wings

-Rob Bass

May 4, 2022May 13, 2022

MOON KNIGHT [Season One Review]: A Bizarre Ride II The Moon Light.

It is truly astounding how quickly things can change. One year ago, the MCU was just starting to regain its bearings, having just gone almost a year and a half without a single release. Flash forward a year, and we’ve just reached the season finale of a series about one of the most obscure heroes in Marvel lore: Moon Knight…

When it was announced that Moon Knight would get his own series, I was curious to see how the character would be portrayed and received, given that he was initially nothing more than a Batman rip-off with multiple identities he uses to gather information. This Knight was later revised to be a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder with those other identities as his alters. This show seemed to be leaning hard into that in the marketing, which led me to question whether Marvel could pull off a gripping superhero story involving a man with a mental disorder without being disrespectful in their portrayal of said disorder. Ultimately, they mostly did so with some mixed results.

The superhero story actually took a backseat in the first couple of episodes as the story leaned hard into the struggles of Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), a British man who works in the gift shop of a London museum. Right away he deals with the effects of what he believes is a sleepwalking disorder, only for it to become apparent early on that he’s actually dissociating and waking up in strange places and losing time. This all leads to the moment when Steven first interacts with his alter, Marc Spector (also Oscar Isaac), an American mercenary who took on the powers of the Egyptian Moon god, Khonshu. Spector becomes the superhero Moon Knight and punishes those who would do evil under the night sky.

This is where the superhero story truly begins, as a former avatar of Khonshu, Arthur Harrow (not Oscar Issac, surprisingly, but Ethan Hawke), has now become devoted to another Egyptian god, Ammit. Harrow has begun using some sort of power granted to him to kill people who commit evil at any point in their lives, regardless of whether or not they’ve actually committed the acts yet, and is now on a mission to release Ammit from captivity. Got it? Lucky you. This part of the story, while somewhat interesting, actually feels rather rushed; while the title of the show is Moon Knight, this is truly a story about Marc Spector and Steven Grant, two identities within one body, coming to terms with their existence and dealing with the trauma that brought it about and attempting to heal and move forward from there.

Most of this happens in the fifth episode, an absolutely heartbreaking showing that delves into Marc and Steven’s past and is one of the most difficult episodes of a show that I’ve ever had to watch. Episode 5 requires its own piece to thoroughly break down the layers of character development, the characterization of flawed, broken people, and the truly tragic effects that can come from not dealing with trauma. As difficult as it was to watch, the Ep. 5 was masterfully done and up there with the best episodes of all the Disney+ Marvel series. It absolutely makes the show worth watching alone.

The place where the series fail in its portrayal of the mental disorder? When showrunner Mohamed Diab and lead writer Danielle Iman sing the Hollywood stereotype of the violent alter, something that leads to a misunderstanding and fear of people with DID. Even within the confines of this superhero story, it really did seem like Marvel had managed to avoid that trap despite constantly hinting at it. All that said, the story told here was fantastic. Moon Knight even included some stunning visuals that you’d come to expect from superhero movies and not shows. The visuals of MK’s cape in a crescent shape directly in front of the moon as he flies into the night sky, the giant forms of Khonshu and Ammit fighting behind Moon Knight and Harrow, Spector’s wife, Layla, becoming an Egyptian hero with an outfit reminiscent of Sam Wilson’s, and Khonshu turning back the night sky 2000 years were all amazing to behold.

Ultimately, this series wasn’t perfect or even well-balanced, but all of its disparate parts were enjoyable in their own way, allowing this series to feel bizarre but enjoyable rather than disjointed, which is how it may have felt in the form of a movie. 4/5 Moon Shines.

-Kevin Palma

July 9, 2021

BLACK WIDOW [Review]: Espionage Exhaustion.

Black Widow is a film explaining what Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) was up to in-between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. The film was originally set to be released in May of 2020, but was pushed back and had three different release dates thanks to COVID-19. Unfortunately, most completed films that sit on the shelf and are in limbo for over a year rarely live up to the anticipation. Black Widow is worthwhile for a few key action sequences and notable characters that steal the spotlight, but is otherwise a mostly forgettable superhero film.

Marketed as a superhero film, Black Widow is also a spy thriller. Johansson has stated that films such as Logan, The Fugitive, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day were influences. After Civil War, Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) is on the hunt for Natasha. Women like Nat who have had similar training in a torturous training facility — known as The Red Room — are victims to brainwashing by a man named Dreykov (Ray Winstone), but a serum ends up in Natasha’s hands that can break his brainwashing. Natasha begins searching for The Red Room and Dreykov, which also has her crossing paths with other spies that posed as her family members; her “sister” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), her “father” Alexai Shostakov (David Harbour), and her “mother” Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz).

The biggest selling point for Black Widow is that it’s a mostly female cast in front of and behind the camera. The film is directed by Cate Shortland and Black Widow is her first big budget feature. It’s also co-written by female screenwriter Jac Schaeffer (uncredited co-screenwriter of Captain Marvel) and Ned Benson (director of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby).

Taskmaster is cool in the film until you realize the character has been altered from his comic book origins. This isn’t uncommon in the MCU or even other live-action superhero adaptations, but what the character has become in the film will be received with mixed results. In the comics, Taskmaster’s real identity is Anthony Masters and he’s a mercenary not unlike Deadpool (the two have fought together and against each other). Copying fighting styles and weapon techniques is similar to the film, but it’s all thanks to his incredible memory and photographic reflexes.

Taskmaster in Marvel Studios’ BLACK WIDOW, in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

The character is altered to fit the story in the Black Widow film. It’s not necessarily a bad thing as it gives a bigger purpose for the character since it suddenly becomes a major part of Natasha’s storyline, but how the character evolves over the course of the film seems to almost relieve Natasha of her past sins rather than continue to serve as a catalyst. Taskmaster is generally involved in some of the best hand-to-hand combat sequences, but seems to be left hanging by the end of the film. We could see the character again, but whether or not the desire is there to see Taskmaster return is debatable.

The free-fall sequence that has been teased in the trailers is Black Widow’s most unique source of action. There’s exploding elements and falling debris, Natasha trying to save someone’s life, and Taskmaster thrown in attempting to mess up whatever she has planned; plus a bunch of goons bringing up the rear that will obviously be taken out in peak fashion. The sequence is like a duel to the death taking place on the edge of a volcano that’s about to erupt. It’s on the verge of being overkill, but is just awesome enough to trigger all of the adrenaline in your body.

Melina (Rachel Weisz) in Marvel Studios’ BLACK WIDOW, in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access. Photo by Jay Maidment. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Kevin Feige apparently wanted an equal amount of screen time for both Natasha and Yelena. With the after-credits sequence, Natasha being very dead after the events of Infinity War, and the reports that Yelena may be the new Black Widow, she’s essentially the star of the film and for good reason. The character begins as an individual with a chip on her shoulder from someone from her past, but Pugh is able to add humor and empathy with her performance. Yelena has the best one-liners in the film (“That would be a cool way to die,”) and is essentially the best source of comedic relief (i.e. her hysterectomy rant), as well. She is the one character in the film you’d want to see more of after Black Widow ends.

The storyline of Black Widow doesn’t feel like anything you haven’t experienced cinematically before, especially within the confines of the MCU. An evil man is responsible for pulling the strings of a bunch of women that would kick his ass otherwise. Unfortunately, Winstone doesn’t feel all that intimidating as Dreykov since he doesn’t do much besides talk.The point is made in the film that is all there’s really needed of the character, but the baddie’s biggest weapon is his mouth. However, his verbal skills don’t seem advantageous enough to make him such a threat let alone keep him alive for over 20 years.

Yelena (Florence Pugh) and Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff ©Marvel Studios 2020

It also feels like every MCU film has its on-screen characters competing over who can get the most laughs; this is something that only got worse after Thor: Ragnarok proved to be a success. Marvel films are already so formulaic with most villains being introduced and killed within the confines of a single film. Natasha’s spy family all feel like minor extensions of herself. Weisz, despite not aging a day in nearly 30 years, is forgettable as Melina. Harbour is essentially his character from Stranger things cosplaying as Mr. Incredible (that Red Guardian costume sequence is ripped directly from The Incredibles) with a Russian accent. Even Pugh’s Yelena is basically a younger blonde version of Natasha even though they’re not related by blood.

Black Widow clocks in at over two hours and it feels like a film that could have been edited way down. Witnessing the events of a dysfunctional spy family who then spend good chunks of the film reminiscing about those moments the audience has already seen is redundant storytelling that feels like nothing more than filler.

Taskmaster in Marvel Studios’ BLACK WIDOW, in theaters and on Disney+ with Premier Access. Photo by Jay Maidment. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Black Widow is worth seeing for Florence Pugh, the free-fall fight, and anything involving Taskmaster before it’s revealed who is under the mask. Everything else about Black Widow feels like it was done better by the films it was supposedly influenced by and mostly feels like a diluted imitation of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It’s fantastic that women are getting more opportunities in big summer blockbusters like this one, but it’s also disheartening since their filmmaking skills are shackled to formulaic superfluity that obviously stands in the way of creating extraordinary cinema. 3/5 Shots of Brainwashed Pantomime Whiskey.

-Chris Sawin

May 6, 2019

SPIDER-MAN – FAR FROM HOME [Official Trailer]: Time To Step Up!

Peter Parker returns in Spider-Man: Far From Home, the next chapter of the Spider-Man: Homecoming series! Watch the new and official trailer here…

Our friendly neighborhood Super Hero decides to join his best friends Ned, MJ, and the rest of the gang on a European vacation.

However, Peter’s plan to leave super heroics behind for a few weeks are quickly scrapped when he begrudgingly agrees to help Nick Fury uncover the mystery of several elemental creature attacks, creating havoc across the continent!

Sony Pictures Entertainment and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Far From Home spins its way into theaters everywhere on July 2, 2019.

April 26, 2019April 26, 2019

AVENGERS – ENDGAME [Face-Off Review]: A Most-Deserved Victory Lap.

Let’s cut to the chase: you’re going to see this movie. Your parents are going to see this movie. People who haven’t seen a single Marvel movie are at least going to condescendingly brag about they’ve never seen.. nor never will see.. any Marvel movie, including this one, before going out to see this movie. Hell, the homeless guy sitting outside of Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn, where I saw this, has probably seen Avengers: Endgame. But is it worth seeing this movie? Yes–with slight caveats.

For purity’s sake, I’m going to only mention characters and events portrayed only in the trailers…so if you want to go in super cold, and have avoided even trailers: go see it. There. Move along.

Do I personally like it?

All good? Good. Now that those suckers are gone… Following Thanos’ obliteration of half of life in the universe during Infinity War, Endgame finds the remaining Avengers coming to terms with — and trying to find meaning, and move on from — their overwhelming defeats. The best bits are how each character personally deal with the Snap…

Captain America tries his best to remain optimistic; Iron Man is floating in space alongside Nebula; Ronin is out and about cleaning up the streets (which makes one wonder how the Punisher would be reacting to these events as well); and — as seen in the end stinger to Captain Marvel — there’s a new hero to add to the mix. And then stuff happens.

Now don’t go and let Moody wear you, now, you hear?

Really exciting stuff. There’s a lot within this movie that is unexpected; it goes to some bonkers, unexpected places; and, this is not one of those movies where it can stand alone (I’ve seen all the Marvel Studio films aside from Thor: The Dark World…that is a mistake on my part), and if you’re one of those people curious to know what films to rewatch in order to not lose sight of any details: Winter Soldier, Age Of Ultron, The Dark World, and Guardians of the Galaxy are the bare minimum.

It is almost to the film’s detriment that it is so reliant on its prior entries, yet on the other hand not since the first Avengers back in 2012 has an event film been built up this steadily and with such confidence. There has certainly been little in terms of the cinema-going experience to compare to the sheer build-up to this movie, and contemplating where Marvel Studios goes from here is mind-boggling (although the possibilities are now endless; the only event with an comparable sort of scale would be the Galactus Trilogy, but I’m picking that entirely out of thin air, based on nothing in this movie, and is based merely on the recent Fox Studios acquisition).

The only caveat — and this is a common complain of mine — concerns the tone. There is a character who is portrayed in a way that is much more broad than perhaps this film deserves, and it is not a character I was expecting to be portrayed this way. Perhaps you’ll know what I mean when you see it, but this character almost undercuts all the development made in this character’s recent film; although it is a logical continuation of how that character was portrayed therein in that film, if that makes sense (Editor’s note: What the hell?).

Here, it threatens to undercut the drama and stakes in this character’s personal arc, perhaps going a bit broader than it should.. but, luckily, the larger dramatic scenes featuring other characters don’t suffer from what I personally refer to as the Marvel Mootness (the tendency for Marvel Movies to undercut a dramatic development with a gag or joke, often undeserved).

J.L.’s body after people slam his bible score.

And yet, on the flip side, this is probably the most comic-booky comic book movie made thus far. The amount of sheer spectacle is unprecedented, and the last 30-45 minutes had the entire audience cheering; I admit getting tingly as well during this period, particularly during a single shot that might as well be a visual representation of Captain America’s “River of Truth” speech from the comics. I know there’s plenty I missed, and after rewatching all the Marvel Movies (and, hell…throw the ABC shows in there as well…), I know it’ll be just as rich an experience the third time around.

It’s a well-deserved –and surprisingly emotional– victory lap to over a decade of build-up, one that has been so unexpectedly successful it’s reshaped the entire way movies are made and marketed. Do not go in expecting a self-contained story, and you’ll be fine. 4/5 Bibles.

-J.L. Caraballo

So… when I walked out of Avengers: Infinity War — and hell, just about every other film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — I couldn’t help but think that these were the dreams had as longtime comic book readers. The tender, love and care that directors Anthony and Joe Russo, with Marvel Studios figurehead Kevin Feige just above, poured forth in every second of these films is nothing short of magical…

There have been great superhero films from different directors and different studios, but this team’s attention to every Pym Particle-sized detail during this 22 film run can’t be — and won’t ever be — matched. Call it “fan service”, or “catering to comic geeks”, or whatever excuse you’re currently attempting to conjure up, but Avengers: Endgame is the ultimate fantasy for every superhero-loving comic book geek, wrapped up in a 3-hour and 1-minute time warp.

Hence, this movie was made for the dieheards, which is now the broad, record-breaking audience that has been coasting along the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ever triumphant run every step of the way. So, a few folks may be jumping on the Marvel bandwagon and may not completely get the 6,274 easter eggs, references and callbacks to everything built up to this point. Even Marvel Comics’ notorious #1 event books have several references to prior stories that clearly make the current ongoings more coherent if you’ve been a longtime funnypage-flipping veteran.

If Endgame doesn’t “go back in time”, and Lord knows I shouldn’t say anything further, folks would still complain that a film of this magnitude should not stand alone. That rather the Avengers’ fourth film should wrap everything up in an Infinity-sized bow, putting together all the puzzle pieces for one… err… endgame.

The movie does that, and more. And it’s the “more” part that will force the n00bz to dive headfirst back into the library, much like we do with our comic book backlog when current ongoings are pushing the brink of continuity. Imagine that, a 17-year superhero legacy connected by a singular event film, even when fans have had to endure two War Machines, two Fandrals, dos Cráneos Rojos, three Hulks and three Howard Starks.

I really want you to see this movie, and I know the majority of you reading this already have. And I know most of you will see it again, three to four times even. If that’s you, do-like-I-do: peep the Endgame in 4DX. Akin to a 1-0 pitcher’s duel heading into the 9th that sees nearly every swing go yard on that shaky bullpen, Avengers: Endgame in 4DX teases the viewer with more subtle chair shakes and thrilling signature effects (i.e. easily the best in-theater lightning to date!).

These moments shall ease moviegoers up until that very, ultimately inevitable Endgame: the 98 mph fastball with 2 outs to go that will knock your behind into the stands; a grandslam of seat-wavering insanity, translucent purple lights, strong winds (during the Benatar flight/Iron Man suit-up moments) and noticeable smoke. The magnum opus of Avengers: Endgame definitely has the best put-together scene in 4DX effect history — and your neck or lower back won’t be suffering for it.

Sold out? Guess I’ll have to catch the damn movie on Monday.

While there are a million more words to say — and not say — about this film, one that left my jaw dropped to the floor for most of its 3-hour duration, I’ll add that Endgame does a super job at giving each of the original 6 Avengers equal screentime — many of them playing up these perhaps critical and final moments in.. the strangest ways possible. It all works, of course.

Endgame also shares a near equal amount of time in the Cinematic Universe’s most notorious and fan-favorite locales. While the many place-hops and time-jumps affects the overall pacing — especially with a climax and extended epilogue that may remind many of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King‘s ninteeen different endings — the film still admirably balances out the right amount of deep character moments, dramatic beats, and shocking comedy. Yup, our Endgame is a greatly hilarious tearjerker–and I wouldn’t have it any other way. 5/5 Stan Lee Cameos.

Let’s get into more detailed, spoilery-fun stuff when I jump on this weekend’s Geekdom Fancast.

-Travis Moody