Shazam! (2019)

I’ll be honest that I wasn’t overly keen about seeing Shazam!. To me it looked like DC were running out of ideas and that they didn’t have any other high profile characters to make films from. This came out shortly after Captain Marvel and knowing that these two characters are tied it was interesting to see what this film would bring.

This film follows a kid who goes missing from his mother and ends up in a foster home with the guy from The Walking Dead. He has been given good powers whilst Mark Strong’s character (Dr Silviana) has all the bad powers and one has to stop the other basically. Its a simple plot but still follows the standard superhero narrative and has a good baddie with some cool scenes.

Some have compared this to the film Big and its quite obvious. I think the producers knew this and stuck in the scene where Billy and Dr Siviana are on the toy piano in the toy shop. The big thing I took from this film is that this film doesn’t take itself too serious. Most DC films in the past have been very dark and were very light on tone but this film manages to find the right balance showing it can be done. With this, Aquaman and Wonder Woman it shows that these films don’t need to be dark and miserable and the films are going in the right direction.

There are things that I am not wild about in this film. The whole mother story arc is silly. First of all they expect us to believe that police or social services didn’t try and look for Billy’s mother. They wouldn’t have used the media to find her or ask Billy where he lived to get a picture of what she looked like. Even if she changed her name and fled instantly, she would still have been found. Then when Billy does find her, its a rather throwaway reply about being 17 and blah blah blah. Ok, she didn’t look 17. Add 6-7 years to that and I would believe you but 17 is ridiculous. There is also a cinical part of me that thought the other kids were a bit cliched. I did think Darla was quite funny but the rest weren’t as good although I didn’t hate any of them.

Shazam! is a far better film than I could have expected. Its far better than Captain Marvel because the story works much better and most importantly the central characters aren’t boring or bland. It’s not a perfect film but I think that its one of the strongest DCU films in a very long time.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

I cant recall a film having higher expectations than this. I saw the film two weeks after the film came out when I knew the buzz would have died down but when I went to see it, the Box office takings had crossed the $2billion line and James Cameron sent a half-hearted tweet congratulating Marvel for surpassing Titanic. He really will be annoyed if it beats Avatar’s $2.7billion. At the time of writing it stands at $2.3billion.

So basically the plot is that the remaining Avengers go back in time to get the stones and stop Thanos from collecting them. It’s a simple enough idea which is handled well and doesn’t feel like its dragging its feet to much although I personally thought that it was about 30 minutes too long. All the stuff with them back in time trying to get the stones went on a bit too long but apart from that the film worked very well. Bearing in mind that its 181 minutes (not including the trailers they stick on at the beginning), it didn’t feel like a 3 hour film. So much happens and you are never allowed to really stop and think about what is happening.

There are a few MECU films that I haven’t seen like Black Panther and the Ant-man films so I found Ant-man to be useful to the story but I just found him to be the least important of the characters.

I’m sorry but I still find Brie Larson rather smug. She is less smug in this but I just find her to think she’s above everyone even though this is only her second film in the MECU. I’m glad she’s not in it for very long but when she does come in towards the end its like she’s saying to everyone ‘You can rest now, I’m here to save the day’. It makes everyone look silly and asks why we should care about them if Captain Marvel can save the day in two seconds.

I liked how they came up with a line that allows them to go back in time but doesn’t screw with the films that came before it and doesn’t say to you that you wasted your time in watching them because they still happened. They use the line that just because you go back in time and change whats happened, doesn’t mean that it changes the future. What did slightly ruin the discussion for me is when they mention films and TV that deal with time travel that they didn’t mention Doctor Who. This film has a former Doctor Who companion in it FFS and yet it didn’t get mentioned. Oh well. Another thing I was very impressed with what how they managed to make Michael Douglas look about 40 years younger and Chris Evans look 40 years old. Both effects were very well done and show that this sort of thing will be happening more and more in films.

Despite having so much riding on it and having to achieve so much, the thing that most impresses me about this film is how it works. It wraps up 20+ films and still manages to start threads for new films. It says thankyou to those that came before whilst putting over the new stars. Credit has to go to the Russo Brothers for directing a film that does so much. The final scene where all the Avengers return and Thanos realises that he is in trouble is one of the best moments I have felt in a cinema since The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers when the wall at Helm’s Deep blows up. Seeing everyone charging is a great sight and does what its suppose to do in a film and that is deliver a moment that cinemagoers can cheer on and enjoy and boy does it achieve that.

I think that this is the point that I am bowing out of the Marvel films. I have enjoyed them but figure that now is the time to stop going to the cinema to watch them unless something stands out but as it looks like Brie Larson is going to be the spearhead from the next generation, I don’t think I will be watching.

Captain Marvel (2019)

Captain Marvel is the last stop before Endgame and I had hoped that this film would be a good film but sadly it’s a very different film from what I was expecting. I wondered whether you would need to see this film before seeing Endgame but you don’t have to. The film sees Captain Marvel…..I cant even be bothered to because it does a lot of doing backstory so we know largely how Fury got his eye patch.

There are many problems that come from this film. Firstly Brie Larson. She is very wooden from start to finish. We are expected to believe that she is a pilot but bearing in mind she has two emotions (bland and smug), its hard to see how she could be anything. I just couldn’t connect with her because she never did anything that was worthy of it. Also she is way to strong and can push people away with one punch. Ok so send her in to deal with Thanos and that runs Endgame from 3 hours to 5 minutes.

The cat is the best thing in the movie. I think that he was this movie’s equivilant of Groot. It was also quite fun seeing the 1990’s references and also seeing a Stan Lee cameo was a nice highlight. The usual Marvel Studios intro was changed to feature all of the moments featuring Stan Lee in Marvel films and the caption ‘THANKYOU STAN’. It’s a shame that this film doesn’t do him justice.

The film is only two hours long (quite short for a Marvel film) but feels much longer. I was quite glad when it ended and even though I know she’s in Endgame, at least there will be other people in it. I don’t think that this film is terrible but its rather average. I think the mistake was largely down to the casting of Brie Larson. I am willing to accept that the story wasn’t very good either so she may be better in Endgame or in the next Captain Marvel film but on the basis of this film I don’t hold much hope