4k-UHD/Movie Review: Avengers Endgame

 

Endgame is the 2019 MCU entry that was the direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War and a conclusion to the first decade of Marvel movies, which started in 2008 with Iron Man. It stars the main Avengers cast members, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, and Jeremy Renner, all of whom survived Thanos' snap in Infinity War. I will not spoil any specifics for any of the few who may not have seen it by now, but the basic plot is that the team tries to find a way to undo the effects of "the snap," which wiped out half of all life in the universe at the end of Infinity War. It is a great blend of action, dramatic moments, and comedy (mostly involving Thor), and finds a way to tie in many of the moments and characters that have been involved in the MCU throughout the course of the 23 movies. And, even finds a fun way to do a quick shout-out to one of the TV series.

The 4K set is a three-disc set with a UHD disc and two regular Blu-Ray discs. The UHD disc only includes the movie, which looks and sounds outstanding in the UHD format. One of the regular Blu-Rays has the movie with an intro by the directors and can be played with a commentary track featuring the directors and writers of the film. The other regular Blu-Ray disc has all of the extras. There are seven different featurettes, the longest of which is a featurette on Captain America, and the shortest of which is about Thor. Then, there are about five minutes of deleted scenes and a short gag reel. If you are a fan of the other movies, this is a must-get. It is one of the best (if not the best) of the entire group of 23 movies. It is well-written and acted that is funny at times, emotional at times, and action-packed from start to finish.  It is a good send-off for some characters and a good reset point for others. I will not spoil which characters fit into which category, but chances are anyone who has read about the future plans (or attended comic-con) will know.

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Avengers Infinity War

 

Avengers: Infinity War is the first of the epic two-movie crescendo to tie up the initial run of MCU films. The movie was directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and brings back the entire slate of MCU characters and actors, including Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johannson, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Holland, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Benedict Cumberbatch, Anthony Mackie, Tom Hiddleston, Don Cheadle, Chris Pratt, Sebastian Stan, Zoe Saldana, Vin Diesel, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper, and Karen Gilian. It also, finally, sees the arrival of Josh Brolin's Thanos after multiple teases in various movies or end-credit sequences.

This, as most are aware, is the movie that the entire MCU slate of movies has been building up to. As I said above, Thanos finally arrives, making good on his threat in the post-credits scene in Age of Ultron to do things himself. It starts where the end-credits scene in Thor: Ragnarok left off, with Thanos attacking the Asgardian ship. The movie then finds a way to weave in most, but not all, of the characters from the other movies in an attempt to keep the various infinity stones away from Thanos. The "main" Avengers lineup get the most screen time, while the amount of time the other characters are in the movie varies. I won't spoil anything for those who may not know how it turns out, but it has massive repercussions for the MCU storylines going forward.

The 4k set is a two-disc set. The UHD disc has just the movie itself, which looks and sounds great, as you would expect. The extras are on a regular blu-ray, with about 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes and making-of featurettes, a gag reel, deleted scenes, and a commentary track on the movie. It is definitely one of the best movies in the group 19 or so movies in the MCU that had been released up to that point. Even if you have a bit of superhero movie burnout, it is worth checking out to see all the stories finally tied together.

Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Captain America Civil War

 

Civil War is one of the 2016 entries into the MCU. It was directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and brought back nearly all of the MCU main characters/actors. This movie was really a sequel to all the various movies that have come before and was as much an Ironman sequel as it was a Captain America sequel. I will not go too much into the story because to do so would be to give too much away. But there are elements of revenge, misdirection, and, most of all, consequences for the things that came before. It is really the first attempt in the movies to deal with the collateral damage done to the ordinary public after the big climactic battles like those of the two Avengers movies, the second Thor movie, etc. The fallout of that collateral damage leads some characters to agree to let the United Nations decide when and where to deploy the superheroes, which begins to fracture the team. What ultimately causes the biggest rift is a much larger storyline involving Captain America (Chris Evans), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.).

This transition movie is bridging what has come before with what we know is coming, specifically the Infinity Wars movie. This movie leaves the Avengers team very much tattered, with Thor and Hulk conspicuously absent. It leaves a question about where those characters will fall when they are brought back into the storyline. As most know, this movie also introduces Black Panther, which I think is very well played by Chadwick Boseman, and yet another incarnation of Spider-Man, this time played by Tom Holland. In the main battle between the two teams, Spider-Man and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) very much steal the scenes, both in terms of comedy and with what they bring to the fight.

For those who get the discs, the movie looks and sounds great on Blu-ray. For extras, there is a commentary track on the film by the filmmakers (none of the cast), about an hour plus of making-of and behind-the-scenes material, and a gag reel. There is also a short feature introducing the Doctor Strange movie. Ultimately, this movie is not so complex that you would have no idea what is going on if you have not seen the other movies, but given the movies and, to a smaller extent, the various TV series are all telling a large overarching story, the events of this movie will be easier to follow the more you have seen what has come before. The acting is very good, and the special effects are top-notch. If you have superhero fatigue with all the various movies or are just lukewarm to them in general, then this will probably not be for you. For everybody else, while liking it or not will be subjective, most will find it enjoyable.

4k-UHD/Movie Review: Marvel's The Avengers

 

This is, if you watch the MCU movies in chronological order, the seventh, after Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Hulk, and Thor. If you are watching them in release order, it is the sixth, after Iron Man, The Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, and Captain America. It is, in part, a sequel to both Thor and Captain America, with the Mcguffin of Captain America (the Tesseract) and the villain of Thor (Loki) being front and center in the story. Basically, Loki is tasked to use the Tesseract to open a portal through which an army of aliens called the Chitari can come through and take over Earth. The Avengers have to team up to stop him, leading to what would be referred to in the subsequent movies as "The Battle of New York" and have reverberations throughout the other movies and the tv series that the MCU would spawn.

The 4k set is a two-disc set containing a UHD disc and a regular Blu-Ray disc. The A/V quality of the movie in UHD is excellent. I do not count myself as an A/V expert so I cannot really tell you whether the 4k UHD disc is a huge upgrade over the initial Blu-Ray release (there are certainly sites out there that can do that), but as a novice, it does look like, when watching it on a big screen 4k TV playing on a 4k Blu-Ray player, the UHD disc does look better than the Blu-Ray version. The extras include a director's commentary track on the movie, several making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a Marvel One-Shot short film starring Lizzy Caplan set after the events of the movie. As is the case with many UHD releases, the UHD disc just has the movie itself and then the regular Blu-Ray has all of the extras. I listened to the commentary track years ago when I purchased the original Blu-Ray release before everything all the allegations about Joss Whedon being a raging asshole came to light. From what I remember it is a pretty standard director's commentary, but I refuse to listen to him talk about anything, but it is there if you want to listen to it.

Overall, the movie is wonderful. I think Marvel did a good job by introducing the characters in stand-alone films first and getting the origin stories for most of them (all but Black Widow and Hawkeye) out of the way and developed (at least to an extent) before they started doing the big team-up movies. It seemed like the cast had great chemistry, and worked well together. Of course, the big casting change from the prior movies was the fact that Mark Ruffalo was brought in to play Bruce Banner/Hulk, replacing Edward Norton who seemingly wore out his welcome very quickly when filming The Incredible Hulk. Even though Ruffalo was kind of shoe-horned in, given that this was the first movie in which all of the major actors worked together, it worked out well. The movie is, as you can imagine, mostly an action movie, but does have some comedy and even drama mixed in. It also started the tradition of having both a mid-credits scene that advances the storyline (this one introducing the "big bad" of the initial phases of the MCU, and a post-credits scene that is meant to be more fun or tie back into the movie you just watched. So, if you are a fan of superhero movies, this one is definitely worth watching and pays off on the prior movies quite well.