Rank 'Em - The Roald Dahl Films

Netflix recently announced that they'll be adapting work from Roald Dahl into multiple animated streaming series.  I figured it was a good time to take stock of the film adaptations of Dahl's books we've had so far. Because of his popularity and very specific style, not many Dahl projects have ever gotten off the ground, but the ones that did have all been very memorable.  

I'll be leaving off the made-for-TV movies, so no "Danny, the Champion of the World," or traditionally animated "The BFG."

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) - Gene Wilder's most famous and beloved role is Willy Wonka without question.  And he's the anarchic force that elevates one of the most daring children's films ever made. Nobody is safe, everything feels a little dangerous, and you clearly can't trust Wonka or the sinister Oompa Loompas.  The satirical elements, the art direction, and the hummable songs offset some of the more humdrum business in the opening acts. Once the factory tour begins, however, it's unapologetically weird and wonderful.

James & the Giant Peach (1996) - This is a very faithful adaptation of a very short and simple book, done in stop-motion animation by Henry Selick and much of the team from "The Nightmare Before Christmas."  The visual inventiveness on display here is on par with anything else that Selick has ever done, bringing to life a bevy of wonderfully nightmarish creatures who inhabit a world of wonders. I especially love the pessimistic earthworm and the femme fatale spider.  My only complaint is Randy Newman's music - I'm just not much f a fan.

The Witches (1990) - Now here's an adaptation that embraced being dark and scary, though the ending was famously changed to Dahl's extreme displeasure.  The witches in this movie are nasty creatures, lead by Angelica Houston playing a deliciously evil Grand High Witch. They do some deeply upsetting things to children, and the terrible revenge visited upon them is satisfying stuff.  Like "Willy Wonka," "The Witches" existed in a truly dangerous universe, one where that more challenging ending would have been perfectly appropriate.

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) - This is definitely more of a Wes Anderson film than a Roald Dahl film, though that's not a bad thing in the slightest.  Dahl's work is all here, just with some added character dynamics and couched in themes of Mr. Fox's self-doubt and continuing maturation. The unorthodox animation has grown on me over time, and I love some of the little touches like the song lyrics being taken directly from the book.  Anderson's super-meticulous style and nostalgic aesthetics mesh with Dahl's boisterous characters surprisingly well.

Matilda (1996) - I struggled with this one, since it's a childhood favorite, but I have to dock it a lot of points for failing to capitalize on the material in the book.  Nearly everything with Matilda's terrible parents, her love of books, and Miss Honey's house is missing. Instead, this version of "Matilda" is really a story about an exceptional girl matching wits with a monster principal.  And it's a perfectly fine, if unusually gross kids' movie. However, it's not very good as a Dahl adaptation, never really reaching the ridiculous heights that it could have.

The BFG (2016) - I  wonder if I was too old for this film when I first saw it.  I love the book and this is a very faithful and well mounted adaptation, but I came away totally unimpressed.  The content feels very sanitized, with little of the dark edge that I always appreciated about Dahl's work. Mark Rylance is as good a Big Friendly Giant as you could ever hope for, and the CGI is pretty good, but only a few sequences really stood out.  I wouldn't be surprised if it found a more receptive audience later, though, the way most of these films have.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) - Looking back, this movie isn't as bad as I remember it being.  The kids are great, Danny Elfman's music is fun, and I enjoy some of the additions to the story. The elements that I really have trouble with, however, are big ones: Johnny Depp's performance and the ghastly amount of dodgy CGI.  Depp's Wonka with all the weird mannerisms was off-putting from the start, but over time the effect has actually gotten worse now that everything about one of its biggest influences - Michael Jackson - has come out.

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"Glass" Half Full or Half Empty?

Okay, so I'm going with the most obvious gimmick here.  "Glass," the M. Night Shyamalan movie that fully ties together his prior films "Unbreakable" and "Split" into one big cinematic universe has arrived.  And it is alternately wonderful, terrible, audacious, laughable, exactly what I wanted, and a total catastrophe.

Let's start from the top.  David Dunn (Bruce Willis), the unbreakable man from "Unbreakable," now runs an electronics store with his son Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark).  He's been crime fighting on the down low, and is now actively searching for the serial killer with dissociative identity disorder and 23 different personalities, Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) from "Split."  Both of them end up under the care of Dr. Ellie Staple (Sarah Paulson), a psychologist who seeks to convince them that their superhuman abilities aren't real, but rather the product of delusions from mental illness.  She's also treating Dunn's old nemesis Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), who has long been institutionalized for his crimes. Staple also recruits Crumb's former victim Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) to help her with Crumb's treatment.

What I love about "Glass" is that it gives me more of the wildly improbable characters I enjoyed in "Unbreakable" and "Split."  Samuel L. Jackson and James McAvoy's performances are especially strong, catching us up on what their characters have been up to since we saw them last.  Crumb's internal power struggles are still fascinating, and easily the best thing in the movie. Mr. Glass is a ticking time bomb with a real sense of pathos to him.  Willis is noticeably less involved, but David Dunn is still an enjoyable presence too. Best of all, these characters work pretty well together, easily sliding into the roles and relationships of these larger-than-life comic book heroes and villains on the verge of a momentous clash.  The trouble is that the any wonder or mystery keeps being undercut by Shyamalan's insistence on shoving the comic book motif in our faces over and over again.

In "Unbreakable," Jackson's Mr. Glass would go on these extended monologues about the nature of comic book characters, and that worked because it was an extension of the nature of that character and his obsessions.  Here, multiple characters have those monologues, and superhero trivia keeps being brought up at random, to the point where it becomes ridiculous. Sure, the idea that believing you're a superhero might be a new subtype of mental illness has some potential.  However, it's implemented so badly. Sarah Paulson is stuck with the awful job of playing the shrink who tries to convince the other characters that they aren't living in a comic book by grandiosely raving about comic books and superheroes incessantly. It's way, way too much.

What's worse, it takes attention away from the parts of the story that needed it.  I would have loved to see more time spent on the Dunns' relationship, or Casey and Kevin's relationship, or more Mr. Glass backstory.  Heck, setting up Dr. Staple as more than a two-dimensional character would have made that last act twist (we all knew there was going to be a twist) play out better.  Shyamalan has some good ideas in the mix, and I absolutely respect him for making some choices that no other superhero media would dare try, but the execution is so lackluster that few of them land with much impact.

Part of my frustration with this aspect of the film is that  it feels like Shyamalan hasn't been living in the same world as the rest of us, where superhero movies and shows are so prevalent and widely accepted.  He insists on explaining the rules of comic books to the audience as if they're totally unfamiliar with the mythology. I have to wonder if the script for "Glass" has just been sitting in a box somewhere since "Unbreakable" came out twenty years ago, and Shyamalan didn't bother to update it.  Or it could be that he got carried away trying to put into dialogue all the things that he couldn't figure out how to put on screen.

I should point out that Shyamalan is working with a very limited budget here, and we were never going to get the full superhero action showdown that some viewers were hoping for.  "Glass" is operating mostly in the realm of a supernatural psychological thriller. Sure, it's also a superhero movie, but in the same way that "Logan" was a superhero movie because the main characters are superheroes.  At least the movie looks great, despite its scant resources, and manages some good moments of suspense and excitement - but in the end it's a very small film, and its limitations show.

I think it's worth seeing for some of the performances, especially if you enjoyed the previous films.  Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well on its own, and as a grand finale it's sorely disappointing.

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"Quixote" Lives

Terry Gilliam's "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is one of the more incoherent films I've seen lately, but this isn't all that unusual for Gilliam.  The narratives of "Tideland," "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," and "Zero Theorem" have all been rather muddled to some degree. And this is a movie about Don Quixote, after all, literature's favorite Spanish madman who famously got lost in his own fantasies.

But of more interest to cinephiles is that "Don Quixote" is Terry Gilliam's notorious white whale, a movie that encountered so much misfortune on its way to the big screen, that it took him nearly thirty years to complete it, and a very good documentary was made about its production troubles way back in 2002.  It would be hard to make the case that the finished product was worth all the effort, but it is an interesting film, and a significantly different one than Gilliam originally envisioned. I think this is also one of those cases where knowing about all the behind-the-scenes chaos actually improves the viewing experience.

Toby Grisoni (Adam Driver), is a feckless young director shooting a commercial in rural Spain, and comes across the old village where he made a student film about Don Quixote de la Mancha ten years ago.  The actor who played Quixote, a shoemaker maned Javier (Jonathan Pryce), has since gone off the deep end and believes that he really is Quixote. He insists that Grisoni is Sancho Panza, and the two go off to have adventures together, fleeing the law and Toby's boss (Stellan Skarsgaard), fighting giants, and saving fair maidens like the lovely Angelica (Joana Ribeiro).  

Shot in Spain without much of a budget, "Don Quixote" nonetheless looks fantastic.  In many scenes, Gilliam fills the screen with elaborate sets and costumes, tons of artfully arranged debris, and a couple of good instances of special effects.  It's wonderful to finally be able to see the giants in all their glory. In other scenes, however, it looks like the filmmakers just hastily threw together whatever was available on short notice.  There are sequences that look oddly patched together, and clearly some of the pieces are missing. Much of the editing is very abrupt, especially the ending, .

I can only guess at the state of the script, but my guess is that it wasn't in the best shape.  This is the only reason I can think of for the usually dependable Adam Driver delivering one of the worst performances of his career, playing a spoiled brat of a director who is eventually redeemed by his friendships with Don Quixote and Angelica.  There are multiple scenes where he shouts and screams for no discernable reason, delivers awful dialogue, and is in a constant state of whiny agitation. Little attempt is made to give him things like a backstory or a clear motivation.

Jonathan Pryce makes an excellent Don Quixote, however, a self-important, tragically noble figure who exists out of time.  Every time he's onscreen, he exudes so much charisma that the film seems better than it actually is. The best parts of the movie are where he insists on riding headlong into catastrophe, or mightily chastises Toby for his boorishness.  I wish Gilliam had given him more of the spotlight, or made a version of this movie that was a more straightforward "Don Quixote" adaptation. As is, "Don Quixote" is worth a watch just to see Pryce's performance, but it's a bit of a pain to get there.     

Earlier versions of the film contained a time-travel element, where Toby would have travelled to the real Don Quixote's age.  I think that the removal of this was a wise choice, since it avoids an unnecessary level of complication. Tying Quixote to a state of madness that afflicts various characters is a perfectly good alternative, and allows for memorable visuals as reality and fantasy clash.  I suspect that Gilliam planned more elaborate spectacle along these lines, but the final film only gives us fleeting glimpses of Quixote's mad visions.

In the end, the movie is a mess, but it's a mess on its own terms.  I was satisfied with it, having expected much worse. Gilliam's films have been getting more and more indulgent and inscrutable over time, but this one still has those occasional moments of wild genius that I adore.  And if this turns out to be Terry Gilliam's final feature, there really couldn't be a better one for him to go out with.

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"Escape Room" and "Isn't It Romantic"

At the time of writing, at the end of May, the three highest grossing films of 2019 at the domestic box office, that are not based on any pre-existing media, are the horror movies "Us" and "Escape Room" and the romantic-comedy spoof "Isn't it Romantic."  And I figured that the latter two deserved some recognition for that. Jordan Peele's "Us, " of course, has gotten plenty of attention and I'll write it a separate post for it later.

Now, both "Escape Room" and "Isn't it Romantic?" are deeply derivative.  "Escape Room" follows the pattern of "Saw," with a group of characters working their way through a series of deathtraps to escape a fiendish mastermind.  However, it's much tamer than "Saw," with a PG-13 rating, and more emphasis on puzzles and mind games rather than grisly kills and jump scares. The characters are stock types, but decently fleshed out.  There's the shy brainy girl, Zoe (Taylor Russell), high powered executive, Jason (Jay Ellis), directionless grocery store stocker, Ben (Logan Miller), scarred war vet, Amanda (Deborah Ann Woll), jovial middle aged white guy, Mike (Taylor Labine), and an escape room enthusiast nerd, Danny (Nik Dodani).  All are lured to participate in the escape room under false pretenses.

What I like about "Escape Room" is that it really embraces its gimmick.  I had a brief fascination with real escape rooms around the time I was trying out online puzzle box games last year.  I know enough about them that the film's depicted gameplay felt mostly right. There's a certain pattern to how the puzzles and cyphers work that is translated pretty well to the screen.  Of course, this being a movie, the escape rooms are far more elaborate than anything seen in real life, to the point where most are wildly improbable. Also, there's a little too much hand-holding and way too many convenient coincidences to fill in backstory and set up the big reveals.  There's no reason for the escape rooms to be personalized, for instance, except that it gives the characters an excuse to talk about themselves.

Still, for what it is, the movie mostly works.  There are some good thrills and some cerebral satisfaction in seeing how the puzzles are solved or defeated.  The different rooms are well constructed and each one has some wow factor to them. The characters are thin, but still likeable enough that it's sad to see some of them get killed off.  A lot of the execution is very sloppy, especially the ending, but the premise is sound. I expect that it will be able to sustain the several sequels that are no doubt on their way, along with all kinds of convoluted melodrama about the sinister nogoodniks behind the game.  And I don't think that's such a bad thing, since I'd happily watch another installment or two with smarter writing.

On to "Isn't it Romantic," where Rebel Wilson's Natalie is a single New Yorker who hates romantic-comedies and all their unrealistic tropes.  So, naturally, she suffers a head injury and wakes up in a picture perfect rom-com universe where she's the improbable star. The movie takes aim at common tropes like the gay best friend, embodied by Natalie's neighbor Donny (Brandon Scott Jones), the evil co-worker/rival, Whitney (Betty Gilpin), the lifestyle upgrades, and the random musical numbers, before inevitably getting down to the business of actually being a romantic-comedy and having Natalie choose between the hunky Blake (Liam Hemsworth), and her sweet bestie Josh (Adam DeVine), who is about to get married to a stunning yoga ambassador, Isabella (Priyanka Chopra).   

The trailer for "Isn't it Romantic" is better than the film itself, because the gimmick of Rebel Wilson being exasperated with being stuck in an airbrushed PG-13 universe wears out its welcome, and the movie isn't nearly as thorough with its skewering of the rom-com genre as I wanted it to be.  Still, the movie does a very good job of selling the joke. A lot of time is spent establishing Natalie's baseline reality in a recognizably grungy New York, before she's whisked away to the fantasy version of it. And Rebel Wilson is a great fit for the material, because you understand immediately why she has such a grudge against this kind of fantasy.  The ensemble is also very strong, with Hemsworth and Chopra being very good sports playing superficial caricatures, and DeVine keeping Josh down to earth.

The humor is clever, but it's just not as clever as I wanted it to be.  There are some strong individual gags like Natalie never being able to properly consummate her relationship because the movie keeps cutting away to the next day, and the art direction is full of funny visual touches.  However, the plot pivots too quickly to following the beats of a typical rom-com once Natalie decides to play along. "Isn't it Romantic" only bothers mocking most of its targets on a surface level, because it relies heavily on plenty of rom-com tropes itself to get to a happy ending.  To be fair, this is what most genre satires like "Shaun of the Dead" do - they follow the usual formula while pointing out the sillier parts of it. "Isn't it Romantic" just doesn't offer as much insight or subversion as some of the better ones. It's still fun, and plenty romantic, but I wouldn't go on a second date.         

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The 2018 Movies I Didn't See

I write these posts every year to sort out my feelings toward some of the more prominent movies I've made a conscious decision to skip watching.  I'm working through the last handful of 2018 films on my "To Watch" list, mostly foreign films with later domestic releases. However, as my Top Ten list has mostly solidified, and the queue of 2019 films is only getting longer, it's time to make some decisions.    

Below are eight movies that didn't make the cut this year.  I reserve the right to revisit and reverse my viewing choices in the future.   However, I still haven't watched anything from last year's list.

Love, Simon -  It's the first mainstream young adult romance featuring an LGBT lead character!  That's great! This is the kind of movie that needs support! Except that I'm not a fan of studio produced romance films in general, especially not the young adult stuff.  And the reviews, while kind, have pointed to this being perfectly average as a film. In short, it's potential airplane viewing. Not something I'm going to make time for.

On the Basis of Sex - I'm not averse to a good biopic about a legal giant now and again.  But it's directed by Mimi Leder? Felicity Jones is played Ruth Bader Ginsburg? I don't know what it is about Felicity Jones, but her screen presence immediately puts me on guard.  I wrestled with this for a while before ultimately deciding that I could skip it. There's been little awards attention, reviews are middling, and I've already seen the "RBG" documentary.

The Front Runner - Oh, boy.  This is another prestige pic that never generated much interest despite its timely subject matter and cast of familiar names.  Still, it had decent critical notices and Jason Reitman did a good job with "Tully" earlier in the year. I could go in fresh, not really knowing much about the Gary Hart scandal.  On the other hand, the awards heaped on the awful "Vice"this season have soured me on political films for a while.

Mowgli - A darker "Jungle Book" feature might be more true to the original book, but I was never honestly much of a fan of any version of the story to begin with.  From the beginning I've thought of this movie as an odd passion project of Andy Serkis's, and found the behind the scenes drama of its production and distribution woes far more interesting than anything to do with the actual film.  Like the "Grinch" remake, I can't give this a fair shake.

The Happytime Murders - Well, Brian Henson finally got his R-rated puppet noir.  As much as I love the Muppets and many of the creatives involved in the project, I have no interest in actually sitting through this thing.  The trailer satisfied any kind of curiosity I had about how the film ultimately came out. I fully support the Jim Henson folks in their quest to appeal to modern theatergoing audiences, but this was clearly a bg swing and a miss.

Let the Sunshine In - I am putting my foot down.  I have watched too many European female midlife crisis movies recently and I haven't enjoyed any of them.  I'm sorry Claire Denis, and I'm sorry Juliette Binoche, but I do not have the patience to go through another round of this aggravation.  You're just going to have to wait another decade or two until I'm old enough to relate to your angst better. This clearly isn't the right time to get acquainted.

Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot - I still don't trust Gus van Sant.  It's been a few years since the low that was "We Bought a Zoo," but I can't help having lingering doubts about where his head is.  The plot is also one of those oddities that I'm not really sold on - Joaquin Phoenix plays a paralyzed man who copes with depression by drawing off-color cartoons.  The fact that I haven't heard a word about this at awards time doesn't help either.

Assassination Nation - I was intrigued by the promises of violence and social justice satire, but responses to the movie have been mixed, and it bombed at the box office in September.   It's not a good sign when a film selling itself as being provocative doesn't manage to elicit any sort of response from the wider media. I'm also very wary of writer/director Sam Levinson, whose debut feature was my pick for the worst film of 2011.

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"Avengers: Endgame" (With Spoilers)

All the spoilers ahead.  ALL OF THEM.

This is not the movie that I was expecting, but that is a good thing in just about every respect.  Going into "Endgame," I expected the film would be all about reversing the clock and undoing the events of "Infinity War."  I'm so glad that the filmmakers elected not to do this, instead allowing everyone to move on, or try to, thereby putting them in different positions with different motivations when the time comes to regroup.  I love how they really hammer home the theme of failure (pun intended), and show how it affects everyone in different ways. I don't think characters like Black Widow and Hulk have ever gotten so much character development.  Thor's transformation is hilarious, but also poignant.

Some of my favorite moments in the entire run of the MCU involve the Avengers having some downtime here.  Sure, all the fights and the big "Time Heist" are fun, but seeing all these different personalities interacting and having the time to really enjoy their camaraderie is what I love.  So Thor's rambling retelling of the events of "Thor: The Dark World," and Hulk replacing Ant-man's taco, and Tony Stark embracing being a dad, mean just as much to me as Thanos finally getting his much deserved smackdown.  As sad as it would have been, I'm disappointed that we didn't get to see Tony and Pepper's wedding. And the film is so much better for allowing the characters their space to fumble and grieve and say goodbye.

Yes, Iron Man and Black Widow died, and Captain America retired.  The important part, though, is that the movie did its best to make those meaningful ends.  I don't think they quite succeeded with Black Widow, but they did a great job of wrapping up Tony Stark as a character, letting him grow and better himself.  And Steve Rogers got his happy ending in a way that conveniently also took him off the board. And unexpectedly, there was so much time spent giving Nebula an arc - I don't know that it was necessary, and it may have meant less time for more important characters, but they did it right.  Nebula is a fascinating figure, and it was great to see her get her due. And this was the best appearance by Ant-man, who I enjoy so much better as a second banana. And Professor Hulk is bizarre, and I don't know about this choice in the long term, but it works for "Endgame."

The plotting is entirely too convenient.  None of the time travel makes sense to me, but it was such fun and absolutely shameless fanservice to send everybody "Back to the Future II" style, back to the older movies to muck around with our expectations.  The meta humor and all the little callbacks and cameos are great. "Thor: The Dark World" may not have been anyone's favorite, but it did have Renee Russo's Frigga in it, which was exactly what the "Endgame" version of Thor needed.  Fat Thor felt awfully gratuitous for the first half of the movie, but I like that everyone committed to the bit and he didn't magically slim down again in the end. I hope we get to see more of him with the Guardians in a few years.

Good grief, I haven't even talked about the performances yet.  Robert Downey Jr. has always been the MCU's MVP, and he went out on such a great note.  Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans are at their series bests. Chris Hemsworth is clearly having a blast.  Paul Rudd is still a great fanboy stand-in. Karen Gillan is still hard to take your eyes off of. And Josh Brolin ensures that Thanos will hold the title of best Marvel supervillain for a long time to come.  And while I generally find too many cameos off-putting, all thee ones here felt earned. It was great to see so many old faces again - even if quite a few of them have been digitally manipulated to de-age them.  

Well, this post has devolved into a lot of fangirling, and I don't think I've written anything remotely critical, but so what?  "Endgame" is so unabashedly for the fans, and I'm one of them. I can't help responding to it by geeking out, as that's exactly the response it's designed to elicit.  Every time I try to talk about bits I didn't like, or that didn't work, like Hawkeye going vigilante, I end up remembering two or three other things that I loved. There's just so much crammed into the movie that I enjoyed.  It's astonishing that the Russos and the writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, made it all feel as coherent and beautifully paced as it did.

This is one satisfied Marvel fangirl signing off.  Happy watching!

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"Avengers: Endgame" (Without Spoilers)

Since it's difficult to actually talk about the particulars of the latest "Avengers" without getting into the details of what it does well and not so well, I'll be spending a good chunk of this post talking about meta - what the movie means for the Marvel franchise and a bit about the wider cultural impact too.  The spoiler post will go up in a day or two with more in-depth musings about all the plotty stuff.

However, first things first.  I liked "Endgame" just fine. I liked that it served as a solid endpoint to several of the ongoing stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that it gave several of the actors a chance to do things they haven't really had a chance to do in these movies.  There are too many characters, and some inevitably got the short end of the stick, but the ones the movie chose to focus on got their due. "Endgame" rewards the most ardent franchise fans, full of callbacks and in-jokes to nearly every other film in the MCU.  It's a lot funnier than the advertising makes it look. On the other hand, it's also the most effective at melodrama, since this is one of the few times in the franchise where there are actual, meaningful stakes and consequences for the characters.

I'm not surprised that the response to "Endgame" has been so much more positive than "Infinity War," since "Endgame" has all the resolution and the payoff that "Infinity War" set up.  As more than one critic has noted, the MCU movies really function as more of a serial these days than standalone films. "Endgame" can't be watched without the context provided by the other installments - it leans very heavily on previous character introductions, explanations of comic-book lore, and years of prior history.  If you don't know how Thor's hammer operates, or who Hank Pym is, you should still be able to follow along, but not very well. The humor and the cameos in particular need some familiarity with the universe.

And if we do treat "Endgame" like only the latest episode in a serial, should we overlook how badly the MCU functions as a serial?  So many of the most consequential relationships and events unfold offscreen entirely, the storytelling is often clunky and repetitive, and some of the best characters are never developed properly.  I've sat through all the other MCU movies, and occasionally I still feel like I've missed important backstory somewhere. The sheer scale of the spectacle is very impressive, and the larger-than-life nature of the comic book narrative helps to smooth over some of the rough edges, but those rough edges are very apparent.  Especially when you put all the installments up next to one another, there are so many opportunities that weren't taken, so many places where the creators played it too safe.

On the other hand, this style of serialized moviemaking is a new beast, or at least one we haven't seen in the popular consciousness in a couple of decades.  Some of the bumpiness is only natural. The only comparable hybrid I can think of is the most recent series of "Game of Thrones," which began as a typical television series and has slowly been morphing into a grouping of connected event movies, which happened to premiere during "Endgame's" first weeks of theatrical release.  With both of these franchises, you can see how the nature of their storytelling changed as their end goals did. "Game of Thrones" has given up more and more intimacy and verisimilitude as it has embraced bigger and bigger feats of spectacle.

As for "Endgame," it took the opposite approach, and reaped the benefits. This feels like the installment where the MCU finally decided to take full advantage of its long history, and use it for dramatic potential.  Sure, there's plenty of mindless brawling if that's to your taste, but what distinguishes "Endgame" is that many of the characters feel more human here than they have in any other outing. They grapple with loss, with failure, with frustration, and all the other fallout of "Infinity War."  They change in ways that are more fundamental than a costume upgrade or a new haircut. And for a few of them, their stories end, capping off not just one movie, but appearances stretching back all the way to the beginning. And room is provided, at last, for the emotional moments to match the spectacle.   

Wherever the MCU goes from here, it'll be hard to top "Endgame."  The amount of narrative momentum generated by over twenty sequential films, plus the novelty of the format, plus the cultural positioning of the superhero genre have all contributed to an instance of true event cinema.  Whatever else can be said about it, there's no denying that it's one of a kind.

           

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