This movie is a strange mix between fast action and vibes of dispair. It takes about half an hour to really warm up, with a strong backstory already built, but it stays a bit confusing right the way through the movie.
By the start of the second hour, the three main protagonists are now somewhat introduced and are working together in a team to track down their loved ones – to rescue them from the aliens who have abducted them. This is probably the highlight of the movie, in terms of mood. But it doesn’t take long till they’re all captured and things become quite depressing right through till the end of the movie – that’s quite a missed opportunity to have a lot more fun, and it brings this movie down from what looked set for a very high rating, down to just Decent which is still no mean feat.
Andy On was impressive, as one of two roughly equal co-stars, called Connor, with vibes similar to Jet Li, just a bit less intense. He was able to match Scott Adkins (who played Quinn – the other co-star) in terms of charisma and screen combat capability, while coming from such a different culture – they made a quite good team.
The lead female – Adkins’ psychiatrist – was played quite well by Vietnamese actress Trương Ngọc Ánh. The second main female – Connor’s kidnapped wife – was played adequately by Lily Ji.
The best bit about this movie is arguably the very ending – it’s got a cool bit of mysterious music at the end, blended in very well with the final scene. It’s not an adrenaline-rush tune, but it’s quite spiritually stirring nevertheless.
This movie is also abundant with metaphors that coincide significantly with theories that became popular around world events that followed this movie’s release in 2019. It’s as if someone were trying to get a message out, but had no permission or trick to do so any more explicitly than were done here. Of course this is pure conjecture, but it kind of makes me respect Scott Adkins a bit more than I previously did. Maybe it’s misplaced credit, who knows. And by the same token, maybe we should respect the weird Wachowskis too, since even though they seem to be much deeper ‘in the club’, and even though they seemed to have the full backing of the system to do so, they basically promoted the same kind of metaphors via The Matrix, and somewhat in Jupiter Ascending too.
Avengers: Endgame starts off a lot slower than Avengers: Infinity War did, as if it’s a direct & straightforward continuation from the depressing cliffhanger ending of Infinity War. Endgame could easily be called Infinity War Part 2.
Fortuntely the mood lifts slightly before the end of the first 10 minutes, as Captain Marvel (Bree Larson) appears and rescues a stranded Tony Stark, returns him to Earth and what remains of the Avengers have a little get-together, counting their losses and consoling each other. This of course is very timely since the dedicated Captain Marvel movie was released on Friday 8 March 2019, just 7 weeks before Endgame was released on Friday 26 April 2019.
By the 15th minute, most surviving members of the core team of Avengers have agreed to go after Thanos with the help of their new ally, Captain Marvel. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, since Thanos has already destroyed the infinity stones so there’s no way to reverse what’s happened now. Thor impulsively kills the now defenceless Thanos, and everyone is depressed again by 20 minutes in. Half an hour in, people are still sobbing, and it’s starting to look like the only reason it’s a 3 hour long movie is because it’s not been condensed into a richly entertaining one – they just left all the junk in as if it’s a sci-fi drama sitcom.
Fortunately, Ant-Man shows up with a plan to build a time-machine using the quantum realm, to go back in time before Thanos did his thing, and prevent it from ever happening. Now things are starting to get a little interesting – it’s just a shame we had to sit through half an hour of sobbing to get here. 1 hour in and not much more has happened – thus far, this movie seems like way more drama, way less action than Infinity War.
90 minutes in and it’s looking like it’s only half way done – at this rate it will need all three hours to properly complete things.
Nearly 2 hours in and it’s still looking like a season finale to an action drama series.
Overall I rate Avengers: Endgame as an OK movie considering its pros and cons. It’s kind of Bang Average for an action hero movie reviewed by this site. It’s considerably weaker than Infinity War – the previous Avengers movie, which I rated slightly Above Average.
All the usual Avengers cast members are here, and then some. Thanos returns as the main antagonist too. They killed him at the start, but then they went back in time for a rematch. How very uncreative! Still, it’s not the worst plot of all time – it’s no worse than any other Avengers movie with the exception of Infinity War. Plotwise, Endgame could easily be the last of several chapters from Infinity War, even though it’s a longer movie, it feels like Infinity War covered several chapters to Endgame’s one, or one long chapter to Endgame’s short final one.
Some of the strange things that happened in this movie include Thor gaining a belly; Captain America being equally worthy of wielding Thor’s weapons and somehow having some of Thor’s lightning powers when he does so; and many of the core cast members meet their long lost lovers or family members when they go back in time.
Even though Thor (played well by Chris Hemsworth) is fat in this movie, I’d say he’s still the best member of the Avengers and this movie massively underplays his powers, giving both the Hulk and Iron Man a chance to wear the six infinity stones but never Thor. Iron Man (played well by Robert Downey Jr) is one of the busiest characters in this movie, as is Chris Evans who does a fair job as Captain America. Hulk is also a very significant character here, and is played quite well by Mark Ruffalo with the help of ample CGI which looks quite odd in how he’s made to stand in a wobbling slouch like a RPG video game character. In terms of powers displayed, Captain Marvel (played adequately by Brie Larson) is made to look like the most powerful Avenger – she’s involved early in the movie, then disappears until she re-joins the action very late into the final battle scene at the end. She basically saves the day, although still needs help since she still gets knocked around a bit by Thanos momentarily. Thanos himself makes a great adversary, and is played well by Josh Brolin with the help of loads of CGI.
Once the grand finale battle is done, with the best part of half an hour remaining, the last half an hour can easily be skipped by action hero movie fans, since it’s pure drama. There’s not even an interesting teaser clip among the closing credits like there usually is on a Marvel movie. Maybe they really thought the world was coming to an end after 2019? There have been further Marvel movies released in pretty much every year since Endgame was released in 2019, but there’s not been many new good ones – the recent Marvel movies have been mostly quite poorly made. For this reason, after watching Endgame, you may like to go back to watching the earlier Marvel movies from prior to the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Perhaps try X-Men (2000) and its sequels next. There’s a trilogy from the early 2000s, then a Wolverine trilogy mixed in with 4 prequels culminating in Dark Phoenix (2019) which bears a striking resemblance to Captain Marvel and was released just a few months later but is not part of the MCU with its endless Avengers and endless crossovers. The X-Men and Wolverine movies also feed into the modern Deadpool trilogy in case you’re into toilet humour – not my cup of tea personally – but if you like Deadpool you’ll probably like DC’s Shazam and vice versa.
Strangely, the DC superhero called Shazam is a relatively new name, since that character was originally called Captain Marvel in comicbooks – not to be confused with Marvel’s own Captain Marvel of course, who is a completely different character made specifically for the 2019 movie (development began in 2013).
Development of the Captain Marvel character by Marvel Studios began in 2013. The basic concept was announced in 2014. The story was written in 2015. Brie Larson was cast & announced as Danvers in 2016. The directors were hired in 2017 at which point the script was also rewritten, and filming began in 2018 in time for the movie’s release in 2019.
As you can imagine, there have been all kinds of trademark & copyright issues going on ever since the DC’s Captain Marvel (now Shazam) was created in 1939 just in time to rally the troops for WW2 (coincidence much?) although initially the main qualm was with how this Shazam / Captain Marvel character (published initially by Whiz Comics and Fawcett Comics, both owned by Fawcett Publications) bore too much similarity with DC’s Superman. DC won a copyright lawsuit in the 1950s and Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel – they also allowed their unusable trademark to expire in the 60s at which point it was quickly picked up by Marvel Comics. Then in 1971, Fawcett sold the remainder of their copyright stake in this Shazam / Captain Marvel character to DC – at least, whatever was not already ruled the legal property of DC due to its resemblance to their Superman character. This sale consolidated all rights of the early Shazam / Captain Marvel character for DC, except of course the trademark name which was picked up by Marvel in the 60s. So DC used the name Shazam instead, for the purpose of selling comics, while still getting away with referring to the character as Captain Marvel from within the comicbook scripts. DC allowed this strange scenario to exist until 2010 when they finally fully renamed their character to Shazam. Within the decade, Marvel Studios released a movie dedicated to their own new Captain Marvel character, which was to be their first female-led project, and just 1 month later, DC released their own movie dedicated to Shazam, thus jointly putting to bed the best part of a century’s worth of dispute & confusion.
Alternatively, check out the Fantastic Four movies (2005 & 2007) if you haven’t done so in a while – these movies are starring Jessica Alba (from Dark Angel) alongside a young Chris Evans (who took on the role of Captain America a few years later) – this movies will set you up nicely for Marvel’s 2025 remake of the Fantastic Four, 20 years on from Alba’s version and featuring a completely new cast since everyone’s now much older – Alba’s already in her mid 40s, and Evans is too well known as Captain America these days.
Captain Marvel is an OK modern Marvel movie. It’s not very well made, but it’s not very poorly made either.
It’s got subtle and not-so-subtle undertones of a girls’ girl theme, but this doesn’t massively detract from the core plot or action scenes so it’s tolerable for those whose cup of tea it is not.
The action ranges from so-so to pretty good, and although its best scenes have most of the constituents of an awesome experience, they falls short of what the best Marvel movies have managed to achieve (both in action and in drama). The best action scenes, while still pretty good, are a bit limp and end up being a bit of a sissy version of what they could be.
The plot is fairly enjoyable when you’ve not seen it in a few years.
Brie Larson plays the main character, Captain Marvel, born as Carol Danvers and renamed Vers by her kidnappers who may have also wiped her memory. Her acting is alright but nothing special.
Samuel L Jackson plays the next main role, as Nick Fury, a senior agent of SHIELD and as Earth’s main liaison for Captain Marvel – initially trying to arrest her, then eventually helping her when he realises his own agency has been hijacked by the alien race who he initially thought were the enemy but eventually discovered were the good guys. Samuel does a good job and kind of saves the show from what would otherwise be little more than a poorly made, uncoordinated in drama interspliced with mediocre action, only a few scenes of which are sort of good.
Lashana Lynch plays Maria Rambeau, the tomboy-type forgotten ‘best friend’ (and maybe more) of Carol Danvers aka Captain Marvel. Her acting doesn’t impress me.
Ben Mendelsohn plays Talos (the shapeshifting alien) and Keller (the agent who Talos impersonates, who is Nick Fury’s boss). He does a so-so job.
Jude Law plays the main antagonist in the second half of the movie, who initially appears to be a good friend of Vers – her senior comrade, supervisor and training partner (and secretly the guy who originally kidnapped her, before her memory were wiped). Jude does a decent job here, and significantly helps to make this is kind of respectable movie.
The main antagonist at the very end, who Jude Law’s character answers to, is Ronan (played by Lee Pace although you can’t really tell who it is behind the CGI, mask, outfit, makeup, etc). Ronan was the guy who served under Thanos in Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014) before going rogue when he acquired an infinity stone and became the most powerful man in the universe and the main antagonist of that movie, until the Guardians took the stone back. He’s a cool character and wields hammer a bit like Thor.
Djimon Hounsou and Gemma Chan play members of Jude Law’s team – initially comrades of Vers (Captain Marvel). They add value. They’re at least as good as Brie Larson.
Annette Bening with weird contact lenses plays the AI character who helps to deceive & control Vers – modelled on Carol’s forgotten friend, a renegade pilot who developed the technology that gave Captain Marvel her superpowers when it crashed (shot down by Jude Law’s character, who also killed Bening’s character, kidnapped Carol and wiped her mind).
Clark Greg plays Agent Phil Coulson from SHIELD, working under Nick Fury. He’s a good character but only has a very minor role here – I’d be pleased to see him in a bigger role.
This move gets off to a bad start, with a boring-come-irritating drama scene that attempts to conjure up a traumatic experience while building a backstory for the main character. Fortunately this only lasts a few minutes, and then the better stuff gets underway.
Chris Pratt (with vibes of Seann William Scott) stars as Peter Quill – the main man in this movie. He’s a fun character with convincing acting, and carries the occasional moment of humour very well too.
Dave Bautista adds substantial value as a strong powerful ally called Drax The Destroyer, although he gets beaten easily by the main antagonist called Ronan – himself played quite well by Lee Pace with a massive dose of CGI and masking up so much that we can’t really see who he is.
Zoë Saldaña (star of Colombiana, 2011) is the main female in this movie. She’s a green woman called Gamora, and a trained killer. She joins the team of misfits, to save the galaxy, and has the odd moment of romance with Chris Pratt’s character. Her performance is adequate but nothing outstanding. She wears heavy makeup including some bits to make her look less human.
Michael Rooker plays Yondu, the head of the Ravagers, quite well.
Bradley Cooper provides the voice of Rocket, the bounty hunting raccoon; and Vin Diesel provides the voice of Groot, the talking, walking warrior tree.
Considering the ratio of tedious drama to exciting action, the ratio of easy viewing to irritating viewing, the general quality of acting, the half-smooth half-muddled script, and the general strength of cinematography, I have to rate this movie Bang Average, on a par with Captain America 1 and 2.
But if Chris Pratt had some kind of super power or incredible talent that made him special, and the main crew were not a bunch of weird alien misfits, this movie could have more of a classical superhero vibe, but as it stands it’s far more casual than exciting (when it’s not a noisy mess of drama). Although it has the odd bit of good action and the odd bit of good humour, it’s hard to get behind the main characters, some of whom are not even human, and most are weird looking beastly aliens with bright red, blue or green skin. I wouldn’t even call it childish, I’d call it too goofy or wacky-minded to relate to, and too nonchalant to really get behind. Thus, although some parts belong in a much more highly rated movie, the overall production is so full of pros & cons, it ultimately boils down to a Bang Average action hero movie by Marvel Studios. Having said that, after a long tedious patch, the ending is pretty strong and shows the specialness in Pratt’s character Peter Quill for the first time, as well as another level of ability in his main comrades (Saldaña’s Gamora, Bautista’s Drax and Cooper’s raccoon) as they’re officially dubbed the Guardians Of The Galaxy by the main antagonist, Ronan. Question is, why so late? Why suffer two hours of weak drama for one strong ending? There should have been more bits like that, to prevent this movie getting lost between genres and never surpassing mediocrity in either genre. With a few more scenes like that, this movie could have easily gone up several rating levels.
Credit also goes to Josh Brolin who barely recognisably plays Thanos (with the help of ample makeup & CGI) – the most powerful being in the universe, and Ronan’s boss (until Ronan acquired the infinity stone). Prior to Guardians, Thanos also appeared in Avengers (2012) where he was played by Damion Poitier instead; then Josh Brolin took over the role of Thanos for every subsequent movie until Avengers: Endgame (2019) where he dies.
Sequels
Next up, if you’re following all Marvel movies in order, is Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron (2015) featuring a multitude of superheroes just like the first Avengers movie from 2012, including Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and more, but no Peter Quill or anyone from the Guardians movie series yet, although Avengers 3: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers 4: Endgame (2019) both feature the entire Guardians team. Or if you just want to skip to the next true dedicated Guardians movie where Chris Pratt and his team of misfits get all the screen time, that would be Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 (2017). There’s also a Guardians 3 (2023) in case you’re going down that route.
Following the success of The Spy Who Loved Me which was one of the best Bond movies of all time (and brought in the best box office revenue since Goldfinger & Thunderball in the Sean Connery era) on a budget equal to 14 million dollars, which up until that point was the highest budget a Bond movie had received by far (in real terms) and was second in budget behind You Only Live Twice after accounting for inflation – the budget was over doubled for Moonraker in both real terms and after accounting for inflation. But Moonraker’s takings at the box office remained about equal to The Spy Who Loved Me, so budgets were reigned back in after Moonraker didn’t do as well as expected for the money spent – the same budget (after accounting for inflation) was not spent again until the Pierce Brosnan era nearly two decades later, and the box office takings of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker were not surpassed until the soppy Daniel Craig era whose movies I personally find quite unwatchable.
If your tastes matches mine, don’t forget to bookmark this site for masses of carefully curated action hero movie reviews & recommendations just like this one – tailored specifically to my own taste and anyone who thinks like me – I know there’s not many of us left, but let’s still help each other out a bit!
Both movies – The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979) – were directed by Lewis Gilbert, but Moonraker lacks a woman with as much star power as Barbara Bach from The Spy Who Loved Me, and lacks an evil mastermind as convincing as Curd Jürgens. Still, at least we get the return of Roger Moore as James Bond (who performs excellently as usual) and his most legendary adversary, Jaws (another epic performance by Richard Kiel in the second of his only two ever outings as the most iconic Bond adversary of all time).
The main antagonist on the brains side, is Hugo Drax, played a bit demurely by Michael Lonsdale.
The lead females in Moonraker are played by American actress Lois Chiles (as Dr Holly Goodhead – on loan to Hugo Drax from NASA) and French actress Corinne Cléry (Corinne Dufour – personal pilot to Hugo Drax – she gets killed around half an hour in). They both deliver basic but adequate performances – both far less stunning or sophisticated than Barbara Bach from The Spy Who Loved Me, but that’s to be expected – they’re just about as tidy as an average Bond girl.
Blanche Ravalec plays the most fun female in Moonraker, called Dolly – a nerdy pigtail-wearing young woman who falls in love with Jaws and the feeling is reciprocated!
The most attractive woman in this movie is probably Emily Bolton who plays Manuela – James’s contact in Rio. She doesn’t appear until about an hour into the movie, and doesn’t get much screen time but she certainly brightens up the movie for a while.
The river boat chase after half an hour into this movie, is obviously inspired by the great boat chase in Live And Let Die, although this one is a bit cheap & nasty in comparison, but at least it’s original and not too close an imitation. And there is another boat chase in the second hour of this movie where James is given a much cooler boat. Then in turn, this movie’s boat races probably inspired Pierce Brosnan’s river boat race scene in The World Is Not Enough (1999).
When the boat becomes amphibious and drives around town about 40 minutes into this movie, that’s obviously inspired by the scene where the Lotus drives out of the sea in The Spy Who Loved Me. The reactions are a bit more developed this time round, but that’s not entirely a good thing – it’s all a bit cheesy, as if trying to be a comedy but not quite getting there, and the amphibious boat itself is a bit of a cheap looking stunt – something much improved in the second hour, and in The World Is Not Enough. Having said that, there is a nice bit of unspoken humour occasionally in this movie.
The fencing with the kendo swordsman in this movie probably inspired the swordfighting with Madonna in Die Another Day too.
It’s not till half an hour before the end when we finally see why the movie is called Moonraker – we finally see the hidden space city as James & Holly secretly board one of Drax’s shuttles.
I rate Moonraker an OK movie, like most Bond movies up until this one.
Not to be confused with the Indian film of the same name, from the same year. Soldier (1998) is one of Kurt Russell’s best action hero movies. It’s beautifully composed and has a very original concept. It also has a great soundtrack by Loreena McKennitt (Night Ride Across the Caucasus).
This movie follows the story of a cold-hearted team of soldiers whose leader is played by Kurt Russell – the strongest and fastest of them all. After many successful campaigns, he eventually gets made obsolete as a new breed of soldiers are introduced, who are stronger and faster than the old ones. The leader of the new soldiers is played by Jason Scott Lee (from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, which is not an accurate depiction of Bruce Lee’s life story but is a decent movie nevertheless).
Now obsolete, we see the leader of the old soldiers left for dead on a garbage dump planet where no people are thought to live. But he soon gets taken in by a community of locals, and we see him gain a heart and eventually help these people to defeat all the new soldiers when they eventually come to wipe out the people on this planet.
Jupiter Ascending is an action-drama sci-fi starring Channing Tatum as an alien ex-legionnaire who is half-human half-wolf, who comes to Earth to rescue the reincarnated queen of a humanoid vampiric alien race who extend their life by breeding humans on various planets and harvesting their essence. While its story and its special effects contain plenty of sci-fi, there are clear undertones to what really goes on in this world that few people know about except those who are directly involved in it. This may make you wonder who wrote it – turns out it’s written & directed by The Wachowskis – the same pair who wrote & directed The Matrix – another movie with uncanny parallels to reality, including some very similar concepts (such as breeding humans as a resource, although in the case of The Matrix, it’s done by robots, for battery power).
Channing Tatum does a decent job acting in his role here. His performance is generally action packed, with a little drama.
Mila Kunis plays the lead female – the member of alien royalty born on earth and raised with a simple life – quite shocked when she realised she’s someone special. Her acting is so-so, she’s not really my cup of tea – to me she seems like a skin-deep minded, hot-headed drama queen rather than the feminine maiden of an action hero movie. Still, she’s not terrible.
Great to see Sean Bean play the main side-kick to Channing Tatum’s character. I once heard someone say he always adds massive value to any movie he’s in, and I can’t disagree.
Other cast members include Eddie Redmayne and Douglas Booth – the rival brothers who are both members of royalty in this alien race. They are the main antagonists in this movie and do a kind of adequate job although neither are to my taste either.
If not for so much drama and even horror genre creeping in, I would probably rate this movie as Pretty Good. First time viewers may love it. But when it comes to rewatching, if you’re only after an action hero movie, you may find the drama scenes quite tedious and spoiling the mood. So as it stands, I rate it Decent, alongside many other classic action-drama movies that just lack a smooth enough vibe and consistent enough action to warrant a higher rating even though there are many pretty strong action scenes within.
