'Marvel's Avengers': Earth's Mightiest Incoherence

Marvel’s Avengers is a hero game with a thousand faces. You never know what game you will be playing any minute. Avengers might be Uncharted 3, it might be Destiny, it might be Aquaman: Battle of Atlantis. The cutscenes present a finely-polished AAA video game from 2020. The combat transports you back seventeen years and suddenly you’re playing a PlayStation 2 brawler you found at the bargain shelf of EB Games – complete with a missing cover. The menus are a byzantine labyrinth of loot, gear, abilities, and currencies. Now, you’re back in good old 2020. Every superhero game apparently has to be this now.

I could find a thousand games in the incoherent, barely-finished world of Avengers. But really, I want to focus on two games: the game developer Crystal Dynamics wanted to make, and the game their bosses made them make. In truth, I have no idea what happened behind the scenes in the development of Avengers. Jason Schreier has yet to crack this case. Maybe I'm wrong. Crystal Dynamics perhaps were inspired by Anthem and thought it would be a perfect fit for the MCU.

But I see a studio that made 2012’s Tomb Raider, a cinematic action-adventure that out-Uncharted Uncharted. They brought in developers from Naughty Dog and from Sony Santa Monica. These are people who made some of the best AAA experiences of the last decade. Square Enix told them to make a brawler with monetization hooks. You end up with Avengers, a game with a solid campaign in service to a bland looter shooter with very little shooting or very good loot. It is like if Wolfenstein II’s story was made for Battleborn.

As late as last month I figured Avengers would be a failure in an obvious, boring way. It would be simply a game not for me, maybe not for anybody, but that was fine. I do not need to play every video game in the world. I’m not offended by a gear loot game if that’s what the developers wanted to make. I definitely will not be playing or reviewing Godfall, don’t worry. (Really, I’m only covering this game because I happened to luck into an extra copy a friend of mine had.) But upon Avenger’s release, I was shocked to learn this was fairly close to something I wanted to play. Avengers has ambitions to be a playable Ms. Marvel MCU movie. That should have been great. 

Sadly, there was another, much worse game Avengers also had to be.

I Do Not Understand 'I'm Thinking of Ending Things'

Fifteen minutes into I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I guessed the big twist. I was right. That didn't help. I still have no idea what Charlie Kaufman's newest movie is really about.

 

If you're more lost than I am, I can tell you what's "real" and what's "fantasy". That part is easy. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is not some intricate Mystery Box built to surprise you in a single grand reveal. It isn't Fight Club. The details of the story make no sense right from the start. I could clear up some points, but this review is not one of those "I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Ending Explained!" pieces that are so distressingly popular. No, I'm maybe a few steps ahead of you. But I'm no closer to the answer. What is Kaufman trying to say with this movie? I don't know.

I am not really sure what genre I'm Thinking of Ending Things even belongs in. It definitely is not a love story, because the romance is already terminally ill by the time the movie begins. There's plenty of ridiculous moments, including a broad parody of one of the worst Best Picture winners of the last twenty years. But it isn't a comedy. I was terrified watching much of the film, but horror feels wrong too. If it is a tragedy, it has picked a particularly unsympathetic hero. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is two hours of uncomfortable conversation interrupted by moments of extreme existential nightmares. Then the main narrative dissolves completely. Genre is not a useful tool to help understand this piece.

Never mind my utter bewilderment at I’m Thinking of Ending Things. If you just want a simple yes or no recommendation, then reading stop now. This movie rules. It is an extraordinary piece of art made one of the true greats of cinema. We are spoiled to have Charlie Kaufman. I say we're spoiled, even as he tortures us with his stories about miserable men and the unattainable women around them. I'm Thinking of Ending Things might be his weirdest film yet. Still, while I am so entranced by the filmmaking craft on display here, I don't know much of anything about this purpose of this movie. Does Charlie Kaufman even like the character he's created here? Is this a plea for sympathy for a man ignored by the world? Or is it telling us the character was better off silent because he had nothing to say in the first place?

Top 10 August 2020 First Watches

Movie theaters are reopening right now. I beg of you not to go to them. I live in a part of the country that is now relatively safe, as things go. Only about a dozen people a day die in New Jersey from Coronavirus. "Only about a dozen" is a fucking sick statement if I've ever made one, we're safe only by relativity. It is bad everywhere. Movie theaters are not safe. They have always been dirty places open to the filthiest members of the public that were never well-cleaned. You really think a place that routinely has sticky floors and cum stains on the seats is hygienic? I say this as somebody who has spent most of his adult life in a movie theater, who loves that place more than his own home: STAY AWAY.

However, at the end of August, I actually did see a new movie in a kind of theater. It was New Mutants, making me one of the very few people to have seen it. However, I saw it at a drive-in in New York state. I was in my car, a safe distance away away from everybody else. The experience was terrible for a number of reasons. Drive-ins suck, as it turns out. The sound is bad, the screen is bad, there's distractions everywhere, and it is hard to find parking. Drive-ins are about the worst way to see a movie. Yet they are better than risking your life to see Tenet at Christopher Nolan's beloved IMAX. 

Again, don't go to the movies. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you have ever listened to me as a critic, do it now. No theaters.

Anyway, August's movie theme was Kaiju Films, that special Japanese style of giant monster cinema. Turns out a large number of classic Sixties and Seventies kaiju films from the great masters of the genre, Toho, are available on HBO Max and Amazon Prime right now. I am a massive kaiju fan, so much so I run an unpopular series of reviews years ago on this blog. I tried to review every giant monster ever made. And failed. Godzilla is my personal favorite superhero. He's been a major part of my life since I was a child watching him fight Gigan and Mechagodzilla on VHS. My mom and my uncle used to watch him on TV in the Seventies in their childhood. So if my family was in Game of Thrones, our sigil would have the King of the Monsters on it. However, it was only last month I finally saw all thirty-five Godzilla theatrical releases. (It will be thirty-six come next year with Godzilla vs Kong, assuming the plague goes away.) 

Still, I konw kaiju films are often boring, have very cheesy effects, and have aged terrible. So this month I have a lot to say about a lot of really not-that-great movies. If ever I have indulged in 100% Glorified My Shit in my writing, it is right now.