Well, for one thing the Space Tyrant only has that power when he has the Gauntlet and the whole point of that battle was to prevent him from getting the Gauntlet. So the rules of the fight were more earthly and identifiable both for that reason and because whatever grander thing you might be envisioning simply might not be interesting to the majority of viewers. Furthermore, it seems like only a select few of the combatants could actually play any role in it and the point was to utilize everyone and show them doing what they do.
It's not my damn fault the majority of viewers are plebs and can't handle anything past pew-pew. But even then, my problem is that the fight itself felt hollow. It IS a fight for existence itself. Where are the armadas? Where is the rest of the universe? Ae they simply sitting there, twisting their thumbs? The only non-earthers who came to help were the Space Pirates. What were all the other alien races doing? Yeah, we see a couple of spaceships, but they're nothing in the grand scheme of things.
I didn't particularly like the actual location of the battle as compared to Infinity War but the nature of the battle I was completely fine with. I'd liked being able to identify what was going on and have a proper sense of how victory was achievable as opposed to say, the final battle in Wonder Woman which I can barely even remember - it was just noise in which Wonder Woman was losing and then she won for reasons I couldn't even understand - because the rules were not earthly, they were not definable to me. That's how you lose my investment.
I wouldn't have minded so much if they could get that right. But ultimately they didn't. LotR's final battle also was "down to Earth" compared to the stakes of IW/EG, but it still felt more epic. The battle here was just a skirmish, set in a blown up compound, with two "armies" going from left to right and clashing in a CGI mess, complete with a brown filter. Look at the Oscars poster:
They literally have the same guy copy/pasted a bunch of times. The "epic scenery" is a blown up wall ! I get it, they couldn't do Castle Greyskull in Space. But they should've done SOMETHING. When you get into such high-end cosmic stories, I expect things like the Abstracts or at least of something bigger than a low-level alien invasion film. Independence Day had a more epic feeling.
As for investment... It was a bunch of people in CGI clothes, standing in front of a Green Screen and playing pretend. It wasn't some brilliantly choreographed battle, so I don't get the appeal. I will agree the 3-v-1 fight was great, but the rest was muddled.
Huh...when you put it that way.
It was a parking lot.
You make a good point about the location and rules of the fight tho. We saw a taste of the IG in IW, so I was hoping to see Thanos be a bit more creative in EG, but given the storyline they came up with, they grounded the Infinity Gauntlet and Thanos for that matter a lot. Maybe that's a good thing, after all, the MCU will have more movies with huge stakes eventually, so maybe then they can go even further.
There's Annihilation, but I doubt they'll be able to pull that off. I guess they could make a faithful Phoenix Saga, but I don't think they'll allow a woman to commit such murder. They could do Kang Dynasty, but there's no point without the proper Avengers. The various Secret Wars exist, but I don't see them pulling off Hickman's, and the Original is pretty "corny" at this point. Besides, we're now in an MCU without the main Avengers and counting on people like Shang-Chi. Yeah, they got the X-Men and F4 back so they can shift the focus there, that's true. But will the MCU really keep going on for 10 more years so that you can do God Emperor Doom?
How was it a good point about the rules of the fight? If Thanos gets the gauntlet he instantly snaps everyone out of existence - the end. The only reason he did any of that other stuff with the Gauntlet in Infinity War is because he didn't have all the Infinity Stones yet. In Endgame they created a sense of urgency and desperation by having it be a full Gauntlet that they absolutely had to stop Thanos from getting hold of because as soon as he does they're all dead.
A pretty big character trait of Thanos' is that he's an egomaniac who self-sabotazes himself because he finds the journey more interesting than the destination.
>but this isn't MCU Thanos!
Yeah, I get it, everything is a pale immitation of children's funnybooks. I'm just saying, when you build up a fight for 20+ movies and it ends up being a brawl behind the school between two rival gangs, folks are going to be dissapointed.
>but how would you do it
I don't know, I'd probably rewrite the whole movie so that it's not solved by poorly explained time travel that nobody can decide on how it works. But if I had to keep all of that, fine, I'd have Thanos bring his armada and attack the entire planet. The whole thing would've been like the Earth fight on Mass Effect 3. Him coming here would've alerted the various alien civilizations which I'd have devoted some minutes to before, so that the final fight would have a bigger scopes. It's not perfect, but it broadens the scope. If anything, the GotG movies had more "epic" final battles.
Again, sorry.
Everyone just stop
All kidding aside, I understand the logic behind the decision. The way the MCU was set up, they couldn't do the Cosmic stuff, they never really gave much attention to the aliens, so the best they could do given the whole Time Travel bit, was just have Thanos battle the characters that they'd already introduced. I'm just saying that it's a dissapointment if you think about logically, and realise that we're talking about the fight for existence itself. It feels wrong.
At the end of the day, I caught it on my PC when it came out on BR, and haven't seen an MCU or CapeFlick since DS in theatres. I fast-forwarded through BP, CM and whatever else. I caught JL on the tv last week or so, and I didn't make it past the midway point, be it comics or films. I don't really care anymore. If anything, I might catch TROS on cinema, but don't see myself watching anything MCU, DCEU, etc. Maybe if Black Panther 2 has Namor or the F4 film is just good-natured wholesome sci-fi. But generally, I'm tired...
As for Joker, the reason it's stayed with people is that it's an actual film, not a glorified special. The CW Shows have an upcoming crossover about multiple earths and yadda yadda yadda. Huge stakes and all that. But that doesn't mean that it's a better show than Mr. Robot. Discount Blockbusters like Endgame always get forgotten, that's their nature. Also, Joker's story is clear and personal. People can get invested in it, no mater how they read it. A bunch of costumed super-soldiers fighting a space raisin can be enjoyable if done correctly, but ultimately that's it. There's nothing to discuss or analyze.
