Mathias Larsen’s review published on Letterboxd:
The McGuffin Cinematic Universe
I like that the MCU formula has changed up a bit, shows that they are open for experimentation both through the stories they tell and how they tell them. Still there’s this corporate hue over them, which makes sense as it’s pretty much the biggest movie franchise of all time. It isn’t bad - I kinda like the MCU, it’s easily digested entertainment.
About the movie, first off the opening sequence was gangster as fuck, but it slowly compiles into a dreary exposition dump and just because it’s in Cantonese does not make it better, the movie does contain a lot of exposition. Most of the actors did a serviceable job, I do have this ambivalent relationship with Akwafina as an actor, I don’t think she’s bad but she kinda has the same on-screen presence as T.J Miller… Tony Leung will always be great though. The humour was really hit and miss, I definitely laughed when he handed that PC back to the girl on the bus, her facial expression was perfect.
The fight scenes were a lot better than your typical MCU movie and also very diverse in style. The story I thought made very little sense from a serialised MCU perspective (like how many Shadow organisations controls the world in this Universe?) but as a stand-alone movie it was fairly cool. I like the aesthetic, the costumes and the aspect ratio was nice. Amazing CGI of course, other than that it doesn’t do anything revolutionary for the MCU as something as the Guardians of Galaxy did with it’s humor and loose tone, but it’s by far more stylised and more combat focused than previous entries, which I like. This is a superhero movie, it will be formulaic and I’m not expecting a masterpiece.
i do think the dialogue falls flat, especially in the beginning it felt like watching a commercial at times. While the story is structured a lot better than f.ex Black Widow, I think it added unnecessary scenes and the 3rd act is all over the place. I had a great time watching it, while I absolutely have problems with it, all-round it’s one of the better movies from the franchise. Still think it could’ve been better. And a lot of people will most likely really enjoy this for many different reasons and that’s fine, while I definitely have invested time into this franchise and Endgame might be one of the coolest experiences I had at the Cinema tbh.
So in retrospect: Good action, decent plot, alright performances, ok comedy, but nothing exemplary and still major issues for my part.
