Avengers Endgame -- Sucked

It sure seems like I'm hard to please. At least that's what one might think when reading my blog. But  whatever. I'm not going to say a movie is good when it's not. And even though Avengers Endgame made billions of dollars, it sucked. Big time.

So why did it make so much money? I've said it before...the goose-steppers. For those of you who don't know what that means, goose-steppers are the rabid fans who will like anything, or any movie, that has their favorite heroes in it.

Jack Kirby's rendition of the Scarlet Witch

Like Star Wars for instance. Disney bought Star Wars from George Lucas for four billion dollars, a price he couldn't refuse, I suppose, even though I heard he donated the money. But whatever. In selling his franchise to Disney, he surrendered what little integrity the franchise had left after its atrocious prequel trilogy.

Disney studios proceeded to destroy the legend of Star Wars. First by doing nothing more than rehashing the original story line, albeit with a female "Luke Skywalker" this time. And then by delivering prequels and sequels that totally sucked with boring scripts, tired plots, and bad casting. But the Star Wars die hard fans had been waiting so long for anything Star Wars, they ate it up. These are the "goose-steppers" and Disney made billions off of them.


The same thing was true for most Star Trek fans. So hungry for anything Star Trek, even the stupid movies and TV shows couldn't fail. The goose-steppers soaked it all up and still are. I said "most" fans because once upon a time I was a Star Trek fan. I thought the original series was terrific as did millions of other people. But the second series "Next Generation" was a total load of crap, and so were the ensuing movies...nothing but crap. I didn't buy it. I quit watching The Next Generation soon after it aired, and even though I admit to seeing the movies, I couldn't stand any of them. Therefore I am removed from the "goose-stepper" status.

The Scarlet Witch as drawn by Jack Kirby

But one might argue that since I paid for seeing the movies, doesn't that make me one of the goose-steppers? No. Because a fan will go to see a movie hoping it will be good. The goose-stepper will come out of that theater raving about how great the movie was, even if it sucked. Why? Well, because it was a "Star Trek" movie. Not me. I loved the original Star Trek. But after seeing the movies, I realized I wasted my time and money. So no. I'm not a goose-stepper.

I had been a Marvel superheroes fan since I was a kid and I can call myself an expert on the characters and the Marvel universe, at least so far as the Silver Age is concerned. I still have quite the collection to this day.

Elizabeth Olsen is NOT the Scarlet Witch

I have been critical of the casting and the story lines of most of the movies. Yeah, Robert Downey, Jr. is good as Tony Stark. Yeah, Chris Hemsworth is good as Thor. Jeremy Renner was fine as Hawkeye, and I didn't mind Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange. Chris Evans is a better Captain America than he was the Human Torch. But just about every other actor was horribly miscast.

That means from the first movies like the X-Men to the last one...Spider-man Far From Home this summer. They all have been miscast. And they ruined the characters, too. I remember seeing the first Conan movie. I was a Conan fan and I was thrilled they were making a movie. I saw it, and even during the movie I remember thinking to myself..."That isn't Conan."

But of course the goose-steppers were thrilled just to see a dude dressed up as Conan with a broadsword riding a horse. Never mind the dude had nothing else in common with the character created by Robert E. Howard. Never mind the story completely sucked.

Mila Kunis is the perfect Scarlet Witch

So it's the same thing with Avengers Endgame. The characters are all there. There's Captain America, ending up as an old man, passing the torch to a new Captain America. There's Thor, but with a pot belly and wasting his days playing video games. Yeah, that's right. A pot-bellied Thor doing nothing but playing video games all day. Everyday. I mean, um, that's supposed to be the "god of thunder" but yeah. He's a pot-bellied couch potato now. What was worse was the completely ridiculous story. The bad guy kills half of life in the universe, because... Well, there really was no reason. Balance, he said. What does that mean? The story, plot, and script sucked big time.

One last example before I go. The Scarlet Witch, as pictured above (drawn by the original artist Jack Kirby.) She used to be my favorite female superhero. But casting Elizabeth Olsen as the Scarlet Witch was a disaster. Especially when the PERFECT actress for the part was available and still in her prime.

Imagine that outfit in red-The Scarlet Witch!

Who could argue that MILA KUNIS isn't the PERFECT Scarlet Witch? No one that's who. It's because Mila Kunis is the perfect Jack Kirby drawing of the Scarlet Witch come to life. So why can't the movie people get something right when it's staring them in the face?

I can go on. My point is the actors and actresses are out there. They got Thor right and Iron Man right. But that's like two out of fifty or something. With a little more effort they could get them all right. And with a little more effort they could have great stories, too. I mean it really isn't that hard to figure out. If the movie people went with the stories written by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee during the Silver Age, all of these movies would have been a hundred times better.

Too bad the effort is lacking. But why bother? They're getting their billions. That's all that matters, right? To them, at least.