AVENGERS ENDGAME Runs 181 Minutes

[jkholm]

I'll say this for Marvel, they're giving psychologists and social scientists tons of material for future analysis of geek culture.

Avengers: Endgame is definitely an emotional movie, but one fan in China may have been hospitalized due to hyperventilation caused by uncontrollable sobbing.

According to WFMY News 2, a Chinese outlet reports that a 21-year-old woman in an unspecified region of China was sobbing uncontrollably during the film. After Endgame ended, she found herself "short of breath and her hands and feet felt numb." She was then brought to an emergency room, where a doctor determined her symptoms were a result of hyperventilation.

https://www.cbr.com/avengers-4-woman-ho ... e-sobbing/

[mkaroly]

Lol...hey, I am happy to hear fans of these movies are enjoying it. A close friend of mine (who is a MCU junkie) basically thought it was a home run and is very pleased with it, especially the ending. He has pretty good taste in films so it gives me hope that when I do see it I will like it. But not until it comes out on DVD!

[Johnmgm]

People are idiots.

I am not an especially religious person, but it appears that many are taking this stuff to heart as if it were a religion. A religion which has only about 50-60 years of tradition, created by nicotine stained hacks who would have laughed until they puked at the notion of anyone taking taking this stuff seriously.

BTW-I saw Endgame. I thought it was pretty good, much better than the last two Avengers movies. I found it too long, kind of like Easter Mass.

[AndyDursin]

Perpetually irritated Brie Larson just not happy with the slow movement of LBGTQ characters in the Marvel Universe...

https://www.buzzfeed.com/eleanorbate/br ... rs-endgame

[Paul MacLean]

I am not an especially religious person, but it appears that many are taking this stuff to heart as if it were a religion. A religion which has only about 50-60 years of tradition, created by nicotine stained hacks who would have laughed until they puked at the notion of anyone taking taking this stuff seriously.

BTW-I saw Endgame. I thought it was pretty good, much better than the last two Avengers movies. I found it too long, kind of like Easter Mass.

For a while I've had theory that superhero movies are the new "biblical epics". Secularism is far-more widespread today than it was in the 1950s -- but despite its increasing popularity, human beings seem to retain an intrinsic need to believe in something. Thus, superheros have become the new "deities" for many people, and their adventures the new "bible stories".

And fans treat them with the same reverence and awe once reserved for God himself. Much as even the most stilted, slow-moving biblical epics once commanded the respect of religious audiences, these overlong, costive superheros movies now command the reverence of fanboys.

[Johnmgm]

Very interesting.

I think replacing 2-5,000 years of tradition with...Stan Lee (aplologies to Stan Lee) is mind boggling.

[jkholm]

I like Matt Zoller Seitz's analysis of how ENDGAME and GAME OF THRONES are examples of a paradigm shift in cultural entertainment. He writes about the death of the theatrical experience and the merging of movies and TV shows into something new.

https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/avengers ... nt-endgame

[AndyDursin]

Disney comes up with release dates now before they have a script. What they're doing, in addition to choking out the entire medium, is very much like scheduling a TV series that has 2 or 3 episodes a year -- whether it's Marvel or Star Wars. So it doesn't matter if it's ANT-MAN or CAPTAIN MARVEL or whatever, it's the fact that it has MARVEL on the top of the poster that matters now. It's a big TV series that costs $200 million an episode to produce but can make a billion or more every time out. No wonder why they don't care about making other movies that won't make as much.

Other studios do the same thing -- and no point in our lifetimes were release dates slotted out 2-4 years in advance. "Don't open on that weekend in 2021, that's when X-MEN 35 is coming!!"

That article makes a lot of good points on how people are experiencing entertainment today, but I think he's missing one crucial point -- the theatrical experience is going to come to an absolute end at some point in our lifetimes because continuously regurgitating old IP's is fast money in the short term but won't grow the audience in the long term. 50 years from now, nobody is going to care about seeing elderly Rey and Kylo Ren running around in some virtual reality STAR WARS franchise. Yeah these STAR WARS movies are making money now -- but making an actual social impact the way the 1977 film did? NOT EVEN CLOSE.

At some point the mania for super-heroes will end and Disney will run out of movies to remake -- the one thing you can count on is that tastes always change. That's when there will be a reckoning for the paradigm shift we are seeing today, and it spells doom for the future of cinema. I'm not exaggerating that -- I truly believe we are at a tipping point, as evidenced by 25% fewer movies being made today than a decade ago, along with the decline in attendance to go with it.

Sure there has always been an alarm sounding that "the cinema is doomed" at various points in history -- but in this case, I think it's entirely on the table. Before there was also a technological (if not "social") advantage to seeing movies on the big screen -- you couldn't replicate sound and picture at home. Now you can, and the audience of adults who doesn't care about franchises and super-heroes won't be going back to that venue once they are driven away, as they are being today.

[AndyDursin]

The UHD came in this morning -- I watched 65 minutes, and got up to the moment when they finally go back to New York. Is this when the movie actually starts?