Spoilers

My, my ladies and gentlemen, this movie was something. Not something awesome but something, in that it was a thing, that happened, and existed. I gotta say, I was underwhelmed. This movie was built up. It was supposed to be a darker, closer look at the cast but with the same big bang and pow and zap that we have come to expect from the series. But it fell flat in most ways.

The acting was what it normally is. The actors aren’t at fault. They were just playing their parts and the script couldn’t rock it out. The little bit of personal growth from our Avengers was stilted. It didn’t really work and felt like it was jabbed into the action to try to add depth. In the end the drama around Hawkeye and Black Widow was pretty much like Hawkeye and Black Widow in general, not really necessary and the plot has to compensate blatantly to have their contributions, and their stories, matter at all.

The Baddie was…lame. I don’t care if people disagree, he was a plot device stomping around the world trying to make us care one lick. The new good guy was…lame as well. He is one of those characters with undefined abilities that can either make all of the other characters obsolete or that are so situationally dependent/changeable that they are obviously subject to the writer’s whims and nothing more than crutches for poor writing and resolution planning.

I will admit that I loved the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver but in the end what is the point of having a giant legal issue and messing with their origin story if you are only going to use them in a limited and short-term capacity? These guys could have been something awesome but instead all we get to look forward to is Captain America and Iron Man playing a game of “trying to keep people interested as the franchise slowly dies”.

Basically, the entire movie was an attempt to give lesser characters’ back stories without giving them their own movies while making the main characters flatly push the story through to its unfulfilling conclusion. Was it terrible, not really. Was it worth seeing in theaters, maybe not (and I’ve seen all of them in theaters and this is the first time I’ve said this so you know where the bar is set).

Verdict: Lackluster, not memorable, grandiose with no purpose or tether for the grandiosity. Go see it if you have a social aspect, a date or friends or something, or go see it if this is your jam and you need to continue with the world. But I promise you that if you are anything like me you can just watch it on Netflix while cleaning and enjoy it just as much.