By now, many of you have seen Avengers: Endgame. I sincerely hope that most of you enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I didn’t. Last night, my initial impression was that the film had earned a solid B-. After sleeping on it, and literally waking up thinking about some of the major failures in the film, I have downgraded that grade to a C+. The funny parts weren’t terribly funny. The dramatic parts weren’t dramatic. The sad parts were mostly missed because the editing and pacing was poor. (More on that, later.)

However, this will not be a comprehensive review. It is mostly going to be my opinion, which certainly isn’t humble. I’m not going to talk about all the ways the movie failed or succeeded, as that isn’t the point of this subreddit. Instead, I’m going to talk about the ways the movie insults, disregards, or devalues the contributions of men. This seems to be a recurring theme with Disney, and they haven’t caught on to the fact that the audience is getting sick of it.

Let’s start with the entry to the theater. As many of you have heard, Disney has been demanding that theaters keep Captain Marvel on screens if they want to show A:EG as well. This is an attempt to bolster the flagging numbers of Brie Larson’s cinematic abortion. Defenders of Larson love to point out that the movie “grossed a billion dollars!” but they ignore that most of that is overseas. Domestic box office is always where Disney has needed to shine, and at home, Captain ‘Deus Ex Machina’ barely broke the $400M mark, and China, the largest movie consuming audience, and the one that laughed Star Wars entry The Last Jedi out of the theaters in fifteen days is reportedly not pleased with the film, either.

My tickets to Endgame were for the 8:00pm showing at my local ten screen cinema, which has three screens showing the flick at pretty much constant intervals, with a 25 minute cleaning time between them, along with one 3D showing every four hours. Captain Marvel was in auditorium nine and A:EG was in four. Naturally I had to take a detour to see if the reports of the empty theaters were true. I’m pleased to say that they were not accurate! The theater wasn’t empty.

There were three people in it! Take that, critics!

I found it somewhat disconcerting that the A:EG theater was only just over half full. On Saturday of opening week the biggest cinematic event since the release of Revenge of the Sith Was. Only. Half. Full. Now, I live in a small, mostly military and retiree, town, but seriously, three screens with hourly showings and the auditorium is only half full? Worse, I peeked into the 3D auditorium and it was only a quarter full.

Anyway, I got seated and waited for trailers. The new trailer for the latest Star Wars that Disney plans to commit was not only boring as fuck, Rey’s appearance on screen resulted in audible boos from the audience. When she jumped over the TIE Fighter with the lightsaber, some guy in the front few rows actually yelled out, “Because of course she did!” I don’t think Disney understands the amount of real anger they’ve created in a formerly loving fan base.

And then the movie began, so lets finally talk about Avengers: Endgame, itself.

First off, the good news: Brie Larson is only in the film for 14 minutes. Word that her part was drastically reduced because of her attitude towards her coworkers and the fan backlash against her movie seems to be accurate. Nobody likes Captain Marvel, and they like Brie Larson as Captain Marvel even less than they like the character— and that character has been inflicted on us in nine different iterations! (Seriously, Marvel. Quit it. It’s embarrassing.)

As expected, Captain Marvel was exactly the sort of worthless, lazy writing trope one would expect of deus ex machina. If you don’t have time to look that up, let me explain that it’s Latin for “God in the machine.” A hero, when faced with certain doom, would be rescued by a literal “god”, which can be described as “a force outside the original narrative.” We all know that Tony Stark is floating in space. The trailer said “Food and water ran out three days ago. Air will be gone in about two more days...” We’ve known that pretty much since Infinity War ended.

Just like we knew that the overpowered Captain Marvel was going to rescue Tony. Which is exactly what she does. I turned to my girlfriend and muttered, “Fucker can build a goddamn arc reactor in a cave using scraps, but he can’t figure out how to recharge the fuel cells of a space ship using the damn thing strapped to his chest?” Nope. He’s got to be rescued by a character everyone hates, literally just to give her a reason to be in the film.

Bad. Writing.

After she single handedly carries the Milano (Quill’s ship from Guardians of the Galaxy) to earth, with Nebula and Stark (And, during proofreading my girlfriend pointed out Rocket coming off the ramp, but it is never explained by the story why he was there; in A:IW, he was on Earth fighting Thanos.), there’s a brief bit where the heroes track down Thanos after he uses the Infinity Stones again. Naturally, this titan is easily pinned down (although he’s badly injured from said attempt to use the stones a second time for reasons I’ll let you discover) by Ms. (Not Miss) Danvers, and then Thor Goes For the Head when it is discovered that the snap can’t be undone.

Fast forward to five years in the future. This is where the narrative really shows how poor the writing is. Tony and Pepper had a kid. Captain America is leading a goddamn self help group. (And of fucking course the man talking about “getting back out there dating for the first time since the snap” is openly gay. According to Hollywood, three percent of the fucking population is 90% of the population.)

Remember Deus Ex Machina? Scott Lang has been trapped in the quantum realm for five years. A rat, a fucking rat, runs over the keyboard for the somehow still fully-powered quantum tunneling device and just happens to hit the “recall” switch to pull him out. Not Bruce Banner, not Tony Stark, not any of the remaining geniuses at SHIELD working on technology to undo the snap— it’s a goddamn vermin animal. (That guy in the front row actually yelled, “Really?!” at that bit. I liked that guy.)

The only true bit of emotional acting was in actor Paul Rudd’s face when he sees his daughter. For him it’s been five hours. Seeing her as a seventeen year old he somehow shows about eight different emotions at once and I gained new respect for Mr. Rudd.

Banner and the Hulk have somehow merged. Banner is now speaking through the Hulk. This is how he will remain for the rest of the film. Let me say that again: the Avengers ‘secret’ not-secret weapon, the Hulk’s ability to rage and through rage grow stronger, is deleted to make a softer, gentler and immasculate Hulk! Because Marvel and Disney can’t have that icky maleness and rage any more!

The most offensive neutering of a male character is what happens to Thor. In the five years since beheading Thanos, he’s become a drunk with a beer gut. This is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. Thor is fat. He swills beer and plays video games all day. There’s even a joke about people living in mom’s basements. I hope like hell it was a fat suit or CGI and they didn’t make Chris Hemsworth throw out a decade of hard work in the gym for this shitty warping of his character. He spends the rest of the film as fat Thor, even grunting to fit into his armor. During the fight with Thanos, there’s a scene where Thanos is slowly pushing Stormbreaker into Thor’s chest and I wanted to yell out, “If you’d kept in shape you could press his purple ass.” I think I was channeling the guy in the front row.

Somewhere in there is another scene with Captain Marvel, this time as a hologram arguing with Rocket. In that scene she shows all the charisma, warmth, and humanity that fans expect from her, coming across as a flat, emotionless and pointless bitch (with a haircut). She has mercifully departed for deep space to apparently save other planets from The Patriarchy the devastation caused by Thanos’s snap. Following the hologram scene, she only returns in the final confrontation, which she ruins by destroying Thanos’s ship single handedly by merely flying through it at full speed. A ship designed to invade worlds is taken out by one pissed off bitch. “But she’s not overpowered!” She then goes toe to toe with Thanos, catching his glove in exactly the same way Captain America did in Infinity War, but showing the purple pud who’s boss by no selling his head butt— literally ignoring it without blinking (Which, judging from Brie Larson’s acting ability, they performed by just having her stare into space while they added a head butt with CGI that doesn’t even muss her hair.) and shoving his hand back into his face.

What’s the one character everyone wanted desperately to see return in Endgame? Spider-Man. And when does he show up? About 2:19 into a 3:02 movie. Just long enough for him to have a tearful hug with Tony that for some reason falls flat. In my opinion it’s because the movie’s pacing was so drastically off due to poor editing, but also because we’ve spent two and a half hours getting invested in totally different characters and we no longer have the emotional connection to Tom Holland’s character, which is just poor writing once again as we already had that fucking connection from the previous movie and the writers bungled it so we lost it.

Spidey literally has one task and that is to play wide receiver, which he only manages to do after Captain Marvel saves him. And Jesus in a straw hat she’s a condescending twat (that’s from my girlfriend, not me) while she does it.

Then there is the obligatory “men couldn’t do the job so women have to” lineup of every female superhero in the entire MCU, including Pepper Potts in MK59 Ironman armor, Valkyrie who has had about five lines and whose disappearance in Infinity War is totally ignored, and that female warrior from Black Panther whose entire super power is having a bald head.

Then climax. We win. I won’t tell you how, but it’s the only part that I thought was a well-written answer to Thanos’s snap. Everything else was mostly just noise.

Oh, by the way, you know how Steve Rogers had that passionate kiss with Peggy Carter’s grandniece in Civil War? Yeah, that is going to take a bit of explaining since he returns to 1945 and marries Carter. “Hey, I deep-tongued your hot niece 79 years from now,” is probably grounds for divorce even in 1950.

I have mentioned the editing and pacing being off in this movie a couple of times. It’s a well-known secret that Marvel had to do a bunch of reshoots of Endgame once the fans let it be heard that they didn’t like Captain Marvel and didn’t want her to have a significant role in A:EG. It’s my opinion that this is what caused the disconnect in the pacing. Infinity War had some of the best pacing I’ve ever seen in a movie. The arcs rising to Pinch one and Pinch two were perfect. The way it ended, with no falling action to decompress the emotional impact of Thanos wiping out literally half of all life in the universe, and that fucking end credits line: “Thanos will return.” combined together to make one of the most emotionally impactful movies I’ve ever seen. Hell, even MauLer, who generally shreds MCU movies, loved it. I reference him a lot because he has a formal background in writing and presents an educated, cogent discussion of why certain tropes do or do not work in certain movies. His reviews are always long, but you’ll learn a lot about how stories are structured, so they’re worth watching.

I feel like the failure of Captain Marvel to connect with audiences, and the way she was shoved into our faces at the wrong time in the MCU timeline made her a deus ex machina character. She’s overpowered, and demonstrated it, even in her limited screen time. Add to this Brie Larson’s arrogance and negative interactions with her peers and costars— every single fucking one of which is a bigger and more successful actor than she is— made problems for the movie that required drastic editing and reshooting to fix. This irrevocably broke the timing. In most movies you can set your watch by certain beats; pinch one about 17-23 minutes in, pinch two with 25-30 minutes remaining. I joke about trying to see a 90 minute film with a 40 minute bladder, but I can usually “feel” when the best time to head to the head is. Not with Endgame. The pacing was such a mess I had no idea if I was going to miss something important or not if I jetted to the bathroom or ran to get a popcorn refill.

Further, in Infinity War, Thanos was a well established character with a defined arc and clear motivations of his own. A:IW worked because it was his story, not the Avengers’. However, A:EG fails because Thanos is returned to being a “mad titan” who makes moves with no rhyme or reason. He’s not working towards a plan. In fact, his “balanced” and calm demeanor that made him terrifying because he wasn’t acting out of malice was abandoned and he literally says he’s going to “enjoy obliterating humanity” and “remaking the universe from scratch.” He goes from trying to save life from extinction to literally wanting to wipe it all out and start over from scratch. This is a drastic perversion of his character as established in the rest of the series. It’s like the writers hadn’t even seen the first few Avengers films.

There were moments I liked. Watching Thor dual wield Mjolnir and Stormbreaker was a high point; but it was marred irrevocably by the fact that he was poured into his armor like a jelly mold. Hawkeye finally becomes a badass, but that’s also marred by the fact that he’s traveling all over the world killing crime bosses, but there is no explanation as to why. He lost his family to Thanos’s snap. Okay, what the fuck does the Mexican drug cartel have to do with Thanos killing his family?! Instead of beheading Japanese yakuza, shouldn’t he be trying to figure out how to get an arrow up Thanos’s nose? And what the hell is with the sword? He fires literally three arrows in the film. I genuinely enjoyed the suspense of not knowing which one, Natasha or Clint, was going to sacrifice themselves to gain the soul stone. I felt that was handled well, and Jeremy Renner needs to get more credit as an actor instead of a movie star because he can definitely handle more serious roles. By contrast, I felt that Scarlett Johansson kind of phoned it in on that.

Rather than have Captain Marvel effortlessly take out Thanos’s ship, that role should have gone to Scarlet Witch. She faces Thanos and informs him, “You took everything from me.” (I thought Ultron already did?) Thanos rebuts this with a simple, “I don’t even know who you are,” that is nearly as well delivered as Raul Julia’s, “For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. For me it was Tuesday,” the only decent line in the entire Street Fighter movie. How awesome would it have been to see that Phase Two character we have watched grow into her powers in five movies rage out and rip Thanos’s ship out of orbit, finally in complete control of her full power? I would have cheered to see that.

The neutering of men is the worst part of this film. I am fully aware that Hulk and Banner actually merged in the comics. That’s great, but the way it’s done here was clumsy and detracted from the story. Thanos wiped out half of the life in the universe. What the universe needs now is a Hulk to wreck shit, not a giant green hug monster. Worse, it takes place entirely off screen, so there is no character growth and absolutely no explanation for why the Hulk refused to come out in A:IW. Spider-Man is removed completely as an effective character, or even as a motivation for Tony Stark who has literally replaced him— Stark and Potts have a five year old daughter. How amazing would it have been to bring Peter Parker back to life and have Ironman and Spider-Man fight back to back, with Tony accepting finally that Peter is worthy of being his own man like he almost did in A:IW? Missed opportunity that was probably left out because it would show men in a positive light and as a positive role model. T’Challa, who I don’t particularly care for, has three lines and almost no screen time. Doctor Strange does approximately fuck all, other than to tell Tony, “one”, and what they did to Thor was inexcusable. Thor is and has always been a warrior, whether you are referring to the comic book version or the MCU or even the actual Norse mythos. There is not one single time in any of those storylines where Thor sat on his ass, played video games, and swilled beer until he looked like a leaking punch bowl. Thor has always been the most masculine of the MCU characters. Hulk is offset by Banner. Captain America is a “nice guy” in a superhero body. Ironman is a bookworm with fancy armor. Hawkeye is, well, Hawkeye. Spider-Man is a kid. Doctor Strange is a surgeon first, magic wielder second.

Thor is a man. He fights when he has to and enjoys the challenge. He parties like it’s AD909. He wines and wenches and lives life with no apologies. So naturally the fucktards at Disney had to neuter him and turn him into a fat, beer-obsessed moral coward. When they showed him in what I still hope is a CGI fat suit, I clenched my jaw so hard that it hurt. They took a hero who represented the best of manhood and turned him into a fucking tampon commercial. All they needed was to have him carry Jane’s purse for her and the journey towards the dark side would have been complete. The only reason he gets involved in the final battle at all is because Rocket tells him they have beer on the ship. That’s his sole motivation. I’m surprised he didn’t call for a time out during the final battle so he could take a piss.

It irritates me that this movie is going to earn a billion dollars, easily. It’s the same frustration as when I see shit movies like Solo and The Last Jedi making money. The name alone is going to draw people to the theater. Even some people who read this review and agree are probably still going to see the movie because, if nothing else, it’s the end of the saga. Just like you can slap ”Star Wars” on any piece of distended rectum and people will fork over $12 a ticket to see it, we’ve reached a point where the MCU will make money whether their film is well written or not, and worst of all, this movie is not only poorly written, it directly insults the male audience going to see it— some of which will be so fucking dense they won’t even notice the digs or understand what they’re seeing: a subliminal castration of male heroes.

Perhaps it is best summed up by my compatriot in the front row, who, after seeing Captain Marvel destroy Thanos’s ship without breaking a sweat, yelled, “Now get off the goddamn screen. I’m trying to watch the Avengers.”

Me too, my dude. Me too.