Friday Finds shares a piece of content I’ve recently experienced.
Today’s find: Avengers: Endgame
Genre: Superhero, Feature Film
Origin: Marvel Studios (Disney)
Find it: Every movie theater
Certainly this edition of Friday Finds isn’t bringing forward a little know piece of content. Avengers: Endgame will likely be the most successful movie of all time. It made a billion dollars in just one weekend.
This post today is to salute the Marvel Studios and Disney team for bringing forward a 22 movie, 10 year long effort to create the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
With almost no hiccups – OK, putting aside Edward Norton’s The Incredible Hulk – and relying on Marvel’s so-called “B list” of heroes, Kevin Fiege and the Marvel Studios team crafted a movie series that was not only incredibly lucrative for Disney but creatively successful.
Think it’s easy to take characters that have existed for decades with hundreds of stories already written and bring them to the screen? Take a look at Warner Bros’ efforts trying to bring its corporate cousin’s DC Universe to the screen, which would seem to be foolproof with Batman, Superman, and a host of known characters.
Or look at the lack of consistent success with Marvel’s “A” list characters. These were licensed long ago by Marvel before its acquisition by Disney. There have been Fox’s series of uninspiring Fantastic Four movies, and Sony’s ups and downs with Spiderman. Arguably Fox’s X-Men/Wolverine/Deadpool franchise has been most successful, but it still lacks the consistent performance of the MCU.
The Rare Ketchup – Movie Comparison
Endgame manages to pull together the threads of 21 previous movies to create a movie that mostly works well as could be expected. In fact, it starts rather slowly in the first 20 or so minutes before action picks up. It’s like getting ketchup out of a bottle – it trickles out then there is almost more than you want! The film does a good deal of fan service with references to past movies in the MCU series. It closes the loop in the stories of some of our characters (to be vague and non-spoilerly). And its lack of a post-credits scene puts a punctuation mark on its status as the end of a long story arc.
Thor’s Hammer Hits Hard
As a minor comic book nerd, I was always in the demo targeted by the MCU. From the strains of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man at the end of the first Iron Man trailer, they had me on the hook. And that hook was in for good during the post-credits scene in Iron Man 2 that showed Thor’s hammer. I literally jumped out of my seat in excitement, an exhibition my son will never let me forget.
Will the next large arc of the MCU be as successful as the first? It is unlikely that lightning will strike twice (sorry, Thor) in terms of actors, directors, characters, and screenwriters. But there is no reason why it can’t continue to excel, even if not at the same level as the past 10 years.
David Tice is the principal of TiceVision LLC, a media research consultancy.
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In this edition of Friday Finds, it’s time to start celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing by seeing Apollo 11. This documentary is an excellent recap of the historic mission solely using original film shot in that period. It’s highly recommended.
Lodge 49 has just ended its season run on AMC, and it’s taken me that long to consider writing about it. It’s a difficult to describe hour – mostly comedy, some drama, and a lot of quirky.
I’m a big fan of car racing and racing films. Not so much today’s scene, but racing from the early ’60s to the late ’70s. Thus it was with a pleasurable surprise that I saw this week that 
Boasting a strong headlining cast of 
In addition to the music, there are also other archival materials available. The site is set up as a virtual file cabinet for each album, with a file folder for each album and song. The file for a song shows its recording details as well as tabs for related documents (such as handwritten original lyric sheets or gold record certifications), photos, and memorabilia (such as covers for 45 singles). There are also buttons for the final official lyrics and for videos (sometimes of the song, sometimes of interviews about the song).
