THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*


In response to my recent viewing of Dario Argento's first directorial effort, I wrote this ARCHIVE essay, RATIONAL AND IRRATIONAL PROBLEMS, in which I argued that Edgar Allan Poe gave birth to two complementary attitudes toward the mystery genre-- one being an attitude which feels that the rational capacity can pretty much solve all problems, while the other projects the sense that even if some problems are solved, the world remains essentially enigmatic.

According to the DVD extras for THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, Argento didn't admit until late in his career that he based his script for BIRD on Fredric Brown's 1949 novel SCREAMING MIMI. I have never read the Brown novel, but I have seen the 1958 Gerd Oswald film adaptation, which is said to be reasonably close to its source. Based on my memories of the movie, I would say that Brown's story falls into the category I call "the riddle," in which the mystery is totally cleared up by some detective's ratiocinative activities.

BIRD, in contrast, falls into the category I call the "enigma," for even though the story's main character does solve one mystery, Argento's world seems even more enigmatic than ever before, rather than being more rationale. I don't know all of the Italian gialli that preceded BIRD, so I can't say whether or not Argento was substantially different from them in his aesthetic approach.

The titles of the Brown book and the Argento film might be seen as one signal of their different approaches. In the former, the meaning of the phrase "screaming mimi" is central to the revelation of a serial killer's identity. In the latter, the meaning of "the bird with the crystal plumage" is only indirectly related to the killer's identity. In fact, even though protagonist Sam Dalmas starts off the film talking about he, a blocked writer, put out a hack nonfiction book about rare birds, it's one of Dalmas friends who reveals to Dalmas the relevance of the titular bird with the weird plumage. I'll note that before the success of Argento's film, there were a handful of gialli with enigmatic titles, not least Mario Bava's influential 1964 BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. However, after BIRD's success weird, hard-to-fathom titles became a regular thing in 1970s gialli, such as LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN and THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS.

Like the protagonist of the Brown novel, Sam (Tony Musante) becomes a detective by accident. He's passing an art-gallery when he sees two figures, a woman and a man, struggling inside the building. He sees the woman fall wounded, while the man, his identity obscured by a black raincoat and black gloves (a visual trope swiped from Bava), escapes. Sam, already suffering from writer's block, is literally blocked during this scene, since someone sees him coming and seals Sam between two automatically-operated glass doors in the museum's front. However, thanks to his calling out to passersby, the police arrive and the woman, gallery-owner Monica Ranieri, survives the wound she took from her assailant. Neither she nor Sam can tell the police anything about her attacker, who may be guilty of three previous killings (shown in gory detail via flashbacks). Perhaps because there was no obvious connection between any of the women, the cops don't grill Monica about the attacker, but the chief inspector does try to make Sam plumb his memory as to what he saw. In part because Sam himself feels like he missed something, he starts his own investigation of the serial killer, which results in both Sam and his girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) being targeted by the killer.

Though I often don't have any problem with issuing spoilers for these type of films, in this review I'll forego discussing the revelation of the serial killer's ID, except to mention that Argento's been complimented for the way BIRD plays against gender stereotypes. But this is less interesting to me than the way Argento's vision transforms 1970s Italy into a place of weird, brooding presences. Both the natural world, as represented by the scenes with various rare birds, and the world of human art are equally weird and perverse, and remain weird (and occasionally funny) despite the amateur detective's attempt to make sense of his experiences. Unlike most such amateurs in film, Musante endows Sam Dalmas with a strong sense of empathy for the victims, even while Argento starts off his long career of transforming female bodies into canvases of destruction.

NIGHT MONSTER (1942), HORROR ISLAND (1941)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*


Though the classic Universal monsters were still going strong in the early forties, arguably the studio's horror-mystery programmers became somewhat erratic in quality.

NIGHT MONSTER is one of the good ones. Though director Ford Beebe was best known for B-westerns and serials, he does a fine job imparting a sense of Gothic fatalism to the weird family on the Ingston Estate. Ingston is the crabbed, crippled paterfamilias of the house, and he reigns over a heritage of hate that includes his possibly insane sister, his devoted housekeeper and butler (the latter played by a top-billed Bela Lugosi), his randy strongman-chauffeur, a Hindu mystic, and a maid who begins the story by fleeing the mansion in tried-and-true Gothic-heroine style.

Ingston's sister Margaret is first seen scrubbing at mysterious bloodstains on the floor as she were a latter-day Lady Macbeth. However, she's not totally bonkers, for she defies her tyrannical brother by sending for a psychiatrist. Miss Harper, to ascertain Margaret's own sanity. Margaret becomes the replacement Gothic heroine for the story, while Dick Baldwin, one of Ingston's neighbors, falls in with her and becomes the de facto Gothic leading-man. Ingston's wealth makes it possible for him to stoke the fuels of his hatred against the doctors who crippled him, and he doesn't want visitors. However, a mysterious killer murders the vagrant maid, and so the local sheriff locks down the mansion, refusing to let the occupants lead during the legal investigation.

Three doctors, despite being aware that Ingston nurtures ill feelings toward them, also occupy the house, but not for long, as the killer goes after them as well. Not surprisingly, this causes the sheriff and Baldwin (who's apparently a consultant because he writes murder-mysteries) to suspect Ingston. But he's not just crippled, he's a quadriplegic, so he's a poor candidate for a killer. However, the aforementioned Hindu mystic demonstrates some bizarre talents that may reveal the identity of the serial murderer.

The standout feature of this B-film is the marvelous nature of the Hindu's powers, since this is one of the few times such supernatural abilities were used to explain what seems like a serial-killer mystery. The script's idea of said powers is actually pretty well-researched for 1942, though the mystic (Nils Asther) doesn't get much to do, any more than top-billed Lugosi (who might've been better served with the Hindu role). The other members of the ensemble, though, are given relatively rounded characterizations for a B-mystery, particularly Leif Erickson's smarmy chauffeur and Fay Helm's nervous but righteous Margaret, who has a great end-scene against the officious housekeeper. But Ralph Morgan's nasty Ingston gets the best lines, and, as in Gothic fiction, the hero and heroine (Baldwin and Harper) pale by comparison.

On the flip side, we have HORROR ISLAND, which has nothing going for it but the familiarity of some of its better actors, particularly Leo Carrillo in one of his many heavily-accented types. The "horror" of the title is The Phantom, a cloaked murderer in a fright-mask who's trying to get hold of the treasure of pirate captain Morgan, but the Phantom is certainly not the star of the show, as was the "Smiling Ghost" of a similar horror-comedy of the same year (albeit from Warner's). The star is Bill Martin (Dick Foran), a young guy who's constantly trying to find some career that puts money in his pocket without his having to work too hard. Not much is revealed about Bill's past, though apparently at some point his family had enough money that he received, as a bequest, a small island off the coast of Florida. One might speculate that because Bill got saddled with this useless white elephant, he's spent his life thinking that the world owes him a living: hence his attempt to further his fortunes with trivial enterprises like dance studios and escort services. When the Phantom comes into his life, pursuing half of a treasure map held by Carillo's character Tobias, Bill barely takes the Phantom seriously, nor Tobias's claim that the treasure of Captain Henry Morgan is hidden somewhere on Bill's crummy little island (which, despite being supposedly valueless, has an old mansion on it that ought to be worth something).

Bill's main response to all this folderol is a new get-rich-quick scheme, as he decides to host a "haunted house ride" on the island for all the suckers he can pull together. This group includes the usual Universal collection of oddballs: a married couple who turn out to be a gangster and his moll, a sleepwalking professor, and the usual pretty girl with whom Bill exchanges flirtations. However, the tour is interrupted by the usual murder attempts, and not only by the mysterious Phantom, who ends up being the film's number-two menace.

In addition to the Phantom's peculiar outfit, the old pirate mansion also sports one "outre device" slightly in line with the tomb-traps of the much later Indiana Jones flicks. I found all of the characters as thoroughly uninteresting as the ones in NIGHT MONSTER were semi-interesting. I'd call the story's motifs psychological since the base idea is that once gadabout Bill Martin falls in love with the standard pretty chick, he'll straighten up and fly right. But in this role at least, Dick Foran's charm fails to impress.

THE SCORPION KING 2: RISE OF A WARRIOR (2008)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

When I reviewed the third iteration of the SCORPION KING series, I remarked that it wasn't as fun as the first film, and that I barely remembered the second film in the series. However, though KING 2 certainly had the outward appearance of being just another routine DTV franchise-sequel, a closer look caused me to realize that despite its obvious flaws (lame acting, lousy FX), the story was actually a little more mythically portentous than the original flick.

The behind-the-scenes credits would seem to encourage such a belief: credited scripter Randall McCormick barely worked on anything that wasn't a sequel, and director Russell Mulcahy was a long way from his one indisputable hit, 1986's HIGHLANDER. Nevertheless, the script follows an interesting quasi-Freudian pattern. In the character's first appearance, he was actually an archaic man turned into a modern-day monster in the course of the second MUMMY film, while the 2002 film showed Mathayus at the apex of his career as a hero in the mostly fictional ancient realm of Akkad.

KING 2 pursues a familiar strategy: showing Mathayus as a teenaged barbarian warrior (Michael Copon). The youth is defined as a son seeking to emulate his respected warrior-father Ashur, who's respected for his prowess with the king's bodyguards, the Black Scorpions. Ashur forbids Mathayus from following in his footsteps, but the teenager joins a mercenary training-camp anyway. There he encounters Layla, a teenaged girl with whom he's grown up, and who wants to be a warrior. Both teens get on the bad side of their trainer Sargon, but Ashur's pull with King Hammurabi saves them from punishment.

Sargon, however, is more than just a trainer of mercenaries; he's also (very improbably) a guy who's made a deal with some Akkadian devil to get mystic powers. He uses his powers to secretly slay both Ashur and Hammurabi, and then (even more improbably) ascends to the throne of Akkad. Both Mathayus and his widowed mother Inanna know that Sargon killed Ashur but cannot prove it. Mathauyus continues to train as a warrior, waiting for the chance to slay his father's killer.

After coming back from some campaign, Mathayus has a brief scene with his widowed mom, and then meets the new king, who doesn't seem to remember the son of Ashur. Sargon takes a quasi-paternal interest in Mathayus, inviting the latter to join his bodyguards-- the first move that moves Sargon from the role of "father-killer" to "bad father." 

Mathayus bides his time, which gives him the chance to accept the king’s hospitality by dallying with a few slave-girls. Then the hero tries to slay the usurper. However, Sargon's magical powers render him  invulnerable to ordinary weapons. Mathayus flees the king’s forces and seeks a method to slay his enemy.  He meets Layla again, and their liking for each other is transparent. The two of them are joined by Ari, a young Greek scholar, who persuades them that for a price he can lead them to a sword capable of killing Sargon.

Ari leads the other two to Knossus, where they invade the temple of the Minotaur and slay a very badly-done bull man. Ari then reveals that the sword is in the underworld, the land of the dead. Mathayus remains firm on slaying his father's killer, and even makes a few more converts in the temple: Greek warriors eager to loot the underworld of its treasures. Their leader Pollux is sort of a 'good father stand-in," for he knew Ashur in life and is roughly the same age as the hero's daddy. During the group's trek into the netherworld, Mathayus also sees a dead spectre whom the hero thinks is Ashur, though the viewer does not see what the hero sees.

After the would-be thieves have slain a few underworld monsters, the domain's queen Astarte shows up. She claims to be "the goddess of love and war" but takes a shine to Mathayus. While she tries to tempt him into becoming her consort, some of the warriors sneak away to look for the magic sword, which they find and successfully pilfer. However, Layla can't stand seeing the goddess mess with her chosen man, and challenges Astarte to a fight, significantly insulting her as a “cradle robber.” 

After a short battle between the young and the ageless, Astarte cheats and wins the fight.  She then tells Mathayus that she has Ashur with her in the underworld with her, and, though she doesn’t quite state her relationship with him, it's not impossible that she's dallied with him as she now dallies with the hero, which would make her the "bad mother" against Inanna's "goiod mother." Despite Mathayus offending the goddess by rejecting her,  most of the expedition escapes-- though "good father" Pollux perishes and remains behind.

While the good guys journey to meet "bad father' Sargon, "bad mother" Astarte meets him first. In fact, while Sargon is having sex with some slave-girl, Astarte possesses or replaces the girl just as Sargon's trying to have sex with her. Astarte hasn't come for pleasures of the flesh, though: she wants to be sure that Sargon-- who has apparently received his occult powers from her-- retrieves her sword. Sargon asks her for more power and she bestows on the villain the ability to become a scorpion-monster-- thus foreshadowing Mathayus's final fate in the second MUMMY film.

Amid other complications, Mathayus confronts Sargon, but the wily villain disguises himself as Ashur, thus providing yet another link between “the two fathers.” The disguise doesn’t fool the hero, since he believes that he saw his father in the underworld. Sargon then reveals that he's been the prime mover in the hero's quest, for he suborned Ari the Scholar to steal the real sword and bring it to Sargon. However, Ari double-double-crosses Sargon, so that Mathayus gets the really real weapon and eventually slays his enemy in a big battle. 

Once the "bad father" dies, “bad mother” Astarte shows up to reclaim her sword. She's tempted to kill Mathayus and take him down to her realm with her, but he improbably convinces her to let him live since she'll have him one day. The last thing Mathauys sees before swooning is Astarte, and when he wakens, the next thing he sees is his real mother Inanna (the second of her two scenes in the whole film). All of Mathayus's surviving allies are there as well, with Layla taking over as the hero's destined squeeze. Since the first film focuses on how the character first became "the Scorpion King," this teen version of the hero doesn't attempt to ascend to the Akkadian throne. A final voice-over reminds the audience that Mathayus does have a somewhat tragic fate in store, and that his heroic propensities will at a future date lead to him becoming a monster not unlike the "bad father's he's slain.

On a minor but not irrelevant note, the name "Layla" strongly resembles that of a Near Eastern goddess called variously Lilith and Lilitu, and this goddess also shares characteristics with two others whose names are evoked in the film: Inanna (also called Ishtar in antiquity) and Astarte. I don't think that this name-association  can be simple coincidence, and I find it more probable that writer McCormick intentionally gave all of the women in the hero's life roughly-similar names. I would not press the Freudian comparisons too far. Still, given that his real mother Inanna barely has any purpose in the script, her appearance so close to Astarte at the climax may have been informed by a quasi-Freudian notion of the basic identity of the two mothers-- and even of the prospective mother of the hero's future children, if any. Similar, there are so many good and bad versions of the father in the film that some Freud is justified. This intellectual debt, however, may not do much for many viewers, who would be justly irritated by the film's unfunny lapses into contemporary phrases like "music hath charms to soothe the savage beast" and "what fresh hell is this."

SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY (1987)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*


SLAVE GIRLS FROM BEYOND INFINITY has a spoofy title, and there are many risible lines that suggest that writer-director Ken Dixon wasn't taking the project too seriously. (It seems, incidentally, to be Dixon's final work in films or TV, according to IMDB.) However, though SLAVE GIRLS isn't particularly riveting, it aligns more with adventure than with comedy.

The basic plot is transparently lifted from the 1932 film-adaptation of Richard Connell's THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, aside from the opening. Two scantily-clad women, Darla (Elizabeth Kaitan) and Tisa (Cindy Beal), are chained in a cell on space-prison ship. Darla-- who is clearly the stronger and more combative of the two, and thus lines up with the Joel McCrea role from GAME-- breaks loose from her chains with no help from Tisa, who is more or less the Fay Wray of the movie. Darla helps Tisa break Tisa's chains, and the two prisoners escape in a shuttlecraft. (There's no mention of what offenses the women committed, nor do any authorities pursue them.)

Darla and Tisa crashland on an obscure planet, where a recluse named Zed-- the film's version of Count Zaroff-- lives in a fortress, served by two intelligent robots and (to some extent) a cyborg-alien, who are presumably loose approximations of Zaroff's servants. Zed has a couple of guests, who are also brother and sister like the cannon-fodder from the 1932 film. In GAME the fate of these guests foreshadows the battle of the McCrea and Wray characters against Zaroff, but in INFINITY the guests serve little purpose beyond eating up a little time before the climactic scene in which Zed hunts both Darla and Tisa, just as Zaroff hunts his principal victims. There's a minor SF-trope thrown in, in that Zed warns the girls to stay away from a mysterious area called "the Phantom Zone." (The context makes this seem unlikely to be a conscious homage to SUPERMAN comics and more likely to be an accidental duplication.) The girls fight off a couple of zombie-like aliens, who aren't explained any better than the cyborg-guy, and get some weapons. However, their next encounter with Zed ends with Darla apparently falling to her death, and the villain taking "the girl" back to his fortress to be raped. As in the 1932 film, Darla heroically returns and fights Zed, the robots, and the cyborg, who turns against Zed for no stated reason. Then the "slave girls"-- who are never said to be have been slaves, nor get treated as slaves during the story-- swipe a ship and escape into space while Zed perishes.

This is harmless fluff with a few cute lines. Elizabeth Kaitan isn't all that good in the fight-scenes, but she at least puts more effort into this film than she did in the VICE ACADEMY entries.

STAR TREK: "DAY OF THE DOVE" (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, sociological*


In my review of A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR, I noted that its reputation as an anti-Vietnam screed was largely undeserved. If any Classic Trek episode deserves that honor, it would be DAY OF THE DOVE.

The short version: both the representations of the Federation and of the Klingon Empire are maneuvered into a conflict by an alien entity that feeds on the negative emotions of warfare. The alien, never seen as anything but an animated effect, shows intelligence in that it's capable of advance planning, for it lures Kirk's ship, and that of a Klingon named Kang, to a deserted planet with false distress signals. Kirk manages to get the upper hand on Kang, and takes the Klingon and his landing-party aboard the Enterprise as prisoners. At this point the alien reveals matter-manipulation powers, confining most of the Enterprise crew below decks and orchestrating an ongoing battle between Kirk's faction and Kang's-- but one in which both sides are armed only with swords rather than phasers. The Klingons, routinely portrayed as savage types, embrace this conflict while Kirk and Spock try to figure out what's going on. Even the Vulcan isn't immune to the alien's mental manipulation, though, and some crewmen, such as Chekhov, become totally invested in the wholesale slaughter. At last Spock concludes that they can get rid of the alien by ceasing to feed it (a rather diabolical take on the Tribbles plotline!), and Kirk uses logic and reason to make peace with Kang's forces.

Though DOVE isn't precisely abrogating the necessity of military action, Jerome Bixby's script is prescient in critiquing America's involvement in the Vietnamese "war of attrition," which had not in 1968 become as universally rejected by the populace as it is now. Bixby's script is equally dextrous in terms of describing the role of xenophobia in keeping the war-fires burning. Some TREK episodes are guilty of becoming preachy on this topic, but Bixby keeps the moral resonant by using "good" characters, such as Scott and Chekhov, to channel racist sentiments.

On a side-note, the savage Klingons of this episode seem to be the direct ancestors of the ones in all the later TREK serials, as opposed to the sneaky Klingons of earlier episodes.

ELECTRA ONE (1967)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


Though I enjoy Eurospy flicks, they tend to be undistinguished visually. Thus I was rather surprised when I saw director Alfonso Balcazar's ELECTRA ONE making far more use of artful close-ups to create his Bond-on-a-budget.

Balcazar did most of his directorial work on spaghetti westerns, at least one of which was a collaboration with ELECTRA'S central actor George Martin. Martin never made another Eurospy film, which is a minor shame, since he projected a little more charming insouciance than most actors in similar roles. His character is a little different, too, for he's not a spy, but an international thief known as "the Lynx" (though he goes by the single name "Gary" during mundane encounters). Moreover, he actually has a romantic arc atypical of Bond-imitators.

ELECTRA ONE is named for its villain, though there's no explanation as to why a middle-aged schemer would use a code-name modeled on an archaic Greek heroine. The film opens by quickly establishes the nature of the villain's menace: he uses an insidious formula to make a U.S. military officer go berserk and almost trigger a nuclear-missile launch. Many Eurospy films toss out some devilish device or fiendish formula to motivate the hero against the villains, and then they proceed to forget about it. Some films, like THE SPY WHO LOVED FLOWERS, content themselves with just talking about the gizmo. ELECTRA ONE's opening at least establishes the possible peril of the dingus, even if most of the rest of the film has the hero chasing around after an antidote.

While the Lynx is performing a heist-job, he crosses paths with the henchmen (and one henchwoman, the gorgeous Rosalba Neri) of Electra. They've killed the scientist who concocted the antidote, but his lovely female assistant Monica (Vivi Bach) has the formula with her. Gary the Lynx gets hold of the formula and tries to get as many bidders as possible to pony up for it. However, Gary's also more than a little smitten with Monica, so that he ends up defending the formula against Electra instead of merely turning it over to the highest bidder.

The action is nicely handled, but there are no gadgets aside from the insanity-formula and its antidote, though Electra does have a secret base. Neri, despite her status then as a prime Euro-babe,  doesn't get to do much of anything.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*


(SPOILERS OUT THE WAZOO, naturally)

Like the George Lucas STAR WARS films, Kevin Feige's "Phase One" MCU have become such cultural events as to resist criticism, either from the mainstream or from hardcore fans. Nevertheless, I'll give it a try.

The comparison of "Lucas Wars" and "Phase One" also holds with respect to the execution of elaborate plotlines. Audiences remain enthralled with the "New Hope" trilogy, and less than mesmerized with the prequel trilogy that established Who Darth Was and How He Came to Be. Kevin Feige certainly intrigued many viewers with his early hints of a massive story-skein derived from Jim Starlin's "soul gems" concept. But here too the resolution of this plot leaves much to be desired.

Genre fiction walks a tightrope. Move too far in one direction, seeking to give the audience (or internal business interests) what they want, and you fall into the abyss of predictability. Move too far in the other, seeking to present the audience with a sense of novelty, and you risk blundering into the darkness of incomprehensibility. To my knowledge there were no leaks of ENDGAME's script to fans, but nevertheless, many of them guessed pretty much how Feige and his collaborators would seek to resolve the plot set up by the cliffhanger ending of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. Feige knew that fans would snatch up all of the "Easter eggs" he left around, and thus there was no real mystery that ENDGAME would have to use time-travel to resolve the cliffhanger, which ends with the evil Thanos obliterating half the living beings in the universe with a snap of his fingers.

I've criticized Feige's MCU for being uninterested in the nuts and bolts of the Marvel fantasy-verse, and sure enough, Feige's idea of time-travel is built not on SF-logic but on jokes to the effect that all previous time-travel movies (TERMINATOR, BACK TO THE FUTURE) are just "bullshit." This spoof is merely Feige's strategy for saying, "Time-travel works however my narrative says it works." TERMINATOR 2 , for instance, gets by with intimating that Skynet can be destroyed in part by constructs originated by Skynet. But this "becoming your own grandfather" paradox is small potatoes, next to having ENDGAME Character A die in the time of her later self, Character B, so that A vanishes from the very timeline that led to B's creation. And this development takes place some time after one of the main characters tells his fellow time-travelers not to risk changing the past by interacting with one's past self.

So the resolution, purely in terms of plotting, falls into the predictability abyss. Yet I have to appreciate how skillfully Feige makes his audience want the predictable. In comic books, major catastrophes are usually reversed quickly, as soon as a group of goodguys like the Avengers can find the way to effect said reversal. Feige, though, has the Avengers fail to undo Thanos's evil deed. For five years every inhabited planet has to deal with the after-effects of cosmic genocide.  Though I've read no reviews at this time, I'm sure that by now several someones have related the first thirty minutes of ENDGAME to 9-11. Of course, the 20th-century "reign of terror" had been building long before 2001, with terrorism taking the place of warfare as a means of asserting hegemony, but ENDGAME is not able to swim in waters that deep, and is content to focus on the Marvel heroes suffering for their "feet of clay." To be sure, Feige doesn't treat all characters with an even hand. The Hulk barely appears in this section, and Thor is reduced to a buffoon. Not much happens to Black Widow either, though this has more to do with her ultimate fate in the movie, while Hawkeye loses his family to the catastrophe and, in reaction, essentially turns into the Punisher. Where Hawkeye loses a family, Iron Man gains one, though by the film's end this equivalence will be overturned, less because Feige is being generous to Hawkeye than because he needs to be rid of Iron Man. Even Captain America, the embodiment of can-do optimism, is reduced to attending "survivor guilt" programs and musing over missed opportunities.

This dirge-like opening functions on another level than making the audience really want the reversal: it's a threnody for Phase One, since by the film's end the Big Four, with whom Feige built his world, must be shuffled off in one way or another, to make room for Phase Two. When the heroes get their act together and start their time-travel quest, ENDGAME is refreshingly free of the tedious overbaked FX-orgies seen in ULTRON and many other MCU films, orgies whose only raison d'etre is to keep the audience from noticing plot-holes. The time-quest section, for all its logic-problems, is the film's best section, recalling the leaner, meaner 2012 AVENGERS.

Once we're back in the present, predictability sets in again: the main good guys struggle for a while against Thanos (who's time-traveled forward to give them another crack at him). The erasure gets erased, the other heroes come back, and evil is banished, though all the people who have returned have still lost five years of their lives. Many of the heroes who return from death will be a big part of Feige's Phase Two, but Feige doesn't allow the new kids to overshadow the sendoff of the Old Guard (with the exception of the new Captain Marvel, who, though merely charmless in her own movie, comes off as terminally insufferable here).

Again, some sendoffs leave something to be desired. I expected little for the Hulk, and got what I expected. Despite Feige's near-total cockup of the Thor franchise, the thunder god does get a few good moments of both action and characterization. Iron Man's fate is telegraphed but adequately handled. The only surprise in the film is the fate of Captain America, which is another one of Feige's "time does whatever I want it to do" schticks but manages to work in terms of his character arc.

I mentioned Black Widow earlier: though not one of the Big Four, Feige sends her off too, though her character-arc isn't executed well, and her franchise-potential is sacrificed on the altar of her old partner Hawkeye, who's already slated to take part in a live-action spinoff series. Feige's plate is certainly already full with proven franchises like Spider-Man, Black Panther and the Guardians, to say nothing of potential interaction with Disney's new Marvel acquisitions. There's a decent big-freaking-battle at the end, not a classic but serviceable, aside from a tedious bit of irrelevant "girl power" virtue signaling.

Despite my many reservations about the Feige-verse, I'm a little sad that the Phase One ride is over, particularly since I'm getting the sense that Phase Two may not have much more to offer but endless virtual signaling. And, of course, jokes. But at least Feige does a better job getting rid of the Old Guard than Disney did with that of STAR WARS.