writer0327
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We're almost done with the year, only a handful of releases left. So this might be a good time to talk about what surprised you in the magnificent year of 2019. Sleepers that came out of nowhere? Box office bombs that left you scratching your head? Performances you didn't see coming, whether good or bad?
My three biggest surprises:
3. Endgame actually lived up to and surpassed the hype.
I knew before seeing Endgame that I would like the movie. I had nothing but confidence in the directors, writers, creators, actors, etc. Not only that, it was the culmination of 11 years of films that I loved, so how could I not like it? But considering the scale of the MCU, and the number of story threads addressed in Endgame (that honestly would have been easily forgiven had they ignored them), to actually stick the landing with an exclamation point was beyond impressive. There was nothing easy about what Endgame did. It took standard tropes and plot devices we've all seen a million times and repurposed them into what ended up being a poignant redemption story, made a 3 hour movie feel like 2 hours, and wrapped up several characters arcs, from Black Widow to Stark to Cap to Thor, while giving us some of the greatest comic book movie moments in history. Culminating the MCU within one film was a tall order, but they didn't just accomplish that, they did it in style and going away.
2. The Summer of Lackluster.
Maybe it was just me, but was this one of the most boring summers in a long time? May through August is usually primetime for movies and it had a lot of good names and franchises in the mix this year: Aladdin, Lion King, Spider-Man, It Chapter 2, Pikachu, X-Men, Godzilla, Men in Black, F&F, etc., but aside from the two Disney remakes and Spider-Man, none of those movies really seemed to wow anyone. It brought this whole strategy of the power franchises into question and led to a ho-hum box office as a result. And speaking of the box office....
1. Joker's box office.
If someone had told me that Joker would finish the year in the top ten for the box office, I would have laughed in their faces. This was a year that had a ton of big time box office potential throughout a lot of other films, but a character study about a comic book villain set in the 80s did not seem like one of them. Sure it was going to make a decent amount of money, but cracking $1B? That was a shocker to me, but just as most of those other would-be box office hits came up short, this movie didn't because it didn't only seek to entertain the masses, but to tell a story that people clearly needed to hear.
My three biggest surprises:
3. Endgame actually lived up to and surpassed the hype.
I knew before seeing Endgame that I would like the movie. I had nothing but confidence in the directors, writers, creators, actors, etc. Not only that, it was the culmination of 11 years of films that I loved, so how could I not like it? But considering the scale of the MCU, and the number of story threads addressed in Endgame (that honestly would have been easily forgiven had they ignored them), to actually stick the landing with an exclamation point was beyond impressive. There was nothing easy about what Endgame did. It took standard tropes and plot devices we've all seen a million times and repurposed them into what ended up being a poignant redemption story, made a 3 hour movie feel like 2 hours, and wrapped up several characters arcs, from Black Widow to Stark to Cap to Thor, while giving us some of the greatest comic book movie moments in history. Culminating the MCU within one film was a tall order, but they didn't just accomplish that, they did it in style and going away.
2. The Summer of Lackluster.
Maybe it was just me, but was this one of the most boring summers in a long time? May through August is usually primetime for movies and it had a lot of good names and franchises in the mix this year: Aladdin, Lion King, Spider-Man, It Chapter 2, Pikachu, X-Men, Godzilla, Men in Black, F&F, etc., but aside from the two Disney remakes and Spider-Man, none of those movies really seemed to wow anyone. It brought this whole strategy of the power franchises into question and led to a ho-hum box office as a result. And speaking of the box office....
1. Joker's box office.
If someone had told me that Joker would finish the year in the top ten for the box office, I would have laughed in their faces. This was a year that had a ton of big time box office potential throughout a lot of other films, but a character study about a comic book villain set in the 80s did not seem like one of them. Sure it was going to make a decent amount of money, but cracking $1B? That was a shocker to me, but just as most of those other would-be box office hits came up short, this movie didn't because it didn't only seek to entertain the masses, but to tell a story that people clearly needed to hear.
