posted 04-28-2019 05:36 PM                    

The room I've watched this in was packed, almost to the brim. The theater clearly wasn't prepared to the crowds this would draw, as they had sold out almost all of their concessions only halfway through the evening.

The location was CineStar Düsseldorf in Germany. I've been there before and the performance was usually OK. It's a standard, 13 in a dozen multiplex, but they show movies in their original version, which is already pretty special for a big multiplex in Germany, where most theaters show the dubbed version. (And yes, I hate dubbed versions, even for movies where I don't speak the languages involved.)

We had some prime seats in the room, but we had to give them up, because there was some water leaking through the air conditioning vents. It was just a drop or two every odd minute, but since you didn't know where the water was coming from, we didn't want to take the risk.

The way the situation was handled was less than stellar though. We had to find our own new seats, only to be chased away again and again, because those who booked them, tended to show up a while later. This was not our choice, this was the official "plan" from the management. The whole experience was extremely frustrating, to the point that we almost walked away. Not giving any kind of compensation for such a bad show is also pretty abysmal service level. Eventually, we found a bunch of seats almost in front of the silver screen, reflecting all kinds of "goodness" from that rather odd angle...

What they should've done was to stop selling tickets to this show, get somebody with a tablet or printout with the seat reservations and assigning new, unassigned seats to those in the affected area. Seemingly, you need a half functioning brain for such a master-plan... Heck, even I could open the seat reservation site on their website on my mobile phone, that's how we eventually found those empty seats anyway...

Also, this whole water-leak episode postponed the start of the show for about 15 minutes. Maybe, just as a matter of courtesy, you could've skipped the commercials? Or... the stupid "Ice Cream Break", where they put on a slide of ice cream commercials for 5 minutes for stuff that was completely sold out anyway...

After my rant about yet another failed theater visit (guys, you really need to step up a notch, this is costing you repeat visitors), let's get back to the movie itself.

I've never been committed to the current Marvel universe, though most of the movies have been good for the industry, as in they've sold a lot of tickets, which is still one of the most important measures. With this movie signaling somewhat of an end for the current Marvel universe, I hope for a fresh start that doesn't involve any reboot in the following 20 or so years...

To be honest, I expected to be bored a lot more than that I ended up to be. With the rather extreme running time of this movie, what kind of compelling story could you tell that wasn't already told in this universe? Yet, I ended up being mostly entertained, although a lot of this was eventually nothing more than a big accumulation of flashbacks, engineered to push some sentimental buttons.

Spoiler Alert - Click to Toggle

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The story, is nevertheless pretty predictable, especially if you've watched all the movies that lead up to this one. After what happened in Infinity War, it was pretty clear they couln't finish the series the way this movie ended. The only way to solve this, would be pulling a "Back to the Future" on it, which eventually, they did.

My wife, who is a lot more emotionally invested into those Marvel characters, didn't like quite a few aspects of the movie. Obviously, everybody wants to see "their" superheroes more in the limelight than others.

Her biggest gripe was about the fact that Tony Stark got the big, "Royal", Big-Fish-esque funeral, whereas the death of Black Widow was more of a "bummer moment" in the whole movie.

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