[Itse]

I just came home from watching Everything Everywhere All At Once.

I liked it fine, it was quite entertaining at times, but the ending really dragged for me, kept bouncing back and forth between things way more times than was good for the story, and the final battle lasted quite a while after it stopped being funny (and it didn't exactly feel poignant, even though the idea was clever). The thing with the rocks was still pretty good, but other than that I was hoping that they start wrapping it up already, and was almost completely tuned out of the movie for at least the last 10 minutes. I really wish they would have just stopped earlier. You're making a very silly movie, and you can't convince me to take it seriously by repeating the same few points multiple times in the end. Still, it was imaginative, entertaining, funny, very well acted and casted, with enough actually good ideas to gloss over the few weaker moments. A solid 4/5 overall, even though I don't think I'll ever feel a need to watch it again.


Multiverse of Madness was pretty much exactly what I expected in both good and bad. The good was that it was still extremely imaginative visually with tons of creative fantastical concepts. While I'm not a huge fan of Dr. Strange as a character, that aspect of this franchise is just catnip for me, I love it. The cast was as good as expected, I especially love Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda. The movie likely set a new record of referencing previous material, but that was also to be expected and was mostly handled pretty well I think. (Of course I'm a fanboy who's seen all the stuff and read a ton of comics). Soundtrack was also better than what's average for MCU. The actress for America Chavez had a somewhat one-note role, but she did good with what she had to work with and I'm sure I'll enjoy the character in future MCU stuff.

The bad was that MCU is getting somewhat lazy with how they're handling superpowers. Continuously one-upping on previously ridiculously overpowered characters is getting quite old already, and they've gotten really lazy in just going with rule-of-cool in what the parameters of everyone's powers actually are. When there's really no logic or consistency to what anyone can do, it drains quite a lot of tension out of action scenes, and makes the plot feel somewhat irrelevant. There was also some very lazy character writing in some scenes.

Luckily you can paint over all those problems with good worksmanship, and as I already mentioned, the technical aspects was top notch as expected with Marvel these days. The whole thing moved at a good pace and was never boring. Sam Raimi was a very good choice to direct this material. Everybody looks like they're having fun doing what they're doing, and the cast hams it up in a way that suits the movie perfectly.

To sum up, it was a pretty dumb but very entertaining movie with enough of an emotional core to not make it feel completely disposable. I had a lot of fun from the first minute to the last, and at about two hours it was also pleasantly compact. That extra fifteen minutes they DIDN'T spend doing victory laps and explaining the plot and morals of the movie was a choice I wish EEAAO had also made.

Both are good films, with strengths that are different enough that there's no need to declare either better or worse than the other. I'd also give MoM a solid 4/5.

MoM is a film I will very likely watch again however, just because it's a very pretty comic book movie. Obviously since MoM had (goes to check) 8 times the budget of EEAAO, that particular comparison is not exactly fair.

Go see both, if you haven't already.