Not A Review Of Some Other Stuff I Watched While Waiting For “Avengers: Endgame”

So Netflix finally sent me Avengers: Endgame, a little over a month after it was released on disc. As previously noted, we—mostly meaning me—had to watch a number of other movies while waiting for that one (#firstworldproblems). My wife paid little to no attention to those movies, but she did make a few observations here and there. First up: The Lego Movie.

The Lego Movie, which is not to be confused with Legon: Awakening, is, yes, a movie set in a Lego world, featuring Lego sets and characters, with a villain called President Business whose theme song is “Everything is Awesome” and who has a plan to enforce a new brand of rigid conformity.

Wife: “Is this supposed to be political?”
Me: “Maybe. The bad guy is President Business, and you can see by all his slogans that—”
Wife: “Wait. Bad guy? What is this?”
Me: “This is The Lego Movie.”
Wife: “There’s going to be two hours of this?!* I thought it was a commercial!”

And a little while later, after Our Hero, Emmet, meets Our Heroine, Wyldstyle**:

Wife: “Lego should be paying ME to sit through this.”

And finally:

Wife: “Well that was nothing but marketing.”
Me: “Wait, is it political, or is it marketing?”
Wife: “It’s political marketing.”

Needless to say my wife tuned The Lego Movie out almost immediately in favor of playing on her computer.

Another film I watched while waiting for Endgame was Gantz: O, which is streaming on Netflix:

So yeah that trailer is in Japanese and it doesn’t have subtitles, so most likely you can’t tell what the characters are saying. But does it really matter? No. No it does not.

Wife: “What. Is. This.”
Me: “Some kind of crazy Japanese CGI movie. Look at the computer graphics!”
Wife: “Auntie is so lucky you don’t subject her to this stuff anymore.”

Basically the premise of Gantz: O seems to be that dead people get resurrected and then teleported to various Japanese cities to fight monsters. There’s not much of an actual plot here, but there’s no shortage of action, with plenty of CGI mayhem going on. A good deal of it is caused by giant disembodied heads that career around town like angrier versions of the boulder that chased Indiana Jones through that tunnel. My wife really liked those***.

Wife: “That thing is still rollin’ around, huh?”
Me: “Oh this is a different one.”
Wife: “This is so weird.”
Me: “I know. I wouldn’t say this is a good movie, exactly, but I’m watching it.”
Wife: “Why?”
Me (shrugging): “Why do I watch anything?”
Wife: “Good question.”

I had no real idea where the monsters come from, where the technology comes from, or why the people seeing all this transpire on the TV news seem to consider it so routine that they can’t be bothered to stop eating their steamed dumplings and watch it. After finishing Gantz: O I did a little research (as one does on important topics like this) and learned that it’s based on a manga that I never read. Apparently the deal is that the monsters and the entities controlling them are aliens (maybe) who use Earth’s cities and the resurrected humans to stage Battle Royale-style games for their own amusement. Or something along those lines. Anyway, like I said, none of that information was conveyed in the film, which was basically 90 minutes of CGI swordfights, explosions, and hilariously over-the-top ludicrous gibs.

So naturally I watched the entire thing.

^* 1 hour and 41 minutes actually.

^** She’s not a DJ.

^*** And by “liked” I mean “thought were ridiculous”.