Avengers: Endgame Review

First things first – an obligatory spoiler warning.  If you’re one of the few people left who has not yet seen Endgame and wants to, read no further unless you want to be preemptively let in on some major plot points.

Captain America always looks like a bird just flew away with his hot dog.

We’re in the Endgame now.  So said Dr. Strange – a man that we now know the Ancient One had assumed to be “the best of us” – at the end of last year’s Infinity War.  In what has surely been one of the most anticipated movies of the past God knows how many years, the Russo brothers have delivered another showstopping experience to the MCU’s countless fans (with more of their customary Community cameos to boot), and in spite of the fact that I waited a few days too long to see it and got spoiled by freaking LeSean McCoy on Twitter, I loved it 3000.  Indeed, I don’t have much to say here in the way of actual critique, nor do I have really anything at all to say in the way of theories as to how the time-travel in Endgame worked (seriously, guys, it’s just a MacGuffin, and shouldn’t be taken too seriously – Endgame itself even saw fit to poke some fun at it, and explained it what I thought was the appropriate amount), but I still think it’s worth talking about why Endgame is great, and why it’s still shattering box office records and recording high Rotten Tomatoes reviews as you read this.

Steve Rogers is looking as beefed-up as ever, which makes sense – he probably has an easier time getting machines at the gym with half of the population dusted.

The list of “goods” here is just too long to enumerate, and that starts with the ensemble cast, which at this point is large enough to populate a small country.  All of the performances are great, and range from the clearly-having-a-blast type (Mark Ruffalo and Paul Rudd come to mind here) to the actually-tearjerking type (Robert Downey Jr., of course, and also Tom Holland in his brief few moments).  Either way, they all certainly accomplish enough to keep a movie like Endgame – which, in spite of its increased emotional range, is still a comic book movie – afloat.  Endgame uses this cast effectively with smart writing that employs the typical dose of MCU quippy humor while taking its audience on a surprisingly twisty journey that leaves anyone who has seen the film’s many trailers and feeling like they know what to expect (me) confused after the first twenty or so minutes of Endgame‘s three-plus hours.  The time-travel mechanic, while littered with plot holes and seeming inconsistencies that have the internet teeming with explanatory videos and articles, is well-crafted in its ability to give audiences the opportunity to revisit some of the MCU’s best and most iconic moments over the past 11 years along with the characters they’ve grown to love, and in this respect Endgame is a master class in fan service.

The tenuous detente between Captain America and Iron Man was one of the more fun interpersonal elements to watch in Endgame.

Along the way, you’ll also find a lot more emotional content than Infinity War (or any other MCU movie to date, for that matter) ever had, which makes some amount of sense and is large amounts of predictable given where last year’s blockbuster left us, but is still overall well-executed.  While a lot of this content is found in the expected places and isolated within the film’s exposition and denouement (our heroes coping with the Snap, and of course where they end up at Endgame‘s conclusion), some of it comes in the midst of the Avengers’ fight to bring back all that was lost – Black Widow and Hawkeye’s battle for sacrifice on Vormir comes to mind, as does Thor’s reunion with his now-deceased mother, who really takes the idea of time travel in stride.  For me, and given my undying love for Iron Man, Endgame‘s most poignant moments usually involved him, and given his newfound family-man archetype and his continued treatment of the dusted Peter Parker as something of a surrogate son, these poignant moments were in no short supply.  Of course, a lot of this emotion is also propelled into the audience’s heart at hypersonic speeds by Alan Silvestri‘s outstanding score, which on top of mixing themes from his previous MCU exploits (he provided the work for Infinity War, and way back when, Captain America: The First Avenger), also provides the perfect soundtrack for the film’s triumphant reunion of all of the MCU’s countless heroes to take down Thanos once and for all (seriously, Portals is amazing).

Avengers!  Assemble!

Which brings me to the film’s final hour, and wow, what an hour it was.  This is where the movie really takes off and produces its “Holy shit, I am literally on the edge of my seat and shaking with joy” moments, from the aforementioned portal moment to the revelation that Captain America is indeed capable of wielding Mjolnir, as teased in Age of Ultron.  The final battle, in all its chaotic glory, serves as the ultimate payoff for those that have been with Marvel Studios through any portion of its 11 years of filmmaking, and also serves as a reward for anyone that’s capable of suspending their disbelief at the theater door – and also going three hours without using the restroom.  This battle’s end, while seemingly avoidable according to some, completes the so-called Infinity Saga the same way that it began – with Tony Stark getting the last word, as always, and proclaiming his mantle as Iron Man.  This end – while in reality followed by twenty minutes or so of wrap-up that also finds Captain America’s passing of the torch to Falcon to be the end of his character’s arc – is a beautiful one, and the beginnings that come along with it (who’s hyped for Asgardians of the Galaxy?) aren’t bad either.  If there’s one effective way to expand an already massive cinematic universe, it’s to follow the lead of your comic book source material and create a multiverse with assumedly infinite and independent timelines.

We’ll miss you, Tony.

Avengers: Endgame is not a perfect movie – not by any stretch of the imagination, in fact -but it does show just how much movie a single movie can give you, and also how much an estimated $356 million can buy (and subsequently recoup in a mind-blowing single weekend).  In spite of recent reports, I think it’s unlikely to garner much awards consideration (except, perhaps, for Silvestri, whose main competition at this point I expect to lie in December), and while it’s largely exempt from a number of the problems I listed in my recent Captain Marvel review due to its uncharacteristically high multi-movie stakes, it still signals a potential jumping-off point for people who may want out of the taxing continued commitment to the churning money machine.  But given its mammoth scale, along with the long list of tasks it has to accomplish as the capstone of a 22-film saga, it gets the job done and then some, and features countless moments and shots that are among the MCU’s most thrilling and most emotionally charged.  If you consider yourself of a fan of Marvel’s work thus far, it’s virtually impossible that you’ll be leaving the theater disappointed.  It’s definitely hard to imagine a continued MCU reaching a peak of this sort again, but if Kevin Feige and Co. have proven anything to us thus far, it’s that they’ll do whatever it takes to get their audience atop another one.