Avengers: Endgame (2019)
No spoilers. I promise.
I’ll only talk about characters you would have seen in trailers or at the end of the previous “Avengers” film.
—
I remember being in gym class my sophomore year of highschool, back in 2008. Some classmates and I were discussing the brand new trailer for “Iron Man” and how cool it looked - I had never been into comic books, but I was always up for a superhero slug-fest.
One of my peers said he found an article online claiming they were going to make “Iron Man,” then “Captain America” and “Thor,” then put them all together into one movie called “The Avengers.”
It sounded ridiculous. I had never seen a good team-up movie, and the only ones I’d heard about (ie: “Aliens v.s Predator”) weren’t exactly bastions of cinema.
Way back then, if you’d told me that “Iron Man” was only the first film in “phase 1” of a three-part movie empire, I would have laughed.
And then “Avengers” (2011) came out, and it was good. That was the first time I heard Alan Silvestri’s ‘Avenger’s Theme’ - a stellar piece of musical genius - and it’s been in my music library ever since.
It’s been 11 years since Robert Downy Jr. first took up the mantle as Iron Man - at the time a third-rate comic character that no-one particularly cared about, a Hail Mary attempt for Marvel as their last swing at relevancy in a world losing interest in comic books.
Man, did that pay off big time.
Marvel went and got itself bought by Disney, and with it the most incredible bankroll for anything they want to film. Ever.
—
I’ve taken to describing the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as “a TV season told in movie form,” because that’s exactly what it is.
We, collectively, just spent the last 11 years watching 22 movies - from season premiere to season finale, including one of the best cliffhangers ever, Thanos’snapin “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018), to keep fans hooked and desperate to see how it all ends.
Somehow, against all odds, Marvel/Disney managed to make 22 movies that all mesh and intertwine and separate again, all without completely losing it and churning out bonkers stuff. Sure, “Thor: Raganrok” (2018) was an absolute riot, but it didn’t destroy the fabric of the MCU. “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011) and “Thor: The Dark World” (2013) were comparatively bad when set against the other 20 films in the series, but they weren’t terrible in the way that, say, “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” was.
—
So let’s talk about the movie itself:
This one is very somber, compared to just about every other movie in the MCU. The film starts up a few days after the end of the previous movie, with people reeling and the universe in tatters after Thanos wiped out 50% of all living things, and the Avengers who remained suffering from the ultimate survivor’s guilt.
This movie’s alternate title could have been “Avengers 4: Avengers 1, Again!” as the heroes who survived the snap are the same crowd who were in the first “Avengers,” with a few additions from later movies, just for flavor.
Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) had the ultimate character arc throughout the series. Not only did he get three of his own movies, but he also got the four Avengers films, and spots in ‘Spiderman: Home Coming” (2017) and “Captain America: Civil War” (2016). I think that puts him in more flicks than any other character. And it shows. With every movie, he changed and grew, like a properly developed character in a TV show should. Not saying other characters aren’t great or didn’t develop, just that Tony had the most screen time to show it.
Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) continued to be the epitome of what the character of “Captain America” was designed for. He’s honest, upright, and always looking for the right thing to do, even when it’s painfully hard.
Natasha Romanov/Black Widow (Scarlet Johannson) is, unfortunately, still a bit two-dimensional. She’s been in all of the “Avengers” movies, and “Civil War,” but none of those ever put her in the front seat - she was only ever a side character. Hopefully the yet-unnamed ‘Black Widow’ prequel will help flesh her out some more. And it better, because she mentioned “Budapest” again, and I really want to know what the backstory is there.
Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) stole the show. He was already pretty entertaining in “Thor: Ragnarok,” but he took it to the next level here - I would love to see more of thisversion of The Hulk.
Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) survived the snap, unfortunately. I wish he hadn’t, or at least I wish the Russos had just let him stay ‘retired’ on the farm with Linda Cardellini’s character, making butter or children or whatever.
AntMan/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is just… so stupid. I have no idea why they went with a character assassination, after developing him so thoroughly in “AntMan” (2015).
You can draw your own conclusions about who survives this film, based on the next movies in the MCU lineup, like “Spiderman: Far From Home” and “Dr. Strange 2,” but the Russos have some serious balls and killed off a few major players - a loss the MCU desperately needed.
Without good guys dying, how is it a sacrifice? Punching bad guys all day holds no emotional weight if you know everyone is going to make it to the end credits.
—
The special effects were gorgeous, as to be expected from the climactic conclusion to a 22-movie run, what with Disney’s entire CGI space station working full-bore and all.
The music was outstanding again, because they let Alan Silvestri continue to compose. He wove in “The Captain America” march from Cap’s film line, which was great for Cap-specific scenes, but really highlighted the fact that none of the other movies have a decent score of their own, which is a shame and something that I’ve commented on many, many times.
But that’s for those movies.
For this one, the soundtrack was stellar. Silvestri even developed an extra piece that got thrown in for particularly emotional points.
As I mentioned above, “Infinity War” ended on the ultimate cliff for “Endgame” to jump from. I would argue that makes them two halves of the same movie, instead of two movies separated by a calendar year, as I noted in my ClawReview of the previous film.
Unfortunately, some spineless monkey spoiled this movie’s major plot points for me a few days before I actually got to see it.
But, even knowing what would happen, the movie was still worth watching. I still found myself gasping at critical events and tearing up even though I already knew what was coming.
Speaking of: kudos to the Russos (the directors) and Kevin Feige (the MCU overlord) for developing characters, with all their arcs and development, that I was so thoroughly distraught at events that befell them that I teared up.
My one and only serious critique for this film: the run time. There were some scenes that could have been cut out, and that may have only saved 20 minutes total, if that, but at 180 minutes for your movie, sometimes you don’t need to include every single scene that the writing team doodled out.
There was a bit of a tonal shift with this movie. Not just with it being more serious than previous films, but I felt there were more curse words, and some of the characters’ actions were a little more extreme.
That said: if 50% of the people around me just disappeared, I’d probably behave differently too, so that’s pretty reasonable.
—
It’s been an incredible adventure.
More than a decade has passed and Marvel/Disney has managed to pump out two movies per year without the entire concept feeling old and stale.
We’ve seen all manner of characters on earth, in space, in time loops, and in the quantum realm, and all of it has somehow been stitched together into an absolutely beautiful quilt of storytelling, when it could easily have simply turned into a pile of threads on the cutting room floor.
This is a must-see.
You will feel things.
It will be worth it.
(spoilers here)
