WARNING:
This review contains mild spoilers for certain plot points in Avengers: Endgame, as well as crucial
moments in Infinity War. This will
mostly be restricted to things that were revealed in the trailers or would be
impossible to discuss this movie without mentioning, but I have refrained from
spoiling any plot twists or big character moments that are better left a
mystery and have done my best to keep those as vague as possible. If you wish
to see this movie completely blind, I wouldn’t blame you if you decided not to
read this review until after you’ve seen it.
It’s hard to believe that it’s
been eleven years since the Marvel Cinematic Universe took shape and forever changed
the landscape of film and pop culture in the 2010’s; a decade long parade of
interconnected franchises that’s rarely transcendent but consistently reliable.
Even so, it would be a stretch to say that everything has been leading up to
this (even though I foolishly said so in my review of Avengers:
Infinity War). They’re more like individual stories that occasionally
bounce off each other and coalesce into each other with tangential ties retroactively
added to give the illusion that they’ve been building up to this all along.
With all that said, the end result is still tremendously effective. Whereas Infinity
War was a big fireworks display celebrating its own existence, Endgame is more like a carefully concealed
retrospective, the film equivalent of flipping through your family album before
heading off to college. Singing its praises is the easy part. The hard part is
figuring out how to do so without spoiling it.
Thanos (Josh Brolin) has won.
After collecting all of the Infinity Stones, he reduced half of all life in the
universe to ash with a snap of his fingers. The remaining Avengers, that being
Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris
Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johannsson), The Incredible Hulk (Mark
Ruffalo), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Rocket Raccoon
(Bradley Cooper), Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), track
him down to make him fix it, only to find that he had destroyed them. So now
the universe is left with no choice but to adjust to its massive loss. Five
years later, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) arrives at Avengers headquarters with a
solution: use the Quantum Realm to travel through time. Now the Avengers
assemble for one last ditch effort to find the Infinity Stones before Thanos
does and prevent his apocalypse from happening.
In a sense, there are plenty
of parallels between Endgame and its predecessor:
It begins mid-scene with someone being rescued from the brink of death in a
nearly hopeless situation, presents a glimmer of hope before dashing it and
reminding us that the solution isn’t as simple as hunting the bad guy down and
punching him until he hits the reset button, then showing our protagonists grappling
with the enormity of the situation before nutting up and rising to the
challenge. The first act is almost entirely dedicated to showing how each of
the remaining Avengers cope with their loss. Hawkeye becomes a vigilante and
takes out his grief on petty criminals, Bruce Banner managed to find a happy
medium between himself and the Hulk, and the less said about Thor, the better.
It all works in tandem with the underlying themes that have run through all of
Marvel’s movies; mainly the need for family, surrogate families in particular,
and the effects of when said family is torn apart. It isn’t all doom and gloom.
This is a Disney property, after all. But after ending Infinity War with such an
incalculable body count, it would seem wrong to glance over the aftermath.
The second act is essentially
a time-travelling scavenger hunt where the Avengers split up into teams and sneak
around in the background of their old movies while trying their best not to
disturb the timeline. In each instance, one character runs into someone from
their past they had unfinished business with and seize the opportunity to find
some long-needed closure. Sometimes it’s cathartic, sometimes it’s
heartwarming, other times it ends up blowing up in their face. One character in
particular experiences a schism with her past self that puts the entire mission
in jeopardy, but her overcoming that peril ends up being one of the most satisfying
and unexpected character resolutions in the entire Marvel saga. This is one of
the few cases where a sizeable knowledge of previous Marvel movies comes in
handy, but a lack of it doesn’t diminish from the final payoff.
It’s the original Avengers
lineup that gets the most to work with, fitting considering that this will be
the last time we’ll be seeing a good number of them before they hang up their
capes after inhabiting these characters for over a decade and pass the torch to
the next generation. Saying whose story concludes and how would be giving away
the game, but one in particular left audience in an emotionally devastated state
by the end, but if you’ve seen Logan,
you’ll understand the sense of finality it has. Half the reason this movie has
been stretched to a beefy three hours is because the last sixth of the narrative
is dedicated to wrapping up all loose ends, sort of like the ending of Return of the King, except it doesn’t
fake you out a dozen times. Fractured friendships are mended, callbacks are
called back to, torches are passed, the dead are mourned, retired heroes get
their deserved sendoffs, and the new status quo is established. It’s filled
with, for lack of a better word, fanservice, but this is one of the few cases
where that isn’t considered an insult. If they want to spend their last hurrah
doing a few victory laps, let them. They’ve earned it.
Bottom line, Avengers: Endgame is probably the best
conclusion to this eleven-year saga that one couple reasonably ask for. It’s
shaggy in places, it really does begin to feel its length during the home
stretch, and there a lot of hanging questions about where the MCU can possibly
go from here, but the fact that this movie exists at all is a minor miracle in
and of itself, and for fans and fans alike, there probably isn’t a more satisfying
note to send them off on.
8/10
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