Avengers: Endgame review/general thoughts

Just to get it out of the way in a spoiler free summary: they stuck the landing. The 20+ film Infinity Saga was wrapped up in a way that I cannot imagine wouldn't satisfy 99.999% of the fanbase.

*thus ends the spoiler free zone*

It is an overwhelming film to process after just one viewing. This is a 3 hour film positively packed with stuff happening. MAJOR stuff. The last two-thirds of this movie in particular are just relentless. You feel the weight of 20+ films of story, as well as the responsibility to leave the MCU set up for the future.

I knew in general some of the things that were going to happen. But like with the ending of Infinity War and knowing that one way or another a lot of that was going to have to be reversed, it was more about how you get there. Endgame earns bringing back the snapped. It isn't just a quick fix. The whole opening 20-30 minutes are all about driving that point home. The remaining Avengers, with Captain Marvel, go find Thanos, and kill him. But it doesn't undo what he did with the snap. I really liked that the film stays in a post-snap world for a long time. I want to see what that is like and how it effects the characters. They have to truly live with this, for YEARS.

Tony and Pepper retire to the quiet life and have a kid. Steve does grief counseling. Natasha sort of becomes the new Fury, organizing a sort of makeshift Avengers to help deal with the chaos brought all over the world by the snap. Hawkeye goes super dark and now goes all over the world killing bad people he thinks should have died in the snap.

And Thor, well, if I had to cite the one thing that really sticks out in Endgame that I didn't like, it would be what they do with Thor. I liked that he indeed founds the New Asgard. I liked that it led to more of Valkyrie than I expected to see. I liked we got to see Korg and Meek too. I sure didn't like that they went way over the top and not just made Thor depressed, but made him depressed, a slob, fat, and kind of stupid. It was amusing at times, sure, but it went on for too long. There is a good payoff for it involving his mother, but it takes a long time to get there.

A more successful swing.was taken with Hulk. I knew they were doing the Professor Hulk thing, but I wasn't sure how it would work. Turns out that it's seamless. Amazing fx work to blend Banner and the Hulk we've seen. I loved how when they go back to 2012 and he has to pretend to be the old hulk smash.

I was hoping for more of Captain Marvel. It makes sense that she would be elsewhere in the galaxy for most of the movie, since every other planet got snapped too, but I hoped to see her more. She does still get a couple of the coolest moments in the movie.

The time travel plot I knew was coming, and loved the spin they put on all these moments from previous films. They brought back Natalie! That alone would have sold me. But they also had a bunch of other previous characters cameo, and not just for the sake of a cameo. That's why I reject the idea that it's just fan service. But obviously the people that have lived with these movies for years appreciate this more. Each team of time travelers get their own cool moments. Tony gets to see his dad. Steve gets to see Peggy. All of it works wonderfully.

As it always is with time travel there are complications, and it was clever to use Nebula as the conduit to bringing the earlier version of Thanos into the story.  And I loved how the Nebula-Gamora relationship got flipped.

The soul stone scene really surprised me. I did not see Natasha dying. I guess the Black Widow movie is officially a prequel. I thought Hawkeye dying would have made more sense, but I guess that would have been a little less of a galvanizing moment for the team.

But it works out. They collect the stones. Banner snaps the new gauntlet, and everybody is back.

So then we get that insane, epic climax. 2014 Thanos travels to the present, decimates the Avengers base in order to try to get all the stones right then and there, and we get Tony, Steve and Thor vs Thanos. Once again Stormbreaker proves to be an overrated weapon btw.

Thanos surprisingly handles them all fairly easily. He's also genuinely mad now, and doesn't want to do another snap. He just wants to kill EVERYBODY.

Cap gets to his feet, beaten to hell, shield half destroyed(just like in Tony's vision).

And, well, you know what happens next. It will probably forever be the most epic scene a comic book movie can ever hope to unleash. ALL the resurrected Avengers come back. Portaled in by Dr. Strange, Wong, and all those other sorcerers from around the world. Everybody shows up.  Spiderman, Black Panther, Wanda, Bucky, Sam, Shuri, Valkyrie, The Wasp, all the Guardians, Batman, Hit Girl, Deadpool, Miles Morales, Toxic video Britney Spears....

Okay maybe some of those are imagined. But I guarantee there are some characters in there who I missed, cause it's so much. It's actually very similar to the climax of Ready Player One, only with real stakes. It's a sequence that will be poured over in numerous repeat viewings.

And Captain Marvel does show up again to basically end the threat, except for that new gauntlet sitting there. There's an amazing sequence where the gauntlet gets passed from Avenger to Avenger. We get the ultimate female Avenger team up moment, which is made all the better for the knowledge it will piss off the man babies.

But what's going to happen? Well, as Strange tells Tony "if I tell you what happens it won't happen." Now, a jackass spoiled Tony's fate before I saw the movie, but that line by Strange would have been the tipoff. Thanos thinks he has the gauntlet and does the snap....but nothing happens. There are no stones. They're all on the gauntlet Tony has. "I am Iron Man." He snaps. All of Thanos's army turns to dust, then Thanos himself.

Unfortunately, Tony can't handle the snap. I'm glad they underplayed his death scene. They flip the "Mr. Stark I don't feel so good moment," which kind of got me, then Pepper says a goodbye. That's it. No long death speech. No parting words from anybody else.

I was not expecting Tony to die all along. I figured Robert Downey Jr would become a highly paid cameo player in future movies.

The film also finds a poignant sendoff for Steve. He gets the job of time traveling to return all the stones to their proper place, but after that he decides to stay in the past and finally be with Peggy. He only appears again in the present as Old Man Rogers, to pass on the shield to Sam.

The end of the movie has a lot of setup for the future of the MCU. Along with Sam unofficially becoming the new Captain America, we have Thor leaving New Asgard to Valkyrie as he leaves with the Guardians. And Quill is searching for the Gamora who wasn't a Guardian yet, so obviously GotG3 will have that as a plotline. Spiderman is back with his classmates.

Tony's funeral has everybody there(even Ross, that prick), and it concludes with a long pan shot showing all the surviving characters, all separated by their own franchises. Is it a little self-indulgent? Maybe, but it's earned. The MCU will go on without Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff, but it'll be okay. Tony made the sacrifice, Steve got his dance, Natasha wiped the red from her ledger. They all got worthy sendoffs.

Off of just the 1 viewing, I will pretty confidently say that Endgame is not quite at the level of the 1st Avengers or Infinity War, which are maybe my 2 favorite films of the whole decade. I'd probably put Civil War ahead of it too. I wonder if there is a little tighter cut of Endgame at like 2:40. You feel the bloat at times here, but I'm not really sure what I would have cut out. Those others are just a little more cohesive movies.

But Endgame had an enormous responsibility on its shoulders to do everything it had to do. Imagine going for over a decade, for over 20 movies, and then not aceing the final. The fact that it's as great as it is is some kind of miracle.