I saw Endgame yesterday evening. Here's my review. As a little challenge to myself I'll be trying to go the entire review without once mentioning Zack Snyder or any movie he directed.
I have major issues with Disney as a company and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a franchise, I think the former needs to be split up and the latter needs to end. Having gotten this out of the way I hope you all believe me I tell you that I enjoyed Avengers Endgame quite a lot. I approached its predecessor Infinity War, in retrospect, perhaps not with the good will I usually make a point of approaching movies with. Something about it rubbed me the wrong way. There was certainly an ambition there to create a sort of superhero epic, something comparable to genre giants like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, to a lesser extent even Harry Potter, I suppose, but Infinity War went about it in a way that struck me as insincere. The writing of movies like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings derives its gravitas from drawing clear parallels to ancient and biblical myths and for me a long time that was part of what defined the cinematic epic for me. Infinity War surely had a comparable sense of scale and scope to it but as far as I was concerned, the pathos just wasn't there. Maybe it was the dialogue. Where the characters of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars occasionally share dialogue that has a clear theatric, shakesperian bend to it, Marvel's costumed heroes tend to talk like sarcastic millenial hipsters. It's a world of cutting one-liners, snappy comebacks and snarky observations and always struck me as a bit insecure. A method to keep plausible deniability, to lean deeply into operatic, effects driven grandiosity and, when accused of pretention, still be able to say "What? It's just a light hearted action comedy, lighten up." There have been attempts by... other directors to commit fully to the operatic grandiosity of the genre without taking refuge in self aware humor, but the MCU has stuck confidently to its established tone which is why its more emotional moments fell flat to me. In retrospect though, I will say, I was probably too harsh on what was a mostly well constructed, occasionally creative superhero opera that, general consensus tells us, didn't fail to create the emotional response with its core audience that it didn't get from me.
So here we are, one year later, with Endgame, the second half to the Infinity duology and the conclusion to a story arc that lasted just slightly over a decade. And there's some credit to be given here, between Iron Man in 2008 and Endgame in 2019 we saw the end of the Harry Potter series, the beginning and end of the Twilight series, the beginning and end of the Hunger Games series, the beginning and end of the Hobbit series and the rise and fall of countless other franchises. The MCU, however, persisted, and maybe Endgame was as inevitable as its antagonist Thanos claims to be. And while I would have taken some pleasure in tearing it apart, in taking it down, to take petty revenge on a bloated blockbuster my commitment to sincere criticism says that I can't. Because Endgame is, even for me as a non-fan of the MCU, a good movie.
I think what makes Endgame work is that it knew that most of its major plotpoints where fairly predictable and then went out of its way to execute them in unexpected ways. We start off right where Infinity War left off, Thanos purged half of the universes population and our heroes have to cope with their own failure. The movie throws its first curveball here, Thanos is found and killed very early on, but the Infinity Stones are destroyed, half of the human population is still gone. There's a timeskip of five years and, in what is one of the movies smarter thematic ideas, the Avengers have become the equivalent of washed up celebrities. Tony Stark has retired in dignity to be a father to his daughter, Captain America joined a self help group, the Hulk takes photos with fans (And, one has to assume, probably also does conventions) and Thor, god bless Chris Hemsworth, has gone full washed up rockstar with pot belly, Z.Z. Top beard and a drinking problem. Endgame is for better or for worse, quite ready to let its main cast wallow in depression for a while, which puts it in contrast with Infinity War, which always seemed in a hurry to get from one action setpiece to the next.
As most have predicted the movie involves time travel to recover the Infinity Stones from the past. This leads to all the personal character moments, fan servicey action scenes and obligatory cameos one would expect. Though it is very impressive to see the movie pull the likes of Natalie Portman, John Favreau and, of all people, Robert Redford out of its hat. Once again there are some, mostly well executed, twists here that I'd rather not spoil but I will say that I rather enjoyed the whole second act of the movie. It was set up a lot like a heist movie through time and space, somewhat reminiscent of Inception only less complicated, less pretentious and better directed. Chances are there are lot of plotholes here for pedantic YouTube hacks like MauLer to pick apart but I had very little problems with the whole time travel sequence as an excuse for what are mostly well executed setpieces to happen.
Where the movie stumbles a little is in its last act, where the climactic battle against Thanos from the past happens. Once again the limitations of CGI are very clearly on display, character development is put on hold in favor of action and the movie seems to be going through the motions for a bit. It's competent enough but it failed to surprise, which the movie, to its credit, managed to do beforehand. It does come together again once its over and the movie is heading towards its conclusion, and I felt that it did end on a high note.
Though having quite a bit of praise for the movie, there's also some criticism. The movie sidelines a lot of the franchises newer characters to focus on its old guard one last time and as a matter of fact contrives a reason very early on to get them out of the way for most of the movie. Among them Captain Marvel. Having not seen her standalone movie I can't help but wonder what everyone's issue with her was again, as far as I can tell she's basically Superman, but as a cute blonde, which I have absolutely no issue with. Though talking about her, Endgame sure does very little to make the MCU any less of an unapologetic sausagefest, making a shot during the last battle showing a lineup of the MCU Waifu Unit in battle feel a bit hollow. I have already mentioned when talking about Infinity War that Tony Stark's character isn't nearly as charming in a post Elon Musk world as he was back in 2008 and that moving on is probably not a bad idea. Thanos is another character who gets the short end of the stick to focus on the core Avengers lineup more, which is unfortunate, because Josh Brolin's performance is once again very strong.
Overall though, I consider Endgame a success and considering how much enjoyment I got out of it, having not a lot of emotional investment in the MCU I am quite confident that fans will be very satisfied and, who knows, maybe get a bit teary eyed over it. I am very well aware that this movie is to normal people what Twin Peaks: The Return was for me and I genuinely hope it won't dissapoint them either. Make no mistake, Endgame is still an overproduced, overly long, lumbering monster of a movie but I can't bring myself to dislike it. For a spoiler, I think the moment that really tied the movie together for me was its very last scene. It shows Steve Rogers using the time machine one last time to return to the time he came from and reunite with his wife to live out the rest of his life with her. It was a very heartfelt little scene and the moment where I did realize that whoever wrote it and decided that it should end the movie has a strong grasp on theme. It ends with a literal World War 2 veteran returning home to the woman he loves. And all my cynicism towards Marvel, Disney and Hollywood in general aside, that was a beautiful note to end the movie on.
