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"Avengers: Endgame": Movie Review

Categories: Movie Review The Avengers

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Published: Aug 6, 2021

Words: 758 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Works Cited

Markus, C., & McFeely, S. (Writers), & Russo, A., & Russo, J. (Directors). (2019). Avengers: Endgame [Film]. Marvel Studios.
The Avengers (Motion Picture). (2012). Marvel Studios.
Avengers: Age of Ultron (Motion Picture). (2015). Marvel Studios.
Guardians of the Galaxy (Motion Picture). (2014). Marvel Studios.
Captain America: The First Avenger (Motion Picture). (2011). Marvel Studios.
Smith, M. D. (2014). The Marvel Studios Phenomenon: Inside a Transmedia Universe. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Gray, J., & Johnson, D. (Eds.). (2020). The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom. Routledge.
Mathijs, E., & Pomerance, M. (Eds.). (2015). The Routledge Companion to Film and Popular Culture. Routledge.
Stein, L. C. (2015). Millennial Avengers and the New Hollywood. In M. D. Denson, L. Eckel, & A. Tolkach (Eds.), Avengers Assemble!: Critical Perspectives on the Marvel Cinematic Universe (pp. 49-62). McFarland.
Dittmer, J. (2013). Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero : Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics. Temple University Press.

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Avengers: Endgame

“Avengers: Endgame” is the culmination of a decade of blockbuster filmmaking, the result of years of work from thousands of people. It is designed to be the most blockbuster of all the blockbusters, a movie with a dozen subplots colliding, and familiar faces from over 20 other movies. It’s really like nothing that Hollywood has produced before, existing not just to acknowledge or exploit the fans of this series, but to reward their love, patience, and undying adoration. The blunt thing you probably want to know most: It’s hard to see serious MCU fans walking away from this disappointed. It checks all the boxes, even ticking off a few ones that fans won’t expect to be on the list. It’s a satisfying end to a chapter of blockbuster history that will be hard to top for pure spectacle. In terms of sheer entertainment value, it’s on the higher end of the MCU, a film that elevates its most iconic heroes to the legendary status they deserve and provides a few legitimate thrills along the way.

Don’t worry: I will stay very spoiler-free. The main joy of this film is in how its incredibly complex narrative unfolds, and you can go elsewhere if you want that ruined. The disappointing “ Avengers: Infinity War ” ended with Thanos finally getting all of the six Infinity Stones he so desperately sought, and then using them to wipe out half of existence, including beloved heroes like Black Panther, Star-Lord, and Spider-Man. “Avengers: Endgame” picks up a few weeks after “The Snap,” as the remaining heroes try to pick up the pieces and figure out if there’s a way to reverse Thanos’ destruction.

Immediately, “ Endgame ” is a more focused piece than “Infinity War” by virtue of having a tighter, smaller cast. (Thanks, Thanos.) It’s a more patient, focused film, even as its plot draws in elements of a dozen other movies. Whereas “ Infinity ” often felt bloated, “Endgame” allows some of the more iconic characters in the history of the MCU a chance to be, well, heroic. No longer mere pawns in a Thanos-driven plot, Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk, and Thor break free of the crowd, ably assisted by Hawkeye and Ant-Man. In a sense, this is the new Avengers, and the tighter group of superheroes reminded me of the charm of Joss Whedon ’s first “Avengers” movie, one in which strong personalities were allowed to bounce off each other instead of just feeling like they were strapped into a rollercoaster headed in the same direction. It also allows space for some of the best acting work in the franchise, particularly from Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr., who one realizes while watching this have turned Captain America and Iron Man into something larger than life for a generation. The most satisfying aspect of “Endgame” is in how much it provides the MCU’s two most popular heroes the story arc they deserve instead of just drowning them in a sea of cameos by lesser characters from other movies. In the way it canonizes them, it becomes an ode to the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe.

What works best about Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely ’s script for “Endgame” is that one feels, for arguably the first time, a sense of looking back instead of merely trying to set the table for something to come. This film incorporates elements of what fans know and love about the MCU, recalling character beats, origins, and the plots of movies like “ Iron Man ,” “ Guardians of the Galaxy ,” and “ Captain America: The First Avenger .” Call it cheap fan service, but one of my biggest issues with these films, especially “Infinity War,” has been a sense that they’re merely commercials for movies yet to be made. “Endgame” doesn’t have that. Sure, the MCU will go on, but this movie has a finality and depth given to it by MCU history that the others have lacked.

Of course, it needs to work as just a movie too. The middle hour is as purely enjoyable as the MCU has ever been, but there are times when I wished I could sense a human touch below the incredibly-polished, carefully-planned surface of “Avengers: Endgame.” In the long build-up first hour, I longed for one of the pregnant pauses about the seriousness of the situation to lead to something that felt spontaneous or an acting decision that didn’t feel like it had been run through a committee. Every single aspect of “Endgame” has been foreshadowed for years by other films and finely tuned by the hundreds of people it takes to make a movie like this one. The result is a film that often feels more like a product than a piece of art. Roger Ebert once famously wrote that “video games can never be art,” but he may have been surprised to see art becoming more like a video game, something remarkably programmed and determined, lacking anything that really challenges the viewer.

However, people aren’t lining up at dawn for “Avengers: Endgame” to challenge them. It’s really about rewarding commitment, fandom, and expectations. Whatever its flaws, “Endgame” does all of that, and with a sincere admiration for the fans who have made this universe a true cultural phenomenon. The stakes are high and the conclusions actually feel resonant. It’s an epic cultural event, the kind of thing that transcends traditional film criticism to become a shared experience with fans around the world. The biggest question I had coming out was how they could possibly top it ten years from now.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Ronin / Hawkeye
Zoe Saldana as Gamora
Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America
Paul Rudd as Scott Lang / Ant-Man
Stan Lee as Stan Lee
Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man
Josh Brolin as Thanos
Bradley Cooper as Rocket Racoon (voice)
Don Cheadle as James "Rhody" Rhodes / War Machine
Karen Gillan as Nebula
Gwyneth Paltrow as Virginia "Pepper" Potts / Rescue
Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk
Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel
Alan Silvestri
Anthony Russo
Christopher Markus
Stephen McFeely
Jim Starlin
Jeffrey Ford
Matthew Schmidt

Cinematographer

Trent Opaloch

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<i>Avengers: Endgame</i> Is a Good — And Sometimes Great — End to Marvel’s First Decade

Avengers: Endgame Is a Good — And Sometimes Great — End to Marvel’s First Decade

Avengers: Endgame —the 22nd movie to emerge from the Marvel Cinematic Universe birth canal and the capper to the two-part saga that began with last year’s Avengers: Infinity War —makes more sense as an event than as a movie. The film has been meticulously crafted for people who care deeply about these characters, and it’s likely most of those viewers will leave the theater satisfied. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo (also the directors of Avengers: Infinity War, as well as two of the Captain America films) and their team of writers have ensured, with machinelike precision, that each Avenger gets his or her proper allotment of sensitive moments, as well as heroic ones. Once in a while, Endgame is enjoyable on its own terms, though mostly, you’ll be better off if you have at least a rough working knowledge of the MCU movies that have preceded it. It’s an entertainment designed to please many, many people and disappoint as few as possible, extravagant without necessarily having a vision beyond its desire not to put a foot wrong. It’s bold in the safest possible way.

In other words, as movies that are part of multi-billion-dollar franchises go, Avengers: Endgame is good enough. I must note here that I have little invested in the Marvel movies as the result of any attachment to Marvel comics. But I do care about the work of the actors who appear in them, performers like Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson, Chadwick Boseman and Robert Downey Jr., Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Renner. All of these people have been terrific in MCU movies, even when they could easily get by with being less than terrific. Watching Endgame, I realized that I do care about Marvel characters because these actors have made me care.

The skill those actors—along with some I haven’t mentioned, like Tessa Thompson and Mark Ruffalo and Benedict Cumberbatch—bring to the Marvel movies in general, and to Avengers: Endgame specifically, only makes me wish these movies were breezier and more inventive, and less obsessed with the high-stakes, big-money fan-pleasing game. But you can’t have everything, and Endgame at least gives these actors something to work with. (Minor-to-moderate spoilers follow, so if you want to experience Endgame with the naïve blankness of a tadpole freshly launched into the pond, please stop reading here.)

Endgame opens with an unnerving, gracefully filmed prologue involving Renner’s Clint Barton, Hawkeye when in his superhero guise. He’s enjoying an outdoor picnic with his family when it becomes clear that what we’re seeing is a moment connected to the tail end of Infinity War: The instant supervillain Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers—after having captured the last of those six all-powerful nuggets known as the Infinity Stones —and destroyed exactly half the world’s population , leaving the other half to grieve and remember. (It’s more cruel, when you think about it, to destroy half the world than all of it.) This megalomaniacal act was Thanos’s way of cleansing what he viewed as a corrupt universe. But Hawkeye, having retreated from Avengers duty to be a family man, wasn’t around to witness Thanos’s big finale—and, as Endgame begins, he doesn’t yet know that half his friends have turned to dust. And so, in this moment, we know what’s going to happen before Hawkeye does: He turns away from his family for just a millisecond, and in a blink, they’re gone.

Next we see the other remaining Avengers pulling themselves together after the tragedy—or, in the case of Scott Lang/Antman (Paul Rudd), just waking up after a Quantum Realm-induced nap . Lang quickly gets up to speed on what he missed, and comes up with the germ of a plan: Might the Avengers go back in time to foil Thanos’s plan of half-destruction? Lang introduces his idea to remaining Avengers Steve Rogers/Captain America (Evans), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson) and James Rhodes/War Machine (Cheadle). They bring this spark of an idea to the guy who might be able to make it work, Downey’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, who barely survived Thanos’s destructathon. First Stark says it’s impossible; then he changes his mind—but he also worries that if the scheme doesn’t work, he’ll lose all he’s gained in what has for him become a bittersweet time, an era during which he’s mourning his lost friends but also starting a new life for himself.

The plan to turn back time is less a major plot point than a mechanism to keep the story clicking, and the middle section—in which the Avengers break into groups to travel to specific places and years where they can grab one Infinity Stone or another before Thanos can get his dirty mitts on any of them—is the movie’s finest. Avengers: Endgame is a better movie than Avengers: Infinity War in one important sense: It relies less on milking tears out of us (for characters who have “died” but who we know will come back again—they’re too valuable to the franchise to be gone for good) than on focusing on what each of these characters might mean to us, given our history with them. The mid-section of Endgame shows the Avengers actors at their best. Chris Hemsworth, as a Thor who has slid into a state of pot-bellied depression post-Thanos, gets a chance to reunite with his long-dead mother, Frigga (Rene Russo), in the kingdom of his birth, Asgard. He greets her tentatively, almost shyly, nearly dumbfounded by the gift of seeing her again even for a few moments; she discreetly asks about his funky eye. The tenderness between them is lush and quiet, underscoring what’s most valuable about Endgame: There is only one gargantuan, booming fight scene, and it’s not the centerpiece of the movie. It’s as if the Russo brothers have finally acknowledged that bigger, noisier battles amount to less rather than more. At least we can hope.

Endgame does give us some arresting visuals: Thompson’s Valkyrie riding on a winged horse, anyone? But generally, the actors are Endgame ’s finest special effect. Though we’re made to wait for the entrance of Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther, it’s worth it: He coasts into the movie on a regal cloud. And Robert Downey, after playing Tony Stark/Iron Man for perhaps too many years, snaps back into form. In the 2008 Iron Man, Downey brought a kind of frazzled elegance to the role of Stark—his nervous energy seemed to spark from his fingertips, as if it were too much for his body to contain. In the years since, his Iron Man performances have become more brittle, more reliant on tics. But in Endgame, Stark’s moments of doubt feel lived-in—Downey’s performance is alive with prickly uncertainty. Even when Endgame hits its generally predictable beats, you can still count on the actors to shift the mood into slightly uncomfortable emotional territory.

The Russos and their writers clearly took pains to give nearly each character a gratifying arc, and a proper—if not necessarily soft—place to land. That must have been a lot of work, and a few of the Avengers get short shrift: The ever-so-powerful Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) drops out of the movie for a long stretch, eventually returning with…a short haircut. Some arc.

avengers-endgame-black-widow-captain-america

But the Russos more than make up for that with the discreet, wistful coda they give Steve Rogers/Captain America. It’s the movie’s single most gorgeous element, perfectly fitting for a guy who entered a 70-year sleep right after finding the love of his life. Evans’ Captain America has always been, physically speaking, the beefiest of all the Avengers, as sturdy and wholesome as the “after” picture in a Charles Atlas ad. Yet Evans has also always been one of the most understated actors in the franchise. As Steve, Evans’ smile is easy, friendly, in a stock all-American way. But there’s never been any swagger behind it. It’s the smile of a guy who’s lost something valuable, whose view of the future is perpetually tinted with the color of what he left behind. Avengers: Endgame isn’t a great movie, but there are flashes of greatness in it, and quite a few of them belong to Evans. His Captain America rewards us with a revelation and escapes with a secret. The best thing in Avengers: Endgame is everything he doesn’t say.

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Film Review: ‘Avengers: Endgame’

After the must-see showdown that was 'Infinity War,' the Russo brothers deliver a more fan-facing three-hour follow-up, rewarding loyalty to Marvel Cinematic Universe.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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SPOILER A LERT: The following review contains mild spoilers for “ Avengers: Endgame .”

The culmination of 10 years and more than twice as many movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Avengers: Endgame” promises closure where its predecessor, “Avengers: Infinity War,” sowed chaos. That film — which revealed that the cookie-cutter uniformity of all those MCU movies had been part of an unprecedented master plan — infamously wrapped with a snap: a gesture that, when performed by a supervillain armed with the six Infinity Stones, was capable of wiping out half of all life in the universe.

Audiences have had a year to mourn the loss of Spider-Man, Star-Lord, and Black Panther (whom they’d only just met two months earlier), and to nurture theories as to where directing siblings Anthony and Joe Russo might steer things from here. Maybe all those characters weren’t really dead. Maybe the remaining Avengers just needed to travel inside the Soul Stone to get them back. Or maybe “Avengers: Endgame” would have to resort to that most desperate of narrative cheats — time travel — to undo the damage caused by Thanos (the purple-skinned, multi-chinned baddie so compellingly performed by Josh Brolin).

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The element of surprise and the thrill of discovery are everything in these movies, so every attempt has been made to minimize spoilers. Yes, “Avengers: Endgame” is the most expansive film yet, and yes, it strives to provide emotional catharsis for several of fans’ favorite characters. It’s even safe to say that “Endgame” shifts the focus from extravagant, effects-driven displays of universe-saving — manifold though they remain — to the more human cost of heroism, which comes at great personal sacrifice.

That said, readers should also be warned that “Avengers: Endgame” hinges on the most frustrating of narrative tricks, and that no meaningful analysis of the film can take place without delving into some of the choices made by the Russo brothers and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. If “Infinity War” was billed as a must-see event for all moviegoers, whether or not they’d attended a single Marvel movie prior, then “Endgame” is the ultimate fan-service follow-up, so densely packed with pay-offs to relationships established in the previous films that it all but demands that audiences put in the homework of watching (or rewatching) a dozen earlier movies to appreciate the sense of closure it offers the series’ most popular characters.

To the extent that it has all been leading up to this, no franchise in Hollywood history can rival what the Disney-Marvel alliance has wrought, although “Avengers” would not be what it is without the three-films-over-three-years scope of Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the coming-of-age continuity of Warner Bros.’ eight-part Harry Potter saga, or the 21st-century shift of serialized television to expansive, ensemble-driven narrative. Each of those experiments in cumulative, multi-part storytelling served to test just how far audiences would go to follow characters they love over time. But nothing — not the horror of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, nor the shock of James Bond’s wife murdered at the end of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” — could prepare fans for the Snap, and the pain of watching half the heroes they’d gotten to know turned to dust at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.”

The opening scene of “Endgame” revisits that unbearable moment from the point of view of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who sat out the previous battle to spend time with his wife and kids, such that the agony he feels in watching them vaporized by the Snap will come to stand for what all living things must experience as they witness their friends and family disappear.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark ( Robert Downey Jr. , looking frail) and Thanos’ daughter Nebula (Karen Gillan), now begrudgingly “good,” are drifting somewhere out in space when they encounter Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) hovering outside their cockpit. That’s not quite how a “Captain Marvel” end-credits vignette teased her joining the Avengers — which involved a pager signal sent by her human ally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) — but “Endgame” has so much ground to cover in the span of three hours that it breezes past introductions and treats her arrival as a fait accompli, racing to its first confrontation with Thanos, who has banished himself to a remote garden planet with his gauntlet.

That showdown doesn’t go at all as audiences might expect, but establishes that whoever holds those six all-powerful Infinity Stones can achieve pretty much whatever they want simply by snapping their fingers — with one major problem: Thanos has destroyed the stones. That means the universe is stuck like this unless someone invents time travel.

Spoiler alert: Someone invents time travel — which feels like a skill so far beyond the reach of modern science that maybe it should’ve qualified as a superpower and, if memory serves, might even have been among Doctor Strange’s abilities, except that the super-wizard (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of the casualties of “Infinity War.” Before surrendering his Infinity Stone, Doctor Strange projected himself forward in time to view all possible outcomes of the Avengers’ uphill battle, reporting back that of those 14,000,605 alternate futures, only one resulted in victory over Thanos.

“Infinity War” may have gone badly for the Avengers, but the odds are pretty good that “Endgame” will yield that one possible happy ending, even if it means permanently having to say goodbye to certain characters — or at least, to certain actors in those roles, as we have already seen creative reboots of Spider-Man, Hulk, and the X-Men at other studios. And now that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has demonstrated the potential for time travel at the quantum realm — a solution teased over the end credits of his last outing — the Avengers are free to buddy up and jump through time to collect the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get to them, at which point they can make their own gauntlet and snap things in and out of existence.

The Russo brothers dedicate an inordinate amount of time to convincing the heroes that the mission is worth trying, which may have worked in “The Magnificent Seven” but asks us to accept that, after shoving two or three of these Marvel movies down our throats a year, somehow everyone has sat idle for half a decade, crushed by depression and defeat. Still, the five-year flash-forward — a trick borrowed from the “Battlestar Galactica” playbook — allows for significant, and in some cases amusing, changes to Iron Man, Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo , who’d had trouble transforming when last we saw him), and Thor ( Chris Hemsworth , still plenty sarcastic but looking the most different).

But here’s the thing about using time travel to solve their problems: As soon as screenwriters open the door to that device, then any sequel can undo whatever came before. Here, War Machine (Don Cheadle) makes the suggestion that they go back and strangle Thanos in the crib, which the film treats as a joke, and yet, it sounds like a better idea than the “time heist” they have in store. Alternately, they could wait for Thanos to hijack all six Infinity Stones and then jump in and prevent him from using them.

Frankly, there are 14 million better ideas out there, but this one is designed to yield the maximum number of surprising twists, amusing confrontations, and bromance-y bonding moments between mismatched partners (like Thor and the Bradley Cooper-voiced space raccoon Rocket). The plan also allows the surviving Avengers to revisit scenes from the earlier films, watching their younger versions — as well as fallen comrades — from another angle, and in two very different cases, facing off against his or her past self.

To the film’s credit, it’s not the casualties, but the chances these heroes have to go back and say things to those they’ve lost that resonate as the most emotional scenes in “Endgame”: Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America ( Chris Evans ) each get such opportunities, any one of which would’ve been worth the price of admission. Still, all that time travel creates a host of paradoxes that will keep the geek debates raging for years: What happens if your “former future” kills an earlier, alternate version of yourself? If every change creates a “branch reality,” what kind of outcomes are in store for the universe in all those new paths? And why, if one has all six Infinity Stones in his possession, is snapping even required to set one’s wishes in motion?

By this point in the franchise, audiences have come to expect a top-of-the-line experience: iconic costumes and sets, stunning visual effects (including convincing computer-generated characters, like Thanos and Hulk), cinematography that alternates smoothly between epic clashes and nuanced character moments, and rousing music that underscores both the peril and the sheer importance of it all. Like “Infinity War” before it, “Endgame” delivers these elements at a higher level than Marvel’s less expensive — and considerably less expansive — lone-hero installments. But there’s something considerably less elegant to the storytelling this time around.

If “Infinity War” built inexorably to an “inevitable” conclusion (as Thanos arrogantly describes his victory), that was made possible by the filmmakers’ daring choice of positioning their villain as a deeply unconventional protagonist: It was Thanos who undertook the “hero’s journey” of that film, wildly outnumbered by the Avengers in his quest to amass the Infinity Stones. Here, the equation is reversed, with a surfeit of heroes now splitting up to repeat more or less the same mission, with only one adversary to oppose them (even with the Avengers’ ranks reduced by half, there are still too many to keep straight, while the prospect of reviving any of the fallen only makes it more unmanageable).

It works because the creative team has taken note of what audiences want (Black Panther! Captain Marvel!) and what the culture at large is asking for (more diverse representation all around), crafting brief but impactful moments along the way. If these Avengers movies are like massive symphonies, then the conductors have taken care to give nearly everyone a standout solo, however short — or, in the minute that played best at the film’s premiere, a group shot that gathers all the female Avengers, and proves that had Thanos’ snap wiped out just the dudes, the remaining women would’ve been awfully formidable on their own. However satisfying — and necessary — these vignettes may be, is it still art when a movie seems so transparently reverse-engineered according to audiences’ appetites, or does that make “Endgame” the ultimate pop-culture confection?

After nearly two and a half hours of hardcore comic-book entertainment — alternating earnest storytelling with self-deprecating zingers designed to show that Marvel doesn’t take itself too seriously — “Endgame” wraps all that logic-bending nonsense with a series of powerful emotional scenes. Whereas all the casualties suffered at the end of “Infinity War” felt suspiciously like a gimmick that would be undone in this film, these meaty character moments illustrate the spirit of personal sacrifice certain individuals consciously make on behalf of the team, and the universe at large.

Time and again, “Endgame” makes the point that family matters, whether that means biological ties — as Iron Man, Hawkeye, Ant Man, and Thor have experienced — or those forged by duty. The final takeaway from this decade-long journey is that heroism isn’t defined by bravery or super-abilities, but by what one gives up for the greater good. Among the many frustrations of the Snap was that it robbed so many great characters — and gazillions of anonymous creatures throughout the galaxy — of proactively making that choice. “Endgame” isn’t exactly a do-over, but it builds to an infinitely more satisfying conclusion.

Reviewed at Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, April 22, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 181 MIN.

Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Marvel Studios presentation. Producer: Kevin Feige. Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo, Trinh Tran, Jon Favreau, James Gunn, Stan Lee.
Crew: Directors: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo. Camera (color, widescreen): Trent Opaloch. Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt. Music: Alan Silvestri.
With: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo , Dave Bautista, Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Winston Duke, Karen Gillan, Dana Gurira, Tom Holland, Scarlett Johansson, Brie Larson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Redford, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Rene Russo, Tilda Swinton, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Wong, Laetitia Wright.

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Avengers: Endgame (2019) Review

AN EPIC (AND DEEPLY SATISFYING)

Conclusion to the mcu’s infinity saga.

There was an idea…to bring together a group of remarkable people….to see if we could become something more…so when they need us, we could fight the battles…. that they never could. Since it’s inception back in 2008, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has indeed flourish and prospered into one of the most beloved / talked about superhero film franchise ever created. With a staggering amount of theatrical entries (collectively tallying at 21 features), this movie superhero franchise as transcended a lot of viewer’s expectations, chronicling the adventures of a wide variety of superheroes through a series of standalone endeavors and team-up blockbusters that are interconnected (collectively) within a shared cinematic universe. The MCU has taken some of the recognizable (and lesser known) properties from Marvel Comics and have translated them into some of the most iconic on-screen superheroes of a film generation, offering up compelling storytelling narrative arcs (a combination of character builds of humor and heart) with large-than-life superhero escapades of doing what’s right in the face of overwhelming odds and saving the day from evil do-gooders. This consist of a roster of intriguing and well-developed heroes, including self-righteous individuals, costumed warriors, fierce monsters, pragmatic rulers, mystical beings, and (sometimes) a rag tag group of misfits, have played instrumental roles in the likeability of these movies as well as the acting talents that portray them on-screen of which includes plenty of recognizable stars (some recognizable, some undiscovered, some seasoned veterans, etc.). In addition, the MCU have captivated a generation of moviegoers (young and old, fan-boys and casual viewers, etc.); finding millions of viewers entertained by the cinematic tales of heroes and villains. This is further realized when considering that the MCU has spanned (currently) a 11-year timeframe by keeping its viewers interested and intrigued with this expansive franchise by creating new stories for its established characters and bringing in ones into unfold. Thus, despite few naysayers, the MCU franchise has built a thriving film empire; something that only a few movie franchise / film sagas have ever achieved in the history of cinema. Now, the Marvel Cinematic Universe reaches a culmination climax to its cinematic tales (thus far) as Marvel Studios and the Russo Brothers (Joe and Anthony) prepare for the highly anticipated 22 nd MCU film titled Avengers: Endgame , a follow-up adventure to 2018’s Avengers : Infinity War . Does this latest superhero blockbuster live up the incredible hype or does it take the close out the “Infinity Saga” on a disappointing whimper?

Following the epic events of Avengers: Infinity War , the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) succeed in his endgame plan by finally collecting the six fabled Infinity Stones (space, reality, power, time, mind and soul) and “snapping” half of sentient life (across the universe) out of existence, including many of the Avengers characters and their friends. Those who remain on Earth, including Steve Rogers / Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Bruce Banner / The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Clint Barton / Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper), James Rhodes / War Machine (Don Cheadle), try to make sense of the fallout aftermath of Thanos’s Decimation and the new world order that comes with it, while Tony Stark / Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillian) are set adrift in space, hoping for a miracle to save them. All seems lost until Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) suddenly appearance (thought to believe perished in Thanos’s snap), and with hopeful revelation to restore what was taken. With a daring and almost impossible mission set before them, the remaining Avengers set out to change the undo the universal damage caused by Thanos. New allies will appear, including the inclusion of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), loyalties will be tested, valor will be proven, and a shocking and climatic showdown to reverse the past will happen. Whatever the outcome, whatever the cost, whatever it takes…. the Avengers must come together and set out to defeat Thanos, once and for all.

THE GOOD / THE BAD

Well, I’ve said many times before and I guess I’ll say it many more times, I’m a huge fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movies have always been a favorite past time for me to watch, enjoy, and get lost in their world of heroes and villains. To me, what makes them great is that, while most usually are somewhat standalone adventures that focuses on a single hero or group, the movies have that blockbuster quality that brings a sense of big time “popcorn feature” to the proceedings, allowing its larger-than-life characters to display their uniqueness in thwarting the bad guys. Of course, the interlinking of these films within a shared cinematic movie universe is another great attribute, connecting most of the installment features into an over-arching narrative for the 21 films (so far) in the MCU. Some of my personal favorites being the first Iron Man movie, two of the three the Captain America films ( The Winter Soldier and Civil War ), the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies (i.e Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 ) and (of course) Avengers: Infinity War . Yes, some might look down upon the MCU superhero movies as just major “cash-cows” for the movie studio behind (i.e. Disney) or just big / dumb blockbuster tentpoles of recycled ideas, but, in truth, the MCU has flourished in evolving beyond such the superhero genre by blending other genres into the mix (i.e. fantasy, heist, supernatural, historical, political, etc.) and has ultimately become a dominate force of movie entertainment; dazzling viewers (both young and old) in escaping into a world of superheroes and villains, gods and monsters, and where cinematic adventures being told are just as large and grandiose as the comic book characters that populate this franchise. In short, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has indeed proved itself to be a dominate powerhouse movie series for the past 11 years, ushering in the “golden age” of superhero movies as well as proving that a shared (and expansive) cinematic universe is possible and damn well entertaining at that.

As to be expected, this brings me back around to talking about Avengers: Endgame , the 22 nd film in the MCU and the follow-up conclusion to 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War . It goes without saying the Avengers: Infinity War was definitely a monster juggernaut of a movie that delivered on bringing a large-scale cinematic tale adventure within an equally large roster of the MCU characters. It definitely was a penultimate entry (a so-called “Beginning of the End” type of endeavor), leaving a massively dark / ambiguous cliffhanger ending to the masses, promising a grand and epic finale with Avengers: Endgame . Following Infinity War , the internet exploded with a plethora of theories as to what might happen in Endgame , especially considering that Marvel Studios kept a very tight lid on what was release about the upcoming movie; shrouding its release in secret. Heck, we even didn’t get an official title for the movie until mid-December. Plus, the film’s market campaign (mostly the movie trailers) didn’t give too much away by ways and means of “spoiling the feature within its preview (a sort of reoccurrence that occasional happens to movies). Of course, being a mega huge fan of the MCU, I was eagerly waiting to see Endgame , setting the film as my #1 pick for my Top 15 Most Anticipated Films of 2019 list. I was hoping that it would live up to the hype that Infinity War set and to conclude this cinematic universe (up to this point) with climatic showdown blockbuster. Yeah, I was super pumped, jacked, and excited for this movie! So, with much anticipation, inherit hype, and many times looking away from internet spoilers (and I do mean many), the release of Avengers: Endgame is here and I went to go to see it on its opening night. Now, the big question, what did I think of it? Two words…. loved it! Avengers: Endgame wraps up the Marvel Cinematic Universe (so far) in an epic and sweeping way that truly does live up its own insurmountable hype. The endgame has been written…and it is a glorious ending that’s both epically beautiful and colossally satisfying to any viewer who has with this franchise since 2008.

Avengers: Endgame is directed by the Russo brothers (Joe and Anthony Russo), whose well-known for their efforts made within the MCU in directing some of the better entries with the franchise, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier , Captain America: Civil War , and (of course) Avengers: Infinity War . Thus, it really goes without saying that Russos definitely have a great understanding of crafting an MCU feature film as well as executing one with a large roster cast of character to juggle and an even more grandiose narrative to tell. Thus, Marvel Studio’s decision for the Russos to direct Endgame (the so-called Infinity War Part 2 endeavor) was kind of like a no-brainer, with the pair quickly orchestrating a cinematic superhero feature like no other. To that effect, the Russos succeed; bringing with them as “tour de force” effect with Endgame that truly feels like a culmination of the entire MCU (up to this particular point of time). The staging of events and characters is also contributed to the Russos directing experience within the realm of the MCU, handling the highly anticipated feature film with great care and attention within the context of the story being told. Thus, the final presentation of Endgame is truly something to marvel over. In lesser hands, the movie could’ve been a downright disappointment (crumbling underneath its own weight of mismanagement), but the Russo brothers have a crystal-clear vision for the film and it definitely shows that in the final product.

And to me, that’s true sublime of the MCU. If you really think about…there are now (currently) 22 movies within this cinematic universe and they have kept us (the viewers) invested within this franchise for years. Of course, some installments are better than others, but the pure joy and interest in these MCU endeavors has continued to swell with popularity, which is quite an amazing feat (and I think many will agree with that).

This brings me around to talking about the movie’s runtime, which is at a staggering three hour and one minute. While not completely unheard for a theatrical film, it is definitely a bold and ambitious move to make, especially considering that most of the large scaled MCU have been roughly two hours and twenty some odd minutes long; making Endgame the longest film in the MCU to date. However, the narrative being told never feels bloated or unnecessary, which (in turn) makes the movie never boring or lag. There’s always something to see on-screen and to keep its viewers invested the Endgame’s story. Thus, while runtime make scare some moviegoers out there, Endgame is totally worth its length, offering up intriguing story that works and feels tightly paced throughout.

In truth, Endgame represents not only the continuation / resolution to Infinity War , but also the collective movie might / true spirt of this particular cinematic universe of superheroes. There’s definitely a foreboding sense of everything coming to a climatic head (and ending), which the movie certainly does achieve; bringing the tale of the first three phase saga of the MCU (again, now dubbed the “Infinity Saga”) to a dramatic conclusion. With the revisiting of familiar places (and familiar faces), the movie definitely feels like a trip down “memory lane” (MCU style) and does offer up plenty of fan-service moments that will surely make many out there laugh / cheer with unapologetic glee. Because of this, there’s an also a sense of sheer joy added to the feature’s overall spectacle that seems to permeate throughout the film. I mean…. there’s one particular moment (that I guess would be in the film) is one giant fan service moment that literally had me practically cheering with a tear or two in my eyes (you’ll definitely know what it is when you see it). Looking beyond humorous bits and pieces, the movie certainly also has a several big dramatic / poignant moments that will surely tug on the heartstrings of emotion. Much like Civil War and Infinity War , Endgame delves into some pretty emotional beats and offers up some “pure heart” in a very compelling and dramatic way. In these moments, the Russos (as well as Markus and McFeely) excel, creating character filled sequences that really are a “no holds bar”, with one or two that will make everyone shed a tear or two. In addition, there are few surprises in the movie and, while I expected them to appear, there overall presentation (cinematically and performances) caught me off-guard (in a shockingly good way). This continues to add a new layer of appreciation for this movie, offering up some of the best sequences / moments in both the franchise history as well as in the superhero genre.

Also, film composer Alan Silvestri, who previously composed music for other MCU films ( Captain America: The First Avengers , Marvel’s The Avengers , and Avengers: Infinity War ) returns to this world of superheroes to score Endgame and does so in a magnificent way. The scoring of music has always played an important part with me in appreciating movies and Silvestri’s work on this project excels, especially in some of the film’s big moments and sequences.

As one can imagine I was thoroughly impressed with this movie, but that doesn’t mean that there were a few minor (and I do mean very minor) criticism that I have to make about Endgame . Perhaps the most prevalent is how rushed the first fifteen minutes is. Granted, yes, I do understand that the movie has larger terrain to traverse throughout its three-hour runtime, but the opening act seems quite rushed and could’ve been easily expanded upon. What’s presented is great and definitely works, but it feels as if there could’ve been more to it, especially since it takes place in the immediate aftermath of what transpired in the previous feature. Another problem is in the handling of the whole “time travel” aspect. Some of the film’s characters do explain the laws of time travel (and how several movies portray it) the laws of time, but it seems a tad confusing and plays more in line with how Endgame wants it to be (fitting the narrative structure) rather than a practical set-up / understanding. Again, those (plus one another that I’ll mention below) are my only negative points to the film and hardly diminish my overall likeability to Endgame .

What also works in the movie is the further development of its cinematic world well-developed / well-established superhero characters and Endgame (due to the events of Infinity War ) devotes plenty of time to the original six Avengers characters. Naturally, leading the charge are the MCU’s “Big Three” leads (i.e. Tony Stark / Iron Man, Steve Rogers / Captain America, and Thor) with actors Robert Downey Jr. ( Sherlock Holmes and Chaplin ), Chris Evans ( Gifted and Snowpiercer ), and Chris Hemsworth ( 12 Strong and Rush ) reprising their popular MCU roles respectfully. It goes without saying these three have been the main character structural pillars of this superhero franchise (each other the characters have their ow trilogy) and each one has definitely made their on-screen characters their own (i.e. Downey Jr. with his egoistical / snarky banter of Stark, Evans with his self-righteous / stoic idealism of Rogers, and Hemsworth with the otherworldly / comedic timing of Thor). These characters are equally embraced (more so than ever) in Endgame with Downey, Evans, and Hemsworth giving some of their best performances in the movie. Given the nature of the movie’s narrative, Stark, Rogers, and Thor get compelling story arcs in Endgame ; each one developed and completed by the time the feature’s end. It’s definitely one of the best parts of the movie; seeing these three story threads unfold the way that they do (for laughs, for dramatic purposes, and for plot development), with Downey, Evans, and Hemsworth bringing their “A” game to their respective Marvel characters.

In large supporting roles are some of other remaining Avengers / main Marvel characters from the other movies. Of this grouping, the character of Nebula (Thanos’s other adopted daughter / sister to Gamora) gets the most screen-time in the movie. While the character has been a supporting role in several of the movies (i.e. the Guardians of the Galaxy films and Infinity War ), her involvement in Endgame is an indeed an important one, with actress Karen Gillian ( Doctor Who and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ) getting more time to develop the character, evolving Nebula from what she was original was in 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy . Behind Nebula are the characters of James “Rhodey” Rhodes / War Machine, who is played by actor Don Cheadle ( Hotel Rwanda and Crash ), Scott Lang / Ant-Man, who is played by actor Paul Rudd ( Forgetting Sarah Marshall and I Love You, Man ), and Rocket Raccoon, who is voiced by actor Bradley Cooper ( American Sniper and The Hangover ) play their parts in the movie’s narrative as secondary supporting players. The movie isn’t super laser focused on these particular individuals (more focused on the original six Avengers), but their addition to the movie is equally good; finding this trio of characters up to the task for whatever the film gives them and the acting talents that play them. Plus, each of these characters get their “moment to shine” a few scenes here and there, which ultimately adds to the enjoyment of their inclusion in Endgame .

Then, of course, there is the Mad Titan himself…Thanos…who once again plays the main antagonist of the story. While Infinity War was his big character build screen debut, Endgame pulls back on him slightly. He’s still the dominating “grand puppet master” character that he was meant to be, but the film’s script isn’t so heavy with Thanos, which (again) is appropriate for the film that finds its main camera spotlight with the Avengers. Still, his character setup from Infinity War carries over into this movie and still acts as the “main bad guy” in quite a compelling way. This as well as actor Josh Brolin’s ( Only the Brave and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps ) performance as the titular villain makes for a worthy adversary for the Avengers to fight against in Endgame . I still consider Thanos as one of the best / intriguing villains in the entire MCU.

The only character that I do have a problem with in Endgame is in the inclusion of Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel. What do I mean? Well, despite having a good origin story within her movie (i.e. Captain Marvel ), I kind of was expecting more from the character by playing an instrumental role in the narrative (of which many were speculating). Her involvement in Endgame , however, is minimal as if she was written into the Endgame’s story at the very last minute. There’s a reason that’s given to the movie as to this and I do understand that the script wanted to more focus on the original Avengers team, but it feels kind of feels like a copout. Still, actress Brie Larson ( Room and Kong: Skull Island ) continues to make Captain Marvel have a great screen presence; hinting that her future involvement within the MCU is looming on the horizon. That’s probably my biggest pet peeve of Endgame and yet it’s an minor quibble.

Rounding out the cast are several minor characters from past MCU movies. While I won’t spoil who they are and what context that there presented in the movie, their inclusion within Endgame’s grandiose story is incredibly fun. Plus, it’s great to see the selection of recognizable actors and actresses return to their MCU post once again. Definitely put a smile on my face.

Additionally, just to let my viewers know, that, despite the commonplace trademark of “secret endings” (mid-credits ones and ones after the credits) from the MCU franchise, there is none in Avengers: Endgame . Lastly, be sure to be on the “lookout” for Stan Lee’s cameo, which is to be his final one in the MCU (R.I.P Stan Lee).

FINAL THOUGHTS

Part of the journey is the end as the Avengers set out to reverse Thanos’s snap in the movie Avengers: Endgame . Directors Joe and Anthony Russo’s latest film sees the MCU’s grand tapestry of heroes, gods, and monsters come to a dramatic and climatic point, resolving what’s being considered the “Infinity Saga” narrative arc to this expansive movie world. There’s a whole lotta movie to watch within Endgame and Russo certainly unpack a lot within its lengthy runtime, capturing the franchise’s some of the best moments of humor, heart, and compelling storytelling. There are a few minor nitpicks in the film, but those are minuscule blemishes to almost nearly perfectly balanced superhero blockbuster and can be easily looked over to the overwhelming and sheer entertainment value that the Russo Brothers have crafted with Endgame . As you guys can imagine, I absolutely (and unequivocally) loved this movie. It was everything I was expecting from this movie and so much more. I laughed hard, cheered harder, was in awe of its spectacle, heart warmed with its compelling narrative, loved the well-established characters (and the talented actors and actresses), and shed a few tears when it was over. I was definitely amazed by the film’s journey and thoroughly enjoyed the movie immensely from start to finish. Personally, despite how much I sincerely love Infinity War , I would say that I love Endgame slightly better. Infinity War is the nearly perfect penultimate endeavor, while Endgame is the nearly perfect epic conclusion to a twenty two motion picture saga. Thus, it goes without saying that my recommendation for this movie is (beyond a shadow of a doubt) “highly recommended” an undeniable must-see for Marvel fans out there and a highly definite choice for everyone else (from casual moviegoers to fanboys). What comes next? That’s really hard to say. While Marvel Studios will most likely continue onward with the MCU, propelling the next generation of Marvel characters forward (in some shape or form), no one can ever deny that this particular movie signifies the end of an era…in both the Infinity Saga storyline and to the cinematic adventure that we (as viewers) have experienced throughout its 11-year journey. To that end, Avengers: Endgame stands as a crowing hallmark achievement in superhero blockbuster entertainment, a shining beacon to the franchise and already cemented celebrated legacy within the pantheon of movie history.

As a personal note, I sincerely want to thank all those involve at Marvel (including the late Stan Lee) for ultimately creating this cinematic universe for me to get lost in. It was an incredible 11-year journey that was definitely worth it (with the hopes more to come). As a movie critic, as a film lover, as a fan of Marvel, and as a person who looks to these theatrical presentations as means for escapism…. Thank you!!!

4.9 Out of 5 (Highly Recommended)

Released on: april 26th, 2019, reviewed on: april 26th, 2019.

Avengers: Endgame is 181 minutes long and is rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language

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‘avengers: endgame’: film review.

Marvel Studios and Disney's three-hour epic sendoff 'Avengers: Endgame' reunites the franchise's mightiest superheroes to battle Josh Brolin's Thanos.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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The closest equivalent to Greek mythology the modern world has devised of late achieves a sense of closure in Avengers: Endgame . A gargantuan film by any standard, this three-hour extravaganza shuffles back into the action numerous significant characters seen in recent Marvel films as it wraps up an epic story in which the survival of the known universe is (once again) at stake. While constantly eventful and a feast for the eyes, it’s also notably more somber than its predecessors. But just when it might seem about to become too grim, Robert Downey Jr. rides to the rescue with an inspired serio-comic performance that reminds you how good he can be.

Avengers: Infinity War, which was released a year ago this week, stormed the planet to take in $2.048 billion at the worldwide box office on its way to becoming the fourth biggest-grossing film of all time. Its three-hour running time notwithstanding, there’s no reason on or off Earth to suspect this one won’t enter the same rarified realm.

Release date: Apr 26, 2019

In case you hadn’t noticed, since last we saw the lantern-jawed mug of Thanos (Josh Brolin), he’s decimated half the population. Endowing him with such power is the complete set of six Infinity Stones he spent the last film accumulating, and Thanos has worked out his own perverse rationale as to why humankind deserves to be put out of its misery rather than just being punished. When Brie Larson’s recently introduced Captain Marvel shows up with the announced intention of knocking off Thanos single-handedly, she needs to be restrained, for Downey’s Iron Man has first dibs on taking out the brooding evil genius.

Easier said than done, however. For an entertainment brand in which hardly anyone ever really and truly dies, a sense of mortality nonetheless hangs over quite a few of the characters — especially in this saga, in which some confess, in one way or another, to feeling that they’ve come to the end of something. While there are certainly young upstarts like Captain Marvel and the briefly glimpsed Black Panther ready to jump into the fray, veterans including Iron Man, Chris Evans ‘ Captain America and Chris Hemsworth ‘s gone-to-seed Thor (complete with pot belly) seem more than prepared to face their reckonings, come what may.

Nonetheless, it’s an amiable brand of melancholy that pervades the film, one that scarcely gets in the way of the enthusiasm and excitement that Marvel adventures almost always deliver in some measure or another. The feeling of finality and potential farewell is sometimes suggested quietly just in the way certain moments are lingered over, conveying the fatalistic sense that this might well be the last time around the block for some of these characters. At the rate it’s going, Marvel will be around for the better part of forever, but this will likely be the studio swan song for a number of the castmembers.

The major characters, most of whom have had multiple individual films centered on and in some instances named after them, are faced with the all-but-imponderable challenge of how to undo Thanos’ success in collecting the all-powerful stones. It’s one of the signal successes of the script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that they concoct a method for doing so (stemming from some of the Marvel characters’ special relationships with the Quantum Realm) that even sounds half-plausible in context; the brain trust centered around Tony Stark/Iron Man comes up with the clever, if perhaps not entirely original, idea of a “time heist” (the time bandits, anyone?). If flawlessly executed, this looks to be the only way of extricating the stones from Thanos’ otherwise iron grip on the dire-looking future of the universe.

Although there’s loads of action and confrontations, what’s distinctive here in contrast to most of the earlier Marvel films are the moments of doubt, regret and uncertainty, along with the desire of some characters to move on. Granted, this is almost always undercut, and/or cut short, by some emergency that pulls them right back in, and decisive action always remains paramount.

But there is growth here. Whereas Downey’s fast-talking quips and occasional rudeness became increasingly callow and off-putting in his Iron Man outings, Tony Stark in this movie, at last, seems more human and dimensional. Thor and Captain America are experiencing identity issues. And the most unexpected comic relief may come from Mark Ruffalo ‘s Bruce Banner, a very large man with a greenish-gray hue to his skin who dwarfs everyone around him and is often called upon to do the real dirty work due to his size. Perhaps most notably in the moments when this veteran superhero is reassessing his powers, Ruffalo’s highly amusing performance reveals a frank and unusual awareness of his character’s acceptance of self in an action-spectacle context.

The Political Avenger: Chris Evans Takes on Trump, Tom Brady, Anxiety and Those Retirement Rumors

Production company: Marvel Studios Distributor: Disney Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson , Jeremy Renner, Brie Larson, Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow , Jon Favreau, Benedict Wong, Tessa Thompson, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, Robert Redford Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely Producer: Kevin Feige Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo, Trinh Tran, Jon Favreau, James Gunn, Stan Lee Director of photography: Trent Opaloch Production designer: Charles Wood Costume designer: Judianna Makovsky Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt Music: Alan Silvestri Visual effects supervisor: Dan DeLeeuw Casting: Sarah Finn

Rated PG-13, 182 minutes

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Review: avengers: endgame is, above all else, a triumph of corporate synergy.

Every serious narrative beat in the film is ultimately undercut by pro-forma storytelling, or by faux-improvised humor.

“Let’s get that son of a bitch,” says Captain America (Chris Evans) near the beginning of Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Endgame , the supposed big-screen finale to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we now know it. Cap, that sacred symbol of American might, is of course profaning Thanos (Josh Brolin), the purple colossus whose hand of fate, bedecked with the six Infinity Stones, erased half the world’s population during the cliffhanger climax of last year’s Avengers: Infinity War . The victims included many among the superheroic, several of whom have movies on the docket. So there’s no way the remaining commodities—I mean, Avengers—are going to go down without a fight.

It’ll take a while to get to the final showdown, of course. About two hours and 45 minutes of the three-hour running time, to be exact, all of it filled to bursting with goofy one-liners, aching stares into the middle distance, and lots and lots of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey digressions. Almost all of the Avengers’s founding team members are on hand, with a considerably more grizzled and cynical Clint “Hawkeye” Barton (Jeremy Renner) providing most of the pathos. Also in attendance are Scott “Ant-Man” Lang (Paul Rudd) and Carol “Captain Marvel” Danvers (Brie Larson), the latter of whose won’t-take-no-guff brashness is especially endearing to a certain gruff, hammer-wielding Asgardian.

I’d tell you more about the film, but then I’d have to kill myself at the spoiler-averse Marvel Studios’s behest. Even noting certain elements out of context—like, say, “Nerd Hulk” or “Lebowski Thor”—might be considered too revealing by the powers that be. So, let’s dance around the narrative architecture and instead ruminate on whether this 22nd entry in the MCU serves as a satisfying culmination of all that’s preceded it.

That’s a firm no, though the Russo brothers and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely certainly lean hard into the dewy-eyed, apocalyptic sturm und drang. You’d think they were putting the finishing touches on the Bible. There are allusions to The Leftovers , J.G. Ballard’s The Terminal Beach , and Picasso’s Guernica , though there’s never a sense, as in those works, that society is truly in irrevocable decay. It’s all good, even when it isn’t: Death is a mostly reversible ploy, and sacrifice is a self-centered concept, a burnish to the ego above all else. It’s telling that, in one scene, Captain America stops to admire his own ass.

There’s some fleeting fun to be had when Endgame turns into a sort of heist film, occasioning what effectively amounts to an in-motion recap of prior entries in the MCU. Yet every serious narrative beat is ultimately undercut by pro-forma storytelling (the emotional beats never linger, as the characters are always race-race-racing to the next big plot point), or by faux-improvised humor, with ringmaster Tony “Iron Man” Stark (Robert Downey Jr., so clearly ready to be done with this universe) leading the sardonic-tongued charge. Elsewhere, bona fide celebs like Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Natalie Portman are reduced to glorified extras. Even the glow of movie stardom is dimmed by the supernova that is the Marvel machine’s at best competently produced weightlessness.

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Avengers: endgame review - marvel delivers a superhero epic like never before.

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Star Wars' Next Movie Breaks 25 Years Of Tradition

One obi-wan kenobi line set up the rise of skywalker's palpatine twist 36 years earlier, eden review: i loved to hate ana de armas in ron howard's completely unhinged thriller [tiff], avengers: endgame wraps up the story of the mcu so far, delivering an epic superhero adventure while honoring the past in a satisfying finale..

Marvel Studios kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe nearly 11 years ago with 2008's Iron Man. Back then, they had a relatively modest vision of building to The Avengers by assembling a team of heroes from their respective origin movies into a single unit. In the decade since Robert Downey Jr. made his debut as Iron Man, the MCU has grown to include superheroes from all across the universe, from Earth's Mightiest Heroes to the Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, Avengers: Endgame marks the 22nd film in the MCU and sets out to achieve a feat Hollywood has never seen attempted before by ending the story that first began in Iron Man . And it does, in a spectacular accomplishment. Avengers: Endgame wraps up the story of the MCU so far, delivering an epic superhero adventure while honoring the past in a satisfying finale.

Avengers: Endgame picks up after the events of Avengers: Infinity War , which saw the Avengers divided and defeated. Thanos won the day and used the Infinity Stones to snap away half of all life in the universe. Only the original Avengers - Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) - remain, along with some key allies in the forms of War Machine (Don Cheadle), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). Each of the survivors deal with the fallout from Thanos' Decimation in different ways, but when an opportunity presents itself to potentially save those who vanished, they all come together and set out to defeat Thanos, once and for all.

For Avengers: Endgame , Marvel Studios assembles its veterans behind the scenes as well, re-teaming directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who joined the MCU with Captain America: The Winter Soldier , with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who've penned a total of six MCU movies since Captain America: The First Avenger . All that's to say, Avengers: Endgame fits perfectly within the larger MCU in terms of direction and screenwriting because it was created by those who had a prominent hand in crafting the sprawling cinematic universe. And with so much experience under their belts, the Russos excel at balancing the superhero spectacle with human drama, while the more focused story of Endgame allows for the characters to truly shine. There are moments when the story gets a little unwieldy, suffering from similar problems to Infinity War in maintaining a consistent pace throughout the entire film. But Avengers: Endgame is meant to be a culminating epic and it's clear that the Russos, Markus and McFeely took the care to make sure they got it right.

At the heart of Avengers: Endgame are the heroes we've been following since the very beginning. At this point in the franchise, there're too many heroes for one movie - even a three-hour movie - to focus on all of them. Avengers: Infinity War undoubtedly struggled under the weight of balancing so many characters. With half the universe gone, Endgame is able to focus on the original six Avengers, who are the true center of the MCU (at least, so far). The film remarkably balances its character arcs so well it's as if each hero gets a solo movie in Avengers: Endgame . There are certain character beats that may not work for all viewers, and even within the original six, certain heroes get more focus than others, unfortunately. To their credit, though, the actors give some of their best performances in the MCU, especially the original six: Downey, Evans, Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Johansson and Renner. Even with future movies or TV shows already planned for some characters, this is the original Avengers team's swan song, and the actors put their hearts and souls into Avengers: Endgame .

In addition to the character drama, Avengers: Endgame delivers superhero spectacle like nothing seen in the MCU - or any other superhero movie - ever before. With Endgame acting as the conclusion of the MCU thus far, it goes all in on action. There are times when Endgame falls back into Marvel's old problems (hordes of unimportant villains, too much CGI and muted coloring), but they're tempered with character-focused moments. While most of these are in service of the core six, each Marvel hero in Avengers: Endgame gets a moment to truly shine and join in on the superhero fun. Some of these moments are unashamedly fan service and, in fact, there's a great deal of fan service in Avengers: Endgame overall. But after 11 years and 21 movies, Marvel has earned some fan service, and it all adds to the epic, event nature of Avengers: Endgame .

Ultimately, Avengers: Endgame is a whole lotta movie, but the filmmakers put every single second of its three-hour runtime to good use. Since Endgame concludes the Infinity Saga (the official title of the story thus far), Marvel and the filmmakers have the unenviable task of delivering a movie that satisfies all MCU fans. While there are bound to be aspects of Avengers: Endgame that don't work for all viewers, for the most part the movie actually, truly offers a satisfying ending to the Infinity Saga. As a result, Avengers: Endgame is a must-see for Marvel fans, even those who have only a casual interest in the MCU. Because of the spectacle, it's worth seeing Avengers: Endgame in IMAX, though it isn't necessary to enjoy the movie. Marvel Studios' latest faces the highest expectations of any Marvel Studios movie thus far and manages to exceed them, which is nothing short of extraordinary. Simply speaking, Avengers: Endgame is one of the best Marvel movies ever.

Avengers: Endgame is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 181 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

Avengers: Endgame

The penultimate chapter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Endgame , marks the finale of the first three phases of the MCU and acts as part two of Avengers: Infinity War. With Earth's Mightiest Heroes failing to stop Thanos from wiping out half of all existence, the heroes discover one final chance to make things right. Journeying back through space and time, the surviving Avengers attempt to stop Thanos before all is lost.

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Review: What “Avengers: Endgame” Could Have Been

The empty churnings of last year’s “ Avengers: Infinity War ” ended on an impressive, if tentative, note of loss: a batch of beloved characters was reduced to ashes, murdered by Thanos (Josh Brolin), who, enabled by his possession of the six Infinity Stones, also killed half of all other living beings. The sense of grief, though, felt brazenly manipulative; given that the reversibility of time was planted as a plot element in the film, it was a foregone conclusion that these heroes would somehow be coming back in the next “Avengers” installment. As it turns out, the effort to bring them back is the story of “Avengers: Endgame,” the last film in the series.

The new movie (directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, as was its predecessor) prolongs the melancholy mood with which “Infinity War” ended. Despite its surges of superheroics and numbingly vague and grandiose battle scenes, “Endgame” is primarily in the elegiac mode—even if its principal strain of mourning is reserved not for the fate of individual characters but for the Avengers cycle itself. From the start, “Endgame” links to the previous film with a series of deaths and near-deaths, a new mourning and a narrow escape, and finds a group of surviving Avengers, twenty-three days after Thanos’s massacre, preparing a new mission. But Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), a.k.a., Iron Man, who is still grieving the death of Peter Parker in the previous film, erupts with Homeric wrath at his companions, especially at Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a.k.a., Captain America. Tony wants no part of the mission—or of the Avengers.

The action then leaps five years ahead, when the survivors of Thanos’s campaign inhabit cities in ruins. But the remaining Avengers have yet another plan, this one suggested by Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a.k.a. Ant-Man, to send the entire group back in time to recover Thanos’s stones and undo his murders. (It’s inspired by Scott’s time-warping journey, in infinitesimal form, to the so-called quantum realm, in “ Ant-Man and the Wasp .”) The science on hand isn’t good enough, though, and they need the help of the visionary inventor Tony, who at first turns them down again. He’s living in a quiet country house with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and their young daughter, appreciating what he considers his “second chance.” But Tony’s sense of guilt at the death of Peter Parker spurs him back into action, sparks his reconciliation with his cohorts, and gives rise to the time-travel adventures at the core of the drama.

The combination of superheroic battle, sentimental reunions, and time travel suggests, oddly, the classic genre of metaphysical military romance (“A Guy Named Joe,” for instance, which was remade by Steven Spielberg as “Always”). The pointed emotionalism in this premise—the return to the past, the redemption of failures, the repairing of old bonds and the forging of new ones—suggests that a resonant film might have emerged from “Endgame.” Some scenes have a strong melodramatic authority, and there are a few situations that induce an inspired aura of the uncanny. But these moments get lost in the movie’s stiflingly rigid yet bloated three-hour span. The Russos have peculiarly little sense of visual pleasure, little sense of beauty, little sense of metaphor, little aptitude for texture or composition; their spectacular conceit is purely one of scale, which is why their finest moments are quiet and dramatic ones. (For instance, there’s nothing here to rival the phantasmagoria of “ Ant-Man ” or “ Doctor Strange ,” let alone the thrilling political symbolism of “ Black Panther .”)

“Endgame” pivots on matters of memory. It’s a sequel that does more than depend on preceding films in the series; it invokes them onscreen as part of its time-travel plot. As the remaining Avengers of today are reinserted into scenes from their movies past, “Endgame” delivers momentarily fascinating though utterly undeveloped face-to-face confrontations (and even battles) of these present-day characters with their past selves. Some characters enter a loop involving their own origins and even encounter their own parents in earlier times (even, in some cases, before their own birth). The crux of the final battle is sparked by a next-level diabolical plot by Thanos, who realizes that he’s under siege from the Avengers because they, like the other survivors of his half-world extermination, remember how things were before. As a result, he hatches yet another scheme, which involves the obliteration, fabrication, and control of memory.

In “Endgame,” memory plays more than a dramatic role; it plays a moral one. Memory is represented as a fundamental freedom and as a crucial element of power. If only that freedom were an element of the movie itself. What’s missing from “Endgame” is the free play of imagination, the liberation of speculation, the meandering paths and loose ends that start in logic and lead to wonder. The climactic battle scenes are seemingly interminable; other episodes in imaginary realms are rigid, lumbering, and perfunctory. And I’d happily sacrifice an hour of that churning and plotting for a scene in which Scott Lang, returning to his home in San Francisco after a five-year absence during which he was counted as dead, walks in the door and has a discussion with his wife and daughter about what the hell happened.

The absence of such scenes is all the more regrettable given the one realm in which a glimmer of imaginative freedom shines through—in the strength of “Endgame” ’s performances. Above all, Downey carries the film with his wry and sulfuric acting, his grand, impulsive, thrillingly inflected delivery of the film’s cut-down, index-card dialogue. The movie is proof of how much a great actor can do with how little. Several of Rudd’s whimsical moments have an inspired sense of spontaneity. Also, Brie Larson makes much of her brief but prominent reprise of the role of Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel —she ramps the character’s confidence up to bravado and then to a near-camp intensity.

The cast of actors is diverse, though the Russos do little with that diversity. “Endgame” is a movie of men, of cishet men, and, in particular, of fathers—and their approaches to paternity suggest the movie’s crucial moral divide. Women are featured prominently throughout the film and act heroically in private and in battle, yet they do so with their personalities and mental lives nearly erased, reduced to the instantaneous import of the onscreen action. Characters of color are similarly prominent, and similarly effaced. There’s a particularly obtuse moment in which massed Wakandan troops—the only troops who are allied with the Avengers at large—enter battle. It’s an awful vision of black rank-and-file soldiers as heroic volunteers and cannon fodder, and the movie ignores the sufferings of these soldiers in battle. The movie’s lack of imaginative freedom reduces personal identity to pictorial identity; the grandiose and maudlin melodrama to which the movie rises feels as manipulative as did the dénouement of “Infinity War.”

This narrow dramatic determinism is the principal reason that the Marvelization of movies ultimately feels deadening, despite the occasional spectacular delight or dramatic twist. It’s not because of the ubiquity of the advertising or the number of screens on which the movies play. It’s because their hermetically sealed aesthetic narrows the inner lives of the characters depicted to a terrifying homogeneity, grooming audiences to welcome precisely such movies and to imagine themselves in their terms.

“Avengers: Infinity War” Reviewed: The Latest Marvel Movie Is a Two-and-a-Half-Hour Ad for All the Previous Marvel Movies

Friday essay: is this the Endgame - and did we win or did we lose?

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I had a momentary brain-fade when I went to the movies this week.

“Three tickets to … what’s it called again?” I asked.

“Endgame”, the ticket seller replied firmly, “What other movie is there?”

At over three hours long, it certainly is a movie for the fans, packed full of emotionally satisfying vignettes and snappy interactions for the cast of thousands that has become the Avengers trademark. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a faster three-hour movie.

Avengers: Endgame , the concluding half of Avengers: Infinity War , has quickly become one of the biggest grossing movies of all time . By pure numbers these are important and influential movies. So what are they are telling us?

Let me say at the outset that this is not a critique of the movie itself. I’m not going to document plot holes, flaws in logic or whether or not the science is correct . I’m happy to suspend a bit of disbelief for the sake of a good story. But I am interested in the function that stories like these play and what they reveal about our broader hopes and fears.

Although not pitched as one, Endgame is an environmental movie – and an apt one for our times. Its predecessor, Infinity War, saw the world under threat from powerful villain Thanos, whose home world had been destroyed by overpopulation and resource exploitation. His grief sets him on a quest (involving, naturally, a gauntlet studded with variously magical and powerful stones) to halve the population of the universe.

Despite being cast as the antagonist, it is Thanos’s character who undertakes the “hero’s journey” in this movie. By the end of Infinity War, Thanos manages to achieve his goal across the universe, without violence – painlessly and humanely, with a click of the fingers – wiping out exactly 50% of the population at random, all at once.

It’s a little unclear in Infinity War what Thanos intends to reduce: half the human population or half of all sentient life. His track record had focussed on people, killing “people planet by planet, massacre by massacre”. In Endgame the goal is broadened. Not just all humans or even all sentient life forms, not just the resource exploiters and over-users, but half of all life forms. It’s a telling ecological misstep.

Clearly, it’s the people that matter and humans in particular. Despite having the breadth of the universe as a stage, even the alien Avengers are strikingly Earth-centric, with the exception of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, who is the only one, aside from Thanos, who cares that the same thing is happening across thousands of planets.

Various critics have discussed whether Thanos’s population reduction strategy would work – at least in terms of halving the human population of Earth. And they generally conclude that it wouldn’t.

But this is an over-simplification of the movie’s message. The specific population reduction strategy Thanos employs can also be read as a broader environmental goal – to “restore” ecological balance. Climate change, pollution, species extinctions, overpopulation, resource use and distribution are all connected parts of the broader issue of environmental sustainability. The question is not, is population reduction a viable strategy? (Probably not.) Nor even, would a reduced human population be good for the planet? (Perhaps, if it were sustainable.)

The question Endgame poses for us is, are we willing to make personal sacrifices to save our own futures? To which the answer is a categorical no.

Our greatest fears

Eco-catastrophe fiction is often castigated for not being scientifically accurate, and for failing to promote action on any of the various threats that face our planet – overpopulation, pollution, extinction, nuclear fallout, climate change. But when my colleague and I looked at climate change fiction across the centuries , we found that such stories are not about providing answers to our problems, but articulating our greatest fears. These stories – in book or movie form – are reflections of how society imagines the world of the future.

Eco-catastrophe stories have been a part of our culture from the earliest mythological stories of floods, fires, eruptions and storms. These stories of punishment and redemption form the foundation for much of our literature, not least that of superheroes with god-like or even godly powers.

Read more: When the Bullin shrieked: Aboriginal memories of volcanic eruptions thousands of years ago

The emergence of both the novel (and modern science) in the 17th and 18th centuries saw a growing awareness of environmental change reflected in fiction. Early Romantic literature may have seen climate change as a metaphor for social progress and human advancement into a Utopia, but that rapidly shifted into the dystopian fears that dominate environmental fictional literature today.

From the mid-19th century onwards, fiction, and particularly science fiction, closely tracked developments in science. Our deeper understanding of past ice-ages and the influence of solar variation, geological instability and the oscillations of the earth on climate, emerged in stories like Gabriel De Tarde’s Underground Man , S Fowler Wright’s Deluge and William Wallace Cook’s Tales of Twenty Hundred.

Extra-terrestrial influences (comets rather than aliens) provided the catalyst for eco-catastrophe fiction in the 19th and 20th centuries. This phase was a phenomenon undoubtedly inspired by the first-hand experience of the “ little Ice Age ” which caused widespread famine, crop failures, and food riots across the Northern Hemisphere. Astronomer Camille Flammarion’s Omega: The Last Days of the World (1893-4) was perhaps one of the most influential of the comet-inspired fictions and marked the continuing dominance of dystopian over utopian visions for the future.

This pattern continued into the 20th and 21st centuries and, as the climate change debate expanded from a restricted scientific focus to a broader social and political dimension, the literature expanded from science fiction to a broader range of literary forms. Eco-catastrophe has emerged in every genre from thrillers to literary fiction and particularly young adult fiction. And of course, in the visual forms of storytelling – superhero, science fiction and apocalypse movies.

A sense of inevitability and hopelessness pervades much of the modern literature on climate change, irrespective of sub-genre. Rarely is climate change depicted as being solved by human agency. For many, the damage of climate change can only be overcome with the assistance of either supernatural or extra-terrestrial powers. We can see the same patterns in movies where the future of humanity is so often saved by superior intelligence rather than our own, either aliens, angels, or, as in Interstellar , our unrecognisably advanced selves.

Read more: Friday essay: how speculative fiction gained literary respectability

Distrust of scientists

The history of eco-castastrophic stories reveals that, far from being agents of resolution and improvement, scientists are mostly depicted as untrustworthy or even responsible for the crisis. Environmentalists are even less trustworthy than the scientists; they are frequently depicted as extremist and violent loonies.

This distrust is reflected throughout the Avengers franchise. The original 2012 Avengers film saw Tony Stark’s (aka Iron Man) sustainable power source, the Arc Reactor, co-opted to create a wormhole entry point for alien invasion. The shadowy law enforcement agency, SHIELD, subverts research into the environmental potential of the Tesseract, an alien object with infinite energy, for weapons development. The same theme recurs – green technology is dangerous and scientists cannot be trusted.

And nor can “environmentalists” like Thanos. On his home planet, his environmental crusade earns him the title “The Mad Titan”. By the end of Infinity War, however, he has completed his quest, accepted the sacrifice his choices entail, and his hero’s journey is at an end. Both he and the world have been transformed into a new order. Thanos sits in the countryside and watches the sunset.

Except that it’s not a happy ending. Endgame opens with a powerful scene that illustrates the central problem. Clint Barton (or to use his “made-up name”, Hawkeye) is picnicking with his family in the country – having given up his action persona – and is teaching his daughter to shoot arrows. As he turns away for a moment, his daughter, wife and two sons all suddenly disappear – victims of the 50% erasure. Hawkeye’s loss is both excessive and insurmountable. He loses everything.

Versions of this continuing loss permeate the movie. Hawkeye retreats into his vengeful violent superhero persona. Thor drinks himself, comically, into oblivion. Captain America runs group counselling sessions helping people to move on.

The differing manifestations of grief are represented in different characters – denial, anger, depression, bargaining, even acceptance. But these are not stages that characters work through. Ultimately all the characters are grief-stricken and unable to move forwards, except for Tony Stark, who has moved on but decides that, in a hastily explained piece of time-travel sleight of hand, he can fix the most of the problems without losing the future he has created for himself.

Read more: Avengers: Endgame exploits time travel and quantum mechanics as it tries to restore the universe

Nonetheless, the future in which our environmental problems are resolved is infused with melancholy. While Thanos’s rural retreat is a pastoral idyll, the rest of the world is empty, seemingly devoid of life. When Captain America mentions the environmental restoration, he is flippantly dismissed by Black Widow:

You know, if you’re about to tell me to look on the bright side - I’m about to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich.

In traditional superhero stories, the hero(ine) must sacrifice the thing they love most for the betterment of the world. But in Infinity War and Endgame, the heroes sacrifice the betterment of the world to save (or at least reconcile with) the things they love best. Individual interests win out over social or environmental restoration. Rather than securing the future we need, they save the world of the past. With superheroes like this, my sympathies lie with the villains (and not just because of Tom Hiddleston).

So, is Endgame a paean to conservative values, a retreat to an idealised version of the past, a failure to meet the genuine challenges that face the Earth and its ever expanding human population?

Nathaniel Rich, author of Odds Against Tomorrow (2013) once argued : “I don’t think that the novelist necessarily has the responsibility to write about global warming … but I do feel novelists should write about what these things do to the human heart.” This is true of movies too.

What Endgame reveals is that in our hearts we are afraid that the price of environmental salvation is too high, that the losses will be too great, that we will not be able to cope with the scale of the personal sacrifice required.

An insight into the cultural zeitgeist

There is no point in complaining that there are no great climate change movies, or books, with real solutions, or which inspire real action. This is not their purpose. Movies and books don’t help us to overcome our fears, they simply express them. But surely they also reinforce them. Cliched fears about the risks of environmental change, scientists and technology may not be intentionally promoted but they risk promulgating pervasive subconscious biases that both perpetuate and delay vital cultural change.

The real risks of environmental inaction, of course, massively outweigh the risks of any environmental action. But that message does not yet seem to be permeating the popular psyche.

It may well be true, too, that the worst environmental costs will not be borne by the relatively well-off viewers of Avengers movies, but disproportionately by poorer and more vulnerable communities (something that only heightens the irony of fictional East African nation Wakanda’s role in the Avengers franchise).

Effective environmental action does not demand the destruction of half the human population. But it does require the vastly more efficient use and distribution of resources. The sacrifice is not that of the individual, but the vested interests in old-world resources and technology who would prefer not to incur the costs of change. Responding to environmental change does not threaten our comforts, but failing to act will.

Endgame isn’t the endgame: it’s an insight into the cultural zeitgeist. Neither threats nor solutions come from purple aliens, gods or superheroes. They come from us – politicians, scientists, environmentalists, industry and the general public.

Markets, technology and industries can and will adapt rapidly to changing circumstances, in milliseconds, months or even decades. Economies recover, but species do not. The environment takes millennia to adapt and what is lost never comes back. We need to face our fears and find solutions to these problems, rather than just perpetuating the fantasy of regressing into the past.

As Peter Parker says: “You can’t be a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man, if there’s no neighbourhood.”

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‘Avengers: Endgame’: The Screenwriters Answer Every Question You Might Have

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By Dave Itzkoff

April 29, 2019

This article contains spoilers for “Avengers: Endgame.”

With “Avengers: Endgame,” the two-movie story line that started with “Avengers: Infinity War” is finished, along with the 22-film cycle that represents the Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. And some of the heroes we’ve followed on this decade-long adventure are gone, too.

In the three-hour span of “Endgame,” the Avengers confront and kill Thanos (Josh Brolin), who had used the Infinity Gauntlet to snap away half of all life in the universe . When the story resumes five years later, the Avengers are still left with their grief and remorse — until the unexpected return of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) kicks off a race back through time to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos could obtain them in the first place. Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) sacrifices her life; a colossal battle ensues; Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) dies; and Captain America (Chris Evans) finds a way to live the life he’d always wanted, reappearing as an old man to entrust his shield to the Falcon (Anthony Mackie).

These and many other head-spinning developments in “Endgame” emerged from the imaginations of its screenwriters, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who also wrote “Infinity War.” (Both films were directed by Joe and Anthony Russo .) Markus and McFeely have been friends and collaborators since the 1990s and also wrote all three “Captain America” movies as well as “Thor: The Dark World” (with Christopher L. Yost) and created the Marvel TV series “Agent Carter.”

In a recent interview in their offices in Los Angeles, Markus and McFeely discussed the many choices and possibilities of “Endgame,” the roads not taken and the decisions behind who lived and who died. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

[Read our review of “Avengers: Endgame.” | Check out all the superhero makeovers . | Catch up on all the M.C.U. movies in two minutes .]

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A Spoiler-Packed Review of Avengers: Endgame 's Highlights

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Congratulations! If you're reading this, then that probably means you've seen and semi-processed the three-hour superhero smorgasbord that is Avengers: Endgame . We, too, have enjoyed its wonders—and, boy, do we have thoughts . For a comic-book movie, the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe flick was rich with themes, arcs, and plots. It was also quite stellar. Yet, walking out of the theater, we all had questions, things we needed to work through that may or may not include a deep love for Lebowski Thor and Carol Danvers' Power Lesbian Haircut. We assembled WIRED writers and editors Jason Kehe, Jason Parham, Peter Rubin, and Angela Watercutter to analyze all of the biggest themes of Marvel's franchise-defining movie.

Jason Kehe: The hot new thing to do to supervillains: shock beheadings! First was Snoke, but that came at the end of Last Jedi . Not to be outdone, the Avengers—specifically pre-Lebowski Thor—surprise-decapitate Thanos at the beginning of Endgame . That shut up the whole theater. Wasn't Captain Marvel supposed to deal the death blow? What about the Infinity Stones? Who's going to finish whatever Thanos left gently sautéing stovetop? (Thor, apparently.) Then they flash-forward five years. Cool! The whole opening sequence is basically a resounding This isn't the movie you thought it'd be.

I was thinking about that when I read, in certain boneheaded, poopy reviews, that Endgame was designed—by machine algorithm, these critics seemed to imply—as pure "fan service." Huh? What do they think we're doing here, exactly? Hoping to be undone or challenged or forced to confront the existential miseries only true art can evoke? Insofar as Endgame is a reward, by turns energizing and moving, for fans who've watched these movies for years, then sure, it qualifies as "fan service," but I'm not sure that phrase was ever meant to be used pejoratively or dismissively. It's also not entirely accurate. We didn't ask for self-sacrificing Nat and Tony, or Pepper "Iron Woman" Potts, or Professor Hulk. (We did ask for the cat from Captain Marvel , or at least I did—where was Goose?) Also, the original idea of "fan service" involved, more often than not, anime boobies. Instead, Endgame gave us uglified Thor, fully clothed Hulk, and nary an objectified bod in sight. What am I missing? Was Endgame exactly the movie we thought it would be? Is "fan service" fair criticism?

Peter Rubin: Boneheaded and poopy? Gotta be some kind of award for pulling off that particular tonal exacta. The fan service, if you can call it that, was exactly the kind we've come to expect from the MCU, an outfit that prefers meta-commentary and Easter eggs over broader forms of pandering. I'd call Professor Hulk fan service for that exact reason! Endgame doesn't have the post-credits scenes that have given us stuff like Howard the Duck and Adam Warlock teasers, so instead we got Banner's merged personality baked into the movie. Besides, "fan service" is about as cogent as "it failed to capture the spirit of the original," a phrase that is basically the freezer-burned Hot Pocket of critical insight.

Angela Watercutter: Thank you for that, Peter. I, too, was kind of baffled by the number of reviews calling the latest Avengers fan service. In the truest sense of the term, it's correct—it is a film that does fans the service of giving them things that make them happy—but the phrase, as it's used in fandom, is a tongue-in-cheek understanding of "giving the fans what they want." It's almost always about showing skin or turning fanfic ships into canon. To give you an example, if Endgame was Fan Service for Angela, then it would've ended with Carol Danvers riding off into the sunset on Valkyrie's pegasus. (Marvel, that idea is all yours, free of charge.) Instead, it slyly tied up a lot of the plots while giving nods to the characters and moments that made audiences stick with this franchise for so long. That's just comic-book moviemaking. Moreover, this is a Disney flick, people; making fans happy is kind of their whole deal. Scoffing at Endgame 's quest to please people misses the point.

Jason Parham: But that's the thing about Endgame . It's not exactly fan service but it does do just enough, maybe more, to appease just about everyone in the theater (well, people who have a heart, anyway). It's just bad criticism—LOL at Peter labeling it the "freezer-burned Hot Pocket of critical insight"—and the kind that trivializes the incredible work the film accomplishes. To your original question, Jason, Endgame wasn't what at all what I thought it would be: After Thor's surprise-decapitation of Thanos, which completely threw me for a loop, I knew we were in for a three-hour (!!!) joyride.

I will say, one thing I didn't expect, and didn't much like, was how the movie felt so much more like a Remember When We Did This? montage. I can almost see Kevin Feige in an early meeting with the Russos and their screenwriters like: "Guys, these ideas are great. Really great. I love 'em. But let's remind everyone all of the cool shit we did to get here!" I think a more self-assured film (yes, one even more confident than this one) wouldn't have relished in What Was as much. Of course, we're traveling through time, so it's unavoidable—it's the literal thread of the film!—but I wonder what more magic we could've experienced if it didn't dwell on revisiting everything we already know and love about the MCU. What kind of film would we have gotten if its eyes were forward? All of which is to say, in spite of that, I still found it endlessly enjoyable. Give me more Paul Rudd!

Watercutter: So, I already touched on this in our review , but to Jason's point, I was fascinated by the way Endgame used time travel as a storytelling tool. I enjoy a good time-jump movie as much as the next person, but so often those narratives can devolve into tropes. When I realized the only way the Avengers were going to beat Thanos after Infinity War was to rewind the clock, I got worried. If Endgame just felt like one long deus ex Iron Machina , it was going to be a letdown. There's nothing interesting about going back and fixing the past like "ta-da!"

I was relieved and surprised. Although it still had a few exposition scenes where a bunch of characters argue about quantum physics and screwing up the past, Endgame was also self-aware enough to acknowledge them. (Scott Lang saying, "So Back to the Future is a bunch of bullshit?" was a highlight.) The time travel also allowed for a good third of the movie to be about going back and revisiting the films that came before it. Normally this would lead me to James Harden levels of eye roll, but it was nice. Some of these characters may not have solo movies after this, so why not visit their worlds one last time? (Also, those cameos .) It was a blatant ploy to serve fans (see above), but it's also a comic-book movie. I say, bring on the schmaltz! What'd you guys think?

Rubin: Two things I loved about the movie's thick coating of time travel—call it temporal tempura? Fine, if I have to—were how it placed the MCU more squarely in the real world, and especially how it allowed the writers to to fend off solutions like "just kill baby Thanos!" Playing with time and consequence is so fluttery that you should only take it on if you're willing to redefine it, right? Otherwise, you're left playing in a sandbox that's all wet with whatever The Butterfly Effect left behind.

It has to be said, though: If I had the power to go back and change one thing in this movie, it'd be forcing a better explanation of how Iron Man was able to pickpocket the Infinity Stones out of the damn gauntlet . What the hell was that?!

Watercutter: Seriously, I don't know. I also don't fully understand how Tony was able to wield those stones when doing the same thing nearly flattened gamma-powered Professor Hulk. Sure, the effort took a huge toll on Stark, but Hulk was barely able to put his fingers together, let alone snap them, even when wearing an Iron Man glove. But again, this is a comic-book movie; logic is a fool's errand.

Kehe: Well, Hulk does have thicker fingers? I don't know. (Speaking of the green man's hands, though: One of my favorite scenes was Hulk giving Ant-Man two fresh tacos out on the tarmac. They looked so nice and tiny.) What I'll say about the time traveling in Endgame is that it never felt forced or done out of narrative desperation. There were any number of ways the Avengers could've destroyed Thanos and un-raptured the masses. Time travel felt like the right decision , even a creatively inspired one, in that it allowed the movie to quite literally celebrate the time we've spent with these characters. It also gave us two of the movie's more ingenious solutions: geriatric Cap (lovingly rendered, with Clint Eastwoodian eye twinkle) and alternate-timeline Gamora, who still has that great love-hate relationship with her sister but has to fall for Quill all over again.

Finally, time travel lets the movie reflect on itself in a not-obnoxious way. So much superhero-style metamodernism ( Guardians , Deadpool ) feels winky and ironic—a sensibility that hasn't exactly aged well. Here, there's a subtlety and suaveness to the self-awareness. A coolness, really. I see Endgame has having finally nailed this particular tone, whether it's Pepper (as Gwyneth) reading about the science of composting, Ant-Man wishing he were in as much selfie-demand as Hulk, or Captain America getting annoyed at his own past self's in-battle catchphrases ("I could do this all day").

Rubin: Can't forget Hulk's begrudging smashy-smashy when they go back to the Battle of New York—complete with commentary. In 2019, apparently, destruction comes with a side of deconstruction.

Rubin: Post-movie conversations start from one of two places: "What'd you think?" and "What were your favorite parts?" When Jason Kehe and I were walking back to the office from the screening we attended, we ended up with the latter, and almost immediately the conversation turned from the movie's obvious shocks and pleasures—Thanos losing his head in the movie's first few minutes, Lebowski Thor and Korg's Fortnite woes, that group shot of the MCU's phalanx of superpowered women—to the things that had gone a little deeper. Specifically, we kept coming back to the idea of family and redemption.

Thor and his mom on the day she died. Tony sharing an unexpectedly candid elevator ride with his dad in 1970. The final shot of Steve and Peggy dancing. Clint's agony and ensuing nihilism after the Snappening. Even that moment at the end between Clint and Wanda, each of whom had in some way been responsible for the loss of hugely important people in their lives. These all could have been empty, or cloying, but instead helped remind us that these are real people—gods sometimes, sure, but people.

One of Endgame 's toughest challenges was to build a movie around the core sextet that also encompassed dozens of others, and to the Russo brothers' credit they did exactly that. What I didn't expect was for the treatment of that sextet to be so satisfying at a character level. The original Avengers have always enjoyed banter and shawarma , but the heroes who hadn't already crossed from comics into the popular imagination—Natasha/Black Widow and Clint/Hawkeye especially, since they don't have their own origin movies—never got to be much more than black-clad mercenaries with dark histories. Until now. In fact, all of them got the treatment they deserve (except Hulk, I guess, but now that Banner found a way to stabilize himself into something like Merged/Professor Hulk , I'm hoping we'll get more of him in the future), and much of that came from seeing them confront their own pasts.

Is that putting too much on a movie like this? I mean, of course it had the burden of saving the universe and wrapping up a handful of story arcs, but with each passing day I find myself a little more impressed with how it did so.

Watercutter: I'd also add Scott Lang's arc to this mix. He didn't go back in time like Tony or Thor to do it, but considering he lost five years in the Quantum Realm, seeing him track down his daughter and have that moment with her felt right. Scott trying to do right by his family has always been a big part of the Ant-Man movies, and considering the circumstances he didn't have much to redeem himself for here, but since being a superhero kept him away from Cassie for so long I thought their reunion was touching. (Reader, I wept.) So much of these movies has been about family—chosen or otherwise—and seeing those ties reinforced at the End was a smart move. Hell, even Nebula and Gamora had their moment of reconciliation.

Parham: Angela, I was shocked at how integral Nebula and Gamora were to the fabric of the movie. Their bond as sisters—and as daughters trying to get from under the shadow of Daddy Thanos—was one of the film's true gifts. I would've never guessed Nebula to be one of the film's most essential elements. Also, it's so rare to see such a conflicted, loving, and imperfect relationship between women in a cinematic vehicle of this nature. Hell, for a franchise that mostly given voice to men, its insistence on sisterhood and women grappling with power and loss in the final sendoff was inspiring to watch (if a bit too late). There was Black Widow carrying the burden of leadership in the early tints of the film. Valkyrie stepping in for Man Baby Thor, who'd gone full Lebowski, to make certain New Asgard, like Old Asgard, doesn't perish. (Isn't it interesting that the strongest Avenger seems to be the weakest emotionally?) Though we don't see much of her, Captain Marvel is basically off protecting the rest of the universe while everyone on Earth wallows in grief. What can't Carol Danvers do? Thor's mom proved to be the backbone he needed to shake his overwhelming sorrow. There was also Wanda going full badass sorceress on Thanos in the final battle, which gave us one of MCU's most stirring and indelible scenes of female power. When Okoye, Pepper, Valkyrie, everyone assembles— wooooo . I got chills.

Kehe: So true, guys. Yeah, as Peter says, all you want to do after seeing Endgame is talk about the best parts. In a way that's what the movie was: stitched-together moments, everyone getting their due. For me, Thor's sitdown with Mom was just about note-perfect. She's never had much screen time, so her death didn't feel hugely wrenching. Yet Thor's always been so broken up about it, and here we get to see why: She's this wise, all-seeing, compassionate soul (in many ways the opposite of Odin) who takes one look at Fat Future Thor and accepts his pain. Plus, she was raised by witches. I wish I were raised by witches.

Parham: Goodbyes are hard. Overall, that's what makes Endgame particularly affecting for me—not as a film (the two deaths aside) but as a cultural product. It signals the end. Or, an end. For all the nostalgia (Whedon's original Avengers remains a thrill) and instability ( Thor: The Dark World , anyone?) that marked the first two phases, the releases under Phase Three were, as a unit, more daring, poetic, confident, sophisticated, and just-plain fun than their predecessors. Phase Three was a clear maturation. It was a wildly satisfying journey full of, well, marvel: from Germany to Wakanda to Asgard, across alternate dimensions, through the hilly streets of San Francisco, and into the strange campy depths of Sakaar. But even the Marvel Universe is not immune to fate. Ends are inevitable. A great odyssey—its hardships, its triumphs—can only really come into view once the hero's concluded. Like Tony said: "Part of the journey is the end."

It's the one line from Endgame I haven't been able to shake. Before this, nothing in MCU felt concrete or final. Realities were always fair game for manipulation before—why would this be any different? But it was. Proof that even MCU is finite. That nothing lasts forever. Thankfully, ends also signal new beginnings. Cue Phase Four! To kick start that process, the Russo brothers—with a script from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely—tied a neat bow around three central Avenger character arcs: killing Iron Man and Black Widow, and aging Captain America to the point of retirement. Naturally, questions arise: What does that mean for the rest of the team? What will the Avengers look like now? Will they exist in some alternate form in the next series of films? Phase Four seems especially ripe for crossover appeal; the ground's fertile with possibility. Some of the seeds seem to already be planted, too. Lewboski Thor joined the Guardians. Cap knighted Falcon as next in line (a black Captain America—sign me up!). Also, with Tony dead, does that mean we will finally get Ironheart ? (There's been chatter of an Ironheart film coming to the MCU, which would be chef's kiss .)

As ambitious as Marvel has gotten with its character development and storytelling, how do you see Phase Four taking shape? Also, what would you personally like to see happen? I want a few dream scenarios!

Watercutter: I'm on board with everything you just said, Jason. Particularly the Ironheart film.

What do I want? Definitely another Black Panther movie, maybe two or three. I really want to see what happens now that Wakanda's wonders are no longer a secret. I want to know what Shuri does next. Is she running that STEM education center in Oakland? Will she be opening more? Does she build herself suits and weapons and get her own superhero adventure? I hope the question to all of those is "yes."

Also, more Captain Marvel movies, please. Shipping desires aside, I would like to see a buddy movie with her and Valkyrie. Maybe a film that's just her and Rocket talking about haircuts. I'm open to a lot of possibilities. (Side note: I really want to see all the emails Rocket apparently sent to Natasha.)

What else do y'all want from Phase Four?

Rubin: Maaaan, I'm already in line for BP2 . Killmonger's liberation theology may not have stuck, but with Wakanda opening itself to the outside world, I'm excited to see if and how Ryan Coogler will have fun with real-world ideas like gentrification. (You just know some befleeced developer is already angling to build Wakondominiums with a Blue Bottle at street level.) The same goes for the Thordians of the Quillaxy, as I'm now insisting on calling them. Even 30 seconds of the God of Thunder toying with Star-Lord's natural insecurity was a joy, and adding Chris Hemsworth—who, between Ragnarok and Endgame, might just have the best comic timing in the MCU—is a nice shot of novelty for the Guardians.

But these, and Captain Marvel, are just characters we already know. GOTG2 's end credits teased the arrival of Adam Warlock, an incredibly powerful hero who also just so happens to have an evil counterpart known as Magus. Sounds like a promising baddie to me! And with Disney finally gobbling up Fox, that leaves the Fantastic Four—and Galactus and Silver Surfer to boot—free to enlist in the MCU. Honestly, I don't care if we ever come back to Earth again; I'm loving the potential for cosmic chaos.

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Entertainment

Avengers: Endgame gives Iron Man, Captain America, and the other heroes what they deserve

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s season finale is all payoff

by Susana Polo

Avengers: Endgame cast collage illustration

It took me a few months, and a few viewings, but I have to admit a critic’s failing: I cooled on Avengers: Infinity War after my initial screening . Even when I held the movie in good esteem, I recognized that its screenwriters were kludging together whatever they could build against the iron constraints of the story’s massive cast and universe-spanning reach. At the time, I just thought that was as good as could be done to squeeze a comic book crossover maxi-series into two hours and 40 minutes.

After watching Avengers: Endgame , I wonder if Infinity War just took the bullet of being 180 minutes of table-setting masquerading as a complete film.

Where Infinity War had trouble finding time for characters, Endgame is about nothing but character work, the kind that can only work in a narrative as old and wide as an interconnected comic book universe. The film, again by directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo, is a giant tribute to those who have stuck with the Marvel Cinematic Universe for over a decade, but a nutritious one, a cunningly crafted one.

Was Infinity War worth it for setting up for Endgame ? That’s something I might be thinking about for a while.

[ Ed. note: The following contains the mildest of first-act spoilers for Avengers: Endgame .]

Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: ENDGAME - L to R: Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), War Machine/James Rhodey (Don Cheadle), Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Rocket (voiced by Bradley

The first 20 minutes of Endgame are awkward, plodding along at a clunky pace as the movie struggles to extract itself from the sticky chrysalis of Infinity War . When it finally unfolds its butterfly wings and takes off, Endgame diverges from what I think most fans expect it will be. Each turn is as momentous as Infinity War ’s finale.

Avengers: Endgame is a heist movie, and it’s written like one. We know in our comics-trained hearts that our heroes are going to win this one, but a surprisingly tight script does some frankly ingenious problem-solving to raise the stakes over and over again. That logic opens up emotional possibilities for our heroes like no other genre of story can, and while the thrust of the plot is about cosmic rocks, it is hung on a framework of character development and payoff. And there’s nothing Endgame sets up that it doesn’t pay off.

This is the first Avengers film after Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man , and Thor: Ragnarok that really blends all of the genres in the Marvel Cinematic Universe without feeling like three Lego projects bricked up together. The script swims through effortlessly cool Iron Man (2008) and Avengers (2012) bombast to Captain America: The Winter Soldier spy pastiche to the operatic drama of the first two Thor films, and even pulls off some Ant-Man -style slapstick without being hokey.

Paul Rudd serves often as our window character — the average guy who just can’t believe how cool this all is — and his interactions with the other masterful comedic actors in the cast are to be savored. Chris Hemsworth is clearly having the time of his life as a more comedically inflected, post- Ragnarok Thor, who’s been completely blown back by everything that’s happened to him since the destruction of Asgard.

Marvel Studios’ AVENGERS: ENDGAME..Ant-Man/Scott Lang (Paul Rudd)..Photo: Film Frame

But while Endgame is full to the brim with (deeply character-based) humor, Marvel’s habit of undercutting drama with winks about how it doesn’t take this comic-booky stuff all that seriously is nowhere to be found. In fact, Chris Evans’ Cap and, of all people, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, have some scenes that just might bring you to tears.

All of this character work is done primarily in service of the core Avengers, which leaves their respective supporting casts — some of them as beloved or more so than a few of the more minor Avengers — without too much dimensionality. But I suppose that’s what the TV shows are for .

There are times when Endgame drops back into the bleakness of Infinity War , then rescues itself. There is still no getting around the fact that three hours is too long to spend in a theater, and as with most superhero movies, the final confrontation is a bit of a mess of punching and yelling. But Endgame knows what its audience wants, and delivers that without feeling like quote-unquote fan service.

I was feeling pretty fatigued about the MCU one year after Infinity War , ready for a new start with Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, and whoever would be left (plus the Eternals and Shang-Chi , one assumes). Endgame reminded me that I still care about Captain America and Iron Man, by taking the time to show me why I should.

We’ve talked about the limitations of movies to capture comic book storytelling , and Endgame doesn’t prove them wrong. But it shows that there are some commensurate storytelling elements that films can employ in the genre that the comic books can’t. They can give their characters endings that last, satisfy, and pave the way for new stories ahead of them.

Avengers: Endgame will premiere April 26 in theaters.

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‘Avengers: Endgame’ Review: The MCU’s Long Goodbye Is an Emotional Wipeout

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Thanos demands my silence. So if you expect a lot of specific “who lives, who dies” spoilers in this review, snap out of it. However, it is fair to say that Avengers: Endgame, directed by the Russo brothers — Anthony and Joseph — with a fan’s reverence for all that came before, is truly epic and thunderously exciting. You probably won’t care that at three hours, it’s bloated, uneven and all over the place, flitting from character to character like a bird that doesn’t know where to land. And yet the movie hits you like a shot in the heart, providing a satisfying closure even when its hard to believe that Marvel will ever really kill a franchise that’s amassed $19 billion at the global box office. Of the 22 films in the MCU that began in 2008 with Iron Man, Endgame is the most personal yet — an emotional wipeout that knows intimacy is its real superpower.

Avengers: Endgame and the State of the Modern Superhero

With 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War as our source, what we grasp going in is that Thanos (a superb Josh Brolin giving tragic dimension to a CGI villain) has decimated half of all living creatures in the universe. Only six of the original Avengers remain: Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ), Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Steve Rogers/Captain America ( Chris Evans ) and Bruce Banner/Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo ). Also in play are James Rhodes/War Machine ( Don Cheadle ), Rocket the space raccoon (hilariously growled by Bradley Cooper), Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and Nebula (the sublime Karen Gillan), the supervillain’s reformed blue-meanie daughter. Their mission impossible, and there’s no question that they’ll choose to accept it, is to avenge the dead by destroying Thanos, bring back the six Infinity Stones that hold the key to ultimate control and just maybe find a way to restore a semblance of order.

With Infinity War, the Russos left audiences with their mouths open in shock as beloved characters were reduced to dust and evil emerged triumphant. Who does that? With Endgame, from an original script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the filmmakers take you places you can’t possibly see coming regarding who dies and who lives to tell their story. Don’t expect a typical happy ending. Just prepare to be wowed.

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For a movie bursting with action and culminating in a one-for-the-time capsule showdown, Endgame starts on a quietly reflective note. No Avenger is left unbroken by the devastation that ensued when Thanos snapped his fingers and half the world turned to dust. (Some mild plot spoilers ahead.) The movie jumps ahead five years after that moment, with our superheroes are empty shells forced to reflect on their failures. Tragedy has set Hawkeye adrift. Iron Man has retreated into the cocoon of family life with wife Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Thor has lost his home on Asgard. Hulk has learned to subdue his baser instincts. And Black Widow wonders if any sense can be made of it all. That’s when Ant-Man (Paul Rudd, amiable as ever) shows up, fresh from the Quantum Realm, with an idea for a “time heist.” You don’t have to make jokes about the clichéd time travel plot — the film is ready, willing and able to make its own, with Back to the Future coming in for a serious ribbing.

The Russos make sure there are lots of intentional giggles, especially when Cap is told that his uniform “does nothing for your ass” or Thor lards up with bellyfat or Hulk just stands there like a big green machine. Cheers to Ruffalo and Hemsworth for getting the most laughs without sacrificing character. Downey lowers Stark’s snark quotient to create something genuinely moving. His young daughter measures her devotion to him in multiples. “I love you 3000,” she says. Fans will surely feel the same.

Audiences affection for these Avengers carries the film over its rough spots. Some characters get their due (let’s hear it for the the women of Wakanda!) , while others stay on the outside looking in. A few supporting characters who show up for the big third-act battle have big moments that feel unearned. Also, it seems like Endgame has at least six endings, when the first one handily gets the job done.

Still, this long goodbye gets to you. It’s not an ardent and artful game-changer like Black Panther ; there probably isn’t a Best Picture Oscar nomination in its future. So what? You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll thrill to the action fireworks. You’ll love it 3000. And not for a minute will you believe it’s really a farewell.

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Avengers: Endgame (2019) Review

AN EPIC (AND DEEPLY SATISFYING)

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