The blockbuster to beat all blockbusters is finally here.
Avengers: Endgame is Marvel's love letter to its own Cinematic Universe, tying together
all 21 films that came before it.
So how did it do?
From its early stumbles to its stirring finish, here are the five worst and five best things
about Marvel's latest genre juggernaut.
Warning: Massive spoilers ahead!
Infinity War is a tough act to follow, with all the Spider-Man-dissolving and whatnot.
Half the life in the MCU was just snuffed out!
So it's no surprise that Endgame starts on a hopeless note.
But Infinity War's infamously brutal finish, unfortunately, makes the first 20 minutes
or so of Endgame a bit of a slog.
It's a glaring weak spot, especially for a film with such an epic runtime.
There's a gap between the Hawkeye-centered cold open and the title card, in particular,
that feels stagnant, especially considering the thrill ride to come.
Part of the reason for that is trailer fatigue; Marvel did a great job limiting promotional
footage mainly to these early moments, but the downside to that is that the start of
the film felt like watching the trailers and TV spots all over again, without enough fresh
material mixed in to make it feel like the film had properly started.
There are a surprising number of moving moments in Endgame, especially considering it's arguably
the biggest Hollywood blockbuster action spectacle ever conceived, with an epic battle scene
centerpiece that felt like it was choreographed by a pack of bright 11-year-olds on a sugar
binge.
There's Happy Hogan's tear-jerking hamburger funeral talk to Tony's daughter Morgan, for
example, which also works on a meta level, since Happy actor Jon Favreau directed 2008's
Iron Man, which kickstarted the MCU.
The chat also hearkens back to all the hamburger talk in Iron Man.
But Happy's brief tender moment is just one tiny beat in Endgame that likely had moviegoers
stifling sobs.
There's the "sacrifice off" for the Soul Stone between Hawkeye and Black Widow, Tony's ultimate
sacrifice, Peter Parker and "Mr. Stark" reuniting, Tony connecting with his father in 1970 — the
list goes on and on.
While Endgame certainly feels better-paced overall than the occasionally sluggish Infinity
War, the numbers don't lie.
At just more than three hours long, you'll need to prepare accordingly, going easy on
the soda and maybe even prepping your posterior with some Doctor Strange-style yoga.
As satisfying as it was to spend this long with our favorite MCU heroes, some of these
gags could have been saved for the Blu-ray, or just left on the cutting room floor.
There is certainly fat to be trimmed in the trip to New Asgard (in more ways than one!),
or in the uneven journey to New Jersey back in 1970.
The Howard and Tony scenes in this timey-wimey jaunt were effective, but this leg of the
"Time Heist" overall was arguably the weakest.
Balancing the many moods of the MCU in one three hour thesis statement is no mean feat.
But the Russo brothers managed to do just that in Endgame, skillfully blending the cool,
the cosmic, the bombastic, and the slapsticky sides of this vast and daunting universe.
It's also way funnier than you'd expect, considering the circumstances these heroes are in and
how high the stakes are.
But there's also a healthy dose of refreshing silliness, most of it aimed at Thor, who's
sporting a beer belly and getting compared to The Dude in The Big Lebowski by Tony Stark.
Nevermind the Last Action Hero-style switcheroo that would be necessary here, since Lebowski
star Jeff Bridges also played Iron Man villain Obadiah Stane.
"That was you!
You were in that movie!"
"You were in a movie?"
"Yes."
It's a great gag at first to see the God of Thunder humbled in this way, compelled to
shirk his highfalutin' Asgardian duties for more mortal endeavors, even if it overstays
its welcome a bit.
Speaking of which …
There are some tonally erratic moments in Endgame, with some emotional ping-ponging
between post-apocalyptic hopelessness and cartoonishness.
In other words: It's a comic book movie!
But one moment that flat-out just doesn't work is when a tipsy Thor helps his buddy
Korg navigate a session of Fortnite.
A player named "noobmaster69" is giving Korg trouble, you see, since … Wait — what
movie is this again?
Look: There's nothing wrong with Fortnite per se or including IRL pop culture in an
MCU flick — and it'll age better than, say, the Bill Maher cameo in Iron Man 3 — but
these are two great tastes that simply don't taste great together … at least not on film.
The limited time Avengers/Fortnite crossover is a blast, but the product placement in the
film was just too much.
With its trippy and richly rewarding time-travel plot, Endgame feels in many ways like a "greatest
hits" supercut of our favorite MCU moments.
It's a fitting tribute, since it's the last time we'll see this particular cast of heroes
together in maybe forever.
It also feels a lot like 2012's Avengers — way more than Infinity War did — with the Whedonesque
meta-banter about Back to the Future and the practicalities of time travel.
There's also an excellent callback to the elevator fight in 2014’s Captain America:
The Winter Soldier, the welcome return of Tilda Swinton's The Ancient One from Doctor
Strange, the "instant kill mode" introduced in Homecoming finally put to good use by Spider-Man,
and so much more.
The Fortnite gag felt the most like a weak Saturday Night Live sketch, but the whole
"What if Thor, but fat?"
subplot was perhaps the most grating aspect of Endgame.
There were certainly moments when the silliness served to inject some levity into the famously
pompous Asgardian, but didn't Ragnarok do enough to make Thor a winning comic character?
Chris Hemsworth is definitely up to the task of playing this kind of broad humor, but it
went too far.
When Thor was having a panic attack at the sight of his mother, for example, Hemsworth
was playing it for laughs, but the scene was really pretty tragic, bordering on PTSD.
Thor had been undermined by this point by all the "wacky fat guy" stuff; plus his character
arc was counter to the development he saw in Ragnarok, when he learned there to embrace
his role as a leader.
But now he's heading into space and bestowing Asgardian leadership to Valkyrie?
It's a wacky little twist, made more believable and palatable by Hemsworth's winning performance,
but something just feels off about it.
Endgame culminates with an extraordinary battle scene featuring an absurd amount of characters
clashing on some totally scorched Earth, like a group of excited kids dumped a bucket of
Marvel action figures in the dirt and spent the afternoon swooshing them through the air,
banging them together until some kind of convoluted resolution was reached.
It's kind of perfect!
It's an incredible sequence featuring a brain-melting amount of CGI, but that hardly matters when
you're caught up in the majesty and brutality of it all.
It's a whirlwind of badass character intros, crowd-pleasing triumphs, and a meme-ready
scene featuring the most power women in the MCU teaming up for the first time.
It's almost too much to take in at once, but nothing in the MCU so far has captured the
epic scope of the comics or brought to life what it would really be like if dozens of
super-powered folks clashed in such a high-stakes battle.
After 11 years and 22 MCU adventures, one of the worst things about Endgame is that
it really is living up to the promise of its title.
Sure, the MCU will live on via Disney+, with several characters toplining their own shows,
and the big screen MCU machine will grind on, churning out fare that's likely going
to be excellent in its own way.
But this special blend of characters will probably never again assemble on the big screen.
That said, Endgame is an excellent showcase and recap for all that the MCU Infinity Saga
had to offer, skillfully blending all the elements that made this decade-plus run so
winning into an epic that's ultimately satisfying and hard to quibble with.
Cap's impossibly romantic time travel adventure to "get a life" with Peggy Carter is just
one of many examples in Endgame of Marvel offering a real sense of closure in a cinematic
universe that's been resistant to it from the first post-credits scene in Iron Man.
In the 21 MCU films that preceded it, there was always a nagging sense of "What's next?"
But with Endgame, Marvel finally made a film that truly feels like the end of great saga.
The Russo brothers, in fact, even decided to omit a post-credits teaser this time around,
a controversial move that reinforces the finality of the film's title, signalling to fans that
this isn't a $350M advertisement for what's ahead, but a proper bookend to the film that
started it all.
We even get a triumphant "I am Iron Man!" from Tony Stark, right before his ultimate
sacrifice, echoing the end of the first MCU adventure.
"I am Iron Man."
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