Avengers: Endgame Review

Eleven Years And Twenty-One Films

Eleven years and twenty-one films all come to a head in Avengers: Endgame. Does the movie live up to they hype? To a degree, yes, but it is far from a perfect film.

No spoilers ahead unless you’ve missed some of the previous films.

This film picks up a few weeks after the events of Avengers: Infinity War and we see the surviving Avengers set off on a mission to reclaim the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos. Instead, they find that the gauntlet has been destroyed along with all of the Infinity Stones.

Refusing to give up on their lost friends and half of the rest of the world’s population, the gang regroups when they discover that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) wasn’t snapped away as they all believed, but was actually trapped in the Quantum Realm the entire time. For him it’s only been five hours, but for the rest of the Avengers it has been five years.

With a new game plan in motion, the group splits up and heads into the past in order to collect the Infinity Stones before they were claimed by Thanos. Thanos learns of their plan and, as any decent villain would do, puts his own scheme into action to stop the Avengers and all life itself once and for all.

The film is pretty good. It’s inferior to Infinity War in my opinion and in all honesty is a bit top heavy with characters. A lot of time is spent dwelling on the depression of some characters coping with the loss of so many people and the failure of the group as a whole. While I understand why these moments were in the film, I believe that they could have been wrapped up a lot faster. Also, with a run time of over three hours, I found my mind wandering in the first hour of the film.

Once our heroes start seeking out the Infinity Stones, the movie goes into fan service mode by replaying certain scenes from some of the other films while our heroes attempt to acquire the stones. It makes for some rather nostalgic moments.

There are a few moments in this film that attempt to grab at your heart, but much like with Infinity War, it’s not like the audience wasn’t expecting certain characters to die or make some huge sacrifice. I will admit that one scene (and it wasn’t a depressing scene) really caught me. It was an iconic moment in the film and something that I’ve been waiting for ever since it was hinted at in a previous Avengers film. That moment alone was worth sitting through quite a few dull moments in the film.

The film’s cast did great jobs all around with one exception. Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel felt forced into the film. Much like in her own movie, Larson’s acting was stiff and she didn’t seem to gel very well with the rest of the cast. There’s a particularly awkward interaction between her and Tom Holland’s Spider-Man that was played for laughs, but Larson was extremely rigid in the scene. The best performances of the film went to Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye/Ronin, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, and Chris Evans as Captain America. These three characters showed more development and range in this film than most of the other characters have in the entire MCU run of films. Renner was especially great as a broken man with no reason to live. He reminded me of Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday from the classic western Tombstone. He had nothing to lose and was deadlier for it.

With such a crowded field of characters, only a few others were allowed to shine. Robert Downey, Jr.’s Iron Man (obviously) got a lot of screen time as did Chris Hemsworth’s Thor. Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk was reduced to comic relief throughout most of the film and didn’t really have any epic moments that I recall. The rest of the Avengers did well despite having limited roles.

Alan Silvestri handled the music for the film and, as always, proved that the film’s score was just as important as any character. He made the obvious tear-jerking moments better and the heroic moments event greater.

The movie’s CGI was hit-and-miss. Once again it was pretty obvious that Thanos and many of the other characters were rendered instead of people in suits. While it didn’t necessarily distract from the film overall, I always mention the CGI because so many people brag on it in Marvel films. Seriously, folks, the CGI could be better.

I know that I’m in the minority when it comes to this film. It was very good and definitely worth watching, but it could have been shaved down a bit or, instead of shaving it down, more attention could have been given to other characters in exchange for dropping some of the depressing scenes.

Thanks for reading my review. Let me know what you think in the comments.