Okay, Marvel Studios. You can stop now.
There are going to be as many Avengers: Endgame spoilers as I can think of following the jump, so watch out. Then again, I assume that if you breathe, you’ve already seen the movie, sooooooooooooo…jump away.
I mean jump toward the post. That way. Like, thataway.
Full disclosure: I don’t make it a habit to watch trailers for much besides the odd fighting game here or there. Having been burned in the past, I’ve safeguarded myself for the future by basically sidestepping trailers unless they’re unavoidable…or tied to Sonic the Hedgehog: Uncanny Valley Edition. Thanks to that rule, I knew very little about Endgame except for its title, Iron Man would keep drifting in space for a bit, everybody gets red and white suits, and Ant-Man does…something.
Guess I made the right move. Endgame was not the movie I expected, but I’m glad it wasn’t. What could have been a big dumb three-hour romp of wall-to-wall action actually tries its best to be something more -- thoughtful, meditative, and willing to trust its audience. While I wouldn’t say it’s the greatest movie ever, or that it was 100% successful in everything it went for, I’m satisfied with the end result and can’t think of many better ways to cap off a 22-movie story arc.
If the MCU stopped pumping out movies right then and there, I’d be fine with it. But since it’s not? At least we have some proper punctuation.
One of the biggest things that jumps out at me about Endgame is that it’s the slowest of slow burns. I feel like that’s consistent with a lot of movies in the MCU; you could put them under the action umbrella, yes, but multiple installments have made you wait for the bulk of that action for the sake of developing characters, scenarios, and worlds. That’s so true of this movie, it feels like nearly a third of it -- meaning it’s one out of three hours -- is spent being slow and quiet with the action sprinkled conservatively throughout.
I’m okay with that. Mostly. I’ll be the first to admit that there were times I got a little fidgety over the lack of swish-boom-bangs, and legitimately wondered when the real fighting would start. The counterbalance is that the heroes are doing more than spinning their wheels until it’s time for the runback against Thanos. Part of that comes from the fact that Thanos, the purple powerhouse who knocked the Avengers around and wiped out half of the universe’s life, gets killed unceremoniously within minutes of the title card. Then there’s the question of “Okay, so what now?” The answer to that is a pretty bold choice for a mainstream blockbuster: live in a world that’s half-empty.
Much like the movie at large, the approach mostly works. There are some parts that are kind of cliche and unavoidable (Ant-Man comes home and meets his newly grown Avenger in the making daughter, Iron Man had a kid offscreen to help quasi-redeem his original scumbag characterization). And yeah, some parts aren’t as deftly handled as others; I legitimately fought back laughter upon seeing Hawkeye’s family get dusted at the start of the movie, because oh my God of course they would do that.
Yet it’s the effort itself that I respect, and here’s why: this is how the MCU deals with consequences, conclusively. The common complaint is that there are never any stakes because either people never die, or they can’t die because of actor contracts, movies slated for future release, or good old fashioned plot armor. I’m not one to pin consequences solely on body counts, but yes, the MCU isn’t exactly guilt-free here (the Sokovia Accords and the fallout from Civil War are probably going to be footnotes in the canon going forward).
Now that half the universe is canonically dead at the outset -- and stays dead for five years afterward, because hey, killing Thanos after the fact didn’t do crap! -- it was essential that the film crew made the snap and resultant Dust Bowl have real weight. Guess what? They did exactly that.
One of the best things about Endgame is how it feels like the cap to a lot of character arcs -- showing how far we’ve come both on the personal level for these heroes and as a situational response. Who are these people when they’re not going on missions and punching out baddies? Endgame has answers that vary from hero to hero. Tony Stark is flat out done with it all, having broken completely from Infinity War. Black Widow’s basically the new Nick Fury, only with a motherly edge and a much wider range of emotions than the secret agent we once knew. Steve “The Best One” Rogers offers a helping hand so that the survivors can move on, but can’t move on himself. Hulk dabs, and nothing more needs to be said about that.
Pretty much everyone here is a winner, inside and beyond the aftermath of the snap. The characters who’ve been so well-defined (for good or ill) through the other movies are given chances here to surprise audiences all over again, yet still stay true to their personas. Cap’s adopted pragmatism, Banner fully accepting his monster half (albeit offscreen), Thor’s crisis of confidence half-solved by confiding in his mother, it’s all there. Even Nebula gets some play, though that invariably means she gets smacked around by fate over and over again. What’s here is good.
Now excuse me while I blather on about Thanos for a bit -- because now that all’s said and done, I’m kind of over him. And I feel like, retroactively, I have been for a while.
I mean, it’s not like I hate him or anything. Given duds like Malekith and Whiplash, he’s definitely an upper-tier villain. But he has to share space with guys like Vulture, Ego, and especially Killmonger, and speaking personally, the Mad Titan doesn’t really do it for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve played too many JRPGs and thus my brain’s been rotted -- so while his shtick isn’t akin to the worst that that genre has had to offer, I feel like I’ve gotten about as much as I can out of him. Oh, he’s a villain that sees the universe as hopelessly flawed, and he’s doing it a favor by committing horrible crimes! How very…ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
I think there are two things about him that get to me the most. The first is that his attempts at pathos don’t quite bridge the gap for me -- like they’re there and that’s fine, but I don’t really feel for a guy who uses unlimited power to wipe out half the universe, no matter how many crocodile tears he sheds. (As opposed to Killmonger, whose every emotion felt genuine and deserved.) Second, there were points during Endgame where he came off as a rambling lunatic -- which is kind of the point, but A) some of his words/reasoning felt hollow, and B) a part of me just wanted him to get on with it. He’s more interesting to me when his mask of a world-weary gentleman cracks -- and it does at points, for sure -- but I’m okay with him, or a version of him, getting dusted. See you around, Grape Ape. It’s been a bash.
Also, time travel is in this movie, and despite past bitter experiences, I’m okay with that. My understanding of how it works in Endgame is that changing the past doesn’t instantly change the future, or at all; it just means that interactions with the past make the past branch off into a different timeline -- another possible future, of sorts. It probably doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, but from moment to moment it holds up. And supposedly using the Infinity Stones -- as Professor Hulk explained to the Ancient One -- let them scrub away those branching timelines, sooooooooooooooooooo…no love lost?
Time travel is all just a means to an end anyway, so the ultimate summation of how it works is “don’t worry about it”. And I didn’t, because -- just as the crew probably hoped -- it’s never enough to make you get a headache over its mechanisms. Maybe I’m being too lenient because the idea of a TIME HEIST (AKA the crux of the second act) still leaves me giddy, but the plot and execution are such that you never really need to worry about the ins and outs of quantum physics or any of that.
Speaking of TIME HEIST, the second act revolves around the surviving Avengers using tech from the Ant-Man movies -- coupled with improvements from Tony -- to gather the Infinity Stones from their places in time throughout earlier movies in the canon, all for the sake of bringing back those who got dusted. It’s a chance to go back and play all the greatest hits from the MCU (and also Thor: The Dark World), only remixed so that the present-day heroes can bumble around -- calling back to old scenes, playing with our expectations, etc. It’s unabashed fanservice for those who have stuck around for the past decade, rejiggered to be in service of the plot. Does it devolve into being a self-indulgent victory lap? No, but I’d be lying if it I said it didn’t come close to breaching that line.
The tradeoff is that the content that’s in there is still good enough to justify any slaps on the back. A Captain America mirror match? I’ll take that. Hulk getting blown out by the Ancient One? I’ll take that, too. Star-Lord getting decked during his character-establishing solo dance? Gimme, gimme. I also appreciate nice little details, like the Asgardians calling Rocket a rabbit -- so it’s an inherited, cultural trait, and not just Thor being an idiot.
The necessary evil here is that, in order for some of these characters and arcs to get closure, certain scenarios have to be included under an imaginary penalty of death. Pretty convenient for Tony to run into his dad, and for Steve to catch a glimpse of Peggy, and so on and so forth. I get it; these guys had to go to specific eras and the eras they knew best, but it sure is handy that everybody who needed to have an emotional moment got to run into the one person most likely to trigger those emotional moments. I guess that’s the Doylist in me talking.
Speaking of which, I’m still salty over Black Widow biting it.
…
…Okay, those are tangentially related points, but salt overtakes all.
This is more subjective than objective, but I have to be honest: to me, killing off Natasha was a mistake. That’s probably an unpopular opinion, because I have doubts that a lot of people would name her as their favorite hero (and would probably argue that she doesn’t have a personality). I’d argue the opposite, and point to this movie as proof. Her transformation across the canon not only reaches its apex in Endgame, but also comes off as one of the strongest of the bunch. Her development, her expressions, her range of emotions, her conflicts inside and out; what started off as a job became a willing, conscious effort to do what’s right while also protecting the family she’d long since come to love. Supporting others, even when she herself needed the most support.
Giving her the axe hurts, even more than Iron Man sacrificing himself at the end. Is that my bias talking? Most likely. On the other hand, there’s a part of me that wonders what else she could have done for the canon. Black Widow’s supposedly going to get her own movie at some point (or so I’ve heard, somewhere, at one point, maybe), but I guess now it’ll be a prequel instead of anything that pushes the needle forward. She could have gone even further, I bet, and the fact that she can’t bugs me. I can only hope that from now on, people have a deeper respect for the unsung Avenger instead of simply seeing her as “the girl”.
Whatever complaints I have on that front --
Well, at least we still have Mantis. That’s a win in my book.
Whatever complaints I have on that front are simple enough to ignore, given the great big bunker-busting battle at the end. I don’t know how much money went into it, or how much time, or how many resources, or how many man-hours, or how many souls, but clearly it was enough to make one of cinematic history’s biggest brawls. If Smash Bros. Ultimate took a page out of Avengers’ book by having Galeem wipe out characters en masse, Endgame took a page right back with its own spin on EVERYONE IS HERE!
The conflict starts off with a smaller scope -- well, past Thanos’ carpet bombing of Avengers HQ -- with a 3v1 showdown between Cap, Thor, and Iron Man against the Mad Titan. It eventually escalates into the bank-breaker of a battle between armies, pitting Thanos’ forces against every hero you can imagine and their allies, including sorcerers, Wakandans, and aliens (Howard the Duck is in there, apparently). It’s all a treat to experience, given that they’re all ready to avenge the fallen, get payback, and save the universe in one handy-dandy fell swoop. But the real business -- the one moment that justifies not only the price of admission, but the MCU itself -- is Cap using Mjolnir to whoop Thanos’ wrinkly mauve ass.
Nothing will ever top that. Nothing. It is the greatest scene ever, and I’ll not hear any debates to the contrary (though Scarlet Witch nearly soloing Thanos in a fit of rage is a close distant second). I’m just sitting here, waiting for the inevitable YouTube mixes of that scene to “You Say Run”, and it’ll be the most justified video ever to hit the internet.
The only reason my theater didn’t pop off during my viewing was because there were barely a dozen people there -- and if my throat could hold out long enough, my cheers would have filled the whole room. Like, even if my first-born son graduated from an Ivy League School as the valedictorian and looked to me for praise, I’d look right back at him and say “Yeah, but did you hit a big purple alien with a magic hammer, though?”
It’s pretty hype, is what I’m trying to say here -- which probably sums up the entire movie. Except for when it’s being crushingly grim, but whatever.
This is a movie that’s very easy to poke fun of or snark about, because conclusion or not it’s still another one to throw on the Marvel pile -- with all of the faults that that implies. It’s by no means a perfect movie, and for those who scoff at the MCU or feel burned out by the glut of superhero movies? Yeah, this one won’t do much to change your mind. (I legitimately can’t begin to imagine how locked out newcomers would be by this movie.)
But knocking the movie and focusing purely on its faults won’t do anyone any favors, because there are plenty of good elements to it. As always, the sum of quality is the net worth -- add the pluses to the minuses, and whatever you get is the final score. Considering that there’s more good than bad here by a decisive margin, Endgame is worth a look. Maybe more than one. Is it another product birthed from an assembly line. Yes. But it’s also the culmination of talent, passion, effort, and heart -- the gift bestowed to us by directors, actors, writers, artists, and all. Don’t forget that.
That’s really all that needs to be said…except for what I said at the start.
Okay, Marvel Studios. You can stop now.
You don’t have to do anything else. You did it. You won. There’s nothing left to prove. Your run wasn’t flawless, but it had more high points than low. Where else can you go from here? How are you going to top Endgame? Are you just going to figure that out 3-10 years from now? Are we going to be on this ride for the rest of our lives?
I mean, okay, sure. I can see the traces of a road map. Need to put out a new Spider-Man movie? Fine, make that a sort of epilogue so that Peter -- having gained a new Uncle Ben through Tony Stark -- finds the inner strength to live up to his legacy and become the new leader of the Avengers. Guardians 3? Wacky space hijinks tempered with the fallout of adding 2014 Gamora to the cast and not 2018’s (because I guess we’re just pulling plot points from Beerfest now). Black Panther 2? Okay, that one’s fine. But guys, you’ve gotta do something to save Captain Marvel’s reputation, because it’s not good for business when you’ve got people who think they can take bathroom breaks during Endgame whenever she’s on the screen.
I hope that at some point, the MCU winds down on its own terms and doesn’t just collapse under its own weight to force a closure. Endgame would have been a great way to bow out, but I guess that’s not happening. And keep in mind that this is coming from someone who, through thick and thin, has stuck with this franchise, defending it as best he could on a soap box that might as well be microscopic, for all the attention it gets.
Someday, this whole enterprise will have to take its final bow, and I’ll be happy when it does (assuming it does so effectively). That day is not today, which is troubling in a lot of ways. Are we going to see diminishing returns from here on out? We’ll see. I hope not, but there’s a possibility. If nothing else, though? If future movies -- however many we have left -- maintain the quality of Endgame and its ilk, then maybe things won’t be so bad. Maybe.
I don’t know what the future holds. But what we do hold the present -- and based on this movie? That’s good enough for now.
Oh yeah, I just remembered that the title’s a JoJo reference, soooooooooooooooooooo…time to do the obvious.
Fitting, isn’t it?
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