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wits-writing · 6 years ago

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Avengers: Endgame (Movie Review SPOILERS)

Avengers: Endgame, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo with a screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, has a clearly delineated story structures, basically splitting its story among three different genres to bring in so much of the scope that’s been built up in 21 previous movies. Even accounting for its three-hour runtime, how much payoff and experimenting with the character dynamics from throughout the MCU’s history has been fit into this one astonishes. Each segment has ways of managing tone and dealing with the finality at play that warrant discussing how they work on individual levels. I’m going to try something different by doing exactly that with this review, followed by highlighting my favorite performances in the movie. This will mean spoilers, but the stuff I want to discuss requires that and I won’t give away the biggest moments Endgame has up its sleeve.

Final Warning: If you don’t want to be spoiled on anything about Avengers: Endgame, turn back now but know this is a satisfying finale for everything the MCU has built.

[Full Review and SPOILERS Under the Cut]

Act 1 (Prologue/Post-Snap World):

The prologue of the movie effectively tells the audience what the movie will not be about. When Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) arrives at Avengers HQ after saving Tony (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) from being stranded in space, Endgame goes through the motions of the most obvious follow-up to Infinity War. The heroes regroup with their new powerful ally to kick Thanos’s ass properly this time around with the intent to get the Infinity Stones and undo the Snap. Things get complicated with a revelation when they go to find Thanos on the idyllic planet he’s retired on after achieving his twisted idea of “balance.” The Mad Titan used his second act with the Infinity Stones to self-destruct them, so the Snap can’t be undone. After Thor kills Thanos in a swift act of rage, the Avengers are left with no solid idea of what their next move will be.

That’s when the next major reveal of Endgame’s premise occurs, it’s set five years in the future from where the prologue left off. The time-skip effectively jumps us into a new status quo the characters have settled into and how some have dealt with the Post-Snap world better than others. Some of the Avengers had more invested in the mission than others and either desperately seek a new one or completely close themselves off due to lack of purpose. Others have managed to find renewed purpose through rebuilding their personal lives, finding a sense of balance and moving on, even if guilt over being unable to stop Thanos has stuck with them.

This act represents the movie at its most somber and considerate. Even the humor that does manage to creep into this part of the movie is more subdued or the product of characters lashing out in frustration. We get the most time inside the heads of the characters in the opening stretch and we’re given a sense of what they still have to lose in the aftermath of their greatest failure. However, things shift gears into the second act, when the heroes get the chance to start making things right.

Act 2 (Time Heist):

Endgame starts reintroducing the type of fun that’s more expected from the Avengers movies by way of reintroducing the audience to Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man. He emerges from the Quantum Realm after the mid-credits cliffhanger from Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the five years only felt like five hours to him. After catching up on what he missed and reuniting with his loved ones, he decides to go to Avengers HQ with his revelations about the Realm and how they could use it to bring back everyone dusted in the Snap by tracking down the Infinity Stones throughout time. Which ends up meaning the Avengers taking a tour through the events of past MCU movies.

The buildup to the actual trips through time transition from the more dower tone of the opening by turning the middle of the movie into a heist. Like any decent entry in that genre, it begins by bringing the team together. This is where the last couple of heroes that haven’t made appearances in the movie yet make their return and they’re the ones in more amusing positions post-time-skip. Some of the team use this as a chance to pick themselves back up as having a new mission breathes new life into them. Others still have some heavy lifting to do in that area that has to wait until they’re already on the MacGuffin quest. They determine which times are best for picking up the Stones as efficiently as possible with the limited resources at their disposal.

Once the time travel begins, how much an audience member gets out of it will inevitably be tied to how much they have invested in the MCU as a series and the entries being revisited in particular. I can’t be impartial about how well this would work for the casual fan of these movies, since I’ve watched most of them multiple times over the years. It’s about as blatant as fan service can get and represents the movie at its lightest tone overall. Even if specific events aren’t being revisited, there are nods, winks and cameos from past characters aplenty to go around as Endgame pays tribute to every storyteller that’s added something to this universe. My personal favorite bits come from how the movie uses this time to answer retroactive questions of “what was X-character doing during Y-event”, especially during the part that revolves around the Battle of New York from The Avengers.

It’s not all jokes and continuity nods, since going through ones own past presents plenty of opportunity for self-reflection. Characters get the chance to see how far they’ve come, reexamine their regrets and bring relationships with other characters full-circle. The exact mechanics of what can and can’t be done in the past are loose but usually in service to the character arcs being brought to fruition. Since it wouldn’t be a heist or a time travel story without something going wrong along the way, this is also where the buildup for the final act of the movie occurs.

Act 3 (Final Battle/Epilogue):

If the second act was examining the MCU’s past compared to how far they’ve come, the final act is about showing off the full spectacle of what’s been built from that past. It’s a sight to behold as stories get payed off and called back, all while the scale grows to a level that makes the battles from even the biggest superhero movies of the last twenty years look miniscule by comparison. The cathartic execution of this battle is awe-inspiring and goes beyond anything else I can remember seeing in my life. All of it leads into the movie’s epilogue as the characters are left to consider what they’ve sacrificed to win the day. The final stretch of this movie emphasizes a sense of finality on par with the multiple epilogues from Return of the King. Even as the MCU inevitably continues after this, there’s a sense that the story that began with Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps has concluded.

The Characters:

Since Endgame’s mainly a conclusion for what began with Phase 1 of the MCU, the original six Avengers get the bulk of this movies character work. Keeping things focused to a core group of characters makes this movie ultimately feel more satisfying for them than Infinity War, where they were mostly a reactive force to Thanos’s machinations.

Tony’s presented as the one with the most to lose before they go on their time travel mission, since he’s put the most work into rebuilding his life after the Snap. When he’s first presented with the time travel plan, he dismisses it as a pipedream of a Hail Mary pass. His own desire to make things right eventually wins out and he’s the one to put the finishing touches on the devices that make their mission possible. He’s paired up with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) for the mission as it takes them on a tour of the intersections in their personal histories. Theirs is probably the strongest of the segments that makeup the second act of Endgame and serves as a worthwhile reconciliation for the two after their falling out in Captain America: Civil War.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been stuck dealing with witnessing everything he ever defined himself by crumble with the weight of his failure to stop Thanos as his breaking point. He’s given up on any version of Thor he thought himself to be in the past, not the arrogant prince we first met him as nor the hero he became. He’s retreated from himself and that makes him the most reluctant to go along with the plan to fix everything. His depression is played partly for laughs and given signifiers of letting himself go like overeating and alcoholism. It’s likely a divisive decision to do this with Thor, but I enjoy the way it pays off. He also continues his great dynamic with Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) from Infinity War, which plants Rocket in the rare position of being the mature one in the situation.

Natasha (Scarlet Johannsen) spent the past five years actively throwing herself into mitigating the chaos caused in the wake of the Snap. She’ll take any problem as an excuse to keep herself busy rather than dwell on how her efforts to do the right thing as an Avenger added up to a zero-sum when it counted most. In the time between those dilemmas, she’s busy tracking down Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). He lost his entire family in the Snap and it broke him. He’s gone on an international killing spree of any major criminals spared from being dusted. The two reunite for the sake of the mission and are both prepared to give up anything to make up for the sins of their respective pasts.

Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) is probably the character there’s the least to say about. The position he’s in after the time-skip is amusing. He’s managed to make peace with his Hulk-side and now permanently hulked-out with a more affable demeanor overall that suits Ruffalo’s performance perfectly. It’s a fun decision, showing one of the characters taking the perspective granted by experiencing a cosmic tragedy to work through his personal issues but it leaves him with little to do but exposit about the plot mechanics of time travel. There are some great bits where he struggles to imitate the past-Hulk’s rage to stay incognito on their time travel mission that make this decision the most worth it.

Aside from the original Avengers, the character given the most material to work with is Nebula. The character and Gillan’s performance have been a consistently underrated aspect of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, but the spotlight she’s given here makes her best showcase yet. The time travel segment ends up showing how far the character has come since her first appearance. It’d be difficult to discuss much more without going into further spoilers than I have already, but she’s definitely Endgame’s secret weapon for why it works as well as it does.

Conclusion:

Honestly, I don’t know what else to say at this point. Avengers: Endgame makes an effective celebration of everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has built up. If you’ve read this far past my spoiler warnings already, you’ve either already seen it and made up your own mind or wanted more details about what the experience of this finale is like. This is a curtain call on eleven years of evolution for superhero movies as a genre and I’m happy I got to see it happen. Part of me will never believe they actually pulled it off, but they did and these characters have earned a permanent place in film history for it.

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