by Alex Goode
Firstly, I'd like to apologize for the absence of blogs recently. I've moved house, and it has absolutely swamped me, but I'm in the new place now. I still have a bit of unpacking to do, but I officially have a new home. Now that that's out of the way, I can get back to reviewing movies, and what better film to get back into it with than Avengers: Endgame? It is the twenty-second movie in the MCU, as well as the tenth (and last) chapter in Phase 3. Next up, I think, is Spider-Man: Far From Home, but, until then, we have Endgame to talk about. It was directed by the Russo Brothers, and the screenplay was written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the same people who helmed Infinity War). This movie serves as the grand finale of the Thanos conflict (which started in Iron Man and came to a haunting climax in Infinity War), which, given the title, the runtime, the trailers, and the synopsis, is probably something that a lot of people are expecting from the film. Be warned, I'm gonna be delving in to heavy spoilers with this review. I'm gonna be leaving no stone unturned with Endgame, because it's gonna be a little difficult to get my thoughts out without doing so. If you haven't seen the movie yet (unless you just don't care about it), don't read this until you do. There's a lot of plot to cover, so I'm issuing a massive spoiler alert. We're in the endgame, now.
The first thing I want to cover is the cast. Everyone pours their souls out onto this movie, and it really shows. Robert Downey Jr. kills it like always, Chris Evans kills it like always, Josh Brolin kills it like always. The mainstay actors were all great, like always, and the relative newcomers do great jobs as well. Bradley Cooper nails it, Karen Gillan nails it, Paul Rudd nails it. I'll also give props to the actors that are only on-screen for about four minutes: Tom Holland was great, Chadwick Boseman was great, Benedict Cumberbatch was great, Elizabeth Olsen was great. All of the main cast members are bringing their A-game to this movie. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'd like to shout out a few actors individually, and the first one is Chris Hemsworth. He's been in the MCU since almost the beginning, we already know that he's great as Thor. Even if his first two movies kinda blew, Thor himself was really fun to watch and a lot of that is because of Chris Hemsworth. In Ragnarok, we get to see a more comedic side to Thor, and Endgame keeps that going, while also keeping Thor's more aggressive, battle-ready personality. Chris Hemsworth kills it 100%. We seem as both the ripped God of Thunder as we always knew him as and as a fat guy with a Rob Zombie beard and a beer belly. It's great. He has more to do here, and he does it well. Another actor I wanna shout out is Brie Larson. If you read my Captain Marvel review, you'll know I wasn't too sold on CM as a character. I enjoyed Brie Larson's performance for the most, but I wasn't fully behind the character. A few people on Reddit took that to mean that I hate Brie Larson, which you'd know isn't true if you actually read it, but that's besides the point. The point is that Brie Larson really shines in this movie! I don't know if it's because of a better set of writers and directors, but I was really digging Captain Marvel in this movie, much more than I did in her solo movie. She retained the cocky side to her personality that made her enjoyable in Captain Marvel, and was also given better written dialogue, better scripted action scenes. I feel like her character was handled much better here than she was in her solo movie, and Brie Larson plays it very well. I believed that she was this character 100% after seeing this. I wasn't fully on board with Captain Marvel before, but I certainly am now. The last person I want to shout out is Mark Ruffalo. He's in the same situation as Hemsworth: He's a mainstay, we already know he's a great casting choice, but he was given more to do in this movie than usual, and I feel like he excelled at it. Sometime off-screen in-between Infinity War and Endgame, Banner and Hulk fused themselves together to create what is known as Professor Hulk. The mocap used to bring him to life is really good, and I feel like about half of that goes to Ruffalo's performance. The special effects artists and Ruffalo, but we're talking about the acting so let's focus on Ruffalo. Every facial expression came through in the mocap perfectly. Ruffallo spent all of his screentime as a giant, talking, green monster, and it was believable through and through. If you weren't fully sold on Ruffalo as Bruce Banner before, I can guarantee that you will after this movie.
Let's just get this out of the way right now: This is not a happy movie. It's three hours long, and the first, I'd say, hour and a half of it is pure despair. I really felt the weight of the Avengers' failure. We don't spend a whole lot of time in this post-snap universe, at least not when it came to actual screentime, which was a little disappointing, but how the things that were portrayed made me feel more than made up for the short length. The Avengers failed, and I felt that wholeheartedly. The surviving heroes don't smile, except for a few smirks here and there. All of them are broken, all of them are depressed, all of them are doing they're best to keep their spirits up but they aren't succeeding. Endgame does have a happier ending than Infinity War, but I'd still call it bittersweet. Thanos is dead and the snap was undone, yes, but it isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Iron Man is dead, Black Widow is dead. Vison, current timeline Loki, current timeline Gamora, and Heimdall are all still dead. Steve Rogers is an old man now, Thor is still fat, 2012 Loki escaped S.H.I.E.L.D. custody with one of the Tesseracts, so God only knows how that's gonna go down. What I'm saying is that everything isn't completely back to normal, which I loved. I'll get into what I thought about everyone that bit the "dust" coming back in a minute, but I'll say that I really appreciated that it wasn't a complete happy ending. That isn't what this movie needed, because that isn't what it was building up to. A lot of the reasons why the drama works so well are the screenplay, the actors, the effects, and the cinematography. All of those things are spot on with this movie. The dialogue is "cool, if a little cheesy" at worst and "downright prophetic" at best, save for a good bit of the jokes, which aren't good (like the Axe Body Spray gag, which felt more like an advertisement). The camera work isn't always the best, mostly when it came to all the fight scenes but one, but I really enjoyed the use of shaky cam in the scene when Scott Lang is frantically searching the list of dusted civilians on those giant slabs. It was meant to be intense, so the camera did it's job quite well. It's the only time the shaky cam effect didn't make me want to vomit in this movie. The special effects look great, save for a few hiccups here and there. The mocap bringing Thanos to life once again looks great, especially when we first see him with burns on one half of his body. Nebula's makeup effects still look good, this is the best that Rocket Racoon has ever looked, Thor's stomach fat suit looks convincing (although I wish they had given him a full-body fat suit to further sell the joke), and good God is the finale one of the most beautiful sequences I've ever witnessed in a Marvel film, at least from a visual standpoint. We briefly see a CGI de-aged Michael Douglas when Cap and Tony travel back in time to get more Pym Particles, and he looks great! It's even more impressive when you consider that he isn't even on-screen for a full two seconds. We've come a long way since Tron: Legacy, people. Korg was here for one scene, and he still looks good. He even has pizza and beer stains all over his body, which was a nice touch. The CGI mooks looked great, like usual, the costume and set designs were lovely, the original score was pretty good (especially at Tony's funeral). I also really enjoyed this movie's use of liscensed songs. Replaying "Come and Get Your Love" to tie back in to Guardians of the Galaxy was great. Unrelated, but I also enjoy the way certain characters interact with each other. After the title card, the film properly opens with Tony and Nebula playing paper football with each other. It's a very nice moment that does a lot to humanize Nebula. There's a sweet moment between Peter Parker and Ned at the end after mostly everything goes back to normal, Scarlet Witch has an awesome line to 2014 Thanos before they fight for a few seconds in the finale, Peter and Pepper's final interactions with Tony before his death were gut-punching, there's a very touching scene between Tony and his father at one point. That doesn't really have much to do with what I was talking about, I just wanted to squeeze it in somewhere.
I wanna go ahead and get the things I clashed with about Endgame out of the way so I that can keep praising it. A few of them are nitpicky, but worth mentioning, so I'll get those out first. Fat Thor was really funny, and I think it was a pretty ballsy move to keep him that way for all of his screentime, but it got a little narmy seeing this goofy, tubby guy jumping around in the final battle. It didn't break the action or anything, it was just a little weird. The makeup effects on old man Steve Rogers at the end look really bad. I thought the moment was absolutely beautiful, but the effects weren't. It looked like old uncanny CGI de-aging effects, except it was actual prosthetics. The de-aging effects for Stan Lee's cameo didn't look good, either. I couldn't tell if it was CGI or prosthetics, but they didn't look good. The person I saw the movie with couldn't even tell it was Stan Lee. I thought it was kinda lame, especially given how it was Stan's last cameo he pre-recorded before his death, but it was still nice to see. Some of the comedy doesn't quite land, the shaky cam used in all the fight scenes except for the final battle was nausea-inducing, the first hour and a half dragged a little bit (although the payoff for it is amazing). I thought the time travel was handled well, but the rules aren't very well explained. They make fun of other time machine movies, Professor Hulk says "Nah, man, changing things in the past don't affect the future", and then they act as if that is a legitimate threat, but then they change things anyway without even considering the effects it could have. That was a little weird, but it didn't break my immersion. I also feel like Nebula could've done a better job of explaining certain rules to the surviving Avengers before they began the time heist, like how obtaining the Soul Stone works or the fact that 2014 Thanos will be a part of the action. Now, let's get the big one out of the way: All of the heroes that died via turning to dust in Infinity War are brought back to life. On one hand, it completely nullifies the ending of Infinity War (to me, at least), but, on the other hand, I can't be too mad at it because it led to the coolest moment in the movie. It was mindblowingly awesome when all of the previously dusted heroes stepped out of the time portals to stand behind Captain America in the final battle, but I can't help but feel like it ruined the downer ending of Infinity War. I'm not just speaking as a Marvel fanboy, either. This is coming from a film lover in general. One of the most important parts of a movie is the end, and Infinity War had one of the best endings I've ever seen in a movie. Endgame, while giving us an incredible fight scene, ruins that ending, in my opinion. I remember sitting in the theater watching Infinity War with my Dad and being absolutely crushed after Thanos won. Watching most of my favorite characters turn to dust hurt. A lot. I had the exact same reaction every consecutive time I watched the movie afterwards, but I don't know if I can have that reaction now that I know it was entirely undone (save for the people that died pre-snap). I don't know, maybe I'm thinking about it too hard. I still really enjoyed the final battle, which I'll get to momentarily, it's just that a part of me wishes that it had kept at least a little bit of the weight of Infinity War's ending. Oh, and there's also a scene that happens, like, immediately after Professor Hulk reverses the snap from Infinity War in which 2014 Thanos' ship decimates the Avengers building. Scott Lang takes an explosion caused by three missles at point blank range and didn't die somehow. Yes, he shrunk at the last second, but I feel like that wouldn't do much to protect you against an explosion of that callibur. All of the people in that building survived, even the ones with no actual superpowers. I get that they needed everyone to be alive for the final battle, but a few casualties probably wouldn't have hurt. Kill off Hawkeye, at the very least.
There isn't a whole lot of action in this movie, but, when fight scenes happen, they're some of the best action scenes I've ever seen in an MCU movie (and probably in a comic book movie in general). Endgame Captain America fighting 2012 Captain America was really cool to see from a choreography standpoint. Since they're the same character, they employ the exact same fighting styles, so it was really fun to see that. The shaky cam and quick edits were a bit much, it was still a fun fight. The brief scuffle Thanos has with most of the surviving Avengers near the beginning was neat. It ends with current timeline Thanos getting decapitated, which was extremely cathartic. Thor even makes an "I went for the head" joke, so that scene gets a huge thumbs up from me. The whole time heist sequence was great. There was good emotional moments, good dialogue, actually some jokes that worked. I liked when Professor Hulk had to briefly pretend to be 2012 Hulk, that was a funny bit. It visits previous MCU films, like The Avengers and Thor 2 (because they need to go back to various times in MCU history to retrieve the Infinity Stones), and does so very satisfyingly. We even get a funny jab at Secret Empire by having Cap say "Hail HYDRA". It was a great scene overall. But the scene I'd like to spend this time talking out, and you know what I'm about to say, is that awesome Earth battle near the end! I can learn to live with every dusted hero coming back, simply because it results is one of the best action scenes ever put in a comic book film. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire third act. The moment that Captain America finally said "Avengers, assemble!" on the big screen was easily my favorite part of the entire movie. I cheered in the theater. I was the only one that cheered when he said that, but I'm okay with that. The people that were sitting around me probably think I'm a complete lunatic now, and that's alright. Let them think that, cause that moment was awesome! Pure and utter goosebumps. The final battle features some of the most brutal combat I've ever seen. We get to see how Thanos fights without any of the stones, and it's pretty terrifying. He practically completely no-shows Cap, Thor, and Tony. It isn't until the dusted heroes come back that the good guys even have a little bit of an edge. Even without the added power of the Infinity Stones, Thanos is still a beast. We finally get a payoff to the "Cap nudging Thor's hammer" scene in Age of Ultron, when Captain America lifts Mjolnir andwails on Thanos for a bit, but he still ends up overpowering him. Then, all the dusted heroes come back and the final battle begins properly. It's worth repeating that this final battle is awesome, but it does get a little mind-numbing at times. There's so many characters, a lot of which we know, a lot of which are nameless CGi goons, and a lot of which only get less than a minute of screentime each. It can get a little chaotic at times, difficult to follow. Doesn't mean I wasn't smiling like a goofy child the entire time. We get a lot of fun banter between the heroes, specifically when it came passing the gauntlet/stones from one person to another. Every hero gets at least one shot where the focus is just them, giving them a moment to shine (even if they are brief moments, in a lot of their cases). I think that was a great way of making sense of the clutter, so it's a good thing that it happens fairly often. And the sweeping shots that show a lot of action are great, if a little cramped. Regardless of the slight claustrophobia I experienced at times, this was still an amazing scene. My jaw was on the floor for almost the entire third act. Honorable mentions go to Spider-Man activating Instant Kill, the female Avengers stepping into action, Captain Marvel shrugging off a headbutt from Thanos like it was nothing, 2014 Gamora kneeing Star-Lord square in the nuts, Black Panther's brief time carrying the gauntlet, and Ant-Man taking out a Chitauri Leviathan with a single punch. There were so many more cool moments that deserve mentioning, but I picked only my favorites so as to avoid coming across as too much of a fanboy. Believe me, there's much more awesomeness in the battle than I mentioned.
If you take away the action, you'll still be left with a phenomenal drama. It's a funny movie, yes, but the dramatic moments completely blow the comedic moments out of the water. The screenplay is very well-written especially in the dramatic scenes. There's a reason why most people left the theaters as a sobbing mess after seeing Endgame, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't end up tearing up at the end. I've already discussed the dramatic tension I felt throughout the movie, so I'd like to take this time to go over two very emotional scenes (one that works really well, and one that doesn't work all that well). Black Widow's death completely caught me off guard, but I feel like the moment could've been handled a little better. Her and Hawkeye go to Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone, they meet Red Skull, he gives them the same spiel he gave to Thanos and Gamora in Infinity War, and it ends in a similiar way, but the differences are enough to make me question whether not it should have worked at all. The gimmick is that you have to sacrifice something you love in order to prove you're worthy of wielding the Soul Stone, a soul for a soul. In Infinity War, this meant Thanos had to throw Gamora off of the cliff and kill her. He does it and it works, which gives him another Stone to add to his collection. In Endgame, Hawkeye and Black Widow spend a lot of time fighting over who goes off the cliff before one of them just kills themselves. I thought it was supposed to be a sacrifice of something you loved. Yes, you could argue that the sacrifice happened out of love so that could get the job done, but suicide wasn't an established loophole. Red Skull just stands there while all this happens and they never once ask him, "Hey, if I toss myself off the ledge, will that give the stone to her?", so I'm not entirely sure if Black Widow killing herself would have actually given Hawkeye the Soul Stone. Whatever, though, it was an emotional (if a little too long) scene. I can live with it. And now, let's get to the big one: The death of Tony Stark. It's a concept that's been teased over and over again, and a part of me figured either Tony or Cap would die in this movie, but I didn't think Marvel had the guts to actually go through with it. But, they did. Tony sacrifices his life to defeat Thanos. Looking back on it, while it hurt to see Tony die, that's the only way I could've seen this movie go. I'm giving this movie tons of props already for not having Captain Marvel swoop in and no-show Thanos, but it's such a fitting end to the Infinity Saga that Tony was the one to defeat Thanos. The attack on New York in The Avengers scarred Tony for life, more so than he could even begin to explain, not to mention the trauma of losing Spider-Man in Infinity War. Having Tony be the one to snap Thanos out of existence is both extremely satisfying and immensely poignant. It's like he's finally getting his revenge. The shot of Thanos kneeling down and accepting defeat as he himself becomes a victim of Tony's snap is both awesome and sad (in a way), but it happens at the cost of Tony's life. Using the stones fried him, and he dies in front of all of his friends mere moments later. The resulting funeral is easily one of the saddest moments in the history of the MCU. Never thought I could get misty eyed from a cheeseburger, but it happened. The long-take that shows everyone silently standing there paying their respects to their fallen ally is beautiful. Sad to see Tony die, but I'm happy they did his legacy the justice it so rightfully deserved by giving him such an awesome death. Rest well, 3000.
Wow, that was long. I'd say it needed to be, though. I was thinking of ways to talk about the movie without spoiling major plot elements, and nothing came to mind other than the general stuff I say on Facebook when I give movies their initial ratings. Overall, Endgame didn't have the same impact on me that Infinity War did. That being said, I still greatly, greatly enjoyed this movie. I'm gonna give Avengers: Endgame a 9/10. I don't know how Marvel can top the Infinity War duology going forward, but I look forward to see what other stories they have in store. Now that Disney owns Fox, I'm hoping Galactus will be properly adapted to the big screen, unlike whatever that abomination that we got in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was. Also, what's with all the Fortnite jokes in superhero movies now? Batman flossed in The Lego Movie 2, Shazam flossed in Shazam!, and we see Thor playing the game outright in this movie. It's a fun game, I'll admit, but does it really warrant that much attention? If anything, it dates the movie. Well, it didn't hurt any of the movies it appeared in, so I can't be too harsh. Now that I'm moved in to this new place, I'm gonna start catching up on movies I missed so far, like Glass, Alita: Battle Angel, A Madea Family Funeral, and as many of the rest of them as I can. My plan is to review as many movies this year as I can, and then making a "Top Ten Movies of 2019" list on the last day of this year. Just cause I miss a movie in theaters, it doesn't mean I'm skipping it.
