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Movie reviews aren’t really my thing. I don’t read them other than occasional snippets on Rotten Tomatoes. I never write about them. I rarely go to the movies anymore despite once truly loving them for the same reason I stopped watching the NFL. My money is better spent when it goes to people who don’t hate my political, cultural, and/or religious beliefs.
With that said, I have kids and the MCU drew me in. When the opportunity arose to see an Avengers: Endgame screening, I wasn’t going to pass it up.
Here’s the spoiler-free reality of this movie: Nothing I say will convince or dissuade you from watching this movie. You’re going to watch it or you won’t and considering how much attention it’s getting and the massively positive reviews its already garnered, the former is almost guaranteed for anyone reading this. And yes, you will probably enjoy it because it’s a fulfilling conclusion to a long journey that has enthralled the masses for over a decade. My perspective cannot take away from the sheer accomplishment of putting out mostly solid movies in a 22-movie run. No other franchise has come close to this level of success.
Now, let’s get into my issues with the movie. If you’re going to see it and you don’t want it spoiled, come back to this story later. What I’m going to write is more of a post-mortem than an actual review, so it may behoove you to read these thoughts after you’ve taken in the material itself.
Or, just read on, starting with the synopsis. Either way, here’s your fair warning. Spoilers ahead.
Last chance…
Okay, here we go.
Synopsis with commentary (spoilers)
When it comes to cleverness of solving a seemingly unsolvable scenario, the Russos did a fine job of putting together the proper flow of hope, despair, regret, more hope, tension, challenge, and triumphant victory. The movie moves at light speed from the start. The Russos weren’t kidding when they said the footage in the trailers was mostly from the beginning. You could piece the first 20 minutes together if you know what order to drop the footage.
The opening
We didn’t see Clint Barton (Hawkeye) in Infinity War and the opening scene of Endgame tells us why. He’s with his family enjoying a break or possibly retirement. While his friends were trying to stop Thanos, he was having a picnic and teaching his daughter to shoot an arrow. Then, The Decimation happens and his whole family gets dusted. It’s a perfect first scene because it instantly brings us back to the moment when the MCU was massively changed.
Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Nebula are lost in space for a couple of minutes before Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) saves them. Back in Earth, they are reunited with the remnant of the Avengers. Tony is gaunt, likely medicated, and clearly shaken by the events that transpired. He lets loose on Steve Rogers (Captain America) before collapsing. The team learns from Nebula where Thanos likely is and they decide to go after him to get the Infinity Gauntlet and reverse the snap. Danvers leads the team of Rogers, Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow), Rocket, Thor, James “Rhodey” Rhodes (War Machine), and Nebula to capture the gauntlet. They find a physically broken but emotionally satisfied Thanos literally picking alien vegetables and cooking a stew for himself. He can barely walk up the steps after destroying the Infinity Stones two days before in an effort to prevent the temptation of using them again. The heroes are notably shaken as they realize they don’t have the power to reverse The Decimation. Thor, frustrated by his own failures after not going for the head in Infinity War takes out his anger on Thanos who does nothing to defend himself. Thor beheads him with Stormbreaker and that’s that.
Jump ahead five years
Pacing is one of the best parts of the movie at first. Every second is important in the 3+ hour flick and the Russos did a fine job of squeezing what could have easily been three movies into one. Some will complain they move too fast, but that’s the point. It wasn’t rushed just for the sake of squeezing everything in. They needed this to be an emotional roller coaster, which is why the despair of Tony and Nebula being stuck in space is shifted to happiness of Danvers saving them and then back to despair and failure, all within what felt like ten minutes. It was probably longer, but it felt fast and this was good.
But the time jump hits at an emotional level. We learn the planet hasn’t recovered, not by a long shot. Rogers has been reduced to leading a support group. Romanoff is apparently leading the remnant of the Avengers, commanding a small team that is clearly frustrated by the meaningless missions they’re undertaking. Danvers says she won’t be back for a while because she has thousands of planets to tend to. Romanoff even cries after a meeting, punctuating the despair of not being able to do anything to change their situation.
Hope comes in the form of Scott Lang (Ant Man) coming back to the world thanks to a rat pushing the right button in his Quantum Realm van. When he makes it to Avengers HQ, he reveals time travel is possible. Rogers, Romanoff, and Lang go to the guy who can put it all together.
But Stark’s life has taken a different turn. While everyone else is either dead or despairing over the broken universe, Stark is living the dream… literally. In Infinity War we learn of a vivid dream he had of a daughter with Pepper Potts, and that’s exactly what happened. His idyllic cabin on a lake with his two best girls shows us a side of Stark that we’d never seen before: contentment. The world has died, but the Starks have thrived.
Arguably nothing in the movie is more touching than seeing the man who has fought both real and personal demons in front of our eyes for over a decade finally living in a way he never wanted, but realizing once he had it that this is everything. When the trio of hopeful Avengers come for his help and to shatter his world, they plant the seed that we know will become action. After they leave, rejected, the seed takes hold and Stark does what he does so naturally – discovers how to make time travel work. It’s a great testament to the real power of Stark. His Iron Man suits, his Arc Reactor, the powers he wields as a result, are all only possible because of his real superpower – intuitive engineering brilliance. This last piece of casual yet superior intellect being shown off by the Russos against the backdrop of his daughter wanting a freezer pop was Stark’s reward for a decade spent saving the planet.
The following scene is equally beautiful. Stark tells Potts he might be able to help reverse the snap. An excellent piece of movie making that will be understated or unnoticed by most is how the Russos treat Potts throughout. Her transformation since the first Iron Man movie has been excellent (Iron Man 3‘s weirdness with Potts notwithstanding) and culminated in a mature and sober companion for Tony who is every bit his better half. They didn’t make her protest or throw out lines like, “Think about Morgan.” Her limited role in this movie was perfect, a great send-off by Gwyneth Paltrow.
Forming the plan and team
After a series of comical scenes with Professor Hulk (the combined intelligence of Bruce Banner with the looks and strength of The Hulk) as he tests his own understanding of time travel with Lang, Stark comes to save the day. He puts the Civil War feud to rest with Rogers, giving him back his shield, and they go to work. But they need a team and half the superheroes were snapped, so Romanoff tracks down Barton. He’s broken, perhaps more than any of our heroes, after his whole family was lost in the snap. Now, he’s hunting bad guys for execution by sword when Romanoff finds him. It was a surprisingly touching scene as she tells him they may have a way to reverse the snap. Even though we saw some of it in the trailers, it was still a little stunning to see Barton so fragile after getting a small dose of hope.
Rocket and Banner go to new Asgard, a community for the Asgardian refugees. There, they find Thor and learn the last five years haven’t been kind. He’s obese, disheveled, constantly drunk, and emotionally broken. They’re only able to convince him to help after telling him there’s beer on the ship.
Back at Avengers HQ, Barton volunteers to be the guinea pig and travels back to grab an item from his home prior to the snap to see if time travel works and if they can retrieve items from the past. It works.
Things have been moving quickly up to this point, and they’re about to move much faster. They all have their missions – acquire the Infinity Stones from the past so they can build a new Infinity Gauntlet and reverse The Decimation. Stark, Rogers, Lang, and Banner go to the Battle of New York where they split up in search of the three Infinity Stones that happen to be in the same city at the same time. Rhodey and Nebula go for the Power Stone on Morag just before Peter Quill (Star-Lord) was able to steal it in the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1. Thor and Rocket head to Asgard to grab the Reality Stone while it’s still stuck in Jane Foster in the form of the Aether. Lastly, Barton and Romanoff go to Vormir to retrieve the Soul Stone.
They get one shot as they only have enough Pym Particles for one round-trip each. They split up to get the stones. The scenes bounce back and forth between the four teams, but we’ll look at each mission as a whole.
Mind, Time, and Space Stones
Tony’s team has to grab three stones, so Banner goes to find Dr. Strange for the Time Stone while the other three work on getting the Space Stone and Mind Stone. Banner meets The Ancient One who tells him Dr. Strange won’t have the Time Stone until five years into the future. She’s unwilling to give it to him, lecturing him about the problems with removing the stones from her timeline, but when Banner tells her Dr. Strange gave Thanos the Time Stone willingly, she realizes he would only do so for a reason. “He was supposed to be the best of us,” she said. Banner promises to return the stones after they’re done, thus keeping her timeline in order.
Stark, Rogers, and Lang visit Stark Towers in the immediate aftermath to the Battle of New York. Rogers gets the Mind Stone from Hydra by claiming there was a change of plans and saying, “Hail Hydra” to them, pretending to be a double agent along with the rest of them. He then has to battle his former self who believes he’s just Loki pretending to be Rogers. It’s a neat scene that should have been longer – Captain America versus Captain America could have been an epic battle if they had more time.
Stark and Lang are able to get the Space Stone temporarily as Lang shrinks to cause old Stark’s act reactor to malfunction as a distraction, but are thwarted by the old Hulk inadvertently knocking it out of Starks hands. In the confusion, Loki grabs the Space Stone and escapes with it.
They send Lang and Banner back with their stones while Stark and Rogers go further to the past to grab the Space Stone from the old S.H.I.E.L.D. lab in 1970 as well as more Pym Particles to get them back to their time. Once there, they bump into two people important to them. Stark meets his father, Howard, while retrieving the Space Stone. They have a cute conversation about fatherhood just before Tony is to be born. Meanwhile, Rogers sees his love from the past, Peggy Carter. After retrieving Pym Particles, he sees her but doesn’t talk to her.
Reality Stone
Thor, still fat and broken, can’t seem to be much help. Rocket is forced to gather the Aether from Foster on his own while Thor sulks around. He talks to his mother who gives him advice about how to find himself again, and also mentions he needs to eat salad. Thor calls for and receives his trusty hammer Mjölnir, which was destroyed by his sister in Thor: Ragnarok.
Power Stone
Rhodey and Nebula let Quill lead them to the Power Stone before knocking him out and stealing his keys. Thanos from 2014 comes back on the scene with old Nebula and old Gamora. They receive word Ronin has found the Power Stone and they set out to retrieve it. But the technology behind Nebula connects the 2014 and 2024 versions, letting each have access to their memories. 2014 Nebula reveals to Thanos that his plan had worked, he retrieved the stones, committed The Decimation, and was killed. They form a plan to go to the future and stop the Avengers from reversing his work.
2014 Nebula captures 2024 Nebula and replaces her, jumping back to the future and Avengers HQ.
Soul Stone
Barton and Romanoff meet the Red Skull on Vormir. He tells them of the Soul Stone’s price, noting that the sacrifice is permanent. The two friends fight to sacrifice themselves for the other. As it seems like Barton wins and jumps from the cliff, Romanoff grapples him, tying him to the cliff so he can’t fall. Barton grabs her but he can’t pull her up or let himself fall. She pleads with him to let her go.
She falls to her death just as Gamora did in Infinity War.
Everyone returns at the same time to Avengers HQ where they are overjoyed to learn they were able to get all the stones. But their joy is short lived when they learn of Romanoff’s sacrifice.
Reversing the snap
After mourning briefly, they go to the lab to assemble the new Infinity Gauntlet. Seeing what it did to Thanos, they know they need someone strong to put it on and do the snap. Thor volunteers, but the team won’t let him in his current condition. Banner volunteers as the only one strong enough to snap and possibly survive. Meanwhile, 2014 Nebula, disguised as her future good-guy self, is opening up the time portal for Thanos and his war ship.
Banner puts on the gauntlet and is instantly driven to the ground in pain, but he keeps going and does the snap. It nearly kills him. Barton’s cell phone rings. It’s his wife. But just before they’re able to celebrate, Thanos’s ship destroys Avengers HQ with an incredible display of weapons fired at the base.
Most of the Avengers are now separated. Banner is holding up the weight of the building with Rhodey and Rocket trapped with him. Stark find Rogers and they work their way to the surface. Barton finds the new Infinity Gauntlet, but is chased by Outriders, narrowly escaping.
Meanwhile, Gamora is back on Thanos’s ship and talks to 2024 Nebula. They become allies after 2024 Nebula tells Gamora she knows she’s against her father’s plans and that he killed her in order to retrieve the Soul Stone in the future timeline.
2014 Nebula finds Barton with the new Infinity Gauntlet. He gives it to her, thinking she’s still thinking she’s 2024 Nebula. After she alerts Thanos she has it, she pulls her gun to kill Barton but 2024 Nebula and Gamora intervene. After trying to talk her down, 2024 Nebula shoots her former self.
Thor is watching Thanos sitting on the battlefield waiting for his daughter to return the Infinity Gauntlet. Stark and Rogers join him. Thor calls for Mjölnir and Stormbreaker and dons his battle clothing.
The walk down to Thanos, who tells him he has a new plan. He now realizes that as long as there are people who remember how things were, there will be those who are unwilling to let go of the past. Therefore, he intends to use the Infinity Gauntlet to destroy the entire universe, then rebuild it by creating new life that will appreciate him because they won’t know what happened before.
After the exchange, they attack Thanos. This battle scene of the three fighting Thanos is the most enjoyable of the movie. They pull out their best moves from the whole series but are still not able to bring down the Mad Titan. Thanos grabs Stormbreaker and is driving it into Thor’s chest when he’s hit by Mjölnir. Rogers was finally able to wield it and goes into an epic Thor-like attack sequence against Thanos, even calling down lightning.
But it’s still not enough. Thanos calls on the full force of his armies to destroy the Avengers and annihilate the planet. With Stark unconscious and Thor missing, Rogers stands alone against the incoming armies of Thanos.
Just as he’s about to fight them all on his own, magical portals start forming behind him. All the heroes who were snapped away in The Decimation emerge one-by-one from the portals, as well as the armies of Wakanda and the wizards of Dr. Strange. What follows is a standard large-scale battle sequence with brief clips of the old heroes returning.
A few components of the fight sequence are noteworthy.
- Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch) is red-eyed with rage. At this point, she had just experienced the death of Vision moments before. Now, she’s able to actually handle Thanos with her powers. He has to call on his ship to fire on the battlefield, including hitting his own army, just to escape Wanda’s rage.
- Potts is there in her Rescue armor.
- Barton is trying to get the Infinity Gauntlet to Rogers and Banner so they can return the stones to the past. He gives the gauntlet to T’Challa (Black Panther) who then gives it to Peter Parker (Spider-Man).
- As the fire rains down from Thanos’s ship, it pauses to fire into the clouds. Danvers is there and destroys the ship.
- There’s a scene that was clearly a tribute to women in which the female heroes are all together doing great damage to the army of Thanos.
- Thanos is able to get hold of the Infinity Gauntlet, but Danvers fights him. Though she holds her own, including a moment in which Thanos tries to headbutt her but it doesn’t phase her at all, Thanos is able to defeat her with the gauntlet.
This is the big dramatic moment in the movie. Stark wrestles for the Infinity Gauntlet but Thanos knocks him away. He says, “I am inevitable,” and snaps the gauntlet, but nothing happens. Stark reveals he had taken the Infinity Stones while wrestling with Thanos and says, “I am Iron Man.” He snaps his finger, dusting Thanos’s army and the Mad Titan himself.
Rhodey, then Parker, then Potts come to Tony just before he dies. She tells him they (she and Morgan) are going to be okay. It’s an extremely emotional moment that was very well played by the actors and properly directed by the Russos. After all, Iron Man was where this all started. It’s fitting that his death brings the end to the greatest threat to the universe.
Epilogue
The Avengers, Potts, and their Stark’s daughter Morgan watch a holographic recording Stark had prepared before going back for the Infinity Stones. Then, at the funeral, we get to see all of the major and some of the minor players in the previous movies all in attendance at his house.
Thor appoints Valkyrie queen of Asgard and joins the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Rogers is going to get sent back in time to return all the Infinity Stones to where they acquired them. Banner is operating the machine with Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier) and Sam Wilson (Falcon) attending. But five seconds after leaving, Rogers doesn’t return. Then, they see an old man sitting by the lake and realize it’s him.
He tells them he decided to stay in the past after returning the stones. He gives Wilson his shield.
The movie ends with a shot from the past as Rogers and Carter finally get their dance.
Review
Don’t think too hard. There are so many plot holes you the Hulk could throw a mountain through them. The handling of time travel was quite decent, especially the way they attempted to dissuade false notions of time paradoxes arising from actions they do in the past. A popular current theory on time travel jibes with how they handle it in the movie. Nonetheless, it’s still murky and intentionally so.
The way they handled Thor was fine in the beginning, but it’s silly to think he would continue to be a self-absorbed drunk after learning they could reverse the snap. For a guy who’s supposed to be over a thousand years old, to think he deteriorated almost irreversibly in five years is silly.
Professor Hulk was a joke. Literally. He was comic relief throughout the movie. One can argue the mild-mannered Banner in control of the powerful body wouldn’t really be aggressive, or they can argue the combined personalities yielded a whimsical and often ineffective intellect, but it just didn’t fit. They elevated Hulk and Thor in Ragnorak, then chopped them down for the sake of laughs throughout.
If I could change the script, I would have had the reversal of the snap happen much later. There was no reason to try to cram screen time in for so many characters when this movie should have focused on the core six against Thanos all the way to the end. It was a creative decision, one that most fans will love. I didn’t.
But despite its flaws, this movie achieved what it set out to do. It ended the chapters, set up new ones, and gave as fulfilling of an end for Stark and Rogers as they deserved. I’d be foolish to think any but a few would be disappointed in the end result.
Thanos, Stark, and Rogers were spot on with the performances of the actors and the conclusion to their story arcs. If the criteria for greatness is making a movie that hits all the right notes and checks all the right boxes, then the flaws I’ve noted are just nitpicking.
Is the movie big enough to match the hype and anticipation? Absolutely. My synopsis and analysis may be harsh, but I know the vast majority of fans will love this film. For the Russos, this was a huge mission accomplished.
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