WARNING: "Endgame" spoilers below
I had three specific fears going into this movie.
My first fear about this movie was that the search for the inevitable reset button to undo the ending of Infinity War would be cheap. And they did much better than expected on this, aiming not to make it so it never happened, but to bring everyone back, five years later. The actual ramifications of this weren’t explored in the movie, but you can imagine the complications. There are stakes, there are consequences. Of course, once you open the can of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey worms, there’s no putting the lid back on, and the more you think about any of the time travel stuff, the less sense it makes. Especially the ending. But more on that later.
My second fear was that the film would suffer from the lack of the characters erased in the snap. This one was kind of justified, but your mileage may well vary depending on which characters you enjoy. I missed the Guardians, Spiderman, Scarlet Witch, Loki, Bucky… Ant-Man, Hawkeye and Hulk are not as interesting. Some of these characters do get their moment when they come back. Others do not. What Infinity War did well was balancing not only a bigger cast of characters for much of the film, but giving them reasons to be in different places and a whole host of really interesting meet-ups. Endgame just doesn’t have that. They pair up fairly randomly to go on their time heists, and don’t actually interact with each other very much or very effectively while they are there (with the exception of Natasha and Clint, who have a more convincing bond than maybe anyone else in the movie).
My third fear was basically exactly what happened in the end. But more on that later.
The three hour runtime isn’t exactly justified. While I appreciate that they spent some time actually having consequences to the snap, a lot of the ‘let’s round everyone up to go on a time heist’ bit could have been trimmed and tightened up considerably. I’m not sure we needed to see Hulk arriving at the Scottish fishing village all the Asgardians are apparently now living in. There are really good scenes at the start, though, with Clint's family, Iron Man and Nebula and the fight with Thanos. I wasn’t completely sold on the time heist plot. It’s a little messy and inelegant, there are plotholes you could drive a truck (with Hulk on the back) through, and while there are some fun moments (Cap fighting himself, the Hail Hydra lift moment), there was the potential for so much more, sacrificed for the sake of a few characters’ overlong heartwarming chats with their deceased parents which in the end don’t add all that much. I’d have preferred if these encounters had been briefer and more bittersweet. All the revisiting also gets in the way of the film really doing anything new. It’s also not as funny as Infinity War.
It then all ramps up to the conclusion, the final battle, which, while messy, is more like the rollercoaster of a film I was expecting. There are moments which are epic and moments which are ridiculous, just as there always are. The battlefield almost looks more like something from Lord of the Rings than Avengers. The moment with a bruised and battered Captain America standing up to face Thanos alone, then to be joined by an army of the returned gave me goosebumps. Tony Stark’s last stand was a memorable ending. He got a good send off, although I couldn’t help feeling that he and Captain America got each other’s endings, in a way. I actually think they could have stood to kill off a few more characters. Two deaths out of all of them was a surprisingly small price to pay.
Some of the characters are less well served than others. Thor as a slob is kind of funny, but it’s a one-joke joke which drags on far too long. In a fatsuit. Which I think was ill-judged. The tragic-comic interaction between him and the Guardians in Infinity War was pitch-perfect. This time it really isn’t. Natasha and Clint fighting over who gets to die on Vormir was almost heartbreaking (but went on a little too long). Nebula and Gamora get a kind of closure. Some people get a touching battlefield reunion, others don’t . If you’re watching it for any of the Black Panther characters, you might want your money back. Bucky gets a particularly raw deal. He was important enough for Captain America to start a civil war over a couple of movies ago, but his only function in this movie is to approve of Cap’s bad decisions in the end (more on that later). What happened to their ‘to the end of the line’ friendship? And then he gets passed over while Steve gives the shield to Sam. It’s like the writers had no idea what to do with him. I also didn’t feel like Steve and Tony’s antagonism was ever really resolved. It’s set up at the start, but there’s no point at which they actually really resolve it, so I don’t really know why they made a big deal of it at the start.
I liked Captain Marvel in her own movie; she seems to sit a little awkwardly within the Avengers as the writers clearly try to balance making use of her with not having her be too much of a deus ex machina. Their solution to this is to have her absent for most of the film. I do wonder if they could have waited to introduce her… but seeing as she was around in the 90s, the question would always have been why she didn’t turn up for the battle. But speaking of Captain Marvel – where the hell was Goose in this movie? A disappointing no-show, there could have been all kinds of fun with Goose and Rocket.
A word on the ‘women of Marvel line up’ shot, since that seems to be a ‘thing’ – no sillier, really, than any other line up shots they always do. I always wonder why they’re standing in formation when they do those shots. But it does feel like a bit of a diversity crumb in a movie that’s basically about six white guys plus Rhodey and two women (both of whom get killed, even if one is only her past self). A bit like that gay guy at the support group. They’re using that as a way to suggest some kind of diversity credentials while being blatantly too scared to have a gay superhero (even when they had the perfect candidate they just decided to sideline).
OK, now it’s (1200 odd words) later, more on the big, big problem I had with this film. The stupid Source Code ending. The last five minutes or so. Captain America’s ending. I hated it. Really hated it. I had a sinking feeling it was coming from the trailers with him looking at Peggy’s picture. He didn’t even know her that well in the first place. He’s spent the last few movies moving on. She’s dead. He kissed her niece! But now apparently she’s the love of his life. So much so that at the support group for snap survivors at the start he’s just talking about her, not about Bucky or Sam or Wanda or any of the other friends he lost. And he chooses to go and live with her in the past, without telling anyone, abandoning all of his friends. He just decides to settle down (in what, his thirties?), stop fighting, just let Hydra do whatever (including taking over SHIELD and torturing Bucky for 70 years). What about Peggy’s family, are they now erased from history? What about her job? It’s a really odd, regressive conclusion to his character arc when he’d been finding a life for himself in the present, when he’s always been so focused on doing the right thing. He was my favourite character and that ending makes me dislike him.
However little character or emotional sense it makes though, the worst part is that Steve sitting on that bench as an old man in the same timeline makes a complete mockery of everything the film has already told us about time travel. I get that there’s a certain amount of suspension of disbelief required with superpowers and time travel and quantum realms and all the rest, but there’s a limit to that. And deliberately flying in the face of the rules they have set up for it is that limit for me. It comes close to ruining the film for me.
For all the reviews saying the more you are invested in the characters, the more you will get out of it, I feel I would have enjoyed it more if I had been invested a bit less.
I had three specific fears going into this movie.
My first fear about this movie was that the search for the inevitable reset button to undo the ending of Infinity War would be cheap. And they did much better than expected on this, aiming not to make it so it never happened, but to bring everyone back, five years later. The actual ramifications of this weren’t explored in the movie, but you can imagine the complications. There are stakes, there are consequences. Of course, once you open the can of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey worms, there’s no putting the lid back on, and the more you think about any of the time travel stuff, the less sense it makes. Especially the ending. But more on that later.
My second fear was that the film would suffer from the lack of the characters erased in the snap. This one was kind of justified, but your mileage may well vary depending on which characters you enjoy. I missed the Guardians, Spiderman, Scarlet Witch, Loki, Bucky… Ant-Man, Hawkeye and Hulk are not as interesting. Some of these characters do get their moment when they come back. Others do not. What Infinity War did well was balancing not only a bigger cast of characters for much of the film, but giving them reasons to be in different places and a whole host of really interesting meet-ups. Endgame just doesn’t have that. They pair up fairly randomly to go on their time heists, and don’t actually interact with each other very much or very effectively while they are there (with the exception of Natasha and Clint, who have a more convincing bond than maybe anyone else in the movie).
My third fear was basically exactly what happened in the end. But more on that later.
The three hour runtime isn’t exactly justified. While I appreciate that they spent some time actually having consequences to the snap, a lot of the ‘let’s round everyone up to go on a time heist’ bit could have been trimmed and tightened up considerably. I’m not sure we needed to see Hulk arriving at the Scottish fishing village all the Asgardians are apparently now living in. There are really good scenes at the start, though, with Clint's family, Iron Man and Nebula and the fight with Thanos. I wasn’t completely sold on the time heist plot. It’s a little messy and inelegant, there are plotholes you could drive a truck (with Hulk on the back) through, and while there are some fun moments (Cap fighting himself, the Hail Hydra lift moment), there was the potential for so much more, sacrificed for the sake of a few characters’ overlong heartwarming chats with their deceased parents which in the end don’t add all that much. I’d have preferred if these encounters had been briefer and more bittersweet. All the revisiting also gets in the way of the film really doing anything new. It’s also not as funny as Infinity War.
It then all ramps up to the conclusion, the final battle, which, while messy, is more like the rollercoaster of a film I was expecting. There are moments which are epic and moments which are ridiculous, just as there always are. The battlefield almost looks more like something from Lord of the Rings than Avengers. The moment with a bruised and battered Captain America standing up to face Thanos alone, then to be joined by an army of the returned gave me goosebumps. Tony Stark’s last stand was a memorable ending. He got a good send off, although I couldn’t help feeling that he and Captain America got each other’s endings, in a way. I actually think they could have stood to kill off a few more characters. Two deaths out of all of them was a surprisingly small price to pay.
Some of the characters are less well served than others. Thor as a slob is kind of funny, but it’s a one-joke joke which drags on far too long. In a fatsuit. Which I think was ill-judged. The tragic-comic interaction between him and the Guardians in Infinity War was pitch-perfect. This time it really isn’t. Natasha and Clint fighting over who gets to die on Vormir was almost heartbreaking (but went on a little too long). Nebula and Gamora get a kind of closure. Some people get a touching battlefield reunion, others don’t . If you’re watching it for any of the Black Panther characters, you might want your money back. Bucky gets a particularly raw deal. He was important enough for Captain America to start a civil war over a couple of movies ago, but his only function in this movie is to approve of Cap’s bad decisions in the end (more on that later). What happened to their ‘to the end of the line’ friendship? And then he gets passed over while Steve gives the shield to Sam. It’s like the writers had no idea what to do with him. I also didn’t feel like Steve and Tony’s antagonism was ever really resolved. It’s set up at the start, but there’s no point at which they actually really resolve it, so I don’t really know why they made a big deal of it at the start.
I liked Captain Marvel in her own movie; she seems to sit a little awkwardly within the Avengers as the writers clearly try to balance making use of her with not having her be too much of a deus ex machina. Their solution to this is to have her absent for most of the film. I do wonder if they could have waited to introduce her… but seeing as she was around in the 90s, the question would always have been why she didn’t turn up for the battle. But speaking of Captain Marvel – where the hell was Goose in this movie? A disappointing no-show, there could have been all kinds of fun with Goose and Rocket.
A word on the ‘women of Marvel line up’ shot, since that seems to be a ‘thing’ – no sillier, really, than any other line up shots they always do. I always wonder why they’re standing in formation when they do those shots. But it does feel like a bit of a diversity crumb in a movie that’s basically about six white guys plus Rhodey and two women (both of whom get killed, even if one is only her past self). A bit like that gay guy at the support group. They’re using that as a way to suggest some kind of diversity credentials while being blatantly too scared to have a gay superhero (even when they had the perfect candidate they just decided to sideline).
OK, now it’s (1200 odd words) later, more on the big, big problem I had with this film. The stupid Source Code ending. The last five minutes or so. Captain America’s ending. I hated it. Really hated it. I had a sinking feeling it was coming from the trailers with him looking at Peggy’s picture. He didn’t even know her that well in the first place. He’s spent the last few movies moving on. She’s dead. He kissed her niece! But now apparently she’s the love of his life. So much so that at the support group for snap survivors at the start he’s just talking about her, not about Bucky or Sam or Wanda or any of the other friends he lost. And he chooses to go and live with her in the past, without telling anyone, abandoning all of his friends. He just decides to settle down (in what, his thirties?), stop fighting, just let Hydra do whatever (including taking over SHIELD and torturing Bucky for 70 years). What about Peggy’s family, are they now erased from history? What about her job? It’s a really odd, regressive conclusion to his character arc when he’d been finding a life for himself in the present, when he’s always been so focused on doing the right thing. He was my favourite character and that ending makes me dislike him.
However little character or emotional sense it makes though, the worst part is that Steve sitting on that bench as an old man in the same timeline makes a complete mockery of everything the film has already told us about time travel. I get that there’s a certain amount of suspension of disbelief required with superpowers and time travel and quantum realms and all the rest, but there’s a limit to that. And deliberately flying in the face of the rules they have set up for it is that limit for me. It comes close to ruining the film for me.
For all the reviews saying the more you are invested in the characters, the more you will get out of it, I feel I would have enjoyed it more if I had been invested a bit less.