And so we enter . . . Endgame
Avengers: Endgame is essentially three movies in one. The first third, which is actually my favourite part in many ways, is a serious and low key treatise on death and loss and how it affects the survivors. The middle third is a fun but convoluted time travel heist heavily inspired by Back to the Future Part II. And the final third is an emotional and epic battle full of fanservice moments, some of which are more successful than others.
Let’s start at the beginning. Hawkeye’s entire family being dusted is a heartbreaking and somber opener that makes me wish the rest of the movie had that level of intensity. Meanwhile, Tony Stark and Nebula are just chilling on a dying spaceship until Captain Marvel very conveniently finds them and tows them back to Earth. Reunited with the other surviving Avengers they track Thanos down and Thor cuts off his head. Wait, is the movie over already? Nope!
Five years later, Scott Lang finally escapes from the Quantum Realm thanks to a helpful rat. Oh, you didn’t know he was in the Quantum Realm? Guess you missed the end credit scene from Ant-Man and the Wasp. The other Avengers have been keeping busy in various ways (blink and you’ll miss the first openly gay character in a Marvel movie, at a Steve Roger’s led therapy session) but of course once Lang suggests some time travel shenanigans it’s time to get the gang together to put right what once went wrong and hope each time that the next leap... will be the leap home. Sorry, wrong show.
Of course, the Avengers then go to Stark for help with the timey-wimey stuff, but, plot twist, he is now raising a daughter with Pepper so he’s like, “Screw you guys.” By this point I’ve already cried several times during the movie. Thanks, Marvel! Luckily their back-up person is Professor Hulk. Yep, the jolly green giant is smart now. I’ve heard some people dislike this idea but I liked it because a) it’s from the comics and b) smart Hulk trying to act cool with kids and being embarrassed over his “Hulk Smash!” past is a hoot.
Stark comes back on board because he can’t resist getting to save the day again and Hawkeye (who is now brutally slaughtering gang members in Japan in what seems like a completely different movie) also agrees to return to Avenge the fallen. Which reminds me, it would be nice to see what has actually happened to the world in the wake of Thanos’ snap (Utopia? Dystopia? Dinotopia?) but this damn movie is already three hours long so I guess it makes sense to avoid that.
Then we come to the most problematic part of the movie, the reintroduction of Thor. He’s gained weight as a result of his depression following the Avengers’ failure and spends his time drinking and playing video games with his buddies from Thor: Ragnarok. If the filmmakers had handled this as sensitively as Stark’s PTSD in Iron Man 3 was, it could have made for a really interesting subplot. Unfortunately, they pretty much just make fat jokes and Big Lebowski references at Thor’s expense. For the next two hours. Hey, I know we’re all supposed to hate Joss Whedon now, but this is one area of the film where I wish he was still involved as a writer.
Anyway, this leads us into the Back to the Future part of the film where the characters have to go back into scenes from the previous movies to retrieve the Infinity Stones, without altering history in the process. It doesn’t make a lick of sense, but it’s fun revisiting some of our favourite Marvel movies (oh, and Thor: The Dark World) and seeing cameos from people we never thought we’d see again (Hello Robert Redford!). Somehow they manage to successfully steal all the stones, though Loki escapes again (this time to his Disney+ show) and Cap has a run in with “America’s ass” aka Steve Rogers from 2012.
The best part of this sequence is a trip to the 1970s to see Tony’s dad Howard, Peggy Carter and even Jarvis from that Agent Carter show that I’m still pissed about being cancelled. Oh, and Black Widow dies retrieving the soul stone just like Gamora, except she jumps instead of being pushed. Trying not to cry at this movie now is proving futile. Everyone except her returns to the present (future?) to figure out what to do with the stones. Oh, did I mention Nebula has been replaced by her evil version from the past and Thanos and his 2014 crew now know what the Avengers are planning?
So the Avengers make a new Infinity Gauntlet and Hulk snaps everyone back to life that Thanos killed, except the people that didn’t get dusted, because screw them. Then Thanos and his superfriends show up and bring the house down, leading to a recreation of one of my favourite comic book moments.
Luckily, all the Avengers survive being crushed under tons of rock and are ready to face Thanos, who now decides he’ll destroy the whole universe instead of just half of it. The battle is pretty cool but then- Oh my God! Cap just summoned Mjolnor! Forget everything bad I said up until now, this is the greatest movie ever made!
That moment almost overshadows the awesomeness of the next part, when Dr. Strange brings Black Panther, Spidey and all the other undusted heroes through portals so they can fight in the mother of all CGI battles. Let's take a moment to appreciate Alan Silvestri's score here. His Avengers theme deserves to be ranked with other great heroic themes like Batman and Superman. Cap finally gets to say the line, “Avengers assemble!”. To be honest, they looked pretty assembled already, but I’ll allow it.
The battle has everything you could want, even a Howard the Duck cameo in the background. Captain "Deus ex Machina" Marvel returns to help keep the gauntlet away from Thanos (sporting a cool new haircut) but she needs some help getting through his army, because apparently just flying straight up into space is too hard. Cue every female superhero in the galaxy coming to her aid, in a nice “girl power” moment that almost makes up for most of them having nothing to do for the rest of the movie. But of course the Infinity Gauntlet has to come back to the OG Stark, who snaps away Thanos and his army before dying from radiation. There is literally not a dry eye in the house now.
Stark gets a big funeral with lots of people you’ll recognize and some you won’t (oh hi, grown-up kid from Iron Man 3). Tony and Pepper's daughter gets a cute scene with Happy Hogan, though it would be nice to see her interact with her, you know, actual mother. Thor gets to go off into Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and the other Avengers return to their family and friends (apparently everything is continuing as normal at Peter Parker’s school, even though half his classmates would now be five years older than the rest). Oh, and Gamora is still around too, presumably, though since she’s from an earlier time she won’t have any memories of that jerk Starlord being the love of her life.
All that’s left is for Cap to return the Infinity Stones from whence they came and, oh I won’t spoil it . . .
. . . Okay, I’ll spoil it. He finally gets that dance with Peggy and spends the rest of his life with her in the past before returning as an old man to pass the mantle of Captain America to Falcon. I don’t know how it works timeline-wise, but it’s emotionally satisfying. The end credits remind us how much of Marvel's success has been due to casting, with Robert Downey, Jr. and Chris Evans in particular taking their characters on an incredible journey over the course of this series. But there’s no end credits scenes, so get the hell out of the cinema after the cast names have been and gone. The ushers will thank you.
I know this review sounds nitpicky and snarky because, frankly, there’s a lot to nitpick about this movie. It’s too long, the fanservice is often clumsy, and it generally feels like a messy and bloated season finale compared to the efficient storytelling of the other Avengers movies (yes, even Age of Ultron). But emotionally, Endgame works like Gangbusters. It’s impossible not to be moved if you’re even a little bit emotionally invested in these characters, and for that reason this movie deserves the trillion dollars it’s already made. We may never see its like again.
The Missing Link
Oh, and I also saw this charming Laika animation film. It deserves to be seen by a bigger audience, but unfortunately less and less people are going to see stop motion movies.
posted by A.S. McDermott at 12:54 PM
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