Lets suppose that you have watched Marvel superhero movies here and there, starting with 2008’s Iron Man and have grown accustomed to some 30-40 heroes till then. 21 movies and 11 years later, the wizards at Marvel Studios, headed by Kevin Feige, have kept us entertained with blockbuster after blockbuster. There’s no telling how much these movies have changed film-making, but we can say this:
There will be nothing like Avengers: Endgame ever again.
For those of you just joining us, Endgame is the conclusion of a story that was painstakingly and carefully constructed. And boy is it huge! As a movie that’s designed to deliver payoffs after payoffs for characters and stories that you’ve been watching for a decade, you will get your money’s worth and then some more. You will feel glad for sticking along for the ride.
What Endgame isn’t, is a movie you that you can go watch without having seen any of the Marvel superhero movies. Its extremely self-indulgent and aware of its goal, but then again, that’s exactly what most of us were expecting to see.
The Marvel Universe films have set the bar too damn high. Many movie studios have tried, and failed at building interconnected multi-platform franchises (looking at you here WB-DC). And Endgame is what you get when you are interested in establishing a story, and concluding it with aplomb.
You will cry, You will laugh. Heck you will even laugh and cry at the same time. There’s really no other way to describe this roller-coaster of a movie.
We will be keeping this review spoiler-free, choosing instead to focus on the themes present in the movie.
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Plot
Avengers: Infinity War, the prequel movie to Endgame, ended up giving us a storyline where the villain wins. It was a deeply tragic film, and one that ends up killing a lot of heroes in the process.
However, where IW was like Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, in the sense that our heroes had been done for and left broken, EG is something very different.
Mild spoilers follow, however no plot details will be discussed though.
For the first 20 minutes of the movie, we see a world that’s trying to move on from that traumatic event. And there are some genuinely shocking moments that help set up the tone for what kind of movie EG will be.
To its credit, EG does take its time to make us feel the heroes’ emotional loss and how helpless they are in the face of it. Themes like failure, grief and survivor’s guilt are given time to be explored.
Oh and yes, we finally see Tony and Steve reunited, and boy is the tension off the roof there.
Acting
Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America) and Chris Helmsworth (Thor) are real stars here. Downey is still that smart mouth and arrogant guy he’s always been, but one who genuinely feels wrecked by how he has failed in his duty as protector of the Earth. Oh and he’s still pissed at you-know-who, and we don’t have any issues with that. Evans is still the goody two shoes optimist who, despite the fact that he’s out of time, is there to pick up the pieces post-IW. And Helmsworth? We’ll just let you see the movie to decide it.
Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) and Paul Rudd (Ant-Man) get major screentime this time around, and they are really in their element here.
Characters to watch out for? Karen Gillan’s Nebula and Scarlet Johanssen’s Black Widow.
Direction
Even though this is a pretty dire movie, directors Joe and Anthony Russo have surprised us with how much humor made it to this movie. Oh and they actually manage to give most of the heroes the sendoff they deserve, and this is saying something when you have got like 20 characters to juggle.
The action sequences? Industrial Light and Magic have completely outdone itself here with the breath-taking attention to detail, and shockingly great CGI that helps sell the superhero tour de force this movie is. You will definitely get your money’s worth here.
Conclusion
If you have even a passing interest in the world that Marvel has built over the course of 11 years, this movie is going to pull the socks out of you. There are some very cool twists (many in fact), nods to stories that have been alluded to in prior films, and its three hours of you staying at the edge of your seats as our heroes risk it all to turn the tables on the guy who obliterated half of the universe.
Plus it will make billions, and for good reason.
Review Breakdown
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Plot
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Acting
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Direction
Verdict - Go See it!
This is the kind of movie that will make people talk about it for years. Its an almost perfect movie, made for a certain kind of fan in mind. So if you like superhero movies (or pretty bombastic action sequences), this is it.
