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Alright: for the benefit of those who haven't seen it yet, I’m going to attempt
to keep this review about 98 percent SPOILER-FREE so for those of you who are
invested in such things that means I’m sincerely trying to avoid getting into
unnecessary detail about surprises, cameos, specific plot twists, whether anyone
who died last time comes back somehow, to not give away any big moments, and
nothing that hasn’t been dropped into the trailers already.
So here we are at the ending that’s not really an ending to a story that’s not
really a story. What we now call the Marvel Cinematic Universe works because
it’s structured to feel like it has a grand, overarching narrative but it’s
really a set of individual movies and franchises that sometimes reference and
bounce off each other. Once every few years they coalesce into a bigger
crossover that retroactively pretends as though various events prior were
building to something specific. Avengers could have been called Avengers: We
Meant To Do That.
Infinity War was different. After
several installments of intermittent buildup to the confrontation with Thanos,
there needed to be a whole movie just for telling us where he came from, what
his goals were, why he wanted to accomplish them and how he planned to do so.
They couldn’t tell us in the previous movies because they didn’t actually know
yet, because if you try to pre-plan that kind of thing all the way in advance
you get might end up making
Batman V
Superman,
Suicide Squad and
Justice League (and nobody wants that again.)
With that film sorted and the mother of all cliffhanger climaxes still fresh in
audience’s mind, Endgame begins by cleverly establishing that, no, it will not
in fact be as easy as tracking down Thanos, finishing him off and hitting a
cosmic reset button. It swiftly moves on with an audacious skip forward in time
that’s just long enough for the surviving main characters to have undergone some
interesting life, appearance and personality shifts before introducing what is
ultimately the film’s main conceit. The heroes discover a limited ability to
leap backwards in time to prior events in recent history (i.e. previous Marvel
movies) and perform certain tasks which if successful may allow the Avengers to
— if not reverse the events of
Infinity War— at least rescue the half of universal life Thanos wiped out.
As a result, the climax to the biggest serialized blockbuster undertaking ever
is largely the action movie equivalent of paging through the family photo albums
before going off to college. I admire how upfront they are about the whole
thing: Endgame might not be the most meta of the Marvel features, but it’s
definitely the most meta about the sentimentality that’s come to underline the
Avengers movies in particular. Almost everyone’s story is centered on family,
surrogate family, longing therefore, lack thereof, etc. And when it becomes
clear that the second act really is going to be a long stretch of various
Avengers pairing up and popping back into key moments from the previous films so
that fans can laugh, cheer and be wistful about how far they’ve come alongside
these heroes it’s hard not to get into the spirit. Assuming you recognize
everything, playing the “I remember that! Oooh! Look who it is!” game is great
fun..
If there is one thing that sets Endgame apart from the first three Avengers
movies and really the whole rest of the MCU, it’s that it is the first one that
actually feels more tailored for devoted fans than for a casual general
audience. I’d argue even
Infinity War
can be easily watched as a big wacky superhero epic with a bizarre ending
without the context of the other Marvel movies. It feels like the main reason
Endgame’s run-time swelled to a full three hours is that one of those total
hours consists entirely of — for lack of a better word — fan-service.
Fortunately, for the most part, it’s good fan-service. Catchphrases are said,
callbacks are called back to, references are referenced, beloved supporting
characters return, old subplots are revisited, loose threads tied up, things
long left unsaid are said, new combinations of pairings and quip trading are
tried out, powers are tested against one another. All of its leads up to the big
climactic battle. (No, I do not in fact think it is a spoiler to say that an
Avengers movie has a battle near the end of it.) About a third of the big
showdown is stuff you want to see them do one last time, another third is stuff
you always wanted to see them do, and then a surprisingly large final third
feels like a series of test runs for the prospective future of the Cinematic
Universe itself. New team arrangements, pair-offs and brand new characters
getting big, splashy showcase moments clearly designed to generate an entire
year of spontaneous social media polling data on who and/or what should get
their own movie deal next.
How does it fare as a film rather than as a cultural event, though? This is an
exceedingly fun action feature that also works as a highly agreeable character
piece. Most of the main featured players here have been inhabiting these roles
for close to a decade — or over a decade in the case of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron
Man — and it’s thrilling to see them both swing for the fences in classic mode
and try on new world-weary, deeply-traumatized takes. True, it doesn’t reach the
heights of the
Black Panther’s
legitimately transcendent topical gravitas. There is, however, a boldness to the
way the film attempts and succeeds in making a fantasy about unwinding the end
of the world that’s really about the fact that everyone still has to deal with
having lived through it. Also bold is the choice to have the first hour of the
story draped in a deep sense of grief. It's my favorite segment of the entire
film.
On the acting front it’s the original Avengers crew who get the most to work
with this time out. The surprise MVP ends up being Karen Gillan as Nebula, who
ends up centered more than you’d expected for plot reasons and carries a lot of
important, difficult scenes. I’ll be extremely curious to see how certain fans
respond to how various people’s stories conclude, as the wind-down includes a
few endings more definitive than others. The implications of at least one of
those endings seems to actually raise more questions than it answers. (And, yes,
there will be a lot of questions about exactly how a whole slew of
already-announced upcoming projects are going to work now.)
While in spots a bit shaggy ( particularly the under utilization of Captain
Marvel. Especially after sitting through an entire origin film about her that
positions her as the most powerful character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
and perhaps not a wholly trans-formative experience, I can safely say that
Avengers: Endgame is at once a satisfying and comfortable yet bizarre and
utterly unique entry in what’s turned out to be one of the most unique
mass-entertainment properties of its age. A fitting send-off and fine preview of
things possibly to come.
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