We were promised a massive spectacle at the end of Phase 3
of the MCU and they delivered. Oh how they delivered. The film hits you in the
feels on so many levels. The producers made a valiant effort to pay off old
story arcs and further connect past films in the MCU with this finale of a
story.
You will laugh. You will cry. And you will be happy you went on this
crazy ride with the characters.
There were moments where I and the rest of the audience
erupted into cheers. Believe the hype. Endgame is the movie event of the season.
It is definitely worth seeing on the big screen. The spectacle alone is enough
to cover the price of a movie ticket.
As a fan of the MCU, as much as I enjoyed the film, I had as
many fist pumping and cheering moments as I had moments that pulled me out of
the story to say, “Hold on. WTF?”
SPOILERS AHEAD.
If you don’t want to know. Don’t
read on. But, if you have seen the movie, and like me walked out scratching
your head as you wiped the tears from your eyes, let’s discuss.
They had a huge job to do in this film. No, not the Avengers,
the movie makers. All of them. After the end of Infinity War we lost almost all
our heroes. Getting them back in any sort of believable fashion was never going
to be an easy thing. The writers and producers had to make the journey worthy
enough to appease the fans. That meant changing the plot structure of the movie
to not only set up but also pay off the end we demanded.
Rather than the traditional 3 acts,
we got 4.
Let’s break them down.
Catch Up And Lets Go Kill Thanos
We are introduced
at a break neck pace to the team (what’s left of them) in various states of disarray.
Hawkeye during the snap, losing his
family was heart wrenching. Tony and Nebula adrift in space, felt hopeless. But
then, appearing like Tinkerbelle in space, Captain Marvel appears, with no rhyme
or reason to carry them home. For a character that had only been introduce in
her own film months prior, the movie producers chose to bring her in deus ex
machina style with no explanation of how or why she was there. The same applies
to her later appearances as well in this movie. They just tossed her in for
effect. A big disservice to the character in my opinion. But, whatever, she
brings Tony and Nebula home to the rest of the broken team of original 6
Avengers and Rocket.
From there it was a
mad rush to do what they said they would in the trailers. Assemble and Kill
Thanos. But of course that couldn’t work. We’re still only 30 minutes into a
three-hour spectacle. It had to fail. And fail it did. The title transition to
what I’m calling Act two was well done. Each word coming across the scene like
the fall of a hammer, signaling their doom.
Five. Years. Later.
We’re Getting The Team Back Together For A Time
Heist
Overplayed their
hand a bit with Captain America and Peggy Carter missed romance. It was a
callback to earlier Captain America solo films but he’s long since stopped
brooding this hard. Maybe the writers felt that in the wake of the snap he
might return to his old brooding way, but to me the constant reminder of Peggy
Carter in this film felt forced and definitely foreshadowed his end.
The actual plan of
the Time Heist would never have happened if not for a rat crawling across the
control panel of the van? That stole a lot of the thunder from Infinity War’s
Doctor Strange saying he saw only one way for them to win. Really? He saw one
reality where a rat happened to tip toe across the right buttons to reactivate
the quantum tunnel in the van and spit Ant Man back out? I feel like that was a
little lazy on their part. As a fan I wanted to see Tony or Banner actually
figure out how to get Ant Man out. That would still lead them to the same conclusion,
the Time Heist, without it feeling like it was a fluke. They stole their own
thunder there.
Speaking of
Thunder. We have to talk about Thor or should I call him, The Dude? Others may
not have enjoyed his tribute to the Big Lebowski, but I loved it. Especially
when Rocket tried to slap some sense into him. They played him for laughs but I
think they had to in order to mellow out the drama.
Cap and Tony had their
drama for sure. And that I’m glad they kept short. They had no reason to bicker
when the universe needed them. They had a few scenes and then buttoned it up,
thank goodness.
This bit of the
film was extremely enjoyable as they took us on a trip down memory lane to collect
the time stones from alternate time lines. Total fan service here. Great
cameos. But when you add time into the equation, you have to get it right or we
end up giving your fans more questions than answers, and it was here I started
having issues with the film’s believability. More on that below.
Great Battle
This was the climax
we all wanted, and the spectacle that had everyone in the audience cheering.
Stones collected, gauntlet made, ready to snap, and just as we think we have
won…Thanos arrives with a bang for round two. The audience was left in that
awesome place between excitement and dread, happy and sad, with anticipation
keeping them glued to their seats. For a solid 40 minutes this act brought us
on a roller coaster ride. Having to follow so many characters, the battle was
cut quickly between key Avengers doing their thing as only they can. We see
every hero show up in their glory. All of them fighting together, shouting
their battle cry as they charge and equally impressive army of Thanos.
Long Goodbye
I knew it was coming.
Not all characters could make it. The stakes had to feel real or the movie
couldn’t deliver on the full spectrum of emotions. The 3rd snap sees
our greatest hero fall, and they take their time in paying proper respect to
the fallen, as they give us the Tolkien end of closing each of the other
important character’s current story arc. This was done at a nice pace
considering it went longer past the end than normal MCU movies dare. It
effectively gave us our end credit scenes without making us sit through the
music and walls of text. It also served to give the audience enough time to mop
up their faces before walking out of the theater after their good ugly cry.
FUNNY MOMENTS
The Big Lebowski
Picking on Thor
for putting on more than a little weight. They have firmly committed to Thor
being a comedic character, and allowing him to go the whole movie as Fat Thor
aka The Dude, really kept his character light.
Professor Hulk
Shirt
When they return
to the battle of New York. Hulk is embarrassed seeing his prior, half naked
self, and bemoans the gratuitous pulling off his shirt to go pretend to fight.
Too funny.
“That’s America’s
Ass.”
Yes. Yes it is.
Nuff said.
Star Lord’s
Dancing like no one is watching.
They paid off the
opening of GOTG1 going back to the moment Star Lord takes the stone, but
instead of his triumphant song and dance to victory, we get to see it from the
other side, watching the ridiculous karaoke and actually cheering when he gets
knocked out before he can really get singing.
INCONSISTENCIES
As I said above, when you do time travel, you have to get it
right or you leave your audience wondering how rather than just enjoying what
has been laid out in front of them.
Here’s a list of my top WTF moments and Questions. If you
have more, be sure to post them in the comments.
Cap with Mjolnir – Coolest moment, audience cheering. But it
creates a possible continuity error for the MCU. Cap can pick it up and swing
it, sure but why was he able to wield the lightning? The hammer was a conduit
for Thor’s power. The power did not come from it, as per Thor Ragnarok.
Captain Marvel gets the gauntlet. Why did she not escape to
space until there was an all-clear with the gauntlet instead of taking it
straight to Thanos on her way to the Van?
I get that they needed to get the stones back to their time,
but just throwing it into the van wasn’t going to do it. It allowed for the
second snap to happen eventually but basically returned the damn thing to
Thanos in the process.
Cap left with Mjolnir when he went to return the stones to
their time, but never returned with it. Where did it go? No one specifically
said that it was part of his mission to return that as well.
So, Steve went back and returned the stones. Fine. But he
never came back to present time. That leaves him in a time where there are 2
Steve Rogers existing in the same place; one is frozen and one with Peggy.
Also, if Cap returned the soul stone shouldn’t he have
gotten the soul back that was sacrifice for it? Wouldn’t that get us Black
Widow back? Why is this not addressed at all?
Where did Valkyrie get the Pegasus? Asgard was destroyed and
those don’t exist on earth. We can’t explain it as they were returned in snap 2
because that was still after the destruction of Asgard. So, cool as they were,
having them appear out of nowhere felt really Deus Ex Machina.
So, they were in possession of the Time stone before sending
it home and after the 3rd snap. Safe. Battle won. Yay! Why couldn’t
they have had Doctor Strange use the time stone to reverse the damage on Tony's
body after he used the gauntlet?
Where is Gamora? Did she get caught up in Snap 3? Did she
escape somewhere? They just left her character ambiguous.
Also, while we are on the subject of what happens to
characters, let’s address the kids. Peter Parker goes back to school after
being returned by snap 2. This is 5 years later, and yet, he and his friends
are still there, still the same age? How is this possible? Are we to believe
everyone in his school got snapped? If so, that’s really lazy writing.
All my curmudgeoning aside, I did
really enjoy the film. It delivered on its promise to provide an ending to this
phase of the MCU and opened up doors for some characters to continue on post
snap with their own adventures.
What did you think of this movie? I
want to hear your thoughts.