Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo

Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

(this review is 98% spoiler free; I do have to spoil a very basic plot detail just to discuss the movie, but it’s something that has already been widely and confidently speculated)

Reviewing a movie like Avengers: Endgame is surprisingly difficult. So much of what it does is built upon what has come before it that almost all of its virtues are conditional. Great if you’ve seen this other movie; emotional if you love this previous trilogy. And yet, if the viewer does have those connections, it’s likely to be one of the most profound and moving experiences they’ve ever had in the theater. For those fans who have been following along for a decade, this is everything they could ever have wanted and more; and, frankly, does it really need to be any more than that? I would argue that it does not. The movie picks up immediately after the ending of the previous film, with Tony Stark and Nebula trapped on Titan, and the rest of the defeated Avengers together on Earth after Thanos teleported away at the end of the battle. Their loss still fresh, the Avengers resolve to hunt down Thanos and try to fix what he has broken. And that’s about all I can say about the plot without ruining some of Endgame‘s best surprises (of which there are many). Like Infinity War before it, the team at Marvel managed to come up with a narrative that makes sense but still manages to surprise in a number of ways. The (very) mild spoiler that I mentioned above is that in their quest to set things right the Avengers end up doing some time travel, which was widely assumed to be the case before the movie was released. Indeed, this adventure involves time travel, and that’s one of the less surprising things that it does.

The time travel, actually, is of pretty key importance in understanding whether or not you will enjoy Endgame. As the film itself lampshades with a couple of clever jokes, time travel often doesn’t make a lot of sense in otherwise really fun and entertaining movies. If you’re the kind of person who would enjoy reading or writing an entirely serious, 5000-word screed on why the time travel in Back to the Future 2 doesn’t make any logical sense, this might not be the movie for you. It operates pretty exclusively on comic book logic for how science works, and if that’s not your jam some of this might really rub you the wrong way. Otherwise, you’re in for one of the most fun times at a cinema of the century thus far. The writers and directors here have shown that they can work with a huge ensemble before, and those skills continue to carry them through the increasingly convoluted and dense mythology of the ever-expanding universe here. To a surprising degree (considering the number of heroes involved), every character has something to do here. Like many of the best action-oriented blockbusters, there is a mission with clear objectives, and each character has a part to play in that mission. How it’s actually executed and the complications that arise from its execution drives the plot forward in a natural and cohesive way. Once again, from a structural standpoint, the screenwriting team of Markus & McFeely have knocked it out of the park in terms of making a gargantuan narrative flow naturally and feel brilliantly inevitable.

And oh, the character moments. Vast swathes of this movie are blatantly fan service, big moments you can tell are designed to make you cheer or cry or both at the same time. But if you are in the target demographic, I can assure you that it won’t matter. After the movie was over, my wife told me, “I could tell I was being manipulated, but I didn’t care.” That about sums it up for me. This movie is a simultaneous fulfillment of so many childhood dreams, and manages to fit so many moments from my youthful imagination into one three-hour runtime, that I could never be anything but floored by it. I don’t want that to sound like damning it with faint praise, either. It does so much more than it strictly had to. It is far more than competent. It is exhilarating, fist-pumping, joyous pop culture entertainment. It is an emotional roller coaster of a film, taking the audience through profoundly hopeless-seeming depths and spectacular, heart-pounding highs. I’ve seen it twice, and both times the audience was filled with spontaneous, audible responses to the scenes in a way I’ve rarely seen before. It’s a fulfillment of so much expectation, and it handles every element of the burden placed upon it with aplomb. It was never going to have the same kind of focus that a single-character film had, or even a small ensemble, but it has something entirely different: an alchemical combination that gives it the feeling of cinematic lightning in a bottle. There is the distinct feeling that there has never been a movie like this before, although it’s seeming increasingly likely that there may yet be again.

Ultimately, this movie does everything that fans wanted. It provides a satisfying conclusion to a decade of moviemaking, and manages to serve as a sequel to a staggering twenty-one films. That alone is enough to confidently place it within the pantheon of historically significant movies. That it does this not merely competently, but confidently and with seeming ease (it’s 181 minute runtime seems to fly by), is a compliment of the highest order. If there is any problem, it’s that there is simply too much ground for the movie to cover everything. As generous as it is, there are still plotlines left on the table, pieces left out for future movies to inevitably pick up and play with. There will be critical voices, and as the emotional impact of the movie fades there will doubtlessly be people who fall out of love with the sturm und drang, but I am absolutely not one of them. Certainly, those who have no investment in the universe will get absolutely nothing out of it, nor should they: this is definitively not a movie for them. This is a love letter to the fans of this franchise, and to thousands or even millions of kids who grew up reading comic books and dreaming of the colorful events of the page coming to life. In many ways, this is arguably the most comic-book-ish of any of these movies yet made. Watching it felt almost exactly like the experience of reading a big crossover event in physical comic books. Gigantic, sweeping stakes that seem as though they may rewrite the universe, cute references to deep lore that in no way detract from the narrative but reward the astute and dedicated viewer, and a ludicrously generous series of moments pulled directly from the page and my heart. I am absolutely the target audience for this one, and I cannot resist its powerful pull on my nerdy, nerdy heart. A huge recommendation for one of the greatest uses of a theater screen in some time.

Overall: