Formula: Avengers: Infinity War * (The Avengers + Thor: The Dark World + Guardians of the Galaxy) ^ Back to the Future: Part II
On May 23, 2010, before airing the 2 hour finale of LOST,
ABC aired a 2 hour retrospective program, looking back on the popular series.
They did stuff like this a lot. There was the nascent days of binging. ABC
wasn’t convinced that audiences would find a way to catch up on their own, so
they would air 1 hour recaps occasionally to help new viewers be able to jump
right in. This one was different though. It was completely for the fans. More
like a victory lap to remind the fans of the journey they’d all been on.
Highlighting favorite moments and characters along with the story behind the
show. The finale itself was imperfect. There were just too many loose ends to
tie off; too many characters to give a proper send-off to. Nothing would be big
enough or satisfying enough for the six years of investment and build. When you
factor out the commercials, that night of programming was about 3 hours long
and it did exactly what it needed to. It reminded me of all the moments and
characters that kept me interested for so many years, and it gave me a
conclusion to the story that, while problematic, had plenty of great moments.
I hope you see where I’m going with this. I know more
people are looking to something like The Lord of the Rings as a
comparison for going into Endgame. I’m seen people compare this to a
season of TV by pointing out how the number of movies (22) is the same as the
number of episodes of a network TV season. I’ve even seen comparisons to Boyhood
to - I guess - point out how much time has gone into this. Personally, I keep
coming back to that last night of LOST, because even more than trying to
have a perfect story, Endgame wanted to thank the fans for sticking
around so long.
With these movie reactions, I trend toward writing reviews
that don’t give away too much. That won’t be the case with this post, because
with Endgame, either everything is a spoiler or nothing is. I’ll assume
if you are reading this, then you’ve already seen the movie or you don’t care.
I should probably start with the spoilers. When it’s all
said and done, there are only 3 real spoilers in the movie: 1) Black Widow
sacrifices herself. 2) Iron Man dies. 3) Captain America goes back to Peggy.
Everything else about the movie is a matter of how, now if. Any
half-attentive movie fan already knows of all the movies Marvel has in production.
No one believed the Snap was final. The only question going into Endgame
was how they would bring everyone back. It turns out the answer was quantum
time travel stuff. Everyone knew there would be a big battle and we mostly knew
which characters were still around at the beginning. Those three spoilers are
the only thing anyone has a right to be angry about finding out beforehand.
The story of Endgame is an absolute mess. It is
convoluted and confusing. I worry that resorting to time travel has opened a
can of worms that Marvel may regret down the line. The mechanics of it are
clunky and I’m not sure any of it really makes sense. For example, how the hell
does alt-world Thanos get his entire army to earth for the big battle? There
was a big fuss earlier in the movie about only having a finite number of those
doohickies to get home for time travel, but then Nebula is somehow able to
sneak an army through. Or there’s the fact that Tony Stark was able to solve
time travel seemingly in one night in his cabin after Cap, Ant-Man, and Black
Widow mention the right vocab words to him. Really, the story is a mess.
There's no other way to describe it. They wrote themselves into such a corner
with Infinity War that they had to go to some wacky places to get out of
it.
Endgame has an Infinity War problem. The
Snap is the inflection point of the MCU so far. It’s the big moment. I can’t
call it the climax, but it’s where all the stories converged. That movie had
its own problems, but Infinity War made sense. All stories built to
that. All the heroes were brought together by it. Comparing them to Lord of
the Rings, Infinity War was the giant battle in front of Minas
Tirith in Return of the King. Endgame was the desperation fight
in front of the gates of Mordor later on*. No matter what Endgame came
up with, Infinity War had “the moment”. I watched Infinity War
thinking “what’s going to happen next?” I watched Endgame thinking “How
are they going to fix it?” Endgame had all the burdens of a finale (the
challenge of closing the story) without the excitement of seeing how they bring
everything together.
*Hours after writing this, Game of Thrones put it more
succinctly. To paraphrase, in Infinity War, they fight the great battle.
In Endgame they fight the last battle.
However, here’s the dirty little secret about Endgame:
It’s not about the story. The story for the first era of Marvel is done. Infinity
War wrapped that up. This is the studio that perfected the end-credits
scene though. The most exciting part of any MCU movie is seeing what they give
fans at the end. Endgame is a fan service movie, and I love it for that.
The whole time travel adventures really are just an excuse to remind audiences
of all the great moments of the series leading up to this movie. Few things tickled
me more than seeing what amounted to “deleted scenes” from The Avengers,
Thor: Dark World, and Guardians of the Galaxy. I loved seeing the
famous team formation shot from The Avengers. I giggled with delight as
they paid homage to the Winter Soldier elevator scene. Watching this
movie was a constant reminder of the hours and hours of entertainment I got
from these movies in the last decade. As a fan, I’m not sure what else I
could’ve asked for.
Sure, I don’t know how any of the final battle was possible.
The logistics of the battlefield rarely made much sense. I never had a grasp of
the geography of the location. That’s not the point though. I’m only going to
remember moments from that section of the film anyways. Cap revealing that he’s
worthy to hold Thor’s hammer: Awesome. The “Avengers assemble” moment
overwhelmed me. Honestly, that choked me up. Even the “girl power” moment, as
ham-fisted as it was, made me swell with happiness. Anything that movie could
do to remind me of how many great characters they’ve introduced over the years,
I ate right up.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I refuse to be
cynical about the MCU or other such franchises. Yes, I love a lot of small
critical darling movies. I also bemoan the death of the mid-budget adult drama.
I am worried about how a few studios are sucking up all the box office and pop
culture oxygen. But, I fell in love with movies because of movies like Endgame.
For me, it was the spectacle of seeing The Phantom Menace in theaters.
Seeing The Fellowship of the Ring on the big screen rewired my brain in
a way that nothing else has. I’m amazed by what the MCU has done. If they want
to take a victory lap with Endgame, that’s fine with me.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
Some Other Thoughts
-This cast is too big. Several people were going to be
short-changed. That was inevitable. They did pretty well though. There was way
more Nebula (Karen Gillan) than I would’ve expected. The story necessitated
that, but it was still a bit much at the expense of characters I personally
like more.
-My big complaint is that there wasn’t enough Carol Danvers
(Brie Larson). I forgave a lot of issues I had with the Captain Marvel
movie last month, because I figured I’d get to see her cut it up with the other
Avengers in Endgame. Brie Larson is an A+ banterer. I get that Captain
Marvel’s powers overwhelm a lot of situations, but it’s unforgiveable that they
couldn’t find more ways to use her for non-action sequences.
-I think Chris Hemsworth’s development as a comedic
presence is the most remarkable thing to come out of the last decade from the
MCU. Even as recently as The Avengers,
would you have believed that he’d be driving most of the comedy in this movie?
I’ll admit, they maybe went a little too far with it. Turning him into The Dude
was a bit much. I wouldn’t trade that for 2011 Thor though.
-I have no idea what the MCU’s plan is moving forward.
There’s going to be a Loki series on Disney+. Loki is still dead. There’s going
to be a Disney+ series with Scarlett Witch and Vision. Vision is still dead and
the Infinity Stone that gave him life is still destroyed. Black Widow died even
though there’s a Black Widow movie in the works. Are all these projects really
going to be prequels? That sounds like a bad idea. And is Gamora gone for good
too? I suppose swapping her out with Nebula is fine, but that really sucks for
Gamora. When she died in Infinity War, everyone kind of assumed she’d be
brought back in Endgame, so she was never properly eulogized at the
time**. I’m surprised that the Hulk wasn’t written out. I kind of assumed Mark
Ruffalo was getting tired of these. I’d like to have him back, but I’m not
crazy about this perma-Hulk thing he’s got going on. The Jekyl/Hyde dynamic is
the most interesting thing about that character. Captain America’s farewell is
the only one that made 100% sense to me. Evans has made no secret of wanting
out*. Robert Downey Jr. leaving makes sense. It’s just a real kick in the balls
to give him a daughter before killing him off.
*Not that he hates the role. He’s just
ready to move on.
**Wait, or is alt-timeline Gamora still around at the end? I didn't see her.
-I’m sure they’ll address this later, but how does this
5-year difference thing work? So, they undo the Snap and bring everyone back.
They are all the same age as before though. Tony Stark makes it very clear that
they weren’t supposed to undo anything that happened in the last 5 years though
(i.e. He didn’t want to lose his daughter). So, is half the world just five
years different in age now? Will Peter be going back to school with half of his
same classmates? What about all the people who remarried? I am incredibly
confused by this. It sounds very poorly thought out.
-Am I the only one who thought the Snap was figurative?
Like, Thanos only snapped to make half the population of the universe disappear
as a symbolic gesture. I just assumed if you have a gauntlet on, you
automatically had the power. In this movie, they really ran with the idea of
snapping though. No one could do anything with that glove until they snapped.
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