Avengers: Endgame Hits and Misses – Shannon’s Review

The movie event of the year is here (well, until Star Wars, anyway…)! It’s finally time for Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of 11 years of Marvel Cinematic Universe creations.

You don’t really need a synopsis for this movie. You already know what’s going to happen. But here’s a little recap anyway.

• In Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos successfully collects the six Infinity Stones, snaps his fingers, and erases half of all living creatures.
• In Avengers: Endgame, the remaining Avengers try to find a way to undo this action.

Ever since Thanos snapped his fingers, I have been worried that Endgame would be a predictable, time-travel movie that would essentially undo everything that happened in Infinity War. I was right. But I was also wrong.

Spoiler-free review of Avengers: Endgame

A Few More Details (Spoiler Warning)

If you read on in this post, there will be spoilers!

Avengers: Endgame successfully tied-up 11 years of Marvel story lines into a neat package. It was appropriately sentimental and nostalgic and it provided the closure we were expecting.

But did it blow me away? No.

Here’s what they got right:

• Humor. Marvel has always been good at injecting just enough humor to perfectly balance its serious themes. They knocked it out of the park in Endgame. I’m looking at you, Thor!
• Plausibility. Endgame was as realistic as any superhero time-travel movie can be. The story made sense without any huge leaps that had you scratching your head.
• A twist. The major twist in the movie is the point where I sat up and said, “Ok, now we’re getting somewhere!” Saving the universe couldn’t be as simple as gathering the stones and snapping your fingers again. I was glad to have that Thanos/Nebula wrench thrown in.
• The Hulk. I’ve never been a big fan of the Hulk, but I think they totally nailed his character in this movie. He should have made that transformation years ago.
• Memories retained. I’m THRILLED that this wasn’t just about “undoing” the snap. When everyone comes back, they all know what happened.
• Editing old footage with new. Some of my favorite scenes in the movie were when Cap and Iron Man went back to the time of the very first Avengers movie.
• Fan service. We get to see every Marvel character in Endgame, though some are only cameos. It’s a nice nod to the past 11 years without feeling too much like, “Oh let’s make sure we throw in a reference to this character for no good reason.” Again, it all made sense.
• Goodbyes. We’ve all heard rumors that certain actors were done playing their Avengers roles. I feel like we got very satisfying good-byes all around.

Here’s what they got wrong:

• The first third of the movie was boring. After an initial bit of action where the OG Avengers go after Thanos, I thought the first third of the movie was borderline boring. There was too much focus on the sad state of the world. And I’m not buying that a world that lost half of all life would necessarily look so apocalyptic.
• A rat saved the universe. Can we talk about the fact that it was a rat who essentially saved the universe? Ant-Man is stuck in the quantum realm for 5 years (which was just a few hours for him) until a rat happens to run over the controls of his abandoned time-machine van and press a button to pull Scott Lang out.
• Too much Hawkeye. He has never been a huge part of the Avengers and the screen time he gets in this movie seemed a little out of place to me. Or maybe I’m just not that emotionally connected to him.
• Not enough Captain Marvel. After all the hype surrounding the Infinity War end credits scene and the subsequent Captain Marvel origin movie, I expected to see a lot more of Carol Danvers.
• The final battle was not emotional enough. I think many people will disagree with me on this, and I honestly can’t pinpoint exactly why I felt detached. But I thought the final battle was a cacophony of cameos and “Oh, there’s that character!” without really pulling me in emotionally. And I didn’t think the actual imagery of the battle was that good – it was just a lot of dirt being blown around. I would have liked it more if they took 5 minutes from the beginning of the movie and put it toward the battle to slow things down a bit and focus more on the characters.
• Spider-Man’s future course. At the end of Endgame, we see Peter Parker in a school, reuniting with his friend Ned. Wouldn’t it be 5 years later? They wouldn’t still be in high school… I’m curious how they will explain this in the upcoming Spider-Man movie, which looks like it will have all the same main characters from the previous movie. Update: It seems that a lot of Peter’s friends were dusted and will also return, the same ages they were. So it IS 5 years later, but Peter and his friends will be the same age.
• What about Loki? It really bugged me that he was not addressed at the end. We know his course will be altered since he stole the Tesseract…

Overall, I liked Avengers: Endgame a lot. And I’m looking forward the next phase of the MCU!