What I Didn’t Like about Avengers: Endgame – Fadra’s Review

I’ve not only been waiting a year to see Avengers: Endgame. I’ve been waiting a year to review Avengers: Endgame. And now that it’s here and I’ve seen it, I’m feeling pretty bittersweet.

Here’s my quick overview of how I felt about the movie:

But there’s so much more to say and most of it isn’t great. In fact, once the movie ended, my criticism started immediately. My husband looked quizzically at me. I thought it was great, he said. Yeah, but he’s a casual consumer of Marvel movies. To the people who have been living and breathing this universe for years, there’s a lot to say.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

In order to really talk about the movie, I have to get into the details. So if you haven’t see Avengers: Endgame yet, TURN BACK NOW! It’s always good to see a movie spoiler-free. And then once you’ve seen it, come back and share your thoughts with me because I’m about to unleash some fury (and not the Nick kind).

What I Didn’t Like About Avengers: Endgame

Let me start by saying I was a HUGE fan of Avengers: Infinity War naming it the best movie of 2018. That movie blew me away and kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire movie. It’s rare that a film does that for me.

Suffice it to say, I had pretty high expectations going in and left feeling pretty deflated. Yes, some of these things are nitpicky or personal preference but I couldn’t escape some of these aspects of the movie.

• It was pretty boring at least for the first half. There was a lot of catch up for the course of the 5 years that had passed but it was more than was needed to move the story forward.
• It was too easy to kill Thanos. I realize that killing him was an integral part of the storyline but once they found it, it was over in seconds. Kind of anti-climactic. I know that was the point but that part of the story fell really flat.
• They made a mockery of Thor. Yes, I know it was for comic relief but the joke carried on way too long. Thor didn’t seem dark and depressed. He seemed lazy. I think they could have lightened things up without making him such a joke.
• Ant-Man was an idiot. They did this in Ant-Man and the Wasp and I had the same complaint. If anyone recalls from the original movie, Scott Lang was an electrical engineer who probably knows enough to base his understanding of time travel on something other than Back to the Future.
• The mood shift was too dramatic. Robert Downey Jr. gave the performance of a lifetime (in this universe, anyway). Hawkeye’s despair was palpable. And then we yuk it up with Thor and Ant-Man. I know they were trying to stay true to the characters but they did a much better job blending their styles in Infinity War.
• Time travel is simply an inverted mobius strip. Wait, what? Okay, I’ll allow that because we needed to figure out time travel to make this all work but that seemed just a little too easy.
• Professor Hulk? I still feel very confused about him. Maybe it’s because we had to now rely entirely on CGI for his character and didn’t get the real life scenes with Mark Ruffalo (until later) that I usually enjoy. I guess that’s making up for too much Mark Ruffalo in Infinity War.
• We didn’t have time to mourn Black Widow. There was a sad moment and then down to business. This was a stark (pun intended) contrast to Tony’s funeral at the end and I felt like her death was a little glossed over.
• Nostalgia on hyperspeed! It was a lot to try and tie every single movie together. I think a big part of it was to emphasize that this movie was the crux of the entire Avengers story. But it also seemed like they were trying to cram everything together in a package for the fans and in a ways that would satisfy the nerds. It was a little too much for me.
• Oh, the time paradoxes. If Nebula of the present kills Nebula of the past, should Nebula still continue to exist? If Loki in the past steals the tesseract and disappears, will that timeline continue leading up to what resulted in present day? If Gamora from the past stays in the present, will she ever become the Gamora that helped Thanos get the Soul Stone? Time travel is messy. I wasn’t majorly upset here but there are definitely holes.
• How did no one die in that Avengers HQ blast? I mean, I’m GLAD no one died but didn’t it seem highly unlikely that nobody died or was at least critically injured?
• Since when is Pepper the Ironwoman? When the Avengers assembled (that was actually a fun moment), was anyone else surprised to see her show up to do battle?
• Why was Captain Marvel there? She shows up (and not in the manner we see in the trailers) to save Tony Stark and help find Thanos. Once he’s dead, she says kthxbye because she has other planets to save in the universe. When she does reappear, she fists her way through Thanos’ spaceship and yet somehow just can’t seem to get a good punch in.
• Why was it so easy for Thanos to do the snap in the first place? Maybe I just don’t understand the power of the Infinity Stones but he didn’t seem to have any trouble wielding the power but Hulk could barely handle it and, well, we know what happened to Tony.
• WHY COULDN’T ANYONE KILL THANOS? In Infinity War, he was powerful because he has so many of the stones. In Endgame, he’s just a bad guy and a warrior. Arguably, he was never a power-hungry bad guy. He was focused on achieving balance in the universe. So the version of the Thanos from the past didn’t quite work for me. With all of them and one of him (without any Infinity Stones), it seems like he could have been defeated.
• Marvel took a page from DC for the end scene. One thing I dislike about DC movies is the massive battle scenes that seem so over-the-top. That’s what seemed to happen here. It’s like the director said, Okay, put everyone on the battle field and let ’em fight! Kind of like when a little kid takes his army men and bunches them together and calls it a fight.

What I DID Like about Avengers: Endgame

I’m not simply a naysayer. I’m a Marvel fan so I can’t NOT like this movie. It just didn’t deliver what I wanted (and I can’t say exactly what I did want other than a feeling when I walked out of the movie). But there were plenty of things that did resonate with me.

• Robert Downey Jr. was the star, in every sense of the word. He started it and he finished it. It was a poignant story arc and his acting was on point. Outstanding performance.
• Tony Stark dies and I’m okay with that. I thought it was the ending that needed to happen.
• Black Widow dies and I’m okay with that. Although I didn’t want to see her die, it made sense. Hawkeye had a family to return to and she finally got to make the difference she so desperately wanted to.
• Gamora returns! Although it’s not the Gamora we’ve grown to love, I’m glad to see we will get to see more of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
• Thor will make a fine addition to GOTG. Just please get rid of that gut. And that beard.

There were also a few scenes I loved. Hulk and the Ancient One, Tony and his father, and hearing Captain America say Avengers, assemble! I certainly didn’t hate the movie. It just didn’t leave me feeling all the feelings like I did at the end of Infinity War.

I’ll definitely watch it again. And I’m sure my thoughts will change as I’m still digesting the story. But there will always be more Marvel movies and I’ll be there to see them!