âAvengers: Endgameâ film review
By Bex Peterson, Editor-in-Chief
3.5/5
Note: This is NOT a spoiler-free review. Please read at your own risk!
After a whopping 22 films in the trailblazing Marvel Cinematic Universe, the time has come to bring an end to the Infinity War saga that has been gracing our screens for over a decade. Itâs hard to believe that there was a time where the idea of a superhero team-up film was unique to the point of being considered risky. After all, we wondered, would moviegoers really want to see a movie where youâd have to watch at least three other films beforehand to know whatâs going on?
The first Avengers movie was like nothing weâd seen before. Now, however, itâs just about all anyone is seeing, with other film studios trying to cash in on that sweet movie universe franchising fortune with various degrees of success. So how do you make the concept exciting enough to warrant Endgameâs bladder-testing three-hour runtime? You get back to the basics.
With half the universe snapped away in the previous film by the purple power-mad Titan Thanos, the remaining Avengers are forced to come to grips with their failure. After five years of the survivors living and struggling in a half-empty world, âAnt-Manâ Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) re-emerges from a quantum experiment heâs been stuck in since the snap with a radical idea: Using time travel to steal the Infinity Stones from the past to bring everyone Thanos killed back to life.
The premise is a good one for a film that so clearly wanted to cap off this era of Marvel movies with depth and poignancy. It allows us to take a tour of some of the high points (and low points) of the last decade, revisiting Avengers, the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, andâwell, Thor: The Dark World. Easy laughs and emotional points are gained by getting a 360 view of scenes from films most viewers remember fondly; we get to see what happens after the original Avengersâ heroic victory team-up pose in front of a defeated Loki in Stark Tower, revisit âStar-Lordâ Peter Quillâs iconic dancing intro, and get cameo after cameo of characters we havenât seen in years.
These moments work because theyâre designed to work, a mixture of nostalgia and meta humour that even a cynic would be hard-pressed not to enjoy. There is a paint-by-numbers element to how itâs constructed, seeming to operate on the Marvel formula of âif it ainât broke, donât fix it;â a blessing and a curse, as itâs this formula that has allowed Marvel to churn out blockbuster after blockbuster with very few commercial failures in the current line-up of Marvel films. Did I find the all-girl team-up of superheroines during the incredibly crafted final battle scene emotionally manipulative? Yep. Did I get misty-eyed thinking about all the kids who get to grow up in an era of female superheroes, having enough badass ladies on the screen to warrant said team-up? Absolutely.
Despite the somewhat mechanical formation of the screenplay, I did enjoy the stuff I was supposed to enjoyâfor the most part. Unfortunately, the formula slopped out two or three components of the film that, quite honestly, felt like finding a few giant raisins in an otherwise perfectly tasty chocolate chip cookie.
While the other Avengers had very realistic and sympathetic arcs with regards to grief, guilt, and mourning in the wake of Thanosâ genocide, Thor (Chris Hemsworth)âwho arguably had the strongest emotional performance in the previous filmâwas given a âhilariousâ drinking problem and a fat suit. Instead of sympathy for Thorâs trauma, we were pelted with endless jokes about his eating habits and physical appearance. In a movie that was trying so hard for emotional depth, this treatment is completely tone-deaf and at times gleefully malicious.
The other sour note in the film for me was the treatment of âHawkeyeâ Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) and âBlack Widowâ Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). In the wake of his family being snapped away by Thanos, Barton shaves his head into an angsty mohawk (I get it, weâve all made bad hair decisions when weâre upset) and goes on a unilateral killing spree of criminals he personally deems worthy of execution (who all just so happen to be people of colour). Thereâs even an extended swordfight sequence in Japan (because all Japanese yakuza wield katanas, obviously) where the crime boss points out that, well, maybe this is all a bit fucked up, actually.
After convincing him to help in the so-called âtime heist,â Natasha and Clint travel back to Vormir, the planet where Gamora was lovingly tossed off a cliff to her death by a softly weeping Thanos in the previous film. Once Clint and Natasha realize one of them has to die to retrieve the Soul Stone, they engage in a very different kind of fight to the death, with both of them determined to sacrifice themselves for the other.
This could have been an incredible scene, and it almost wasâClint manages to knock Natasha off her feet and makes a sacrificial run for the cliff. I remember thinking that this, while not making up for Clintâs little murder rampage, at least shows that heâs aware he has a debt he owes to society at this point. Red in his ledger, if you will. It could have been a redemptive moment that his character sorely needed.
Instead, the formula comes roaring back in with a vengeance, as Natasha manages to save Clint and sacrifices herself in his stead. What should have been a poignant moment is rendered almost darkly comedic as her fall and final death shot were filmed and edited exactly the same as Gamoraâs, even scored with the same music. This leaves us with yet another badass woman killed off for the sake of man pain while the audience is meant to sympathize with a vigilante serial killer âcause, like, heâs just so sad, guys. Instead of an interesting parallel to Gamoraâs forced sacrifice, we got a parody.
Itâs hard to reconcile these cringe-worthy moments with the rest of the movie. I wouldnât say they impacted my enjoyment of everything else on the wholeâafter all, you can still eat around the raisins in the chocolate chip cookie. Still, I found them bafflingly unnecessary.
Much like the previous 21-movie collection of the MCU, Endgame has plenty of highs and only a few (admittedly pretty dismal) lows. But heyâwith a three-hour runtime, maybe itâs not such a bad thing that I know which scenes Iâm happy to miss for a bathroom break on a re-watch, or fast-forward through to cut down the runtime when the film finally makes it to Netflix.