I’m late to the game here, and this is more of an internal monologue of my thoughts than a thorough review, but I wanted to finally write about some of the things that have stuck with me from Avengers: Endgame. I thought it would be premature to do it before now because I wanted the chance to rewatch it a few more times, but since you can buy the film on iTunes now, I’ve been able to rewatch it again (after seeing it in theaters twice back in April) and organize my thoughts. If you haven’t seen it yet, (well, firstly wtf is wrong with you, and secondly,) here’s your ⚠️ Spoiler Warning.
Generally, I really liked the movie, and I think it will have more replay value than most finales, like “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” or “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2.” I think they did a fantastic job with the character arcs, but I did have a few issues with the film from a plot perspective.
First of all, Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) seems a bit too powerful to be believable. She can travel at nearly the speed of light, and she seemed fairly capable of handling Thanos by herself. I get that they tried to balance out her apparent invincibility and general ability to whoop ass by saying that there were a lot of other planets that needed her help—fine, that makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense is that for so long after the Avengers pull off their “time heist” and have all six infinity stones, she was still nowhere to be found. It seems like no matter what else she was doing, all six infinity stones being in the same place at the same time would be enough to warrant her immediate attention.
I also think that the Captain Marvel character (specifically as she’s presented in Endgame) would’ve benefited from being about 15% less cocky. I get that we’re hyping up the whole female power-equality-feminism thing, but there’s a difference between cockiness and confidence. In a similar vein, I thought that whole female character ensemble towards the end of the fight when they help Carol get the stones in the special glove (does it have a name? I don’t think it does. I’m calling it the Iron Gauntlet) to the van was a little much. I know we’re talking about a universe with superheroes and magic rocks, but what are the odds that all the female characters ended up in the same exact spot at the same time on that massive battlefield? The similar moment in Infinity War with Nat, Wanda, and Okoye was much better. While we’re on the subject of women, the movie would’ve benefited from more Natalie Portman (as Jane, not Thor🙄).
Next, lets talk about the whole time travel thing. Time travel is a fairly weak plot device, and its primary weakness is that it often creates a lot of logical problems; Endgame was not immune to this weakness. The easiest way to reconcile with these plot holes is to ignore them, because once you get started, you probably aren’t coming out of that rabit hole for a while. Cause like, what about that whole timeline where Loki got away with the tesseract? How did Tony solve the question of time travel in five minutes by inverting a mobius strip (which is already inverted)? And wouldn't the Avengers have seen Cap putting all the stones back while they were collecting them, since they had to be returned to the same moments they were taken from? Or was there a little wiggle room? If so, why didn’t he put the soul stone back a few seconds before Nat fell to her death? How could Cap live out a life with Peggy while she had a husband? Why didn’t they just go back and take the stones from Thanos with the Iron Gauntlet before he used them in Infinity War? If changing the past doesn't actually impact the future, then all of those things should have been possibilities. And why don’t they just make more Pym Particles?!?
Though, I will concede that, to Endgame’s benefit, the stories that Marvel has been telling do span a rather wide amount of time, so there were unique ways that they were able to use time travel to incorporate humor and heart. At the end of the day, I’m not mad that they resorted to using time travel, I just wish they’d come up with something better.
Moving on from my grievances with the plot, the story did complete a lot of character arcs really nicely, namely for the six original Avengers, and I think we can give credit for part of that maturation to the five year gap between Infinity War and Endgame. Tony is a lot more compassionate and level headed. Bruce was able to finally establish some internal peace between himself and Hulk. Thor (while a hot mess for most of the movie) finally accepted that he simply wasn’t the person everyone expected him to be. I can’t say too much for Clint—not gonna lie, I wish it had been him who had died for the soul stone, but that wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. Natasha really transformed from the beginning of the MCU, and I think she had the most beautifully tragic life of all the Avengers, but her motivations were finally out of the shadows, and her arc was truly complete. Cap really changed a lot as well, maintaining the same optimism and grit he always had, but also allowing himself to be a lot less uptight.
Speaking of Cap (and briefly regressing to one of those rabbit hole plot issues), I think we’ve all known since “Age of Ultron” that he would eventually wield Mjölnir, but I didn’t realize that he would be able to use it to also conjure lightning. That seemed a little gratuitous and a bit too much outside of his territory; Thor is a god, but Cap isn’t, and I don’t think he would be able to adopt Thor’s powers just because he’s worthy of wielding his weapon.
Getting back to the subject of character arcs, I want to address the several impactful death scenes. Tony’s death was slow and you knew it was coming for several minutes. To me, this had less emotional impact than the two most memorable close calls he had, in Infinity War when Thanos stabbed him, and in Civil War at the end of his fight with Cap (I honestly thought Cap was about to bash his head in with that shield the last time he brought it down into Tony’s chest). In any case, I thought it was done well, and I liked how Pepper and Peter were so present for it. Iron Man is my favorite Avenger, but Natasha’s death really cut deep—I actually think I was more upset about her death than any other. It was just such an emotionally impactful completion of her character arc. Scarlett Johansson’s acting and the music really took that scene to another level. I hate that Tony and Nat had to go, but I’m honestly surprised that more characters didn’t bite it, especially some of the auxiliary Avengers (Bucky, Rhodey, Scott, I’m looking at y'all). And as for Thanos’s ultimate death scene: I didn’t like it. There’s something satisfying about having a villain’s cold, obviously dead body be presented on screen as opposed to having them just fade into nonexistence (Harry Potter screwed this up, too).
Overall, I really liked the movie, and felt like it was an appropriately epic conclusion to the MCU as we’ve known it.
Also worth noting: this movie really changed how I watch “Age of Ultron.” Up until this point, I’d considered AoU to be the weakest of the four Avengers movies, and it was hard to look past the fact that the main plot driver, Ultron, was a fairly weak concept. However, now I don’t think we’re giving it enough credit. It works a lot better after having seen Endgame. There are quite a few Endgame easter eggs, and it’s clearer than ever just how much leg work that movie did in terms of expanding the MCU, from furthering character arcs and tying in a lot of second tier players, to introducing the infinity stones, to setting up “Captain America: Civil War.” AoU had a lot of ground to cover, and it’s clearer than ever after watching Endgame how well of a job it did, despite having the weakest plot line of the four Avengers films.
