I missed out the last time an Avengers movie was on screen with Infinity War, however, I feel like with Endgame I’ve got to talk about the movie because simply … it is the END of an ERA. How so? Put simply, I feel like this is the beginning of the END of the dominance of Super Hero movies and in some ways this is GOOD an BAD but I’ll get into that more so in the later spoilers section of my review.

That being said let’s dive into the film and talk about what works and doesn’t work.

First off. The Music MUCH much more improved over the last several Marvel films.  Now onward to story!

Story

This is usually depending on the film one of the weaker or stronger areas in the Marvel titles and in this case it is supremely satisfying seeing the fallout of the snap-ocalypse that occurred one movie prior. Scott Lang’s daughter is older. Tony has a kid. Steve is having to deal with his issues of failure. I’ll be honest however, I was expecting as crazy an ending and even MORE death in this film as the last and figured that it would keep more in the tradition of the actual infinity war comics. However, instead of the infinity gauntlet being essentially “God Mode” it was more like “semi-ultra powerful mode” which in my mind I found pretty lackluster. I would have appreciated a story that had a lot more meat and potatoes in terms of showing off the sheer power of the gauntlet. Instead it was mostly relegated to a McGuffin and more Thanos memes. That being said what is on screen as a replacement is one of the greatest “trips down memory lane” ever devised on film. It successfully calls back to many great moments in Avengers films and has some extremely satisfying payoffs (except for Thor) and some other lackluster ones. This is maybe one of the more emotional Avengers films if only because at the end of it you FEEL the weight of the end. To me I don’t know how I could keep watching Marvel films after this as largely I feel like this film has achieved its goal. It has satisfied its ending and as a result ended up being in my mind a great end to an ERA of Avengers films.

Visuals

I was actually a little disappointed in this area. Don’t get me wrong there were some fantastic visuals and some of the ending fight scenes were truly breathtaking. But I still feel like Marvel is using too many colors and needs to centralize their color palette vs a “paris by night” all the colors approach. That being said the CGI on screen was very much fantastic as should be expected.

Acting

This is one area I didn’t expect to see that much improvement. Prior Avengers films had felt very run of the mill however, in terms of acting and what was expected. This film I think substantially raised the bar on my expectation of Marvel films in terms of sheer talent brought to screen. It was hitting it’s acting beats and moments much harder and there were just some absolutely great examples of the “caliber” of actors that we knew they had been hiring for a reason. Seeing the pain from Tony and Cap and Black Widow and everyone as well as a “man out of time” showing from Scott Lang was a real joy to watch. Hawkeye has a great example of this as well as Jeremy Renner can act but this was his first examples in the series where he really sold it.

Themes

One of the major themes of this film is “how much are you willing to sacrifice to achieve victory” as well as overcoming failure. There are some great great moments that it’s portrayed. That being said … this is one of the weaker areas of the film as sometimes the convolution of the story gets in the way of the themes of the film.

Conclusion

An outstanding conclusion to the END of the Avengers and to Marvel films. Definitely felt like the END of an era of film however. I have no clue how you could top this film in any way possible.

End Score?

9/10