Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons
By Samuel Cruz
Whatever it takes. After 11 years and 21 movies, we have finally reached the endgame. This review will contain several spoilers so I advise you, the reader, to turn away if you have not seen the film yet. This is another sentence warning you that if you continue reading you will get the movie spoiled for you.
“Wow” is the first word that spilled out of my mouth after I finished watching the masterpiece that is, Avengers: Endgame. Before watching this epic film I recommend using the restroom because of the length of the movie. It is nearly three hours long and by far the longest Marvel film. The movie starts as soon as the trailer ends.
Usually, Marvel’s cinematic universe films start with the Marvel intro but, there was no intro. Immediately, the movie starts with Hawkeye(played by Jeremy Renner) practicing archery with his daughter and then Hawkeye’s family was dusted after Thanos’(played by Josh Brolin) snap in Infinity War. He realizes his family disappeared when he turns around and notices nobody was responding to his callouts.
Thanos’ wrath was extended immediately into Endgame, like as if we needed a reminder of the mad titan. This essentially kicks off what is an emotional rollercoaster of a film.
It was important for Marvel to keep the core members of the Avengers alive at the end of Infinity War to set up a magnificent ending to the “Infinity Saga”. Tony Stark(played by Robert Downey Jr) was seen inside a broken ship and recording potentially his last message to his wife. He had run out of food and was a day away from running out of oxygen. Luckily for him, one of Marvel’s new heroes saved him from impending death. Captain Marvel(played by Brie Larson) swoops in and takes him back to the Avengers headquarters, where we see Tony Stark and Steve Rogers(played by Chris Evans) meet face to face again.
Immediately a malnourished Stark argues with Rogers that eventually leads to Stark falling unconscious. This scene sets the mood for the beginning portion of the movie. Lots of characters were on edge or very sad because of the burden of losing so many people.
Captain Marvel is now formally introduced to the Avengers and she finds out that Nick Fury(played by Samuel L. Jackson) was also dusted. This motivated her to find Thanos and with the help of Rocket and Nebula, the group set out to space to find Thanos and kill him.
Captain America, Bruce Banner, Black Widow(played by Scarlett Johansson), Rocket, Nebula, and Captain Marvel head to space and immediately find the planet that Thanos has decided to live in.
The beautiful scenery of the planet Thanos is currently living at is shown, as well as Thanos in his kitchen cooking up something using the spices he grows. That calm and nice scene ended abruptly with Captain Marvel crashing in and pummeling Thanos. Thor delivers the worst of it and chops off Thanos’ arm revealing that the gauntlet is missing the stones.
Thanos explains that he destroyed the stones in order to make sure it could not have been reversed, which then led to an angry Thor to chop off his head. Then Thor delivers one of the most memorable quotes, “I aimed for the head.”
The movie then fasts forwards into 2023, 5 years from when Thanos was killed. This was a smart way for Marvel to fix a timeline that they have tampered with a bit but stays relevant to the story.
We see Ant-man’s first appearance happen as soon as he gets out of the quantum realm, where he was left because, in Ant-man and the Wasp, the people that were in charge with bringing him back were also dusted by Thanos.
Scott Lang(played by Paul Rudd) is immediately confused with what has happened because five years in the quantum realm is five minutes to him. San Francisco looked like a mess, gloomy just like New York. Lang spots a memorial and immediately is looking for familiar names until he notices one. His own.
He takes off and goes straight to his house to find it only occupied by his daughter. After this touching scene, he goes to the Avengers headquarters to try and pitch an idea to bring everyone back.
Earth changed in that five-year span. Several main characters went through drastic changes. For starters, Bruce Banner became Professor Hulk straight from the comics. Banner and Hulk have had an internal battle through several movies now and finally, a middle ground was reached. Another character that changed was Thor, son of Odin. He gained a lot of weight in those five years. Also, he lived in New Asgard with Korg and Meek playing Fortnite and drinking beers. Lastly, Tony Stark had a daughter. This was Stark’s official way of retiring to just live a normal life with his wife and kid.
Captain America and Black Widow still want to bring everyone back but, have no idea how to. Until Ant-man comes knocking at their door and explains what happened to him and why he is confused by what happened. Ant-man then pitches the idea of time travel, which is a tricky theory to mess with but, at the end of the day, it is fiction. That is one critique I have seen come up a lot with Endgame. A lot of people do not understand how time traveling works or thinks that rules established in the movie were not followed.
Nonetheless, time travel plays a major role in the movie. Majority of the movie is spent finding these stones, which results in some cool scenes like Tony Stark running into his father in the 70s, as well as Steve Rogers running into Peggy Carter once again. There are tons of easter eggs and references, possibly more than 200. If you are a casual fan of the series, I think it is better for you to catch up on films you may have missed or else you will miss out on a lot of fanservice and important references.
Overall, I think Endgame did what it had to do. Endgame successfully closed the door on two of its biggest stars in order to allow the whole cinematic universe to continue. Spiderman: Far From Home will end phase three and lead up to phase four.
With Endgame passing James Cameron’s Titanic to be the fifth-highest domestic box office grosser, many Marvel fans are rooting for Endgame to continue climbing the ladder and defeat Avatar’s record.
In terms of grading this film, I give it a good 97/100. Minor things could have been explained better like the time travel but, all in all, the movie was worth the hype.
