Avengers: Endgame (2019)

So here we go, I’ve been holding off on reviewing this movie for a while as it’s hard to review it as a long time-ish fan of the franchise as a movie that you sort of review. The majority of this review is admittedly going to be me ranting about recent things but I’ll try and throw in an actual review in between.

Let’s get the easy things out of the way. Overall I enjoyed the story, as a simple premise, we are set 5 years after the snap in Avengers Infinity War. Without giving too much away about the entire Marvel cinematic universe(or MCU as I’ll be calling it keep it short) the remaining avengers have to band together to try and bring back 50% of all life that was lost across the universe. Yes the whole time travel plot had a number of holes but if you don’t think to hard about it it’s a fun time. I thought that some of the characters had satisfying endings but let’s not get too caught up in that right now. Specifically Tony had a brilliant ending and although sad I think it brought the story round full circle and it actually made sense with his character.

The settings are fairly interesting, while there’s nothing beautiful going on there’s something incredibly cool and satisfying about the time heists and going back through MCU history with call backs to almost all the major locations in their major movies. Arrivals at Morag from the start of Guardians Of The Galaxy, New York during the 2012 invasion of the Chitauri from the first avengers movie, Asgard in 2013 from Thor , the Sanctum Sanctorum from Doctor strange and even the military base from Captain America The First Avenger which we saw way back in 2011 and of course in 1942 the very beginning of the origin of the Avengers, although not the first movie.

The sound is good as always in a marvel movie, while it’s hardly got people running around singing it like they were with the Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack it’s only a score anyway. One particular moment is the Portals Scene, the score Alan Silverstri produced really reflects the epic scale or the scene. I went to go and see this film on opening night and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the entire energy in the cinema throughout but this scene specifically and the blend of the avengers theme tune is just *chefs kiss* I honestly still get chills hearing it almost a year on and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.

The colour, there isn’t too much to say about that, I thought that the colour in the final fight scene was fairly effective seeing as it was fairly dull but natural and it wasn’t really the focus of the scene. I thought some of the shots where they show the sheer decimation of the snap were really effective five years later like the empty football stadium and the mass memorial that Scott enters after being pulled out of the quantum realm or the time he asks the boy on the bike what’d happened.

A few memorable shots where they did something interesting, one scene I always liked was the birds eye view when they have the epiphany that 3 of the stones would be in New York during 2012. Another scene I really liked was the shot of them all walking through the compound in the sun, right before the time heist then close ups on each of their faces before they entered the portal. Oh and of course the ultra wide shot of all the sorcerers, Wakandans, and the avengers were really effective when they were coming through the portal and the shot directly after ‘Assemble’ was incredible.

Now for my character rant. I’m going to try and keep this as short as possible because given half the chance I will write an essay on the topic. I do not like what the Russo brothers did to Steve’s(Captain America) character, in short I think that it was not the correct ending for Steve. Now you’ll notice my time here and neat punctuation, mainly as this is usually a rant screamed at anyone who will listen and I’m trying to give it some form of structure. From the way in which they were building up to it would’ve made far more sense for Steve’s character arc to have gone another way. We’d be here all day if I ranted about it but Sebastian Stan, who plays Captain America’s best friend bucky actually made a post on his Instagram story calling out Disney about this whole situation and that situation being that it didn’t make sense for Steve to end the way he did, after all we all thought he’d managed to move in and for me personally(and a number of people let’s just name drop a few which you can fact check: BBC 3 have made numerous comments on their social media about it, Gerard Way(lead singer of My Chemical Romance and writer of Umbrella Academy)has made comments about it, even the actors have passed comments recently) think that Steve perhaps should’ve been with Bucky, it’s a long story and you’ll either agree with it or you won’t, I’m willing to fight my case with anyone any day. I think that originally it could’ve been the plan, let’s go way back to Captain America the First Avenger, there is a scene where Steve completely brushes off bucky and talks to Peggy instead and in the background faintly you can hear the howlies singing ‘There is a tavern in the town’ which is all about being left behind by ‘my dear love’. Another prime example is the helicarrier scene from Captain America the Winter Soldier and just the repeated use of the line throughout the first 2 movies of ‘I’m with you to the end of the line’ or as Sebastian beautifully publicised a fans comment ‘or until bad, inconsistent writing turns Steve Rogers into his own anti-thesis. Shouldn’t it be “together until the end of the lie” now?’ LOOK THIS UP THE ACTOR POSTED IT ON HIS INSTAGRAM STORY. It is a recurring problem with Disney *cough*finnandpofromstarwars*cough*but that is a whole other rant entirely and only loosely related to this film. Any ways in short Steve’s character was assassinated. However I did quite like what they did with Tony’s character, you can’t talk too much about it without dropping any spoilers but I really felt like what he did was him learning to do what he needed to do and it was really his character coming full circle in the scheme of the MCU.

All jokes and personal issues with the film aside I think that endgame is a brilliant film, while in no way a cinematic masterpiece it is still very rewarding to watch as a fan. While it could be confusing to an outsider who hasn’t seen the 21 other films in the saga it is a great film if you are a fan of the MCU and still somehow haven’t seen it. Other than the way I disliked the ending with Captain America I felt that it drew most of the stories to a satisfying end while also setting up perfectly for the beginning of phase 4.