Summer is almost over – which means the typical blockbuster season of movie releases is nearing a close as well. With that in mind and noting that the newest Spider-Man movie is now in theaters, I thought it would be fun to revisit Avengers: Endgame (2019, dir. Anthony and Joe Russo) – a film I consider to be among the greatest franchise ending films of all time.
The final film in the Infinity Saga portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe picks up five years after “the snap,” an event where half of all life was wiped out in an instant. The few remaining Avengers have been working on moving on while also never letting go of the idea of going back. That suddenly becomes possible when Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) comes out of the quantum realm and convinces Captain America (Chris Evans) and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to give it a show. It takes the genius of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) to make it possible and off we go on a time traveling adventure to undo the plan of Thanos (Josh Brolin).
Seven years later, it is easy to poke holes in the weaknesses in the MCU. The films in the franchise have not lived up to the collective awesomeness of the first segment. Much of that has to do with how skillfully they landed the plane in Endgame. The MCU was certainly starting to bloat with spin-offs and franchises and sub-characters demanding equal time. There simply was not enough screen time to go around anymore. The Snap made that a moot point as many of the characters disappeared for much of the film. There has never been a cinematic moment quite as thrilling as the fiery circles in the sky opening up and every one of those characters comes walking/flying/bounding through for the greatest battle sequence every filmed. When Cap collects Mjolnir and utters, “Avengers…assemble” and the theme song blares, you want to stand up and applaud – the culmination of over a decade of work by thousands of people sprawling out perfectly.
Much of the greatness of this film is made so by what came before it. When Black Widow sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone, it hurts not because of what happened in this film, but because of the previous twenty-seven. When we finally see the charge run out of Tony Stark, we feel it ten times harder because we saw a multiple film arc, brilliantly portrayed by Downey. Most franchises do not attempt this type of experiment, because it is insanely difficult to do well. Some wonderful trilogies exist and even the greatest of them (probably The Godfather) struggle with the dismount. (I mean, Godfather 3 is…not good. At all.) So how did the Russo brothers nail this one with so much more material to sift through and project forward? They did it with planning (setting up the trajectory early in the process and building towards it consistently), a brilliant cast (an underrated part of the MCU is how they got every character that matters absolutely correct), and a crazy high budget. But what ultimately makes Endgame knock if out of the park is not the CGI (which is incredible and cool and seamless). It is the relationships and the palpable sense of loss. You had to know going into the film that not everyone was going to survive, but somehow, they made it hurt more than expected by letting Iron Man get so close to the end. They also managed to achieve this heartbreakingly triumphant climax without losing the sudden humor that made this entire journey worthwhile. No pun intended, it is truly a marvel how they were able to accomplish this.
I am excited to see Doomsday and welcome back some of these characters while ushering in some additional new ones, but I cannot even fathom the possibility that wherever they are headed will wrap up in anywhere near as satisfying a conclusion. Ultimately, that must be beyond what anyone believed was even possible when they started down this path.
FUN FACT – This has nothing to do with the film but rather my own experience with it. I watched the original MCU considerably out of sequence. In fact, when we decided to see this in the theater, I had only seen The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2, Age of Ultron, and Iron Man. As we were driving to the theater, my wife had the good sense to look up a primer for seeing this including a “what to remember from previous films” that was incredibly helpful to us. Of course, seeing this made me instantly want to watch the rest of the saga, which I have since done.
Just Watch says that Avengers: Endgame, like all the MCU films,is currently streaming on Disney+. It is also available for rent/purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and many other services.
SCORES
As a reminder, here is the original post that details the scores and weighting system.