Movie Review: Avengers Endgame… SPOILER WARNING

Movie+Review%3A+Avengers+Endgame...+SPOILER+WARNING

Carter Cox, Newspaper Staff

I will repeat, do not keep reading unless you have seen the movie. Ok, let’s start.

 

First off, I think this is a tremendous movie. I think it is the best Marvel movie so far, and that is for a couple of reasons. The plot lines and characters are drawn together perfectly, the action scenes rival any previous in the franchise, and the time travel elements of the movie were explained beautifully. However, not everything is perfect. There are some minor plot holes, a little too much humor, and way too many forced cultural variety sequences.

 

I want to begin my review with the negatives and end on a high note. There are more positives than what I listed in the intro, and one of those is the good comedic timing in the film. I know I said in the intro that there was too much humor, but there was quite a bit of funny humor placed in the film at the right time. I will talk about this in the negatives as well, but the new Thor was at times hilarious. Some examples are Rocket calling him melted ice cream, Tony calling him Lebowski, and the mental breakdowns anytime he is forced to do anything in the first part of the film. Some other humor was the constant quips that were said by Tony Stark. He’s the funniest character in the franchise, and that was shown on display here. An opening scene with Nebula where they played paper football, pulling up to Avengers complex and immediately stating in a charismatic manner how the others had just failed, and precious scenes with his daughter, Morgan. There were, of course, other funny scenes, but I can’t list them all because it would take too long.

 

Despite the comedy, this movie tickled at other emotions as well. The sadness of Iron Man’s death choked audiences, the countless superhero entrances raised the joy level each time, and the hopelessness of the heroes at the beginning brings us down with them. When Captain America finally got his dance with Peggy that he had been yearning for almost the whole series, a sense of realism was brought to the character. Thor handing off the throne of Asgard to Valkyrie towards the end was a feel-good moment as Thor is now supposedly a Guardian of the Galaxy. Of course, there was also Ant-Man seeing his daughter for the first time in 5 years, Iron Man talking with his father again, and Thor seeing his mom for the final time. Plenty of great emotions to go around, in a beautifully directed movie by the Russo brothers.

 

This movie also displays good technicality as well. There are many things done to ensure that the time traveling, different versions of characters from the past, and action scenes did not confuse most people. The final battle was a great display of action, photoshop, and sci-fi seeming realistic. The time travel was a risky angle to take, based on the fact that Marvel’s audience is a variety of all the population, and people could lose sight of what was happening. But using subtitles whenever the year was changed, infinity stones, and 2014 Thanos seeing his future helped.

 

Like I said before, nothing is perfect, and this blockbuster of a movie is no different. I mentioned this in the intro, and I’ll say it again- there was way too much humor in the movie. The skits with Thor were funny to start but got old fast. Thor is supposed to be a monster with a warrior’s mentality. In this movie, he became a sensitive version of himself, which was shown when he cried at the mention of Thanos’s name. Also, and I know some will disagree, the Fortnite scene felt way too forced. Seeing Thor trash talking a little kid on a game designed for 10-year-olds was so bad in hindsight, although it caused a chuckle from audiences. Other than humor, this movie also did not focus on the losses of the many from Infinity War as much as it should have. Now I know that there were some moments of remorse from Iron Man while thinking about Peter Parker, but that’s about it. Captain America’s best friends, Falcon and Bucky were never discussed before their eventual revival, which was true for Black Panther. Doctor Strange, the one who saved Iron Man’s life was never mentioned by Stark. The same pretty much goes for the rest of the dead, as they were lightly mentioned on an individual basis. Now I know the whole point of the team getting the stones back was to bring back everybody, but I felt that they could have had more tear wrenching scenes from the alive.

 

Now, this next topic could be sensitive to some, but I’m going to tackle it anyway. There were way too many scenes in the movie that were focused on being socially just. The scene when Captain America was at a focus group, and then one of the directors of the film, Joe Russo, acted like a gay man. There was no point to this scene, except to attract different kinds of audiences. Captain Marvel having a short haircut might not seem like anything, but here’s why it is. In real life, Captain Marvel actor, Brie Larson is a known feminist and refuses to be interviewed by white males. So the haircut she had in the movie, which that look is stereotypically worn by feminists, showed something. And finally, during the final battle scene, there was a scene where Spiderman had the stones and gave them to Captain Marvel, and then a swarm of enemies appeared, and Spiderman asks, “How are you gonna get through there?” and then is answered by all the alive female characters saying, “she has help” Now I don’t want to get too into this, but this also felt too forced and culturally just.

 

In my mind, there aren’t many more things wrong with the movie, except for very minor things like small plot holes, a slow beginning which could be expected, and some other detail mistakes. But if I had to give a list of what else I left off on the good side, we’d be here all day. I believe this to be the best Marvel movie as of yet, and worth the hype (and probably the wait the audience had to get into their seats).

 

I’m now gonna grade this movie on a grade scale. Somewhere between F and A+ is where every movie that I review will be. For Avengers: Endgame, this movie will receive a:

 

A- The only reason that the movie didn’t get the A plus was the wrongs I talked about. But the film is not ruined by these and overcomes them.

 

Thank you for reading this and leave a comment if you want about what I had to say and your thoughts about the movie.