Movie Review: Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame [2019]

"Some people move on. Not us."

First up, I'll have to begin this review with a preface. Spoiler alert! I'm not going to put things under a break this time around because... well, it's a bit silly to just have the post be mostly just a poster? Also, a bit of an apology for how long it took for me to finish writing this review.

Also, #DontSpoilTheEndgame. Don't be a dick. 

This, by the way, is the first part of my Avengers: Endgame review. The original draft was so long that I really needed to split it into at least two parts. One to talk about the movie, and a second one to specifically talk about the characters, and maybe a third one to talk about all of the plot-holes and whatnot.  And honestly, for such a monolithic endeavour that the movie itself is, it definitely felt right to do so. This review is going to review the bulk of the movie itself, about the feelings given to me as a conclusion to a decade's worth of amazing stories and characters given to us by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well as the conclusion to both Infinity War, the stories started all the way back from the first Iron Man movie, as well as, honestly, perhaps the biggest chapter of the world's most successful movie franchise. 

And, yeah, sure, there's going to be sequels. Black Panther, Spider-Man, Guardians, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange... they'll all receive sequel movies and whatnot. There's still a crap-ton of television shows to follow. But as far as this first batch of MCU stories go, it's finished, and oh man, this movie is definitely an amazing swan song. 

I still remember going to the cinema in 2012, seven years ago, and thinking how much Marvel managed to take a bunch of characters I am only barely familiar with (always more of a DC fan than a Marvel fan) and make me really care about them. Take that feeling, take that awe as you enter the theater excited about how the plot of The Avengers is going to culminate a bunch of storylines set up with the Tesseract and Loki and all that jazz, and multiply it by a gajillion, because Infinity War's cliffhanger is amazingly well-done. Sure, our heroes are going to save the world, sure, the dusted characters are 100% going to come back... but at what cost? Who else will die in Avengers: Endgame?

And, to the movie's credit, despite carrying a somber tone of desperation throughout the entire movie, like Infinity War, it never ceases to be entertaining and fun. Whether it be one-liners or just comedic sequences, Avengers: Endgame is the perfect nod to just why these Marvel movies are so successful. Superhero comic book movies in general are meant to be entertaining, and while the movie doesn't like, put fart jokes over somber funerals or dramatic character development or anything like that, we give dramatic scenes and action scenes their due, before lightening the mood with a joke or two. It's amazingly done, and while people deride this aspect of the MCU movies for being appealing to the mainstream, the alternative -- and we have seen said alternative -- is definitely a lot worse of a watching experience. 

This movie delivers a full, solid ending to this chapter of the MCU, killing off several of its biggest names, and gives us a respectable catharsis to the stories of these characters that we've lived with all throughout these past decade, bidding one final farewell in perhaps these characters' best showings throughout the entire MCU. And it's these movies with their big-name actors and their huge budgetary costs that honestly solves one of the biggest problems that the comic book format has had over the past couple of decades -- the fact that these actors have so defined these characters suddenly forces the writers for these movies to really try and do their best, to give the characters a lot more justified story time instead of just reverting back to the same old comic-book status quo that both Marvel and DC have lapsed onto. So yeah, good show. 

MAIN MOVIE DISCUSSION -- THE FIRST ACT

"I'm going to go kill Thanos."

So, last warning for spoilers, because I will spoil shit from now on. This segment will be the bulk of my review about the movie as a whole, about how I feel about the plot and discuss the specific scenes, and how the story's broken up. We'll then move into discussing the actual death and legacy of the characters that died, a brief talk about juggling 30+ characters, and finally I'll have a brief segment talking about each and every one of the characters I would consider part of this movie's main cast. 

So yeah, the first 15-20 minutes of this movie is... it's a rollercoaster of emotions. The very first scene is a heartbreaking scene of Hawkeye during the Snap, losing his family, and I did love the fact that we weren't initially sure if this was before or after the Snap. The scene was shot pretty beautifully, too, with the Snap happening quite literally out of nowhere in the midst of the conversation, and while the audience is able to see the last remnants of Clint's family flying off into the wind, poor Clint's confusion at what's happening, of his family disappearing right out of his peripheral vision... it's heartbreaking. 

Unlike what most people expected, too, the post-credits scenes for Ant-Man and the Wasp and Captain Marvel aren't actually scenes from Endgame, and both of those just sort of takes place off-screen. We jump straight to the scene we've seen in all of the trailers, of Tony Stark and Nebula in that spaceship, stranded in space with limited fuel and oxygen, and while a vast majority of the dialogue is the same with that scene from the trailers, Robert Downey Jr's delivery of his lines, of how Tony's trying and very badly failing to keep up the snarky, confident bravado... it's well done, and how he eventually breaks down at the thought of Pepper mourning his death... yeah. Of course, they end up being rescued by Captain Marvel, presumably after Steve, Natasha and Bruce fill her in after the post-credits scene in her movie. 

And the following scene is... it's a genuinely heartbreaking scene as a clearly traumatized and slightly addled Tony begins to spew vitriol at Steve. As Pepper and Rhodey try to calm Tony down, he begins to just pour out a whole ton of anger and resentment at Steve. For questioning his "Prevengers" plan of putting a suit of armour at every country, for Steve for "not standing together", for their loss... it's clear that Tony's not in the right mind, but the scene's still pretty damn heartbreaking nonetheless. Tony's allowed to rest while Carol, god bless her single-mindedness, just decides to go up and kill Thanos. A bit of a talk about teamwork later, and all of the available Avengers head off to do just that. 

And, of course, Thanos has taken up farming and all that, a neat homage to the actual comic arc that the whole Infinity War/Endgame stuff is based on... and then in the midst of salting his soup, Captain Marvel, War Machine and the Hulkbuster burst in and attack Thanos, restraining him, allowing Thor to slice off his arm. It's surprisingly brutal, and instead of a action scene against a weakened Thanos, it's... it's almost pathetic, really, that Thanos isn't even able to fight. We et the revelation that he's used the Infinity Stones to destroy the Infinity Stones itself, to prevent temptation... and also to prevent his Snap and his perceived "cosmic balance" to be undone. 

And then as son as Nebula confirms that, no, Thanos won't lie about this sort of thing, THOR GOES FOR THE HEAD. It's a sudden death punctuated by a dry, in-universe humourless remark as Thor just walks out, with an amazing delivery from Chris Hemsworth -- Thor feels nothing but hollowness in killing Thanos without a fight and without being able to avenge his fallen friends. 

And then we get the ominous smash to black screen... and a "Five Years Later" time-skip, something that genuinely took me by surprise.

Apparently, the movie isn't happening in the aftermath of Infinity War, but rather after it, anime timeskip style, and... I must say, other than a few specific quibbles, it's amazingly executed. It allows for some semblance of normalcy as humanity tries to "move on", and also not have to deal or show the chaos that must've happened from Thanos's Snap all over Earth and the galaxy. It also allows some character development to happen off-screen, which is... interesting! We get to see slower scenes of how humanity as a whole have tried to move on -- Captain America's handling a support group, Black Widow's the leader of the Avengers and is busying herself in work trying to defend Earth, and I do really love the acting in this scene. Natasha very obviously really trying to throw herself into work, and Steve admitting that all of this "Captain America is always strong" thing really is a strong front and he hasn't moved on, not fully.

Meanwhile, some rat ends up becoming the hero of the story as it runs across a van that belongs to Ant-Man, and... and we get Ant-Man, who has only spent five hours in the Quantum Realm, discovering just how much the world has changed. He is presumed dead, in an inversion of most people's situation. The reunion with his grown-up daughter is very sweet, and, of course, he ends up showing up to talk to Steve and Natasha and tell them of the main plan of this movie -- abuse the vague pseudoscience of the Quantum Realm to do a Time Heist. 

And we get to see one man right after the time-skip, and that man is Tony Stark living in a cabin next to a lake... and he's got the most adorable daughter in the world, little Morgan Stark. I do love just how well-developed Tony has been over the five years, being immensely polite and nice to Steve in stark contrast to the scene in the cold open, and Tony is genuinely healthy and happy, and unwilling to risk his own family -- particularly his daughter -- at the chance of returning everyone that's been gone for five years. 

But the idea's planted in Tony's head, and after looking at an old picture of Peter Parker, he ends up off-handedly experimenting ends up solving the time travel equation. I do really love the conversation he has with his daughter -- between the "shit" and the "I love you three thousand" lines, the movie really manages to show just why Tony is so unwilling to risk his own happiness. In the end, as he's very much willing to look back and just move on forwards with his family despite all the guilt, it's a conversation with Pepper, who tells Tony that she's never been able to stop Tony from doing what he wants to do, and even if he put it away... he'll never "be able to rest". Some really amazing scene between these two, honestly, and after how much Pepper's been in the background since Iron Man 3, it's nice to have her front and center again. 

While all of this quiet Tony Stark moment is going on, Team Steve goes off to talk to... Professor Hulk! And this is a scene that I really wished the movie elaborates a bit more, because apparently while off-screen, Hulk and Bruce has amalgamated together into basically Bruce Banner walking around in Hulk form? Some great CGI there to make Mark Ruffalo's features a lot more prominent on the Hulk. And "Professor Hulk", as this version of the character is apparently called in the comics, is... he's hilarious, let's put it that way. We get a comedic bit of "pushing time through Lang", and that's fun, until Tony finally shows up and in a pretty awesome conversation with Steve, tells him that he'll help out... but on the condition that he will always put his family first. In a nice burying-the-hatchet way, Tony gives Steve the shield back after how they fought over it in Civil War. 

And then we get a character recruitment montage! I kinda wished we had some dialogue to explain why Okoye and especially Captain Marvel doesn't show up, but eh. War Machine, Nebula and Rocket show up and land in the compound in a hilarious scene involving tacos and poor, poor Scott Lang. We get to Japan and see that Hawkeye's became basically the international version of the Punisher, killing people with a badass looking new costume, and we get a cool action scene before Natasha shows up and quietly asks him to come along.

Less cool and more hilarious is when Hulk and Rocket goes off to New Asgard, and after a brief reunion with the Thor: Ragnarok cast, we learn to find out that Thor has been so traumatized with his string of failures and pyrrhic victories that... he's basically became became a big fat drunkard with a massive beer gut and constantly screams at people playing Fortnite, and this is such a pathetic and vulnerable state that Thor finds himself in, and... and honestly, it's a genuinely well-done progression of his character arc from Ragnarok and Infinity War. I'd of course love big badass thunder-god Thor with an eyepatch and a big axe as the badass character, but this... this really humanizes Thor. I'll discuss my feelings about it a bit more later on, but this scene is here to show us just how low Thor has sunk. (It's also bloody hilarious).

And I am so glad that out of everything in this movie, Drunk Fat Thor isn't something that I was spoiled on. Admittedly, it's a spoiler that I'm sure not a lot of people will believe. 

MAIN MOVIE DISCUSSION -- THE SECOND ACT

"I know, I know."

Anyway, with this new Avengers team and the core cast of the movie gathered, we begin talking about the details of the Time Heist, a bit of an experimentation with Clint going into the past, and a whole ton of hilarious discussion and dialogue, more pathetic Thor, and a whole lot of talk about where to go in the MCU's history to pluck all six Infinity Stones out of time. And some discussion about time jokes, and I am so glad we had that hilarious baby Thanos joke. 

Basically the movie then zips around between three time periods as the team is divided into three teams. Steve, Tony, Bruce and Scott arrive in 2012 during the events of the Chitauri invasion in Avengers, to get the Time, Space and Mind Stones. In addition to the obvious fan-service of the Avengers movie that started this insane cinematic universe concept, we also got a lot of hilarious moment of the present day cast lampooning the past. Thor and Rocket arrive in 2013-era Asgard, during the events of Thor: The Dark World, to get the Reality Stone. The rest of the team go to 2014-era space, with Nebula and War Machine going to Morag to get the Power Stone, while Black Widow and Hawkeye go to Vormir to get the Soul Stone. 

While in the movie these all sort of happen simultaneously, I'll talk about them one by one. We'll start with the Thor: Dark World one first, because it's a lot simpler. Rocket ends up slapping Thor as he hyperventilates and just freaks the fuck out, and ends up basically doing the whole mission by himself. I do like that Rocket's paired up with Thor; their interaction in Infinity War was pretty well-written. Of course, while he's running around in a panic, Thor ends up coming in front of Frigga, his mother -- who would have died that day. Frigga quickly figures out that this is a Thor from some point in the future, and Thor just breaks the fuck down. And it's genuinely emotional, and I do love that we ended up getting this amazingly emotional scene from Thor and his mother. As Thor puts it, despite his murder of Thanos in 2018, he was just "some idiot with an axe", because half of the survivors of Ragnarok was still dead, Loki was still dead, and the Snap happened anyway. Frigga tells Thor that, yes, that makes him a failure... and being a failure is something that every single person, every single hero, will have to go through. 

I do love that Thor, even in his lowest point, is still so ego-fueled that no one, not Hulk, not Rocket, not Valkyrie, could pull him out of his funk... and it's not until his own mother confronts Thor that he ends up basically deciding to get his shit together, borrowing the Mjolnir of 2013 to prove that, hey, he's apparently still worthy. Humility and the acceptance of his own faults has always been the theme of the original Thor movie, and I do really love just how much this sequence really ends up humanizing the god of thunder. 

While everything went relatively well in 2013-era Asgard, things don't go so well in 2012 and 2014. War Machine and Nebula lampoon just how stupid Guardians of the Galaxy's opening credits scene is when it's just Star-Lord dancing around like an idiot since the time-travelers can't actually hear the music. They steal the power stone no problem... but 2023-era Nebula's cybernetic implants end up... synchronizing with 2014-era Nebula? It's a bit of a contrived coincidence, to be honest, but this alerts 2014-era Thanos to what the shit's going on, the biggest "OH CRAP" the movie has to deliver, and the 2014-era villain ensemble of Thanos, Nebula, Gamora and Ebony Maw end up capturing 2023-era Nebula, and replacing her with the 2014-era Nebula.

And I'm not sure if our heroes knew what Vormir entailed for the team that went there, but apparently the team that got sent is just perfect -- Clint and Natasha, two best buddies. And after the specter of the Red Skull tells them about the whole soul-for-a-soul exchange, the two of them began to basically... try to fight each other for the right to sacrifice themselves, making it not a fight for survival, but a fight to ensure the other's survival. It's black comedy, tragedy and genuinely heartwarming all in the same breath, with some genuinely hard tension, and at the end of this scene... Black Widow ends up being the one to sacrifice herself. 

Again, I have a lot to talk about this scene, but it was beautifully done, as is the shot of Hawkeye waking up in that pool without Natasha and with the stone, and unlike Thanos, whose "regret" is just a slightly more somber "aw shucks", Clint's pain is shown and felt in an amazingly well-done way. 

We get a lot of hilarious fun and games in 2012 New York, particularly with the behind-the-scenes view of how the Avengers act after the "stand and pose" takedown of Loki, with Scott lampshading how SHIELD's strike team look like obvious villains. But while Captain America seems to be able to bait-and-switch the audience from having a repeat of the elevator scene from Winter Soldier and manage to steal the mind stone from Crossbones with a well-placed "Hail Hydra" whisper (easily the comedic highlight of the movie), things don't go quite so well for the others. The Ancient One pushes Bruce's soul out of the Hulk, thinking him hostile and refusing to hand over the Time Stone even when Bruce proves he's not, while Tony and Scott's attempt to steal the Space Stone end up being foiled when 2012-era Hulk bursts through the walls of the building, which is just honestly pretty dang hilarious. 

(Also, Loki escapes in this iteration of the timeline, but this is utterly irrelevant to the rest of the movie, so we'll talk about this in a separate discussion). 

And then, in perhaps the biggest fanwank plot that I am SO FUCKING GLAD this movie puts in is Captain America fighting Captain America. With 2012-era Captain America thinking that 2023-era Steve is a disguised Loki. It's amazing. It's completely unnecessary to the plot, but god damn if it isn't one of the most awesome scenes and fights in the MCU. The fact that 2023!Steve makes a tired joke at the "I can do this all day" line is amazing, the "America's ass" joke is hilarious, and the action scene's just well done. 

Bruce and the Ancient One manage to discuss about branching timelines and Bruce's stated plan to return the stones to their original places in the timestream, and when the Ancient One realizes that Dr. Strange handed over the Time Stone willingly to Thanos, she ends up putting her trust in the Avengers. Neat. Meanwhile, speaking of trust, Tony and Scott own up their mistakes to Steve, and their limited supply of Pym particles mean that they've only got one jump each. Tony asks Steve to trust him, sends Scott and Loki's scepter back to 2023, and then zip back to the 1970's...

...When Hank Pym was working in the same military base that Captain America was born in, to steal both the Tesseract and Pym Particles. And what seemed like just another random stop in time turns out to be one of -- for me, at least -- the most emotional segments of this movie. While we get a bunch of hippie jokes and a hilarious scene where Tony Stark has to pretend to be "Howard Potts" to distract his father, we get a surprisingly emotional scene for both leading men. And while I praised the Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye scenes earlier, this was pretty damn well-done. 

Tony's scene starts off with a lot of hilarious awkwardness, because not a lot of things can faze the great Tony Stark so much... and seeing how he's just basically babbling and struggling to improvise while talking to Howard, and we find out that Howard Stark at this point is going home to see his wife give birth to Tony, and Tony gets to see just how fucking terrified Howard is of parenting, and how much the two of them are similar... Tony ends up finally being able to actually meet the father who he has had so much complex emotions for, and that hug at the end of their scene, of Tony going "thank you for what you've done" before quickly flubbing about it being a thank you for the country... amazingly done. 

Captain America's scene was a lot simpler. He continues with his little heist, fooling Pym and stealing the doodad, and ducks into the office of... Director Margaret Carter. And as the music swells up while Steve realizes where he is, he ends up looking at Peggy Carter, alive and well, through a window, separated only with window blinds, and this is where I cried. Not at the end, no. This is where I cried, because while Steve Rogers have never been my favourite character, this lost chance, this lost time where he should've originally belonged, the fact that unlike Scott or Tony or Clint he isn't even fighting for his family... it's just heartbreaking. 

MAIN MOVIE DISCUSSION -- THE THIRD ACT

"AVENGERS! Assemble."

All of our heroes return to the exact same time in 2023, and they all realize they are down one member... Black Widow. I really love just how downcast Clint looks throughout this whole scene, and how it is Bruce and Steve -- Natasha's closest friends other than Clint -- that are the ones that look the most worried. We cut to a somber, quiet scene of them basically gathering for a wake for Natasha, with all of the remaining members of the original Avengers (man, we're going to see some SJW's complaining that this scene is filled with men, huh) mourning Natasha's loss. Thor and Hawkeye have... an interesting conversation here. We'll talk about that more when we discuss Thor's character. 

A montage and a 'boom' joke later, and Tony's constructed his own Infinity Gauntlet. Because, uh... I guess Peter Dinklage's too busy in Westeros? The argument on who should do the snap to undo the deaths -- but not the events, a pretty important distinction -- takes place, with drunk Thor being the first to volunteer himself. At first it seems to be another dick-waving contest, but Thor's earnest desperation to want to make amends is amazingly delivered by Hemsworth. It ends up to be Hulk thanks to gamma ray technobabble... and Hulk snaps the gauntlet, at the cost of fucking up that right arm something fierce. 

We get confirmation that this works, with Hawkeye's wife calling him... 

AND THEN THE AVENGERS BASE BLOWS UP, because while all of this is going on, the infiltrator Nebula's managed to summon Thanos's massive ship from 2014 to 2023. With all of the drama going on with the other characters, I actually went "oh yeah, you're not our Nebula" when she walked up to the time machine.

And our heroes are split apart, as we enter the final act of Endgame, which is just full-on action scene. Hawkeye goes on a one-man run, holding onto the Gauntlet as he has to race against Thanos's alien minions (Outriders?) in cramped space -- a pretty badass scene. The wounded Hulk, Rocket and War Machine are all trapped in the flooding ruins of the basement, with Hulk forced to hold up the rubble, and poor Rhodey is back to being crippled thanks to the destruction of the War Machine armour. Ant-Man rushes there, but we really didn't see a whole ton of it until later on. 

Clint manages to survive, but is confronted by 2014!Nebula. While all of this is going on, 2023!Nebula manages to appeal to the inner goodness inside 2014!Gamora, telling her of Thanos's betrayal, and how the two of them became sisters in... in Gamora's future/Nebula's past. It's weird. Gamora and present-Nebula try to talk down past-Nebula, but past-Nebula's so single-minded with obtaining validation and purpose from her father that she's willing to turn on Gamora... and gets shot to death by present-Nebula. 

And then... the three leading men of the Marvel Cinematic Universe -- Captain America, Iron Man and Thor -- walk up towards Thanos, who's just sitting in the rubble waiting for them. Sure, the moment's ruined because it's not quite the same Thanos we know and love from Infinity War, but it's still pretty damn badass. They get a cool pre-ass kicking one-liner of holding the line, and Thor finally transforms into true warrior form, dual-wielding Mjolnir and Stormbreaker while summoning his armour and braiding his Lebowski hair into a Viking braid. 

Thanos talks about how his new plan is to end the world and remake it, to prevent the survivors from having the memory of what they lost, and... and admittedly it's a far more boring motivation than the more complex and nuanced Infinity War Thanos. But we get an action scene and HOO BOY IT IS BADASS. Thor dual-wielding his massive weapons, Steve just charging in with his shield, Tony unleashing wacky little gadgets and funnels from his Iron Man suit... we even get some badass combo moves like Thor funneling his lightning through Iron Man's armour, or using Stormbreaker to lob Mjolnir at Thanos. 

Thanos, meanwhile, is taking things seriously as opposed to his detached attitude in Infinity War, spinning around that badass two-bladed glaive or whatever, and at one point when things looked dire and Iron Man's knocked out and Thanos is about to plunge Stormbreaker into Thor's chest, it seems like Mjolnir rises up from the ground... and whacks Thanos... and it's Captain America that wields it in such a well-shot sequence that made the audience break into applause in the theater I was in. It's a genuinely badass moment, and the renewed assault on Thanos is just glorious as Steve dual-wields the shield and Mjolnir, including a cool bit where the vibration of Mjolnir hitting the thrown shield knocks Thanos off balance. 

But it's not enough, and one by one, Iron Man and Thor fall and is incapacitated. Even Captain America's shield is shattered under the blows of Thanos's blade. And it is such a beautiful, cinematic long shot as Steve Rogers stands back up on his feet, looking at the looming Thanos and the assembled army that has descended behind him. A massive alien warship, the four Children of Thanos from the previous movie, a massive army of snarling beasts, Chitauri Leviathans... and Steve Rogers is just one man. And what does Steve Rogers do? Tighten the broken shield on his arm. 

Easily the most flat-out badass scene in this movie, only matched by what happens next. 

The Falcon's voice suddenly sounds in Steve's ear, and then a Dr. Strange portal begins to open, and the fallen from Infinity War return. And it's just amazing. From Black Panther, Okoye and Shuri, followed by the Falcon and Dr. Strange, we get more and more and more and more portals open and all of the fallen return. Winter Soldier, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Star-Lord, Groot, Drax, Mantis... and a whole bunch of other characters. Wasp! Wong! Valkyrie on a goddamn pegasus! Miek and Korg! Pepper Potts outfitted in her own Iron Man suit! And a whole lot of random extras, from Wakanda's armies, to the assembled armies of the sorcerers of Earth, to the Asgardians, to random ships...

"You wanted more?" Wong asks incredulously. We kind of do, Wong, but what we got is genuinely impressive. 

And as Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Nebula and Gamora join in the ranks, and Ant-Man goes giant and delivers the people trapped in the basement into the battlefield, we get a genuinely badass scene of army-versus-army, and finally, after a decade, Steve says "Avengers... assemble."

It's an amazing, quiet, delivery from Chris Evans as the music builds up and the visuals just pan over the fuck-ton of awesome characters we've grown to love over the years charge into battle against Thanos and his army. 

And it's just non-stop action scene as we get a full-on war, and, sure, a lot of the more minor characters don't really get to do much, but it's just amazing to look at this scene and just get sucked into just how awesome everything is, y'know? Highlights include the emotional hug that Tony gives Peter -- no quips, no nothing, just an emotional hug. We get the hilarious bit of "football" as Hawkeye, and later Black Panther, and later on Spider-Man, go around with the Infinity Gauntlet and prevent Thanos's forces from taking it. We get Iron Man and Rescue teaming up together with their armours. We get Spider-Man finally activating Insta-Kill. We get Thor and Steve joking about who gets to use which axe. We get Giant-Man one-shotting fucking Cull Obsidian with a single stomp, Dr. Strange's whole deal with the giant tsunami-tornado... we've got Gamora kneeing Star-Lord in the balls...

And Wanda might not get a whole lot to do in this movie, but she swoops in and arguably does more to Thanos than most of the other heroes, ripping his armour and sword apart and very nearly killing him if Thanos didn't order an orbital bombardment at that point. And as a huge, huge fan of Scarlet Witch, at least they gave her a pretty badass scene even if she's off-screen for the majority of this movie. 

Not even the bombardment lasts long, though, as fucking Captain Marvel zooms in, one-shots Thanos's warship, and assisting Spider-Man in trying to get the Infinity Gauntlet to Scott's stupid time van, and we get a neat scene with all of the ladies in the battlefield assembling together. But Thanos attacks, and the Quantum Tunnel is destroyed, knocking away a lot of the heroes. Captain America, and then Thor, and then Captain Marvel all try to take down Thanos, and despite Carol's over-poweredness, Thanos manages to use the power stone to knock her out. 

It's just pretty damn badass as Thanos finally gets the gauntlet again, proclaiming the quote he says when the original 2018-era Thanos died. "I am inevitable"... but when he snaps, nothing happens. 

Turns out that in the struggle, Tony's swiped the stones from Thanos's glove, and as they are locked onto position in Tony's glove, he proclaims "I am... Iron Man."

And it's Tony that snaps the infinity stones, this being the one in however many thousand scenarios that they win. Thanos's army is wiped out, and the Mad Titan himself finally is turned into dust. 

But he's not the only casualty of the fight, because... well, it's pretty telegraphed that at least one of the MCU's leading men will die. It's not Steve, but rather Tony... and the scene is even more heartbreaking than the "I don't feel so good" scene from Infinity War. First it's Rhodey who shows up next to the burnt body of Tony, unable to properly speak from his injuries. Then a panicking, desperate Peter Parker... and finally Pepper shows up (Tony manages a "Pep", the only word he says before he passes), putting up a brave face long enough to tell Tony that "we'll be fine. You can rest now." before the original Marvel hero finally fades away. 

The long epilogue is... it's a funeral for Tony Stark, with the entire MCU gathered together to honour him, all set to the narration of a message Tony leaves for Pepper and Morgan while the rest of the world (Clint, Scott and T'challa in particular) celebrate their victory and reunion. Like, I love that the movie really gives time for Tony's death to really sink in, both honouring his legacy and making it both sad yet uplifting at the same time, basically like a real funeral.

After that... we get a bit of a fun happy camper scene with Thor joining the Guardians of the Galaxy (or, as he puts it, the Asgardians of the Galaxy). That's all right.

And then Hulk and the Captain America support squad is about to "fix time" by putting the Infinity Stones and Mjolnir back where they came from, and it's... it's interesting. We see so little of what goes on in this part because it seems like we're setting up for something like, oh, a montage of Steve meeting everyone across history or something, fixing all of the continuity problems that time travel has caused (we'll talk about that in a separate post), but, of course, turns out it's not just Black Widow and Iron Man that we lose. It's Captain America too, in a fashion... he simply just... didn't return back to the present day, choosing to finally have that dance with Peggy, grow into an old man, and pass on the shield to Falcon, the new Captain America. 

And it's on that sweet, sweet note that the movie ends, as we return back to whenever Captain America decided to stay, having a sweet, slow dance with Peggy as the credits roll. 

And... and that's beautiful. Honestly, the movie isn't just great for the action sequence and how it resolves the Thanos and snap storyline, because if we're being honest... it's basically just the fluff that the movie plays along by. The main meat of this movie is just how Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanoff and Thor Odinson in particular are developed as people, as three of them go through their final arcs and end them with dignity and grace, going out with a bang saving the universe for two of them, and slowly deciding to quietly earn his reward in Steve's case. It's beautiful. And Thor finally manages to actually get some really powerful characterization in this episode as he gets humbled even more than he has been in the past. On the flipside, characters like Nebula and Hawkeye also get a fair bit of great screentime as well -- we'll explore every single character in subsequent review posts, but honestly, while there are a fair amount of continuity quibbles I can nitpick, the backbone of the story -- the resolution of the Infinity War storyline as well as the storylines for multiple main characters in the MCU... those are handled beautifully. Sure, nothing ultimately is explained about things like Thanos's origin or the origins of the Infinity Stones or whatever, but I think it's the smart thing to do -- the characters are always what these stories are about, and putting them first and foremost before things like lore and whatnot is definitely preferable to the alternative. Remember Age of Ultron? 

And it goes without saying that the action scenes are nothing but spectacular, particularly the final 20+ minute war at the end. It goes without saying that the music and the scene cuts are well done, and it's simply fascinating how the movie doesn't feel like a three-hour affair. Hell, if it wasn't for my bladder, it wouldn't -- I went out of this movie going "man, they really could've added more scenes for the Hulk, and for Nebula, and for Thanos..." before stopping myself and realizing that the damn movie's long enough already.

This movie's great. The central theme is what you leave behind, about the legacy you leave behind when you're gone. With multiple characters dying, and multiple characters getting to see just the sheer amount of history in their past... it's definitely one that really explores with that concept. From Iron Man off-handedly muttering that they need "new blood" like Captain Marvel, to Thor's conversation with Frigga, to Thor passing on the mantle of king of Asgard to Valkyrie, to Tony meeting Peter again, to Tony's final message, to Captain America passing the shield to Falcon... so much of this movie is about legacy and sacrifices, and I do love that beneath all of the smashy-smash and bashy-bash, this movie really does its best to be traditionally heroic and tell a theme of legacy. Not just in terms of the in-universe characters, but also for the MCU as a whole. As a movie series that has -- without any trace of exaggeration -- shaped an entire generation, all of the more meta "we'll be fine without you" and "every journey comes to an end" lines seem to be a sendoff to the actors that played these iconic characters as much as they are to the characters themselves. 

MAIN MOVIE DISCUSSION -- JUGGLING CHARACTERS

"Is that everybody?"

A good, jarring difference from my expectation of what I'd get from this movie is perhaps exemplified in the act. I had explicitly avoided spoilers and any sort of news, and I went into the movie completely blind. I had no idea what the plot was going to involve, I had no idea which characters are going to be prominent, and it was definitely surprising that instead of the survivors of the Snap joined by Hawkeye, Ant-Man and Captain Marvel, the movie mainly just focuses on the original core Avengers six, with a couple of extra tagalongs. War Machine, Ant-Man, as well as the surviving Guardians. Neither Captain Marvel nor Okoye, or some of the other survivors like Valkyrie, actually do a whole ton in this movie.

And I know this has disappointed a fair amount of people who expected Okoye to get some chance to shine as a supporting member of the Avengers, but other than that holo-meeting, Okoye disappears until the final battle. Likewise, Captain Marvel also only participates in the first and final acts, something that's... that we will discuss more properly in the second part of this review where I talk about all of the secondary characters. It's a neat way to basically maintain the illusion that Carol's still one of the god-tier characters in this setting, and the movie side-steps this pretty well, but ultimately it's definitely a good decision to keep Carol relatively off-screen if they also plan to keep her super-duper-powerful. 

And, well, a good reason of why Infinity War felt so appealing is because we jump from one familiar set of cast to the next, from the Avengers cast to the Black Panther cast to the Guardians cast, and seeing some iconic characters that had been the focus of their own movies end up meeting other characters. And without scenes like Cap meeting Groot or Dr. Strange meeting Spider-Man or Bruce talking to T'Challa, this movie feels a bit more... drab because it features so many characters we've seen already interact with each other with the exception of Ant-Man and Hawkeye, and even they've met a lot of the cast of the movie. But it's honestly just nitpicking, and the movie does a decent job at juggling characters. 

MAIN MOVIE DISCUSSION -- MOVING ON

"You can rest now."

So three main characters die in this movie. And, well Thanos and his cronies, but their death are sort of obvious and not quite as emotional. And as everyone predicted, the deaths of Vision, Loki and Gamora -- people who weren't "dusted" -- ended up not being permanent. Thanks to the machinations of time travel, though, it seems that the paradoxical Gamora from 2014 ended up sticking around in the present day (the movie isn't really clear about that), and Loki manages to escape with the Teserract in 2012? Again, we'll discuss these two seeming paradoxes in a proper "continuity nitpicking" segment, but man, poor Vision really got the short end of the stick here, huh? At least Endgame had the decency to have Wanda go on a rampage against Thanos in Vision's name during the final battle, and she gets a neat little scene with Clint mourning Nat and Vision. 

But, of course, we've had a while to mourn Vision, whereas the other three's deaths (well, two deaths and one permanent retirement) are still fresh after this movie. And let's talk about the three of them. 

Black Widow... the way that she dies can honestly be probably framed, if you really want to, as a woman dying to fuel some male angst. But I really kind of bristle at this insinuation, for the simple fact that Natasha has been consistently shown to be the closest to Clint, albeit in a platonic sense. That final scene for her was genuinely gripping, because the movie could honestly pretty conceivably write out either Clint or Natasha. Neither of them had movies planned in the future (that we know of), Clint's shown to be going on a bit of a rampage that might not be the most morally sound, while Natasha's been shown to simply be a bit too eager to throw herself headlong into work and potentially sacrificing herself. The end of that scene is nothing short of heartbreaking as it initially seems like it's Clint that's going to be the one to bite the dust... only to Natasha to tackle Clint and hang on to him. 

Again, it's interesting that Marvel's announcing a Black Widow movie a bit belatedly, so maybe it's a prequel? An inter-quel? A new Black Widow? This movie seems to really want to hammer home that anyone lost to the Soul Stone is permanently dead and not even Infinity Stone snaps can bring them back. 

Iron Man probably gets my favourite send-off in this movie, due to just how utterly badass that scene was, especially just how hard he's been campaigning that he's going to fight for the right to retire peacefully and be a dad. Of how that scene with Howard Stark could be interpreted as Tony taking a different stance on personal happiness/greater good thing. But the signs are there, and at least before his death, Tony has resolved all of his baggage. He made peace with Captain America, he made peace with Pepper, he got to get Peter Parker back, he had five years to enjoy happiness with his child and clearly is a superior parent compared to Howard, thanks to time travel he also made peace with Howard Stark... as someone who started the movie at a pretty low point -- something he shares with Thor -- Tony ends up choosing the greater good, ending his life's story both as the slayer of the greatest threat the universe's faced while simultaneously capping off his MCU career with an inspirational speech via a hologram message. 

Captain America: Steve Rogers is the one character that I pegged as "abso-fucking-lutely dead" when people ask me if I think Tony or Steve would die. Chris Evans have been known to state that he's looking to quit acting and become a director multiple times, we already have to potential candidates for a successor to the mantle with Bucky and Falcon, and as the conversation between Tony and Steve implies, while Tony has a family he wants to go back to, Cap is more... disposable, to be a bit mean. Sure, he's got a lot of friends and is certainly married to the job (the Avengers is literally his family) in the same way that Natasha is... but by the time the action scene's ended, and Tony is buried, and it seems like we're just going to get a series of epilogues... the sudden surprise that Captain America simply did not come back from his time travel definitely took me by surprise. 

The fact that after being a person that is probably the most selfless out of all of the Avengers, Captain America finally took one of Tony's barbs to heart and decides to actually just stop and... and rest, and build a family with the love of his life... it's just nothing short of beautiful, y'know? I've never really been someone who's super invested in Captain America's love story or his "man out of time" plotline, but the framing of just how much Steve misses Peggy Carter just ended up really being super-sad, particularly, as I mentioned above, when the two of them meet, separated by nothing but an inch of glass, when Steve time-travels to 1970. 

And honestly? Would I love more movies with these characters, with these actors playing them? Abso-fucking-lutely. But if they were going to write these characters out... this is honestly one of the best ways they could've gone out on. 

Anyway... I've rambled on long enough. Keep an eye out some time in the future for when I start to talk about each of the individual characters more closely!