Note:
A spoiler warning is in full effect here. If you have not seen Avengers: Endgame, I suggest you do so before reading the remainder of this piece. I'll give my summarized thoughts below as a recommendation and disclaimer.
Summary:
For those who haven't yet seen it, Endgame is a great movie, a solid 8/10. A few tonal inconsistencies and plot contrivances don't stop it from being one hell of a ride, with an ending that impacted me more than I thought it would. Overall, a terrific send-off for the last 10 years. Yeah, I cried.
Spoilers start now, be warned.
So, Why Conflicted?:
With Avengers:Endgame making a return to theaters soon, I thought now might be a good time to lay out how I, personally, felt about this film. As stated above, Endgame is a great movie, so why might I have conflicted thoughts about it?
Simple: The 2nd act feels...incredibly out of place when compared to the 1st and 3rd.
Now, I don't mean to say the 2nd act is bad, I don't think the MCU has ever produced anything I would call outright bad (besides Iron Fist), and in fact the 2nd act is a lot of fun, it's just that it feels like a completely different movie.
Our first act introduces us to a world post Snap: Tony has retreated to focus on family, Steve leads other survivors in group therapy, Thor has become a drunken slob after having what appears to be a psychotic break from not killing Thanos in time, and other members of the team have taken to aiding survivors around the world (and beyond). The tone is somber, surprisingly grounded, and exactly what I would expect to follow the ending of Infinity War.
Likewise, the third act is exactly what I would have expected it to be: An explosive, over the top, all out war between the forces of good and Thanos, with high stakes and strong emotional moments.
And now we get to the problem: In between both of these acts we get...a time travel heist, one that, for the most part, is played fairly lighthearted and almost goofy. It feels more like something from the first Avengers film; a little more playful and jokey, and this just doesn't gel with the rest of the film.
I understand that this second act is mostly there just for character moments: Steve seeing Peggy, Tony seeing his father, Nebula getting to see her sister again, etc., but that doesn't stop the whole undertaking from feeling off. The characters are a bit too chipper, cracking a few too many jokes. They don't feel like the same people that we just saw in the first act. This especially feels jarring when we're suddenly supposed to switch to serious mode for Black Widow's sacrifice retrieving the Soul Stone (which, let's be honest, is probably the weakest scene in the film for many, many reasons).
But Enough of the Bad:
Let's talk about all the parts of this movie that I think really kicked ass! (This is the part of my collected thoughts piece where I just rant about everything that made me geek out).
- Iron Man's final scenes...actually no, Tony in general is probably one of the better parts of this film throughout. That last scene really got me though.
- I really can't overstate how great the first act is as a follow-up to Infinity War.
- Steve wielding Mjolnir.
- Thor coming to terms with the massive losses he's suffered and going back to being a badass. Honestly, if Fat Thor hadn't been played off as a joke so often, he'd be the absolute best part of this movie.
- That entire final battle excluding that seriously cringe-worthy scene where all the women ended up on the same part of the battlefield, out of nowhere, for absolutely no reason? I mean seriously, Disney, I'm a feminist but that was just so transparent and awful.
- Steve wielding Mjolnir.
-Scarlet Witch absolutely wrecking Thanos in a fight.
- The acting. I don't normally think acting is something to call out in Marvel films but a lot of the actors really brought their A game this time around, namely Paul Rudd, Scarlett Johansson, and Karen Gillan.
- The fact that Thanos is still a force to be reckoned with, even without the Stones.
- Valkyrie.
- The CGI time-travel suits that I, a 3D artist, did not realize were CGI. Industrial Light and Magic are a bunch of show-offs and I love them.
- Seriously, Steve wielding Thor's hammer is something I've waited so long for and it did not disappoint.
So there you have it. A pretty inconsequential piece, all things considered, but I needed to get my thoughts out on that second act, and a lot of people I've spoken to about the film have agreed with that sentiment.
Agree? Disagree? Did I miss anything great? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
PS Rant: Why is Earth so empty after the snap?! It only wiped out half of humanity, so there's still like 3.5-4 billion people left right? I mean there'd be at least 200 million or so people in the US alone! What's up with the completely post-apocalyptic look? Tiny thing that bothered the absolute hell out of me. Anyway, great movie.
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