Load the Reel— Avengers: Endgame Film Review
Welcome to my first entry in Load the Reel. These articles will be made up of film and television analysis supported by the YouTube channel Toy Reel. Toy Reel focuses on many aspects of pop-culture, including figure collecting and obviously film and other mediums of entertainment. Over there you’ll find many of the same reviews you find here in video form. Definitely check them out. You can think of these articles as an alternative to watching the videos if reading is more your jam. I edit these articles from my original scripts to better suite the medium of a written review and they will often contain more detail on certain aspects that might be cut for time in the videos.
When thinking about starting this particular series, it wasn’t a difficult choice to start off with arguably the most anticipated film of recent times; Avengers: Endgame.
So, let’s begin!
First thing’s first, this review will obviously contain spoilers so if you haven’t seen the film yet and don’t want all the good stuff ruined, what are you doing here? Go watch the movie.
That out of the way we’ll start with the blatantly obvious question, is the movie any good? Honestly, yes, it’s a good movie and well worth a watch if you’re in anyway a fan of the MCU or Superhero and action movies in general. That should really go without saying, I think if it turned out to be a bad movie that would be the greater surprise at this point. In 22 films, while there has been the odd mediocre entry, Marvel have yet to deliver anything that we could consider calling a bad film.
That said, this is quite a tricky film to review and definitely harder than I initially thought. Straight out of the theatre I would best describe my feelings on the film as ‘conflicted’. While I certainly enjoyed it and there were plenty of great action scenes, good gags and all the usual beats you’d want from this kind of movie — it felt like something was lacking that took me a good night’s sleep to get my head around.
Ultimately, it came down to this; Endgame is a solid movie on it’s own and as part of the whole MCU experience. However, what it isn’t; is a good sequel to Infinity War — which I think is what I was expecting from it.
Infinity War was a film I could dissect and analyse quite extensively, it was a well-paced and fluid film that punched far above expectations given the immense task ahead of it. Endgame? Endgame just isn’t those things unfortunately and I feel it’s biggest failure is simply not living up to the standards set by its predecessor — at least not for me. All that said, let’s break it down into what I thought were the strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
“Were it not for the physical passage of time, you’d never know it was a three hour film, which is definitely worthy of praise and a testament to how engaging the moments within the film are.”
One thing that Marvel does get consistently right is what I would describe as the ‘moments’ within their films. Usually these are small character moments, nods to the continuity and the comic books they are based on. All these moments are really great, perfectly on point and stuff fans will absolutely adore. Moments like Captain America finally wielding Mjolnir in battle pays off hints from previous films and are executed fantastically, garnering cheers from the audience, rarely feeling tacked on or too self-aware. Little character interactions mostly feel earned and justified with great call backs and pay offs. They take advantage of the long history of films that Endgame acts as a conclusion to, a fact that should be celebrated.
The tone can suffer a little bit at times, but overall the balance between fun action, serious reflection and outright comedy is handled very well. This is a balancing act that is exceptionally difficult to get right, and while not perfect, moments of humour are rarely awkward or out of place. Marvel may indeed fall victim to a formula when it comes to these aspects, but with each film they’ve managed to refine it to a solid basis, and that’s on full display here.
Most of the major characters have satisfying arcs, with a couple of hiccups that I’ll explore a bit later, but the core trio of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor get quite a lot of attention. Fitting then, as this is really the conclusion of the path those characters started us down. This comes at the slight expense of some of the secondary characters, but everyone still gets enough moments to shine that I wouldn’t say it’s a major detriment to the movie at large.
The action is naturally a big stand out, I’m always impressed by the way the Russo Brothers consistently deliver some of the best high intensity action sequences without things getting too murky or complicated. The pacing here is always fantastic, with clear stakes and a smooth easy to follow structure that doesn’t get lost in the sea of huge explosions and crazy visual effects. Again, this is something that I can’t heap high enough praise on the film for. We’ve seen so many big budget comic book movies fail to do this after all. It’s clear that the Russo’s really have a keen eye for action, know how to engage the audience and prevent us getting lost in all the spectacle. Action films need more directors like this at the helm, no question.
On that, I’d like to also give a quick shout out to the Visual Effects team for doing a standout job on this film. Even Infinity War, which had some ground-breaking visual effects, still had a few moments that felt a little bit too cartoonish (Thor zipping around the sky in the Wakanda Battle comes to mind). With Endgame however, I didn’t find there was any of that, everything felt and looked brilliant and consistent. Even the de-aging of characters and inserting of various elements from previous films all feels really natural and never takes you out of the moment. No small feat, even for a big budget blockbuster.
I think there are some issues with the overall pace of the film and the way the narrative flows, but in terms of the actual moment to moment editing and scene length they’ve done a good job. A lot happens in the piece, but even with the lengthy run time it never feels like it’s dragging out or moving too fast. Were it not for the physical passage of time, you’d never know it was a three hour film, which is definitely worthy of praise and a testament to how engaging the moments within the film are.
In terms of the story, it delivers with a solid effort and, despite featuring time travel and references to a now 11-year-old continuity, it’s rarely confusing or muddled. The focus is kept squarely on the characters and their experiences, which helps keep the plot on track all the way to the end. There’s so much happening, but the audience should rarely find themselves confused or bored.
All that said, there are certainly a few issues that I think are worth bringing up, so let’s now delve into what I thought were some of the film’s weaker points.
Weaknesses
“the set up at large feels very disjointed and painfully formulaic, like they had a great time travel story in mind and just ticked the boxes necessary to get all the characters in place”
While the plot is perfectly serviceable and a fine way to resolve the conflict which began in Infinity War, I believe the execution wasn’t as smooth as it really could, or should have been. The first act in particular has issues with the tone and pacing, starting with what really feels like a lot of unnecessary moments shoehorned in to simply tie up some of the loose ends left by Infinity War.
Was it really necessary for us to see how Tony and Nebula got back to earth? The film built these moments up in a way that was resolved almost instantly by literal space magic in the form of Captain Marvel. The conflict with Tony and Steve was acted wonderfully and hit a lot of great beats, but their falling out isn’t really explored in an interesting way and is disposed of without a great deal of effort. The opening overall felt shoehorned in, and the cynical side of me wonders if this sequence was shot entirely to create non-spoiler scenes for the trailers and misdirect the audience’s expectations.
A stronger opening might have been achieved by simply having the immediate aftermath left to our imagination and have the 5 year jump be where we start this new film, with their failure referenced in less obvious ways. We’ve already seen the Avengers fail, repeating that set a rather dour tone that wasn’t really followed up in the rest of the movie. I’m not saying the scene was a waste of time, but the narrative might have been better served by having a different approach. Nothing that was set up in the opening 10 minutes was payed off later down the line that couldn’t be done better elsewhere. A very odd choice indeed.
The first act in general has a lot of these issues, the set up at large feels very disjointed and painfully formulaic, like they had a great time travel story in mind and just ticked the boxes necessary to get all the characters in place. Effective, but forced and contrived, especially considering how brilliantly this same feat was executed in Infinity War. Thankfully, these issues disappear once the time travel begins, and don’t crop up again until the conclusion — but let’s get to that a bit later.
My next big gripe is with some of the characters and the narrative choices made around them, in particular; Thor and Black Widow. Thor is a complex and personal one for me, I’ve been a big Thor fan since his inception, and I feel his character has had a rough ride through the entire MCU due to a variety of issues. I won’t delve too far into this as I think It’s probably an article on it’s own but suffice to say I didn’t much care for turning Thor into what amounts to a walking joke for the entire film. I won’t comment on the ‘fat suit’ issues or anything there as that’s a moral issue I’d like to keep separate from my critique and focus more on the choice from a narrative perspective.
I don’t take issue with the concept itself, but it made the character hard to take seriously, at a time when we really should be. After loosing everything we’d expect to see his character falter, but instead of taking a more grounded approach like they did in Infinity War, the Russo’s decided to hit more of a comedic beat, treating him as a joke and ultimately making his sordid and tragic history lack any real resonance or weight. Even the scene with his mother, which was definitely a highlight, suffered from tonal whiplash and again, was difficult to take seriously. I like where he ended up and look forward to seeing him hang out with the Guardians, but I feel like his journey to get there took a very sudden and unnatural tangent that was poorly executed. Your mileage may vary however and the audience seemed to get a kick out of it.
Black Widow suffers from a similar, but different problem. We didn’t really get enough time with her in this movie, or experience enough of her sense of struggle. We’re told rather than shown the toll the events have taken on her and pairing her with Hawkeye for the sacrifice on Vormir felt a little lazy and was a missed opportunity to give that moment the emotional weight it should have had. Obviously Banner would have been a better choice here and would give the two characters the time needed to explore their failed relationship. Potentially making the whole sequence feel less like a box that needed to be ticked, and more like a satisfying conclusion to the character arc established in previous films. They might have avoided this because the outcome would be more obvious to the viewers, but ultimately, we all knew that a sacrifice was required here, and I’ll take better character moments before unexpected twists any day of the week. If that was their primary concern, using Hawkeye didn’t really solve that problem anyway in my opinion.
Largely however, the rest of the characters get a good run — with Ant-Man in particular (who is a personal favourite of mine) getting plenty of great moments and feeling like a strong addition to the team. I wish I could say the same for the newest Avenger, Captain Marvel — but alas she is a big weak point in the entire film. It’s almost like she was tacked on at the last minute, popping up to say a few lines and kill a few bad guys but not really having any meaningful impact on the story at large. She could be entirely absent, and the film would be no worse for it, which is a shame. I understand and support that the focus should absolutely be on the original team, but instead of being an exciting cameo like Spider-Man in Civil War, she’s simply just ‘there’ which makes her involvement feel like just another box to tick.
This is a running theme you’ll find with all my grievances about the film. Too many moments feel like they were just put in there out of obligation and not because they ultimately served an important place in the narrative.
While Iron Man’s sacrifice was handled very well, despite it not being a big surprise, I felt Captain America’s send off wasn’t quite the home run it deserved to be. Tony’s arc came to a satisfying conclusion, feeling like a natural end point for his character who has been central to this part of the MCU for some time. I’ll admit some bias here as he’s probably the character I feel the closest relationship with on a personal level, but they really did give him a satisfactory conclusion here. Most of all, I’m glad that they didn’t try and put in a twist or defy expectations with his ultimate fate. It was an obvious, but fitting end to the character.
For Cap? It felt like they had to find some way to remove Chris from his contract and they added it on in an oddly placed, if well executed scene. I don’t want to nit-pick small technical details in a superhero film here either, but after doing such a good job of summarising how all the time travel mechanics work in such a neat sentence earlier in the film, they then seemingly break those rules in order to give us this nice little scene on a bench at the cap of the movie. I’m all for prioritising narrative and story over continuity and in universe ‘rules’, but while we didn’t necessarily need an explanation, given the fact that we’ll probably never know the specifics — a hint or subtle mention would have helped.
“If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future and your former present becomes the past which can’t now be changed by your new future.”
- Bruce Banner/The Hulk
Again, I like the scene, and I’m not entirely against Steve’s choice (even if it’s perhaps a bit out of character) but the required mental gymnastics to come to terms with it robs what should be a genuine moment of some of it’s power. The execution could have been better, and I think Captain America fans, and Chris himself deserved better.
Thanos suffers a little bit too, this is a minor issue mostly, because he got so much time in the previous film. Spending lots of time with him here wouldn’t be a great use of our time. However, seeing a character who was so well developed in the previous film relegated to just a powerful ‘big bad’ in his next outing was a little disappointing, if understandable. Similar to Loki’s portrayal as the villain in the first Avengers movie, after a great introduction in Thor, he had to take the backseat a bit when it came to the ensemble piece. I get it, but it’s hard not to feel let down after such a great build up.
Ultimately, these issues amount primarily to questionable execution rather than being bad in themselves. With so many boxes to tick, it’s admirable they managed what they did, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I was disappointed to see more misses than hits when it comes to these decisions. Again, not to compare too heavily, but it’s hard not to hold high expectations when similar issues where resolved so well in Infinity War.
Conclusion
“If Endgame is the best that these movies will ever be, it’s hardly a bad point to end on”
It may seem like the bad outweighs the good here for me, and if you’d have asked me immediately after the movie — I would have agreed. However, on reflection these issues only stand out because everything else worked so well.
Overall Endgame acts as a satisfying conclusion to a historic and monumental undertaking in the history of cinema and while it doesn’t necessarily hit all the marks it could have, it’s absolutely a crowd pleasing and exciting ride which not only wraps up the last 11 years, but makes me interested in where the MCU will go next.
When it’s all said and done — what Marvel have done with this 22 movie saga is break ground never before tapped in the history of the medium. If Endgame is the best that these movies will ever be, it’s hardly a bad point to end on. After all, it’s the journey and not the destination — and it’s been one hell of a great ride.
