Avengers: Endgame starts off a lot slower than Avengers: Infinity War did, as if it’s a direct & straightforward continuation from the depressing cliffhanger ending of Infinity War. Endgame could easily be called Infinity War Part 2.
Fortuntely the mood lifts slightly before the end of the first 10 minutes, as Captain Marvel (Bree Larson) appears and rescues a stranded Tony Stark, returns him to Earth and what remains of the Avengers have a little get-together, counting their losses and consoling each other. This of course is very timely since the dedicated Captain Marvel movie was released on Friday 8 March 2019, just 7 weeks before Endgame was released on Friday 26 April 2019.
By the 15th minute, most surviving members of the core team of Avengers have agreed to go after Thanos with the help of their new ally, Captain Marvel. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, since Thanos has already destroyed the infinity stones so there’s no way to reverse what’s happened now. Thor impulsively kills the now defenceless Thanos, and everyone is depressed again by 20 minutes in. Half an hour in, people are still sobbing, and it’s starting to look like the only reason it’s a 3 hour long movie is because it’s not been condensed into a richly entertaining one – they just left all the junk in as if it’s a sci-fi drama sitcom.
Fortunately, Ant-Man shows up with a plan to build a time-machine using the quantum realm, to go back in time before Thanos did his thing, and prevent it from ever happening. Now things are starting to get a little interesting – it’s just a shame we had to sit through half an hour of sobbing to get here. 1 hour in and not much more has happened – thus far, this movie seems like way more drama, way less action than Infinity War.
90 minutes in and it’s looking like it’s only half way done – at this rate it will need all three hours to properly complete things.
Nearly 2 hours in and it’s still looking like a season finale to an action drama series.
Overall I rate Avengers: Endgame as an OK movie considering its pros and cons. It’s kind of Bang Average for an action hero movie reviewed by this site. It’s considerably weaker than Infinity War – the previous Avengers movie, which I rated slightly Above Average.
All the usual Avengers cast members are here, and then some. Thanos returns as the main antagonist too. They killed him at the start, but then they went back in time for a rematch. How very uncreative! Still, it’s not the worst plot of all time – it’s no worse than any other Avengers movie with the exception of Infinity War. Plotwise, Endgame could easily be the last of several chapters from Infinity War, even though it’s a longer movie, it feels like Infinity War covered several chapters to Endgame’s one, or one long chapter to Endgame’s short final one.
Some of the strange things that happened in this movie include Thor gaining a belly; Captain America being equally worthy of wielding Thor’s weapons and somehow having some of Thor’s lightning powers when he does so; and many of the core cast members meet their long lost lovers or family members when they go back in time.
Even though Thor (played well by Chris Hemsworth) is fat in this movie, I’d say he’s still the best member of the Avengers and this movie massively underplays his powers, giving both the Hulk and Iron Man a chance to wear the six infinity stones but never Thor. Iron Man (played well by Robert Downey Jr) is one of the busiest characters in this movie, as is Chris Evans who does a fair job as Captain America. Hulk is also a very significant character here, and is played quite well by Mark Ruffalo with the help of ample CGI which looks quite odd in how he’s made to stand in a wobbling slouch like a RPG video game character. In terms of powers displayed, Captain Marvel (played adequately by Brie Larson) is made to look like the most powerful Avenger – she’s involved early in the movie, then disappears until she re-joins the action very late into the final battle scene at the end. She basically saves the day, although still needs help since she still gets knocked around a bit by Thanos momentarily. Thanos himself makes a great adversary, and is played well by Josh Brolin with the help of loads of CGI.
Once the grand finale battle is done, with the best part of half an hour remaining, the last half an hour can easily be skipped by action hero movie fans, since it’s pure drama. There’s not even an interesting teaser clip among the closing credits like there usually is on a Marvel movie. Maybe they really thought the world was coming to an end after 2019? There have been further Marvel movies released in pretty much every year since Endgame was released in 2019, but there’s not been many new good ones – the recent Marvel movies have been mostly quite poorly made. For this reason, after watching Endgame, you may like to go back to watching the earlier Marvel movies from prior to the modern Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Perhaps try X-Men (2000) and its sequels next. There’s a trilogy from the early 2000s, then a Wolverine trilogy mixed in with 4 prequels culminating in Dark Phoenix (2019) which bears a striking resemblance to Captain Marvel and was released just a few months later but is not part of the MCU with its endless Avengers and endless crossovers. The X-Men and Wolverine movies also feed into the modern Deadpool trilogy in case you’re into toilet humour – not my cup of tea personally – but if you like Deadpool you’ll probably like DC’s Shazam and vice versa.
Strangely, the DC superhero called Shazam is a relatively new name, since that character was originally called Captain Marvel in comicbooks – not to be confused with Marvel’s own Captain Marvel of course, who is a completely different character made specifically for the 2019 movie (development began in 2013).
Development of the Captain Marvel character by Marvel Studios began in 2013. The basic concept was announced in 2014. The story was written in 2015. Brie Larson was cast & announced as Danvers in 2016. The directors were hired in 2017 at which point the script was also rewritten, and filming began in 2018 in time for the movie’s release in 2019.
As you can imagine, there have been all kinds of trademark & copyright issues going on ever since the DC’s Captain Marvel (now Shazam) was created in 1939 just in time to rally the troops for WW2 (coincidence much?) although initially the main qualm was with how this Shazam / Captain Marvel character (published initially by Whiz Comics and Fawcett Comics, both owned by Fawcett Publications) bore too much similarity with DC’s Superman. DC won a copyright lawsuit in the 1950s and Fawcett stopped publishing Captain Marvel – they also allowed their unusable trademark to expire in the 60s at which point it was quickly picked up by Marvel Comics. Then in 1971, Fawcett sold the remainder of their copyright stake in this Shazam / Captain Marvel character to DC – at least, whatever was not already ruled the legal property of DC due to its resemblance to their Superman character. This sale consolidated all rights of the early Shazam / Captain Marvel character for DC, except of course the trademark name which was picked up by Marvel in the 60s. So DC used the name Shazam instead, for the purpose of selling comics, while still getting away with referring to the character as Captain Marvel from within the comicbook scripts. DC allowed this strange scenario to exist until 2010 when they finally fully renamed their character to Shazam. Within the decade, Marvel Studios released a movie dedicated to their own new Captain Marvel character, which was to be their first female-led project, and just 1 month later, DC released their own movie dedicated to Shazam, thus jointly putting to bed the best part of a century’s worth of dispute & confusion.
Alternatively, check out the Fantastic Four movies (2005 & 2007) if you haven’t done so in a while – these movies are starring Jessica Alba (from Dark Angel) alongside a young Chris Evans (who took on the role of Captain America a few years later) – this movies will set you up nicely for Marvel’s 2025 remake of the Fantastic Four, 20 years on from Alba’s version and featuring a completely new cast since everyone’s now much older – Alba’s already in her mid 40s, and Evans is too well known as Captain America these days.
