11 years. Ever since Iron Man, Marvel has slowly been building a wide ranging and fantastic universe filled with vast stories of good and evil, of adventure and romance and dazzling spectacle. And now, we have reached Endgame, the end of the current era of Marvel as we know it, and the culmination of a number of threads that have been running through the Marvel stories since Captain America: the First Avenger.
As is my wont, I will start with a spoiler free review of Endgame before diving into some spoiler rich criticism and analysis of the film. Be aware, this may end up being a pretty long post, as I have a lot of thoughts and a good amount of time to get them all typed up.
Review
So, in case you have been living under a rock for the last decade, Endgame is the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and follows the tragic events of last year's Avengers: Infinity War. First, let me say, this film is not for everyone. If you like your movies to be "dark and gritty," or maybe "intellectually complex," go back to your indie film festival; this probably isn't the film for you. If, however, you have enjoyed the MCU before and are looking for a film to effectively develop the characters you already know and love; if you love big spectacle action films and superhero movies, then you should definitely check out Endgame. This monster of a film felt like three movies in one (in a good way), and the final act of the film had me thinking, "wow, this reminds me of Return of the King," which is one of the highest compliments I can give. So if that sounds like your cup of tea, go see Endgame. If nothing else, it's getting to spend three more hours with all your favorite MCU characters on the big screen, which makes it worth the price of the ticket in my opinion.
The Rant and Rave Review
OK, for those of you who have seen it, or those of you who don't mind spoilers, a bit of fangirling before I get to the more serious analysis. Like I said, the film can be divided into three major parts, and each of them has some majorly awesome sections that I want to unpack a bit.
Part one could be entitled "Variations on Grief" if I was feeling particularly pretentious. This is where our heroes are forced to cope with the fact that they failed to prevent the single most cataclysmic event in human history, the wiping out of half of all life in the universe. This section is fantastic in that it allows us to see our favorite characters cope with their losses, and each does so in a different way. Black Widow throws herself into her work, doing everything she can to keep the already unstable world from falling apart further. Captain America takes up the mantle that his friend Sam (Black Falcon) left behind, counseling others in their grief and providing help for those who don't know how to cope with the loss of their most important loved ones. Tony Stark breaks his bonds with the friends he thinks he failed and who failed him, and begins a new and happy life with his wife and (eventually) his daughter. Thor, who sees his own failure as the greatest given his relative strength and the opportunity he had to kill Thanos, sinks into a pit of alcoholism and depression, while Hawkeye, who has lost his entire family, goes looking for revenge on criminals who didn't "deserve" to survive "the snap." Each of these characters has a unique way of dealing with the horrific events of Infinity War, that reflects the journey the characters have undergone to reach this particular moment. While the first act of Endgame is quiet (by superhero film standards), it allows time for the characters and the audience to process and prepare for the next battle.
Part two is the self titled "Time Heist." Now, many of the criticisms I am seeing of Endgame view time travel to fix the problem as the ultimate cop out, and while they are not wrong, there was also no way to fix the dusting of half the universe (pun absolutely intended), without some sort of cop out response. What makes time travel such a good option in this case, is it gave the characters a "time without hope," a time where Thanos had destroyed the Infinity stones, so there was no way to fix the catastrophe he caused. This forced the characters through the grief we see in the first act. Time travel also served the unique purpose of allowing the audience and the cast a trip down memory lane while also allowing key development for a number of characters. We get to see Peggy Carter working at SHEILD and how much Cap lost when he went into the ice. We get to see Tony reconciling with his father, who he always viewed as distant and harsh, but who was struggling to do his best in a complicated world. We get to see Thor, at rock bottom, having lost everything, go back to the moment when everything first went wrong, when he first "lost," and see him reminded that everyone loses, everyone fails, and what makes him a hero or not is whether he chooses to get back up and keep fighting. What could have just been a cheap-get out of jail free-gimmick is actually very well utilized to provide character development and to allow the audience to see why these heroes stand, how they have grown, and what they have sacrificed to reach this point. It is also a boatload of fun. Seeing Tony, Cap, and Hulk waltzing through Avengers New York, calling out old costumes and Hulk's lack of rationality was a thoroughly enjoyable experience that appealed to my nostalgia for old MCU films and my inner Marvel nerd.
The character development of the first two acts paid off in the third. Having endured five years of grief, and having rebuilt hope through their encounters on the time heist, the characters are forced into battle with their greatest foe, an enemy that they thought was dead and gone, Thanos. When he takes advantage of the Avenger's time travel technology to come and take the Infinity stones and ensure his irrevocable victory, every hero in the MCU is called into the fight. This final, epic battle is amazingly well constructed. It starts off with Marvel's current "big three," Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor versus Thanos. The fight gradually grows in scale, with Thanos' forces joining the fray only to be met by the newly restored heroes of earth; every hero we know and love joining the fray. What makes this fight so good is the mismatched nature of the heroic forces... while most of Thanos' forces are nondescript, generic monsters needing to be dispatched, the massive variety of heroes means the shape and style of the fighting is constantly changing wherever the action is focused. Watching Spiderman rock the Iron Spider costume, only to shift perspectives to Scarlet Witch duking it out with Thanos, then back to Bucky machine gunning his way through cannon fodder opponents; each hero has a visually distinct fighting style which continually changes the pace, scale, and perspective on the final battle, which keeps it from getting bogged down, and lending it an epic gravitas on par with the Battle of Pelenor Fields in Return of the King.
My comparison with Return of the King does not end with the mere scope of the battle, however. One of the most iconic moments in the entire Lord of the Rings series is Eowen's battle with the Witch King of Angmar, lord of the Nazgul. Her declaration, "I am no man!" goes down as one of my top three most epic, badass moments in movie history. Endgame's final battle was also rounded out with a badass character moment that will likely end up in my top five, and is definitely in my top ten. As Thanos battles Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, we have Thor dual wielding hammer and axe when both Cap and Tony are knocked away from the fight. Thanos sends Mjolnir flying, and has over powered the "strongest Avenger," Thor. At that moment, there is a lull in the battle, and the camera pans to Mjolnir, lying in the rubble. It quivers, rises up, and flies straight into the waiting hands of CAPTAIN AMERICA!! with a crash of thunder and lightning, as Cap stands against Thanos, mighty shield and hammer of Thor at the ready. What makes this moment so great, is we have waited at least since Age of Ultron, when all the Avengers tried to lift the hammer, and we saw Cap budge it, to see him wield Mjolnir in a fight. Those of us Captain America fans out there have always asserted he was worthy, but with the destruction of the hammer in Thor: Ragnarok, we didn't anticipate ever getting to see Cap lift it. It is one of the most properly badass moments I can think of in a film, made all the better by the fact that many of us never thought we would get to see it happen.
Now, this wouldn't be a proper rants and raves section without a bit of a rant. There is one moment in the final battle that took me out of the story a bit and was a bit disappointing. As the heroes attempt to get the Infinity Stones to Ant Man to send them back into the past where they belong, the gauntlet is passed from Spiderman to Captain Marvel. One of the other heroes asks if she can get the gauntlet through on her own. This would have been a really good moment for Captain Marvel to shine as an individual character... as (probably) the most powerful hero in the MCU at this time, it would have been epic to see her battle through alone, a testament to female power and capability. Instead, the scene devolves into a cheap gimmick as all the female heroes surround Captain Marvel, pose, and declare, "she's not alone." It turned the scene from one that could have been an awesome example of female empowerment into one that felt like mere pandering to a demographic. This is a slight criticism of a single moment, but unfortunately that moment was made all the more jarring by the total disconnect with the audience, with the action to that point, and with its obviously political intent. (OK, rant finished, on with the review).
The bittersweet ending of the final act draws the entire story together, from three films into one coherent piece, as each character is allowed to partially reclaim what they have lost, but at such a high cost. Iron Man is able to fulfill his vow from the first act, to preserve the happiness he has found in his family, but he does so at the cost of his life. We have seen his development from a womanizing narssicist, to genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, and finally, into a father figure who is willing to sacrifice himself in order to save those he cares about. Proof that Tony Stark has a heart is not his glowing chest piece, but the lives of everyone at his funeral that he was able to save simply by being Iron Man. While Tony's story ends with him choosing to die to save everyone, Captain America's story ends with him choosing to give up being a hero. Ever since the first Captain America film, Steve Rogers has been a man who chooses the fate of the world over his own happiness. Time and again, he has sacrificed himself in order to keep others safe. His development is the realization that sometimes it is ok to be selfish. Instead of choosing his obligations to the world, Steve chooses his own happiness, electing to stay in the past and have a life with his one true love, Peggy Carter. This is such a powerful ending for him, because he is finally able to receive the reward he has been fighting for so many years, to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Finally, for the "big three," we see Thor choose what he has wanted since The Dark World, to leave behind his kingdom, in the hands of someone imminently more capable of ruling it well, to pursue a life of adventure with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike Cap and Tony, Thor's arc seems to be left unfinished, leaving him room to grow and change in future films. While he has overcome his "failure," he still has a long way to go to reclaim the peace and happiness we see both Iron Man and Captain America achieve in Endgame.
A few thoughts on the extra bits and pieces before I go into a bit of critical analysis. First, while the main focus of the story seems to center around the "big three," the development that is given to Hawkeye and Black Widow in the story provides much of the emotional heart. His arc, from the opening of the movie, when we see him lose his entire family in the snap, to the middle where he fights with Black Widow to see who will sacrifice themself to obtain the soul stone. to the end, when he reclaims his happiness with his family, a victory tainted by the loss of his best friend, directly correlates with the events of the larger story, while providing a personal, individual scale to the massive, epic conflict. Even if we don't relate to the arcs of the "big three," anyone who has lost a family member can identify with Hawkeye's pain, which serves to ground the story in personal reality. Secondly, while Endgame utilizes its time travel very well, it also leaves a couple of unanswered questions that I hope future MCU films address. In his conversation with the Ancient One to acquire the Time stone, Hulk learns that removing the stones from history can cause it to skew off into a secondary timeline that is potentially darker than their current timeline. Thus it becomes imperative to preserve the timeline and return the stones to the moment they were taken. This idea, that time travel can create alternate futures is not a new one in science fiction, but it is one that could have devastating consequences in the MCU because of two major plot points. First is Thanos' final attack, which is stopped by Tony Stark's use of the Infinity Stones. When Tony snaps his fingers, all the enemy fighters disintegrate into dust. While this is very emotionally satisfying, all these fighters are past versions of the characters that arrived via time travel. This is Thanos BEFORE he fought the Avengers in Infinity war. We also have Nebula and Gamorra from a time before The Guardians of the Galaxy. If these past versions of characters are killed or unable to return to their places in time, how does that affect the current version of reality? If Thanos is killed with Tony's snap, then does the version of him that fought the Avengers in his future, their past, cease to exist? It's a "Back to the Future" conundrum that needs to be addressed, especially if "pre-Guardians" Gamorra is going to end up with the current Guardians of the Galaxy team. Similarly, when Tony and Ant Man fail to steal the Tesseract in 2011, Loki ends up grabbing it and zapping away. The failure is treated as inconsequential because they simply go further into the past and get the tesseract, however, we still have Avengers era Loki bouncing around time and space with the Tesseract! While this is good news for Loki fans (and I will readily admit I am more than happy to see the god of mischief return in the MEU), it also messes up the timeline, as 1. the Tesseract is no longer in New York, on its way to Asgard, and 2. Loki is no longer on his way to the prison cell Thor removes him from in Thor: The Dark World Both of these facts should have a radical impact on the timeline if Marvel stays consistent with its premise, and it does need to be addressed and resolved in future MCU products.
Some Critical Ramblings
So there have of course been criticisms of Endgame from a variety of analysts. I would like to take a quick moment and address some of the more egregious.
One of the main criticisms I have heard for Endgame is that it is "big budget" "corporate advertisement" that is not truly a work of film or of art, but is merely spectacle pandering to a base in order to sell toys and future Marvel products. I have two responses to these criticisms. The first is, "Did you actually watch Endgame?" While I admit that Marvel does sometimes fall into the trap of advertising future films more than focusing on the film they are presently creating, I don't think that Endgame falls into that trap. As the culmination of 20+ films and stories, if anything, Endgame is designed to look back on what came before; to appeal to nostalgia more than it looks forward and pushes current products or future releases. Of course, any comic book property is going to be selling merchandise... action figures, posters, costumes, props... but Endgame does so by telling an epic story with interesting character development, emotional heart, and incredible action. To demean the story of Endgame simply because the story is based on a salable product merely demonstrates a failure to appreciate superhero stories on their own merits. While I understand, and absolutely respect a critic who states... this story was not my cup of tea, and here are the elements that I disliked, for these reasons," to simply write off a legitimately good story as "bad" because it has a corporate advertising element is fundamentally disrespectful to the art of storytelling. In a similar vein, to cheapen Endgame because it is simply "pandering to the masses" is academic elitism at its worst. To say something is mediocre because it appeals to a large number of people is disrespectful to artists who work hard to create work that is interesting, engaging, and relatable, and to the audience who chooses to support a genre they love. To state something popular is mediocre is to call into question the judgement of the wider population, demeaning their likes and dislikes while pompously declaring, "only the things that I like are good." This is academic ego at its worst...the declaration that something must be "complicated," or "dark," or "unsatisfying," or "political," in order to be good. Endgame achieves the goal it sets out to accomplish... it is an epic conclusion to a decade of conflict between good and evil, in which good triumphs. It is the simple story of characters who have failed fighting to reclaim that which has been lost. It is a satisfying story where families are reconciled and restored, and heroism is rewarded. It is a story of people assembling (pun intended), despite radical differences in age, education, gender, species, background, politics, and power, and uniting to confront a true evil that is greater than any of them. At its core, Endgame's goals are fundamentally different than those that critics view as "good," but it accomplishes them in an epic, engaging, heartfelt, action packed manner. Yes, those elements may not be a critic's bread and butter, but Endgame is not bad storytelling simply because it does not match what academia has convinced itself it good.
My second response to criticisms that Endgame is "corporate advertising" designed "merely to sell merchandise," is... so what? Is there something intrinsically bad with telling stories to make money? All art is a tension between the artist's "self expression" and the audience to whom they are expressing. The great works of art we admire were often subjects commissioned by a paying client. To question art created for money (at the behest of the ruling power structure) is to devalue Shakespeare, Michelangelo, or Bach. Perhaps, one could argue that the art these men created was the selling point in itself, not linked to an external merchandise, but was it really? The Sistine Chapel was a work of art designed to advertise the Roman Catholic church, as were many of Bach's compositions. The point is, any art has a commercial aspect because artists have to eat, audiences appreciate art by paying money, and institutional power structures often serve as an intermediary between the two. What critics who condemn the commercial aspects of Marvel products fail to incorporate into their analysis is that the audience plays a large role in merchandising aspect of these films. Marvel nerds WANT to buy merchandise... not because corporate Disney has brainwashed us into thinking we need merchandise, but because we appreciate and value the products as a part of the art. For example... a Marvel nerd (me), loves Captain America because he represents an antiquated, non-subjective morality that chooses to do "the right thing" even when it is difficult. Disney releases Endgame, which reinforces the value of Captain America's worldview (and subsequently, that nerd's worldview) by having Cap wield Mjolnir like an absolute badass. The nerd then goes out and buys a poster of that moment. Now, in this case, the nerd wants to have a visual indicator of how much she values Captain America as a hero and all he stands for, so she buys merchandise. The audience is not merely a passive recipient. The reason that superhero films are successful and sell toys and merchandise isn't because big studios decide "oh, this thing is what we will use to sell merchandise," but because the audience has a passion or interest in "the thing," enough that they want merchandise, a demand which the studio then meets. So, yes, superhero movies sell merchandise... because the audience that enjoys superhero movies is so passionate about the subject that they want more than just movies, they want posters and action figures and costumes. And isn't that what stories are supposed to do? Stories are an art that engages the emotion of the audience on behalf of the characters, a craft that builds lies (fictions) into greater truths, either by reflecting the world or rewriting it into something better. What makes Endgame "good," is that it engages the audience's passion for the heroic, for larger than life characters who are actually superhuman, and grounds them in the personal experiences of grief and failure. What makes Endgame "good" is that it acknowledges that sometimes evil triumphs in the world, but that ultimately, a hero will stand up and keep fighting; that good wins in the end, so if evil is victorious all that means is we haven't reached the end yet. What makes Endgame "good" is the fact that, like its audience, it acknowledges that the world is complicated, filled with horrible, unavoidable loss and failure, but instead of wallowing in despair, it chooses to find meaning in that loss and look toward a more hopeful future. And while this view seem stupidly innocent to the cynical critic who has spent decades immersing himself in the academic darlings of nihilism, realism, deconstruction, and Marxist theory, there is really no quantitative way to assert the superiority of such a mindset. It all comes down to what you value subjectively... romance or realism. I will absolutely respect a critic who states, "I prefer complicated, realistic stories that examine the futility of human existence because I find those stories match reality as I understand it through my experiences." I while I may not agree with him, I will also respect a critic who says, "I thought Endgame struggled because the fight scenes are too disjointed and the story struggled to balance too many characters and so many were left disappointingly undeveloped." What I cannot respect is a critic who refuses to look at the content of the film because he has been trained to dismiss its creators, or a critic who dismisses Endgame as "bad" because he simply does not agree with its romantic worldview.
In Conclusion
Well, this turned into a monster of a post. I wasn't planning on saying this much about Endgame, but I read some articles and some criticisms that made me really angry, and this is my place to rant and rave into the abyss that is the internet. I also imagine I may look back at this post sometime in the future and cringe at how one sided it is... I only have watched Endgame once so far, and I am probably overrating it purely off of my fangirl tendencies and total nerdgasm at its meta awesomeness. However, I do think there is value in an art, a product, a story that gives its audience what they want, characters that you know and love, fighting an impossible battle against pure (if complicated) evil, pulling off an amazing triumph tinged with the bittersweet taste of loss. That is what Endgame was for me; the culmination of a decade and 20+ films that looks back on what has come before with affection, and mourns the ending of an era, while also looking ahead hopefully to the future.
Well, back to reality.
