Avengers: End Game (2019)

Depending on your point of view, Marvel films are either the best or the worst thing to happen to cinema. Personally, I lean towards the latter. Some might even go so far as to say that I'd rather watch my bare feet being slowly consumed by gnawing rodents than watch most of them, but who's to say. To me they all seem formulaic to the point of abject boredom. A manifestation of what is considered art for the iPhone generation. Every release seemed to quite obviously follow the same plot points: 

- Hi, I'm normal a person who discovers they have (insert superpower here).

- Wow, having my (insert superpower her) is awesome! 

- Hold on, there is responsibility attached to having (insert superpower here) and I'm not sure I'm ready for it. 

- No, I must use my (insert superpower here) to defeat this bad guy who is threatening mankind.

- Massive fight featuring lots and lots of things on screen. 

- Post-credit sequel set-up.

Plus I heard that not only are these things in place from a script point, but apparently they are storyboarded before a director is even brought on board. At that point, what is the director really doing besides yelling "action" every now and then? Once, this template is fine. 10 times in a row, it gets a wee bit stagnant. 

Regardless, somewhere along the way The Avengers came along and swiftly became the most popular installments of all the Marvel franchises. I watched the first one. There was a lot of wise-cracking while kicking ass, fine. Where I immediately tuned out was because; one, the green screen 'special effects' are rubbish. And I know everything ever created in movie land is fake, but it would be nice to make an attempt at some sort of reality. And two, because everyone involved is essentially superhuman, it seemed that we are continually subjected to watching people fight who can't hurt each other. Therefore nothing is at stake, so why bother? I made it about 4 minutes into 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' before giving up. More ridiculous CGI, more silly wise-cracks. Bored me to tears. The term 'less is more' has never applied to anything Marvel-related, but for the Avengers movies they seemed to have taken the attitude of abandoning story altogether in favour of just relentless 'stuff' on-screen. It overwhelms the senses to the point of dull-eyed detachment, much like, you could argue, an iPhone (smiley face). And so I swerved the third installment 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018) entirely, deciding instead to spend three hours of my life watching paint dry. 

Then came the most hyped film of them all, 2019s 'Avengers: Endgame'. Billed as the culmination of many Marvel universes (universi?) coming together and bringing closure to this chapter of the franchises' history. I was duped into going to see it in the cinema and, at the time, felt much the same as I did about every other Marvel film - complete indifference. For three hours. However, on a recent random plane journey, I found myself vacantly browsing through the endless catalogue of films to watch and, as you sometimes do on a long flight, just wanted something to watch with no thought or concern entering my head for as long as possible. And so I decided to revisit this film and, inexplicably, rather enjoyed doing so.  

For a start, we don't open on any green screen silliness. There are actual actors in an actual place and something, gasp, intriguing happens without relying on action. This had my attention. Luckily with Marvel films, it didn't really matter that I had missed the previous film as there was enough exposition for me to catch up within the first ten minutes of the movie, so I was immediately somewhat on the hook. Long story short, a chap named Thanos (Josh Brolin) had successfully managed to wipe out 50% of all living beings in the universe, including, of course, many Marvel Superheroes, as you would expect statistically. The Avengers, it seemed, had lost. Again, this is an intriguing premise. 

The surviving members of the superhero world are shocked by the discovery that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), long thought to be dead with the others, has spent the past 5 years trapped in a quantum realm. Thus leading the team to believe that, through the use of time travel, they may be able to reverse the catastrophic events at the end of the previous film. What I found enjoyable here was the reliance on plot and character building over relentless, pointless, action. There is some actual filmmaking on display here and the first 45 minutes or so is pretty beautifully executed. Where you might be tempted to get bogged down in the logistics of the plan, the script does a fine job of doing that for you, making multiple references to 'Back to the Future' and 'The Terminator'. A mind-bending, Christopher Nolan-style, maze this is not. And that's ok. We want just enough to believe that at least they know what they're doing and are able to take us along for the ride. So follows a retrospective time-traveling sojourn through just about every previous Marvel film and it makes for an entertaining and surprisingly emotional ride. Particularly the bit where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) runs into a younger version of his father. Most of this, of course, is pure fan service, but on that level it works. In the same way that WWE Wrestling works. You see your favorite larger than life characters doing crazy things in order to entertain and overcome. 

The last hour, almost inevitably, descends into the old familiar "now let's fill the screen with as much stuff as humanly possible" epic fight sequence and here is where the interest might wane a bit. I suppose when you start with "more is more" the only real way to go is "more is more so let's add more", which they certainly do here. There is a famous bit where it looks like all hope might be lost and Thanos will win once again, only for the previously thought dead superheroes all arrive and Captain America finally utters the famous words "Avengers......assemble". I believe everyone cheered when I saw this in the cinema and, upon second viewing, I found it a nice moment. All of the work done previously with universe-building seems to really pay off. Of course there is the bittersweet moment of victory and, as a result, quite a poignant coda which leads into what I thought to be a quite surprising and moving ending. 

For all the hoopla, and the stuff, and infinity stones, and aliens and spacecrafts and huge people with massive powers fighting each other, to end on a note where a human man just wants to go back and slow-dance with the woman he loves was a great directorial choice. To end such a massive story on something so small brings it back to what it's all about and what ultimately keeps us as an audience interested. All of this made me see this film through a new set of eyes and, while I wouldn't say I'm suddenly a Marvel convert, you could at least see what all the hype was about (this film was briefly the highest grossing film of all time. Quite a feat). For the most part, this works as a film and is by far the strongest effort (at least that I've seen, which isn't saying much) in the Marvel cannon. It made me want to revisit some of those previous films, despite having absolutely no interest in the past. So we'll see how that goes. For now, I think it's safe to say that I enjoyed this film a great deal more than I thought I would and the filmmakers have done an excellent job of bringing conclusion to twenty-two (yes, twenty two) other Marvel stories in this one three-hour ride. 

For the fans, I imagine this is the Citizen Kane of superhero films. For the rest of us, it's an enjoyable jaunt that leaves more of a mark than you might expect. 

★★★☆☆

JB.