Avengers: Endgame: Take a Bow

Based on the box office totals, it seems like everyone in the world has already seen Avengers: Endgame (some probably multiple times). I saw it on opening night in a packed theater and the atmosphere was electric. Every cameo and every character got a rousing cheer, every plot development was met with a whoop or a gasp, and towards the end, there was audible sniffling. All for the 22nd film in a superhero franchise that began in 2008. Bravo, Marvel, you nailed it. This post will be spoilerific so please stop reading now if you're one of the few people who have yet to watch this film. If you have seen it, however, let's dive into what made this movie quite so spectacular.

Firstly, let's look at that chronology again. The Marvel Cinematic Universe began with 2008's Iron Man. A vastly entertaining movie, it heralded an onslaught of superhero movies that would regularly dominate our summers, and then casually creep into every month of the year that Marvel deemed appropriate, so that last year, we had Black Panther in February, Avengers: Infinity War in April, and Ant-Man and the Wasp in July. Over the course of four years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) introduced us to Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who were all brought together in 2012's The Avengers as the original crew. Over the next seven years, the MCU relentlessly expanded, often in extremely quirky ways like Guardians of the Galaxy or Doctor Strange, or re-booting Spider-Man yet again with the delightful Tom Holland, or adding on more sequels to enrich the relationships and backstories of the original Avengers like Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, Avengers: Age of Ultron, etc. When Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) got two movies, it felt like overkill, but when you watch him serve as the catalyst to everything that goes on in Avengers: Endgame, you start to see how intricately plotted each phase of the MCU has been. It took 21 movies to get here, and when you view the final product, not a single one of those movies was wasted. There are callbacks to characters and storylines from all of those myriad movies, and watching them coalesce into one glorious whole is staggering.

Secondly, look at the casting. Marvel wasn't messing around. They started with Robert Downey Jr. and always insisted on getting the best of the best. Superhero movies are inherently dismissed as childish silliness but Marvel hired actors who knew how to make you care deeply about these characters. They were charming, they were witty, they knew how to fight, and they knew how to break your heart. The relationship between Captain America and Iron Man is the cornerstone of the MCU and Evans and Downey Jr. will leave you destroyed by the end of this movie. Are they swashbuckling superheroes wearing robot suits and skintight pants (all the better to showcase America's ass!) and fighting intergalactic battles? Yes. Are they also two men with differing ideologies but a strong sense of duty who are trying to reconcile their personal needs with the demands of defending the entire universe? Yes. Don't let the superhero antics fool you - we came for the action but we stayed for the characters.

Thirdly, look at the plot. Endgame begins precisely where Infinity War left off - Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers and half of the universe's population disappeared, including many of our superhero friends. The remaining Avengers crew assemble and spend much of the first hour of the movie in distress. There's a five-year time jump, with everyone in an extreme state of numb helplessness, trying to move on but still desperately missing the ones they lost. And then, Ant-Man is brilliantly resurrected and kicks off Act 2 of the film, a time-travelling caper that essentially feels like the superhero version of Ocean's 11. Our heroes travel back in time to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos ever got them, which means that they travel back to the pivotal moments of previous movies in the MCU. When Nebula (Karen Gillan) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) go back to Morag to the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy where Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is dancing to Come and Get Your Love? I don't think I've experienced such a thrill of cinematic payoff ever before. I've seen every single one of these movies, but over eleven years, I've forgotten most of what happened in them. But as scenes unfolded and characters arrived from the prior movies, I was instantly transported and so happy to see them.

Avengers: Endgame is simply marvelous. It fully justifies why Marvel has dominated movie theaters for so long, and gives them complete license to keep rolling out as many of these movies as they would like for the foreseeable future. I know there are people who simply do not understand, and at this point, it feels a bit insurmountable to catch up by watching 22 movies. But for those of us who patiently watched each movie as it came out in the theater and then went about our lives, this movie feels like an epic gift, rewarding us for our patience and proving that there was an endgame all along. What a thrilling conclusion, and what promise for the future.