I saw "Avengers Endgame" last night on opening night with my daughter. Before reading too much reaction or reviews from others I thought I'd share some of my initial thoughts. This is such a blockbuster movie and there was so much going on in the movie that it was hard to absorb everything in one viewing. I'm going to see the movie a second time to see if anything changes and if I can pick up on a little bit more.
I've been a comic book fan since I was a kid. I used to collect comic books and had hundreds and hundreds stacked in my closet. My favorites were Spider Man, The Hulk, Superman and the X-Men, but my favorite issues were stories in which all of the superheroes got together in a big battle against and evil force like Thanos. That's why I am a huge fan of all of the Avenger movies. These movies really take me back to the comic books and do a great job of storytelling and bringing the comic books to the big screen.
Overall I really enjoyed the movie. There were some things I liked and some that I didn't like. I'm going from memory here, so I'll do my best in trying to review everything that happened.
The beginning of the movie starts pretty slowly. The opening scene shows Hawkeye's family having a "pre-Thanos snap" picnic and he witnesses his whole family turned to dust by the snap. This scene was actually very powerful and served as a reminder as to what Infinity War was all about. After that we get a scene with Iron Man and Nebula on their spaceship which only has a day of oxygen left. Tony falls asleep and is awoken by a bright light which is Captain Marvel coming to save the day. Captain Marvel then guides the ship back to earth.
Captain Marvel meets with the Avengers and they decide to go kill Thanos and recover the infinity stones to reverse the snap. They end up finding and killing him rather easily, which is the films first "WTF" moment. But why they did it that way is rather brilliant. Thanos had already destroyed the stones so there were no stones to recover. While they did kill him to get revenge, they weren't satisfied doing it because they had still lost all of their friends and there were so many other deaths. Getting revenge that way just wasn't good enough, and as a viewer I felt exactly what the Avengers felt. Hence the feeling that the only way to get redemption and revenge was to reverse the events of the snap. In my opinion they didn't really need Captain Marvel for this scene. I was worried that Captain Marvel was going to come in and save the day, leading to a bunch of Captain Marvel movies in the next phase of the MCU. She did get to show off her powers during the course of the movie but in the end she was just a helper and not the main catalyst for defeating Thanos.
Skip to five years later and Ant Man all-of-a-sudden pops out of the Quantum Realm and realizes The Snap happened. He figures there may be a way to reverse Thanos' snap by using the Quantum Realm but can't figure it out on his own so he goes to Avengers headquarters to seek their assistance. They eventually talk Tony Stark into helping and he "figures out time travel." That seemed a little bit too easy to me. He figured out time travel in about five minutes.
There were a lot of spoilers about this movie in the past year. Some were true and most weren't. One of the true spoilers was that they were going to travel back in time to retrieve all of the infinity stones, which was the main premise of the movie. This is where the movie got really fuzzy to me. There was a scene where Hulk, Nebula, Ant Man and Hawkeye were talking about time travel and the possibility of running into themselves in the past and changing the course of history and there is a short debate where Hulk and Nebula insist that it won't be an issue and the conversation ends with Ant Man saying "you mean Back To The Future is complete bullshit?" It's a funny line and I think it's just the directors way to convey to the audience "hey don't worry about the specifics. It all works. Trust us." Unfortunately it wasn't a good enough answer for me and it got a bit confusing in some parts. I was still able to enjoy the movie, but it was a bit of a speed bump in the story for me.
There were a couple of issues with the time travel scenes. In one scene "present day" Nebula kills "past" Nebula and nothing happens to present day Nebula. I would think if you go back in time and kill yourself that you'd be dead, but the death had no effect on present day Nebula.
Gamora disappears after the main battle at the end of the movie. What happened to her was one of the main questions I had at the end of the movie but I guess they're probably setting up the next Guardians of the Galaxy movie with her disappearance. It was just kind of odd.
It was also a cool moment when Hulk put on the gauntlet that Tony Stark designed with all the infinity stones in it and reversed the snap. But that brought up another question. Does the gauntlet just read the thoughts in your mind and then do whatever you are thinking? It's just kind of weird how it happens, Anyway, I digress. Thanos of the past realizes what the Avengers are up to while they are time traveling and retrieving the stones and sends Nebula from the past back to present day Earth so she can bring Thanos to the present day to stop the Avengers. When he arrives is when the big battle scene takes place.
The final battle scene was spectacular. It was as close as you can get to bringing the comics to the big screen as you could get and was very satisfying. I wasn't a fan of Captain America wielding Mjolnir so easily, but it was a cool moment. Another cool moment was when Thanos appeared to have the Avengers beat and all of a sudden all the previously killed superheroes came back to the fight. Such a great scene.
The last battle had a lot going on and it's hard to remember everything. One thing I did not like was there was a point where all the women super heroes showed up in one grouping all at the same time. In a battle this huge, this was not feasible at all and felt very forced. I don't mind female superheroes, but I just don't like it forced down my throat like this was.
Obviously the big moment was Iron Man stealing the infinity stones from Thanos and wielding the Iron Man gauntlet and snapping away Thanos and all of his army. After Iron Man's snap, it looks like he is hurt pretty bad, but I kept thinking "they're not going to kill Iron Man are they? They're not going to kill him, are they? He's just stunned, right? He's gonna snap out of it, right?" And then he dies. Such a great but heartbreaking scene. It was at this point that people in the theater were crying and even sobbing! Personally, I hated this moment because it marked the end of the Avengers for me. I kept thinking they might be able to bring him back, but it wasn't to be. So sad.
Another part of the movie that kind of surprised me was Captain America going back and staying in the past and growing old, which was revealed at the end of the movie. For a long time rumors have been around that Bucky would be the next Captain America. Maybe the writers purposely wanted to throw everyone off because instead Steve Rogers relinquished his shield to Sam Wilson/Falcon.
I almost forgot to mention Hawkeye and Black Widow going after the Soul Stone. I would think Nebula would have warned them about the sacrifice they had to make in order to retrieve it. Instead they both seemed shocked at what they had to do. It was kinda cool that they both tried to sacrifice for one another, but that was another confusing part of the movie for me. All the dots weren't quite connected.
I guess that's it for now. I'm going to go see the movie again and see if I can answer a couple of these questions. Maybe I missed something the first time I saw it that will be cleared up upon a second viewing.
It was a great movie, but a sad ending for me. It marks the end of the Avengers arc of the MCU. I don't typically like many movies anymore, but these Marvel movies have me hooked. The guys and gals making these movies really know what they're doing.
Till next time....
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