Directors: Joe and Anthony Russo

Genre: Action/Adventure

Running Time: 182 minutes

Avengers: Endgame is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence. 

Avengers: Endgame. The most anticipated movie of 2019, and the biggest box office hit in the world, falls short of its expectations. The movie continued the events of Infinity War, in which half of the universe– including most of the Avengers– are turned to dust by Thanos in an event called The Snap. Only the original 6 remain of the Avengers team: Captain America, Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Thor. Endgame follows the Avengers as they try to rebuild the post-Snap world and defeat Thanos, the main antagonist, for good. Despite well-known actors (many of whom became famous from the Marvel Universe), incredible graphics, and an extensive fan base, Endgame’s script, flow, and plot is all over the place. Marvel tried to stuff the movie with content to the point where the comedy became bland, storylines were focused in the wrong places, and character development arcs were lost. To make another movie (The Infinity Trilogy, instead of just two movies) Marvel would have to renew contracts for actors such as Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson (after the Black Widow movie), and Chris Evans, all of whom explicitly stated their careers in Marvel were over. 

Avengers: Endgame featured many capable characters, but the most powerful of them all, Captain Marvel, was barely seen. The Russos had an opportunity to utilize a new mainstream character, but decided to cut her out almost completely from the movie. She appeared in the beginning to save Tony from space, but apparently went off-screen to help “less-fortunate worlds”. But where was she when the Avengers had a plan that could stop Thanos? The “can’t fail”, one-in-a-million chance they had? Despite criticism from Infinity War asking where Captain Marvel had been during the events of the movie, the Russos seem to keep making the same mistakes, and didn’t use Captain Marvel to her full extent. She could have easily done most of the proclaimed “Time Heist” herself– she’s pretty much the most powerful character the MCU franchise has ever seen. 

The pacing of Endgame was confusing and misleading. Other than the first 10 minutes of the movie, the beginning two hours were… uneventful, to say the least. The Russos tried to fill it with how everyone was coping with the deaths of half of the universe, and some of it was done very effectively. But after a while, the scenes become tedious and boring. If it was better paced, the three hour long movie would not have felt so slow. Endgame is also filled with jokes and references to be “funny”, but most of them fall flat. No one needed to see Thor and Korg playing Fortnite against “NoobMaster69”. The jokes mainly consist of fake name-calling, such as Tony Stark calling Rocket Racoon a “Build-a-Bear”. The first five times it’s funny, but it eventually becomes unoriginal and corny. There was a lot of potential and room to show the depression and mental struggle that the world’s going through, but instead it’s replaced with the Hulk dabbing. For example, Thor fell into heavy depression after the death of his brother, Loki, and their loss in Infinity War. He had lost everyone in his life– his siblings, parents, world, and way of life. There was a chance here to really show how Thor was coping with his loss and depression, but it is played off as a joke. Depression and mental issues are very serious, and showing what leads to it and what the consequences were could have played a very strong and informative role in Thor’s character development. 

The character arcs of Captain America and Black Widow were perplexing, and all their development until Endgame became obsolete. Over the course of the MCU, Captain America was turning towards not being stuck in the past, and learning to move on– but that’s all ruined when he decides to stay with Peggy Carter in the past. Peggy Carter was also happy with her life, as shown in her TV series, Agent Carter. Black Widow’s relationships were all over the place– was she in love with Captain America, as The Winter Soldier and Civil War implied? Was she troubled about infertility? 

Next, the Vormir scene and entire plot of that part of the movie was mishandled. Both Nebula and Tony knew that going to Vormir to collect the Soul Stone would mean one would have to sacrifice a loved one. Yet they didn’t warn Hawkeye or Black Widow that one of them had to die. On Vormir, Hawkeye and Black Widow engage in a fight to determine who is going to die– both trying to sacrifice themselves for the other. The answer to who should die was obvious– Hawkeye went on a 5 year killing spree, killing hundreds of innocents. All the while Black Widow was rebuilding and leading the Avengers to help people and find solutions. But Black Widow ends up dying, for no apparent reason. The explanation that the Russos gave said they killed her was because she didn’t have a family, and Clint (Hawkeye) did. The entire development of Natasha’s (Black Widow) character became irrelevant and completely undone with a single action. Thus, one of the action industry’s most prominent female heroes falls victim to the notorious Women in Refrigerators trope. The Women in Refrigerators trope is when women die in order to move the plot for the males along. Endgame implies that Black Widow died instead of Clint because she couldn’t have a child, thus making yet another casualty of the Women in Refrigerators. It is a blatant display of sexism, and is completely unfair that her life was worth less than Clint’s just because she couldn’t have a child. Despite all of the good that Natasha had done for the world, she still ended up sacrificed. 

Not only did they kill off Natasha, but the Russo Brothers decided not to give her a funeral, only Hulk throwing a bench into a lake, and the rest of the Avengers looking sad– except for Thor, who attempts to come up with reasonable and logical ideas on how to get her back. However,  the rest of the team just claims “that’s not how it works”, and that “she’s gone”. 

Overall, there were a lot of missed opportunities in Endgame. I would not label it as a horrible movie, but a decent one. It had lots of redeeming qualities, but lots of unsatisfactory ones as well.

 

written by Sofia Jacik

edited by Keerthi Selvam and Saanvi Gutta

 

Image Source:

Take a Look. (2019). https://takealook.tv/2019/04/08/avengers-endgame-special-look-every-easter-egg-and-timeline-2/.