So here we are. 11 years and 21 films later, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is finally gonna kill some of these mother fuckers. And for real this time, not that bullshit snap. And while I probably already sound like a jaded DC fan at this point let me go ahead and state that I have no comic book allegiances whatsoever - my only allegiance is to good movies. And while Marvel has made some along the way, (decidedly much more frequently than DC) however more and more it feels like they're churning out the same mass produced, cookie cutter, sterilized origin story with sprinkled in bits of charming hunks saying witty things to break up the monotony of it all. Incredibly safe and unbearably predictable.
I enjoyed Infinity War a great deal. It was a tad long but we've come to expect that with these special effect spectacles at this point. But the ending pissed me off. For the same reasons that DC pretending that Superman was actually going to be dead during Justice League pissed me off. It's insulting to your audience to think they haven't picked up on how predictable these movies are. The bad guys always lose and anything devastating that happens to our heroes is almost never permanent. It's the same thing that bothers me about comic books themselves - nothing is ever permanent. It can all just be retconned at the first sign of backlash until everyone gets the same bland outcome they expected from the start. There are no consequences.
Especially when everything is just building to the next installment. The shared universe Marvel has built is undeniably impressive in how expansive its become but it also feels like it sets boundaries on how high the stakes can be raised without having a ripple effect throughout all of your upcoming projects. The story has to remain contained enough so that all the pieces fit nicely back together for the next movie coming out in 2 months. It also becomes incredibly self involved. Imagine a kid coming into Infinity War as their first Marvel film - you're setting them up for 40+ hours of research before they can give a shit about anything or anyone in this movie. It's made the MCU feel less like traditional films and more like the most expensive mini series ever made. And as the lines between movies and television continue to blur in the binge streaming age, I suppose its not necessarily a detriment - just more of an annoyance to act like these films can stand on their own merit when Infinity War and Endgame are in reality more of a two-part season finale.
And then you cut the movie in half, which has always felt like a cop out but especially so with the "cliffhanger" Infinity War left us with. So even when the stakes finally feel catastrophic and Thanos has dealt a devastating blow to the Avengers, those consequences are completely castrated when you learn there's a 3 hour follow up coming out the following year to clean everything up. Not to mention that it's all being undone with time travel. It's not enough to have invincible superhumans from across the Galaxy teaming up to break every rule of physics imaginable - but now they can travel through time as well making everything matter even less because it can all be undone. Oh and if you're like me and didn't have the interest to make it out to Captain Marvel - apparently she's an indestructible alien, she just didn't really have time for Earth until the last twenty minutes of Endgame.
And despite my 4 paragraph diatribe above, I honestly didn't hate the movie itself. Fat Thor was amusing enough and when we finally got our enormous cast of Avengers reassembled for the final showdown with Thanos it was a visual spectacle to behold, no doubt. But the journey to get there was pretty mind numbing. Traveling back through the previous films felt like a victory lap - a Marvel clip show of "hey, remember when"s. A two hour flex to celebrate the fact that they've been doing this for 10 fucking years without a slip up like Batman v Superman to derail it. Even though that means mostly playing it safe. Then there was the sequence with Hawkeye and Black Widow fighting over who got to sacrifice themselves, which to me had an odd meta feeling of two extremely talented actors fighting for who gets to escape this decade long franchise commitment to have a career doing anything else. And that painfully contrived girl power shot in the final battle just piled onto a movie already bending over backwards to do anything for easy applause.
But lets be honest, more than anything Endgame was the Tony Stark farewell show. Giving him some quality time with his family, getting to say goodbye to his dad - it became pretty obvious this was how they let Tony tie up all of his loose ends on his own terms before we say goodbye to the original Iron Man for good. Robert Downey Jr. has been spectacular as the centerpiece for the Avengers (and the entire MCU for the most part) so it was nice to see him go out in such a huge way rather than be Ed Norton-ed out at some point. So if you've stuck with the series this long, I say go ahead and dive in, you'll probably find Endgame enjoyable during some point of its 3 hour journey. But if you're not a fan of Marvel or have become a little beat-down with superhero fatigue, this isn't really going to win you over in any way.
