I just came back from the cinema after the three hour long cinematic extravaganza that is Avengers: Endgame. I won't spoil anything, just share my first impressions (and boy, was I impressed!) about how effective the plot, characters and production-values were used. If you want the TLDR, It's a great conclusion for ten years of the MCU, but not without problems.
Image by AntMan3001 - source: Flickr
Let me start by saying that if you're a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a unique and epic series of feature-length films that are woven together to create one massive continuous story, than you owe it to yourself to not miss this one on the big screen. If you've followed the characters and their progression since the first Iron Man film of 2008, you'll be able to fully appreciate (and be blown away by) this final chapter of an era, the likes of which I'm not sure we'll ever see again. Certainly not in this lifetime at least, since Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige have done something truly special here.
The rest of you, who haven't seen the MCU films yet, I'd advise to at least watch the main films first, before watching Endgame; if you watch the Iron Man, Avengers and Captain America films, you'll be able to understand most everything and pick up on how each of the original Avengers' characters have progressed through the past decade, and thus enjoy all the emotional impacts with them. And stop reading this, because I will briefly discuss the history leading up to Endgame and might spoil some of the previous films for you.
Already in Avengers: Infinity War, I was impressed with the way so many main characters were done right by their individual characters, how each of them were given enough screen-time for the audience to really care about them, and how they all got their moment to shine; I'm glad to say that Endgame does this even better, and with even more emotional impact. Especially in the first act, the survivors of Infinity War deal with the trauma caused by the sudden death of 50 percent of all life in the universe, which gives us some emotional scenes, right from the start. And this doesn't stop; it really is an emotional roller-coaster, but in the middle part I sometimes had the feeling the balance was lost, with too many jokes breaking up emotional encounters. This is just a minor gripe though.
Above all, Endgame is an epic conclusion to a ten year long build-up, and expectations were astronomically high because not one of the more than 20 films that preceded this one, can be called bad; some of them are just okay, like Ant Man and the Wasp, Thor: the Dark World, and Captain Marvel, but most are just plain good to great. It's a small miracle that the work of so many actors, writers, producers and directors was managed in such a way that the overall plot and all the diverse superheroes on their individual quests, meld together into one continuous universe; Endgame is, in my opinion, a worthy conclusion to this heroic saga and manages to even surpass my expectations in some ways.
I really am in awe of what all these people have achieved. Sure, there are other big film franchises that tell, or try to tell a coherent story over the span of multiple individual films, but most of them fail at some point. Although Marvel had the balls to let every individual team, every director, story- and screenwriter and so on, do their own thing, add their own individual fingerprint to their film, none of the directors were blind to the story so far, none of them decided to suddenly tell their own story, lose sight of the overarching plot or not betray individual characters (looking at you, Rian Johnson).
source: Wikipedia
The film is a whopping three hours long almost, but it's a testament of it's entertainment value that these hours seem to fly by. Even if the first act, when we get a full picture of the consequences of Thanos' victory in the previous Avengers film, is quite slow paced with not a lot of action, it doesn't feel slow due to the way we're going along an emotional roller-coaster with the characters we've come to know and love since 2008 in some cases. The notable exception here is Captain Marvel, who was only sort of introduced to us one film ago and with whom we haven't had a chance to bond with yet.
For me, she was only a small annoyance in Endgame, but I'm so happy that this doesn't negatively impact my overall impression of this film. It's a masterpiece, but only when seen as what it is, the final chapter in a cinematic saga of epic narrative proportions. This film does not work as a standalone film. I still don't think any of the individual films can rise to the level of The Dark Knight or even Logan, which was another kind of last chapter in another heroic saga, but as a whole there's nothing that comes close to the depth, scope and consistency found in the MCU, with all individual character-arcs coming to a perfect closing in Endgame.
Except one major thing. There's a plot-hole that I can't get out of my head, but can't talk about it without spoiling parts of the story; I'll come back to that in another post. This is not a problem that's big enough for me to not recommend the film, on the contrary: I had a great time, and for all the pressure there was on this film to not screw up the end of a ten year long saga, the crew delivered a worthy final chapter. And the final fight is really a piece of art; again all characters that ever had a role in this series, gets their moment in the sun, ALL of them. And everything in the film looks gorgeous, something we've come to expect from the MCU films, but nothing comes close to the scope and grandeur of this final battle.
I want to close by apologizing for the lack of structure or consistency in this first impression; it's late and I literally started writing this when I came home. It's also not a review, just my first impressions and I'm still letting it all sink in. Maybe tomorrow, when my head is clear again and I start thinking about the film, my judgement will change; this has happened many times before; The Force Awakens comes to mind, the first film in the Disney Star Wars trilogy which I really enjoyed while watching it with friends, and only on second viewing recognized how much of a rip-off that film really is. I highly doubt that will happen with Endgame though and encourage each and every one to go see it on the big screen.
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