This last weekend, Avengers: Endgame happened. In the seven days it’s been out, it has set dozens of box-office records, including fastest movie to reach $400 million domestically as well as $1.5 billion worldwide, highest opening weekend gross ($1.2 billion, doubling the previous record), widest release of all time (4,662 theaters), and highest weekend per-theater average for a wide release (a category generally dominated by indie movies releasing to only a handful of theaters). In short, a lot of people saw the movie, and it seems to be doing very well for itself.
If you’re somehow unaware, Endgame is the much-awaited follow-up to the movie that use to hold a few of those records, the acclaimed and culturally impactful Avengers: Infinity War, itself the climax to 20 previous Marvel movies. These movies make up the most popular and successful film series of all time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—rivaled only by such household names as Star Wars and James Bond.
The MCU, through its consistently good (rarely perfect) entries, has managed to embed itself in American and probably world culture. Its position in the zeitgeist was solidified with the “Snap” at the end of Infinity War, a defeat of the heroes and cinematic system we had all come to expect happy endings from.
This is what Avengers: Endgame was built upon, what it had to live up to and integrate with. And as anyone would tell you, I think it did a good job (with some minor exceptions). Spoilers ahead.
Avengers: Endgame was the perfect movie for what it set out to do: to wrap up this saga in the MCU. In addition to the logistical, phasing out contracts that were coming to an end, Infinity War and Endgame held the artistic task of concluding several disparate yet interconnected storylines and characters.
Many suspected this to take the form of a heroic sacrifice for all of our original Avengers (coincidentally, those whose contracts were furthest along). This would be a reasonable choice, but the creative team behind these movies—most notably the Russo Brothers and Kevin Feige—constructed something a little more complex and little more cathartic for our characters.
Instead of some joint sacrifice, the three main characters (the three with trilogies to their name) each take a separate path. Tony Stark makes the heroic sacrifice, but he does it alone. This is not only a nod to the OG of the series, but an acknowledgment of the fulfillment of Tony’s arc—from the most egotistical character in the series to the most selfless. Steve Rogers, on the other hand, doesn’t make the sacrifice—that’s too easy for him. Instead we get the only ending there really ever could be for the Captain, an ending that wasn’t possible until this installment, a chance to not be the hero, to go back to where his heart never left. And Thor, with the most complex and surprising conclusion of all, finds closure in a relationship from a movie all-but-forgotten and takes up with the Guardians of the Galaxy—with the potential of another film?
Still, Endgame wasn’t simply designed to sail away each of our heroes; it had to work as a fitting conclusion to the last decade of blockbusters. It had to be an action movie and it had to please the millions of fans it had built up along the way. And this it did superbly. In fact the minor grievances mentioned below mostly flow from how well it did this very thing: throughout and especially in its climactic battle, it delivered unadulterated fan-service. It took us back through each of the movies we’ve seen before and showed us all of our favorite characters with all of their best lines. And it integrated them all into the weaving plot of this movie.
The final fight is probably the most obvious example of this fan-service, with the Doctor Strange portals and Captain America picking up Thor’s hammer, but the middle act of the movie—the extended heist—is just as much built for that effect. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as we may sometimes assume of fan-service. In fact, this is probably the example where it is done best. Each beat of the heist portion of the movie offers some sort of catharsis for fans of the MCU.
And if we’re working backward, we’re only allowed this middle act or that final fight because of a strange though ultimately smart choice by the creative team: killing Thanos in the first twenty minutes (give or take). The choice was shocking for first time viewers and set up the movie for two more hours of excellent storytelling. In the moment, was it effective? Was it worth how it made the audience feel during those subsequent minutes? I think so, but those are questions still out there from The Last Jedi.
Avengers: Endgame is not a perfect movie; it’s not even the best movie in the MCU. The heist portion isn’t terribly suspenseful because it breaks the main rule of heist-ing, that is, setting up how the heist is supposed to work. Perhaps its greatest flaw, besides making Chris Evans shave his glorious Jesus-beard, is its handling of Thanos. We get a Thanos at the end, after our original is beheaded, but it’s not the same Thanos—it’s not the Thanos that we spent the entire last movie with, with the relationship and enmity we’d built up. For all intents and purposes, he’s the same (much like the Gamora they’re trying to sub in there?), but an audience’s corporate catharsis notices that sort of thing.
We’ve talked about this before, but is Marvel done? Assuredly not. They wrapped-up with a $300 million bow this span of their story, and it would be nice if they allowed the universe the dignity it deserves to put it to rest completely. They won’t though, and that’s to be expected. We can only hope that they will continue their movies with the same tact and care they’ve put into these previous installments, and maybe—if we’re lucky—release a few less per year.