Review: Avengers: Endgame is a fireworks display of fanfare but no substance

As someone who holds Avengers: Infinity War to the highest regard in terms of the MCU and comic book movies as a whole, Avengers: Endgame is a disappointingly stark contrast to the highest of highs of this great franchise.

This conclusion to a series of 22 films and 10 years of stories is a muddled mess that shows the biggest cracks in the Disney formula. Sure, it delivers moments that will make you smile and feel loads of glee as well as gives satisfying conclusions to some of its longest-running characters but it ultimately comes off as just that. A movie of moments with the loosest possible narrative tying it all together.

We’re not going to spoil anything that hasn’t been revealed in the marketing for the movie in this review so don’t worry, you can still go see this and enjoy it without feeling like you had anything ruined.

Thanos and one Avenger have terrible characterizations, feeling like massive leaps backward

Avengers: Endgame picks up with our heroes in a state of disrepair, feeling the overwhelming sense of defeat after Thanos was victorious in the last film. Characters begin to crumble, resorting to alcoholism and emotions that leave these characters seeming ultimately broken.

This is what I was personally most excited to see, these heroes that always come out at top broken both physically and mentally. Sadly, that’s all thrown away quite quickly. The depth that you might seek from character development like that is there for the briefest possible portion of the film.

When the plan to save the day starts rolling, these characters revert back to their normal selves. There’s one character in particular that puts a large portion of the blame on himself for what happened and has the most dramatic shift in character. This could’ve been incredible and done to a great degree but ends up being played for laughs constantly.

They get the laughs they desire but it undercuts so much of the drama of this movie, making me wonder if that small chuckle was worth destroying an entire crucial character arc.

The biggest issue with Avengers: Endgame is what it does to the greatest Marvel villain ever, Thanos. The mad titan who demanded your attention anytime he was on screen in Infinity War, the most ruthless yet empathetic comic book villain ever seen on the big screen.

He’s nothing but a watered down, one-dimensional version of the lowest tier Marvel villains in Avengers: Endgame. In Infinty War, he had this Shakespearean nature, a sense of tragedy, a sense of complexity. You knew he was the bad guy, yet still understood his point of view and I didn’t want to see him killed. Defeated? Sure, but not killed. He was too good to throw away!

In Endgame, all I wanted was for him to not be on screen the more and more I saw him. He’s completely lifeless, lacking emotion and anything beyond monotonous generic villain dialogue. He’s a complete 180 from the character we knew and while there’s some reason for that in the plot, it’s still flawed, weak, and feels incredibly contrived.

A rather predictable story that lacks the punch of Infinity War

The core story of Avengers: Endgame left me feeling unfulfilled. As already noted, the film sacrifices any deep character work in favor of jokes and exposition about the main plan of the Avengers. The first hour feels as if it could be trimmed significantly, lessening the number of times the characters repeat the same mumbo-jumbo to each other. They really hammer it in your skull over and over again and yet still, there are seemingly some contradictions with their plan by the end of the film.

Endgame also loses any and all shock value. In Infinity War, there were some big moments that had the audience gasping in shock, Endgame had me going “Yeah, that’s about what I expected”. There’s nothing on the level of the big Red Skull reveal, no surprise heartbreaking twist like Gamora being sacrificed, and the intensity of that final fight between Iron Man and Thanos in Infinity War isn’t really here.

Either there’s nothing surprising or the things that should be surprising aren’t because they’ve been seen before both in the MCU and elsewhere.

Great character moments and spectacle

Where Endgame strives is in its moments of grand fanfare and resolutions to some character arcs, as already stated, directors Anthony and Joe Russo fumble two specific important characters but the rest are done to great success.

These characters we’ve loved for a decade largely get the resolutions they deserve in a variety of ways, they’re handled with great care and provide satisfying closure for some of fiction’s most beloved heroes.

The Russo Brothers know how to craft a moment that makes you want to leap out of your seat and cheer, which happened a few times during the movie for a couple of fans around me. The final battle in this film is something that is so unbelievably charming and monumental that even the biggest Marvel nay-sayers will have a hard time finding a reason not to smile at it.

It’s quite possibly the most awe-inspiring thing ever put to film on this scale and is only possible as a result of the achievements Marvel has created and patiently built up for the last decade.

The Verdict

Even with loads of marvelous spectacle that could only be crafted by the purest imaginations out there, I still felt let down.

I should’ve left the theater with a feeling of triumphant satisfaction but I ended up with a feeling of emptiness. This 10-year conclusion took something that had the potential to be the greatest comic-book movie and turned it into something that feels hollow and a shell of Infinity War’s greatness.

Avengers: Endgame has its moments but its moments are not enough to bring a consistently enjoyable and universally satisfying finale to the MCU.