Avengers: Endgame

At the end of Avengers: Infin­i­ty War, our heroes were left in dire straights. The suc­cess of Thanos in elim­i­nat­ing half of all liv­ing crea­tures through­out the uni­verse left but a hand­ful of Earth’s might­i­est heroes, includ­ing the OG Avengers, Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), Cap­tain Amer­i­ca (Chris Evans), Black Wid­ow (Scar­lett Johans­son) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Dev­as­tat­ed not only by their loss­es but the idea that they have failed in their only objec­tive, they more or less drift apart.

Five years lat­er, the rav­aged world seems no clos­er to its for­mer glo­ry. Grief is a black cloud which hangs over aban­doned build­ings, seas of rust­ed-out cars lin­ger­ing in park­ing lots. In the after­math of Thanos’ suc­cess, the world looks a lot like an episode of The Left­overs. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca chairs a sup­port group for those griev­ing. Black Wid­ow is de fac­to leader of what’s left of SHIELD. Hawk­eye is enjoy­ing an extend­ed sojourn as a katana-wield­ing assassin.

Every­one is sur­viv­ing, more or less, but the wounds of the past are still ugly and open rather than scars. With the sur­prise arrival of Scott ​“Ant-Man” Lang (Paul Rudd), pre­vi­ous­ly assumed dead, comes a final chance for redemp­tion, to right the wrongs of the past through a spot of time travel.

So fol­lows an enjoy­able trip down mem­o­ry lane, cov­er­ing 10 years of Mar­vel exploits, revis­it­ing old ter­ri­to­ry, old­er and wis­er and more equipped to con­front the past. The three-hour run­time of Avengers: Endgame had many balk­ing, but it zips along quick­ly – after so many films heavy on expo­si­tion and set­ting gears in motion, Antho­ny and Joe Rus­so have noth­ing to do but knock the domi­nos down. Much to their cred­it, they pull it off.

With the cast thinned out thanks to Thanos, there’s more time for indi­vid­u­als to shine. Not everyone’s favourite gets a moment, but there should be com­fort in the fact they’ll prob­a­bly be back in a year or so. We remem­ber what a gift­ed com­ic actor Chris Hemsworth is, and how much Thor has come as a char­ac­ter since the fig­u­ra­tive and lit­er­al Dark World. Downey Jr, Evans and Johans­son are all giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remind us that before they were part of this machine, they were telling sto­ries with less flash and cash and more heart and soul.

As the body count stacks up, it’s a com­fort to think that some of those who bow out from the MCU this year will hope­ful­ly go on to choose projects which chal­lenge them as actors. Some­times it’s easy to for­get this tal­ent – and often, the Mar­vel films for­get it too. The stakes, which felt pleas­ing­ly real in Infin­i­ty War, feel real now too.

If only they could keep Alan Sil­vestri off those damn strings and learn that it’s okay to have silence in a big, expen­sive film. Some of the scenes real­ly need a lit­tle more time to breathe. Sim­i­lar­ly, big­ger and bold­er VFX doesn’t equal a more impres­sive spec­ta­cle: the best fight scenes in Endgame are ones shot at close range focus­ing on a sin­gle or few char­ac­ters – Cap­tains Amer­i­ca and Mar­vel each get a pret­ty great one.

Endgame lacks the dis­tinct iden­ti­ty of Marvel’s most inter­est­ing and suc­cess­ful projects, name­ly Black Pan­ther and Thor: Rag­narok. There are no hall­marks to be had here, no real styl­is­tic flair that doesn’t come down to things already estab­lished in past films. So it all falls to the nar­ra­tive, and thank­ful­ly it’s a sol­id one: there’s plen­ty of lev­i­ty as well as grav­i­ty in Christo­pher Markus and Stephen McFeely’s script, and the pair cer­tain­ly embrace the weird and won­der­ful essence of com­ic books. Some fun sto­ry­lines ripped straight from the pages them­selves seem to be com­ing into frame, which sug­gests they might be ready to take more risks with the next phase of the MCU.

For those that have grown up immersed in a world with heroes and vil­lains doing con­stant bat­tle it’s 10 years’ worth of pay­dirt, and the self-indul­gence can be for­giv­en. Mar­vel final­ly seem to realise they have no need to con­vert the cyn­ics, and Endgame is, at its heart, about all the things super­hero films always are: being true to your­self, the pow­er of sac­ri­fice, and the tri­umph of ​‘good’ over ​‘evil’ (if it’s ever that sim­ple in the first place). When you start to detan­gle the knot­ty pol­i­tics of the film, it fal­ters, but it’s still liable to ignite a spark about anthro­po­log­i­cal ethics and the sci­ence of time trav­el. Not bad for a pop­corn movie.

But the shine is tem­pered by some­thing. How can we rec­on­cile Dis­ney as a cor­po­ra­tion with a film like Avengers: Endgame, which is so earnest and stri­dent in its belief that peo­ple will work self­less­ly towards the greater good? While inde­pen­dent cin­e­ma seems to be under threat – not least from Disney’s his­toric acqui­si­tion of Fox – the cogs of the machine keep turn­ing with relent­less pre­ci­sion and reg­u­lar­i­ty. Every six months or so, a super­hero film will arrive.

It will make vast sums of mon­ey. To quote anoth­er Dis­ney block­buster: ​“No one’s ever real­ly gone”. For three hours of pure escapism, Endgame pays div­i­dends, and to those who have invest­ed in these fan­tas­ti­cal char­ac­ter arcs, clo­sure feels pret­ty fuck­ing great. But films do not exist in a vac­u­um – no movie is ever ​‘just a movie’.

Why do we love movies? Why do we ded­i­cate such time, effort and expense to them as an art­form? If you’re read­ing this, pre­sum­ably it’s out of inter­est in them, be it pass­ing or deep-root­ed in the very fibre of your being. The rea­sons are almost infi­nite: they tell us who we are, who we could be. Where we came from, where we are, where we’re going. They take us away, they bring us home. They are our con­nec­tion to past, present and future, to almost every cor­ner of the plan­et. The art of cin­e­ma, blunt­ly put, is the art of being alive.

As sat­is­fy­ing as all those call­backs and pay­off moments are in Endgame, noth­ing beats the feel­ing of own­er­ship and belong­ing than comes with find­ing some­thing in films to tru­ly call your own. Mar­vel movies pro­vide that for many peo­ple, and we can impo­tent­ly rage against, or ral­ly to cham­pi­on the voic­es in cin­e­ma that real­ly need that fero­cious ener­gy behind them. Dis­ney and Mar­vel are nev­er the be-all and end-all, and we must do what we can to ensure that their films exist as they should: along­side movies from all over the world, about all of the world. We still have so far to go.