Wednesday, May 08, 2019

An Ending Like Endgame (No Spoilers)

It already feels like it's been a while since I saw Avengers: Endgame with my family. We were able to find tickets for the Friday of opening weekend. I made my son this scaled-down version of the Infinity Gauntlet to take to the theater. We enjoyed the movie and plan to see it again this weekend.

We're fairly recent fans of the MCU. I was able to see Black Panther and Infinity War in the theaters, but my son didn't get into the movies until last fall. We're mostly caught up (we own most of the movies), although there are a few movies that I need to rewatch because I missed sections while I was doing other things.

Finishing a story arc that spans eleven years and twenty-two films is no easy task. I like that the directors threw some twists in at the beginning and that we got to see the characters react to what happened in Infinity War. What really made the movie work for me was how it revisited key places and events from earlier, as they worked well to show how much the characters have changed over the series. I've read series-ending books that have also revisited key people and places, but the character development wasn't so noticeable in them.

Since seeing the movie, I've read some of the articles about it, both in praise of it and some that are more critical. I think they make some good points (my biggest complaint is that characters' combat abilities feel inconsistent with what we've seen in earlier movies, as if the plot was manipulated a bit to force how it would end), but I really need to see Endgame again so I can pick up more details.

If you saw Endgame, what did you think of it? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.


2 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

That's cool you made your son the gauntlet.
I think the characters' abilities were affected by their reaction to what happened. Some were very broken by it.
Seeing scenes from the earlier movies was so cool. Especially watching Quill for the first time.
I'm a DC guy, so a lot of the Marvel Universe I know from the movies. What they've done with them has been just brilliant. We'll never see it again.

Maria Zannini said...

Part of my demented persona is that I like spoilers, so I walked into the movie knowing all the big moments. And perhaps for that reason, me, a person who never cries, was constantly tearing up during the film.

I've always felt the fighting (and strength of the heroes and villains) were inconsistent between many of the movies, but I let that go as part of the storytelling.

I felt the beginning of the movie while they were coming to grips with what had happened was a little tedious, considering the whole world would've been regrouping to fill in the gaps of the empty spaces. But if the Russo brothers had brought that up it would've been an even longer movie, so I let that go too, even though it bothered me.

It more than made up for it when the Avengers did decide on a plan. So many fist-pumping moments and so many heart wrenching ones. It worked. It's one of the few times I can say movie makers ended a series well.

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