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Plot Summary: After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe.

Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Writers: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely

Runtime: 3hr 1min

Main Cast:

• Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel
• Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
• Karen Gillan as Nebula
• Tessa Thompson as Valkryie
• Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man
• Chris Hemsworth as Thor
• Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Captain America
• Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne / The Wasp
• Hayley Atwell as Margaret Carter
• Pom Klementieff as Mantis
• Zoe Saldana as Gamora
• Josh Brolin as Thanos
• Tom Holland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man
• Paul Rudd as Scott Lang / Ant-Man
• Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton / Hawkeye
• Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Stephen Strange
• Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury
• Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / Hulk
• Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther

Review by: Mia

The Marvel Cinematic Universe began its journey in 2008 with the release of the first Iron Man film. Over the past 11 years, the films have continued to define the Superhero Genre in film globally. From casting to special effects, these films have set the tone for what we expect to see in an action packed superfilm. Even DC, Marvel's most recognized peer in the comic/superhero genre, stepped into the millennium acknowledging Marvel as the standard for how to set up their superhero universe (to a fault). The release of Avengers: Endgame is anticipation a decade in the making. At this point, we have grown to love over a dozen characters who all converged in Infinity Wars to protect a Universe in peril from a crazed megalomaniac and misanthrope all combined in one: Thanos - the villain who slayed half of the universe with a snap of his fingers after defeating every hero we have met in the past decade. At the end of Infinity War, it wasn't clear how the heroes would come back from the utter defeat by Thanos. Half of the heroes were dusted with the rest of the universe and the other half were still at odds from past betrayals and disagreements. The two most powerful heroes in canon (Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch) didn't survive to face Thanos in Endgame. How did Marvel plan to recover from here?

My best guess was that they would have to find a way to bring everyone back to fight Thanos. Since Captain Marvel was hinted at in the year awaiting Avengers: Endgame, it began to be clear that she might be a vital component to shifting the odds in the favor of our remaining heroes. With Thanos feeling fulfilled and retiring to his beautiful peaceful planet away from his army and his enemies, it was clear that the heroes would have a chance to meet him at his most vulnerable and turn the tables in their favor. All they had to do was get the glove back and snap everyone back into existence, right?

This film had a lot of questions to answer, a lot of heroes to resurrect, and a looming promise that we would lose more heroes forever. In the past year, we have confirmed the end of contracts for multiple major actors within the film with no hints from Marvel or the actors what that would mean for their roles. Overall, over ten actors were hinted at possibly having contracts that end with Avengers: Endgame and favored heroes such as Captain America and Iron Man were included in that speculation. While this doesn’t guarantee the death of their characters, it definitely puts the fear of impending doom in one’s hearts for both characters. RDJ specifically has been vital to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having more creative control than any other hero casted and earning over $100 million over the course of the franchise thanks to his excellent contract agreement with Marvel. Chris Evans confirmed the end of his contract and further stirred up the impending doom. Major characters were not safe in the fight to undo the damage done by Marvel’s greatest cinematic villain to date.

Avengers: Endgame picks up right where Infinity War leaves off, with the surviving heroes banding together desperately looking for a way to thwart Thanos’ success, even though he has already won… Tony Stark is stranded in space with a redeemed Nebula, starving and nearly out of air with no fuel to fly themselves to civilization. Our heroes back on Earth are desperately searching for Thanos and confirming the lives lost. The world is in mourning for the billions lost on their planet alone. Captain Marvel returns to Earth to offer her assistance in defeating Thanos and to emphasize that the loss experienced on Earth is affecting dozens of other planets that are her responsibility across space. Our heroes use Captain Marvel’s help to rescue Tony Stark and Nebula, who in turn have enough information to help them track down Thanos’ retirement plan on a peaceful Utopian planet fondly called “The Garden” by the genocidal dictator. They find him, demand that he turn over the stones, and chop his hand off to make it clear he has no choice in the matter. Too bad for them: Thanos destroyed the stones after using them to prevent anyone, including himself, from ever being tempted to use their power again. He has sealed the fate of the dusted and defeated our heroes yet again.

The first half of the film is an extremely slow burn from there… Characters are lost, grieving, and unable to cope with the major defeat that the world faced at the hands of a captured villain. They took the villain down, but not without losing half of the universe in the process. Friends, family, society was lost with the snap of Thanos’ fingers and the entire world is struggling to figure out how to move forward facing that fact. Five years passes! Suddenly, probably, unbelievably…exactly how Doctor Strange must have seen it: a rat stumbles across the keys on a quantum “whatchamacallit” inside an abandoned van owned by Scott Lang and frees him from the Quantum Realm. Where he was trapped on the day Thanos succeeded, only five hours passed for Lang (Ant-Man), but he returned to an entirely different world where he had lost his mentor, his girlfriend, and five years with his daughter. Lang finds Captain America and poses an idea only he could think was worth attempting having experienced the physicals of time travel first-hand. Captain America and Black Widow begin rebuilding the Avengers in an attempt to try one last desperate attempt to thwart Thanos.

The most vital person to their time travel plan is Tony Stark, of course. Time Travel is just a concept and Stark is needed to turn the concept into a working machine that can give them the chance to undo Thanos’ success. Stark has retired from hero work and lives in a secluded area with his wife: Pepper Potts and their five year old daughter: Morgan. He is not interested in building up false hope in a concept that hasn’t even been invented yet and would possibly kill them all if the laws of physics behind time travel weren’t all covered in the process of inventing the device that would make travel possible. He refuses to be involved in the rescue attempt and sends the Avengers on their way to scramble with their idea without him. True to his normal mad scientist neurosis, however, he solves the problem anyway. Mathematically and technologically, Stark creates a working time machine and, remembering those he failed like Peter Parker, returns into the fold with his tech to help the others create a plan to time travel.

Through research and strategy, the Avengers pick three instances in history where it makes the most sense to steal the Infinity Stones. They plan to return to the present with the stones and snap the dusted back into existence, literally. The dusted will return to a world that has been without them for five years, but by doing so the Avengers believe that they will be rescuing everyone without disturbing the timeline irreparably. The notion is that all others examples of time travel that we have been introduced to make no sense in the laws of physics (which is true) and that it is not possible to harm the past by traveling to it (arguably less true when real physics are applied) and that this is largely because going into the past makes the past the present and the future and the future the past and the present…confusing right?

Our heroes plot out their best bet for success, travel back in time to steal the stones from themselves or other Avengers at times that they were aware of the location of the stones, and then return to the present. In the process, they learn that if they do not return the stones from when they took them, they could cause even more damage and death by removing the ability for people such as the Sorcerer Supreme (who trained Doctor Strange) to protect the millions of lives these heroes protected with the Stones. The Stones are essentially the only thing that can damage the timeline beyond repair. The Avengers take the stones to the present, are followed to the present by a double agent and Thanos himself (from the past) and find themselves once again in a battle for the stones between Avengers and the army of Thanos.

You guessed it: heroes die in the fight to gain the stones and use them to recover the dusted. Heroes are resurrected and come back to the fight stronger than ever, giving Thanos a real run for his money, but ultimately Thanos is just too strong for even Captain Marvel to defeat in combat, seeing as its impossible to keep his hands off of Infinity Stones that tip the fight in his favor… Doctor Strange saw ONE way that the Avengers win against Thanos and save the universe, and that one way becomes increasingly more and more desperate and tragic for our beloved heroes, resulting in the death of one major hero who sacrifices to save everyone with a power move that is too powerful to survive. Our heroes win, but at a great cost, and the world is left to mend the losses and gains of the past five years’ struggle.

What I Liked:

As the first act of the film wraps up, the slow burn begins to build momentum into actual compelling development. You have these hopeless characters suddenly finding ground to stand on and fight against the problem they face. The slow burn itself was torture, but as a result, you begin the next act fully recognizing these heroes as human – vulnerable. You are rooting for them as underdogs in a way that we largely forgot to having watched them succeed in a decade’s worth of hero films. Its no longer all about the action packed grand finale for a moment. It’s about saving these characters as much as the ones dusted. As a result, the moments of light-heartedness from the characters are that much more valuable. The moments of fighting are that much more suspenseful.

I also like that the heroes left are all vital to recovering the heroes lost. You admittedly see a majority of the surviving characters as minor or weaker than some of the other heroes, but ultimately, these are the right people to get the job done. Marvel takes characters that have consistently been great supports throughout the franchise and turns them into vital playmakers for Endgame. Most importantly, I like how one of the most minor characters of the entire franchise becomes the most influential character over the course of this film: Nebula is the catalyst for many of the events that play out to undo her father’s vision for the universe. Not only does she hold vital information for thwarting him, she also is the character that allows for the largest plot twist in Avengers history. It is arguably more unexpected and game changing than Tony Stark’s revelation that Bucky killed his parents. Nebula gives the Avengers the chance to defeat Thanos and Thanos a second chance to destroy the universe all over again, all while remaining the same warped and damaged cyborg we got to know in the Guardians of the Galaxy chapters of Marvel films.

As we all would expect, the final act of this film is compelling and action packed. Heroes battle Thanos and his army to the death, fighting to keep the stones away from him yet again, and ultimately bring back an army of heroes to fight against him and save the universe. We get to see the women of the Avengers stand off against Thanos. We get to see the Sorcerers of the universe play vital support roles in the Battle of Armies. We even get to see a new era of Thor, a hammer in each hand, dishing out lightning and destruction and sharing his power with another worthy of the carrying his infamous weapon(s). When heroes are resurrected, we are thrown right into the fight as if it never ended in Infinity War and this time the heroes are even more determined to prevent Thanos’ vision from coming to fruition, especially since he has decided that his original vision leaves too much room for heroes like the Avengers to try to undo his work. He decides to baptize the universe in the blood of all living creatures and rebirth the universe in his image of what it should be. Either the Avengers take him down or the universe will cease to exist… the stakes are higher and the anticipation is high to see who lives and who dies in the fight to determine the future of the Marvel Universe. Of course, we know this is an Avengers Film. They have to win. Thats how this works…but Marvel succeeds at keeping the stakes high and driving the audience crazy with whether their favorite character will be the next one to die.

The final battle between Captain America and Thanos is probably the most exciting and dreadful part of the film. Thanos proves exactly how good at combat he is, but in the process we see Captain America push himself further than ever before. Ultimately, this film is good because it is not at all what we expected having anticipated it for years. Marvel still manages to explore new ways to present old characters and old conflict and gives us its most plot-focused, action comes secondary film yet.

What I Didn’t Like:

It feels a lot like Marvel waited to resolve a lot of emotional trauma until this final film. We spend the first half of this film in an extremely slow build towards what we have been anticipating over the course of Marvel Films. Instead of diving right into the events we have built towards, we sit back and explore the emotional changes and development in a lot of characters. While this development is a respectable effort towards leaving no previous internal conflict unresolved, it’s odd that Marvel chose to leave this unpacking until the first act of Endgame instead of threading it through the movies more evenly. As a result, the three hour run time seems to be two movies: one where we watch the survivors’ remorse of our remaining heroes and another where we watch them take up the hero badge and right the wrongs of a villain as we anticipated before getting sucked into the grief of a world after Thanos. Its almost as if Marvel was not on board with the anticipation built for this film up until its release. They are more than comfortable to give us the film that they want, not the film that we expected.

While this was an odd structure to the film, it was not the area that I disliked the most. In a nutshell: time travel. The film begins, the slow burn lasts unreasonably long, and finally we are introduced to how this major problem of half the universe being wiped out will be rectified. Right when the idea of time travel is presented, we face the foreshadowing warning that time travel will not follow any of the rules we are familiar with from any other film or SciFi reference we could think of. In the words of our beloved heroes, “Back to the Future is bullshit.” This warning was necessary because nothing about how the heroes travel through time makes sense the longer the film goes on. How is it that one can go to the past, make major changes, steal major resources (Infinity Stones), kill major players in how the future played out, and then return to the same future that one left to face off with villains who followed you to the future from the past? Everyone that they kill in this major battle is either from the past having chased them to the future or resurrected by the reversal of the dusting of half the universe. Sure, time is not linear. Changing the past is only done by removing an Infinity Stone from the timeline and not returning it.  Nothing else can significantly alter the future when standing in the past apparently, but how do events play out to the point where Thanos destroys half the universe by collecting the Infinity Stones if the Thanos of the past is defeated before he ever acquires a single stone almost ten years after (before??) his quest collecting the stones occurs.

The film is filled with plot holes surrounding time travel, the most glaring being that altering the past does not alter the future. As foreshadowed, this should be explained by the fact that the past cannot be changed for those experiencing the future as the present. Still confusing. By the end of the film, the heroes make every effort to correct having removed the Infinity Stones from different moments in history. However, killing off people doesn’t seem to have a single effect on events that play out only because they are present or acting in the past. One character even chooses to stay in the past and totally undoes a large part of the storyline surrounding that character prior to this film. Somehow, alternative timelines coexist or all occur at once without changing that people experienced the past, present, and future differently. Characters from past movies should be erased from existence, but this isn’t explained or covered when things change in a way that would mean that these characters or their actions never happened.

To be clear, (spoilers incoming)

Images Courtesy of IMDB