Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Paul Rudd, Chris Hemsworth

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 reverse Thanos’ actions and restore balance to the universe.

Hmf, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The Avengers films have too many characters for one movie. Characters come and go so quickly, it’s easy to forget some of them. Most of the characters – especially Thor – were annoying instead of interesting. Hulk served no purpose being the Hulk and he didn’t have any of the Hulk trademarks whatsoever in this film. It might as well have been a completely new character. I didn’t appreciate his new look at all. And Hawkeye is killing people because he is bitter after losing his family!!!?? Can he actually still be considered one of the good guys? Spider-Man and Doctor Strange appears only for a few minutes towards the end just to remind us they were actually in the previous film. Why bother? The film did perfectly fine without them. And where did Wasp come from all of a sudden??? She was never mentioned in the film and then she just appears as Ant-Man’s sidekick. What the hell?? And then there’s Captain Marvel. In the giant Universe,  how did she know where to find Iron Man? And how did she know where to take him? And she has all this incredible power but can’t take care of Thanos? And when she finds him, she returns to the Avengers to tell them where he is, instead of dealing with him there and then? Girl, you have the power but no brains!!

There are A LOT of scenes that should have ended on the Cutting Room floor. All the unnecessary humor also wasted so much time. At times I found the film slow-paced and uninteresting, rendering much of the movie tedious and boring. This film has a running time of 181 minutes, for goodness sake! (Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice was also 180 minutes, but it was fast-paced, action-packed and interesting all the way).  More than once (quite a few times, actually!), I thought “Oh, just get on with it…”.

Considering the film’s budget and bearing in mind this was filmed in 2018, I didn’t find the visuals very believable. The CGI was not as good as the previous films, as if they now rely too much on creating visuals with very little to no practical effects – and it shows. CGI is no effort anymore, and that’s the problem. Nothing looked or felt real. Also, if you haven’t seen the previous films, including ‘Thor’, ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’, Black Panther’, etc. then you’ll be completely lost.

Jumping backwards and forward in time, the film also becomes confusing and there are credibility issues.  Explanations raise more questions, and subsequent answers or explanations makes you question the first explanation. There’s so many loopholes here. Going back to the past, its amazing (convenient) how every character stumble upon moments relative to them. How can a pre-determined time (in the past) have significance for every character? You can try feeding me all these conveniences, Hollywood, but I’m afraid I won’t swallow. And, so, Captain America becomes Thor, and Black Panther becomes Captain America…. oh whatever! Yawn.

I’m so not an Avengers fan. I’m going to forget this in the blink of an eye, and doubt I’ll ever watch it again. Yes, it is a very classy and stylish, well-made film, but a lot felt like a rehash of the previous Marvel films. Deja vu, deja vu, deja vu. This was certainly much better than ‘Infinity War’, though.

At least it had a feel-good ending. Whatever…next!

As of August 2019 ‘The Avengers: Endgame’ is the highest grossing film of all time.