Now Watching: Endgame

Infinity War was always going to be a tough act to follow. Avengers: Endgame isn’t as fantastic as Infinity War, but is still a pretty damn good film, which is all the more impressive considering what it was attempting to achieve.

Because Endgame doesn’t just serve as a sequel to Infinity War, but to the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a film that attempts to tie together 22 movies and wrap up the ‘infinity stones saga’ in a satisfying way. And it succeeds, despite the odds stacked against it.

Endgame isn’t as well paced, structured or tightly scripted as Infinity War which benefited massively by using Thanos as a central anchor upon which to ground the plot. Endgame focuses more on the heroes than the villain, which makes sense given what the film is attempting to do, but as a result, it does lose that anchor.

There’s not a lot you can really say about Endgame without spoiling things and I’d rather not do that in this review. This is certainly a film you’ll enjoy more when you don’t know what to expect. I guess it’s okay to say that time travel is involved – I think we were all expecting that – but whenever a film uses time travel as a key component, you know things are going to get a little messy as far as the plot goes.

Like with other movies that utilise time travel, it would be easy to pick holes in Endgame and point out what does and doesn’t make sense. But this is one occasion when I’m happy to sit back, relax and not worry too much about the temporal complications.

Endgame is unashamedly a movie for the fans, for those who have followed this series and these characters for over a decade. It’s the ultimate fan service movie – in a good way. The film does have a bittersweet ending, but I’m pretty sure we were all expecting that, too.

Overall, Endgame is a very good film that may not be as perfectly composed as Infinity War, but it succeeds where it needs to – by delivering an enjoyable and satisfying end to this decade long saga. Of course, it’s not really an ‘end’ – only a new beginning.

I do kind of wish they’d taken a year or so off, just to give this film and its events a little more time to breathe. But hey, I guess we need to keep this money train rolling. The real question is, how can they top this? With Disney now back in control of the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, it’s going to be interesting to see what they do.

7/10