Movie Review- Avengers: Endgame

At about this time last year, the decade-long denouement of MCU’s hydra-headed (again, pun intended) cinematic story-telling commenced with the cinematic tour de force that was Infinity War. It ended with a finger snap heard across a universe robbed of half of all life in an instant.

One year after, the consequences of the snap continue in Endgame; the final chapter in, unarguably, cinema’s most engaging over-arching storyline this century.

Starting as a slow-burner, Endgame opens with the continuing consequence of Thanos’ finger snap of doom. Done and dusted on terra firma, it progresses to space where Tony Stark and Nebula are floating like space debris post- snapocalypse in a ship that barely had enough oxygen to sustain a forlorn and broken Stark.

In a move that defies the logic of Nick Fury’s pager call for help in the post-credit scene of Infinity War, Stark and Nebula are rescued by Captain Marvel. Reunited with the remnants of Earth’s mightiest heroes, and meeting Steve Rogers for the first time since their fall-out in Civil War, Stark unloads his frustration on Rogers and signals that he is done playing super hero.

In Infinity War, Thanos’ motive in his quest for the infinity stones was taken right out of the Malthusian playbook for population control with a decidedly deliberate universal genocidal bent. Frustrated by the rat race in a universe with limited resources, Thanos sought to restore balance by getting rid of half of the population of the universe by his finger snap of doom.

In Endgame, one could not miss the irony in the fact that the solution to reversing the consequence of Thanos’ finger snap was triggered off by, of all things, a rat!

Smarting from their defeat at the hands of Thanos in Infinity War and still dealing with denial issues in the wake of it, the remnants of Earth’s mightiest heroes looked anything but heroic in the first half of Endgame.

A subdued Tony Stark has retired to a cabin with Pepper Potts raising the cutest daughter ever. A chirpy Bruce Banner has achieved a truce between himself and his inner beast, the Hulk and now identifies as Professor Hulk. Thor’s chiselled Norse God-like physique has melted like ice cream leaving him looking like an Asgardian cousin of fat bastard from the Austin Powers movie. Clint Barton, now sporting a Mohawk, tries to fill the void in his life playing international vigilante.

Having slow-burned its first hour taking us through the nuances of continuing grief, and trying to live in the aftermath of Thanos’ rather anti-climactic short-order demise by beheading courtesy of Thor’s storm breaker, the second hour raises the tempo with a smorgasbord of fan service nostalgia/easter egg-fest.

The solution to reversing Thanos’ finger snap and restoring the billions of lives lost requires the remnant’s of Earth’s mightiest heroes and the Guardians of the Galaxy to time travel into the past in the quantum realm and retrieve the infinity stones.

This intrepid task takes our heroes back to a complex tapestry of previous instalments in MCU where they must navigate their way in retrieving the infinity stones without disrupting the events of time past.

This is where the directing duo, the Russo Brothers, let rip the fan service motive behind the concluding chapter of this decade-long saga. And why not? MCU Fans have been pivotally instrumental in building the enduring religion that is the MCU.

The fans have in the last decade religiously followed the stories of the MCU lapping up every detail and searching for Easter eggs in every instalment as if they were on some quest for the Holy Grail.

Hilarity and nostalgia ensue as the journey into the quantum realm throws up real time perspectives on scenes from past MCU instalments, and encounters between real time characters and their characters from the past.

The journey into the past to retrieve the infinity stones mirrored spookily Thanos’ intergalactic quest for the stones in Infinity War. The quest in Vormir particularly struck an eerie chord.

For the audience, it was deja vu much like in the instance of the wife of a warrior bidding him goodbye for the umpteenth time as he departs for battle knowing that at the end; victory may be achieved but she might end up a widow.

The final showdown with Thanos mirrored similar encounters in Titan and Wakanda in Infinity War, and in sheer scale and choreography; it mirrored the ensemble fight scenes in New York in 2012’s The Avengers, in Sokovia in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, and in Leipzig/Halle Airport in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War.

Set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop, the final battle scene strummed every string on the emotions spectrum and even pandered to girl power and diversity expectations whilst at it. In sheer intensity, it bent steel and broke iron in fulfilment of an inevitability long foreseen in Infinity War.

In a stand-out moment, Endgame finally answered definitively a question whose answer fans had long suspected since Age of Ultron; that Steve Rogers/Captain America is oh so worthy!

In Endgame, the Russos daintily choreographed the dance of realities to the pulsating sounds of Alan Silvestri’s orchestral soundtrack. They plucked off every element from the emotions spectrum mashed them into a potent delicious cocktail and offered it freely to the audience as fan service to completely immerse themselves in whilst consciously fighting the urge for bathroom breaks during the movie’s 3 hour plus runtime.

Like a mad scientist, the Russos chopped off bits and parts from MCU’s expansive catalogue of past instalments and created not a Frankenstein but a cinematic Sistine Chapel befitting for the decade-long denouement of cinema’s most engaging story.

Albeit unrelated, the Family Word of House Greyjoy, rulers of the Iron Islands in Game of Thrones should offer some comfort to fans over Endgame’s most emotional tear-jerking moment; “What is dead may never die”. 7.5/10