My Thoughts on 'Endgame'

Couldn't keep away from this film forever, could we? So, Endgame, then. The fourth Avengers, after Joss Whedon's fan service exercise in the first Avengers, a studio mandated thing that had a pointless and pretentious subtext in a film ultimately about Easter eggs fighting robots, and The Russos' depressing ugly padding of Infinity War, which turned out to be two and a half hours of story that didn't seem to have an ounce of complexity to it or even much of an ending, adding up not being one of the MCU's strong points. Infinity War was, of course, the film that taught the world that gritty heroism and universe spanning tragedy have their places, and that place is not the same place as the place where Spider-Man fights an ugly mo-capped alien from kidnapping Sherlock. I know the MCU is aspiring to write stories with some complexity, and that audiences are insisting on selfishly trying to have fun must be very frustrating, but they kind of brought this on themselves when they decided that Thor being a fat guy would be a subversive masterclass on how to disappoint people on the best character for years to come.

Endgame tries to cunningly hedge its bets by constantly swapping between several different characters and story threads in the hope you'll follow at least one of them. But that smacks of gambler's fallacy to me; it's entirely possible to toss three coins and have them all come up tails, or, indeed, for two to come up tails and the third to roll down a drain, embed itself in a smaller pipe and flood a care home. Tony Stark is probably closest to being the protagonist-protagonist, 'cause he does the standard modern superhero straight man thing, where he's tired and weakened and drained from the fact his failure has led not only to his near death but also strained his relationship with every man, woman, and kitten, but meekly goes along on the ridiculous time heist regardless anyway like a passive-aggressive husband. Captain America, by comparison, is a non-husband who retired from patriotism to spend more time being depressed and attending pseudo AA meetings with extremely cringe worthy cameos. And then there's Thor who seems to be an attempt to represent the standard mode of behaviour of a MCU fanboy in that he's a fat, lazy cynic with the innate likeability of an incontinent cosplayer in a office building an hour before the quarterly performance inspection.

But my major beef is that none of these characters have any significant screen time for actual development, and it's not because they, you know, have their little moments here, character focused or action set-pieces and there which at this point is wearing thinner than a mosquito on a freshly ironed shirt. They're just poorly-written and inconsistent, which may reflect the fact that their dialogue was being written by enough people to fill up the 9/11 believer committee. Stark just comes across as whiny, and Captain America, who having realised his 15 odd years of heroism, has done nothing to gain an ounce of self fulfilment seems to think that the logical conclusion would be to selfishly use time travel created paradoxes as he goes, the writers of Back To The Future blush.

To that end, we have the time travel aspect to the story, which is the big new feature after an ugly alien vying to finally complete his rock collection didn't exactly stimulate our story telling side of the brain last time around. And it's not a bad concept; they plan a time heist and do some recon and awkwardly establish every film that has come before it before the heist itself. Well, I say "plan"; they "plan" them in the same sense the screenwriters "plan" how to explain this nonsense to the viewer, because like all the plot points, it feels less like their version of time travel being woven into the dialogue naturally they instead have a scene short of Mark Ruffalo flat out explaining the next scene.

Not to mention they bear the increasingly omnipresent time travel paradox but just from a writers perspective: total freedom when discussing time travel, when inside, total linear set piece that manages to be both a horrible retcon and the most pathetic attempt at fan service since the laptop Justice League scene in Batman V Superman. Even that fails to deliver on it's own premise because if the ending has anything to go by it's that it only works in the characters favour unless they're opting to set up a new TV show no one asked for, and the game just felt like things were getting into Age Of Ultron territory of being excited everything the MCU has yet to offer except the film we're currently watching.

The characters also have their aforementioned moments incrementing away in utter pointlessness; watching Hawkeye or Ronin in this felt like a glaring missed opportunity because with his 35 minutes of screen time he barely mages to resolve what issues he had besides losing his family and getting a dodgy haircut. I suspect that this is all preparation for the mechanics of the upcoming Hawkeye TV series and how cunning of you, Disney, to hold off realising that until after Captain Marvel, this and Spider-Man have finished consuming all the money in the world so you're left to shit out the less interesting ones.

But digressing back towards Captain Marvel for a moment, why did the promotional material have to go through a rigmarole of advertising her as an essential key player and yet get's only 15 minutes of screen time with seven minutes at the beginning and another seven in the explosive finale? Had Disney finally expressed dissatisfaction with her flat, unlikable and forgettable performance, or is it just that this film is a mess? And not the "fascinating failure" of a mess that was Justice League, but an engorged mess of unrelated and clunkily thrown out B stories. Lots of story threads mind you, but no strong overarching one.

Well, just to appease those nerd-lingers of emotional fanboyism who have been burning Iron Man figures in the front gardens of unimpressed film 'reviewers,' I won't say there's no fun to be had. It's got some colour back into in it this time and generally feels less like a Zach Snyder got his grubby hands over the story to make it a depressing ugly marathon of empty spectacle that only appeal to the most deranged 14 year old boys. I cringed a bit when it brought in old Captain America, but it opens more potential interesting story's and character arcs so there's a point to it other than just soaking up unnecessary money from 1/4 of a preview for another likely inferior film as is the case in other Avengers films. There's not much that particularly made me go "Christ, who thought that was a good idea?" like that depressing ending business last time around. But then again, there's also nothing that made me go "Christ, who thought that was a good idea? Because they were totally right to think that and I feel like a dickhead for thinking otherwise."

There's nothing that excites me, that I can point to and call "the defining moment"; it's just a whole load of the Avengers postponing the inevitable until Galactus inevitably rolls around to rest his gonads on the plains of Africa.