Avengers: Endgame
Directors - Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Cast - Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Don Cheadle, Brie Larson, Paul Rudd, Josh Brolin.
Rating - 4.5/5
With avengers end game 123movies, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has arrived at its long-awaited ‘conclusion’, offering fans an old-fashioned mix of grand spectacle and undiluted emotion. To say that it is a success would be too simple an observation; what it deserves instead, is a eulogy.
Like a series finale of a television show you’ve loved for years, it crosses all the Ts and dots all the Is - some more neatly than others - and ends not so much with a feeling of rigid resolution, but a sense of freeing possibility. For new doors to open, Marvel seems to be saying, old ones must first be closed. It’s a film that will compel even the Frost Giants in the audience to whoop and weep.
Watch the Avengers: Endgame trailer here
For films like Avengers: Endgame to succeed, piled as they are with unfathomably large expectations, a well-oiled system is required to be in place. There needs to be a discipline in the writing, a crispness to the editing, and a generosity in the performances. True ambition in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, more often than not, is born out of a strict adherence to rules. And there are perhaps no two filmmakers better at working within studio sandboxes than Anthony and Joe Russo - at least not on this unprecedented scale.
Avengers: Endgame is a terrific example of that epic intimacy that Marvel does so well - alternating between glorious action and subtle character moments. Watching it almost feels like taking a wistful walk down memory lane, flanked on either side by a Russo brother, our hands held firmly in theirs. It’s an odd feeling that I can’t quite describe; a mixture of déjà vu and nostalgia, of melancholy and euphoria.
It’s a delicate balance to strike, but not nearly as difficult as having to write a review without revealing potential spoilers, whose definition, it seems, is as subjective as the idea of Iron Man 3’s Mandarin being a good villain.