‘Endgame’ is strictly for the faithful
Avengers: Endgame Rated: PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language. Running time: 181 minutes. 666out of 4
It’s over, sort of. Finally. With “Avengers: Endgame,” the Marvel saga of many, many films in many, many moods comes to a finish, in a way that will satisfy millions of fans.
It’s a quality action movie that accomplishes, with seeming ease, a number of difficult things. For one, it’s three-hours long and settles into a relaxed threehour pace from its opening moments. You know the usual splashy opening, with lots of explosions and fake excitement? “Endgame” eschews that action cliché by starting quietly, in a contemplative mood.
The script also figures out a way to give everyone, or almost everyone, something interesting to do. This is not easy. We all know the “Star Trek” movie syndrome. It can’t all be about Kirk and Spock. You have to get Sulu in and Chekhov in there — everyone has to have a moment to shine — and in a movie populated by characters who’ve been the subjects of their own solo films, that would seem especially necessary.
To its credit, “Endgame” doesn’t go the lazy route by giving its characters pithy things to say. Instead, it gives them stuff to do. It takes place in the aftermath of last year’s “Infinity War” — lots and lots of dead people — and shows all the various superheroes reacting to their defeat in different ways.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is lost in space and preparing to run out of oxygen. That means that he’ll soon have to stop talking. Hawkeye ( Jeremy Renner), reeling from grief, has turned to a life of crime. And best of all, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has become a couch potato and a drunk with a beer belly. It makes sense: The Thor movies tend to be funny, and so “Endgame” gives Hemsworth something funny to play. Thor becomes the Big Liebowski, but with a hammer.
Scarlett Johansson as Natasha/Black Widow, alas, still doesn’t have much to do, but here, as in other movies, it’s fun, in a cruel sort of way, watching her try to make something out of a bland part. Every time she gets a line, she invests it with extra meaning. Her eyes tear up. Her nostrils quiver. Actually, if you watch “Endgame” in a certain spirit, Johansson’s struggles make Natasha as funny as Thor, but she isn’t intended that way.
So, that’s how things start. The Avengers are a mess. The planet is devastated. Cities are in ruins. Governments are in disarray. And everyone wishes they could go back in time, back to when life used to be normal. Yes, “Avengers: Endgame” is a movie about people wishing they could re-set history and go back five years. Any resemblance between the world of today and the world of the movie is completely coincidental.
The first half of “Endgame” is slow but interesting. It’s filled with lots of references to previous movies, references that only aficionados will get, but you don’t have to be a Marvel fanatic to take pleasure in the characters and their predicament. The details are complicated, but the plotline is refreshingly simple: They need to go back in time. They need to return to the point before Thanos ( Josh Brolin) got the stones that he used to destroy the world. They need to get those stones, kill Thanos and save the world.
The movie becomes less enjoyable in its second half, when it takes on some of the usual contours of a superhero action movie. Is it a spoiler to mention that the movie contains a big battle scene? Such scenes are built into the formula. But this time, they seem especially unnecessary, because Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is part of the team, and she can do everything singlehandedly. Or rather she could do everything, except — here’s an absurd touch —she has business elsewhere. That’s right, she has more pressing matters to attend to than the survival of life on this planet.
Still, despite a late dip in energy, “Endgame” concludes well. With care and a sensitive understanding of what the audience wants and needs, it brings the huge ship into port. Sure, it has more endings than any movie since “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.” But every one of those endings is satisfying.
All right, so you’ve made it this far into the review and we’ve established that “Endgame” is a better than serviceable finish to the Avenger series, as well as that rare thing — a threehour movie that deserves three hours. So, we’ve concluded our main business here. Now let’s talk about something else — why it feels odd to be talking about this movie at all in terms of quality.
Most movies can be judged as actual movies, even films that are sequels or prequels. But a movie like “Avengers: Endgame” feels rather like an expression of a faith. There are people who love this Marvel universe, and they go to these films, not as discrete events, or even as one event in a series of other film events, but as expressions of this larger Marvel thing, which they also observe, in a sense, through the original comic books and online sites discussing them.
In this context, “Endgame” becomes just a pretext for gathering, a location for mass observance. In that way, it’s almost like it’s not a movie at all, or at least not a movie primarily, but an extension of some other, outside thing. And if you love that thing, then great. And if you like it, then good. But the movie’s quality is almost beside the point.
If you partake of the Marvel universe, this movie is for you no matter what. And if you don’t, seeing it is would be like going to church if you’re an atheist — an experience of spectacle unmoored from any purpose or definition. In the case of “Endgame,” we’re talking fine spectacle, to be sure, the best that money can buy.
But all the same, this one is strictly for the faithful.