Avengers: Endgame: A Short Review...

I am a huge comics fan and I thought Avengers: Infinity War was an amazing superhero blockbuster with surprising emotional impact. 

In fact, lots of films in the Marvel Comics Universe have been excellent. The Iron Man trilogy and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies were great fun, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnorok were astonishingly slick entertainment, and Captain America: Winter Soldier was intelligent and gripping. For my money, the latter was probably the best of the lot, too. 

Of course, I'll never forgive the studio for the abomination that was the 2003 Daredevil film. That remains such a painful experience that it has almost been expunged from my memory. The fabulous bits of the three Daredevil Netflix TV series did help heal that particular wound, though. 

But back to Avengers Endgame. I wanted this film to be really good. But I also wanted to be a handsome and competent lover and that never materialised either. 

In brief, and without revealing any major spoilers, I felt a bit let down by it all. It's not that it isn't very good. In parts it absolutely is. And some of the parts are really smart and really entertaining. But it's too many tiny bits and aren't-we-clever moments and I'm not convinced they all combine to create a dynamic enough whole. 

The plot felt a bit like an extended episode of Scooby-Doo where all the gang come together, thanks to a bizarre sequence of events, to kick off a rescue mission. And Thanos would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky super-powered kids!

There is emotional involvement in it. There are a couple of sacrifice moments and a couple of cool bits of character development. It also rewards viewers who are familiar with all the previous Marvel films. But it also relies on that knowledge a bit too much and there's a lot of plot exposition to explain what the Scooby gang have to do to undo the Thanos 'snap'. 

There are lots of bits where it feels the movie's creators are slapping themselves on the back a little too much. One glaring moment of this occurs in a massive battle scene where the studio has a moment where it almost acknowledges how great it is at establishing strong female roles. I appreciate this is a callback to an earlier moment in another film but it also felt a bit shouty.

It's a real curate's egg of a movie for me. The script obviously had lots of work to do to resolve the narrative carnage that was created after Avengers: Infinity War. But it does succeed in doing that. Albeit in a bit of a sometimes clunky way. It does have emotional impact, too. And it lays some nice foundations for potential things to come.

Its key issue, though, is that Avengers: Infinity War created such massive high stakes that it could never match it for narrative tension. So it ends up feeling a little bit episodic and a bit too valedictory where all the key characters have their moments. 

On the plus side, and this is spoiler country, Howard the Duck does make a brief appearance and there's a fleeting mention for Captain Britain fans, too. 

I will still go see it again, though. And probably again...