Avengers: Endgame

WHATEVER IT TAKES

Those three words seemed to be the common mission statement made by everyone before they went about making this gargantuan of a movie.

The culmination of 11 years of world building, character introductions and 21 movies all building up to this - the movie event of this generation.

I can't begin to describe just how hyped up I was for Avengers: Endgame.

I have been following the MCU right from the start with Iron Man (2008), through the glorious ups and even through the occasional stumbles.

It has been a remarkable journey.

After the events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018) which left us all in absolute shock, the remaining Avengers are left in tatters, both physically and emotionally.

It’s a nice shift in tone to see the MCU delve into much darker themes than we’re used to, and this movie is full of that.

From the way shots are composed and edited down to even the costume design for certain scenes, you can tell they were really going dark and down to the roots for this one.

I’m just going to cut to the chase here. This movie left me literally mindblown.

I kid you not when I say I spent a good 5-10 minutes just sitting still in my seat while the credits rolled, pondering the events I had just witnessed.

No movie has ever left me feeling this way, and the movie deserves all the credit in the world for achieving that feat.

After painstakingly creating this massive universe of characters, locations and stories over the past 11 years, the MCU truly flexes its mighty cinematic muscle in this entry. You get to see everything they’ve been building up to all in one movie, and it’s absolutely staggering.

Unfortunately, I can’t mention a word more because I’d be venturing into dangerous spoiler territory.

Instead, I’ll talk about the handling of all the characters.

I felt the Russo brothers did a really good job with balancing the sheer amount of individuals in Infinity War, but they completely outdid themselves here with Endgame.

The movie flows magnificently and at no point in time did I find myself recalling that it was a THREE HOUR movie I was sitting through.

There are some movies that are actually rather short but feel really long due to either the movie just straight-up sucking or if the movie was loaded with too much talk and no action.

Infinity War had its ups and downs in this department, but Endgame had none of it. It was perfectly paced and edited brilliantly for the most part.

When I say “for the most part”, there were one or two jump cuts which were jarring but they really are unnecessary nitpicks when you look at the film as a whole.

To tell such a balanced story filled with gripping emotion and drama among such a massive cast and still be able to squeeze in little bits of comic relief here and there to lighten the tension is just the MCU at its stunning best.

Given, there was one character in particular which I feel they went too far with in terms of turning the character into more of a joke than a hero we’re used to - similar to the manner in which they used the Hulk for comic relief in Infinity War.

Though definitely worthy of some good laughs, I felt they overdid it slightly. It really spoiled some badass slo-mo shots which would’ve otherwise been perfect desktop wallpaper material.

The massive cast all do a stellar job with their parts, and as with Infinity War, it’s just so awesome seeing characters from some universes interacting with characters from others. This was what the MCU was all about when it started from scratch in 2008. It is truly amazing to look back and see how far they’ve come.


On a technical standpoint, the movie is as well-made as you’d expect it to be. CGI is all on-point and the cinematography just makes everything look oh so epic.

The music by original Avengers composer Alan Silvestri is simply outstanding. I can't imagine any other composer doing a better job at scoring this film than him.

As it was with Infinity War's soundtrack, Silvestri brought some terrific grandeur and scale to the music of the film which makes it all the more memorable.

The use of the now-iconic Avengers theme in some scenes even manages to recapture that spine-chilling, goosebump-inducing feeling when you first hear the tune blast in its full orchestral glory in that 360 degree hero shot in the first movie.

Silvestri also manages to blend in some of the different individual character themes from their standalone movies into the score so seamlessly - something Brian Tyler and Danny Elfman tried to do with the soundtrack for Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) but with little success.

Their efforts just ended up sounding clunky and really last-minute. Given the fact that Elfman was brought in late on to do up a last minute job on Age of Ultron's music after perhaps Tyler got a serious case of writer's block really shows in the quality of the music in the end. For an idea of what I'm on about, just listen to the mess of a track that is "Avengers Unite".

Elfman would later on be hired to do the exact same thing to the same mediocre effect with Justice League (2017), much to the dismay of many DC fans.

Anyway, I digress. The fact is that Alan Silvestri is a very talented composer and to this day is the only composer in the MCU to have consistently created a set of themes the fans actually recognise.

I really liked how the film wrapped up and tied up all loose ends. It was just a lovely and emotional conclusion to a mammoth film, and the somewhat celebratory vibes of it harked back to the lovely ending of Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983) - a film which also wrapped up a legendary series of movies.

Who knows, maybe there'll be a "Force Awakens" in a few decades' time.

All in all, Avengers: Endgame didn't just live up to the astronomical hype, it completely obliterated it and in the process, created a unique and truly special cinematic journey.

The word "epic" just isn't good enough. They need to come up with a new word that means "beyond epic".

I don't think I've ever felt all the emotions there are in existence within one movie anywhere else - it truly is that incredible.

There was sheer excitement and joy, wonder, laughter, suspense, anxiety, sadness and fear plus more, all wrapped into one stunning three-hour masterpiece.

Thank you Marvel for including us on this adventure of a lifetime. I don't think anything will even come close to matching the sheer levels set by these guys.

Naturally, this film so easily earns my highest rating.

THE movie of a generation.

10/10.