Article contributed by Isabella Haberstock
With over a decade of very successful Marvel movies, the end of an era has finally come. Endgame is by far one of the most anticipated movies of all time, and for a very good reason. The end of Infinity War saw half the universe decimated by the Snap with Thanos retreating to an unknown location. With Tony Stark and Nebula stranded in space and no knowledge of Thanos’s whereabouts, the remaining Avengers are totally lost as to what their next steps should be. With the introduction of Captain Marvel, however, the team has renewed hope in the fight against Thanos. What follows is a hilarious and action-packed film with an ending that is heartwarming and inspiring but will make literally everybody cry.
One of the best things about Endgame is how engaging the plotline is despite the movie being over three hours long. Each scene moves relatively quickly and is packed with lots of information that move the plot along, and there was never a dull moment. Especially with the introduction of time travel in this movie, there are many callbacks to characters from previous movies and some that were killed in the Snap. While a lot of the time travel scenes are very funny due to the main characters trying to avoid creating paradoxes, they are equally emotional and offer closure to characters who get to see people who are dead in present day. With everything that happened in this movie, it is easily Marvel and the Russo brothers’ most ambitious task yet, but they were able to intricately weave a dozen different stories together to make this masterpiece of a movie that kept the audience on the edges of their seats for the duration of the movie. The suspense in this movie was also enough to make everyone forget how badly they needed to use the bathroom for three hours.
Like every Marvel movie, Endgame was packed full of jokes and funny moments. Even though nearly every audience member left the theater in tears, there were just as many laughs. Endgame was also beautifully shot and edited with poignant scenes that can easily rival Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther. As mentioned above, Endgame was by far more emotional than any previous Marvel film. Even for movie-goers who aren’t Marvel fans, every person who went to see the movie knew what was at stake. The “endgame” strategy in a game of chess means to sacrifice the most important pieces to ultimately win, so needless to say, this movie caused everyone a lot of stress.
The climax of Endgame saw the Avengers’ final battle against Thanos. This had the highest stakes of any previous battle because it was quite literally their last chance to stop Thanos and reverse his actions. There were points in the battle that made my heart stop, and there were many more points that made me cheer out of sheer joy. This battle is inspiring yet heartbreaking, and it ends in a way that nobody was prepared for but many people expected. The ending of this movie was very hard to accept, especially if you have been a fan of Marvel since the beginning. A send-off for some of the characters that sparked our love of superhero movies was not the ending that anyone really wanted to experience, but it was the satisfying end of the first era of Marvel. Many tissues were passed around, and it was generally agreed upon that Endgame was simultaneously the best and most painful movie that audiences have ever seen. Avengers: Endgame gets a 10/10.
