A review of the new movie blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame”
I can remember a time (1990) when “Die Hard 2” could shock audiences by featuring the death of 230 passengers and crew on an aircraft which crashes thanks to terrorists taking over the air traffic control system. But the Marvel movies have taken death tolls to a whole new level. In “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, a total of 83,871 characters meet their end, although that’s largely down to the 80,000 Nova Corps pilots who lay down their lives in defence of their planet in the closing scenes.
And then we had “Avengers: Infinity War”, the prequel to “Avengers: Endgame”, when – with a snap of his fingers – the evil Thanos uses the power of the six infinity stones to wipe out half the population of the Marvel Cinematic Universe including many of beloved superheroes.
This is serious stuff and we’ve had to wait another year to find out if this horror can be reversed (no spoilers coming or needed) and how (a post-credits scene in “Avengers: Infinity War” made it clear that the ‘quantum realm’ would be involved – but not as Einstein or any real-world physicists would understand it).
It is all immense fun with some version of all our favourite superheroes making a return, although Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larsen) have new haircuts and Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) have new figures. If there is a central player, it is Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr) which is as it should be since he started off the whole franchise.
But it is long: a full three hours (even the prequel was ‘only’ two and a half hours).
And it is complicated: this is the 22nd movie in the MCU released over 11 years and, even if you have seen them all (I have viewed everyone except “The Incredible Hulk”), unless you have seen them several times reasonably recently you won’t catch all the allusions to earlier storylines. I guess this will encourage many fans to see the movie several times and, even without that, it is set to beat “Avatar” as the biggest money-making movie of all time.