Avengers Endgame movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 3 hours, 1 minute

Movie Review Mom GRADE: A (It would be a crime to give it anything less, right?)

IN A NUTSHELL: #ThanosDemandsYourSilence has been requested by the Russo brothers, so this review will be spoiler-free so I #DontSpoilTheEndGame.

This is the 22^nd movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wow. They have crushed it. As soon as ticket sales opened for pre-sales for Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame on Fandango and Atom, both websites crashed, breaking records. Opening night tickets have been scalped and sold on Ebay for as much as $15,000! I hope that included a bucket of popcorn.

It has the nostalgia for fans and the newness the finale begged for. PLEASE, Academy, PLEASE award the MCU a special award for pulling off an unprecedented achievement in film.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Violence
Death
An adorable, little girl swears. Not adorable.
Some subtitles you have to read to understand what’s going on.
This is a LONG movie.
Some “mild” profanity.

THEMES:

Second chances
“The world is in our hands. It’s left to us, guys. We gotta do something with it.” – Captain America (Chris Evans)
Hope
“The measure of a person, a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are.” – Thor’s mom/Frigga (Rene Russo)
Friendship, love
Persistence, determination
Sacrifice for the greater good
Humanity

THINGS I LIKED:

The fantastic cast includes too many to list, but some of my faves are Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Paul Rudd, Karen Gillan, Bradley Cooper, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, and the voice of Josh Brolin.
I absolutely love watching the characters from ALL of the Marvel movies interacting with each other, whether they’re just hanging out or fighting. What a MARVELous and rewarding buffet for fans. The fanservice was perfect.
Brie Larson shot her scenes for this film before doing her Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel. She seemed undefeatable in her debut film, so I was VERY curious to see how she would do against Thanos.
I love that the creator of Thanos actually makes a brief cameo in the movie. Rather than be just a one-dimensional villain, Thanos is complicated with extremely interesting motivations.
One of the Russo brothers, Joe, makes a small cameo during the meeting scene towards the beginning of the movie. He’s the one who talks about his date and crying. He plays the first gay man in the MCU.
So many emotions to navigate during this film. For a superhero movie that usually focuses on fight scenes, this one dealt with real emotions and included a lot of quiet moments between characters that were very powerful.
It really had something for everyone.
Very satisfying. I felt like I just ran a marathon or something. Whew!
I tried not to read other people’s theories or even imagine what was going to happen because I wanted to be surprised. I loved the risks and choices that the MCU took with this film. The payoff was extremely satisfying.
Fans of Community – The Complete Series – Blu-ray will get a kick out of seeing so many of the actors in that popular TV sit-com show up in this movie.
While we’ve had plenty of time to fall in love with characters like Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, it was great to learn a little bit more about Hawkeye and Black Widow in this film, since they have never had their own movie.
I don’t read comic books, but my cousin has a big store in Las Vegas. I’m told that many moments in the film were lifted exactly from the comic books. Some of those things were lost on me, but I love that so much attention was paid to detail.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

Some back and forth timing that could be very confusing for kids.
If you missed even one of the 21 films in the MCU, you won’t truly be able to appreciate all of the details and Easter eggs. Soooo many nods to past movies, both in the MCU and others.
I heard a critic say that you could leave for an hour, go shopping, get something to eat, and then you still wouldn’t miss anything. Well, that’s sort of true, unless you’re a REAL fan (which I am), in which case, you don’t want to miss a second.
A few times, I thought to myself, “Wait a second…what about….??” There are some plot holes, but I definitely didn’t lose any sleep over any of it. Trying to incorporate plots and characters from 21 films had to be no easy feat, right?
Act One moves much more slowly than the rest of the film, so the pacing isn’t even or perfect. Oh well. No biggie.

FUNNY LINES:

“OK. Who here hasn’t been to space? You better not throw up on my ship.” – Rocket (Bradley Cooper)
“Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on Back to the Future?” – Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.)
“Now go eat a salad.” – Frigga
“Seriously?” – Gamora (Zoe Saldana)
“Your choices were either that or a tree.” – Nebula (talking about Peter Quill/Chris Pratt)

INTERESTING LINES: