If I Had A Thanos [Review: Avengers Endgame]

Score: 3 out of 5 stars

All movies reviewed on the Sci-Fi Gene blog are given a score of 3 out of 5 stars

SPOILER WARNING

This review may contain spoiler warnings

2018's Avengers: Infinity War ended with the destruction of half of all life in the Universe, including half of the Avengers cast. I wasn't hugely surprised to find, and this isn't really much of a spoiler, that Avengers: Endgame turns out to be about an attempt by the remaining Avengers to bring the band back together and do something about it.

I was more surprised by the downbeat, bluesy tone of much of the movie. I would expect to see more personal depth and character building in the individual superhero stories, and there's plenty of this in Ant Man and The Wasp, and Captain Marvel - it's hard to get the same depth in an ensemble movie, but Endgame does better than most. The movie opens a few years after Infinity War, in a world reacting to the shock of that Thanos moment through memorials and support groups. Meanwhile the scattered Avengers have each reacted in different ways, and there's a reality to the transformed Thor, Hawkeye and Hulk that makes a lot of sense - possibly having fewer other characters overshadowing them means these characters can be more central. There's also a lot of gentle humour to be found.

However Avengers: Endgame is still not exactly an arthouse dogme experiment - I'm gutted that Lars Von Trier turned down the invitation to direct. There are plenty of CGI set-piece battles, and these are quite lovely but also confusing if you try to follow them. Why is Captain Marvel more powerful than Thanos one moment, and at his mercy the next? I gave up and just enjoyed the fireworks. The same applies to the main plot, the Avengers' plan to address the absence of half the Universe. Giving the writers credit, they have deliberately taken a certain kind of sci-fi plot and tried very hard to give it an original twist by disallowing the obvious routes. The end result serves the movie well but really doesn't stand up to logical analysis - luckily as a Doctor Who fan I have become immune to plot holes through repeated exposure so this did not spoil Endgame for me in the slightest.

Overall Endgame is a satisfying movie and a satisfying end to both the Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy movie cycles. I am sure the great Stan Lee would approve of this movie's marvellous review score of three stars out of five.

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