It is unusual for me to see a movie on the opening day of its release, but today I had the wonderful opportunity to do so; I viewed the new film Avengers: Endgame. It was very good! I thought I would present my thoughts by asking and answering some questions you may have about it.
How many of the other Marvel movies do you need to see prior to this one? The Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU) has been going strong since 2008 with the film Iron-Man. There are now a whopping 22 films. Do you have to view them all? No, but I say you’ll have to see these: the aforementioned Iron-Man (2008); Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) and the sequel Captain America: Winter Soldier (2014); also The Avengers (2012) and its follow-up Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015); Captain America: Civil War (2016); and Thor: Ragnarok (2017).
It is true that viewing other Marvel films will aid in the enjoyment, but as I see it, if you see last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the characters and the context. Furthermore, the dialogue does an adequate job of explaining most of the plot points from prior films that the uninformed may not know. I still haven’t seen movies like Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and the Wasp, or Captain Marvel and I was able to keep up (although differentiating between Marvel’s Captain Marvel and her DC counterpart Shazam – who used to be called Captain Marvel – was an item I had to thoroughly research; that’s a blog for another day).
Is Endgame too long? It’s a 3 hour movie, but the pace and story is so good that it felt like it was only an hour and a half. I say it is the perfect length. Does Endgame have some troubling aspects to it? It does. I could mention a few things, but for just one example, I’ll bring up that there is much more foul language than is necessary. I’m not a prude, but in one scene, they use a certain cuss word for comedic effect; the film has many humorous moments, but that wasn’t one of them.
One last question: Does Endgame end well? Being careful not to reveal any spoilers, I will say that this film has a very good ending (and yes, in case you were wondering, I did cry). Sometimes I feel like the word “epic” is way overused, but the ending is truly epic in every sense of the word. The Marvel movies are sure to continue, but if they wanted to end on this note, I think every Marvel moviegoer would be satisfied with the way things were resolved.
Kevin
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