A WORTHY END TO THE MCU INFINITY SAGA - BUT NOW WITHOUT IT'S FLAWS

Rating: 8/10 (28 April 2019)

The film begins straight 3 weeks after the events of Infinity War with Captain Marvel rescuing Iron Man and Nebula and bringing them to Earth. IM doesn't want anything to do with the Avengers anymore so doesn't go with the rest of the team to hunt down Thanos who's now living on some distant planet. The Avengers along with CM get to the planet to find out that the Gauntlet with the stones has been destroyed along with the stones so that no one can undo what Thanos has done. At this moment Thor chops off Thanos' head and you then realise that the rest of the film isn't going to be about how to get back at Thanos. Remember this is in the very first 20 minutes.
Fast forward 5 years and the Avengers have all moved on to other priorities in their lives and only BW and CA are running the Avengers. As luck would have it, a rat walks over the controls of the quantum machine thing and out pops Ant Man from the end of the last Ant Man film. He then teams up with BW and CA to reassemble the Avengers and go back in time to get the stones and undo what Thanos has snapped. The rest of the film is how the stones are recovered and how everything is resolved. This is my main gripe with this film, time travel...
I always feel that films that feature time travel or alternate universes use this as an easy way to get around problems and issues with the story. They ended the previous film with killing off half the characters and then thought how can we bring them back? I know we'll just go back in time and sort everything out. Don't get me wrong, I love time travel films, one of my all-time favourites is back to the future, as long as time travel is what the theme of the story is, but to use time travel as an easy excuse to give the Heroes an advantage is the lazy option. Recently the re-booted Star Trek being an example of an alternate universe which just didn't have the same emotional connect as the original series as very easily everything that has been shown can just be erased/altered with time travel and introducing an alternate universe. If you want to watch a good series that uses alternate universes then I would highly recommend searching out Fringe which was shown around 10 years ago.
So now we've established time travel is what the major portion of this film is going to be could we please stop referencing older time travel films just so the makers can poke fun at their own stupid idea before the audience does. The amount of times Back to the future is called upon is sometimes a bit shameful. This film gives you so much de ja vu that you know that you've seen this before, BKF2 anyone. There's even a scene reminding you of Doc's explanation to Marty about scewing the timeline. It's a shame Marvel couldn't think of any other way to get back at Thanos other than resorting to time travel. Also, why not just time travel back with CM to when Thanos was about to snap and add her into the fight as well? Would be a lot easier than trying to get the stones back one by one! Also, this time machine they devise not only lets you travel through time but also lets you change your geographical location, amazing! But I will say this, on the flip side using time travel to revisit the past films is the best way to tie everything in and a chance for some serious fan service!
So once the stones are recovered Iron Man does the snap again and the entire Avengers characters return for one last bad ass battle with Thanos. Here there are some great action set pieces and the majority of the characters get their own small part to play, especially during the whole 'rugby' sequence with the new gauntlet. But the flaw here is that Iron Man uses the gauntlet to do the snap and not Thor or Hulk who are more powerful. But obviously Marvel wanted to end this infinity stone saga with the death of Iron Man as it started with Iron Man back in 2008. So a well justified send off for the character and also now not having to pay Robert Downey Jr so much either. I'd like to say the following, a more emotional ending during Iron Man's death scene would have been having Thor, CA, Hulk, and Hawkeye kneeling around Iron Man and at this point CA and IM shake hands to put aside their differences and then Gwyneth's character saying her line. Currently you see CA and Thor crying at IM's death but you don't really get a sense of where they're stood. Where's BW you ask? She died trying to get the soul stone and doesn't even get a funeral scene!
So to summarise, even though there are so many flaws with the story and screenplay, being over 3 hours long, because you're 11 years and 22 films deep into this saga you easily brush over the minus points and only leave the cinema with plus points. The film is a cinematic gem and the final hour or so more than makes up for the short comings mentioned earlier.
As an afterthought, the ending of the film shows CA not coming back to his reality after returning the stones to the respective points in time and instead living his life through to an old man with Agent Carter. Could this mean then that what we are now seeing is not the same universe but an alternate universe where things are now changed? How else would an easier solution be to include the X-Men into the MCU now that Disney has bought 20th Century Fox?