Endlame

Rating: 7/10 (28 April 2019)

In the 70's, I grew up watching Spider Man and reading X-Men. They were groovy. Fast forward to 2008, and I saw Ironman, a character I couldn't care less about. I met my soon-to-be-wife, and she got me more involved with the MCU, and over the next several years, I backfilled my knowledge and interest into this wondrous fantasyland, eventually even caring about Captain America, who I cared even less about than Ironman.
RDJ and Evans breathed humanity into their characters, as well as the rest of the tangential family I grew to appreciate and applaud. Marvel certainly had the right formula to rope me in, and care about the characters, which is the most important element of any story. The audience has to care about the characters. Even Thanos, complicated, merciless, driven and yet, somewhat understandable. Marvel did a brilliant job at sucking me into their Universe.
And this all led up to Endgame. The title itself should have been a red flag. The very name of the movie signified...well...it's over. I mean, there wasn't a person on Earth who didn't know Ironman's fate. It was not a surprise or even a faint twist. He and Cap had run their course, and we were all well aware they had fulfilled their contractual obligations. We all knew it was death or retirement for most of the original Heroes.
So, then. Marvel delivered exactly what had to be delivered, and nothing more. We got highs and lows. We got humor. We got drama. But we got no suspense. Everything played out exactly as it was supposed to, except it was egregiously padded with about an hour of slow, plodding, forced sentimentality.
Do you know know what Ironman dying means? That's right, another 35 minutes of dull, agonizingly slow dolly shots heaped on top of the other hour of desperately boring scenes we already endured. Don't worry, though, we'll have a lifetime of Tony Stark's holographic lectures to listen to. Even in death, he wouldn't shut up.
Aside from that, the deus ex machina provided by Capt'n Marvel, for whom an entire movie had to be filmed for the purpose of shoehorning her into the final battle, was an unnecessary message that "Women are just as tough as men." Thanks. We already knew that. Disney has a perpetual hard-on for lecturing us on things we already believe. I never doubted women are just as strong, if not stronger than men, as evidenced by my mom and step-mom.
In fact, she should have ended the battle with her cavalcade of girls right then. She demonstrated she was more powerful than anyone else...but the Russo brothers didn't have the resolution we have, and were compelled to let her bungle it, and allow each Hero have a shot at haplessly reclaiming the bouncing glove, ricocheting nimbly out of each person's hand, extending an already painfully long battle even longer.
All this, and Dr. Strange was just a second-tier afterthought, when it would have been much more compelling had he been hiding in the mirror dimension ready to unleash the Forces of the resurrected, to crush Thanos. That would have been too clever, the Russo brothers concluded, for the viewing audience.
Finally, the last act Ironman performs, while struggling to complete a snap with the gauntlet, has his hand in A PERFECT POSITION TO GIVE THANOS THE FINGER, but instead declares with meek determination: "i am ironman."
Other than that, great, mindless fun. The people who thought this was the greatest 11/10 movie of all time, full of awesomeness, wild feels and major sadface, are obviously children.