Missed Opportunities and Poor Execution

Rating: 5/10 (28 April 2019)

Warning - Spoilers
Overall, Endgame is a good but not great superhero movie. Marvel did something I never thought possible, they made a boring movie. I understand it is difficult to maintain continuity over 20+ movies and introduce new characters and plots along the way and Marvel has done a phenomenal job with the MCU. This culminated in the excellent Infinity War which I loved and have watched 5 or 6 times now. What made IW great was the energy they were able to maintain while weaving together different characters and stories. It was funny, emotional, and had lots of great action.
Here are some things I liked about Endgame:

Tony's ending seemed like a fitting conclusion for this phase. He essentially started the MCU way back in 2008 and his sendoff here was a nice tribute to his character. I didn't feel like he needed to die and thought he would serve as a father figure and guide for Peter Parker in future Spiderman movies but can see how Marvel went in this direction.

Captain America living but altering his past seemed like a choice he would make given how he seemed to have no place in the present or future. He lived in the past and was a relic of a bygone era. The ending was a bit schmaltzy but I liked him passing on the shield to Sam. One issue, so Cap can suddenly wield Mjolnir and summon lightning?

What I didn't like:

Runtime and pacing! Ok, so they wanted to make a 3 hour movie, fine, I love Return of the King and all. If you do that, you have to keep the energy up! I felt like Marvel didn't know what to do with the characters that survived the snap. Without most of the Guardians, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Spidey, etc., the focus was on minor characters like Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Nebula. Did we really need to see Hawkeye mope around for 180 minutes?? Strange move for Marvel to snap most of the newer (and funnier!) heroes and not bring them back until the last 30 minutes of the movie. These seemed more like cameo appearances to me. It produced a lot of forced comedy which no one in my theater laughed at. I even missed Ebony Maw and the CoT who really fleshed out the bad guys in IW. Without these interactions which made IW so great, the movie dragged!

Thor and Hulk. It's an absolute disgrace to turn Thor into a Jim Carrey impersonation of Jim Morrison for most of this movie. I chuckled when he is introduced but the joke became old fast. He is one of the best developed characters in Ragnarok and IW because he has so much emotional baggage regarding Thanos and they ruined him here. In the first 120 minutes he makes no contribution to the plot, as if he is just a drunk frat boy hung over in the corner. Professor Hulk was okay but they could have spent at least 10 minutes of the first 2 hours showing us how he made that balance happen. Wouldn't that have been cool?? We are first introduced to him in a diner dabbing for some kids taking selfies, pretty lame.

Time travel and hand waving. Okay so time travel is how they figure out how to defeat Thanos and undo the snap. I'll suspend belief a bit on how it works but did Tony really figure it out after running a few models in his basement in 1 day?? I won't even get into the altered timelines and whether or not you change the future by changing the past!

Thanos was written so well in IW, he had a clear plan and was shown as a sometimes conflicted villain. Here he just decides to destroy everything because the survivors couldn't let go of the past 5 years later. No discussion of balance, just a one note villain.

Captain Marvel. So we have an all-powerful being who can pretty much rip through any opponent or ship but she basically says I'll see you in 2 hours instead of helping out with the time travel stuff?

Not showing everyone coming back when Hulk reversed the snap. Marvel missed a huge opportunity to show Black Panther, Spidey, etc. coming back into existence!! Where were they when it happened? What year was it? To have a 3 hour movie but not include this is baffling! It would have been a huge emotional moment to show their reactions and their reunions with those that survived. They all just come walking out of portals at the same time to conveniently battle Thanos in the end. But hey, we got to see some birds come back so there's that.

Overall, I expected much more content in a 3 hour movie. Not bringing back the snapped characters earlier in the movie left them out of the majority of the plot and affected the pace and energy. The great interactions between the GotG, Thor, etc. in IW were missing until the very end of this one. The movie could have easily been 2 to 2.5 hours and tightened up a lot. Also, I expected to see a new big bad guy show up at some point but that will have to wait for Phase 4 I suppose. In the end, my 9 year old loved it so I guess that's all that matters!