Avengers: Mehgame

Rating: 6/10 (28 April 2019)

While Endgame is a competent enough film with satisfying conclusions to many of the characters, it is also an incredibly frustrating film due to a number of fundamental issues. Also, I could have spoiled the title of this film after I saw Infinity War if I didn't know any better to think the callback to Doctor Strange's quote was gauche
The film starts up with Hawkeye losing his entire family, and then with Tony and Nebula being saved in the middle of space by Captain Marvel, and once he is brought back to Earth he scolds Captain America for essentially causing half the universe to be wiped out for his freedom, when really it's equally his fault for not running off to work with Captain America. And Captain Marvel acts arrogant as usual as the Avengers call her out on it, leading me to believe that the film is true to the real animosity behind the set towards Brie Larson's attitude to her coworkers. Anyways, she brings them to where Thanos is and Thor kills him like the chump he is because I guess using the infinity gauntlet has tenderized his meat enough for him to be decapitated this time around. Captain Marvel then immediately leaves after saying there's thousands of other planets going through the same thing, even though Earth is the only one presumably working to undo the destruction of half the universe's population, which is possibly more important than Captain Marvel helping an elderly alien cross a street.
Fast forward five years, and Scott is brought out of the quantum realm thanks to a rat stepping on the control panel, working both as an excellent cheap joke and as a deus ex machina. Scott has a character moment with his now teenaged daughter briefly before teaming up with Avengers and explaining how time travel is a possibility if one could navigate the quantum realm, which is now a possibility. But prior to this Captain America tries to teach people to look on the bright side. Scarlet Johansen manages emoting effectively for the first time in her entire acting career.
Tony Stark has started a new life with Pepper, and the two now have a daughter. The team gives Tony a vial of Pym juice and explain their hopes of time travel and undoing Thanos' snap, but Tony mocks them for being so ridiculous given that he is the only one on the team who has lost nothing out of the whole ordeal, and he refuses to help. The team tasks Bruce for the job, and he has now managed to control the Hulk and the two work in unison now. Instead of creating time travel, they manage to push time through Scott, aging and de-aging him before returning him to normal and playing the whole discovery off as a joke rather than what it actually is; the key to immortality. Tony, in mere seconds of screentime, uncovers the secret to time travel and the team is off to the races. New Asgard is a run-down mess with the few Asgardian survivors, and worse yet, Thor has become a morbidly obese drunkard due to PTSD, and this is a running joke throughout the movie. Black Widow recruits Hawkeye as he cosplays as her in the live-action Ghost in the Shell film, slaying criminals in cold blood, I guess. This is a short interaction despite these being two of the most important characters in the film. I guess it's more important for Black Widow to be making the same jokes about Rocket Raccoon throughout the film rather than explore her character more, but I suppose they have to save material for the upcoming Black Widow film.
They plan out their time travel shenanigans. They have only enough Pym juice for a round trip each, until they conveniently grab more later from the past, however, since this is an action film, it would be unacceptable for this to be treated as a heist, and instead there has to be huge mistakes in each part of their plan in sequences that are so disparately linked that the brisk pace becomes jarring and awkward, and scenes stop flowing together the way they did in Infinity War. Many interactions occur between characters which would have been impossible without this time travel, one of which being an encounter between Tony and a 70s version of his father, which might be satisfying if it weren't so contrived. There are many nods to previous films which are mostly charming, but unfortunately similar to Terminator: Genisys. Captain America has an interesting fight with himself, with younger him mistaking present him as Loki in disguise. But Captain America says "Bucky is alive" to distract younger Captain, which seems a bit too reckless if time-travel logic were taken with any form of sincerity in this film. Nebula and Falcon knock out Star-Lord from the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy, which might possibly even lead to his death considering what happens after this moment in the original film. The most infuriating of all has to be when Black Widow and Hawkeye learn they must sacrifice someone they love to get the soul stone, which is knowledge Tony should have, as he was within earshot of the conversation of Gamora's death in the previous film. I guess Stark has no respect for a man who has lost his family, and was sending Hawkeye there to die, but instead Black Widow sacrifices herself. Even worserer, Nebula gets hacked via what appears to be a crossed wifi signal and Thanos learns of the plans, and a switcheroo is done for past Nebula to infiltrate the Avengers' base. On a positive note, Hulk has a great interaction the Ancient One in which we learn that Doctor Strange gave Thanos the stone willingly just to convince her to give Hulk the stone at that moment, which is perhaps the only intriguing use of time travel in the film.
Anyways, Hulk does the snap and it nearly kills him despite being nearly immune to gamma radiation, yet Thanos faired better with killing half the universe and then destroying the stones with their own power which was possible apparently. And then the team gets ambushed by Thanos and nearly die, even though they should all be dead considering they were blasted before all but one of them realized the threat, which leads to another big fight with Thanos, where literally everyone who was snapped away comes back and has their moment to shine kicking Thanos' ass for a couple seconds before being shown to be a chump.
Captain Marvel shows up to save the day about twenty minutes into the fight to decide the fate of the entire universe, and takes out Thanos' battleship in mere seconds, but this is the kind of thing that thousands of planets across the universe are going through all the time and they don't have a regular guy with a powersuit to help them with it thus Captain Marvel was too busy to defeat Thanos I guess, even though according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige she's stronger than Thanos, which, much to Anita Sarkeesian's dismay is disproven as Danvers is taken out with a single punch from vanilla Thanos, just like everybody else on the team. Somehow 2014 Thanos feels stronger than Thanos was with all of the infinity stones, which makes sense if you also consider that Danvers became stronger than all of the infinity stones by being blasted by the energy from a single infinity stone. What I'm trying to say is the MCU has become knockoff Dragon Ball Super with a massive powercreep problem in which all of the heroes are now so powerful that the enemies have to be even more powerful to maintain the underdog feel, and it's a confusing mess that you might as well turn your brain off for. Whatever, Captain America says "Avengers assemble" so rule of cool I guess.
Anyways, there's a nod to an upcoming all-female superhero flick which reminds me of the Ghostbusters reboot. And then Tony tricks Thanos by doing a bait and switch and states "I am Iron Man," then snaps the army away, and he somehow lives long enough to have a moment with Pepper and Spider-Man.
Iron Man gets a pretty decent funeral and a post-mortem moment with his family via a pre-recorded message. Then Captain America goes back in time to return the infinity stones, and ends up spending his life with Peggy, which I suppose means he was her unnamed husband from the past in the previous films. He returns old and passes his shield on to Falcon. The time travel from the Incredible Hulk has greater implications than one might think. The problem is Hulk has essentially discovered immortality, though it's brushed off as a joke and a terrible mistake. There's another major problem with this; we've brought back alternate Gamora from 2014 and killed 2014's Nebula, doing a switcheroo, but we end up with both, essentially undoing Gamora's death from Infinity War. We can undo all other permanent deaths by bringing the deceased from alternate timelines into this one.
By the way, several dead-dead characters are back despite still being considered dead, which doesn't make the switcharoo feel like any less of a cop-out. Quill is left with a Gamora who hasn't experienced anything with him, but that will certainly be sorted out in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
While Endgame is a relatively competent film, it has many positives and negatives which can make it a polarizing experience for fans, plebs, and snobs alike. There are numerous moments which are both memorable and satisfying, but there's others that are wholly unimmersive and disappointing. While Tony Stark's death was wholly expected, Black Widow's feels bizarre. The heroes' capabilities now are so grand that they together are almost omnipotent, and yet somehow vanilla Thanos was still able to beat them in a fight without the infinity stones despite Thor kicking his ass in Infinity War when he had all the stones. Basically, the MCU has become Dragon Ball Super, and what with their super safe approach we can expect a whole lotta fan service for fans of each individual character regardless of what their power levels should be. Ant-Man expanding inside Thanos would have made for a much better climax.