Mind blowing

Rating: 9/10 (28 April 2019)

It seems like there's always a big Movie Event nowadays, like the last Lord of the Rings movie, the last Harry Potter, or the first Stars Wars movie in forever. Each of these movies packs a huge emotional wallop as we see the culmination of story arcs we've been following for several years. With the Avengers, we've been following these arcs for ten years (and now 22 films), and Endgame had the unenviable task of following the cliffhanger of its immediate predecessor. How will the Avengers reverse the Decimation? Well, for starters they'll do so in a three-hour-plus movie - and they'll need every minute, too. But the road to redemption is not a straight one at all, and if you thought that the final scenes in other franchises were powerful...well, in Endgame they happen very frequently. How emotional is this movie? Bearing in mind that it's a comic book movie, not a Hallmark movie, one wouldn't expect only the broadest of 'heavy' scenes, and yet in Endgame these scenes seem to occur every few minutes. How emotional? It used to be that people would rate melodramas based on the number of handkerchiefs they needed to wipe their tears or blow their noses. For Endgame, I'd say it's a five hankie movie, but only if one reuses one's hankie a lot. I counted twelve tear-inducing scenes. 12! But the franchise has always depended, to some degree, on surprises, and luckily for me nothing was spoiled beforehand. In Endgame, we see many, many character arcs completed one way or another. The movie is exceedingly satisfying and emotional draining. It is far and away the finest comic book movie I've ever seen, and I hope it joins Black Panther in garnering itself an Oscar nomination or two next year. There isn't a single moment in this movie that misses a step, no single overwrought or drawn-out scene. There is just moment after moment of awesomeness. Even if you have just a vague idea of what the plot is or who the Avengers are, you probably won't watch this movie without feeling something magical. The characters are well written and exceptionally well played. The action is exhilarating. The ending is cathartic. It's very worthwhile to see this in a theater, too.