A fitting and almost perfect end to an epic saga.

Rating: 9/10 (17 May 2019)

With last year's semi-cliffhanger, Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) had a lot of ground to cover to reach a satisfying conclusion of over ten years of filmmaking. It's no wonder that it's just a smidge over three hours since there's a lot of ground to cover here. I'll admit that the only instantiations of these superheroes that I'm familiar with is via the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Still, it was probably better to go into the finale this way, having no preconceived notions of how the characters should act or the lore they're connected to in the comic books.
For a three-hour movie, Endgame moves at a steady pace that accelerates toward the inevitable conclusion. Following a standard three-act structure, Endgame benefited from bringing all the heroes together in Infinity War and establishing a baseline to work from and a goal to work toward. It was nice to see how each of these characters handled such a dramatic universal event. This is even to the point where some of the character transformations were quite hilarious (Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk is still a gem of the series). With the stakes already established, the collection of heroes felt like they were actually fighting for something instead of just reacting to actions thrust upon them.
While this film lived up to my expectations, a few scenes were far from perfect. In particular, a scene or two felt like it was pandering to the audience and saying, "Look how progressive we are!" Sure, it was a neat bit and combined somewhat well with all the other amazing bits around it, but I almost had to groan at how forced it seemed. At the very least, Endgame wrapped up a ton of loose ends that have spanned a multitude of movies and left a definitive conclusion to the most ambitious filmmaking event of a generation.
A fitting and almost perfect end to an epic saga, I give Avengers: Endgame 4.5 stars out of 5.