Marvel Avengers: Endgame Film Review - The Final Battle Directed By The Russo Brothers With No End Credit Easter Eggs This Time

Rating: 10/10 (6 May 2019)

When Brie Larson arrived on Earth at the end of Captain Marvel she found the remains of Nick Fury's Avengers, the survivors of Josh Brolin's Thanos and his Infinity Stones grab. In Marvel Avengers: Endgame the Russo Brothers must band together this smaller group of superheroes to find Thanos, retrieve the Infinity Stones, and bring back their fallen comrades. The stones must then be returned to their original time in the past. Easy we might imagine in a film with a 181 minutes running time. I saw it opening day but you won't notice the length as it moves at warp speed.
We can see who survived Infinity War from the poster, and thanks to Captain Marvel she brings Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark back to Earth after his fight with Thanos, with Karen Gillan's Nebula and Bradley Cooper's Rocket, into Gwyneth Paltrow's waiting arms. But there's no time to reminisce as Nebula knows where her father was going after Infinity War. But having achieved his aim Thanos destroyed all the stones.
And with no way to bring back the 50% of the population destroyed, five years later our superheroes have found either domestic bliss, as in Pepper and Tony, Chris Evans's Steve Rogers is running grief counselling sessions, Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow and Don Cheadle's War Machine are running the depleted office and well Hawkeye is really really angry about losing all his family and in Japan taking out gangsters. Jeremy Renner never got an answer to his mustard or mayonnaise question.
Then one day an inquisitive rat presses a button in an old van and we get Paul Rudd's Ant-Man back. And he's a little surprised as to what the hell happened in the last 5 hours he spent inside the quantum realm. And given that time is altered in the quantum realm, maybe our superheroes could travel back to collect all the stones and click their own fingers to bring everyone back.
But Tony Stark isn't interested, he has his own family and doesn't want to change time. So maybe another brain might be able to create the quantum tunnel. A really big brain. Mark Ruffalo's Hulk has embraced his green side and is happy to take selfies with kids. And while I read of the year long training and diet that Scarlett Johansson followed for the back-to-back filming of both Infinity War and Endgame, well Chris Hemsworth's Thor has really let it all hang out. He got it easy this year. Nice to see Taika Waititi back as Korg. But having already done his bit with Thanos, Thor is quite happy drinking in the Asgardians' new homeland.
And yet Tony Stark cannot quite stop thinking about a trip Back to the Future. And is even more amazed when his testing actually proves it is possible.
So that's six stones to find; Time, Mind, Space, Reality, Power and Soul, and only one chance for each of the remaining Avengers to find them, and return, with their limited vials of Hank Pym's serum. Not everyone will survive as they split up to find the stones. But what great stories they'll have to tell about their adventures in the past. Although someone has discovered what our superheroes are up to. And he's coming.
I've been following the Marvel Avengers films, and the Marvel Agents of Shield tv series for a long time now, and Endgame is a fitting climax. Cramming everyone from Marvel into the story line was no mean feat for the writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, but I think everyone made it, even with the blink and you maybe miss them scenes. But the You and Whose Army was mind blowing. Could Captain Marvel have done it all herself I wondered, maybe, but where's the fun in that, anyway she cannot turn back time, and the Avengers have always been a team. Even when they fell out and had civil wars.
With a rumoured budget of $400million the film was a hit the first weekend. Great fun and if you didn't enjoy it you don't have a pulse. Was it the final scene for Stan Lee though?