Disappointingly Mediocre

Rating: Null/10 (24 April 2019)

I want to begin by saying that had this been a standalone movie I would have probably given it a 4 or 5, but for this particular movie, the movie of the decade, the big conclusion everything was leading up to, mediocre-ness is worse than complete failure. We were promised a masterpiece and we received something that what so-so at best.
I'll break down what I think went wrong, so spoilers ahead:
The biggest issue with this movie is the ever-paradoxical use of time travel. Unless you are making a silly comedy like "Back to the Future" it always messes with continuity and no matter how well you try to explain that the canon reality does not just collapse under the paradox, it is always going to feel like the lazy way out, and so it did in this one. Steve deciding to go rogue back to the 40s, thus ignoring all the character development he went through and irreparably messing with every timeline is not exactly the extremely satisfying closure we were promised in interviews with directors and actors. Overall I suppose the expectations were just so high that nothing could have lived up to it, but with the amounts of money and the access to great creators Marvel has I really would have expected something else- something as creative and mind-blowing as they promised instead of the honestly mediocre at best time-travel flick we got. Messing with timelines and essentially de-canonizing large chunks of the MCU just was not what I was hoping for.
Another thing I had a problem with is that this movie was supposed to perfectly conclude every character's arc so far. We were promised a suitable ending of some journeys and at least a crucial point in everyone else's. Instead, Black Widow was killed without ever even allowing her to develop a character. Thor, who could have been the ideal king of Asgard was turned into a fatphobic joke by equating his chubbiness with sloppiness (personally, I liked his new look. Thor looked rather like a man who is strong from physical labour than planned workouts and diet plans, but the way they dressed him in dirty clothes, made him lazy and greasy is just so terrible), while the lessons he learned in Ragnarok and the sacrifices he made did not seem to have any effect at all; the loyalty he felt to his people completely disappeared. Iron Man was ripped of his peaceful retirement, where for the first time he was allowed to try to heal, just because someone had to die dramatically.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not bitter that they killed off beloved characters, in fact I understand that it had to happen, however I would have loved to see them take the characters' arcs into account. In my opinion, Steve should have died because he has no place in either the future or the past, and his mission is completed. Tony, on the other hand, should have lived because he finally made an effort to heal and overcome his trauma. I don't mean to suggest that one or another character should or should not have died, I only think I might have been able to accept the way things turned out if there was a reasonable plot leading up to it that made their death a logical conclusion. The Marvel movies are fictional and everyone who goes to watch them is very aware of the fact that there is a team of writers and creators who crafted everyone's arc and worked on it for a long time. I would have appreciated to watch the outcome reflect the amount of work and time I am sure many people put into this project.
Ultimately I have to admit that the messages we get to take away from this film are what really made me sad: People with trauma don't deserve to heal, people's actions and experiences have seemingly no consequences, and friendship and found family mean nothing against the ideal of a romantic relationship.
This is a very long movie and so there are many more things I could address, for example the "Hail Hydra" scene, Steve wielding Mjolnir, how similar this movie was to the last one, Loki's unexplained disappearance in the past timeline, the cheap attempt of making up for the lack of lgbt heroes by showing a mlm extra in one scene, the list goes on. But all those things seem somehow related to the major issues I addressed earlier. Perhaps the hype was too big, perhaps the team did get lazy and rested on the success of the franchise or perhaps it is just me expecting too much from a superhero movie.
Regardless, if you loved this movie, I see your point, it is in many ways what we were expecting, but what I was hoping for was something new, something revolutionary that would surprise and amaze me. Maybe in another ten or twenty years we will get that movie I thought this was going to be, but I am afraid that by then I will not be interested anymore.