Film of the Week: Avengers: Endgame (Spoiler Free Review)

What do I say without giving spoilers away? Avengers: Endgame couldn’t be more of a satisfying conclusion to an epic storyline. 22 films starting with Iron Man in 2008, slowly building up to an epic ending. With other studios attempting to pursue their own cinematic universe, they’ve all went the wrong way about it, by rushing it, attempting to include more than what was necessary. MARVEL knew exactly what they were doing. Across three phases, their first big team up movie, Avengers Assemble was the sixth film in the franchise, whereas DC’s big team up movie was their second, and Universal’s Dark Universe included more characters than was necessary during their first film The Mummy. Marvel has dominated shared universe storytelling, purely because they played the long game. They allowed each character the thrive before teaming them up with someone else.

Marvel built up trust. They delivered the hype they knew would come with the bigger films, and Infinity War was no exception. Practically told from Thanos’ perspective, the Avengers lose on a monumental scale, and Endgame resumes having nothing. Five years has passed since the Thanos’ snap, and the world had not recovered. Everyone has lost someone and hope is only but a figment of the imagination.

But when that hope is comes flickering back, The Avengers kick back into action and they fight back with everything they have. Endgame’s time clocks in at 3 hours and 2 minutes. Most studios try and keep the runtime for their films as minimal as possible in order to have as many showings in the cinema throughout the day. With Endgame being 3 hours long and of course the obligatory 20-minutes of adverts and trailers, there can really only be three showings of the film per screen in one day, and not every cinema is going to give up every screen for Endgame as it wouldn’t be fair on the other films. This is why a good chunk of films that are released on DVD come with the director’s cut – a longer running film with various deleted scenes not shown in the cinema. But Disney has no need to worry.

Averngers: Endgame has already broken multiple records, and within a week grossed over £1billion – that’s absolutely staggering. One of the reasons Endgame is as successful as it is, is because of its runtime. Endgame has so much it needs to include. Even at an unusual 3 hour running time, every scene from beginning to end was absolutely necessary. Every moment was crucial in telling not only the final chapter of phase 3, but also the conclusion to the Infinity Stones story arc. It stands to reason there are deleted scenes on the cutting room floor, and if they do release a director’s cut of the film, I would absolutely watch that without hesitation.

When watching it at the cinema, it didn’t feel like 3 hours. Time went by so quickly, I genuinely felt it was earlier in the day than what my watch told me after the credits rolled – and yes, despite my knowledge of the film not having an end credit’s scene (because after seeing the film it wasn’t necessary to have one, but it does have a small Easter egg right at the very end in the form of a familiar soundbite which was quite nostalgic to say the least) I still sat to the very end until the final credit rolled. Why? The reason why they include end credit scenes is actually not to tease up-incoming films, but instead to allow everyone who worked on the film a chance to be noticed and respected – an honourable gesture. I sat through the credits to continue that gesture. Everyone who worked on Endgame most probably have worked on other Marvel films, and so of course they must be respected for the hard work they went into making the cinematic universe what it is today. I do wonder if Spider-Man: Far From Home will have an end credit’s scene, since it is the beginning of phrase 4, post infinity stones story.

Avengers: Endgame is a satisfying masterpiece.

My next post, on Friday will be my spoiler review, so read at your own risk because there will be some heavy hitters throughout.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)