Endgame is the party that never stopped It never stopped

You have to give it to him marvel studios: He sure knew how to make his movies look like big events in their time. After the original Avengers Launched in 2012, almost every entry aimed to be bigger in some way, as if the entire company was obsessed with outdoing itself. I was looking for a greater thematic depth (often with mixed results, depending on the reward), but most of the time it would be a spectacle: how many more set pieces? Can explosions and happy character moments be put on screen so that you leave the theater with a smile on your face?

This ethos underlines Avengers: Endgame, the last chapter within infinity saga that started with the first iron Man movie. Originally released on April 26, 2019 game over was positioned as the movie to end all movies, and both were tasked with solving Thanos’ genocidal finger snap that closed Avengers: Infinity War the year before and be a swan song for the original Avengers themselves. If every Marvel movie before then was an event, this one was that, but also serving as a victory lap celebrating its own greatness as if it were going into retirement immediately afterwards.

Marvel was very aware of finals importance, if relaunching just to do more money than Avatar I didn’t give you any idea about that. When marketing wasn’t doing it nostalgia gamethat strangely stingy in what was actually a pretty simple time travel plot that some fans had discovered months earlier. (Likewise, before its debut trailer, Marvel maintained its secret subtitle for no reason.) Still, the studio knew that the journey here was as vital as the destination, and that people came to love The Avengers and everyone in their orbit. There’s something commendable about how it takes its time to outline what the surviving heroes did in the years after facing Thanos; ditto the space he gives the actors to play their characters still reeling from their first genuine L. That the entire second act is basically a “do you remember when?” with callbacks and cameos with some welcome responses is still effective, mainly because the actors know how to sell what happens on the screen.

The MCU has often been compared to television and game over is one of those examples. If we follow that analogy, then this was effectively a series finale for a prestigious program, one in which half would have benefited from, if not more breathing room, then from significant systemic and structural changes to the larger machinery. you Your favorite character’s turn? Do Hulk and Banner resolve their issues off-screen during the five-year time jump? The disconnect in the way the film approaches Hawkeye and of Thor Respective post-Snap breakdowns? Everything that has to do with how Natasha’s death Does it loom over the third act and then go virtually unnoticed in the final moments? Tell us in the comments below!

And yet… despite all that, finals the highs are still undeniably good. I won’t forget how the audience appeared in the theater when the heroes began to arrive outside the portals striking poses as Alan Silvestri’s music swelled. Captain America destroying Thanos’ shit with his shield and mjolnir is still going, and even smaller beats, like Nebula, which manages to bring an alternate version of Gamora from 2014 to her side or Thor Calling. The hammer hit just as hard as it did in 2019. The promise of the premise really delivers, as is the reward for an 11-year continuous investment? It’s just that the movie sometimes stands on shaky footing, given how erratic things have been. been for these characters from movie to movie.

Two months later Avengers: Endgame came out and conquered the world with a box office of 2,799 million dollars, Kevin Feige took the stage at the San Diego Comic-Con to promote what was next. Eternals, Shang-Chi, Blade, some mutated kids – he revealed it all, and Phase Four also serves as a starting point for the MCU shows coming to Disney+. And then, a funny thing happened called the Covid-19 pandemic, which paralyzed the entire world. The first time around, the MCU had to stop, and unfortunately it’s telling that it took a world-changing event for Marvel Studios to pump the brakes. Once things calmed down relatively in 2021, shows and movies started againand the end result has been a couple of uneven phases and a feeling of exhaustion that still pervades even with recent, well-regarded works like X-Men ’97 and Ms. Marvel.

Over the past two years, several chinks in Marvel’s armor have shown, from Nightmare VFX Crackle not to understand how television works and changing frequently release dates. It is like game over It was the seventh seal that relatively held things together, and now that it’s gone, things have become quite chaotic. Things will work themselves out over time. —of course they will, this is a branch of one of the largest companies on the planet, but all this speaks to you of how miraculous game over It was in retrospect. Even when it ends up being one of the best Avengers movies, when all is said and done, the tragedy is for a film so obsessed with time that it couldn’t (or didn’t allow) to give the audience the time to take a deep breath and gather themselves before plunging headlong into a new epic with new characters for people to fall in love with.

There probably won’t be a film of the same monumental scale or importance as Avengers: Endgame, from Marvel or anyone else. Maybe that’s a good thing; The sky-as-the-limit approach carried the study through the 2010s because there really wasn’t anything like it back then. (Or at least, not as consistently successful.) But those glory days are over, and maybe it’s time for a different kind of game, or maybe just something new players completely.

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