Movie Review: Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Quick review: Lots of fun, but WAY too long.

***Spoilers ahead. You've been warned.***

Three hours. That's about an hour and a half too long for a movie for me. I'm so glad I didn't see this in a theater. I'm just going to note here, I don't like my movies to go more than 90 minutes any more. Even Aquaman was a tad too long for me, and I loved it. By contrast, this movie could have had a ton of "moments" cut from it and been just as good but more tolerable to watch. In my opinion. I'm sure other folks will completely disagree.

The movie starts in a very dark place, with the heroes having been defeated utterly by Thanos. The despair gets worse when they learn they cannot undo what's been done - Thanos made certain of that. So everyone attempts to get on with life, despite having lost literally half of every loved one in the universe. What impressed me was the way people didn't just move on and adjust. Everyone had PTSD and everyone was still suffering five years later. Even those who were most successful at moving on were still suffering. Which only makes sense. You don't lose half the population of the universe and just recover in the blink of an eye.

It was Scott who really brought it all home, though. He pops out of nowhere with a possible solution, and his sheer shock at everything that's happened makes for some interesting scenes. The bit with the kid on the bike was one of those strange moments that just worked.

The "gathering of the heroes" scenes could have been way shorter and still effective. There were a lot of moments when I just wanted to turn it off or hit fast forward. Most of the "Hulk selfie" thing could have been cut. It went on much too long. Same with the Thor scenes. Just too much.

Anyway, then there's the time travel. No matter what you do with time travel, something won't work. It's just the curse of working with paradoxes and such. And there's a massive "ug" moment in this movie when the past figures out the future and ... yeah, branching time streams. Whatever. I'd rather just not deal with it at all. In the end, that's what pulled this movie down for me. They have a massive paradox happening, and a snap of the fingers, and it's still a paradox but apparently only in a branching time stream and where does that leave Gamora? It's not like she could go back to her own time once both the quantum thingies were destroyed.

I did like the return of all the missing heroes. The portals opening made for an excellent moment. Having an army to go against Thanos' legions was nice to see.

In the end, we got a mostly fun movie with a lot of long boring moments and a massive battle scene. And an unholy mess of a paradox finish. It could have been better, but then it could have been much much worse.