Since it's difficult to actually talk about the particulars of the latest "Avengers" without getting into the details of what it does well and not so well, I'll be spending a good chunk of this post talking about meta - what the movie means for the Marvel franchise and a bit about the wider cultural impact too. The spoiler post will go up in a day or two with more in-depth musings about all the plotty stuff.
However, first things first. I liked "Endgame" just fine. I liked that it served as a solid endpoint to several of the ongoing stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that it gave several of the actors a chance to do things they haven't really had a chance to do in these movies. There are too many characters, and some inevitably got the short end of the stick, but the ones the movie chose to focus on got their due. "Endgame" rewards the most ardent franchise fans, full of callbacks and in-jokes to nearly every other film in the MCU. It's a lot funnier than the advertising makes it look. On the other hand, it's also the most effective at melodrama, since this is one of the few times in the franchise where there are actual, meaningful stakes and consequences for the characters.
I'm not surprised that the response to "Endgame" has been so much more positive than "Infinity War," since "Endgame" has all the resolution and the payoff that "Infinity War" set up. As more than one critic has noted, the MCU movies really function as more of a serial these days than standalone films. "Endgame" can't be watched without the context provided by the other installments - it leans very heavily on previous character introductions, explanations of comic-book lore, and years of prior history. If you don't know how Thor's hammer operates, or who Hank Pym is, you should still be able to follow along, but not very well. The humor and the cameos in particular need some familiarity with the universe.
And if we do treat "Endgame" like only the latest episode in a serial, should we overlook how badly the MCU functions as a serial? So many of the most consequential relationships and events unfold offscreen entirely, the storytelling is often clunky and repetitive, and some of the best characters are never developed properly. I've sat through all the other MCU movies, and occasionally I still feel like I've missed important backstory somewhere. The sheer scale of the spectacle is very impressive, and the larger-than-life nature of the comic book narrative helps to smooth over some of the rough edges, but those rough edges are very apparent. Especially when you put all the installments up next to one another, there are so many opportunities that weren't taken, so many places where the creators played it too safe.
On the other hand, this style of serialized moviemaking is a new beast, or at least one we haven't seen in the popular consciousness in a couple of decades. Some of the bumpiness is only natural. The only comparable hybrid I can think of is the most recent series of "Game of Thrones," which began as a typical television series and has slowly been morphing into a grouping of connected event movies, which happened to premiere during "Endgame's" first weeks of theatrical release. With both of these franchises, you can see how the nature of their storytelling changed as their end goals did. "Game of Thrones" has given up more and more intimacy and verisimilitude as it has embraced bigger and bigger feats of spectacle.
As for "Endgame," it took the opposite approach, and reaped the benefits. This feels like the installment where the MCU finally decided to take full advantage of its long history, and use it for dramatic potential. Sure, there's plenty of mindless brawling if that's to your taste, but what distinguishes "Endgame" is that many of the characters feel more human here than they have in any other outing. They grapple with loss, with failure, with frustration, and all the other fallout of "Infinity War." They change in ways that are more fundamental than a costume upgrade or a new haircut. And for a few of them, their stories end, capping off not just one movie, but appearances stretching back all the way to the beginning. And room is provided, at last, for the emotional moments to match the spectacle.
Wherever the MCU goes from here, it'll be hard to top "Endgame." The amount of narrative momentum generated by over twenty sequential films, plus the novelty of the format, plus the cultural positioning of the superhero genre have all contributed to an instance of true event cinema. Whatever else can be said about it, there's no denying that it's one of a kind.
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