Some movie series — The Terminator and The Matric movies are two examples — lose the plot or run out of puff. Not so for the likes of Marvel’s Avengers. Too much anticipation can also ruin a movie but for the much-awaited Avengers: Endgame this likewise wasn’t the case.
The 182-minute mega block buster follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War managed to wow the pants off the majority of fans and reviewers alike.
Those superheroes left standing from Infinity War are back looking for ways, against near impossible odds laid out earlier by Dr. Strange, to turn the clock back to save the 50 percent of living beings already turned to dust by Thanos and his ‘snap’.
Given this movie has raised the bar, where ever Marvel Studios goes from here with a new team of Avengers will be a hard act to follow. Read a sample of Avengers: Endgame reviews below.
JUDGEMENT
“It’s easy to forget the risks Marvel took with their MCU casting, in particular with comeback kid Downey Jr and the then-unknown Chrises of Hemsworth and Evans. They have repaid Marvel’s benevolence in spades, and the genius of those selections has always been evident, but here it is taken to the next level. Along with Johansson, Renner and Ruffalo, they all give their best MCU performances to date, as if everything has been building to this (which it has in many ways). Their perfectness for the roles has consistently been evident over the past decade, but they all seem to be going above and beyond here.” Matt Neal, ABC Radio
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“While people’s superhero cynicism and exhaustion is well earned, this film has risen above the immensity of its marketing and the ubiquity of the genre. It has placed itself and the whole unwieldy series alongside Tolkien’s Rings trilogy and the original Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Captain America comics, as a fantastical and essential response to and reprocessing of global tragedy. Yes, it’s all too much, but it is also exactly what we need.” Oliver Jones, Observer
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“Writing this review is challenging; the movie is 3:01 long, and packed with tons of things that carry spoiler potential. I almost just spoiled Thor’s new fun character twist, but it’s already been talked about a lot. The other twist that’s been talked about and available for public consumption is the fact that Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), since we saw him last, appears to have gone on a New Warrior Training Adventure and now refuses to hide, repress, and deny his shadow (his giant green alter ego), and has instead embraced it. The hilarious result is a cardigan-and-glasses-wearing, brainiac Hulk, who takes selfies with kiddie fans and is happy and chill.” Mark Jackson, Epoch Times
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“This is how it ends. Not with a whimper, but with a bang. Several bangs actually. But mostly in the second half, or at least after the 80-minute mark, which is where this defiant and alarmingly confident superhero epic (it’s more than three hours long) finally begins to play the blockbuster game.” Kevin Maher, The Times
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“Adults no longer outgrow comic books. Hollywood prefers that they hang on to the adolescent illusion of carefree, escapist pleasure by pretending that the form’s juvenile cynicism is a sign of sophistication — replacing the traditional sources of imaginative thinking. The cultural monopoly represented by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in its latest release, Avengers: Endgame, depends on geeked-up viewers telling themselves that they are having a major cultural experience.”Armond White, National Review
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“Respect is due to the Russos and their many collaborators for bringing off this near-impossible engineering feat. Given all the characters and storylines that have to be serviced, the movie is lighter and more shapely than it has any right to be, with the pacing problems that plagued Joss Whedon’s similarly epic Avengers: Age of Ultron largely resolved.” Jake Wilson, The Age
See the trailer here if you already haven’t: