Technical
assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 3.5
MTRCB rating: PG
CINEMA rating: V13
Three
weeks after Thanos (Brolin) snaps his finger and
disintegrates half of life, Captain Marvel (Larson) rescues Tony Starks
(Downey) and Nebula from outer space and reunites with the remaining avengers
on earth—Romanoff, Captain, Rocket, Patriot, Banner and Thor. Together find Thanos, hoping to retrieve the Infinity Stones and undo the destructions.
However, Thanos reveals he has destroyed the stones and
gets beheaded by a frustrated Thor. Five years hence, Scott Lang escapes the
quantum realm and convinces the Avengers to travel back in time and retrieve
the stones. They recruit Banner—who successfully merged his intelligent side with Hulk’s
body—and Thor—now an overweight alcoholic still reeling from his failure to
save humanity. Stark refuses to help as he is now a father of 5-year-old
Morgan. But after talking to his wife Pepper (Paltrow), he decides to perfect
the time travel technology and joins the team to retrieve the Infinity Stones
in various times before Thanos does.
This brings certain closures and requires painful sacrifices from our heroes.
Avengers:
Endgame completes the narrative arcs of the
22-movie long individual journeys of its characters. While we can take Endgame as a
standalone film, understanding it from 2008 Iron Man (and we are
almost sure most viewers saw the previous films) allows viewers to appreciate
the struggles and triumphs of its characters. And this is the greatest strength
of the moviethe slow unfolding of individual stories
tightly woven into the main conflict and the antagonist’s own arc (even Thanos is given a backstory). The other elements—the imaginative design,
the gripping action scenes, the impressive CGIs, the emotional score and the
seamless editing—are subservient to and supportive of the storyline, pushing it
forward, bathing it in drama and comedy as needed and underlining its message
with powerful punches in the soul. By the time fans watch Endgame, they would
have been so emotionally invested that each triumph (like when the disappeared
heroes return) is a celebration, each death is a heartbreak and each conclusion
is bittersweet.
Taking the
film as a whole, we can talk about sacrifice and selflessness. Natasha kept the
team together in the beginning and let herself go in the end to save humanity.
Starks, the conceited self-serving genius millionaire whom Cap said in the very
first Avenger can never sacrifice for others, ultimately did. The battlecry,
“Whatever it takes!” resonates real struggles ordinary people fight everyday. Thanos is
not the just the intergalactic Titan but a representation of people and
situations that oppress. Avengers showed that it is not the superpowers per se
that can defeat the oppressor but teamwork, selflessness and embracing one’s
higher purposes even if you can turn your back on it. Individually, we learn
from Captain America’s willingness to live an ordinary life instead
of remaining the superhero the world worships. We see how Peter Quill will
not give up on his one true love even if she does not recognise him. We see how
Thor grieved and became depressed because from successive failures to save Asgard from
Hela (in Ragnarok) and the
world from Thanos (in Infinity Wars) and
relinquished his throne to a person he felt deserved it more.—PMF
Avengers:
Endgame (2019)
DIRECTOR:
Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
CAST:
Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett
Johansson Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan,
Danai Gurira
Bradley
Cooper, Josh Brolin
SCREENPLAY
BY: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely,
BASED
ON: The Avengers by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby
PRODUCERS: Kevin Feige
GENRE:
Action, Adventure, Fantasy
MUSIC
BY: Alan Silvestri
EDITED
BY: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt
CINEMATOGRAPHY:
Trent Opaloch
PRODUCTION
COMPANY: Marvel Studios
DISTRIBUTED
BY: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
COUNTRIES:
United States
LANGUAGES:
English
RUNNING TIME: 3 hours
1 minute
