Satisfaction is a complicated concept in Marvel Land. On the one hand, every morsel of pre-release information is obsessively poured over in feverish anticipation. But by the time the movie is coming out, a sudden hush comes over die-hard fans who, to avoid spoilers, have abandoned their phones, detached from the grid and found a quiet ditch to lay in until the coast is clear and the multiplex is open. It’s an anguished dance between wanting to know everything and nothing, at once. And it never ceases. No Marvel ending (usually) lasts past the credits.
Those fans won’t read this review, but “Avengers: Endgame” will, I suspect, offer them gratification and maybe a welcome moment of respite. “Endgame” not only answers the cliffhanger of its predecessor – that puny $300 million 156-minute “appetizer” better known as “Infinity War” – but ties together the entire 22-film arc of the Marvel “cinematic universe,” begun with 2008’s “Iron Man.”
This image released by Disney shows Robert Downey Jr. in a scene from “Avengers: Endgame.” (Disney/Marvel Studios via AP)Generous in humor, spirit and sentimentality, Anthony and Joe Russo’s “Endgame” is a surprisingly full feast of blockbuster-making that, through some time-traveling magic, looks back nostalgically at Marvel’s decade of world domination. This is the Marvel machine working at high gear, in full control of its myth-making powers and uncovering more emotion in its fictional cosmos than ever before.
It was Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark (Iron Man) who kicked things off for the MCU, and it’s him who opens “Endgame” and most often takes center stage. Providing even the most basic of plot points in “Endgame” is a fool’s errand, but it’s fair to say that it takes place some time after the rapture caused by the megalomaniac boulder Thanos (Josh Brolin). Having obtained all six of the “infinity stones,” he wiped away 50 percent of Earth’s creatures (and superheroes) at the end of “Infinity War” with the snap of his fingers.
Rather than bask in the extra parking spaces and uncrowded check-out aisles, the survivors have spent the ensuing time in a prolonged state of mourning. The remaining superheroes are also reeling, ashamed of their defeat. One has turned angry and vengeful, another has grown a beer belly. As nauseating as the aura of momentousness around “Endgame” has been for some, the movie – while certainly not lacking in ominous solemnity – is frequently funny, as the Russos, working from a script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, arrange their heroes in fresh pairings and unlikely contexts.