This post is full of spoilers. So, if you haven’t watched Avengers: Endgame, do not proceed.
In the space of a decade, Marvel has spun a web of 21 movies, each served well on the platter of MCU. So Endgame feels like a 22nd episode, the season finale to the biggest epic the world has ever witnessed on screen.
Even though the film borrows from its predecessors and drives us through an alley of nostalgia, it maintains a steady pace while establishing the harrowing reality of what’s left behind after Infinity War.
But just because the world is in shambles, that doesn’t mean that old conflicts are forgotten.
Returning to Earth after 20 odd days in space, Tony tells Steve Rogers to stick it up his self-righteous ass.
It is a sheer testament to the fact that someone as stubborn and as ‘shallow’ as Tony Stark, is also a fragile human and that fragility is what makes us believe in the loss he has suffered.
After all, he wanted to have a shield over the planet, protecting it from all alien forces and it makes you wonder what you would have chosen between peace and freedom if you knew the circumstances the latter offered.
Easily the best actor on the set, Robert Downey Jr. makes you feel the pit in his stomach, the ache of failure; his futile attempt to stop Thanos without Captain America by his side.
As someone, whose work has been defined by Iron Man in the last decade, this film also finds a way to express Downey’s true potential as an actor and sets him free in the process.
Captain America, on the other hand, with his ever undying optimism, tries to recover.
But he can’t move on, can he? He’s God’s righteous man.
Steve Rogers lived his entire life, fighting. The sole purpose of his existence was to fight in a war.
Endgame lets him have his final war, to do what destiny demanded of him and then lets him write the last chapter of his own life.
After all, all he really wanted was a dance.
Thor, on the other hand, went for the head and moved on.
His entire life, he has been fighting to be worthy, to be worthy of being a king, a God.
And after failing for the first time in his long celestial life, he has given up. Because it didn’t matter anymore.
But the only time he failed, he lost all of his family, most of his friends died and there was no Asgard for him to rule.
The completion of Endgame releases him to go on adventures of his own, all around the universe.
But let’s get back to the story.
When Steve witnesses whales in the Hudson, you know that Thanos’ plan to ‘save the universe’ had actually worked .
But it won’t remain so, because those who lived in the world before the snap could never forget. They remembered what it was to be whole.
And those who could not move on, would put everything on the line to take all of it back.
If Infinity War was an accumulation of too many characters with ever-building stories based the same formula, cashing in millions through an ever-expanding universe, the snap was Thanos’ way of bringing everyone back to where we started, the purity of what we have at our roots.
But just like the rest of us, the OG Avengers also wanted it back, all of it, for better or worse.
That’s what makes Avengers: Endgame a tribute to the fans, a love letter, a song of gratitude for sticking with the MCU through thick and thin.
Anthony and Joe Russo give us everything. So even when most of the movie moves at a steady pace, we get what we have always desired.
Steve seeing Peggy, Tony meeting his father and knowing the love he had for him, Thor getting to tell his mother how much he loved her and Nebula telling Gamora that they will be fine.
But when it comes to the time of epic battles, the movie doesn’t just shift gears gradually, it jumps right into it.
No wonder it’s sold record-breaking tickets. And if you have watched the film, you know the last hour felt like you were in a stadium and Messi scored a 93rd-minute free kick to win the Champions League.
Part of the journey is the end.
-Tony Stark