My Thoughts on Avengers: Endgame (No Spoilers!)

Usually, I'm the last one to see any given MCU film — mostly because I insist on waiting until it comes out on DVD and I can get it at the library. But, having more or less caught up on the MCU for once in my life, and having found a theater with $5 tickets on Tuesdays, I decided to make an exception for once and go see Endgame in theaters. And oh stars was it worth it!

Endgame is best watched unspoiled (or at least minimally spoiled), so I'm going to do my best to keep this post spoiler-free. That said, I have a lot of thoughts which require giving spoilers, so I wrote up second post on my other blog, where I can keep the content behind a password. The password is yes_spoilers; have fun. Please keep any spoilery comments over there as well, or at least mark them if you post them in the comments of this post. Thanks!

My Non-Spoilery Endgame Thoughts

1. First up, that was way better than Infinity War. Anyone who read my Doings! post last week or who's friends with me on Facebook or Letterboxd knows that I was not crazy about Infinity War; it suffered from too many characters and too many characters making stupid decisions and also too much Thanos being melodramatic. Endgame suffered from none of these problems, and most of the people were actually, like . . . reasonably sensible? And communicated semi-well? And Thanos actually acted like an interesting villain? So that was nice. The beginning dragged a bit, but overall, it was good.
2. It did not murder my heart as badly as I thought it would. Not that most movies hurt that much; I tend to get over any case of movie-related feels much faster than most fangirls do. (I'm pretty sure it's because I then go and fill myself up with other stories that give me new feels . . . and also I'm an ISTP.) But I kind of thought Endgame was going to hurt a lot more than it did. That's not to say that it doesn't have sad or touching moments or that those moments aren't handled well; it does, and they are. But it does mean that the sadness was balanced out by other emotions.
3. It does a good job of wrapping up the character arcs for most of the original Avengers. I don't think this is actually a spoiler; the entire internet knows that this is the end of an era, that certain actors aren't signed on for more films, so on. And I think that it's a good ending or wrap-up point for most of the original Avengers — two in particular — but there were others who I'm not so happy about. I'll say outright that I don't think this movie treated Thor as well as it could have or should have. And there's another Avenger — I won't say who, because spoilers — whose arc I'm kind of happy with and kind of not happy with and I don't know what to do with it.
4. The ladies of Marvel sometimes got the short end of the stick here; I'll be honest. But Captain Marvel and Black Widow (the two females with the most screentime) are both pretty fabulous, and almost all the major Marvel women get their moments of awesome in the climax. There were two in particular that made me almost fistpump in the theater, but . . . those are spoilers. Surprise, surprise.
5. Speaking of which, the final battle? STORMING EPIC. Like, Lord of the Rings-level epic, and that's not something I typically say about superhero movies. I could probably make a whole post just out of my favorite parts of that battle. And the resolution to the battle was just . . . I don't even know the right word. It was really satisfying and fitting and it worked, ok? It made sense.

So, yeah. That's about as much as I can say without giving away spoilers (remember: check out my spoiler post for those!). All in all: definitely worth watching in theaters, even if you're not usually a theater person . . .  but don't go if you haven't seen at least a good chunk of the previous Marvel movies. It won't be as meaningful.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write up that spoiler post I mentioned . . . and look up what other movies are releasing this summer that I might want to see in theaters now that I've realized that going by yourself can be pretty storming fun. (I'm almost certainly going to see Spider-Man: Far From Home, assuming I can get ahold of Homecoming before then. It'll be great.) But what about you? What did you think of Endgame (remember, mark spoilers or put them in the other post's comments!)? Do you have any recommendations for movies I should see this summer?

Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)