Don’t worry – there aren’t any serious spoilers about Avengers: Endgame, but be cautious of mild plot descriptions.
The first wave of reviews are rolling in before Friday’s release of Avengers: Endgame, and by the looks of it, the finale to the 11-year-long franchise is a heart-pumping rollercoaster ride of excitement and emotions! But truthfully, could we expect anything less of the last act made to tie together the culmination of (21) Marvel movies that come before it?
We’re not going to dish out any serious spoilers – but if you just can’t bear the thought of having to wait until April 26, we’ve got you covered. Check out the first batch of early Endgame writeups on the three-hour flick below.
Brian Truitt, USA Today
“‘Endgame’ is tragic and uplifting, rousing and grounding, while leaving minds racing and making everybody cry (even the toughest guys). Marvel movies have managed to find endearing, crowd-pleasing magic amid these fun and flawed comic-book characters in the past decade, and ‘Endgame’ pays off all that goodwill by letting them do what they do best on the biggest stage yet.”
A.O. Scott, The New York Times
“‘Endgame’ is a monument to adequacy, a fitting capstone to an enterprise that figured out how to be good enough for enough people enough of the time. Not that it’s really over, of course: Disney and Marvel are still working out new wrinkles in the time-money continuum. But the Russos do provide the sense of an ending, a chance to appreciate what has been done before the timelines reset and we all get back to work. The story, which involves time travel, allows for some greatest-hits nostalgic flourishes, and the denouement is like the encore at the big concert when all the musicians come out and link arms and sing something like ‘Will the Circle Be Unbroken.’ You didn’t think it would get to you, but it does.”
Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
“Watching Endgame, with its ribbons of poignancy and genuine artfulness, one gets the feeling that any series can get good when it’s had 22 chances to practice. That long runway doesn’t make you appreciate the finery any less, though; in a maybe perverse way, the Avengers, their allies, and their enemies have earned our respect.”
Michael O’Sullivan, The Washington Post
“If ‘Infinity War’ was about failure, ‘Endgame’ is, ironically, all about acceptance and moving on. After 11 long years, the Infinity Saga is finally, fulfillingly over. There is no post-credit scene. But oh, what a going-away party these old friends have thrown for themselves.”
Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter
“There is no question that ‘Avengers: Endgame’ benefits considerably from the prioritizing of humor and character detailing on the parts of writers Markus and McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo, something most of the actors clearly picked up on and ran with. But spectacle still rules in these fanciful epics, which have pre-primed viewers eating right out of the filmmakers’ hands. The best of the Marvel films — and the Avengers pics are certainly among them — go the extra mile to genuinely engage the audience and not just pander to it. Cutesiness and formula prevail at times, to be sure, but this team knows quite well how to stir the pot. And to turn it into more gold.”
David Sims, The Atlantic
“Digging into the details of Endgame’s plot is a very tricky proposition. If you’re invested in the Marvel world, it’s best to go in knowing next to nothing at all. One should head to the theater armed just with the memory of what happened in Infinity War, as well as perhaps the briefest of refreshers on the details of the Infinity Stones. It’s not giving anything away to say that the film mostly focuses on the original team that headlined the first Avengers movie, all of whom conveniently survived Thanos’s magic snap.”
Russ Fischer, Birth Movies Death
“‘Endgame’ is an entire movie of payoffs. It plays off and completes thoughts begun in ‘Age of Ultron’ and ‘Civil War’, and even in comics. Conventional wisdom says that a sequel should be able to stand on its own. For the past decade, Marvel has worked to make that true, to whatever degree is possible in a series of more than 20 interconnected films. That changes with ‘Endgame’, which has no ambition to stand on its own, and no need to. This ‘Avengers’ finale is an event as much as a movie.
Kaila Hale-Stern, The Mary Sue
“Opinions vary, and I predict that the great majority of people are going to enthusiastically and unequivocally enjoy ‘Endgame.’ That appears to be the consensus critical reaction on social media as I write this. They’re not wrong. Most of my own issues are disagreements with how the movie deals with certain characters, especially who it chooses to anoint with attention. Those are my tastes and my favorites reflected back at me; you may not care about these choices at all.”
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[Featured photos courtesy of Marvel Studios]