You’ve gotta hand it to Marvel Studios: it sure knew how to make its movies feel like big events back in the day. After the original Avengers dropped in 2012, nearly every entry aimed to be bigger in some way, like the entire enterprise was obsessed with topping itself. Sometimes this was in pursuit of greater thematic depth (often with mixed results, depending on the payoff), but more often than not, it’d be spectacle: how many more setpieces, explosions, and cheerworthy character moments can be put on screen so you leave the theater with a smile on your face?
This entire ethos underlines Avengers: Endgame, the final chapter within the Infinity Saga that started with the first Iron Man movie. Originally released on April 26, 2019, Endgame was positioned as the movie to end all movies, tasked with both resolving Thanos’ genocidal finger snap that closed out Avengers: Infinity War the prior year and being a swan song for the original Avengers themselves. If every Marvel film before then was an event, this was that, but also serving as a victory lap celebrating its own greatness like it was going to enter retirement immediately after.
Marvel was very self-aware of Endgame’s importance, if a re-release solely to make more money than Avatar didn’t clue you in on that.When the marketing wasn’t doing the nostalgia play, it weirdly stingy on what was actually a pretty simple time travel plot that some fans had figured out months prior. (Likewise, before its debut trailer, Marvel kept its subtitle under wraps for no reason.) Still, the studio knew the journey here was as vital as the destination, and that folks came to love the Avengers and everyone in their orbit. There’s something commendable about how it takes its time sketching out what the surviving heroes did in the years after facing Thanos; ditto the space it gives the actors to play their characters as still shell-shocked from their first genuine L. That the entire second act is basically a “remember when?” highlight reel of callbacks and cameos with some welcome returns is still effective, mainly because the actors know how to sell what’s happening on screen.
The MCU has often been compared to TV, and Endgame is one such example. If we go with that analogy, then this was effectively a series finale for a prestige show, one where half of it would’ve benefitted from, if not more breathing room, then significant systemic, structural changes to the larger machinery. Which was your favorite character turn? Hulk and Banner resolving their issues offscreen during the five-year timeskip? The disconnect in how the movie approaches Hawkeye and Thor’s respective post-Snap breakdowns? Everything to do with how Natasha’s death hangs over the third act, then goes largely unremarked upon in the closing moments? Tell us in the comments below!
And yet… despite all that, Endgame’s highs remain undeniably good. I won’t forget how the audience popped off in the theater when heroes started pouring out of portals doing poses as Alan Silvestri’s music swelled. Captain America wrecking Thanos’ shit with his shield and Mjolnir still goes, and even smaller beats like Nebula getting to bring an alt-2014 version of Gamora over to her side or Thor calling the hammer back to him hit just as hard as they did back in 2019. The promise of the premise really comes through, as does the payoff for a continued 11-year investment. It’s just that the movie sometimes stands on shaky foundation, given how erratic things have been for these characters from film to film.
Two months after Avengers: Endgame came out and took over the world with a $2.799 million box office, Kevin Feige stood onstage at San Diego Comic-Con to hype what was next. Eternals, Shang-Chi, Blade, some mutated guys—he unveiled it all, with Phase Four also serving as the kickoff point for MCU shows to drop on Disney+. And then, a funny little thing by the name of the covid-19 pandemic happened, grounding the entire world to a halt. For the first time, the MCU had to stop, and it’s unfortunately telling that it took a world-changing event for Marvel Studios to pump the brakes. Once things relatively settled down in 2021, shows and movies started up again, and the end result has been a pair of uneven Phases and a feeling of burnout that still permeates even with recent well-regarded works like X-Men ‘97 and Ms. Marvel.
Within the past two years, various cracks have shown in Marvel’s armor, from nightmare VFX crunch to not understanding how TV works and frequently shifting release dates. It’s like Endgame was the seventh seal relatively holding things down, and now that it’s gone, things have gotten fairly chaotic. Things’ll work themselves out eventually—of course they will, this is an arm of one of the biggest companies in the planet—but all of this does speak to how much of a miracle Endgame was in hindsight. Even as it ends up one of the better Avengers movies when all’s said and done, the tragedy is for a movie so obsessed with time, it was unable (or unallowed) to give the audience time to take a deep breath and gather themselves before diving headfirst into a new epic featuring new characters for people to fall in love with.
There probably won’t be a movie of the same monumental scale or importance as Avengers: Endgame, from either Marvel or anyone else. Maybe that’s a good thing; the sky’s the limit approach got the studio through the 2010s because there was truly nothing like it back then. (Or at least, not as consistently successful.) But those glory days are over now, and it may be time for a different type of game—or maybe just some new players entirely.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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