Originally Posted by
jakeic
The movie was fine on it's own merits, considering it was 3 hours long it was no small feat to be entertaining to the point that you don't realize how long it is, but it really feels kind of weak as the final-ish chapter of a 21 film saga, which makes the film a disappointment. As a general rule I don't think movies that revolve around time travel, they tend to overflow with continuity problems and force characters to be willfully dumb at opportune moments so as to create tension, Endgame suffered from this. The issues that arose from the time travel, like why didn't they just go back to a different time that would have been easier or go back and get more Pym (Pim? I don't know) particles, weren't enough to break the movie from being enjoyable, that goes for the word vomit that they pass off as science as well.
There were some aspects that didn't play well in the movie, like it was a rat that freed Antman which lead to Thanos' ultimate defeat (which could have been clever if there was some line in one of the earlier movies from Thanos or one of his Lieutenants about rats not taking down Thanos or some such non sense) which made the entire story seem hokey. As well as Captain Marvel, she seemed really combative toward everyone for no reason. Her story doesn't really fit into the Avengers story, like wouldn't before half of everyone was lost be a better time to signal for her return? Also, how would she have been unaware of Thanos to begin with? Also, aren't there numerous times before Infinity War that an emergency arose that would have warranted her return? It just seems like that aspect of the story wasn't well handled at all.
What were much was a much larger issue than the more minor problems of the rat and Captain Marvel was the re-using ideas from Infinity War, like when Black Widow and Hawkeye are going to get the soul stone and they go through the sacrificing thing and we get six psychs before someone dies. It just felt so forced and uninteresting, I wasn't invested at all since what was going to happen was already known as this scenario had played out before. Another rehashed Infinity War scene was the final battle, where we get the good guys vs Thanos. It's cool to see the heroes in action, but why exactly did they win this time? If it was because Tony sacrificed himself, it's hardly the first time he's tried to sacrifice himself and obviously he should have just done that from the beginning when they were on Titan, otherwise why they won isn't really explained. Another issue with the film is the lack of stakes, we got a line about how Thanos was going to unmake everything instead of removing half of everyone, but it wasn't well introduced or baked into the story so it felt very hallow. Which leads us to Thanos himself, he is clearly meant to be powerful, yet in Endgame he doesn't inflict any lasting injury, the final battle is fought and Ironman is dead from using the Infinity stones but no one else is worse for wear for having fought Thanos. It made the entire final battle just a meaningless spectacle, as opposed to the battle they fought in Infinity War, where far more was lost and the survivors were left to make sense of it.
Endgame was fine by itself, it was a weaker Marvel movie, not as bad as Thor: Dark World, but certainly as the pinnacle of the MCU thus far it was a disappointing tootle rather than a finely crafted crescendo.