I don’t know how Avengers: Endgame (Disney, 4.26) will unfold over its three-hour running time, but we all have a sneaking suspicion that the disintegrated will somehow reconstitute by the end. Right? Don’t we? If this doesn’t happen I’ll be amazed. As in genuinely impressed.
All I wanted from Avengers: Infinity War was to see Robert Downey‘s insufferably smug Tony Stark die and stay dead forever. But nope.
HE boilerplate: “You can’t trust a Marvel film to deliver death with any finality because Kevin Feige doesn’t respect death any more than comic-book creators respect it, which is not at all. Or woundings, for that matter. The MCU mostly regards death and serious physical injury as a tease, a plot toy, something to fiddle or fuck with until an apparently dead character comes back to life.”
From my 4.24.18 review of Avengers: Infinity War: “That fucker Feige stomped on my ass. Feige, the Russos, Thorax, Downey, Chris Evans…they don’t fight fair, and they don’t know when to quit. I felt bruised, broken. Between blows I looked at my watch at least three if not four or five times. I felt as it I was dying of cancer. The sixth time I looked at my watch I realized there was another half-hour to go. ‘God help me!’ I said out loud.
“I respected one thing about it, and that’s the ending. I won’t say what the ending does or what it amounts to, but a middle-aged woman who was sitting to my left and apparently loving every minute of Avengers: Infinity War said ‘what?’ when the film cut to black. I almost looked over and said out loud to her, ‘S’matter? You found that unsatisfying? You were looking for your typical Marvel third-act high and that wasn’t it?’
“I’m sorry but I can’t write a ‘review’ of this thing. All I can say for sure is that it felt like punishment, like being in a mosh pit. My opinion doesn’t matter anyway. It’s expected to make $225 million this weekend, and as far as I’m concerned it’s dogshit. Okay, not ‘dogshit’ exactly and not even ‘mindless’ — it deals reasonably smart cards — but if I ever sit through Avengers: Infinity War again it’ll be too soon.”
