So I was planning on holding off of watching this for a while to avoid the early crowds but there’s way too much spoilery information floating around the Internet to make that feasible. Fortunately there are so many screenings that it wasn’t overly crowded. At the end of it, in a nutshell, this is indeed a near perfect culmination of all that has gone into the MCU and fully justifies every moment of its epic length.
Responding to Nick Fury’s transponder signal, Carol Danvers rescues Tony Stark and Nebula and joins the surviving Avengers in hunting down Thanos. They easily defeat the Titan but discover that he has already destroyed the Infinity Stones in order to ensure that his snap cannot be done. Thor angrily executes Thanos and five years pass. The heroes and the world try to move on until a random accident causes Scott Lang to be released from the quantum realm. As time passed differently for him while he was trapped, he theorizes that it should be possible to go back to before the Infinity Stones were destroyed to collect them and undo the snap. Separate teams are sent after the stones in three different time periods and naturally complications ensue. The most serious of these is when the past version of Thanos realizes what they are doing due to the brains of the past and future versions of Nebula being entangled with one another and intervenes.
As many others have pointed out, this work is first and foremost a fanservice to the over a decade worth of films that comprise the MCU. It is completely useless as a standalone film as it relies on the audience being familiar with all the characters, the story so far and even individual lines and jokes. I consider the Russo brothers to be best action directors in the MCU and they do a commendable job here at delivering a fantastic visual spectacle despite the fact that two opposing armies running towards one another is always silly. The script writers did an incredible job as well, using time travel to both do a sort of encore of the best moments of the previous films and give a satisfying resolution to the story arcs of Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. Time travel is always problematic in stories as once you start using it you wonder why it’s not used all the time. Having the characters discuss its implications by referencing pop culture is amusing but doesn’t close out all of the holes. Still the plot is solid enough that I’m inclined to give it a pass this time.
Probably the most admirable thing about this film is how it gives all of the original Avengers a satisfying resolution, prioritizing that above providing thrills to the audience. I love how practically the first third of the film is all about grappling with the consequences of the snap. It’s what gives all of the subsequent action their emotional weight and a mark of supremely confident directors who know what they are doing. One weakness is that Bruce Banner’s transformation into Professor Hulk happens off-screen and the writers completely dropped his romance with Natasha Romanoff. The arcs for the other characters are quite good fortunately and as others have pointed out, it’s odd how Thor has a better moment with his mother here than in any of his own films. One big surprise here is how much character development Nebula is given. There’s no way the writers could have predicted that when they first introduced her.
The newer characters receive less attention by necessity but even here it’s great how they added interesting interactions between them, such as Spider-Man hitching a ride with Valkyrie, or gave them moments to shine, such as Wanda Maximoff going one on one against Thanos. Carol Danvers is surprisingly inconsequential here even though she is portrayed as being by far the most powerful hero. The Doylist explanation is that this was filmed before her own solo movie so that they had to play it safe. But I also liked the Watsonian explanation that she has responsibilities beyond just Earth now. Hopefully she’ll later have more interactions with the other characters to flesh her out more. Finally even if they don’t do much more than just show their faces, it is so gratifying to see all of the characters appear in the same film. It’s just a small thing I suppose, but it’s a powerful reminder of how large the MCU has grown and how much it has achieved. It’s incredible that they managed to pull in all these famous stars for what amounts to short cameos each.
Again, judged by itself, this film isn’t all that great and it would be really embarrassing if it won major dramatic awards. But as the capstone of a decade-long superhero extravaganza, this is a unique cultural and media phenomenon that I doubt will ever be replicated. Of course there will be more MCU films, but everyone has limits and even Kevin Feige can’t work miracles forever. With the Russo brothers off now and the poor performance of newer directors like the ones who worked on Captain Marvel, it’s pretty hard to see the MCU ever matching such heights again. The good news is that now that the MCU has shown that it is possible, no doubt many, many other people will attempt to use a shared universe to tell ever more complex stories with a large cast of characters and perhaps some of these attempts will succeed. I certainly look forward to seeing them try.