By Sophia Chen ‘20, Arts and Entertainment Editor

*This review contains spoilers*

Avengers: Endgame is one of the biggest films ever created, with a whopping ten years of storytelling condensed into a three-hour movie. The directors are Anthony and Joe Russo, commonly referred to as the Russo Brothers. The script is written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Of all the Marvel movies, I would say that Avengers: Endgame is one of my favorites. If you have even just a passing interest in superhero, sci-fi, or fantasy films, then there is absolutely no excuse for not seeing this film.

Endgame is a continuation of the events from Avengers: Infinity War, which ended with the Avengers divided and defeated. In Infinity War, Thanos seized the day and harnessed the power of the Infinity Stones to eliminate half of all of the life in the universe. In Infinity War, we lost key players in the war: Spider Man, Dr. Strange, Star Lord, and Black Panther, along with half of the population in the universe. I thought this led to a good movie because I was able to learn more about the remaining Avengers members and their backstory. While the other Marvel movies were action movies, I enjoyed this movie because it developed the characters and showed their human side.

In the first 20 minutes of the film, Thanos is found by the remaining Avengers and is quickly decapitated by Thor after the Avengers discover that Thanos destroyed the infinity stones. There is a time skip and we eventually see a rat bring back Scott Lang from the Microverse (aka the Quantum Realm), who was trapped there at the end of Ant Man and the Wasp. Scott makes his way to Avengers headquarters, where the Avengers have been sulking for the first hour or so of the movie. I thought the first part of the movie was quite slow, but I think it worked well in recapping the destruction caused by Thanos in Infinity War.

The movie then goes into its second act where it introduces the concept of time travel as the only solution to return the people that disappeared. Getting into some conflict along the way, the team of heroes divides itself into six groups to retrieve the stones. This allows the characters of the individual superhero to further develop and for the audience to reminisce about prior Avengers movies. We revisit a lot of fun locales such as Asgard and events such as the Battle of New York.  There are also parallels to prior movies as Black Widow ends up sacrificing herself to retrieve the soul stone just as Gamora was sacrificed by her father Thanos in Infinity War. While this moment was intended to carry more emotional weight, I didn’t appreciate that Black Widow’s sacrifice seemed to be brushed aside by the departure of Tony Stark and Captain America at the end of the movie. I was surprised by how the producers made time travel make sense in the context of the movie. I thought it was an interesting take on how time travel works. There are plenty of plot holes, for example, Steve Rogers going back in time and staying in the 1940s, and Loki escaping with the space stone. Given that there are more movies coming along, these plot holes will hopefully be resolved in later movies. I hope that time travel will allow this movie series to continue rather than ending here.

As a Marvel fan, I thought this movie was everything I could have wished for and more. The action scenes were packed with amazing special effects, intense fights, and explosions. But the best part of the movie was the extension beyond its action scenes, where it included some tender and emotional moments (albeit slightly corny) that provided insight into the authentic human side of the superheroes.

While the first two hours of the movie are a bit slow, the entire film delivers a lot of payoff with emotion and action. The final action scene, which ran over half an hour, was thrilling and very well crafted with the all of the superheroes uniting to fight against Thanos and his army. When I saw the movie, the whole movie theatre cheered as all of the characters came back to life and fought in an epic final battle. One moment from the fight scene that the movie theatre appreciated was the image of all of the female superheroes standing in a line preparing for battle. Some could say that it was a representation of girl power. However, in order to follow through with this feeling of female power, there needs to be more representation of female superheroes in movies. The female scene felt forced and unnatural, since the female superheroes highlighted in the scene were sidelined for the other parts of the movie. The most powerful superhero woman is Captain Marvel, and she comes in at the end to save the day. This is overall a fun movie with an exciting climax — the heroic battle at the end of the film.  The final battle provided a great wrap-up to the last few decades of Marvel movies. I definitely recommend this movie to all NA students whether or not they are Marvel fans.