By Joshua H. Stulman

Avengers Endgame is a fitting completion to the third phase of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. The movie will be very rewarding for fans of the franchise film, while mixed for fans of Marvel’s comic history. The Avengers film is chock full of Easter eggs and cameos so much so that it is bound to have something fun for even the pickiest of fans. 

Fans of the film franchise will thoroughly enjoy many of the minor longstanding storylines that are tied up in the movie, especially regarding Captain America and Iron Man, as well the continued stories of the main cast. 

The movie itself departs almost entirely from the Infinity War storyline written by Jim Starlin in the 1990’s. Many of the main characters from the original comics are not present including Silver Sufer, most of Starlin’s intergalactic heroes as well as Adam Warlock, the original keeper of the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos’s counterparts are similarly excluded including Mephisto and his main motivation, his love for the literal figure of Death. Instead, the film includes many visual cues and scenes from numerous different popular Marvel stories seemingly mashed together. These include Secret War (Hulk lifting a mountain), Secret Invasion (Hawkeye as Ronin), Captain America: Reborn (Captain America time travel), Secret Empire (Captain America as Hydra Agent) and more. The scenes really have no business being in the movie. These moments are included for people who are reading modern comics and have a minor working knowledge of the history of Marvel. 

In general, the story plot depends heavily on time travel. While the characters discuss the fault in cinema pop fiction time travel, the movie itself offers a worse explanation of how their time travel works. It completely makes no sense and is apparent to anyone that gives more than a second thought to it. You will enjoy it more if you turn off your brain and just accept the explanation. 

The movie excels at highlighting more of the emotional relationships between the characters and their motivations. This provides a real even balance between the quiet scenes and the action packed battles. The length of the movie at over 3 hours was appropriate and helped allow enough time to build the character rich story. The movie held my interest the entire time and was not bothered by its length. It makes me wonder what could be done with these movies if Marvel spent more time developing their character story instead of rushing to the comedic or action sequences as is done in other Marvel films.

Many of the major Hollywood actors returned to reprise cameo roles. These included Robert Redford, Annett Benning, Michael Douglas, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Natalie Portman reprises her role as Thor love interest Jane Foster, but it seems like this footage may be unused stock from Thor: The Dark World. Portman for some reason has previously been unsupportive of her work in the Marvel movies.

Thanos comic  creator, Jim Starlin has a cameo scene as well as Stan Lee. Stan Lee’s cameo comes during a 1970’s scene and his clothes actually refer to a real life comic convention photo from that time. 

Many of the minor Marvel characters return for cameos. Among these include Hydra characters like Crossbones and Jasper Sitwell as well as Howard Stark, Agent Carter, Jarvis and General Ross. Unfortunately none the Marvel TV characters make an appearance from either ABC or Netflix, which was expected but disappointing. 

One thing that bothers me is Marvel’s continued attitude of self deprecating humor towards Thor and Captain America. Marvel seems to have a serious problem with Patriotism and Captain America. Both Marvel and actor Chris Evans seem insistent on portraying Captain America as corny, out of touch, or embarased to be the symbol of America. The continued comedic emphasis regarding Thor will have certainly upset Jack Kirby’s stoic depiction and seems to be Marvels approach in these films. 

These moments will be enjoyable to average movie watchers and newer fans, but can be offensive for comic historians. 

Overall, Avengers Endgame will be enjoyable to most, and embodies much of what people enjoy and expect in Marvel movies, while mostly disregarding or purposely re-writing it’s comic book history in favor of a broad non-comic audience. 

Overall Film Grade: 8/10

Comic Accuracy: 4/10

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Joshua H. Stulman

Owner, BrooklynComicShop.com