Screenshot: Marvel
The biggest movie of the modern era, Avengers: Endgame, made $357 million in the U.S. in its opening weekend, the most of any film in history, besides the previous Avengers: Infinity War and that one Star War. But what is this sequel like in stupid-expensive 4DX ($30 per ticket), with all the elements—water, wind… well, some of the elements—coming at you live in a theater in various dimensions? On Thursday night, 10 members of the Jezebel staff—many of whom had no idea what an Avenger does and had never experienced 4DX, which is essentially a low-level 3D amusement park ride—went to see Endgame, the final film in this Marvel Cinematic Universe box-set. Here is our story. Spoilers ahead.
The Plot
The surviving Avengers want to un-disappear half the living creatures Thanos made disappear in Infinity War, so they need to find and defeat Thanos again. They do, but then they have to do it again, which means they’ve encountered this beautiful maniac in deathly fashion thrice and killed him twice by the end of the Avengers franchise, sacrificing lots of people along the way. A large chunk of Endgame’s first half is devoted to exposition to catch people up post-Infinity War and maybe initiate those who’d never seen parts of the individual Marvel components—meaning most of the Jezebel viewing crew. Questions like “What does Ant-Man do?” (He shrinks!) and “Why is Scarlett Johansson so sad?” (Her buddies are gone, and she’s the boss now) are easily answered. Others are not. Like, time travel.
Time travel was the only plot device that would have made the sequence of events from Infinity War to Endgame make sense. The logistics are actually impossible to understand, which helps the writers get away with implausible storylines. (Is there a lost chapter of Captain America miraculously replacing all the Infinity Stones at the end at precisely the right time?) The survivors couldn’t have saved the world without each Avenger’s grief fueling their desire to fix everything. They needed Ant-Man and Iron Man to confuse the audience with quantum talk and for Scarlett Johansson to be so sad and empathetic for Hawkeye that she sacrifices herself for a stone. This was my second time seeing Avengers: Endgame and my third 4DX viewing, which I feel like is next to godliness in terms of a theater experience. Infinity War had a tighter story and more of Thanos’s dark existential quotes. The main idea here is that teamwork does make the dream work and makes Thanos dead-dead. —Clover Hope
I especially liked the raccoon.
The Acting/Performances
For the first hour of the movie, Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) were virtually indistinguishable, despite being two separate men endowed with the wildly different powers of shrinking and impersonating metal, respectively. But Avengers: Infinity War is a film filled with handsome white men, who go about their handsome-ing with ease—a delightful setup, probably, for those of us not stricken with mild face-blindness.
Once identified, Downey gives a powerful performance of a man thoroughly gutted having made a mistake at work, with lots of squinting and penetrating staring. It’s impossible to say whether my nausea was empathy induced by Downey’s watery tears, or the gentle vibration of the seats, which swayed backwards in cadence to the emotional climax of each monologue.
Nonetheless! Everyone did a great job of fulfilling their respective roles: Captain America’s chin dimple seemed extra chiseled, and Scarlett Johansson did her most serious Elizabeth Holmes voice. Mark Ruffalo—an improbable casting!—played the Hulk as a surfer type, who’d probably popped an edible recently, a direction I fully endorse. And though Thor’s beer belly and slack greasy locks did most of the work of channeling grief for Chris Hemsworth, the disconnect was riveting.
I especially liked the raccoon. —Alexis Sobel Fitts
The Villain (Thanos)
Going into this film with absolutely zero understanding of 99 percent of the characters (I have seen Black Panther and the first Iron Man, and that’s all I was going on), I didn’t know what to expect from Thanos. I knew he was a bad man, and a particularly buff bad man. I knew he was purple, for some reason, and maybe because of this, he is perhaps a descendant of the Kool-Aid man sans the glass pitcher, and frankly given how much I was thrown around during our 4DX screening and pounded on the back by our chairs, I’d believe it. I don’t know if I find him “hot” as some fans do, because he looks like a bowling ball and probably feels like one to the touch. But what I didn’t know is how god damn lazy he is.
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