Sticking the Landing - Avengers: Endgame, Reviewed (Spoiler-free)

Let me begin by saying that I am truly committed to being spoiler-free in this review. And not just for big reveals and plot details; Avengers: Endgame is so full of delightful surprises and tiny servings of fan service that I hope everyone gets a chance to experience it the way I did. That doesn't mean you have to avoid all the trailers after the second one and the tv spots and clips and featurettes, but I did, and it was quite the experience. I mean, obviously, I loved it, so I suppose you could stop reading right now.

And maybe you might as well, because keeping that cone of silence intact makes reviewing the film pretty tough, I gotta say. So why don't I tell you, in the most general terms, what the film is like, and what I liked about it.

Avengers: Endgame is like saving all the capsules from a dozen Kinder Eggs and opening them all up onto the table. You've saved them for a while, but now it is all right there in front of you. It's not always coherent, mixing characters and settings and tones and such the way it does. There is a period of confusion where the puzzle pieces get mixed up with figurines and the parts from the toy cars with the immensely satisfying little flywheel in them, but when everything is sorted out, it is both immensely satisfying and enjoyable, even if you like one item more than the other.

The film is bookended by a tremendous amount of emotional content, and the second act has its fair share as well. Hearing starved, beaten, half-dead Tony Stark confess "I lost the kid," was heartbreaking. Yes, there is mortality in this film as well, some of it more surprising than others.

I had tears on my face several times over the three-hour runtime -some of sadness, some of sheer fannish joy, and many from laughter. There were four or five moments of unprompted applause from the packed house I saw it with, one in response to two words of dialogue.

Despite being the capstone of a 22-film multimedia blockbuster extravaganza, Endgame still feels like a gutsy and honest film throughout, peppered with both the humour and gravitas that the Russo brothers have imbued their MCU films with since The Winter Soldier.

I did not expect Mark Ruffalo's Hulk to be the funniest character of the first act, nor for the impact of The Snapture to affect title characters as profoundly as it does.

In a lot of ways, it is a movie about consequences. My biggest fear going in was that whatever plan arrived at to deal with Thanos' villainy would undo all of the past, Dallas season 9-style, and give Phase 4 a clean slate, and this did not come to pass. Like I said: ballsy.

Someone tomorrow is going to ask me about Endgame, and how it was, but not to spoil it, and here is what I will say. I will ask them their three favourite moments from the Marvel movies thus far, and after they tell me (and even if they don't), I will tell them, "get ready to revise that list, because all three of mine were in Endgame."

From the time of the first Avengers movie, I said it was impossible to tie together a shared cinematic universe this large, with this many stars and characters and plot points, but I've been delighted to have been proved wrong again and again. And now the Russo Brothers and studio head Kevin Feige have done it: wrapped up a ten-year, 22-movie epic in a way that feels honest and epic, and has been pleasing to old fanboys like me, and to others like my girls who didn't know who half these people were going into them.

They stuck the landing.

Bravo!