Review of the IMAX 3D film 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the franchise adapting the Marvel Comics to the silver screen. Marvel Comics always places its stories in a single fictional universe, and takes advantage of it to intertwine its stories and occasionally make all-star stories where every main character shows up – and now it's the turn for the films. Avengers: Endgame is the 22^nd MCU film and the 4^th Avengers film. This is the film that closes an era.

SPOILER ALERT. Revelations are told about Avengers: Infinity war.

At the end of Infinity war, Thanos managed to fulfill his objective of suppressing half of the population of the Universe with a snap of his fingers, including several main characters. Because of this, spectators' expectations about this film are obviously concentrated on the recovery of the missing half rather than the antics of the surviving half. Beyond the undesirable prospect of not having any more Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange, Spider-man and Black Panther films, there is reason to expect that: after Doctor Strange explored fourteen million possible futures to find one where they could win, he explained his surrendering of the Time Stone to Thanos as 'There was no other way'.

In the first minutes of Endgame, the surviving heroes manage to gather, locate Thanos and develop a counter-attack – only to find that the Infinity Stones are destroyed by Thanos to prevent anybody from undoing his fateful action. All hope is apparently lost, so the film moves on and five years pass by... until Scott Lang comes up with the idea of a time machine.

This is the only serious problem in the film. Now, time machines happen to exist in science-fiction... but time machines used to change history are considered dishonest, cheating plot devices. If you can go back in time and change history every time you are defeated, you are invincible – what's the point in that? The writers come up with a Back to the future II artifice: the protagonists can go to the past to retrieve something, but taking care not to change history as not to cause paradoxes. So, the idea is to borrow the six Infinity Stones from the past and use them to bring back the missing ones, then return them. How does that feel? I'll tell you: it felt predictable in Back to the future II, where the audience felt certain all the time that the previous time-line wouldn't suffer from paradoxical alterations, and feels predictable here. Except that it is even worse: trouble is found, and a lot of paradoxes arise in the way. Wait, was I complaining one moment ago about predictability and now am I complaining about unpredictability? Yes, of course. Being unpredictable at the expense of being paradoxical is worse. If paradoxes are allowed, why not to go straight to the beginning and just strangle baby Thanos on his cradle?  Granted, those paradoxes bring in the mother of all battles, which is probably what the audience is hoping for.

The direction from Anthony Russo & Joe Russo is good. The visual effects are brilliant and make for excellent set design, costumes and illumination, but the camera movements are somewhat limited. The music sets adequately the tone for the film.

As for the acting: Thanos is a brilliant villain. That has undoubtedly much to do with the voice interpretation from Josh Brolin, but also with the visual aspect – in spite of being a computer-generated graphic, Thanos' eyes and facial expressions seem convincingly human. As for the rest of the crew, Karen Gillan is highlighted. Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth deliver a brilliant comical performance, especially Hemsworth. Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson shine on the dramatic side.

As for the IMAX format: The credits show that the film is 'Filmed with IMAX cameras', and the image certainly shows high quality, but not the best quality I have seen on IMAX films.

As for the 3D format: The 3D is not real – not filmed with 3D cameras, but a conversion.  Its falsehood is noticeable, but still good enough to make it worthwhile to watch in 3D.

All in all, an excellent film. 4 out of 5.

Title:	Avengers: Endgame
Genre:	Superheroes
Year:	2019
Nationality:	USA
Colour:	Colour
Director:	Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Writer:	Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Jim Starlin
Cast:	Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chadwick Boseman, Brie Larson, Tom Holland, Karen Gillan, Zoe Saldana, Evangeline Lilly, Tessa Thompson, Rene Russo, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Letitia Wright, John Slattery, Tilda Swinton, Jon Favreau, Hayley Atwell, Natalie Portman, Marisa Tomei, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, William Hurt, Cobie Smulders, Sean Gunn, Winston Duke, Linda Cardellini, Maximiliano Hernández, Frank Grillo, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, James D'Arcy, Jacob Batalon, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert Redford, Josh Brolin, Chris Pratt, Samuel L. Jackson, Lexi Rabe, Ross Marquand, Gozie Agbo, Emma Furmann, Michael Shaw, Terry Notary, Kerry Condon, Ben Sakamoto, Ava Russo, Cade Woodward, Stan Lee, Yvette Nicole Brown, Callan Mulvey, Lia Russo, Julian Russo, Taylor Patterson, Agostino Rosalina, Ken Jeong, Ty Simpkins, Jackson Dunn, Lee Moore, Bazlo LeClair, Loen LeClair, Matthew Berry, Joy McAvoy, John Michael Morris, Michael Cook, Brent McGee, Brian Schaeffer, James Wedel, Anthony Breed, Erica Ribley, Monique Ganderton, Jim Starlin, Jimmy Ray Pickens, Hye Jin Jang, Russell Bobbitt, Jack Champion, Sam Hargrave, Patrick Gorman, Aaron Lazar, Robert Pralgo, Thomas Wisdom, John Posey, James Lin, Ameenah Kaplan, Olaniyan Thurmon, Jennifer Elmore, Mike Lutz
Producer:	Kevin Feige
Co-producer:	Mitch Bell
Executive producer:	Victoria Alonso, Louis D'Esposito, Jon Favreau, Michael Grillo, James Gunn, Stan Lee, Trinh Tran
Production designer:	Charles Wood
Cinematographer:	Trent Opaloch
Film editor:	Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt
Casting:	Sarah Halley Finn
Art Director:	Julian Ashby, Jim Barr, Thomas Brown, Ray Chan, Jordan Crockett, Jann K. Engel, Beat Frutiger, Matthew Gatlin, Kevin Gilbert, Kevin Houlihan, Chris 'Flimsy' Howes, Sean Ryan Jennings, Agata Maliauka, Mike Stallion, Brian Stultz, Mark Swain
Set Decorator:	Leslie Pope
Costume Designer:	Judianna Makovsky
Music:	Alan Silvestri
Running time:	181 minutes
Language:	English, Japanese, Xhosa