This is a spoiler free review for my more in depth thoughts check out my spoiler review also on this blog!

Score: 5/5

Leaving the theater after Endgame my first major thought was how in the world can I review this as a standalone piece? How can I say if you just watched this movie that you’d love it the way I do? Well the answer I came up with is, I can’t. So I won’t. With that in mind I’ll give you my background on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, MCU for short. I have seen every single movie in this bold melding of the movie and week to week TV episode experience. All 21 stories leading up to this final story. Is it required that you have watched every move in the MCU up to this point? No, but watching quite a few of them would greatly expand your experience at the theater when watching this masterstroke of a conclusion to this once in a lifetime movie industry event.  

Avengers: Endgame is special. It’s a movie that not only is telling a very clean cut story based on the previous Avengers film Infinity War, but also is closing the door on several characters that we as audience members have grown to know over the last 11 years. I don’t know if we are ever going to see something like this again in our lifetime and it’s absolutely crazy to me that the directors the Russo brothers pulled this thing off. It perfectly blends powerful moments, strengthened by callbacks to characters and threads from movies so long ago while still pushing the story forward. It’s quite ingenious how they took the whole MCU and used it as a playground to create some really stunning moments. Should we be surprised though? This is the team that gave us Civil War and Infinity War. Which speaking of that each of those movies had a moment that if you freeze frame looks like the big spread of a comic book cover. Well I can happily report that this film has one sequence that tops them all by a large margin. It was absolutely insane to watch and a must on the big screen.

The amount of emotion I felt as the movie played out had such a wild range. It’s deep, it’s heartful, and it’s weighty, while still being able to be fun and hopeful. Where the last film was really anchored around building up Thanos and his goal of attempting to “save” the universe from itself, this is the story that is all about the heroes we have been with for so long. I was always wondering how they would end this story of the original Avengers and the Infinity Stones and now that I have seen I have to say I’m very happy with how they tied it all up. It sure makes me wonder what the future films of the MCU will be like but this was the perfect send off to the original six Avengers all the way back in the 2012 release.

Does the movie feel like three hours? It actually feels like it’s six jammed into three. That’s not saying it feels rushed, it’s just they somehow packed that much movie into a manageable runtime. In terms of visuals it should be no shock that this film looks gorgeous. The special effects are top notch and it’s actually getting pretty damn scary how well they are able to make some things look so real. In terms of the score, they do a great job pulling from themes and cues from all over the MCU to make a very fun listen for the ears.

To say I loved this movie is a tad of understatement, this was one of the most satisfying visual stories I have ever watched in my life.