Avengers: Endgame (2019, Anthony & Joe Russo) (Patreon)

55/100

Spoilers, but I mean who else still hasn't seen this and plans to and gives a damn.

Might sound weird, but I never really cared much about finding out how this two-parter (or 22-parter, I suppose) ended. Would’ve been perfectly content to tune out on Thanos' temporary triumph, with half of the characters/world/universe in narrative limbo. “Five years later" right off the bat sucked me in, however, as did the Infinity Stones' destruction, Thanos' unexpectedly early death, and the reappearance of Ant-Man (whose quantum stranding—in one of those infernal credits cookies, if memory serves—I'd completely forgotten about, because I've never been remotely invested in the MCU at large). Smart storytelling choices all, and while the same can't necessarily be said for "Let's fix everything with time travel, which we'll just conveniently pull out of our ass" (I was unaware that twist was coming, believe it or not—skimmed right past all the tweets and headlines last spring), the prospect of revisiting previous movies from an alternate perspective almost seemed to retroactively justify this whole colossal enterprise. Had Endgame's final two hours consisted of one long, byzantine reconfiguration of the entire franchise, chock-full of moments like Cap assuming his future self to be a shape-shifting Loki (of course he would!), or Rhodes and Nebula spying on Quill's goofy Redbone lip-sync from Guardians of the Galaxy's opening credit sequence ("So he's an idiot." "Yeah."), I'd have been hugely impressed. 

Alas, there's only a little such cleverness. The film instead expends a great deal of time and energy tying bows onto various relationships: Natasha and Clint, Steve and Peggy, Tony and his dad, Thor and his mom, etc. Laudable in theory, but I've never perceived any of those folks as actual three-dimensional characters, so the pathos was wasted on me. (Rule-proving exception: Gamora and Nebula. Which is wholly due to Gillan's almost uncomfortably intense performance.) Nor did I long to sit through a big murky chaotic battle sequence followed by 16 epilogues and what amounts to a funereal curtain call after the Dust Brothers/Sisters return, so the final 45 minutes were decidedly on the exhausting side. Still, on average, these things have been no worse (and arguably a bit better) than, say, the Bond series. Hopefully I won't feel obligated to go any further (already skipped Captain Marvel and Far From Home, unless the latter should seduce me in sample mode), but I'm not sorry to have finally closed out this long arc.