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Avengers: Endgame Is Overwhelmingly Epic and Immensely Satisfying

Avengers: Endgame is everything you’ve ever dreamed a Marvel movie could be. It’s a three-hour adrenaline shot to the heart featuring mysteries solved, consequences suffered, shock, awe, and delight. Some scenes have a scope so huge, the mind reels to comprehend what you’re watching. Others are so poignant and small, you’ll hear the sniffles echoing in the theater. The film’s unrelenting bombardment of story and visual effects are sometimes so dense they edge toward baffling, but they also help gloss over a smattering of problems, which were inevitable with such grandiose goals. Endgame was never going to be perfect. But it comes damn close and, at times, rises to a state of near transcendence.

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More than anything else, Endgame is meant to be a complete, complex, and satisfying conclusion to the last decade we’ve spent with its characters, and it delivers on that promise. The movie is the theatrical equivalent of going 15 rounds with a great fighter. It’s overwhelming and exhausting, but it feels incredible when the credits begin to roll.

Endgame is, primarily, a sequel to last year’s Avengers: Infinity War , and the film’s dense, complicated main story centers on that. Half the universe is gone, and it’s up to the Avengers to solve the problem. How they attempt that, or if they’re successful, is more revealing than I care to be. Suffice to say though, nothing is as it seems.

The film takes great care to be the narrative’s zenith as well as reward to fans who have spent the last 11 years watching Marvel movies by packing in countless nods and payoffs—narratively, visually, as well as sonically—to those previous 21 films. There are things in Endgame you never could have guessed would come back to light, but they do, and it’s glorious .

Like Infinity War and Civil War before it, Endgame is directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. And, once again, that core four have crafted an insanely ambitious story that’s more intricate than its predecessors. Endgame tells a story that becomes increasingly complex as the movie goes along. Rarely is there a moment where it’s obvious how, or if, things are going to work out because everything just keeps getting harder and harder for the characters, creating an incredible amount of tension and intrigue. This makes the film, even at three hours long, feel overstuffed and overly busy at times. And yet, the payoffs built out of those complexities are so huge and satisfying, that’s more of a compliment than a complaint.

Although the film includes many of Marvel’s less prominent characters—Rocket, Ant-Man, War Machine, etc.— Endgame focuses on the original Avengers. In addition to the ongoing battle against Thanos, Endgame gives Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Thor, Hulk, and Hawkeye each their own unique, rich narratives, adding a beating heart to this already robust film. Over the course of the movie , each of those characters goes on a hugely transformative journey, and not all of them work out. (Shit gets dark , y’all.) After spending more than a decade of movies with the Avengers, it’s immensely gratifying and emotional to see them struggle on a plethora of levels.

That’s also, in large part, because the actors portraying those characters give arguably their best Marvel performances to date. You might expect this thanks to the baggage each of their characters carries by this point, but Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, and Jeremy Renner are all stellar in Endgame . They aren’t the only ones (Karen Gillan as Nebula, Josh Brolin as Thanos, and Paul Rudd as Ant-Man all stand out, too), but if Marvel never made another movie with them, all of those actors could say they left their best work for last.

If Endgame ’s ambitious storytelling is what makes it so impactful, it also causes a few stumbles. There are moments where plot points play out a little too conveniently or with not enough explanation in comparison to the rest of the story. And a few of the non-core-Avenger heroes, such as Okoye and Captain Marvel, get slightly shortchanged. They show up, but their roles feel fleeting. In a film fighting to do so much work in a reasonable amount of time, it’s inevitable some characters will fade, but it’s unfortunate that this time it’s them. Conversely, characters like Nebula and Ant-Man have increasingly important roles, so it kind of balances out. Still, you can’t help but wish all the characters could have done more.

Even with a hiccup here and there, Endgame works thanks also to its technical mastery. The film is sometimes juggling five or six stories simultaneously, but the Russos and their editors never let the audience get too far from one or the other. Each is partitioned in such a way that the movie has a near constant momentum as it barrels toward its climax.

The music by Alan Silvestri is also a star here, not just for the way it enhances the viewer’s kaleidoscope of emotions, but as a pinnacle to the work of so many others who’ve made music in the Marvel universe. The visual effects, from physical transformations to digital recreations, are also incredibly impressive and serve to enhance the story and the entire Endgame experience.

After 11 years and 21 movies, Avengers: Endgame is larger than a mere movie. It’s a personal experience. It works as a singular film and ultimately will be judged as such, but on first viewing, it works even better as a cherry on top of a decade of Marvel storytelling—the final piece of a glorious puzzle we’ve all been working to piece together since 2008. Everyone should have a chance to experiences those moments on their own, and I hope you will. You will not be let down.

Avengers: Endgame opens Thursday.

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Film Review: ‘Avengers: Endgame’

After the must-see showdown that was 'Infinity War,' the Russo brothers deliver a more fan-facing three-hour follow-up, rewarding loyalty to Marvel Cinematic Universe.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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SPOILER A LERT: The following review contains mild spoilers for “ Avengers: Endgame .”

The culmination of 10 years and more than twice as many movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Avengers: Endgame” promises closure where its predecessor, “Avengers: Infinity War,” sowed chaos. That film — which revealed that the cookie-cutter uniformity of all those MCU movies had been part of an unprecedented master plan — infamously wrapped with a snap: a gesture that, when performed by a supervillain armed with the six Infinity Stones, was capable of wiping out half of all life in the universe.

Audiences have had a year to mourn the loss of Spider-Man, Star-Lord, and Black Panther (whom they’d only just met two months earlier), and to nurture theories as to where directing siblings Anthony and Joe Russo might steer things from here. Maybe all those characters weren’t really dead. Maybe the remaining Avengers just needed to travel inside the Soul Stone to get them back. Or maybe “Avengers: Endgame” would have to resort to that most desperate of narrative cheats — time travel — to undo the damage caused by Thanos (the purple-skinned, multi-chinned baddie so compellingly performed by Josh Brolin).

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The element of surprise and the thrill of discovery are everything in these movies, so every attempt has been made to minimize spoilers. Yes, “Avengers: Endgame” is the most expansive film yet, and yes, it strives to provide emotional catharsis for several of fans’ favorite characters. It’s even safe to say that “Endgame” shifts the focus from extravagant, effects-driven displays of universe-saving — manifold though they remain — to the more human cost of heroism, which comes at great personal sacrifice.

That said, readers should also be warned that “Avengers: Endgame” hinges on the most frustrating of narrative tricks, and that no meaningful analysis of the film can take place without delving into some of the choices made by the Russo brothers and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. If “Infinity War” was billed as a must-see event for all moviegoers, whether or not they’d attended a single Marvel movie prior, then “Endgame” is the ultimate fan-service follow-up, so densely packed with pay-offs to relationships established in the previous films that it all but demands that audiences put in the homework of watching (or rewatching) a dozen earlier movies to appreciate the sense of closure it offers the series’ most popular characters.

To the extent that it has all been leading up to this, no franchise in Hollywood history can rival what the Disney-Marvel alliance has wrought, although “Avengers” would not be what it is without the three-films-over-three-years scope of Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, the coming-of-age continuity of Warner Bros.’ eight-part Harry Potter saga, or the 21st-century shift of serialized television to expansive, ensemble-driven narrative. Each of those experiments in cumulative, multi-part storytelling served to test just how far audiences would go to follow characters they love over time. But nothing — not the horror of Han Solo frozen in carbonite, nor the shock of James Bond’s wife murdered at the end of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” — could prepare fans for the Snap, and the pain of watching half the heroes they’d gotten to know turned to dust at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.”

The opening scene of “Endgame” revisits that unbearable moment from the point of view of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), who sat out the previous battle to spend time with his wife and kids, such that the agony he feels in watching them vaporized by the Snap will come to stand for what all living things must experience as they witness their friends and family disappear.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark ( Robert Downey Jr. , looking frail) and Thanos’ daughter Nebula (Karen Gillan), now begrudgingly “good,” are drifting somewhere out in space when they encounter Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) hovering outside their cockpit. That’s not quite how a “Captain Marvel” end-credits vignette teased her joining the Avengers — which involved a pager signal sent by her human ally, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) — but “Endgame” has so much ground to cover in the span of three hours that it breezes past introductions and treats her arrival as a fait accompli, racing to its first confrontation with Thanos, who has banished himself to a remote garden planet with his gauntlet.

That showdown doesn’t go at all as audiences might expect, but establishes that whoever holds those six all-powerful Infinity Stones can achieve pretty much whatever they want simply by snapping their fingers — with one major problem: Thanos has destroyed the stones. That means the universe is stuck like this unless someone invents time travel.

Spoiler alert: Someone invents time travel — which feels like a skill so far beyond the reach of modern science that maybe it should’ve qualified as a superpower and, if memory serves, might even have been among Doctor Strange’s abilities, except that the super-wizard (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) was one of the casualties of “Infinity War.” Before surrendering his Infinity Stone, Doctor Strange projected himself forward in time to view all possible outcomes of the Avengers’ uphill battle, reporting back that of those 14,000,605 alternate futures, only one resulted in victory over Thanos.

“Infinity War” may have gone badly for the Avengers, but the odds are pretty good that “Endgame” will yield that one possible happy ending, even if it means permanently having to say goodbye to certain characters — or at least, to certain actors in those roles, as we have already seen creative reboots of Spider-Man, Hulk, and the X-Men at other studios. And now that Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) has demonstrated the potential for time travel at the quantum realm — a solution teased over the end credits of his last outing — the Avengers are free to buddy up and jump through time to collect the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get to them, at which point they can make their own gauntlet and snap things in and out of existence.

The Russo brothers dedicate an inordinate amount of time to convincing the heroes that the mission is worth trying, which may have worked in “The Magnificent Seven” but asks us to accept that, after shoving two or three of these Marvel movies down our throats a year, somehow everyone has sat idle for half a decade, crushed by depression and defeat. Still, the five-year flash-forward — a trick borrowed from the “Battlestar Galactica” playbook — allows for significant, and in some cases amusing, changes to Iron Man, Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo , who’d had trouble transforming when last we saw him), and Thor ( Chris Hemsworth , still plenty sarcastic but looking the most different).

But here’s the thing about using time travel to solve their problems: As soon as screenwriters open the door to that device, then any sequel can undo whatever came before. Here, War Machine (Don Cheadle) makes the suggestion that they go back and strangle Thanos in the crib, which the film treats as a joke, and yet, it sounds like a better idea than the “time heist” they have in store. Alternately, they could wait for Thanos to hijack all six Infinity Stones and then jump in and prevent him from using them.

Frankly, there are 14 million better ideas out there, but this one is designed to yield the maximum number of surprising twists, amusing confrontations, and bromance-y bonding moments between mismatched partners (like Thor and the Bradley Cooper-voiced space raccoon Rocket). The plan also allows the surviving Avengers to revisit scenes from the earlier films, watching their younger versions — as well as fallen comrades — from another angle, and in two very different cases, facing off against his or her past self.

To the film’s credit, it’s not the casualties, but the chances these heroes have to go back and say things to those they’ve lost that resonate as the most emotional scenes in “Endgame”: Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America ( Chris Evans ) each get such opportunities, any one of which would’ve been worth the price of admission. Still, all that time travel creates a host of paradoxes that will keep the geek debates raging for years: What happens if your “former future” kills an earlier, alternate version of yourself? If every change creates a “branch reality,” what kind of outcomes are in store for the universe in all those new paths? And why, if one has all six Infinity Stones in his possession, is snapping even required to set one’s wishes in motion?

By this point in the franchise, audiences have come to expect a top-of-the-line experience: iconic costumes and sets, stunning visual effects (including convincing computer-generated characters, like Thanos and Hulk), cinematography that alternates smoothly between epic clashes and nuanced character moments, and rousing music that underscores both the peril and the sheer importance of it all. Like “Infinity War” before it, “Endgame” delivers these elements at a higher level than Marvel’s less expensive — and considerably less expansive — lone-hero installments. But there’s something considerably less elegant to the storytelling this time around.

If “Infinity War” built inexorably to an “inevitable” conclusion (as Thanos arrogantly describes his victory), that was made possible by the filmmakers’ daring choice of positioning their villain as a deeply unconventional protagonist: It was Thanos who undertook the “hero’s journey” of that film, wildly outnumbered by the Avengers in his quest to amass the Infinity Stones. Here, the equation is reversed, with a surfeit of heroes now splitting up to repeat more or less the same mission, with only one adversary to oppose them (even with the Avengers’ ranks reduced by half, there are still too many to keep straight, while the prospect of reviving any of the fallen only makes it more unmanageable).

It works because the creative team has taken note of what audiences want (Black Panther! Captain Marvel!) and what the culture at large is asking for (more diverse representation all around), crafting brief but impactful moments along the way. If these Avengers movies are like massive symphonies, then the conductors have taken care to give nearly everyone a standout solo, however short — or, in the minute that played best at the film’s premiere, a group shot that gathers all the female Avengers, and proves that had Thanos’ snap wiped out just the dudes, the remaining women would’ve been awfully formidable on their own. However satisfying — and necessary — these vignettes may be, is it still art when a movie seems so transparently reverse-engineered according to audiences’ appetites, or does that make “Endgame” the ultimate pop-culture confection?

After nearly two and a half hours of hardcore comic-book entertainment — alternating earnest storytelling with self-deprecating zingers designed to show that Marvel doesn’t take itself too seriously — “Endgame” wraps all that logic-bending nonsense with a series of powerful emotional scenes. Whereas all the casualties suffered at the end of “Infinity War” felt suspiciously like a gimmick that would be undone in this film, these meaty character moments illustrate the spirit of personal sacrifice certain individuals consciously make on behalf of the team, and the universe at large.

Time and again, “Endgame” makes the point that family matters, whether that means biological ties — as Iron Man, Hawkeye, Ant Man, and Thor have experienced — or those forged by duty. The final takeaway from this decade-long journey is that heroism isn’t defined by bravery or super-abilities, but by what one gives up for the greater good. Among the many frustrations of the Snap was that it robbed so many great characters — and gazillions of anonymous creatures throughout the galaxy — of proactively making that choice. “Endgame” isn’t exactly a do-over, but it builds to an infinitely more satisfying conclusion.

Reviewed at Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, April 22, 2019. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 181 MIN.

• Production: A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release of a Marvel Studios presentation. Producer: Kevin Feige. Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo, Trinh Tran, Jon Favreau, James Gunn, Stan Lee.
• Crew: Directors: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo. Camera (color, widescreen): Trent Opaloch. Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt. Music: Alan Silvestri.
• With: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo , Dave Bautista, Chadwick Boseman, Josh Brolin, Don Cheadle, Benedict Cumberbatch, Winston Duke, Karen Gillan, Dana Gurira, Tom Holland, Scarlett Johansson, Brie Larson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Redford, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Rene Russo, Tilda Swinton, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Wong, Laetitia Wright.

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‘avengers: endgame’: film review.

Marvel Studios and Disney's three-hour epic sendoff 'Avengers: Endgame' reunites the franchise's mightiest superheroes to battle Josh Brolin's Thanos.

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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The closest equivalent to Greek mythology the modern world has devised of late achieves a sense of closure in Avengers: Endgame . A gargantuan film by any standard, this three-hour extravaganza shuffles back into the action numerous significant characters seen in recent Marvel films as it wraps up an epic story in which the survival of the known universe is (once again) at stake. While constantly eventful and a feast for the eyes, it’s also notably more somber than its predecessors. But just when it might seem about to become too grim, Robert Downey Jr. rides to the rescue with an inspired serio-comic performance that reminds you how good he can be. 

Avengers: Infinity War, which was released a year ago this week, stormed the planet to take in $2.048 billion at the worldwide box office on its way to becoming the fourth biggest-grossing film of all time. Its three-hour running time notwithstanding, there’s no reason on or off Earth to suspect this one won’t enter the same rarified realm.

Release date: Apr 26, 2019

In case you hadn’t noticed, since last we saw the lantern-jawed mug of Thanos (Josh Brolin), he’s decimated half the population. Endowing him with such power is the complete set of six Infinity Stones he spent the last film accumulating, and Thanos has worked out his own perverse rationale as to why humankind deserves to be put out of its misery rather than just being punished. When Brie Larson’s recently introduced Captain Marvel shows up with the announced intention of knocking off Thanos single-handedly, she needs to be restrained, for Downey’s Iron Man has first dibs on taking out the brooding evil genius.

Easier said than done, however. For an entertainment brand in which hardly anyone ever really and truly dies, a sense of mortality nonetheless hangs over quite a few of the characters — especially in this saga, in which some confess, in one way or another, to feeling that they’ve come to the end of something. While there are certainly young upstarts like Captain Marvel and the briefly glimpsed Black Panther ready to jump into the fray, veterans including Iron Man, Chris Evans ‘ Captain America and Chris Hemsworth ‘s gone-to-seed Thor (complete with pot belly) seem more than prepared to face their reckonings, come what may.

Nonetheless, it’s an amiable brand of melancholy that pervades the film, one that scarcely gets in the way of the enthusiasm and excitement that Marvel adventures almost always deliver in some measure or another. The feeling of finality and potential farewell is sometimes suggested quietly just in the way certain moments are lingered over, conveying the fatalistic sense that this might well be the last time around the block for some of these characters. At the rate it’s going, Marvel will be around for the better part of forever, but this will likely be the studio swan song for a number of the castmembers.

The major characters, most of whom have had multiple individual films centered on and in some instances named after them, are faced with the all-but-imponderable challenge of how to undo Thanos’ success in collecting the all-powerful stones. It’s one of the signal successes of the script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely that they concoct a method for doing so (stemming from some of the Marvel characters’ special relationships with the Quantum Realm) that even sounds half-plausible in context; the brain trust centered around Tony Stark/Iron Man comes up with the clever, if perhaps not entirely original, idea of a “time heist” (the time bandits, anyone?). If flawlessly executed, this looks to be the only way of extricating the stones from Thanos’ otherwise iron grip on the dire-looking future of the universe.

Although there’s loads of action and confrontations, what’s distinctive here in contrast to most of the earlier Marvel films are the moments of doubt, regret and uncertainty, along with the desire of some characters to move on. Granted, this is almost always undercut, and/or cut short, by some emergency that pulls them right back in, and decisive action always remains paramount.

But there is growth here. Whereas Downey’s fast-talking quips and occasional rudeness became increasingly callow and off-putting in his Iron Man outings, Tony Stark in this movie, at last, seems more human and dimensional. Thor and Captain America are experiencing identity issues. And the most unexpected comic relief may come from Mark Ruffalo ‘s Bruce Banner, a very large man with a greenish-gray hue to his skin who dwarfs everyone around him and is often called upon to do the real dirty work due to his size. Perhaps most notably in the moments when this veteran superhero is reassessing his powers, Ruffalo’s highly amusing performance reveals a frank and unusual awareness of his character’s acceptance of self in an action-spectacle context.

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There is no question that Avengers: Endgame benefits considerably from the prioritizing of humor and character detailing on the parts of writers Markus and McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo, something most of the actors clearly picked up on and ran with. But spectacle still rules in these fanciful epics, which have pre-primed viewers eating right out of the filmmakers’ hands. The best of the Marvel films — and the Avengers pics are certainly among them — go the extra mile to genuinely engage the audience and not just pander to it. Cutesiness and formula prevail at times, to be sure, but this team knows quite well how to stir the pot. And to turn it into more gold.

Yes, there’s a big climactic battle and the decisive death of a major character (for all the conflict depicted, the mortality rate is very low, for the sake of films to come, no doubt), but no action on the level of Game of Thrones or Marvel’s own Black Panther. No, what comes across most strongly here, oddly enough for an effects-driven comic-book-derived film, is the character acting, especially from Downey, Ruffalo, Evans, Hemsworth, Brolin and Paul Rudd as Ant-Man.

So Avengers: Endgame is, from all appearances, the end of the road for some characters and storylines, but the seeds of many offshoots look to have been planted along the way. Expect to see them grow and multiply in the coming seasons.

The Political Avenger: Chris Evans Takes on Trump, Tom Brady, Anxiety and Those Retirement Rumors

Production company: Marvel Studios Distributor: Disney Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson , Jeremy Renner, Brie Larson, Paul Rudd, Don Cheadle, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Bradley Cooper, Gwyneth Paltrow , Jon Favreau, Benedict Wong, Tessa Thompson, Josh Brolin, Tilda Swinton, Robert Redford Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo Screenwriters: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely Producer: Kevin Feige Executive producers: Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Michael Grillo, Trinh Tran, Jon Favreau, James Gunn, Stan Lee Director of photography: Trent Opaloch Production designer: Charles Wood Costume designer: Judianna Makovsky Editors: Jeffrey Ford, Matthew Schmidt Music: Alan Silvestri Visual effects supervisor: Dan DeLeeuw Casting: Sarah Finn

Rated PG-13, 182 minutes

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Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, avengers: infinity war.

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For a 160-minute epic that unifies a far-flung superhero universe that took a decade to build, packs 76 characters into one story, and has four to six plotlines cooking at any given time, "Avengers: Infinity War" hangs together pretty well. The plot finds the intergalactic bad guy Thanos ( Josh Brolin ) and his army of Green Goblin-looking warriors bouncing from star system to star system, torturing and killing various adversaries in order to gather six super-powerful Infinity Stones and embed them in Thanos' oversized glove. Once he's collected all six, Thanos will be able to achieve his dream of wiping out half the population of the universe in order to preserve its precious resources and restore "balance." The only thing standing in his way are the Avengers, led by Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ), Hulk/Bruce Banner ( Mark Ruffalo ), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), Steve Rogers/Captain America ( Chris Evans ) and the rest. Plus all the characters from " Black Panther ." And the ones from " Guardians of the Galaxy ." And a few more Marvel characters who are new to this film.

Co-directors Joe and Anthony Russo , co-writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus , their small army of actors, and their hundreds of filmmaking collaborators have managed to get on the same page and stay on it. The film's running time doesn't fly by, exactly, but it rarely seems to stall out, which is impressive when you consider how many of the movie's big scenes consist of people talking, sometimes emoting, in close-up. The Russos swagger headfirst into melodrama here, more blatantly than in any previous Marvel film they've directed, though there are problems with their approach that I'll outline in a moment. The gambit works, mostly, because the story is an operatic tragedy that necessarily has to end with the heroes in a deep, dark place. In light of all this, it's inevitable (and in no way a spoiler to reveal here) that not every character makes it out alive, and that if you come away from the movie feeling bummed out and anxious rather than elated, that means "Infinity War" has done its job, just as " The Empire Strikes Back " and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One" did their jobs.

If only the film were better modulated, or perhaps longer, or more elegantly shaped, or ... well, it's hard to say exactly what's wrong here. But something's not up to snuff. This is, as many have pointed out, one half of a story broken in two, but it feels like less than half somehow. Until pretty recently, MCU films have suffered from collective curve-grading—each film seemed content to settle for "better than expected," as opposed to being really, truly good—and that feeling returns here, unfortunately. "Infinity War" faced so many challenges, many of them unique to this particular project, that it's a small miracle that it works at all. On some level, it feels ungrateful to ask a movie that already does the impossible to do it with more panache. But what are superhero movies without panache really good for? If there was ever a moment to swing for the fences, it was this one.

I like how the movie builds everything around Brolin's CGI-assisted but still fully inhabited performance as Thanos—an oddly wistful and lonely figure who is, essentially, a religious fanatic, yet carries himself with the calm certainty of a military man who's read the ancient Greeks and speaks tenderly to cadets while stepping on their necks. (Thanos' second-in-command, the snide and hateful space wizard Ebony Maw—played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor —makes an equally strong impression, though he doesn't have many scenes.) Some of the movie's most affecting and/or frightening moments see Thanos tormenting captive heroes (including Zoe Saldana's Gamora and her sister Nebula, played by Karen Gillan ) until they disclose the location of the stones, or forcing them to consider killing themselves (or having others kill them) to stop Thanos from achieving his dream.

The movie treats Thanos as an agent of pure chaos, like an Old Testament curse come to life, picking people up by their skulls, deconstructing them into three-dimensional puzzles with a wave of his hand, even rupturing the structural integrity of the universe. He seems to have the brute force of the Hulk and the conjuring skill of Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange, one of the only characters who routinely manages to counter his destructive power. At various points, characters wonder aloud if they'd have been better off not fighting him. These are action heroes, but the threat facing them is so daunting that they contemplate an alternate reality in which they don't act.

Vision ( Paul Bettany ), who has one of the stones embedded in his forehead, gets attacked while he's off the grid in Scotland, enjoying the company of his beloved Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch ( Elizabeth Olsen ); after they fight off Thanos' goons at great personal cost, he quips, "I'm beginning to think we should've stayed in bed." Peter Parker/Spider-Man springs into action during a class trip after spotting Thanos' enormous, doughnut shaped spacecraft descending on Manhattan, then gets the stuffing kicked out of him and says, "I should've stayed on the bus." The movie has wicked fun foreshadowing the possible demise of our heroes. In the only scene featuring Tony and his partner Pepper ( Gwyneth Paltrow ), they discuss Tony's dream that they had a baby; it feels like the superhero version of one of those scenes in a war flick where the young draftee shows off a photo of his fiancee and declares, "Ain't she pretty?" Thanos' assault on Wakanda, where Cap and the gang take Vision in hopes that Shuri ( Letitia Wright ) can preemptively extract and destroy his Infinity Stone, is depicted as the logical, awful result of revealing the once-hidden country's location, and aligning it with global defense organizations after centuries of neutrality.

And yet, despite the movie's embrace of pain and fear—exemplified by a scene where Thor lists all the loved ones he's lost, and appears to be battling PTSD like Tony—it almost never feels as special or as powerful as it ought to. The direction is part of the problem. Marvel's conceptual artists, visual effects technicians, colorists, and sound designers and mixers are operating at what might be their aesthetic peak here—as well they should be, considering how long this company has labored to perfect a consistent style and tone; the panoramic vistas showing wrecked cities and space stations and distant planets and alternate dimensions, a jumble of psychedelic ironwork and watercolor clouds, seem as strongly influenced by the legendary Marvel illustrator Jack Kirby as Taika Waititi's disco lark " Thor: Ragnarok ." 

But rather than match their support team's inventiveness, the directors avoid risk. They capture both the violent (sometimes cruel) action and the emotionally intense private moments in either a boringly flat or frantically hacky manner (snap-zooms on falling figures; herky-jerky camerawork and fast cutting during fight scenes; the same stuff you see in most action films made during the past decade). They use the camera in an expressive or poetic way so rarely that when they do bust out a heartfelt flourish (like the long, slow camera move that reveals the Guardians in their spaceship engaged in a sing-along, or the "wipes" that reveal the reality that Thanos' illusions hide, or a climatic fight between Thanos and multiple heroes) it's as if somebody had briefly sparked a dull wedding reception to life by going out on the dance floor and demanding a song with a backbeat.

This would all be a lot less grating if the MCU hadn't produced two back-to-back hits, "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Black Panther," which had vivid directorial personalities (Waititi and Ryan Coogler , respectively), and took as many stylistic/tonal risks as Marvel's brand would allow. The studio is too bottom-line driven to permit the sort of eccentricity that would've made this project truly pop (Joss Whedon's ungainly potluck " Avengers: Age of Ultron ," with its spiky wit and nihilistic robot philosopher baddie, is looking better in retrospect). But it's no compliment to the Russos to say that it's tough to tell just by looking at the movie if they were were on a tight corporate leash the entire time, or if they decided to minimize the innate risks of a project this huge and eagerly anticipated by making vanilla choices.

Another issue—and I'm getting dorm room-philosophical, so bear with me—is that the format of a blockbuster MCU movie with 76 characters exposes the limitations of telling a superhero story via this now-well-established cinematic template, as opposed to telling it on the printed page, where the only limits are the writer's imagination and the illustrator's flair for presentation. The storytelling vocabulary of superhero movies doesn't have to be constricted (FX's extravagantly inventive TV series "Legion" is proof) but it feels quite constricted here; it always has been, notwithstanding occasional outliers like "Thor: Ragnarok," "Black Panther" and "Ant Man." There are an infinite number of striking or subtle ways that comic book writers and artists can convey exposition, character details, psychological states, and simultaneous events occurring in parallel storylines; you can do stuff like expand a single decisive instant so that it fills up six pages, or show Spider-Man swinging through midtown Manhattan in a full-page splash panel dotted with thought balloons that summarize a year's worth of his life. But in the sorts of Marvel films that the MCU has released since 2008, we've mostly gotten stuck in linear time, which is where most commercial narratives unfold. Most of the scenes in "Infinity War" fall into one of two categories: (1) scenes where people go into rooms or out onto the street and talk to each other, and (2) action sequences where characters banter while punching and zapping each other and dodging falling rocks, buildings, and spaceships and trying not to get sucked into time-space portals.

There's only so much information that can be put across when you've limited your storytelling in that way. The ticking clock proves a more formidable enemy than Thanos. There are only so many moments or lines that "Infinity War" can give, say, to Tony and Pepper; or to Bruce and Natasha, who had a powerful connection in "Age of Ultron," got separated soon after, and are confined to a couple of brief exchanges here; or to Peter Quill/Starlord ( Chris Pratt ), Rocket Raccoon ( Bradley Cooper ), Drax ( Dave Bautista ) and Mantis ( Pom Klementieff ), who are stuck doing comic relief when they aren't suffering greatly or setting up Peter to make some very bad, dumb choices. Heimdall ( Idris Elba ), The Collector ( Benicio Del Toro ) and Proxima Midnight ( Carrie Coon ) are barely in the film. Cap gets maybe two dozen lines and a few meaningful glances, mostly aimed at Sebastian Stan's Bucky/Winter Soldier, who has even less to do. Chadwick Boseman's T'Challa/Black Panther, who anchored his own marvelous feature just a few months ago, is reduced to a glorified field general in "Infinity War," standing alongside Okoye ( Danai Gurira ) and M'Baku ( Winston Duke ) and watching Thanos' troops burn, trample, and otherwise disfigure the countryside (an image that's more upsetting, for various reasons, than a lot of Thanos' violence against individuals).

Another downside of packing so many people into one film—so many that they apparently had to cut a few; the film's IMDb page lists numerous major players who are nowhere to be seen—is that you start to notice that certain characters are redundant variations on/photocopies of other characters, a realization that you might not have had if you were were watching them star in their own self-contained movies. Putting Tony, Peter Parker and Peter Quill in the same scenes, for instance, might sound like a slam dunk, but once you spend a few minutes with them, the barrage of wise-assery becomes grating. It's like being stuck at a party where every other guy in the room mistakenly believes he's the funny one. (The scenes between Thor and the Guardians are much better because Thor plays the straight man to Quill, who is threatened by his awesome masculine beauty.)

As is often the case in Russo-directed Marvel movies, the humor comes across more vividly than the action. (" Captain America: The Winter Soldier ," with its paranoid thriller stylings and brutal, close-quarters action, is still their zenith.) The movie makes excellent use of Thor and his trickster brother Loki ( Tom Hiddleston ), and gives Hemsworth more chances to show off his formidable deadpan (when Rocket expresses amazement that he can speak Groot's language, he explains, "They taught it on Asgard—it was an elective"). But the joking around doesn't so much complement the film's dark material as clash with it and undermine it. The self-aware humor that the MCU has always done so well ends up working against "Infinity War" in the end. Marvel's "just kidding" sensibility was a refreshing counterweight to the fashionable darkness of early DC Universe movies, as well as to the "dark & gritty" mode that became a global pop culture default after the success of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. But if there was ever a time for Marvel to bust out the Zack Snyder-style, heavy-metal gloom and slap the smirk off its own face, it's here, in a film that's mostly about summoning the courage to fight battles that you know you can't win, and accepting the likelihood of dying on your knees with your head held high.

This movie shouldn't just engage and amuse and occasionally move us; it should shock and scar us. It should kill Ned Stark and Optimus Prime and Bambi's mommy, then look us in the eye after each fresh wound and say, "Sorry, love. These things happen." The last 15 minutes have the flavor of that sort of trauma, but without the actual trauma. Deep down, we all know that modern superhero movies are operating with even lower dramatic stakes than Star Wars or James Bond movies: beloved characters rarely stay dead after they've been killed, and no plot development, no matter how grave, is irreversible, so there's no possible way that what seems to be happening on the screen could really be happening. But we shouldn't be thinking about any of that as we watch Thanos hurt characters we've grown to love and cast the universe into ruin. The very sight should rip our hearts out.  

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action throughout, language and some crude references.

149 minutes

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark / Iron Man

Chris Hemsworth as Thor Odinson

Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner / The Hulk

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers / Nomad

Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow

Chris Pratt as Peter Quill / Star-Lord

Josh Brolin as Thanos

Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange / Doctor Strange

Don Cheadle as James Rhodes / War Machine

Tom Holland as Peter Parker / Spider-Man

Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa / Black Panther

Paul Bettany as Vision

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch

Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson / Falcon

Sebastian Stan as James "Bucky" Barnes / White Wolf

Tom Hiddleston as Loki

Idris Elba as Heimdall

Peter Dinklage

Benedict Wong as Wong

Pom Klementieff as Mantis

Karen Gillan as Nebula

Dave Bautista as Drax

Zoe Saldana as Gamora

Vin Diesel as Groot (voice)

Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon (voice)

Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts

Benicio Del Toro as Taneleer Tivan / The Collector

Danai Gurira as Okoye

Letitia Wright as Shuri

Winston Duke as M'Baku

Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw

• Anthony Russo

Writer (comic book story)

• Jim Starlin
• George Perez
• Christopher Markus
• Stephen McFeely

Cinematographer

• Trent Opaloch
• Jeffrey Ford
• Matthew Schmidt
• Alan Silvestri

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Avengers: endgame, common sense media reviewers.

Intense but satisfying finale is an epic gift to MCU fans.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Violence is main means of conflict resolution, but

Avengers and friends are flawed but unforgettably

Frequent and intense comic book-style action viole

Brief kisses/embraces between a few romantic coupl

Occasional strong language, including "son of a bi

Two Audi cars. Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Film i

Thor drinks a lot as a form of self-medication. Un

Parents need to know that Avengers: Endgame is the final film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's current generation of movies, bringing together storylines and characters from 21 previous movies, starting with 2008's Iron Man . Families with younger kids should know that there's definitely as much…

Positive Messages

Violence is main means of conflict resolution, but story is primarily about courage, self-sacrifice, heroism, collective good. Themes include teamwork, perseverance, courage. Central characters are willing to die (and kill) to save universe and rescue Earth from grief/trauma they've experienced. Also shows how important family and friendship are, how concept of family is more than pure biology: People can have incredibly strong chosen families, with friends who love you unconditionally. Emphasizes idea of being who you are , not who you think you're "supposed" to be.

Positive Role Models

Avengers and friends are flawed but unforgettably brave. They aren't individually as strong as Thanos, but together they can accomplish the impossible. They make sacrifices, protect one another, work together to save their loved ones and strangers alike. Women of Marvel once again have opportunity (albeit fairly brief one) to band together, and family men like Scott/Ant-Man and Clint/Hawkeye are particularly invested in doing what's necessary to save loved ones. Captain America and Thor prove themselves worthy of their special weapons/powers. Characters make difficult life-or-death decisions that put them in danger for the greater good. Thanos believes he's bringing salvation to universe, but his method -- genocide -- is untenable.

Violence & Scariness

Frequent and intense comic book-style action violence. Characters are killed, severely injured. Viewers will see dismemberment, decapitation, stabbing, crushing, shooting, impalement, choking, extremely destructive explosions, self-sacrifice, pursuit by scary monsters, etc. A character carries out ruthless vigilante justice, leaving lots of bodies in his wake. Weapons include guns, swords, axes, hammers, missiles. Violence isn't especially gory, but a couple of injuries/deaths are a bit bloody. Frequent peril and danger. Mourning/sadness. Arguments/yelling/shouting. Spoiler alert: A couple of beloved characters die in order to save the universe, and a couple of previously dead characters don't return to life, which could upset viewers.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Brief kisses/embraces between a few romantic couples. Thor spends some scenes shirtless.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional strong language, including "son of a bitch," "ass," "s--t," "bulls--t," "d--khead," "pissed," "damn," "pissant," "hell," "crap," "goddamn," "Jesus" (as an exclamation), and "oh my God." (Even Cap swears!)

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Two Audi cars. Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Film is tied into vast merchandising/licensing efforts surrounding Marvel Comics.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Thor drinks a lot as a form of self-medication. Until a life-changing conversation, he's often looking for beer, ale, liquor, and/or wine, and bottles and barrels are shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Avengers: Endgame is the final film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's current generation of movies, bringing together storylines and characters from 21 previous movies, starting with 2008's Iron Man . Families with younger kids should know that there's definitely as much intense violence (decapitation, explosions, stabbings, impalement, crushing, shooting, etc.), and even more pain, trauma, and grief here than there was in Avengers: Infinity War . Spoiler alert : A couple of beloved characters die, which will prove particularly upsetting. The language is similar to that in previous movies (mostly uses of "s--t," "ass," "d--k" -- even Captain America swears this time!), but there's no romance beyond a few brief embraces and kisses between established couples; a very minor male character talks about dating another man. Thor drinks a lot to numb his pain. Those who haven't seen any of the previous MCU installments should at least watch Infinity War and Captain America: Civil War to follow the plot, but those who are familiar with the movies and comics will be rewarded with plenty of inside jokes and references. With themes of courage, teamwork, and perseverance, this epic Avengers finale is the ultimate gift to Marvel fans -- they'll laugh, cry, and cheer as their favorite superheroes team up to save the universe one more time. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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• Parents say (129)
• Kids say (473)

Based on 129 parent reviews

Loud, Rude, and Inappropriate.

What's the story.

AVENGERS: ENDGAME is set after Thanos' catastrophic use of the Infinity Stones randomly wiped out half of Earth's population in Avengers: Infinity War . Those left behind are desperate to do something -- anything -- to bring back their lost loved ones. But after an initial attempt -- with extra help from Captain Marvel ( Brie Larson ) -- creates more problems than solutions, the grieving, purposeless Avengers think all hope is lost. They're reenergized by the eventual reappearance of Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man ( Paul Rudd ), who was stuck in the quantum realm during the fight on Wakanda. He believes there could be a way to reverse Thanos' deadly snap. It takes a while to gather the squad -- some of whom have changed dramatically -- but eventually Iron Man ( Robert Downey Jr. ), Thor ( Chris Hemsworth ), Captain America ( Chris Evans ), Black Widow ( Scarlett Johansson ), the Hulk ( Mark Ruffalo ), Rocket ( Bradley Cooper ), Nebula ( Karen Gillan ), Hawkeye ( Jeremy Renner ), and Ant-Man team up for one last life-or-death mission to outsmart Thanos ( Josh Brolin ) and save the universe.

Is It Any Good?

The Russo brothers' poignant, powerful finale more than lives up to the hype: It's a thrilling conclusion and a deeply emotional exploration of loss and love, duty and honor, friendship and family. Written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, the story focuses on the remaining Avengers and their post-trauma lives. Each seems overwhelmed by their failure, so when they start to regroup, it's clear that they're far from the same confident, optimistic superheroes who thought they could defeat Thanos in Infinity War . The dads in the group are particularly effective at showing how personal the grief is, providing a contrast to the general sense of failure and loss that the single superheroes feel. As the often underappreciated Hawkeye, Renner stands out in a crowded field of immense talent for making his character feel central. His intensity and his platonic, brotherly love for Natasha/Black Widow is perfectly conveyed. Johansson does a lot of the emotionally resonant work in the movie, keeping tabs on everyone, encouraging her friends, and acting like everyone's favorite sister (except in the Hulk's case). The big three -- Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor -- are also fabulous. Their differences have never been more obvious, but each proves that despite past conflicts and heartbreaks, they're worthy and ready to fight side by side.

There's so much packed into the three hours of Avengers: Endgame that it might seem overwhelming at times; this is clearly a film that will inspire repeat viewing. There are unexpected twists and moments of hilarity, as well as more serious scenes and themes. Those well-versed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will delight in the many Easter eggs and clear fan service (yes, there's still a Stan Lee cameo), while more casual fans will still find plenty of reasons to applaud. What's also true is that the three-hour movie brings all the feels. Just when one gut-punching beat finishes, there's barely enough of a break for a zinger from Tony or Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper ) before another "oh no" moment squeezes your heart . But don't despair: This is a bittersweet example that the best heroes won't allow hubris or insecurity to defeat them. Endgame ranks up there with The Return of the King and Deathly Hallows: Part 2 -- all are epic, emotional, and exceptional franchise finales.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the action violence in Avengers: Endgame. Does any of it seem realistic? Is it intended to? Is there a difference in the impact between hand-to-hand combat and catastrophic, buildings-collapsing-type explosions? How can a single death be just as or even more upsetting than the death of crowds?

What are the movie's messages about teamwork , courage , and perseverance ? Why are these important character strengths ?

This movie deals with grief, loss, and trauma. How do the characters handle their pain differently? Which ones deal with trauma in a healthy way, and which don't? What motivates them all to "be better," as Natasha says?

Why is it important for superheroes to be diverse? Do you think the Marvel Cinematic Universe offers strong examples of racial and gender diversity? Has that changed over the films' history? What other types of representation would you like to see in these movies?

What will you miss most about this particular combination of Avengers? Which characters did you like best in this installment? Which characters surprised you the most? What Marvel-based stories do you hope they continue making?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 26, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : August 13, 2019
• Cast : Chris Evans , Robert Downey Jr. , Scarlett Johansson
• Directors : Anthony Russo , Joe Russo
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Superheroes , Adventures , Space and Aliens
• Character Strengths : Courage , Perseverance , Teamwork
• Run time : 181 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language
• Awards : Common Sense Selection , Kids' Choice Award
• Last updated : May 20, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• Entertainment
• <i>Avengers: Endgame</i> Is a Good — And Sometimes Great — End to Marvel’s First Decade

Avengers: Endgame Is a Good — And Sometimes Great — End to Marvel’s First Decade

Avengers: Endgame —the 22nd movie to emerge from the Marvel Cinematic Universe birth canal and the capper to the two-part saga that began with last year’s Avengers: Infinity War —makes more sense as an event than as a movie. The film has been meticulously crafted for people who care deeply about these characters, and it’s likely most of those viewers will leave the theater satisfied. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo (also the directors of Avengers: Infinity War, as well as two of the Captain America films) and their team of writers have ensured, with machinelike precision, that each Avenger gets his or her proper allotment of sensitive moments, as well as heroic ones. Once in a while, Endgame is enjoyable on its own terms, though mostly, you’ll be better off if you have at least a rough working knowledge of the MCU movies that have preceded it. It’s an entertainment designed to please many, many people and disappoint as few as possible, extravagant without necessarily having a vision beyond its desire not to put a foot wrong. It’s bold in the safest possible way.

In other words, as movies that are part of multi-billion-dollar franchises go, Avengers: Endgame is good enough. I must note here that I have little invested in the Marvel movies as the result of any attachment to Marvel comics. But I do care about the work of the actors who appear in them, performers like Chris Evans and Scarlet Johansson, Chadwick Boseman and Robert Downey Jr., Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Renner. All of these people have been terrific in MCU movies, even when they could easily get by with being less than terrific. Watching Endgame, I realized that I do care about Marvel characters because these actors have made me care.

The skill those actors—along with some I haven’t mentioned, like Tessa Thompson and Mark Ruffalo and Benedict Cumberbatch—bring to the Marvel movies in general, and to Avengers: Endgame specifically, only makes me wish these movies were breezier and more inventive, and less obsessed with the high-stakes, big-money fan-pleasing game. But you can’t have everything, and Endgame at least gives these actors something to work with. (Minor-to-moderate spoilers follow, so if you want to experience Endgame with the naïve blankness of a tadpole freshly launched into the pond, please stop reading here.)

Endgame opens with an unnerving, gracefully filmed prologue involving Renner’s Clint Barton, Hawkeye when in his superhero guise. He’s enjoying an outdoor picnic with his family when it becomes clear that what we’re seeing is a moment connected to the tail end of Infinity War: The instant supervillain Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers—after having captured the last of those six all-powerful nuggets known as the Infinity Stones —and destroyed exactly half the world’s population , leaving the other half to grieve and remember. (It’s more cruel, when you think about it, to destroy half the world than all of it.) This megalomaniacal act was Thanos’s way of cleansing what he viewed as a corrupt universe. But Hawkeye, having retreated from Avengers duty to be a family man, wasn’t around to witness Thanos’s big finale—and, as Endgame begins, he doesn’t yet know that half his friends have turned to dust. And so, in this moment, we know what’s going to happen before Hawkeye does: He turns away from his family for just a millisecond, and in a blink, they’re gone.

Next we see the other remaining Avengers pulling themselves together after the tragedy—or, in the case of Scott Lang/Antman (Paul Rudd), just waking up after a Quantum Realm-induced nap . Lang quickly gets up to speed on what he missed, and comes up with the germ of a plan: Might the Avengers go back in time to foil Thanos’s plan of half-destruction? Lang introduces his idea to remaining Avengers Steve Rogers/Captain America (Evans), Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Johansson) and James Rhodes/War Machine (Cheadle). They bring this spark of an idea to the guy who might be able to make it work, Downey’s Tony Stark/Iron Man, who barely survived Thanos’s destructathon. First Stark says it’s impossible; then he changes his mind—but he also worries that if the scheme doesn’t work, he’ll lose all he’s gained in what has for him become a bittersweet time, an era during which he’s mourning his lost friends but also starting a new life for himself.

The plan to turn back time is less a major plot point than a mechanism to keep the story clicking, and the middle section—in which the Avengers break into groups to travel to specific places and years where they can grab one Infinity Stone or another before Thanos can get his dirty mitts on any of them—is the movie’s finest. Avengers: Endgame is a better movie than Avengers: Infinity War in one important sense: It relies less on milking tears out of us (for characters who have “died” but who we know will come back again—they’re too valuable to the franchise to be gone for good) than on focusing on what each of these characters might mean to us, given our history with them. The mid-section of Endgame shows the Avengers actors at their best. Chris Hemsworth, as a Thor who has slid into a state of pot-bellied depression post-Thanos, gets a chance to reunite with his long-dead mother, Frigga (Rene Russo), in the kingdom of his birth, Asgard. He greets her tentatively, almost shyly, nearly dumbfounded by the gift of seeing her again even for a few moments; she discreetly asks about his funky eye. The tenderness between them is lush and quiet, underscoring what’s most valuable about Endgame: There is only one gargantuan, booming fight scene, and it’s not the centerpiece of the movie. It’s as if the Russo brothers have finally acknowledged that bigger, noisier battles amount to less rather than more. At least we can hope.

Endgame does give us some arresting visuals: Thompson’s Valkyrie riding on a winged horse, anyone? But generally, the actors are Endgame ’s finest special effect. Though we’re made to wait for the entrance of Boseman’s T’Challa/Black Panther, it’s worth it: He coasts into the movie on a regal cloud. And Robert Downey, after playing Tony Stark/Iron Man for perhaps too many years, snaps back into form. In the 2008 Iron Man, Downey brought a kind of frazzled elegance to the role of Stark—his nervous energy seemed to spark from his fingertips, as if it were too much for his body to contain. In the years since, his Iron Man performances have become more brittle, more reliant on tics. But in Endgame, Stark’s moments of doubt feel lived-in—Downey’s performance is alive with prickly uncertainty. Even when Endgame hits its generally predictable beats, you can still count on the actors to shift the mood into slightly uncomfortable emotional territory.

The Russos and their writers clearly took pains to give nearly each character a gratifying arc, and a proper—if not necessarily soft—place to land. That must have been a lot of work, and a few of the Avengers get short shrift: The ever-so-powerful Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) drops out of the movie for a long stretch, eventually returning with…a short haircut. Some arc.

But the Russos more than make up for that with the discreet, wistful coda they give Steve Rogers/Captain America. It’s the movie’s single most gorgeous element, perfectly fitting for a guy who entered a 70-year sleep right after finding the love of his life. Evans’ Captain America has always been, physically speaking, the beefiest of all the Avengers, as sturdy and wholesome as the “after” picture in a Charles Atlas ad. Yet Evans has also always been one of the most understated actors in the franchise. As Steve, Evans’ smile is easy, friendly, in a stock all-American way. But there’s never been any swagger behind it. It’s the smile of a guy who’s lost something valuable, whose view of the future is perpetually tinted with the color of what he left behind. Avengers: Endgame isn’t a great movie, but there are flashes of greatness in it, and quite a few of them belong to Evans. His Captain America rewards us with a revelation and escapes with a secret. The best thing in Avengers: Endgame is everything he doesn’t say.

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Angela Watercutter

Avengers: Endgame Review: Time Is on Their Side

There is nothing more impermeable than time. It's fixed, constant. It may be a human construct, but it is one humanity has built atomic clocks to perfect; there is no stopping its ever-forward march. Except in sci-fi. And comic books. In those worlds, it's fluid. There are rules about not killing Hitler or betting on the World Series, but other than that, the structures of time can be bent.

This, more than anything, is the core of Avengers: Endgame. Yes, there is—as most fans expected—some time travel. (More on that later, in the spoiler-y paragraphs below .) But its deeper narrative follows a thread about the years people have devoted to Marvel heroes, the nostalgia those fans already have for them, and what the future will look like as they evolve. Luckily, in comic-book stories, the future is just as malleable as the past.

First, here's what you need to know: Avengers: Endgame picks up where Infinity War left off. Thanos has wiped out half of the universe's population, and the remaining heroes (Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon, and the newly recruited Captain Marvel ) are trying to un-snap his fingers. The other thing to note: Avengers: Endgame is very good. No movie could have fully encompassed everything that happened in the preceding 10 years and 21 films, but it is the best possible effort at trying to achieve that goal. It's nearly three hours, and none of them feel wasted. More than that, it's exactly what fans need.

What Marvel fans, or anyone, needs in 2019 is a tricky proposition—one that plays out twofold in Endgame , with a double-helix of a plot that constantly works on two levels. First, there's the obvious: Everyone needs closure, needs to see if the Avengers can pull off saving the universe one more time. Second, they need to be rewarded for the decade-plus they've spent with these characters, the effort they've put into seeing every film.

Endgame achieves this using one of the oldest tricks in the cinematic playbook: time travel. As everyone who noticed that Doctor Strange, Wong, and Ant-Man were largely unaccounted for at the end of Infinity War predicted, there is only one way to press Undo on what Thanos did: pull a Cher and turn back time. Though, they don't just rewind what happened and stop it. Instead, they find a more permanent solution that involves going back to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos got his big purple hands on them and using their power to reverse the damage.

This review won’t reveal if this plan succeeds at defeating Thanos, but it will say that it’s a wonderful ride and a narrative tool that provides a chance for the Avengers and their posse to revisit a large chunk of the movies in the franchise. It’s a trip that, in the best ways possible, feels like a band reuniting for a greatest-hits tour, one where the songs gets played by a frontman or frontwoman who wasn’t on the original track—some Traveling Wilburys covering a George Harrison track, Jay-Z and Nas ending their beef to perform “Dead Presidents,” and Beyoncé reuniting Destiny’s Child at Coachella all rolled into one. (In this case, it’s more like “Rocket goes to Asgard” and extended beats of Bruce Banner explaining science to The Ancient One.) It’s a service to every fan who remembers those early films fondly, and a final tug on the threads that have held the franchise together since the beginning.

This kind of nostalgia is delicate, though. It’s tempting to want to go back to the first arc in these heroes’ journeys, the origin stories when they were ascending. It might even be tempting to just go back to 2008, before Mueller reports and Harvey Weinstein investigations and Michael Jackson documentaries, when it seemed easier to believe in heroes in general. That’s impossible, and foolhardy. Longing for those days is akin to longing for a time of ignorance, a time when all the superhero movies were led by white dudes. Everything has changed, and while revisiting days of future past is fun, time (in our world) only moves forward, and the future is more important than what’s come before. Or, to borrow a phrase from Tony Stark, “That’s the hero game—part of the journey is the end.”

Acknowledging this reality is Endgame ’s strongest suit. Because while it spends a fair amount of its second act playing to its base (with some excellent surprise cameos), it spends its final third establishing its new world order. In one of the film’s most telling moments, Captain Marvel—sporting a haircut sure to be the toast of Lesbian Twitter for months—charges into battle flanked by the franchise’s women heroes, the MCU’s version of a Time’s Up meeting ( remember this? ). Marvel’s Phase 4 is still fairly uncertain, but if Endgame has any takeaway it’s that the future is female. And less white. And at least a little bit queer.

Avengers: Endgame could become the biggest movie the world has ever seen: It may make nearly $1 billion in one weekend . Theaters are staying open around the clock to keep up with demand. It’s the culmination of 11 years and 21 films—an unprecedented feat that may never be repeated. The only thing that may come close is December’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , which will be the ninth film in a nostalgia-filled franchise spanning more than four decades. That film, too, will see the reins handed over to a new generation of heroes, folks whose chance to lead is long overdue. Endgame is a beautiful, massive finale—and it paves the way for all the warriors to come. It’s about time.

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Avengers: endgame review - marvel delivers a superhero epic like never before.

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Avengers: Endgame Theory Explains Why Only Tony Stark Could Snap Away Thanos' Army

The deathly hallows legend in harry potter has always bothered me, but i think i finally worked it out, all extended edition changes in lord of the rings: the return of the king, avengers: endgame wraps up the story of the mcu so far, delivering an epic superhero adventure while honoring the past in a satisfying finale..

Marvel Studios kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe nearly 11 years ago with 2008's Iron Man.  Back then, they had a relatively modest vision of building to The Avengers  by assembling a team of heroes from their respective origin movies into a single unit. In the decade since Robert Downey Jr. made his debut as Iron Man, the MCU has grown to include superheroes from all across the universe, from Earth's Mightiest Heroes to the Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, Avengers: Endgame marks the 22nd film in the MCU and sets out to achieve a feat Hollywood has never seen attempted before by ending the story that first began in Iron Man . And it does, in a spectacular accomplishment. Avengers: Endgame wraps up the story of the MCU so far, delivering an epic superhero adventure while honoring the past in a satisfying finale.

Avengers: Endgame picks up after the events of Avengers: Infinity War , which saw the Avengers divided and defeated. Thanos won the day and used the Infinity Stones to snap away half of all life in the universe. Only the original Avengers - Iron Man, Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) - remain, along with some key allies in the forms of War Machine (Don Cheadle), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson). Each of the survivors deal with the fallout from Thanos' Decimation in different ways, but when an opportunity presents itself to potentially save those who vanished, they all come together and set out to defeat Thanos, once and for all.

For Avengers: Endgame , Marvel Studios assembles its veterans behind the scenes as well, re-teaming directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who joined the MCU with Captain America: The Winter Soldier , with screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who've penned a total of six MCU movies since Captain America: The First Avenger . All that's to say, Avengers: Endgame fits perfectly within the larger MCU in terms of direction and screenwriting because it was created by those who had a prominent hand in crafting the sprawling cinematic universe. And with so much experience under their belts, the Russos excel at balancing the superhero spectacle with human drama, while the more focused story of Endgame allows for the characters to truly shine. There are moments when the story gets a little unwieldy, suffering from similar problems to  Infinity War in maintaining a consistent pace throughout the entire film. But  Avengers: Endgame is meant to be a culminating epic and it's clear that the Russos, Markus and McFeely took the care to make sure they got it right.

At the heart of Avengers: Endgame  are the heroes we've been following since the very beginning. At this point in the franchise, there're too many heroes for one movie - even a three-hour movie - to focus on all of them.  Avengers: Infinity War undoubtedly struggled under the weight of balancing so many characters. With half the universe gone, Endgame is able to focus on the original six Avengers, who are the true center of the MCU (at least, so far). The film remarkably balances its character arcs so well it's as if each hero gets a solo movie in Avengers: Endgame . There are certain character beats that may not work for all viewers, and even within the original six, certain heroes get more focus than others, unfortunately. To their credit, though, the actors give some of their best performances in the MCU, especially the original six: Downey, Evans, Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Johansson and Renner. Even with future movies or TV shows already planned for some characters, this is the original Avengers team's swan song, and the actors put their hearts and souls into Avengers: Endgame .

In addition to the character drama, Avengers: Endgame  delivers superhero spectacle like nothing seen in the MCU - or any other superhero movie - ever before. With Endgame acting as the conclusion of the MCU thus far, it goes all in on action. There are times when Endgame falls back into Marvel's old problems (hordes of unimportant villains, too much CGI and muted coloring), but they're tempered with character-focused moments. While most of these are in service of the core six, each Marvel hero in Avengers: Endgame gets a moment to truly shine and join in on the superhero fun. Some of these moments are unashamedly fan service and, in fact, there's a great deal of fan service in Avengers: Endgame overall. But after 11 years and 21 movies, Marvel has earned some fan service, and it all adds to the epic, event nature of Avengers: Endgame .

Ultimately, Avengers: Endgame is a whole lotta movie, but the filmmakers put every single second of its three-hour runtime to good use. Since Endgame concludes the Infinity Saga (the official title of the story thus far), Marvel and the filmmakers have the unenviable task of delivering a movie that satisfies all MCU fans. While there are bound to be aspects of  Avengers: Endgame that don't work for all viewers, for the most part the movie actually, truly offers a satisfying ending to the Infinity Saga. As a result, Avengers: Endgame is a must-see for Marvel fans, even those who have only a casual interest in the MCU. Because of the spectacle, it's worth seeing Avengers: Endgame in IMAX, though it isn't necessary to enjoy the movie. Marvel Studios' latest faces the highest expectations of any Marvel Studios movie thus far and manages to exceed them, which is nothing short of extraordinary. Simply speaking, Avengers: Endgame is one of the best Marvel movies ever.

Avengers: Endgame  is now playing in U.S. theaters nationwide. It is 181 minutes long and rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments section!

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Review: Like the movie, entertaining ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ musical is all about the man behind the mask

Rob McClure’s tour-de-force performance in the touring show at the Civic Theatre helps the musical overcome its by-the-numbers book

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It’s rare for a Tony-nominated actor who originates a role on Broadway to play the same role in the show’s national tour. The stars prefer to stay in New York and leave the grueling road schedule to the hungry up-and-comers.

But Rob McClure, who earned his second Tony nod in 2022 for creating the title role in “Mrs. Doubtfire,” was having so much fun in the part, he wasn’t ready to let it go. It’s easy to see why. At Wednesday’s performance at the San Diego Civic Theatre, where the musical is playing through Sunday, it was clear that “Mrs. Doubtfire” is the role of a lifetime for this multitalented actor.

During the 2-1/2 hour show, McClure plays two distinct characters; does dozens of spot-on celebrity impressions; performs tap, swing, jazz and athletic breakdance numbers; live-creates a song via audio loop, while performing with hand puppets and accents; does dozens of dizzyingly fast costume changes; and performs tireless physical comedy. (San Diegans may remember McClure’s facility for movement and humor when he originated another Tony-nominated role as Charlie Chaplin in La Jolla Playhouse’s pre-Broadway tryout of “Chaplin” in 2010.)

McClure’s tour-de-force mastery in the dual role is the best part of this musical, which is based on the 1993 Robin Williams film about Daniel Hillard, a struggling San Francisco actor who secretly creates an elderly Scottish nanny alter-ego to care for his children, after losing custody to his ex-wife, Miranda. The by-the-numbers book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell is a virtual carbon-copy of the movie, with a few additions that take advantage of McClure’s dance and vocal talents.

The score by Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick is padded with just-OK filler numbers, though there are two touching ballads: “I Want to Be There, sung by McClure, and “Let Go,” sung by Maggie Lakis, who plays Miranda. There’s also a terrific comic duet, “Big Fat No,” sung by McClure and Leo Roberts, the endearing actor who plays Miranda’s hunky new boyfriend, Stuart.

McClure and Lakis are married in real life and have good onstage chemistry, and both do well at portraying the darker and wounded sides of their characters. Romelda Teron Benjamin is amusingly deadpan as the seen-it-all court officer Wanda. Giselle Gutierrez is a good actress as Lydia, Daniel and Miranda’s eldest daughter Lydia. And Aaron Kaburick and Nik Alexander add comic moments as Daniel’s brother Frank, and his husband Andre, respectively.

Director Jerry Zaks, with an assist from choreographer Lorin Latarro, keeps the show’s action from sagging, though some comic lines feel forced and the children’s choreography is particularly stiff. The producers have mounted a handsome tour, but there’s one problem. The latex partial map that McClure dons to quickly transform into Mrs. Doubtfire covers his eyebrows, forehead and cheeks, so it rob the character’s face of heightened emotions.

Producers are increasingly taking the safe route to audiences’ hearts by using popular movies as source material. “Mrs. Doubtfire” may not be that innovative in its transfer to the stage, but with McClure manning the ship, it’s definitely entertaining.

‘Mrs. Doubtfire’

When: 7:30 p.m. tonight; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

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Tickets: $40 and up

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With ‘Deadpool & Wolverine' Set To Bow, Is Shawn Levy High On The List To Direct Marvel's Next ‘Avengers' Movie? – The Dish

EXCLUSIVE : As Deadpool & Wolverine tracks huge ahead of its July 26 release and looms as a summer box office savior, we can reveal that director Shawn Levy is the top choice and is having early conversations to direct another Marvel Studios pic — one that potentially could be the next Avengers movie.

Deadline hears that Levy has been given the latest script by Michael Waldron, though sources add that he has not given an answer on whether he would come aboard, and the studio is still planning to meet with other directors while they wait on a decision from him.

Marvel Studios could not be reached for comment.

We can’t say for sure that Levy will take the job; he expects to be heavily involved as a director and executive producer of the final season of Netflix’s signature series Stranger Things , and there is also a Star Wars film in his future. Still, the prospect of Levy steering the next Avengers makes a helluva lot of sense as Marvel boss Kevin Feige continues to sort out the next iteration of his superhero empire.

There have been four Avengers blockbusters, two directed by Joss Whedon (the $1.5 billion-grossing The Avengers in 2012 and $1.4 billion for the first sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron ) and two by Joe and Anthony Russo (the $2.05 billion-grossing Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame ). Endgame ‘s $2.8 billion global cume made it the highest-grossing film of all time upon its release in 2019 until rereleases pushed James Cameron’s original Avatar to $2.9 billion.

Even with no director set and the script only recently coming in, Marvel has been working hard in recent months to pull this together so shooting can begin next year on one of Marvel’s largest productions to date. Sources close to both the project say more than 60 MCU characters could reprise their roles, including everyone from Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Benedict Cumberbatch to Tom Hiddleston, Simu Liu and Karen Gillian. Unlike the first four films in which there was a core group that consisted of Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Hemsworth and Ruffalo, many of the characters in this film would have equal footing, making it more of an ensemble feature instead of a handful of characters leading the team.

Plot details are unknown, and following Jonathan Majors’ exit from the MCU as Kang following his reckless assault conviction in December, it is unknown who the central villain would be, or if the film could potentially include multiple antagonists.

The Avengers project is another huge swing for Marvel given the projects it will impact going forward. But in Levy they would have a director with an enviable track record of hits, many on a tentpole level, which the MCU demands. Levy’s credits as director range from the Night at the Museum films to The Pink Panther, Big Fat Liar, Date Night, Real Steel, Free Guy, The Adam Project and the Steven Knight-created series All The Light We Cannot See.

As producer at 21 Laps, Levy’s results are even more extensive, including Stranger Things .

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Review: 'Bad Boys' Will Smith, Martin Lawrence are still 'Ride or Die' in rousing new film

Over three decades of “Bad Boys” movies, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence have traded many a zinger and racked up endless property damage with their buddy-cop exploits. And yet they still find fresh ways to make the franchise sing, like weaving in themes of death and mortality with giant hungry alligators and gunfights that rain down jelly beans.

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday), the fourth installment of Smith and Lawrence’s action-comedy series, certainly doesn’t let up on the explosive, crowd-pleasing antics. But directors Adill El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, returning from 2020’s “ Bad Boys for Life ,” successfully evolve Miami cops Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) by having them confront their middle-aged vulnerabilities as inadvertent outlaws in an increasingly over-the-top tale.

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And if you’ve been a “Bad Boys” fan since the original 1995 Michael Bay film, “Ride or Die” pays off plot threads from previous flicks while catching audiences up with Mike and Marcus’ latest life changes. In the new movie, Marcus suffers a heart attack at Mike’s wedding, and the aftermath shows a flip in their usual dynamic: Marcus gains perspective and a newfound sense of immortality, while Mike begins to suffer panic attacks when he realizes how his job puts loved ones in danger.

They just need to figure their stuff out on the run. When their dearly departed boss Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano) is accused of corruption and linked with drug cartels, Mike and Marcus make it their mission to clear his name with the help of the man who killed him: Armando Aretas (Jacob Scipio), revealed in the last film as Mike’s son. The detectives discover a deep conspiracy at foot, are framed for murder by a villainous ex-intelligence operative (Eric Dane) and wind up fugitives alongside Armando with a $5 million bounty on their heads.

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“Ride or Die” packs in a ton of exposition, subplots, extended action sequences, character moments and cameos (from Tiffany Haddish to DJ Khaled) in less than two hours. Although efficiency is welcome in today's age of the bloated run time, bits and pieces narratively fall into place sometimes too easily − though honestly, who comes to a “Bad Boys” movie looking for story logic?

It does deliver on the mayhem front: El Arbi and Fallah craft a nifty airborne spectacle where Mike and Marcus fight goons and G-forces to escape a crashing helicopter, an appetizer for a flaming car chase through Miami and a wild bullet-ridden affair at an abandoned amusement park. And Smith and Lawrence’s chemistry is as infectious as ever, yet they thankfully don’t even try to be the same guys they were in ’95.

The bickering is still there, as is the fist-bumping swagger, but the stars bring more of a relatable groundedness to Mike and Marcus. When not dealing with angry rednecks or backstabbing exotic dancers, Mike tries to keep Marcus from eating Skittles for his health, and Marcus has to slap Mike to snap him back into reality in a bad situation. (That scene, given Smith’s 2022 Oscars incident with Chris Rock , feels both too soon and knowingly pretty funny.) Interestingly, neither of the main men factor into the movie’s most rousing sequence − that centers on Reggie (Dennis McDonald), who was introduced as a mousy teen in 2003’s “Bad Boys II” but shows his mettle here as Marcus’ Marine son-in-law.

While many Hollywood franchises are flailing, “Bad Boys” instead enjoys a renewed relevance thanks to revved-up emotional stakes and a couple of old favorites still at the top of their game.

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By Alissa Wilkinson

As a reporter, I spent the better part of 2018 puzzling over the meteoric rise and sensational nosedive of MoviePass, the brief beautiful dream of a subscription service that’s the subject of Muta’Ali’s new documentary “MoviePass, MovieCrash.” Perhaps you remember those halcyon days. For about $10 a month, you could see any movie in any theater on any day. You received a debit card that you’d use to “purchase” the ticket, and then the company would reimburse the theater for the ticket’s full cost. It worked, for a while, and it was amazing. But it made positively zero sense.

Anyone who passed third grade math can see why. If I pay $10 this month, and see only one movie, the company’s probably already in the hole. (A normal, non-matinee ticket in New York City, where there were a whole lot of MoviePass subscribers, hovered around $15.) If I see two, the hole gets deeper. Now consider the people who go to two movies a week, or four, or seven, and you start to see the problem.

There was some speculation that MoviePass was working on the gym membership model — lots of people subscribe, but few people actually use it, and they balance each other out. But that also makes very little sense. People, on the whole, tend to enjoy watching movies more than they enjoy slogging away on the StairMaster.

The only answer was that MoviePass was either trying to cut deals with studios and theaters, or selling and utilizing user data, or both — especially since Helios and Matheson, MoviePass’s publicly traded owner, was a data analytics firm. The answer is both, and the company’s leadership was convinced that the bigger their user base, the more likely they’d be able to monetize audiences. After all, data showed that MoviePass drastically increased people’s willingness to go to the movies, where they’d presumably spend money on concessions, too — and that might translate to eagerness from theaters to keep the service alive. The company’s chief executive, Mitchell Lowe, who was at Netflix in its early days, was certain that if they could reach five million users, they’d be operating in the black.

MoviePass didn’t reach five million users, but for a while it seemed as though there would be no stopping it. Under the leadership of Lowe and Theodore Farnsworth, the chief executive of Helios and Matheson, the new subsidiary MoviePass Ventures produced the abysmal movie “ Gotti ” and threw a lot of very expensive parties in mid-2018. At the same time, if you were trying to actually use the service, it went from bad to worse to baffling: random blackout periods, strange requirements for purchasing tickets (like uploading photos of stubs) and near-constant changes to the terms and conditions. Eventually the Federal Trade Commission made accusations that MoviePass fraudulently deceived its customers to prevent power users from getting what they’d paid for. That era of MoviePass did not end well.

My friends and I still wistfully speak of those days, wondering what exactly happened there. Luckily, “MoviePass, MovieCrash” answers a lot of those questions, with the participation of the company’s put-upon customer service agents, engineers, employees, investors and Lowe himself. But surprisingly, the film goes much further than expected. Streaming services are loaded with documentaries about scammy internet-era companies, but “MoviePass, MovieCrash” finds the barely told story in all the juicy facts.

That story is, in a sense, a tale as old as time. MoviePass in fact existed all the way back in 2011, co-founded by Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt. The story they tell in the documentary is one of spotting a need in the market — a threat to theatrical exhibition of films posed, in part, by the slow growth of streaming services — and of figuring out a sustainable way to fill it. The answer was MoviePass, which cost more at the time (I believe I paid $49.99 per month in 2013, which was still a bargain) and seemed poised for success.

But as Spikes and Watt explain it, MoviePass is another story of Black entrepreneurs who, along with other underrepresented demographics, struggle to find investment capital and investor confidence in the market, creating something groundbreaking and then losing it to overconfident white men. There’s no doubt that, under Lowe and Farnsworth, a promising service was run directly into the ground. The frustration that Spikes and Watt felt as they were pushed out of the company is palpable. And when Lowe opines on camera that Spikes “wasn’t being a productive member of the team” when he voiced his concerns, you can feel that frustration, too.

All of this makes for an eye-opening documentary about a lot more than just MoviePass, worth watching whether you’re nostalgic for the service or bitter about how it turned out — or if you just think the whole thing was kind of hilarious. But there is a happy ending. In 2022, Spikes bought back the company, tweaked the service and relaunched MoviePass. And in 2023, it reported its first-ever year of profitability.

MoviePass, MovieCrash Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Max.

Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005. More about Alissa Wilkinson

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