Avengers : Endgame

"Lets get this son of a bitch." Ugh, do lines of dialogue come anymore cliched? How many times have we heard this in movies? Hundreds? Thousands? It's a line that would make your eyes roll out of your head. But this time the man saying it is Steve Rogers aka Captain America. A true paragon of virtue. When he swears you know things are serious. It's a sign that he means business. And like Steve, Avengers : Endgame means business. This is it. 22 films over 11 years. The culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Was it worth the wait? Fuck yeah it was.

In the aftermath of Thanos and his finger snap, the universe is still struggling to deal with the loss of 50% of it's population. The Avengers are in disarray, having lost both family and friends. Some of them have learned to live with it, some of them are barely holding things together and some have given up completely. Then a freak occurrence gives the remaining members a glimmer of hope and they set out for one final go at fixing the horrors of the past.

This rocked. It lived up to the hype and expectation with ease. There were no cheap shortcuts or shitty out of the blue deus ex machina type explanations. Everything here felt earned from the beautiful little character moments liberally scattered throughout to the huge bells and whistles ending. You'll burst a gut laughing at times (Thor and Bruce Banner as always deliver the biggest laughs) and minutes later you'll have a pain in your throat from trying to suppress your sorrow. We've known and loved these characters for over a decade so it's horrible when bad things start to happen to them. Anyone who can call this a soulless blockbuster deserves a slap. It's full of heart. The characters within might be able to fly across the universe in the blink of an eye but they still grieve and feel loss and lash out and we feel all of it too. We care about them and this ramps up the tension throughout the the nth degree. I watched a large portion of the last 30 minutes of this through my fingers while the fella beside me unabashedly cried his eyes out.

It's 180 minutes long but never feels like it. Every part of it is packed with creamy goodness. The nods to long time fans (elevators and burgers), pay-off's to stories began years before, more cameos than you can shake a stick at and a constantly evolving and genuinely unpredictable plotline. Forget what you've seen in the trailers, you won't have a clue what's going to happen next. It zigs when you expect a zag and then floors you with an unexpected thump. With so much happening not every character gets their time to shine but I genuinely can't think of anything I'd have liked to have seen replaced. But best of all is it's back to basics approach in regards to the main cast. The original gang of Cappy, Iron Man, Natasha, Hawkeye, Thor and Bruce Banner are front and centre again and it's deadly fun to see them together again after the last few films saw fit to keep them apart. Feckin civil wars. They spark off each other brilliantly and show us why the first Avenger's film worked so well. (I don't like to talk about Age Of Ultron.)

The cast in this one is unsurprisingly packed with a ridiculous amount of talent but for me the standouts are Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Karen Gillan and Mark Ruffalo. Each has been damaged by the events of Infinity War and each has been dealing with it in their own way be it rage, acceptance, sorrow or beer & a game of Fortnite. Evans as Captain America carries the film on his shoulders though. He's always been the man, the one everyone looked up to, the "ass of America". In Infinity war it took an age for him to appear but here he's in it right from the beginning. He's the heart of the Avengers and seeing him follow through on his mission leads to, for me, the most deserved moment in the entire franchise. As for Mark Ruffalo, the less you know about his character Bruce the better. Let's just say his first appearance is an absolute joy and we'll leave it at that.

If you're a long time Marvel fan this is everything you dreamed it would be. Even if you aren't it's still a mindblowing achievement, all these moving pieces falling into place perfectly. It's blockbuster filmmaking at it's very best. A behemoth with a warm beating heart. I know it sounds like fawning but it's an immensely satisfying 3 hrs at the movies. Just remember to stay away from the large cokes. You don't want to miss a minute of it.