Avengers: Endgame

Now, I actually loved Brie Larson in Room, for which she won an Oscar, but really not much else. Part of me admires her IDGAF attitude when it comes to the bizarre nature of the entertainment business. I don’t even mind her bigoted statement against white male critics, frankly, we could use a more diverse pool of writers/commentators/reporters in our collective conversation about movies.

“Empathy is the entire point of all art whether we experience it in book form, comic book form or movie form…”

What offends me about her statement is that it not only continues to create more unnecessary divides within our culture, it assumes that the group of critics she targeted in her statement are incapable of empathy. This is the very reason we have a passion for movies, to experience the world in someone else’s shoes — to feel what it’s like to be a super-soldier, a genius in an iron suit, a king who dresses like a panther, a talking raccoon, a talking teenaged-angsty, videogame-addicted alien tree or even a powerful woman who can fly through outer space and shoot laser blasts from her fists. Empathy is the entire point of all art whether we experience it in book form, comic book form or movie form. It’s unfortunate but it’s hard not to think about that when Brie is on screen, so do your best to put that out of your mind. (But it would not surprise me if Disney quietly replaced her in a year as they did with Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2.)

All of my other issues with Endgame really come down to little nitpicks and quibbles that make for good discussion after if you think about the film a bit too much. Like, how does time travel work? Are there multi-verses now? And do the people who return from the “unsnappening” do they get their old jobs back? I look forward to debating these questions with you, among others, at a comic-con very soon. (Or just comment below, there’s no reason we can’t debate these questions now.)

The Verdict

So where does Endgame rank? If Infinity War is The Empire Strikes Back, that means that Endgame is Return of the Jedi, and I would have to say that I actually enjoyed Infinity War just slightly more than Endgame. But we’re also talking about two films that are exceptional in the category of once-in-a-lifetime movie blockbusters that I’m sure we’ll watch and debate for years to come. I’m looking forward to seeing both films back-to-back as one very long and satisfying movie.