Featured Blu-ray and DVD Review: Avengers: Endgame

August 10, 2019

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Avengers: Endgame is the biggest box office hit worldwide. It is also a follow-up to Infinity War, which I consider the best movie in the M.C.U. Can Endgame live up to its predecessor? Can it top it?

The Movie

This is going to be a truncated review. Because of the nature of the movie, we can only talk about a small fraction of the film. The film has a short prologue, a 20-minute first act, and then the instigating incident happens and you are hit by spoilers after that. It’s a three-hour movie that hits unacceptable spoiler territory in about 30 minutes.

The prologue shows the emotional impact of Thanos’s plan. It starts with Barton teaching his daughter how to fire a bow and arrow while the rest of his family prepares for lunch. Then the Snap happens and his family is dusted and Barton doesn’t even see it happen, because it happens so fast.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark and Nebula are stuck in space and about to run out of oxygen. Tony records a message for Pepper and goes to bed expecting to never wake up again, only for them to be saved by Captain Marvel. When they get back, and Tony recovers, they plan to undo what Thanos did by finding him, defeating him, and then using the Infinity Stones to undo the Snap. They get lucky, as they detect a burst of energy similar to the one released by the Snap on a planet, but when they get there and confront Thanos, they learn he used the Infinity Stones to destroy the Infinity Stones. Dejected, Thor decapitates Thanos, despite Thanos being unarmed at the time. They return to Earth and try and recover and move on.

Five years later, while the world hasn’t truly recovered. However, hope appears when Scott Lang manages to escape the Quantum Universe. He’s obviously confused over what’s happened, especially after seeing his now teenage daughter. He heads to the Avengers compound and talks to Natasha and Steve Rogers about what happened to him and how only five hours passed for him instead of five years for the rest of the world. He figures that if they can learn how to navigate the Quantum Realm, they can travel back in time and stop Thanos from ever getting back the Infinity Stones. There’s one man they think can crack the science, Tony Stark. However, when he refuses to mess with time, which could kill Pepper, and especially his daughter, they turn to Bruce Banner, who in the past five years merged himself fully with The Hulk becoming Smart Hulk. Even with Bruce Banner being smart all of the time, it is still going to be very difficult to pull off.

I’m having trouble writing this review, because Avengers: Endgame isn’t a real movie. That might sound like an insult, but it is not. It’s not a real movie any more than you can consider All Good Things... to be two separate episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Infinity War and Endgame tell one story over a five-hour run time, split into two movies, because the human bladder only has so much capacity before it bursts. Okay, that’s not the exact reason they split the movie into two pieces, but I think it was part of the calculation. In order to truly judge Endgame, you have to watch the two films back-to-back. And that’s just what I did.

So with that in mind, how does Avengers: Infinity Game work as a full movie? Well, I’m keeping it in first place on my M.C.U. Chart. There was a real chance that if the pay off in Endgame wasn’t strong enough, then it would retroactively hurt the appeal of the setup delivered in Infinity War. That wasn’t the case. In fact, there are plenty of elements of Endgame that actually work better than in the previous film. For instance, due to the events at the end of the first film, there are about half as many characters, each of them get more screen time and have more development as a result. Unfortunately, the screen time is not evenly divided. It’s not even close. For example, Okoye doesn’t have much to do in this movie and the lack of payoff is an issue. Likewise, Captain Marvel is the biggest character introduced between the two films, but she gets very little to do here. I do understand why certain characters do dominate the movie more than others. After all, for several of them, this is their last major film in the M.C.U. and they do deserve a great send-off.

Speaking of send-offs, the final act of Endgame is basically an hour-long fight that includes more fanservice than an entire season of Anime, only it’s not the jiggly kind. There’s even a scene in which every female hero is shown together and they get an extended action fight. I’ve heard that scene described as a feminist moment, but I think it is more a marketing moment. The studio wanted to know how people would react to that scene to judge if a female team-up movie would be profitable. (I think it would be.) This climactic battle with a cast of dozens of named characters is worth the hours of setup and it is a great send-off for the first three phases of the M.C.U.

The Extras

The only extras on the first disc are an introduction and audio commentary track, both with the directors, Joe Russo and Anthony Russo. The rest of the extras are found on the bonus disc and are divided into three sections, starting with Featurettes. Remembering Stan Lee is exactly what it sounds like. Setting the Tone is about the casting of Robert Downey, Jr. and his performance as Iron Man. A Man out of Time is very similar, but about Chris Evans. Black Widow looks at Scarlett Johansson. The Russo Brothers looks at the two directors and their role in the M.C.U. The Women of the M.C.U. looks at the large cast of female characters in the M.C.U. and I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be a preview for a female team-up film in the future. Finally, there’s Bro Thor looks at Thor’s character arc in the film. The total running time here is 46 minutes. Additionally, there are only five minutes of deleted scenes and two minutes of outtakes.

This is not a lot of extras, especially for a two-disc set. Normally I would complain about the two-disc nature of this release, as with most films it would seem like a marketing ploy, because this selection of extras wouldn’t need a second disc. However, the film is three hours long, so there was very limited space left over on the first disc, so I will cut them some slack. That said, I still would have liked a larger making-of featurette to be included in the extras and especially Michael Peña’s rundown of the history of the MCU up to that point.

The Verdict

Avengers: Endgame lives up to its potential and combined with Infinity War is a near-perfect conclusion to the Infinity Stones story line. Like before, there are too many characters for all of them to get enough screen time and the combined five hour running time is unwieldy, but I can’t imagine too many fans of the M.C.U. being disappointed with the finished product. The DVD / Blu-ray / 4K have enough extras to be worth picking up, but a movie this big deserved more.

C.S.Strowbridge

Filed under: Video Review, Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Brolin, Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Brie Larson, Michael Peña, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, Danai Gurira, Emma Fuhrmann, Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Karen Gillan, Lexi Rabe, Ava Russo