Critics reviews

I think this is the particular balance that these movies have—I don’t want to say mastered because I don’t know that it’s an art worth mastering—but consistently being able to smoothly move between gestures signifying gravitas and then a quick, undercutting one-liner that will then give a chuckle and let you move along.

As far as Endgame being dull, the first 40-whatever minutes I was along for the ride, but then the time-travel churn came in, and all of a sudden, it’s a very hollow and normal story about a son and a father.

The hype machine has successfully prepared us for an ‘end,’ and the film is relentlessly directed towards this end; over its three hours, it presents us with extravagant climaxes and moving denouements, over and over again, almost to the point of self-parody.

Endgame’s three-hour length suggests profundity, but each bout of knuckle-busting between the specially gifted vigilantes and the demonic Thanos (Josh Brolin) either panders (the last-minute arrival of pre-technology Wakanda warriors is a risible reversal of the cavalry bit in Westerns) or, at best, is merely redundant (Marvel’s distaff troops line up behind Brie Larsen’s Captain Marvel, the mean-girl superheroine).

The pointed emotionalism in this premise . . . suggests that a resonant film might have emerged from “Endgame.” Some scenes have a strong melodramatic authority, and there are a few situations that induce an inspired aura of the uncanny. But these moments get lost in the movie’s stiflingly rigid yet bloated three-hour span.

It’s testament to the film’s sure hand with cosmic soap opera that scenes between characters who don’t really belong together – the Hulk and Dr Strange’s mentor the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) – are as affecting as the moments where heroes reconnect with dead parents (there’s a lot of that going about, as in almost all superhero stories).

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.

Was it worth it? In the aggregate, I have my doubts, but the chuckles and awws you’ll hear around you in the theater at certain moments attest to the happy sense of participation that lies at the heart of the modern fan experience. At its best — and “Endgame” is in some ways as good as it gets — the “Avengers” cosmos has been an expansive and inclusive place.

It’ll take a while to get to the final showdown, of course. About two hours and 45 minutes of the three-hour running time, to be exact, all of it filled to bursting with goofy one-liners, aching stares into the middle distance, and lots and lots of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey digressions.