Avengers: Endgame Review (2019): Worth Streaming on CocoFlix?

The Weight of the World: A Decade's Reckoning

With over 20 films leading up to its release, "Avengers: Endgame" shows why watching eighteen hours of movies is really worth it. And that's important when you consider the movie's 3 hour run time. The movie picks up after the events of "Avengers: Infinity War," where Thanos wiped out half the universe. The remaining films aren't used to introduce you to a new universe; they're used to show you the remains of the old. It shows the large scale of the loss of life. That loss is shown not only by the large scale, but by the small, sad moments, like Tony Stark, and the other heroes. The directors of "Avengers: Endgame," Anthony and Joe Russo, decided to show the aftermath of the events that Thanos caused and to show, for the first time, the emotions of the characters like Tony Stark, Captain America, and Thor. While the events that occur are on a large scale across the universe, the emotions of the characters, like what the characters are feeling and experiencing, show the events in a realistic way that pulls the viewer in and ground the large, fantasy-based events. It is centered more so around the small moments, which the events that came before it lacked. It's a good entry point for first time viewers, but if you haven't watched the 18 previous movies, the 'Endgame' backstory might be pretty overwhelming. But for those who've invested in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's a deep landscape of grief and macabre.

Performances and Craft: Anchoring the Spectacle

For the main performances to be so important in a movie of so much scale is commendable. The Stark family isn’t the only family of veterans for which the critical community has heaped praise upon, and with very good reason. People speak highest of Tony Stark, and with good reason. Robert Downey Jr. impregnates his performance with an emotional layer of a man whose greatest fears have come to pass. Chris Evans brings the moral compass of the group in Captain America, and Mark Ruffalo grounds the emotional center. Even with a smaller presence than the previous film, Josh Brolin does justice to his powerful and complex portrayal of Thanos. The balance of heart, humor, and plot twists in the writing of Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is commendable, as is how they are able to weave multiple plots together without losing sight of the whole. The Russos are able to execute the plot and the various moving parts associated with each character with equal ease. Although the effects are as one would anticipate, the true joy of seeing the effects as they are employed is in the service of the compelling emotional story. As one pundit stated, “Big budget action filmmaking doesn't get much better than this.”

The Streaming Experience: A Marathon on the Couch

Timed at three hours and one minute, "Avengers: Endgame" is a long movie. Length is an issue for many streaming movies, but it works well with "Endgame''s" narrative, which breaks the journey into digestible segments. Most fans will want to take in the movie all at once, but segmented viewing could work as well. The story pulls in fans with its structure and time travel-centric narrative, with callbacks and Easter eggs that pay-off easily for fans of the series. “Endgame” is a "fan-facing" movie which Variety specifically calls out. The movie has a true closure that is tied to a long and convoluted journey, and creates a long list of pay-offs for the character arcs and plotlines that made up the series. Casual viewers may be turned off by the runtime and movie-specific knowledge, but the movie’s reviews, with a 78/100 on Metacritic and 94% Rotten Tomatoes score, and crowd-sourced reviews on loading screen movie pages (averaging 8.2) suggest that the film is worth the extra time. The narrative and emotional resonance offer an entertaining and engaging story that elevates and justifies the movie’s run-time above most in its genre. Evidentiated by responsive theater audiences, multiple viewings proved the movie was a hit among fans.

A Defining Conclusion for the Ages

Avengers: Endgame is a movie and so much more. It's like saying goodbye to the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the last decade. Definitely, the best final send-off constructed with emotional depth. There are moments when the movie relies on nostalgia and a very deep understanding of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but minor things like that don't even begin to compare to how epic this movie is. It's able to pay off the stories and emotional levels for so many characters that it makes this a truly satisfying ending to an epic journey. There is so much happening, so many emotional levels, and it manages to be Epic, but maintain human. In fact, some of the best performances come from all the actors whose portrayal of these characters has brought us on this great journey. If you have been along for this journey of the last decade, this is the ending you've been waiting for to bring closure. Endgame is essentially how to end a story in this genre on a huge scale at the right level of emotion that every fan should experience.