I agree, it was a decent movie though not one of the best in the franchise, but it did bring an excellent sense of closure to the long-running story arc. Actually what I found kind of surprising was the use of Captain Marvel. What with introducing a new hero at the last minute, the Captain Marvel movie two months ago was essentially her origin story, mostly set around 1995 or so, with some tie-ins to the present.
Then along comes Avengers: Endgame. She shows up at the start, fixes some things, gets some expository dialog going - then vanishes for most of the second half of the movie, until she kicks some serious ass at the end. Maybe she's a bit over-powered for the writers to be able to use her much? An OP hero needs an OP antagonist, which makes all the lesser-powered characters feel a bit useless.
That being said, I have a soft spot for some of the lesser-powered characters like Ant-Man and Star-Lord, so I was rather miffed they became butt-monkey comic relief characters. I mean, given how depressing the situation was, boy did this film need whatever comic relief it could fit in; I just don't like it being done at the expense of their characters. They had depth when they had their own films, but at this point most of that's thrown out when they're outclassed by everyone else.
Another issue, kind of like the Harry Potter franchise, is that at this point you've got so many characters, you don't have the time to make them all important. You have to sacrifice some of the screen time to fit everyone in, even if they don't get many scenes or lines. So it's understandable that they split people up into smaller groups and jumped back and forth between them, it's easier to focus on the smaller clumps. It was nice to see some characters get a bit of family time too.
The question is - what happens next with the MCU? New stories could go anywhere at this point. They've gotten a lot of their heros back. Some are very powerful; I wouldn't be surprised if they split them off into smaller groups to send them in different directions. And Iron Man (and, by association, Spider-Man) both essentially have magic power armor where the writers can put in whatever features they happen to need. Originally I would have guessed Galactus as the next big bad? Except then a friend reminded me of 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which I'd avoided seeing and subsequently forgot that it existed.
I agree, it was a decent movie though not one of the best in the franchise, but it did bring an excellent sense of closure to the long-running story arc. Actually what I found kind of surprising was the use of Captain Marvel. What with introducing a new hero at the last minute, the Captain Marvel movie two months ago was essentially her origin story, mostly set around 1995 or so, with some tie-ins to the present.
Then along comes Avengers: Endgame. She shows up at the start, fixes some things, gets some expository dialog going - then vanishes for most of the second half of the movie, until she kicks some serious ass at the end. Maybe she's a bit over-powered for the writers to be able to use her much? An OP hero needs an OP antagonist, which makes all the lesser-powered characters feel a bit useless.
That being said, I have a soft spot for some of the lesser-powered characters like Ant-Man and Star-Lord, so I was rather miffed they became butt-monkey comic relief characters. I mean, given how depressing the situation was, boy did this film need whatever comic relief it could fit in; I just don't like it being done at the expense of their characters. They had depth when they had their own films, but at this point most of that's thrown out when they're outclassed by everyone else.
Another issue, kind of like the Harry Potter franchise, is that at this point you've got so many characters, you don't have the time to make them all important. You have to sacrifice some of the screen time to fit everyone in, even if they don't get many scenes or lines. So it's understandable that they split people up into smaller groups and jumped back and forth between them, it's easier to focus on the smaller clumps. It was nice to see some characters get a bit of family time too.
The question is - what happens next with the MCU? New stories could go anywhere at this point. They've gotten a lot of their heros back. Some are very powerful; I wouldn't be surprised if they split them off into smaller groups to send them in different directions. And Iron Man (and, by association, Spider-Man) both essentially have magic power armor where the writers can put in whatever features they happen to need. Originally I would have guessed Galactus as the next big bad? Except then a friend reminded me of 2007's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, which I'd avoided seeing and subsequently forgot that it existed.