Triumph or trash? A Marvel first-timer’s spoiler-free take on "Avengers: Endgame"

Avengers: Endgame brings an 11-year narrative arc started with Iron Man to a supremely satisfying close full of nods and crowd-giddying payoffs to the 21 movies that have led up to this point. Given you probably already know if you’re going to see this, I won’t spoil anything or dwell too much on my thoughts. (You can find more reviews for Avengers: Endgame than there are characters crammed into its bladder-testing three hours.) Instead, I wanted to know: What would someone with zero knowledge of and no emotional investment in the Marvel universe think of Avengers: Endgame?

What if you’ve missed a few films here and there but still want in on the fun? Or what if you’re a total newcomer who wants to arm themselves for some Monday morning water cooler chit-chat? After all, this super-sized saga send-off may be the closest thing to a Return of the Jedi-caliber pop-culture event many movie-goers have ever experienced. To get an idea of how well Endgame plays out (or doesn’t) for the uninitiated, I sought a viewing partner who could go in clueless and report back on their Avengers experience.

Finding someone who’s been absent from this decade-long journey proved challenging. Most of the people I could assemble from my contacts list had seen most of the films (a testament either to how widely viewed these films are or how nerdy my friends are — your choice). But at the final hour, a new hero approached — a conveniently solution-shaped key to my Marvel-movie problem, a Captain Marvel-like deus ex machina to save the day: Kevin.

Kevin, my Marvel-ignorant Endgame-viewing guinea pig of a partner, has managed to avoid almost all Avengers-related adventures. He thinks he’s seen the first Avengers flick and caught parts of The Incredible Hulk on a wall of TVs at Best Buy years ago. Armed with no context and a bag of popcorn, Kevin suited up and joined me for Avengers: Endgame.

The following chat has been edited for length, spoilers, and to make me sound smarter.

Avengers: Endgame serves as the second half of Infinity War and the 22nd part in the MCU film saga. You’ve seen maybe one-and-a-half parts of the series. How well could you follow what was going on?

I could gather that something bad had happened — that there was some major cataclysm that occurred. But it was probably a solid 45 minutes into the movie before I understood that Thanos did something that made half the world’s population vanish.

Based off of what you were able to piece together, can you take a stab at setting up the backstory people should know before seeing this?

In the last 10 to 15 years, these various Marvel groups have fought together, and at some point, Thanos destroyed half the planet. Now the Marvel characters are trying to organize themselves to correct what was done. But I have no idea how they worked together. Like, I know Chris Pratt was in the movie with Groot and the green-faced woman. I know that’s a collective. But I don’t really know what the different collectives are. Like, X-Men is Marvel, right?

Yes, but not in these movies. Not yet. It’s complicated. Were there any characters that you were especially confused about?

There were so many characters I couldn’t figure out. But I’ll give Marvel its due: It’s really clear they pulled out the stops to get everyone into this. It’s like the finale of Seinfeld: Let’s get every cast member we’ve ever had and somehow put them in the story.

What about the powers? Did any strike you as especially silly or confusing?
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When I look at what some of the characters traits are, I have questions. There’s this woman [Captain Marvel] who can fly light years across space. If she has that ability, it’s just hard for me to see what a guy who’s good with bow and arrows [Hawkeye] brings to the table. Or like Black Widow — I don’t get how her abilities compare to the ability to harness bolts of freaking lightning! It just doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s not very balanced if you’re playing some type of game with these people.

Even people who adore these movies can probably agree on that.

Sure.

Josh Brolin returns to breathe life into a character that shouldn’t work: Thanos, a 10-foot-tall purple spaceman with superhuman strength and a magic glove. I think he feels real because, one, he looks pretty damn realistic, and two, Brolin brings some gravity to the character. He also has a decent enough (if not fully thought-out) villainous motivation in Infinity War that you can buy why he wants to wipe out half the universe. Could you gather what his motivation was here?

Absolutely not. I felt like I got no explanation other than that he’s just a bad person. I don’t know why he wants to do this. Power? He doesn’t even kill them. They said he made them vanish. I just have to assume it’s to put into his army or something?

Even with half of the world turned to dust, the number of supers juggled here is staggering. And like Infinity War, it’s pulled off surprisingly well. I guess it helps they don’t have to follow the motions of a standalone film with introductions and motivations needing to be established. This break-neck pace where you hop around from place to place and person to person helps the movie not feel overly long, even though it certainly is. However, as a result, you don’t get much time with any character — your attachment to them hinges on you having spent time with them in previous films.

I think so.

For me, there were some really emotional moments when the story focuses on the human sides of these super-humans. People were definitely crying in our screening. (Not me — I just have allergies.) But how did that work for you? Were you able to feel any connection with or care about any of these characters?

I appreciate what they tried to do, and there’s some poetry to the arcs of these characters’ stories, but I didn’t get much of a build up. They’re all nice, but without any previous investment, I don’t know how much of it works. Like Captain America. His is a fine story, but I haven’t seen any of his movies, so I don’t fully know what his plight is. I gathered he was frozen and missed out on his life, but having not spent any time with him, I didn’t think much of it.

Based off audience reaction around you, did you feel like much was going over your head?

Oh yeah. There are a lot of good jokes in the movie. It was funnier than I expected, and I got some good laughs off of the jokes I could follow. But at least a third of the jokes, the audience would be laughing at something and I could tell it was a punchline but had no idea how it related to the movie. A couple of jokes even seemed to be critical plot points, so that was kind of frustrating.

As far as things that you liked, what stood out?

The visual elements paired with the size of the ensemble. Whether I knew the characters or not, it wasn’t lost on me that this was a spectacle. The sheer volume of characters maintained on the screen at one time was impressive.

It is quite the cast of characters. I think Chris Hemsworth’s Thor remains the best of the bunch. His comedic timing surpasses even Pratt’s perpetually juvenile Star-Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy.

​Tony Stark is an interesting character. He’s basically Elon Musk in comic form. I get why people would like that.

With these superhero movies getting (arguably) better over the past few years, I see people saying, “Now this is Best Picture material.” I thoroughly enjoyed the ride, but saying Endgame is Best Picture-worthy seems a bit of a stretch. And I don’t even know if it’s fair to compare these to “normal” movies — they’re more like a miniseries. Or, not surprisingly, comics. I can’t deny that these movies are great at what they do, but saying Endgame deserves a Best Picture Oscar is almost like saying a rollercoaster deserves a Grammy. From your perspective, what didn’t work well? What would you say Endgame’s chances are as a Best Picture nominee?

There seemed to be virtually no storyline whatsoever. And I haven’t thought about it too deeply, but I feel like there are some big plot holes as well. It mostly felt like, “Hey guys, let’s create the most epic battle scenes we can think of three or four times throughout the movie.”

Another confusing thing: I was very surprised by their soundtrack. I enjoyed it, it just caught me off guard. I don’t know what I associate with Marvel movies. but it was very ’60s and ’70s upbeat stuff. It sets a tone for the movie that was different than I expected it to be.

I think that’s a carryover from Guardians of the Galaxy, which is largely framed around its nostalgic soundtrack.

Ah, OK.

Did this movie pique your interest to go back and watch more of the Marvel movies? Or at least like poke around on Wikipedia to read up on the backstory?

I’ll be political here and say should I ever have children, I would delight in their delight of watching these. But I’m going to save it for that occurrence.

Ha! So these movies are for children. Got it. Please direct all fanboy hate-mail to Kevin. How do you think it compared to your expectations?

It was exactly what I expected. It’s nonstop from stop to finish. It’s not sci-fi or fantasy, it’s a genre unto itself. It’s just an entertaining story.

Another big, meaty saga is coming to close right now as well — one that you are familiar with. How do you think jumping in blind to this might compare to jumping in blind on the final season of Game of Thrones?

Well, I don’t want to make presumptions, but Game of Thrones would be more complicated, I’d imagine. I don’t think that the Marvel universe is as deep as that. But if someone told me, “No really, they get into these really compelling character arcs,” then I’d be more tempted to go back. Just the knowledge that Game of Thrones is built on like 4,000 pages of literature... but I guess the comic books are probably longer than Game of Thrones, so maybe that’s not fair.

I think they have sort of crafted their own take on the comics’ stories in these.

And I know Game of Thrones has deviated too. I’m pretty confident that if I had seen the last 10 Marvel movies, I would know exactly what the hell was going on. But you could watch Game of Thrones multiple times and you still might not comprehend all of the story arcs. The duality of good and evil is pretty well defined in Marvel, which is just not the case in Game of Thrones.

Marvel movies also have the benefit of character names that are more to the point and memorable than Game of Thrones: Ant-Man, Iron Man, Spider-Man. Quite a bit different than Lord Beric Dondarrion or whatever.

Game of Thrones also uses a lot of unknown actors, or at least not A-list actors. Whereas the Marvel movies, I know the cast. I get Paul Rudd being Ant-Man. I understand he’s kind of a stoner, slacker type. There are personality traits that instantly get put on the characters because of the actors. And I think I knew at least 70% of the actors in the movie.

So if you’re out of the loop but looking to jump into the convo, Avengers: Endgame is probably an easier entry than Game of Thrones. Since we’re comparing the two though, as a fan of both I can say we should be so lucky that Game of Thrones has a conclusion that will satisfy fans as well as Avengers: Endgame.

​Let’s hope so.

—Eric Pulsifer