Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame – This sequel to that Avengers movie that killed off half of the known universe - but, coincidentally, not one member of the Avengers - brings to an end the storylines of some of the current Marvel film franchise's storied heroes, but otherwise sets everything to right. I mean, how could it not? Other, that is, than not happening at all and just leaving the observable universe, and Marvel superherodom, in the very depressing place where it was at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. Which was almost depressing enough to make me decide I didn't care to watch another Marvel Cinematic Universe flick, ever. But I went to this, partly because my parents went to it after taking me out to dinner and we were traveling in their car, so I could only have avoided going it at the expense of Making a Scene. Which, at the time, just didn't seem worth the effort.

I went and saw it, but was surprised by very little that I saw. I could have predicted – and in an internal way, I kind of did predict – pretty much exactly what happens in this movie. Like I said, "How could it not?" How could time travel not be involved? How could it not be fraught with unintended consequences? How could there not be a climactic battle, starring everybody in the Screen Actors Guild who isn't under contract to DC? How could the recovery of most (but not quite all) of the heroes lost in Infinity War take place without the sacrifice of a few of those who had survived? And how could the boss battle not be depicted on a scale rivaling the Battle of Five Armies in The Hobbit Part 3, with all the requisite artifact of too many too-tiny CGI animated figures duking it out across a too-large canvas? How, indeed?

Sigh. I'm going to skip now to the Three Scenes That Made It For Me: (1) Ant Man: "Somebody peed in my suit." Belly-laugh funny. (2) Capt. America, after knocking himself out in a time-travel assisted scene: "That *is* America's ass." (3) Tony Stark's moment (also via time travel) with the guy who was about to become his dad.

And now the Three Scenes That Un-Made It For Me, because I'm just too sick of this by-the-numbers crap to play nice right now: (1) The endless series of fake-out endings, stealing another unfortunate bit from the third number of a Peter Jackson/Tolkien trilogy. (2) Fat Thor. (3) Chris Pratt's character being treated as such a useless, like, prat. I haven't even seen any of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and I felt vicariously slapped in the face. I could actually go on, because there are more, but I said there were going to be three, but actually, Thing 1 and the aforementioned predictability of it all pretty much reduced my entire evening's enjoyment to a couple of belly laughs and one moment of misty-eyed emotion. If this is the current state of myth making, I want to go back to the Greek.