APRIL 27 — It's finally here. Whether you're one of the first ones to watch it in Malaysia at one of those 7am screenings on April 24 or much later, the wait is over.
All of this mad anticipation is surely courtesy of that unexpected ending in Avengers: Infinity War, which left everyone watching gobsmacked as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) masterplan grips us even tighter in its grasp.
It may have been mere coincidence, but the rise of “quality TV” and binge watching, thanks to modern day pioneers like The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad and of course, the all-conquering Game Of Thrones, coupled with long movie franchises like The Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars, set things up nicely for the elaborate, multi-movie world building and myth making of the MCU.
For those with a keen knowledge of film history, this will not be such a surprise as this taste for multi-part storytelling has been with us since the days of silent movies with what was then called movie serials, a clear predecessor to TV series as these movie serials were usually screened at a movie theatre for one week, ending with cliffhangers, which are then resolved in the next chapter screened the next week, and so on until the whole thing ends.
We may not be familiar with titles like The Perils Of Pauline or legendary European serials like Fantomas and Les Vampires, but they are the MCU movies of the silent era.
So, after 11 years and 22 movies, with quite a few of them pretty long movies too, we have come to the end of Phase 3 of the MCU as directors the Russo brothers chose a rather surprising approach to resolve the cliffhanger in Avengers: Infinity War by making a sort of Sundance indie version of a blockbuster movie with Avengers: Endgame.
Why am I calling it a Sundance indie? Because for a three-hour superhero movie, there's really a lot of talk about grief, and scenes showing people dealing with grief.
Because there are 21 previous movies, with a whole lot of characters, not to mention the shared history between the enormous amounts of characters, for most of its running time Endgame is a movie full of quiet, deeply felt and emotional character moments.
Some people are dismissing this as fan service, but what's a franchise without its fans, and there really aren't many better ways to do fan service than to deliver satisfying emotional payoffs to story arcs we've all been following for the past 11 years.
So in addition to the survivors licking their wounds because of The Snap in Infinity War, which is already ripe emotional material, as beautifully illustrated in Endgame's opening scene with Hawkeye and his family, the audience is treated to what seems like as many emotional payoffs to story arcs and characters as the writers and directors can cram into a three-hour movie.
For once, a movie in the MCU is in a position to provide real, and what seems like final closure. And there are two levels to that closure too – the first one is to see whether they can reverse what happened at the end of Infinity War, and the second one is the closure needed involving our favourite characters in the MCU after devoting so much time to following their adventures so far.
The movie pulls this off by using that neat cinematic device called time travel. Yes, it's messy, and it opens up holes that we'd rather not obsess too much about, but it also opens up the opportunity for the characters to revisit special events and moments that will bring nostalgia not only to the characters, but also to the fans as well – callbacks as some fans like to call it.
I don't want to spoil things so I will leave the details out, especially on who dies and survives, but fans of The Avengers, Thor: The Dark World, Guardians Of The Galaxy, and most touchingly the Agent Carter TV series will find plenty to get misty eyed, laugh, think and reminisce about as certain events or locations from these movies and series are revisited because of Endgame's time travel element.
So if Avengers: Endgame is only your second or third MCU movie, I've a feeling that you will find it slow and talky, because you simply won't know who a lot of these talking characters are and what their relations are to each other. But if Endgame is your 22nd, the hours will fly by swiftly and you'll be treated to a satisfying and emotional end to an 11-year-old saga, a bittersweet conclusion that has pretty much everything needed in a modern day superhero blockbuster movie.
And of course kudos the Russo brothers for the hilarious and totally unexpected tribute to The Dude from The Big Lebowski!!
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
