Anthony Russo & Joe Russo

Avengers: Endgame: Marching to the End, and Back to the Beginning

Jeremy BeckReviews
Heroes assemble in "Avengers: Endgame".

In one of the very first scenes (spoiler alert!) in Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark—marooned in deep space, with hope and oxygen levels dwindling—beams out an interstellar valediction that doubles as a cinematic prophecy. “This is going to be one hell of a tearjerker,” declares the playboy inventor who more than a decade ago donned a metallic suit and launched the mother of all franchises. Setting aside the industrialist’s dire circumstances, the supposed catalyst for those tears is right there in the title. After 11 years, 21 movies, dozens of costumed characters, and billions in box-office grosses, Endgame is designed to bring the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a close.

Whether this in fact brings tears to your eyes is a matter of personal taste, but what cannot be denied is the enormity of this enterprise. Endgame, again directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, is an absolutely massive movie, so full of stuff—fights and flights, flash-forwards and leaps backward, deaths and resurrections, callbacks and cul-de-sacs—that its three-hour runtime seems almost slender. It may not be the best superhero movie ever made—in fact, I’d wager Tony’s conspicuously placed Audi against it—but it is unquestionably the biggest. Read More

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Avengers: Infinity War: Everybody Must Get Stones

Jeremy BeckReviews
Benedict Wong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. in "Avengers: Infinity War"

Vaulting through the interplanetary air, sticky webs shooting from his genetically altered wrists, Spider-Man issues a sincere apology. “I’m sorry,” he says to his plummeting compatriots as he slings gobs of gummy goo at them, yanking them out of their falls and saving them from certain death. “I can’t remember anyone’s names.”

Can you blame him? The nineteenth official installment in the gargantuan compendium known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Infinity War arrives as the ultimate crossover event, a superhero greatest-hits collection most notable for its sheer tonnage. No fewer than eight major characters here have already headlined their own standalone films, while countless others—all played by recognizable actors—have carved out sizable territory as villains, foils, squeezes, and sidekicks. The closing credits sequence alone feels like a breathless roll call, cramming as many high-profile names above the fold as possible, just so nobody’s agent complains about their client getting the shaft. Read More

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Captain America: Civil War—Dissension in the Superhero Ranks

Jeremy BeckReviews
A host of heroes charges the field in "Captain America: Civil War"

Early in Captain America: Civil War, a character called Vision (Paul Bettany) muses on his brethren’s tendency to antagonize. “Conflict breeds catastrophe,” he gloomily intones. Maybe so. But at the movies, conflict is the engine of drama. Yet while the Marvel Cinematic Universe comprises films that feature plenty of fighting, they’re largely lacking in genuine excitement. The Avengers sequel had its Whedonesque charms, but it ultimately amounted to a bunch of costumed warriors trading blows with an army of faceless flying robots. Ditto for Iron Man 3, except there, the robots were the good guys. Ant-Man was fitfully funny, but it was still an absurd movie about a dude who talked to bugs. Thor? Please.

The recent exception to this institutional lethargy—setting aside the terrific Guardians of the Galaxy, which was literally a universe removed from the rest of the MCU—was Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, it was less a superhero movie than a paranoid thriller, and its stripped-down quality lent it a rare spark of intrigue. Now the Russos are back with Civil War, a far more unwieldy but no less thoughtful superhero extravaganza. Like all Marvel movies, it’s large and loud, with special effects and action sequences galore, but it nonetheless feels rooted in its characters rather than its gee-whiz battle scenes. Every comic-book film has combat; Civil War has actual conflict. Read More

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