Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen “Avengers: Endgame” then I wouldn’t recommend reading this article because there may be possible spoilers.
Marvel’s 22 movie franchise, the “Infinity Saga,” has come to an end with its finale movie. “Avengers: Endgame” has been out for over a month and has broken a number of records but reactions still vary between the students and staff of WIS.
“Avengers: Endgame” was the second part to Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War, which is the story of a Mad Titan named Thanos collecting the six “Infinity Stones”. Once he collects all six, he will have immense power to destroy the entire universe. But don’t worry, he doesn’t destroy just that, he just causes half of the entire population of the universe to vanish into dust by snapping his fingers.
“Avengers: Endgame” takes place five years after Thanos collects all the six “Infinity Stones”, he used their power and snapped his fingers which turned half the universe into dust. The team of heroes named ‘The Avengers’ have also lost members due to “the snap”. When the Avengers realized that the only way to reverse the snap was to collect all the Infinity Stones and snap again. However, Thanos destroyed all the Infinity Stones.
Luckily for the Avengers, after many attempts and tremendous amounts of research, they discovered the ability to time travel. The Avengers travel back to three past movies: “Thor: The Dark World”, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, and “The Avengers”. With all the stones back the Avengers were able to bring everyone back and the movie concluded with a tremendous 30-minute fight scene and the death of the Mad Titan himself, Thanos. The movie also ended with the deaths of three beloved Avengers: Black Widow, Captain America, and Iron Man.
“Avengers: Endgame” took the world by storm and has broken 36 cinematic records, earning around 2.6 billion dollars. “Avengers: Endgame” did not solely gain attention from Marvel fans but, based on my survey, it has gained attention from all types of crowds, even those who don’t watch Marvel movies. “Avengers: Endgame” has a very good rating of 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and many of the reviews are fairly positive, however, there is quite a backlash on a number of topics within the plot.
Critic Oliver Jones of the Observer described in a review that “Avengers: Endgame” is “something singular that reflects our age in a way that none of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) films that preceded it have.” For many people, Marvel films have been released all throughout their lives and this final movie allows fans to look back on movies which made up so much of their past.
While many of the reviews say things very similar to the previous review, critic Richard Brody goes against the majority of critic’s opinions by stating in his review that “Avengers: Endgame” is missing “ the free play of imagination, the liberation of speculation, the meandering paths and loose ends that start in logic and lead to wonder.”
Throughout the WIS community, “Avengers: Endgame” had a strong and positive reaction. Based on a survey which had around 30 responses, it seems like many people watched the movie because they are a fan of the Marvel franchise. A majority of those who completed the survey rated “Avengers: Endgame” a 9 out of 10 and based on the interviews done with staff and students, this answer is quite understandable. All the people interviewed agreed that “Avengers: Endgame” got the attention it deserved. To further back this claim up, the movie made $357 million on opening weekend and that’s only the opening weekend.
There were many varieties of opinions found throughout interviews and surveys. 9th grader Nadim Mottu explains in an interview that he “really appreciated all of the interesting consequences that came with Thanos doing the snap and all the different things they explored around that” he could really experience “the tragedy of what had happened.”
Not only were students the only ones to enjoy “Avengers: Endgame”, Donald Boehm provides a teacher’s point by saying that he enjoyed “the references back to the previous movies” and while he finds there to be lots of humor to be in the movie, he thinks “the tone of the first part of the movie was really gripping and intense.”
While there were many positive responses to “Avengers: Endgame”, they’re always two sides to every story. Not everyone in the WIS community has a completely positive opinion on “Avengers: Endgame” and a number of people seem to not have enjoyed the movie.
Around 25 percent of those who answered the survey gave “Avengers: Endgame” a low rating and about half of those who answered said that the movie needed some improvement. Time travel plays a huge role in “Avengers: Endgame” but seeing it be a completely new concept in the MCU, many people wanted more of an explanation on the idea of time travel. There were even some people who wanted time travel to be cut out of “Avengers: Endgame” completely. There was also some disagreement on the three characters who died during the movie but this was understandable because nobody wants their favorite superhero to leave all the future movies.
9th grader Rose Boehm found that “some of the time travel stuff was confusing, but [she doesn’t] think it was a big deal, but after you’re able to think above it”. Time travel played a huge role in “Avengers: Endgame” and when seeing it for the first time, it’s understandable to find it confusing.
Mottu had a quite different issue with “Avengers: Endgame.” To provide some context, in the very first Avengers the movie ended with the entire team of heroes eating at a restaurant named “Shawarmas” and Mottu explains how “it is such missed opportunity that they don’t have an end credit scene that showed all the new Avengers and the old ones that are still around eating at Shawarmas to show the difference of how it all started versus how it is now”.
Personally, I find “Avengers: Endgame” to be an almost perfect way to put an end to Marvel’s 22 movie “Infinity Saga”. The start of the movie starts with a very grim and serious tone which creates a very dark setting. With the setting being very dark, Marvel’s usage of comedy every now and then really lightens the mood and just brings out that classic Marvel movie comedy. As for the plot, I was quite satisfied with the way it all wrapped up however the five year jump at the start of the movie just really made me wonder, what happened in those five years? Overall, the entire movie was pretty good and on the ‘Official Peter Movie Rating Scale’, it would receive an 8.8/10.
By Peter Sloboda
