“Part of the journey is the end.”
As he stares off into a vast and freshly massacred universe, Tony Stark’s chilling words in the cold open of the Avengers: Endgame trailer ring true to eagerly awaiting Marvel movie fanatics new and old alike. For these fans, 2018 will forever be stamped as a bittersweet year, bringing with it a surplus of both critically acclaimed cinematic blockbusters (such as Black Panther; the previous Avengers installment, Avengers: Infinity War; and, most recently, the animated Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse) as well as the tremendous losses of pop culture icons.
The hype and build-up of Avengers: Endgame is intense, as message boards across the internet overflow with speculation, analyses, and fan theories. The title promises to deliver on over ten years of world building and intricately threaded storylines, while also serving as a direct sequel to Avengers: Infinity War, a cinematic event which set the media ablaze in the previous year.
Avengers: Infinity War can best be described as “a film in motion”: a ceaseless catharsis of action, drama, and comedic relief from the very first to very last frame. While many blockbusters bolster the erroneous claim of being “a blast from beginning to end”, Infinity War may be the first of its kind able to legitimately argue that assertion. The film abruptly opens on a startling introduction en media res, and unexpectedly cuts away on a shocking cliffhanger, leading directly into its second part. Due to its immense checklist of characters, locations, and story beats to cover, the film never wastes a second of the runtime, leading to a tight and succinct script. A story of such immense scale and weight can only be fully achieved through the unique cinematic universe built up in previous years.
Due to the success of this previously unheard of experiment, the general audience walks into the theater with a pre-established familiarity with nearly every main character, meaning the film needn’t waste time establishing Peter Parker’s street-level, wall-crawling antics before thrusting him into the cosmos for this film. Even without previous context, the film works in and of itself as a thrilling, chilling, and often hilarious voyage. The surprisingly fantastic filmmaking, led by directors Joe and Anthony Russo, provide excellent cinematography, with a slew of handheld shots to provide some gritty realism to the often unbelievable situations presented in the film. The various performances all provide and entertaining and captivating presence, in particular the fantastic motion capture acting by Josh Brolin, which is only exemplified via the fantastic computer generated imagery done on the antagonist, Thanos.
While captivated audience members worldwide witnessed the vanishing of their favorite superheroes on the silver screen, the passing of the creator of many of these legends, Stanley Lieber (commonly referred to as Stan Lee), was all too real.
A familiar face for viewers due to his various cameos, as someone well as who might be considered the “Walt Disney” of the comic book industry, Lee brought with him an unbridled creativity and an endearing public persona. His work on classic heroes, be they iconic, obscure, or recently popularized due to their film incarnations, completely revolutionized the graphic novel genre as a whole, and created lasting characters in the public consciousness. Unlike his peers, the storylines written by Lee were far more interested in the human aspect of these heroes rather than their endowed superhuman abilities. Lee’s creations, such as Spider-man and Iron Man, were often far more concerned with the relatable struggles of their messy love lives, addictions, money problems, and schoolwork unlike the far more godly comic book hero competition, such as Superman. Lee and his “Marvel Bullpen” aimed to write of the world “right outside your window”.
However, Lee would be proud to witness the cinematic culmination of his comic book universe’s film adaptations. Since the Avengers: Endgame trailer has been released, there are many theories and predictions about what is going to happen in the movie. Liz Triana, a big Marvel fan, has some ideas on how the movie is going to play out. Her prediction is that all six of the original avengers will get killed off in this movie and all of the people who Thanos turned to dust at the end of Avengers: Infinity War will come back to life. She believes that they are trapped in the soul stone and the original six will bring them back and that by the end of the movie, Thanos will be defeated.
“I think something in the movie will happen where they will have to go back in time or into a different dimension,” says Triana.
The movie will not only bring excitement to theaters, but also lots of emotions.
“This movie will bring lots of sadness and heartbreak to the Marvel fandom,” says Triana.
If her predictions are correct, it will be a very bittersweet end to an amazing era. Tears might be shed, but phase 4 for these Marvel hits will just be beginning.
From the creator of the comics that turned into worldwide hits to the movies themselves that made fans laugh, cry, and sit at the edge of their seats, Marvel has so much more to come. Avengers: Endgame will be an emotional ending, but it will be a movie that fans will remember for the rest of their lives.
