'Avengers: Endgame' had some cool explosions but was way, way too long
Ted Berg writes the Morning Win newsletter for For The Win. Yell at him on Twitter at @OGTedBerg or via email at AskTedBerg@gmail.com.
No spoilers.
Look: I don't begrudge anyone their right to enjoy anything that isn't outright harmful to anyone else, and Avengers: Endgame definitely isn't that. It's just a movie, no matter how much people were paying for opening night tickets. You're allowed to like it, and I'm allowed to say if I didn't. That's how this works.
Some of my colleagues - especially Hemal Jhaveri, who wrote an excellent and interesting take on Captain America here on Thursday - know the Marvel Cinematic Universe inside and out, and for them, maybe, a runtime of just over three hours doesn't seem preposterous for the conclusion of a mega-popular series. I assume the same was the case for the people in the theater who seemed like they were laughing too hard at things that weren't even really jokes, cheering gleefully upon the arrival of characters I did not immediately recognize, and openly weeping at times, like they were watching Finding Neverland or something.
I'm just a guy who spotted a rare open ticket relatively late in the game and jumped on it. But I'm not a Tour De France hopeful, so I do not in any way have the endurance to wholeheartedly love a three-hour movie, or at least this three-hour movie. I'm not going to spoil any plot points here, but what especially frustrated me was that they made it so darn long and still did not bother re-introducing you to any of the heroes or reminding you about much of the backstory. I've seen a lot of the MCU movies, too; I just did not pay close enough attention to be able to place prop bets or draft a football team of Avengers.
Many parts of Avengers: Endgame were pretty cool. The characters I did know - Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Captain Marvel, and the like - I care about from meeting and enjoying in prior movies, even if it took me a while to get up to speed, and even if I spent some large portion of the film thinking, "wait, which comic book guy is Jeremy Renner supposed to be again?" Like 140 minutes deep - and this isn't a spoiler at all, I promise - they randomly show Michael Douglas, and I'm all, "wait, what MCU movie is Michael Douglas from?"
They never tell you. If you're not intimately familiar with the entire series of MCU movies, or, worse yet, if you're just accompanying someone else to the movie with no background in them whatsoever, you're going to be completely lost.
And that seems impossibly presumptuous: If you're asking people to commit three hours of their time to your film like it's the freakin' Iditarod or something, you have to give them at least the basics of what's going on. Avengers: Endgame pretty much just drops the audience into the middle of a much, much longer story and gives them three hours to try to sort out what's happening.
Three hours! C'mon. That's too long. And, yeah, I could've looked up the runtime before I bought a ticket. I know that. But I'm not sure it would've dissuaded me, because I would've assumed a three-hour movie would at work as a self-contained thing. And this just didn't.
The movie looked fantastic. There was a whole lot of talking, but the action scenes and various thrills were spectacular when they came. I like movies where stuff blows up and people kick each other, and this movie featured plenty of both. It also featured, like, 40 more minutes of talking than I really needed, especially considering that the talking didn't even really serve to catch me up on much of what I'm supposed to know about the backstory.
The plot - assuming you remember the unforgettable end of Avengers: Infinity War - was easy enough to follow, in that usually one Avenger or another would be all, "hey, here's this thing we need to do," and then the rest of the Avengers would get about trying to do that thing. But there was just so much in there that seemed design to cater only to people with encyclopedic knowledge of a downright massive film series, and - again, even as someone who's seen roughly half the 22 MCU movies - there were a ton of references I could tell I was missing.
Considering its astonishing length, Avengers: Endgame did a fairly good job of holding my interest. But one mark of a really good movie is when it keeps dominating my thoughts long after I've left the theater. Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther both did that. This one's not going to get me there.
After careful consideration, I am prepared to call Avengers: Endgamejust OK and, more than anything, way, way too long. That movie had as much as two hours and 20 minutes' worth of stuff I wanted to see, then they threw in an extra 40 minutes worth of self-congratulatory shoutouts to stuff I don't remember.
My very scientific personal movie rating system is out of five stars, like most other movie rating systems. But I assign zero, one half, or one star for a film's performance in five separate criteria: 1. Does it make sense? 2. Do I care about these people? 3. Does it look cool? 4. Was it too long? and 5. Am I still thinking about it?
A movie can earn bonus points by having Samuel L. Jackson in it, but because Samuel L. Jackson has portrayed a character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I cannot divulge whether or not Samuel L. Jackson is in this movie without spoiling stuff.
Avengers: Endgame gets a half a point for the first category, full points for characters I care about and awesome visuals, and no points for pacing or memorability. This movie earns 2 1/2 stars.
Thursday's big winner: Kyler Murray
The NFL Draft is dumb, but Murray's decision to enter it looks smart after he went No. 1 overall to the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday. Murray, who was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the first round of last June's MLB Draft before winning the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma, wore a suit inspired by the Leonardo DiCaprio version of The Great Gatsby. People saw that?
Quick hits: Booing, Holzhauer, Magic, Trots
- One of the things that gets me about the NFL Draft is that fans can watch a 45-second highlight clip on YouTube and decide they know better than billion-dollar NFL franchises employing armies of scouts. I'm not about blind appeals to authority, but someone whose full-time job it is to evaluate football players is most likely better at it than you are. Maybe the Falcons' pick or the Giants' pick or the Raiders' pick will turn out to be busts, or maybe not. I'd like to see a stat tracking how good booing NFL Draft fans are at predicting the success of picks.
- Jeopardy! hero James Holzhauer said his background as a sports gambler helps him bet big on the show, which makes sense. Half the Vegas sports books won't take his action.
- After mentioning his desire to tweet about basketball again when abruptly quitting his job with the Lakers a couple weeks ago, Magic Johnson returned to tweeting about basketball and said literally nothing of substance.
- After Mets pitcher Jacob Rhame threw a pair of fastballs near his head, Phillies slugger Rhys Hoskins homered and enjoyed one of the slowest home-run trots in recorded history. It's a much better way to get back at a guy than forcing all your relievers to jog out on the field and hold you back.