Avengers: Endgame is a movie filled with the ‘greatest hits’ from 10 years of the MCU

You’ve probably listened to ‘greatest hits’ albums before. They usually contain a recording artist’s number-one, most popular songs they have released over their careers to date.

That said, I’d liken Marvel Studios’ final movie in the Avengers saga to be the ‘greatest hits’ of their cinematic universe to date. It was over 10 years ago that Robert Downey Jr. first strapped on his Iron Man suit that ultimately started the whole idea of a cinematic universe in the first place. In the decade since then, Marvel has been building characters, worlds, and themes that seemed to have always continued (thanks to the trademark ‘end credit scenes’ teasing us for what’s next).

Endgame doesn’t have any end credit scenes, thankfully, because this movie is about closure. While that closure doesn’t fully happen until the last hour of the three-hour epic, the first two hours allow ample time to set us up for the inevitable.

In those two hours lie the MCU’s ‘greatest hits,’ with lots of revisiting and reliving some of the top fan moments from past MCU films. Without going into any detail, it’s important to know that these moments are collectively built to serve one purpose: satisfy the fans.

While I got to watch the film in an advanced media screening, that didn’t mean that there were non-enthusiastic critics in my theater. In fact, it was totally opposite, and obviously so. Most of these critics who have been covering Hollywood have been doing so more than the 10 years that the MCU has been in existence and have professionally “grown up” with the films, too. Regardless of what they and even us think about the hits and misses the films were, the characters and worlds were a part of our adult lives.

So when you think about closing a chapter on a part of your life, it only makes sense that you celebrate all the things that brought you to this point. In other words, you’ll need to know quite a bit about the films that came before Endgame to get it.

Because Endgame is a celebration, albeit a bittersweet one, for the fans that have journey with the Avengers for these 1o+ years.

And to be at the end means that even good things need to come to an end for the journey to have been worth it.

Details – 

• Runtime: 181 minutes

• Rating: Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and some language

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These films have been screened prior to the release date for review purposes and therefore are viewed without charge courtesy of The Walt Disney Studios.