Avengers: Endgame

SPOILERS INCLUDED: Every long-running franchise matures with its viewers and incorporates motifs that resonate with their current ages. Just as Harry Potter advanced from children’s adventures to teen angst and turmoil, Marvel advanced through 22 movies. However, it is rather humorous that the longed-for culmination is dad cinema in spandex. Unfortunately, this does not pertain only to the central dirty trick on the female audience in the transformation of the physiognomy of the whole series’ main hunk, but primarily to the central motif of Endgame. It’s nice that a certain percentage of male viewers will proudly admit that they shed tears, but is that actually evidence of their supposed sensitivity or even of the film’s qualities? Do we rather have nothing to do with the fact that the film’s creators captured the pain of the current crisis of masculinity, where men themselves have made the whip in the form of accepting the diktat that they have to provide for their family and, concurrently, that they do not have to abandon their own self-fulfilment? What does it say about our society that if, in bidding the hero farewell, we hear the standard “I love you”, that would be an object of ridicule, but if hear “Don’t worry, we’re taken care of”, young fathers and husbands shed emotional tears? I also said to myself that hiring Alan Silvestri was a fine attempt to add a bit of a melodic background to a series afflicted with the curse of forgettable music. However, I did not expect that the master would steal from himself, resulting in a programmatically intentional copy of Forrest Gump. While you don’t know what you are going to get out of life, everything in this box of chocolates is by the book, including, unfortunately, the development in the style of the oft-ridiculed cliché “I have two days until I retire and I am the only character who has a private life in which something like this could happen”. But it is clear that these are merely the bitter words of someone who is not invested in the series as a true believer. After all, the individual scenes cannot be appreciated because there is no continuity. Seriously? Isn’t this pseudo-argument simply a justification for the time invested, because the mechanically cranked-out scenes of absolute exertion without structure simply cannot in any way enrich any memories? The fact that Iron Man argues with Captain America is no deeper than when your parents argue for the millionth time. Not because you have seen them go through a relationship crisis, but because in both cases only those affected play transparent roles and act in accordance with automatically accepted formulas. Let’s stop kidding ourselves that the MCU is anything more than a brilliant PR victory over viewers and critics because it was able to create the impression of an event and a unique experience of something that is calculated to the smallest detail, not from the bottom up by individual artists, but by seasoned corporate creatives from the top down. And that it was a wild ride and not at all a sure thing from the beginning. Does anyone still remember Hulk today? Not Ang Lee’s version, but the one with Edward Norton. That was a critical moment in the whole Marvel campaign, because for the first and last time, the creatives let go of the reins and lost their control over the result, after which they deleted the film and destroyed Norton’s career. This was followed by a strictly managed one-sided campaign in which the directors were either no-name assemblers of a puzzle pre-designed by the showrunner, or craftily chosen names that, long before the premiere, lent themselves to shaping the viewers’ acceptance of the film as something serious (Branagh), dark and gritty (Black) or refreshingly light-hearted (Waititi), even though all Marvel movies are always built based on the same foundation. Those who resisted were not allowed in at all or were promptly sent packing (Wright). In this there is something unique, a value and place in the history of the cinematography of this mammoth endeavour, regardless of the fact that the emperor not only has no clothes, but struts around for his fans. The icing on the cake is the vanity found in the closing credits, where the stars of the series even condescend to sign autographs for their admirers. While, like every proper manipulator, the true creators and geniuses of the MCU enjoy their position in the shadows. (03/05/2019) (less) (more)