Review Roundup: What Did Critics Think of AVENGERS: ENDGAME?

The most highly-anticipated film of 2019 is Avengers: Endgame. The film is the follow-up to Avengers: Infinity War, which left fans desperate to find out the fate of their favorite superheroes!

In Avengers: Endgame, while adrift in space with no food or water, Tony Stark sends a message to Pepper Potts as his oxygen supply starts to dwindle. Meanwhile, the remaining Avengers- Thor, Black Widow, Captain America and Bruce Banner-must figure out a way to bring back their vanquished allies for an epic showdown with Thanos, the evil demigod who decimated the planet and the universe.

From breaking pre-sale records to having a $100 million opening in China, Endgame is expected to crush the box office this weekend, but what do critics think of the film? Find out below!

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Peter Debruge, Variety

"If 'Infinity War' was billed as a must-see event for all moviegoers, whether or not they'd attended a single Marvel movie prior, then 'Endgame' is the ultimate fan-service follow-up, so densely packed with payoffs to relationships established in the previous films that it all but demands that audiences put in the homework of watching (or rewatching) a dozen earlier movies to appreciate the sense of closure it offers the series' most popular characters."

Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

"There is no question that Avengers: Endgame benefits considerably from the prioritizing of humor and character detailing on the parts of writers Markus and McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo, something most of the actors clearly picked up on and ran with. But spectacle still rules in these fanciful epics, which have pre-primed viewers eating right out of the filmmakers' hands. The best of the Marvel films - and the Avengers pics are certainly among them - go the extra mile to genuinely engage the audience and not just pander to it. Cutesiness and formula prevail at times, to be sure, but this team knows quite well how to stir the pot. And to turn it into more gold."

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

"The mass slaughter at the end of 'Infinity War' felt both colossal and weightless, insofar as you knew it was little more than an epic tease. But the deaths that transpire here are all the more poignant for feeling both carefully considered and genuinely irreversible. To these faintly moistened eyes, 'Avengers: Endgame' achieves and earns its climactic surge of feeling, even as it falls just short of real catharsis."

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

"'Avengers: Endgame' is of course entirely preposterous and, yes, the central plot device here does not, in itself, deliver the shock of the new. But the sheer enjoyment and fun that it delivers, the pure exotic spectacle, are irresistible, as is its insouciant way of combining the serious and the comic. Without the comedy, the drama would not be palatable. Yet without the earnest, almost childlike belief in the seriousness of what is at stake, the funny stuff would not work either. As an artificial creation, the Avengers have been triumphant, and as entertainment, they have been unconquerable."

Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

"With the stakes being no less than the fate of the world (or at least approximately 50% of it), there's an expected urgency to it all, but an underlying melancholy, too - not just for everything that's been lost, but for what won't be coming back. After seven years, four films, and uncountable post-credit Easter eggs, the endgame of an era has finally come."

A.O Scott, New York Times

"Still, 'Endgame' is a monument to adequacy, a fitting capstone to an enterprise that figured out how to be good enough for enough people enough of the time. Not that it's really over, of course: Disney and Marvel are still working out new wrinkles in the time-money continuum. But the Russos do provide the sense of an ending, a chance to appreciate what has been done before the timelines reset and we all get back to work. The story, which involves time travel, allows for some greatest-hits nostalgic flourishes, and the denouement is like the encore at the big concert when all the musicians come out and link arms and sing something like "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." You didn't think it would get to you, but it does."

Angie Han, Mashable

"Its magic does require some prior buy-in. This is a film designed for fans, stuffed as it is with callbacks, cameos, and Easter eggs. Certain arcs come full circle after years and years; others are revisited and refashioned into something different. Newcomers will likely find themselves totally lost in this tangle of characters and relationships and mythologies. Those who've been following along for a while now, though, will find much to cheer, cry, or swoon over. At both the screenings I attended, the audience reactions were so loud at certain points that entire lines of dialogue were swallowed up. Which is probably just fine with Marvel: all the more reason for fans to go back and see it a second time."

Susana Polo, Polygon

"'Avengers: Endgame' is a heist movie, and it's written like one. We know in our comics-trained hearts that our heroes are going to win this one, but a surprisingly tight script does some frankly ingenious problem-solving to raise the stakes over and over again. That logic opens up emotional possibilities for our heroes like no other genre of story can, and while the thrust of the plot is about cosmic rocks, it is hung on a framework of character development and payoff. And there's nothing Endgame sets up that it doesn't pay off."

Alex Abad-Santos, Vox

"So it's special that Marvel manages to achieve the seemingly impossible in 'Endgame': creating a movie steeped in years of lore that still manages to recapture the excitement of watching your very first Marvel experience. 'Endgame' is a celebration of, and goodbye to, the superheroes that many of us have grown a decade older with. It's an earnest reminder of these heroes' ability to reflect our own feelings about what they stand for and the emotions we share with them."

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