Avengers: Endgame

Like lots of comic book geeks, when I was 12-ish (during the mid-70s) I spent a lot of time -- and, I mean, a lot of time! -- in my bedroom cutting DC and Marvel heroes out of their books and pasting them onto things. I'd paste them onto anything, really. Paper, notebook covers, my wall, my wooden bedframe, the ceiling. Anything on which I could paste:

The Batman vs. Black Panther;
Superman vs. Hulk;
Green Arrow vs. Hawkeye
Flash vs. Quicksilver.

You get the gist. And in my pre-teen universe, DC heroes always won.

Cutting and pasting characters in heroic poses was the best I could come up with in the 70s. The New Adventures of Batman (what with the yellow chest oval and that loveable goof Bat-Mite) was still a year or two away, and Christopher Reeve's Superman had yet to debut. No cable or Internet meant no access to old serials from the 1940s and 50s.

 Flat, poorly trimmed paper champions were the only way I could make comic book fight scenes come to life.

Comic book-based films were hit and miss for the next few decades. Burton's Batman was well received, but studious actually considered Nicolas Cage for Superman Lives. Roger Corman's Fantastic Four was never released to theaters (although I had a copy), but Affleck's Daredevil and Halle Berry's Catwoman were. And those films were so bad they made me anxious that Batman Begins would be horrible, too.

Thankfully, Christopher Nolan proved me wrong.

With this inconsistent history, I was less than optimistic when Marvel announced Iron Man would be released in 2008. A genius-but-troubled actor starring as a clunky, B-list hero made no sense to me. It would fail, I predicted.

And I made that prediction loud and often.

I was glad to be wrong (again). Iron Man was so well done that it ignited Marvel's multi-billion dollar venture into film and led to the development of several really good hero-focused streaming service-based series. Phases 1-3 of Marvel's movies will be the benchmark to which all future comic book movies are compared. In addition to stories being well scripted and superbly acted, movies in those phases were interconnected along a common plot device. While each can stand on its own as a unique flick, the movies together make up a serial that's moving toward a common conclusion.

But after 10-plus years, the story arc that connected nearly two dozen movies had to be resolved in a way that satisfied the audience.

Avengers: Endgame is ultimately satisfying. Patiently, Endgame reminds us how the movies are interconnected, then wraps up the conclusion with a ribbon that's all at once beautiful, devastating, and gratifying. It's sentimental, funny, full of action, and contains plenty of twists and turns.

It's better than I imagined it could be when I was 12.