Avengers: Endgame [** SPOILERS FROM POST 613 **]

A messy film that's the MCU at its best and worst. Step up from Infinity War, but quite a bit short of the few standalone entries I'm fondest of.

It's a big problem that this is top-heavy when it comes to the worst. Fitful moments of wit or excitement aside, I found the first two hours of this pretty tedious. It has the typical Russo Brothers problem of restless editing and underwhelming visuals. Didn't land the mix of humour and pathos. The New Asgard sequence is a good example - whereas Ragnarok had a sustained silliness to it, that same tone doesn't work anywhere near as well when we get a couple of minutes of it in the middle of what's quite a different film.

Equally, they don't really take the time to properly probe the devastating consequences of the snap - outside of our heroes and a few vaguely apocalyptic establishing shots, it's not entirely clear what we're dealing with here. Ant-Man's intro goes some way towards addressing this, but again it feels like the plot is always there, tapping its watch and demanding more and more stuff. As is often the way in these films, all this ultimately gives the impression of things being half-baked - something discernibly lacking, but it's never entirely clear what this is.

Credit where credit’s due though: ‘killing’ Thanos early and so easily is a bold move, and that purposeful anti-climax sells the weird melancholy many of the characters are feeling after.

The whole time travel business is awkwardly handled too. The overt references to better time travel films is a gamble, but draws attention to how this struggles. Sure, there's moments of nice fan service when they're revisiting past sequences, but it's very much devoid of the sort of cleverness you see in, say, Back to the Future 2. A couple of Marvel films have a tendency to be genre homages, but completely outclassed by the films they take inspiration from - Winter Soldier being 'like a 70s conspiracy thriller but dumb as ****' being the prime example. As a heist film, this is just underwhelming, but ultimately it's functional enough to get the chess pieces where they need to be.

Also, I just couldn't buy into the CG for either Thanos or Banner-Hulk here. They're too clunky and cartoonish, with an otherwise bland, functional aesthetic that doesn't allow for it. I mean, the bloody talking raccoon fits in better

But as we transition into that final hour, things do pick up. The battle that follows is pretty standard explosion fest set in a terminally bland battlefield, but the 'Avengers Assemble' moment is one of the few genuine goosebumpy moments in this entire corporate juggernaut. The extravagant scale of it is hard not to admire, and while Alan Silvestri's score is largely excessive and melodramatic, that Avengers theme does the heavy lifting admirably.

One of the problems I've long had with the MCU films is that they're so rarely complete - like they're always teasing the next chapter, even when the immediate conflict is wrapped up. There's no doubt some of that here with some overt setup for a couple of imminent films. But, perhaps for the first time ever, at least some of the characters get some closure. It is, in its sense, a touch startling to see such a thing in an apparent 'forever franchise', with the next entry mere weeks away. But there are endings here. They're cheesy as hell, mind you, and their permanence certainly has to be questioned given this franchise's proven penchant for reincarnation.

If only for a little while longer, though, this finally feels like it wraps some stuff up - a film that isn't teeing up phase whatever, but offering up if not a full stop at least a moderately classy ellipsis. In a forever franchise that has traditionally blatantly advertised to fans in the end credits, you have to take what you can get.