Avengers: Endgame — Laura Dengrove
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
Never has a saying rung so true in our minds then after the phenomenon that was Marvel’s The Infinity Saga.
It all started with the phrase, “I am Iron Man,” and ended with our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man figuring out what it really meant to be a hero. Heroes in our world are far in between, but with these movies we got a sense that everything may turn out all right in the end—or at the very least a distraction from real life horrors of the modern day.
Simply put, these movies changed the name of the game. No longer were we met with sporadic hero outings, but a coherent story that we craved. We needed to know what Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) would do next after announcing to the world he was the famed hero Iron Man. Or what Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) would do after ending up in a strange and new world, missing an ever important dance with the woman of his dreams, Miss Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). No, longer were the days where we just felt like seeing a superhero movie every so often, now was the dawn of a new era, one in which superheroes were the true cinematic escape.
We had some gems that come to mind when thinking of the ten-year journey Marvel took us on. Like when the team finally got together in The Avengers, Captain America had to face old memories and best friends in The Winter Soldier, and when we finally got our boy back, aka Spider-Man (Tom Holland), in Civil War and Homecoming.
The saga also reminded us that D-List characters could be fan faves, bringing in the Guardians of the Galaxy, and showing us that a little diversity can go a long way with Black Panther and Captain Marvel.
This, of course, all culminated in the movie event of the decade, aka Infinity War and Endgame. These movies truly felt like you were witnessing history, something you would tell your kids about one day. Every hero you could imagine teamed up to face the villainous, yet understandably deep Thanos (Josh Brolin). Seeing the snap in real time and the iconic “Avengers, Assemble” line just made everything worth the ten year wait. Nothing will compare to this cinematic event, not at least for a few more decades, and this writer couldn’t be happier to be a part of this nerdy history.
