Nerdrotic has posted its first-ever review of Avengers: Endgame.
Gary Buechler, who recently torched Lanterns as “creatively bankrupt”, never put out an Endgame review when the movie opened back in 2019.
Now, with Avengers: Endgame Encore playing in theaters, he finally did it, and seven years of hindsight did the film no favors.
“When I initially watched Endgame, I was convinced I liked it until I started actually thinking about it,” Buechler says in the nearly hourlong video. “Now that I’ve watched it again, preparing for this video, with the gift of hindsight, it’s gotten so much worse.”
His verdict: “If you want to pinpoint one film that destroyed the MCU, look no further than Avengers: Endgame. The Seinfeld finale of superhero films.”
‘The Last Great Marvel Film’
Buechler calls Avengers: Infinity War “the last great Marvel film” and argues the cracks started showing right after it.
By his count, Endgame makes two major mistakes in its first twenty minutes: killing Thanos, and a five-year time jump the movie deals with “for about 5 minutes.”
He does hand out some praise. Tony Stark and Nebula bonding in space, Scott Lang’s reunion with Cassie, and Hawkeye’s Ronin scene all get credit, though he notes Ronin is “the first real superhero action we’ve gotten in the entire film and we’re 58 minutes in.”
Professor Hulk is “one of the biggest crimes in this film” because the change happened entirely offscreen. “That’s just as bad as killing the Kraken offscreen in Pirates of the Caribbean,” Buechler says.
Buechler continued, “Nobody really cares that much about Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner. They just want to see Hulk smash.”
Fat Thor gets the same treatment, with Buechler arguing the film takes two of the strongest Avengers and reduces them to comic relief in the last movie featuring the original six.
The time travel rules fare even worse. He calls the mechanics “dumb, boring, and wildly inconsistent” and points out that the writers and the Russo brothers still give different answers about how it all works.
‘The Biggest Mistake Of The Entire MCU’
The “girls get it done” shot in the final battle is “the single worst scene in this movie,” per Buechler.
Killing Tony Stark tops everything. Buechler calls it “the biggest mistake of the entire MCU,” even while praising the death scene itself as heart-wrenching and “brilliantly performed by Robert Downey Jr.”
Steve Rogers staying in the past with Peggy Carter is “a selfish act that’s completely out of character” and “a betrayal to Tony Stark and it turns out the entire multiverse.”
Buechler also argues the shield went to the wrong guy. Bucky was set up across the Captain America trilogy, he says, while Sam Wilson’s Captain America “was never popular in the comics” and bombed on film.
‘It Turns Out Thanos Was Right’
Buechler didn’t buy a ticket for the re-release. He thanks whoever posted the new scenes on Twitter for “saving me 17 bucks for one Infinity Vision ticket.”
He runs through the new Encore scenes: the TVA tracking a collapsing multiverse, Doctor Doom coming to collect Bruce Banner, and Loki showing up at Steve and Peggy’s door to move the family off their doomed world.
His takeaway on that last one: “It’s probably Steve Rogers’ fault there’s all these incursions and the multiverse is collapsing.”
On Avengers: Doomsday, Buechler gives Kevin Feige credit for scrapping Kang and backing “a Brinks truck” up to Robert Downey Jr.’s house to bring him back as Doctor Doom.
“Yes, this is a Hail Mary and a desperate move, but it will most certainly pay off, at least in the short term,” he says, adding that thanks to Spider-Man: Brand New Day, “there’s more excitement now for the MCU than there has been since Endgame.”
Long term, he wants the originals recast.
“No actor is bigger than a character. Just look at all the recasts of James Bond, Spider-Man, Batman, and the Joker,” he said.
And he closes with a prediction for Avengers: Secret Wars: Doctor Doom, Wanda Maximoff, or Reed Richards, with help from Franklin Richards, remaking the multiverse, which would make the sacrifices of Black Widow and Iron Man mean nothing.
As Buechler puts it: “It turns out Thanos was right.”
