‘Avengers: Endgame' Is Marvel's Machine In High Gear

Satisfaction is a complicated concept in Marvel Land. On the one hand, every morsel of prerelease information is obsessively poured over in feverish anticipation.

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But by the time the movie is coming out, a sudden hush comes over diehard fans who, to avoid spoilers, have abandoned their phones, detached from the grid and found a quiet ditch to lay in until the coast is clear and the multiplex is open. It’s an anguished dance between wanting to know everything and nothing, at once. And it never ceases. No Marvel ending (usually) lasts past the credits. Those fans won’t read this review, but “Avengers: Endgame” will, I suspect, offer them gratification and maybe a welcome moment of respite. “Endgame” not only answers the cliffhanger of its predecessor — that puny $300 million 156-minute “appetizer” better known as “Infinity War” — but ties together the entire 22-film arc of the Marvel “cinematic universe,” begun with 2008’s “Iron Man.”

Generous in humor, spirit, and sentimentality, Anthony and Joe Russo’s “Endgame” is a surprisingly full feast of blockbuster-making that, through some time-traveling magic, looks back nostalgically at Marvel’s decade of world domination. This is the Marvel machine working at high gear, in full control of its myth-making powers and uncovering more emotion in its fictional cosmos than ever before.