Savannah Oakes’s review published on Letterboxd:
I am in awe of what the MCU has accomplished. Kevin Feige is a genius, someone who has accomplished a vision. He set out clearly with a goal in bringing together beloved characters and with ten years of careful planning and versatile storytelling he, his team and the sensational artists and actors of the MCU come together to bring us the culmination of a decade of emotional buildup.
With a cast of 18 academy award nominees and or winners it wants to give all of them as much time as it can. It features a majority of quiet, contemplative character moments from our surviving Avengers. They live in a devastating, post-war-like world full of regret, guilt and longing to make amends. It follows, mostly, the founding Avengers--Iron Man/Tony Stark, Captain America/Steve Trevor, Black Widow/Natasha, and Thor--with a goofy and puzzled Ant-Man/Scott Lang, a probing War Machine/James Rhodes and Nebula as support despite their equally distraught frame of mind.
Of course the goal of the film is to avenge the fallen heroes of Infinity War and return things to as they were. It will not be so easy and the Russos make lead us down a path that is cleverly misleading. What we think is the goal is the goal but the way it is gone about is twisty and turny and, of course, full of heartbreak. Along the way each of our characters has their moment--reminds us why the are a part of this vast universe.
Overall this End Game drives home what these films have always been about and what other superhero films never seem to one-hundred-percent get right. We are all accountable for one another. It is a journey each individual that wears the mask takes, putting themselves before others in service of the greater good and against those like us who seek to cause peril and injustice. Individuals have their own goals which is why even the Avengers have had their own “Civil War.” This is why the ultimate theme of the film is not redemption for the failures of the last fight but of sacrifice. It’s what they would have done all along if only they’d had the clarity to see it.