Movie · Phase 3

Avengers: Endgame

2019 · 181 min

The first hour is the aftermath nobody expected a Marvel film to sit in: Thanos beheaded in a hut in the first twenty minutes, and five years of unrepaired grief. Scott Lang crawls out of a storage…

The Infinity SagaDisney+94%Released
Avengers: Endgame

The story

The first hour is the aftermath nobody expected a Marvel film to sit in: Thanos beheaded in a hut in the first twenty minutes, and five years of unrepaired grief. Scott Lang crawls out of a storage unit with a physics loophole, and the Avengers go back through their own films to steal the Stones.

The time heist is a victory lap and a reckoning at once — Tony talking to his father, Thor talking to his mother, Natasha and Clint on a cliff. Then a 2014 Thanos follows them home, and Marvel spends forty minutes cashing every cheque it has written since 2008.

Key facts

Release date
26 Apr 2019
Status
Released
Phase
Phase 3
Saga
The Infinity Saga
Runtime
181 min
Certificate
PG-13
Director
Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writers
Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely
Streaming
Disney+
Timeline placement
2018 and 2023 — beginning days after the Snap, then jumping five years to the post-Blip present

Cast

ActorRole
Robert Downey Jr.Tony Stark / Iron Man
Chris EvansSteve Rogers / Captain America
Mark RuffaloBruce Banner / Hulk
Chris HemsworthThor
Scarlett JohanssonNatasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Jeremy RennerClint Barton / Hawkeye
Josh BrolinThanos
Karen GillanNebula

Characters

Hulk poster art

Hulk

Robert Bruce Banner

Easter eggs

  • Stan Lee's final cameo is a 1970s driver with a bumper sticker reading 'nuff said', shouting 'Hail Hydra!' out the window.
  • The 1970 Camp Lehigh sequence reuses The Winter Soldier's location and puts Steve in a room with Peggy Carter's silhouette and Howard Stark.
  • Captain America wields Mjolnir and finally says 'Avengers assemble', the line the franchise had withheld for seven years.
  • Sam Wilson's 'On your left' over the comms inverts the very first line he ever spoke to Steve in The Winter Soldier.
  • Howard the Duck appears in the portal shot during the final battle, alongside Korg, Miek and Kraglin.
  • Jim Starlin, who created Thanos in 1973, cameos as a member of Steve's grief support group; Joe Russo plays the man sharing his story.
  • Cap fights his 2012 self and mutters 'I can do this all day', then admits 'America's ass' after seeing it from behind.
  • The end credits close with the sound of a hammer striking metal, evoking Tony forging the Mark I in 2008, and feature hand-signed cards for the original six.

Trivia

  • It became the highest-grossing film of all time, holding the record until Avatar's 2021 China re-release reclaimed it.
  • At 181 minutes it remains the longest MCU film, and Marvel deliberately released it without an interval anywhere.
  • Smart Hulk required extensive facial capture of Mark Ruffalo mapped onto a redesigned body model.
  • Robert Downey Jr.'s 'I am Iron Man' before the final snap was a late addition, mirroring the closing line of Iron Man.
  • Marvel withheld the title for over a year; 'Endgame' is taken directly from Doctor Strange's line in Infinity War.
  • The final battle involved dozens of vendors and was among the most heavily composited sequences ever attempted, with some shots carrying thousands of elements.
  • Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. both concluded their MCU contracts with this film, and the Russos shot Evans' final scene last.

Box office

Budget
$356 million
Worldwide
$2.799 billion
Domestic
$858.4 million

Reviews

Critics

94%

Exciting, entertaining, and emotionally impactful, Avengers: Endgame does justice to its epic ambitions and serves as a satisfying conclusion to the Infinity Saga.

The MarvelGossips verdict

An unrepeatable event film that works as both a wake and a fireworks display. Its time-travel logic collapses if you press it and the Natasha-Clint resolution shortchanges her, but the last forty minutes are the greatest crowd-pleasing sequence of the century so far. Nothing Marvel has made since has come near it, which is now its own kind of problem.

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Frequently asked

How does time travel work in Endgame?
The film explicitly rejects Back to the Future: changing the past creates a divergent branch rather than altering the present. That is why the Stones must be returned and why 2014 Thanos' arrival does not erase anyone.
What happens to Steve Rogers at the end?
He returns the Stones and then stays in the past with Peggy Carter, living a full life and returning as an old man to hand the shield to Sam Wilson. The Russos and the writers have publicly disagreed about whether that constitutes a branch timeline.
Why can Captain America lift Mjolnir?
He always could. Age of Ultron shows the hammer shifting when he tries, and the Russos have said he held back at the party to spare Thor's feelings. By 2023 he has stopped pretending.
Is Endgame still the highest-grossing film ever?
No. It overtook Avatar in 2019 with $2.799 billion, but Avatar reclaimed the record after a 2021 Chinese re-release. Endgame remains the second-highest-grossing film in history.
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