After first watching the sequel to Infinity War, my first thought was “This is the greatest movie ever!”

But I sat down and began to think about it…and the more I scrutinized the movie, the more flaws it had.

So, I watched it again…and my thoughts were exactly the same.

“Greatest movie ever!”

However, thinking about this movie opened up so many plot holes and problems that I was surprised that I kept on thinking it was a great movie after every time I watched it.

Avengers Endgame is a great movie…because it had the perfect ending.

Let’s analyze that a bit more…beware spoilers if you are that one hermit who still hasn’t seen this movie

The Opening

The first moments of Endgame quickly resolve Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Nebula’s plight, set a solution for the problem and The Avengers swiftly take action. It’s moving and engaging until we realize that Thanos really wanted his ‘solution’ to stick.

The only way he could do that was by destroying the Infinity Stones.

At that moment, the Avengers and the audience watching have no idea how to fix the genocide Thanos inflicted on the galaxy.

The only victory to be had, when Thor kills Thanos, is empty and hollow.

And then, we skip ahead five years.

What Follows…

Immediately, everything grinds to a halt.

We are taken through the world as it exists now, void of hope and light…and good pacing too.

We bounce around the survivors and see how they are coping with this new reality but its only interesting in that we want to know what happened and the characters, especially Steve Rogers (Captain America), keep us invested.

The plot picks up when Scott Lang (Ant-Man) escapes the Quantum Realm and confronts this new reality with us.

His emotional reunion with his daughter and his plan for a ‘Time Heist’ gets the Avengers moving again.

Sure, Tony figuring out time travel in a single evening is absolutely ridiculous but he is a genius, we can roll with that.

The Time Heist

Time travel, when fictionally represented, will always be problematic because there is no unified theory about it.

It can be said, however, that Endgame chooses the safe route by picking the multiple timelines route.

That way, everything they do in the past doesn’t matter…unless they are killed.

That poses very little stakes and gives the audience very little tension.

It does make for very good fanservice as the Avengers visit the MCU’s greatest hits…and Thor: The Dark World.

The Finale

After the Time Heist is completed, The Avengers mourn Black Widow’s death and assemble the Gauntlet to finally fix everything Thanos broke.

Unfortunately, 2014 Nebula came back with them and brings 2014 Thanos with her.

From the moment Hulk puts on the Gauntlet, everything flows perfectly as the story throws the audience from moments of elation to moments of despair.

Hulk snaps his fingers and gives us joy.

Thanos destroys the Avengers compound and takes that away.

Iron Man, Captain America and Thor unite to take on Thanos and gives us hope.

Hulk, War Machine and Rocket are drowning with only Ant-Man as support…despair.

Hawkeye finds the Gauntlet intact…hope.

Nebula takes the Gauntlet…despair.

And it goes on and on until…

“And I am…Iron Man!”

The third act of the movie and the finale of ten years of movies from the MCU is absolutely stunning from its beginning to its ending.

So good that we do not remember that the route to get here was uneven, bumpy and slow a good amount of the time.