I saw Avengers: Endgame over the weekend. More than once. It was good, although spending six hours of a Sunday watching strained what I was willing to do. I now have a fairly solid lock on my favorite moments in the film, and although there are certainly more than ten, let me give you ten of the moments I loved in the movie. It should go without saying that there will be all the spoilers here. If you haven't yet seen the film, then for the love of Pete do not read any further.
10 - Captain Marvel's Arrival - The whole team, and pretty much all our characters, are about to be demolished by cannon fire from Thanos's ship. Then suddenly the cannons stop, and point instead at something flying in from outside. Captain Marvel, who promptly destroys the entire ship. You can see on Thanos's face his shock and the closest thing he's going to get to saying “Oh shit, I'm screwed”. Then she flies down for the gauntlet and delivers my favorite line of hers to a shellshocked Spider-man. “Hello, Peter Parker”. It's all in the delivery.
9 - Rescue - In case it's not clear, that's Pepper Potts' superhero name. That anniversary gift that Tony gave her was the Rescue armor. Seeing her in play was pretty awesome.
8 - Captain Marvel vs Thanos - It was very brief, but the fight was awesome. After catching her off-guard and throwing her, he barely had time to put the gauntlet on before she was back, and he realized he couldn't overpower her. That headbutt? She barely noticed it. He had to get creative and pull a gem out of the gauntlet to zap her, because anything short of an Infinity Stone just wasn't going to do a thing.
7 - Rocket Taunting Scott Lang - "Ya wanna go to space, puppy? I'll take you to space." Rocket's jokes crack me up. Yelling BANG when Tony and Bruce first assembled the new gauntlet was pretty good too. Build-a-bear. Heh.
6 - HATE STAIRS! - Hulk's post-Avengers hatred of Stark Tower's stairwells is one of my absolute favorite jokes of the movie.
5 - Thor and Star-Lord The chat at the end between Thor and Star-Lord about who is actually in charge was amazing every single time I saw it. Largely due to Chris Hemsworth's acting, and his hilarious facial expressions.
4 - Professor Hulk - I had half-expected to see this version of Hulk in the movie, but I hadn't expected the process to be offstaged entirely. Eighteen months in the gamma lab, gone by in the five year flash-forward. And while I seriously hated whiny Bruce in Infinity War, I really liked Professor Hulk here. His perfunctory smashing of things in an attempt to remain incognito during the Battle of New York was great. "I think it's gratuitous, but..." Speaking of which...
3 - The Battle of New York, Take Two - Revisiting old timelines is fun, but seeing a few key moments from The Avengers was pretty great. Seeing the Sorcerer Supreme discreetly protecting the sanctum during the battle was nice, and her knowledge of the future makes sense once you realize she has the Time Stone. I loved seeing the end scene with Loki asking for that drink, followed by the aftermath of Hydra/SHIELD's arrival and the elevator ride down. Thor's makeshift Mjollnir CPR on Tony felt improvised, but was hilarious no matter where it came from. I didn't love the Cap vs Cap scene as much as everyone else, but it's remarkable when you consider his evolution from chiding Tony with "Language!" to cursing as much as he did during this film.
2 - Hobo Beard Thor - The mighty Thor, with cheese whiz flowing through his veins, threatening children who play Fortnite. His acting throughout the film was as excellent as it was in Ragnarok. Hemsworth as Thor may be my new favorite character in the MCU now that Steve has hung up the shield.
1 - Captain America Weilding Mjollnir - Looks like he is worthy. I think this moment got the biggest cheers from the theater of the entire movie. His ensuing smackdown of Thanos included him throwing the shield and then hitting it with the hammer to produce a shock wave that hit Thanos from behind and knocked him down, then calling lightning. I'm still not sure how he was able to do that.
Honorable Mentions: Seeing Captain America at what appeared to be a gay mens' support group was an interesting touch. The memorial to the vanished was some nice world-building. Seeing young Hank Pym and the Goliath helmet was fun. Going back to Morag to see Star-Lord do his idiot dance was fun as well. And Tony's final line in the MCU mirrored his final line in his first film. Great close-out.
So what's next? We've established that Spider-man is like Daredevil - he's operating primarily at a street-level, with his movies showing out-of-the-norm encounters with baddies like Vulture or Mysterio. Then you've got the big boys: The Avengers. They work on planetary threats. And now we've got a whole new level of hero: Captain Marvel, who deals with Galactic-level threats. You'd kind of expect that to be the purview of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Or, the Asgardians of the Galaxy? We'll be seeing Thor again in Guardians Volume 3, which I love. Now that the greater universe has been opened up, I can't help but wonder if we'll see Galactus show up soon.
New insights on the Disney Plus programming that I'd mentioned last week. The Loki series has been set up, as we saw Loki disappear with The Tesseract following Ant-Man's distraction and Tony fumbling after being hit with a stair-Hulk. I still don't know about a Loki-centric show. And I still don't know how we're getting WandaVision if Vision is still dead, although that show is apparently going to be set in the 1950s. But I actually am looking forward to the Bucky/Sam team-up show given that Sam is going to be the new Captain America. A friend I saw the movie with is under the impression that Sam will be getting an IronMan-like suit, which along with the wings and the shield will make him a heck of a hero. This could be interesting.