Okay, nobody really says that, which is lucky because it's not even true. There are hundreds of characters whose stories still haven't come to an end (Doc Savage? The Shadow?) and plenty more that were given an ending that didn't stick (Sherlock Holmes? Batman?). The Marvel Universe characters are never really going to die, if for no other reason than Disney paid billions of dollars for them; good luck explaining to the shareholders why you just threw [spoiler redacted] into the bin.
Still, this is a pretty spectacular bin toss. Running over a doesn't-feel-like-it three hours (being split into three fairly distinct stages helps), this brings in pretty much everyone from the past and present Marvel Universe - except for Paul Bettany's Vision, who died in the previous film and is clearly this movie's Hawkeye as he doesn't even rate a single mention - for a greatest hits collection that manages to emotionally pay off the cliffhanger from the previous Avengers film, throw in some fun time travel hijinx, and wrap it all up with an all-star massive battle that... okay, it's big rather than brilliant, but sometimes big does the job.
(Marvel's inability to nail down their characters powers relative to each other is a weakness here - since when is Captain Marvel more powerful than Thor? Can't Doctor Strange change reality? How does Hawkeye even stay alive once the laser beams start flying?)
Oddly, some of the shakier moments are the character-based ones. Remember how Captain America and Iron Man don't like each other? Despite being the least fun dynamic in the entire Marvel universe, it's back; likewise, Thor's emotional arc works largely to support a handful of sight gags that stop being funny roughly ninety minutes before the movie ends. One big scene relies on a bond between two characters that hasn't even been a thing since the first Avengers movie; whatever's going on with the Hulk seems based more on having him just be all-CGI all the time now.
The tension that really drives Avengers: Endgame isn't whether Thanos will be defeated or how, but how they're going to provide an ending for a story that has no end. Fortunately the comics books got there first, and so this resolves that problem the same way the comic books do - some of the actors move on but the brand names remains. It's the end of an era, but not in the way the film sells itself as. This is probably the last time a Disney movie - which at the moment is around 30% of all movies that make it to cinemas in terms of market share, so we might as well just call it "movies" - will acknowledge that actors have a role in shaping the characters that make Disney so much money.
It's no secret that Avengers: Endgame is in large part motivated by Disney's need to clear the decks as the Marvel Universe's core group of actors run out their contracts. It's not that keeping [spoiler redacted] around couldn't happen for story reasons; nothing here feels that inevitable, and every single character here has enough comic book adventures to fuel a dozen solo spin offs at least. But keeping them around would cost serious money even if the actors did want to stick around, so out the door they go. And you'd better believe that at some point in the very near future anyone signing up to wear a Marvel hero outfit is going to be signing over likeness rights in such a way that CGI versions of them can keep turning up if need be.
[spoiler]
(is it any real surprise that the only Avenger who ends the movie in a position to continue to appear in generic future Marvel movies is The Hulk, who has been transformed into a fulltime CGI character?)
[end spoiler]
Avengers: Endgame is built around the idea that our fondness for these characters is so strong we'll overlook or forget all the behind-the-scenes stuff. But the reason why we like these characters is based largely on the performance of the actors: Robert Downey Jr always played Tony Stark as Robert Downey Jr, but Disney didn't spend all that money on Robert Downey Jr. They spent it on Iron Man, and at the end of the day - or until CGI gets good enough to create believable human characters out of thin air (Disney is a company founded on animation, after all) - Iron Man is where their investment lies.
So Avengers: Endgame still has emotional moments that hit home even though it's a massive exercise in box ticking and character juggling with frankly average action sequences and wild tonal shifts because it's the kind of victory lap we're almost certainly never going to see again. It's a farewell to the actors rather than the characters; their characters get endings that look backwards rather than forwards, and work as a capstone to their adventures rather than - as will increasingly become the norm as it has become in the comics - launching pads for the new versions.
Plus time travel is now totally a thing in the Marvel universe, with at least two characters from the past now running around in the present. Once Disney gets the CGI up to speed, there's nothing stopping whoever makes up the new roster of The Avengers (or The Defenders, or The Ultimates, or Nextwave, or any other Marvel hero team) from deciding the only way to defeat their latest bad guy is by going back in time and grabbing [redacted] in their prime played by CGI [redacted] to help them out. Once you put on a superhero outfit, nobody ever really dies.
- Anthony Morris
PS: the next epic superhero movie that says "fuck it" and decides to hold its sense-shattering climactic battle in a populated area - or ever somewhere with some visual variety - rather than the boring empty field that has become the norm ever since everyone complained about the body count in Man of Steel is really going to knock people's socks off.
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