[No Spoiler] What Watching AVENGERS: ENDGAME Taught Me About Life

The superhero movie of all superhero movies, Avengers: Endgame is finally being released in cinemas worldwide and I was among the lucky few who got tickets to the preview screening last night. Thank you Walt Disney Studio for the invitation! Otherwise, I might have to resort to buying from scumbags like this Carousell guy who claimed to have to sell 40 Avengers: Endgame tickets because his friends “couldn’t make it”!

The narrative follows from where the last Avengers movie left off, whereby half of all life in the universe was eliminated due to the actions of Thanos, the ultimate super villain of all time. The remaining Avengers and their allies (Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Thor, Nebula, Hulk, War Machine, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Captain Marvel and Rocket) must now assemble to revert those actions in one last stand:

From a movie review standpoint, Endgame is definitely getting a five-star rating from us in terms of entertainment values and delivering on the high audience expectation after the surprise ending of the prequel.

A word of advice, you may want to rewatch all the previous Avengers movies as well as all the other related movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before heading to the cinemas to watch Endgame. Let’s just say that the plot allows for the characters to revisit a lot of the iconic scenes from the previous movies and you would enjoy these scenes better if you have fresh recollections of them.

Like all movies that dabble with time travel, there are lots of plot loopholes if you want to go into the nitty-gritty science of things. That’s for the extreme quantum physics science geeks though. For most of us ordinary folks, the movie is a balance of seriousness and comedy in the narrative to keep you entertained from start till the end for its entire three hours and one-minute runtime.

I don’t intend to write a spoiler review. As such, I would rather share on some of the life experiences everyone can learn from Avengers: Endgame. For me at least, these are my takeaways.

1. When it seems to be the end, it may not be the end

When life seems to force you to a dead end, there just might be a way around it for an alternative ending if you try hard enough. You cannot change the past, but you can certainly work towards a better future by learning from your past mistakes. The remaining Avengers did not throw in the towel after Thanos’ snap. Instead, they took time to heal and then regroup to try to make things right again.

2. At the end of everything, it’s always your family and loved ones that matter the most

We witness that from Hawkeye’s devastation after losing his whole family following the snap, Thor going berserk after Loki was gone and even Ant-man was not spared when he lost the love of his life, the Wasp. At the end of the day, all the money in the world or whatever status or power you have can’t buy you the simple happiness of being around with the ones you love and care about.

3. Don’t mess around with time travel

Literally and both metaphorically. The latter because life is too sort to keep regrets. There’s always the ‘how else life would be’ if you did things another way and go down the route to comb through all the alternate life possibilities. We should be living in the present and looking forward to creating a better future – that’s how it should be to defeat Thanos at his game.

4. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork

No man is an island. If you can’t do it alone, get help. Otherwise, why would the Avengers even exist? To fight Thanos and his army, the Avengers needed to assemble a team when the going gets too tough for them to handle on their own. Likewise in life, if you are going through hell which you don’t think you can cope alone, reach out for help!

5. Women rule yo

There’s an awesome women rule scene in the movie which will send goosebumps up your spine – watch out for it! This is the day and age where women are now coming forward to take the lead and it’s the same when it comes to your superheroes. There are lots of strong female characters in Eng Games – Captain Marvel and Black Widow for instance. In real life, don’t be dismissive of the changes that women are able to push for.  Take Monica Baey in Singapore for instance. The victim of a sex crime, she managed to spark a movement calling for tougher punishment for sex crime offenders in the National University of Singapore, triggering a national debate on the issue.

Avengers: Endgames is now showing in Singapore cinemas. Go catch it!