Shazam! Director Details The Alternate Opening And Ending

Shazam! Director Details The Alternate Opening And Ending

Warning: SPOILERS for Shazam! are ahead!

It’s been almost two months since Shazam! first hit theaters, which means it’s now winding down its run on the big screen. However, once that’s complete, you’ll be able to pick up the World’s Mightiest Mortal’s first movie on home media, and among the special features that will be included are an alternate opening and an alternate ending.

For those who need a refresher, Shazam! began in 1974, showing how the young Thaddeus Sivana was brought to the Rock of Eternity by The Wizard Shazam, but deemed unworthy to serve as the Wizard’s champion because he was tempted by the Seven Deadly Sins. Right after being sent back Earth, Thaddeus, his father and brother were caught in a car accident that crippled Daddy Sivana.

Here’s what Shazam! director David F. Sandberg had to say about the movie’s alternate opening that will be available to fans on Twitter:

In the original opening an elevator takes Thad to the Rock of Eternity. We did the car crash instead to have a more dramatic opening to the film. Thad also sees a hologram with some Sin backstory, similar to Billy.

While Thaddeus Sivana being brought to the Rock of Eternity via an elevator is reminiscent of how Billy Batson was brought there through a subway train, the car crash was definitely the more jarring approach, as initially it looked like the Sivana family avoided being struck by one car, only to be hit out of nowhere by another. As far as the origins of the Seven Deadly Sins go, the movie provided a reasonable amount of background on them, so throwing in a little extra for the Young Sivana might have been too much.

As for Shazam!’s ending, the main story wrapped up with the Shazam-ified Billy Batson and his new friend Superman having lunch at school with Freddy Freeman and their adoptive siblings. But after that, the mid-credits scene showed the incarcerated Sivana being visited by Mister Mind, who was briefly shown when Sivana visited the Rock of Eternity as a kid, but had been freed by the time Billy Batson was brought to the Wizard’s liar.

On the off chance they weren’t satisfied with the sinister caterpillar’s appearance, David F. Sandberg and his team had a backup plan, with Sandberg revealing:

The alternate ending was a backup we shot in case the cameo at the end didn’t work. The alternate had all the kids transform and fly off to stop a hostage situation.

It’s unclear what David F. Sandberg specifically meant by if Mr. Mind’s cameo “didn’t work,” but regardless, that didn’t end up being a concern. That being said, seeing the Shazam Family foil a crime together would have clarified to those unfamiliar with the comics that Freddy, Mary, Pedro, Eugene and Darla permanently retained their powers, as opposed to their time as superheroes being a one-time thing.

While Shazam! didn’t make nearly as big of a splash at the box office as Aquaman did, it received a lot of positive reviews, and Warner Bros has a sequel in development. While it will be a while until we learn specific plot details concerning Shazam! 2, but it’s a good bet that it will involve Sivana and Mr. Mind getting up to nefarious shenanigans.

You can purchase Shazam! on Digital HD on July 2, and the Blu-ray and DVD copies will hit shelves on July 16. If you’re wondering what the DC Extended Universe has coming up, look through our handy guide.

George Clooney Says He ‘Wasn’t Good’ At Playing Batman

George Clooney Says He ‘Wasn’t Good’ At Playing Batman

If you didn’t already know, one of the rules when playing the Hollywood game is it’s never easy playing Batman. From Michael Keaton straight through to the news that Robert Pattinson is the top tier choice for the lead in director Matt Reeves’ entry in this character’s canon, it’s been consistently proven true.

But nowhere was that strife most felt than during George Clooney’s tenure in the Batsuit for director Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. However, Clooney himself has been known to apologize for his performance, as even he admits his Batman wasn’t that good. Please accept his apology, through the remarks provided by the actor below:

Now, fair deal: I was playing Batman and I wasn’t good in it, it wasn’t a good film. But what I learned from that failure was that I had to relearn how I was working. Now, I wasn’t just an actor getting a role, I was being held responsible for the film itself

More than just learning the lesson that it’s hard to be Batman, George Clooney learned in one of his earliest major motion pictures that when you accept a role in a film like Batman & Robin, you’re basically accepting responsibility for the film’s quality to a certain extent.

While the movie is in the hands of the director and other people plying their crafts alongside a lead actor such as Clooney, there’s going to be a public perception that his leading performance is the key factor that let the audience down.

However, there was a silver lining to the Batman & Robin experience that George Clooney had, and he let The Hollywood Reporter in on that knowledge as he talked to them for their Awards Chatter podcast. As it turns out, the sting of playing Batman helped the actor to choose projects a little wiser, which put him on a run of movies that still can’t be beat: Three Kings, Out of Sight and O Brother, Where Art Thou.

So while playing Batman isn’t the easiest job in the world, it’s certainly worth it. If you’re really good at it, you’ll be forever remembered as a titan of the role, like Michael Keaton and Christian Bale. But if you’re tenure is a little more embattled, like George Clooney or Ben Affleck, you’re going to learn some hard lessons about where you need to go next. An all important lesson for Robert Pattinson or Nicholas Hoult to consider, should either of them become the next Caped Crusader.

George Clooney can currently be seen in Hulu’s Catch-22, as all episodes are now streaming as of today. But if you’re looking for something more in the way of movies, you can hop over to our 2019 release schedule and see what’s coming down the road.

Netflix's Murder Mystery Trailer Reunites Adam Sandler And Jennifer Aniston

Netflix's Murder Mystery Trailer Reunites Adam Sandler And Jennifer Aniston

Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston were last seen in a movie together in 2011’s romantic comedy Just Go With It. In that film, their characters got caught up in a web of lies while pretending to be married. It's a tough act to be sure, but nothing like what they will have to deal with in Murder Mystery. Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston reunite for the Netflix action-comedy, which has just dropped its first trailer. Check it out below:

First, it must be said that I didn’t know we needed Adam Sandler with a ridiculous cop mustache, but I’m here for it. Although we’ve only seen them together in one other movie, the Murder Mystery trailer reminds us that Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler have good chemistry and a fun dynamic. Here Aniston plays the frustrated wife completely exhausted with her husband, and him as the perpetually disappointing spouse who puts in the absolute minimum amount of effort ("The boat does all the work").

They are taking their honeymoon 15 years late to try and find a spark in their listless marriage, only for that spark to come in the form of the film’s titular murder mystery. And while they’re in over their heads, perhaps his detective skills and her love of mystery novels will see them through and provide more than a few laughs along the way.

The premise of Murder Mystery is nothing new; whodunits are tried and true, and that’s because they are effective. Here, after an offer to spend the weekend on a luxury yacht so generous some might call it suspicious, Nick and Audrey Spitz wind up being framed for a murder of a billionaire. But rather than confine the film entirely to the yacht as the true killer is rooted out, Murder Mystery takes the characters on the run, bringing some action to the proceedings.

That action provides some of the trailer’s funnier moments. The part where we see that Adam Sandler’s detective is missing horribly while firing at a would-be assassin and getting yelled at by his wife for it is great. He clearly trained at the Stormtrooper School of Marksmanship. Also, between this and the new trailer for Men in Black: International, it’s a good week for right-hand drive car humor.

Murder Mystery also seems to be doing a light bit of satire of the whodunit premise. The inspector is your classic European detective you find in these kinds of stories, a Hercule Poirot-type character who is both brilliant and ridiculous. Adam Sandler’s Nick even yells out his Magnum P.I. fantasy while racing to a get in a Ferrari and escape their pursuers.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that some of Adam Sandler’s movies in recent years have been… not great. You might even call some stinkers or “a Devlin,” as Jennifer Aniston’s character in Just Go With It would say. But Murder Mystery looks like a lot of fun. It’s got a solid premise and while it’s obviously still a comedy, it doesn’t look as inane and full of hijinks as something like The Ridiculous 6.

Murder Mystery lands on Netflix on June 14. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what’s headed to the big screen this summer and for all your movie news keep it locked to CinemaBlend.

Zachary Levi Ate A Ridiculous Amount Of Food To Get In Shape For Shazam!

Zachary Levi Ate A Ridiculous Amount Of Food To Get In Shape For Shazam!

Zachary Levi was perfect casting to play the child in a man's body that is the superhero Shazam. However, Levi didn't necessarily have the body of a superhero when he was cast in the role. The actor has spoken a lot about what he had to go through to be believable as a superhero. It required a lot of work on his part, but a large amount of that work was actually eating.

While Zachary Levi spent a lot of time at the gym, as you would expect, that gym work was designed to convert calories into muscle, and so he had to consume a massive amount of calories in addition to his workouts. According to Levi...

I got the job and I was in the gym 5-6 days a week. When I was trying to build mass, you’ve got to eat a lot of calories, 3,500-3,700 calories a day. And they have to be really clean calories, they can’t just be Häagen-Dazs!

A fairly standard adult diet would be something around 2,000 calories a day, which means that Zachary Levi was eating nearly double that along with working out nearly every day of the week. On the one hand, working out that much is going to require a pretty impressive calorie intake to keep you from feeling perpetually starved, but that's still a crazy amount of food.

If you could eat anything you wanted then eating that much might not be all that bad, but as Zachary Levi tells People, it's not like he just sat around and ate ice cream. I mean, it's dairy so there's some protein in ice cream, but there was probably a lot more meat and other more serious protein sources included. Levi has said his diet was basically meat and vegetables five times a day, and considering the calorie count, these were probably pretty close to full meals five times a day. Even with the hunger that you get from working out, I can imagine around meal number five eating more food is not what you'd want to spend your time doing, but it's just as necessary as the exercise.

Being a movie star may be largely as glamorous as it appears to be, but sometimes there is some pretty serious work to be done. Levi says it was a dream come true to play the lead in a superhero movie but the guy had to work to make that dream a reality. While looking like a superhero can be done with padded suits and CGI, to feel like a superhero, you've got to still do a lot of the real work.

On the plus side, if you do throw in some ice cream, you probably burn it off pretty quickly based on how much you're working out.

Based on Shazam!'s opening weekend success, it looks like all the hard work was worth it. The film grossed over $50 million in North America and broke the $100 million mark in total overseas business. It's another big hit for DC following Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

15 Best Movies To Watch On Amazon Prime Right Now

15 Best Movies To Watch On Amazon Prime Right Now

Having a streaming subscription is only as good as knowing how to use it, and in order to get the most out of a service like Amazon Prime, you need a good starting point. That’s easier said than done, as the library of films and TV options is so voluminous that you could spend a whole day just browsing.

But that’s not what you should be doing. You should be watching things, otherwise you’re just paying for a really cool slide show.

To that effect, we’re going to show you 15 of the best launchpads into the world of Amazon Prime’s moving offerings. Now these titles are subject to change, so you may want to check on the availability of these titles yourself. But at this moment, these are the 15 best movies included with an Amazon Prime membership that are totally worth the time.

A Quiet Place

Writer/director John Krasinski’s big debut behind the camera, A Quiet Place, was an unquestionable success at the box office upon its release. Taking the world by storm, this tale of an apocalypse where the slightest sound may be your last is a thrilling exercise in tension and horror. But even more impressive is how Krasinski and his actual wife, Emily Blunt, use their own real life connection to not only tie their characters together in a realistic manner, but also to include their on screen children in a similarly effective manner. It just makes this already thrilling horror blockbuster all the more believable.

Cold War

One of the best films to come out in 2018, Cold War, also happens to be an Amazon Studios original film. Its big entry into the Best Foreign Language Race of this past Oscar race, the film tells the story of a complicated romance between a music teacher and his young pupil. That love story alone is intriguing, but seeing it weave in and out of the rise of Communism in Poland between the end of World War II and the sociopolitical era it’s named after is something that only enhances the conflict between these characters in Pawel Pawlikowski’s lush directorial follow up to Ida.

The Shawshank Redemption

Just because a movie like Frank Darabont’s classic adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption has been talked up to the high heavens doesn’t mean everyone’s seen it. To that effect, it’s important that streaming services like Amazon Prime make it available, as this classic tale of hope in a time of imprisonment is always a good bet for entertainment. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the two faces mostly associated with this film, but an incredible supporting roster that includes Clancy Brown, Bob Gunton, William Sadler and James Whitmore Jr. are all present to lend powerful assists in bringing Stephen King’s cherished novella to life.

The Blues Brothers

Sometimes a musical is just a musical, and sometimes it’s a car-chasing, soul singing, blues-fueled adventure like The Blues Brothers. Born out of a recurring musical act/gag featured on Saturday Night Live, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd star as Jake and Elwood, two orphaned brothers with a taste for mayhem. The story is technically about the boys trying to raise enough money to keep their childhood orphanage open, but don’t let that fool you. Director John Landis’ film is just as much about keeping the songs and celebrity cameos coming as it is about saving the day.

Eighth Grade

It’s an odd bit of symmetry knowing that writer/director Bo Burnham made a film about a young girl trying to become YouTube famous in her last days of middle school. Eighth Grade tells us that story through the eyes of Kayla, actor Elsie Fisher’s lead character in Burnham’s film. But knowing that Burnham became a sensation through the platform only lends more credence to his story about a young person trying to strike the very same sort of success, and why maybe it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. No matter what age you are or what era you grew up in, this movie hits home hard.

The King of Comedy

As the new Joker film seems to be pulling a lot of influence -- and possibly even lifting whole plot points -- directly from Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, it’s a good time to experience one of the legendary director’s lesser-known films. With even Robert DeNiro himself stating that this film feeds pretty heavily into the DNA of Joker, this film will set you up for what could be one of DC’s most experimental films ever. But even without the connection to that new film in the DC Comics line of cinematic storytelling, it’s a damned treat to watch DeNiro’s Rupert Pupkin go from mere daydreaming to full-blown psychosis, under the trusted hand of one of his most trusted collaborators.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a rather interesting title to discuss, as it’s an intersection between two subjects we’ll discuss in this rundown. Much like The King of Comedy, it has ties to a more modern version, thanks to The Hustle being a remake of this very film. On top of that fact, director Frank Oz’s ‘80s comedy classic is a remake itself of the David Niven/Marlon Brando comedy romp Bedtime Stories. So substitute Niven for Michael Caine, Brando for Steve Martin, and unleash this combination on the French Rivera, in the name of racing to a $50k swindle that proves who runs the show and who’s got to go. That’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on paper, but the execution is so beautiful to behold on screen.

The Big Sick

Real life can be funny, but it can also be pretty sad. Both are pretty powerful emotions and they’re difficult to nail when taking a true story like The Big Sick and bringing it to the big screen. Based on the real life courtship of writers Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, and how a mystery illness brought them closer together, this particular story understands the balance between those emotions perfectly. The funny and the sad radiate throughout this film with beautiful clarity, creating a film that truly understands the humanity in its source, while still being quite entertaining.

Kick-Ass

Without Kick-Ass’s success, we probably would have never gotten X-Men: First Class or either of the Kingsman films to feast our eyes on. That’s because director Matthew Vaughn honed his comic adapting skills on this indie book, showcasing a normal high school kid’s rise into a street-level vigilante. Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Chloe Grace Moretz made a pretty big splash as the high school kid who gives the film its name, and the young Hit-Girl who becomes a friend and sidekick to Kick-Ass’s crime fighting crusade. But if you’re a Nicolas Cage fan, you’ll want to partake in this particular film, as it has one of his best performances to date.

Hereditary

Horror movies live and breathe on word of mouth, quite possibly more than any other genre out there. While we all want that occasional good scare, we also want to know if said scare is going to be within our comfort zone before taking the trip. As such, when a film like Hereditary is talked about to the extent that it did during last summer’s box office heatwave, that sort of hype can be scary in and of itself. But you shouldn’t fear Ari Aster’s slow burning film, as it ramps up to the truly terrifying stuff in such a way that you’re freaked out, but you’re only jumping out of your seat every so often. Think less of a jump scare parade and more of an atmospheric dimming of the lights of safety, and you can begin to understand what Hereditary has in store for you.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Good luck creating a remake as awesome as The Thomas Crown Affair. Two years before Oceans’ Eleven would take another piece of ‘60s pop culture and turn it into a sharp and witty ride for the new millennium, director John McTiernan got the jump on the game and made a caper as sexy as it is funny. Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo anchor the tale of a millionaire who steals things for the fun of it, and the investigator who wants to make him pay in the name of the hunt. Though with all of those elements acknowledged, Michael B. Jordan’s proposed remake of this very same film does have a good chance of bringing this particular property back into the pop culture fold in similar style.

The Birdcage

It’s not easy to adapt a stage play into a film, much less remake that adaptation into something equally as funny as it source. And yet, La Cage Aux Folles not only translated perfectly into its initial French film offering in the ‘70s, it also made the comedic genius that was The Birdcage. When your cast consists of a comedic battle royale that includes Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest, it’s up to the creative team to screw things up. Not only did the legendary team of director Mike Nichols and writer Elaine May deliver the perfect playground for all of these legends to play ball in, they dropped Hank Azaria in for an extra dose of spice.

Child’s Play

Yes, that Child’s Play remake is happening this year, and if it does well, we’ll have another variant of Chucky to run and hide from in pop culture. As the prospect of Mark Hamill being the newer, more digital Chucky is pretty damned exciting, it’s still going to be hard not to think back to the original film. That’s not a knock to the Child’s Play for the modern era, but Brad Dourif’s original incarnation is still pretty iconic, and always worth a revisit; especially in the pre-comedic state that this very first film embodies so perfectly.

Cloverfield

While it was released a little over a decade ago, Cloverfield still has a pretty strong following of fans and theorists that dig into its humble origins for clues to the future. What started as a clever viral marketing sensation became yet another franchise that has spurred on a fresh round of detective work with each passing film. And no matter how many sequels are made, it all seems to lead back to this modern legend.

Arrival

The 2016 sci-fi hit Arrival made a huge name for itself as a contender for Best Picture in its Academy Awards class, but the film seems to be settling into a newer, bigger role since its upsetting loss. Director Denis Villeneuve’s tale of linguistics in a first contact scenario seems to be on the track to becoming a classic, as the beauty of its story is only outdone by the perfect performances from Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner and a supporting cast of notables. Just be prepared to cry more than a little while watching this one.

Amazon Prime has a ton of options for anyone looking to entertain themselves through the medium of the movies. So when you’ve exhausted your best options on this list, don’t forget to venture deeper into the waters the company provides. You might just find a new, lesser-known favorite that’s dying to get its moment in the sun.

Chris Hemsworth Was ‘Underwhelmed’ With Thor Franchise Before Ragnarok

Chris Hemsworth Was ‘Underwhelmed’ With Thor Franchise Before Ragnarok

Thor has been a major player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2011, both leading his own film series and being one of the founding Avengers. However, the character received his biggest surge in popularity yet with Thor: Ragnarok in late 2017, and Chris Hemsworth credits the threequel with refreshing his character, as going into it, he wasn’t excited about having to play the God of Thunder again. In Hemsworth’s words:

When we came into Ragnarok, I was sort of exhausted of what I’d been doing and a little sort of underwhelmed by what I was putting out there, you know?

Thus far the Thor film series is the only one where each movie was directed by someone different, with Taika Waititi following in the footsteps of Kenneth Branagh and Alan Taylor for Ragnarok. There’s no question that tonally speaking, Ragnarok was significantly different from its predecessors, but that shift paid off, as it’s the most critically well-received of the Thor movies and made $854 million worldwide.

Chris Hemsworth admitted last year that he found Thor: The Dark World to be “meh” (it’s the lowest-rated of the MCU movies on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer), but in his recent interview with Yahoo, he clarified that his issues with the Thor of it all pre-Ragnarok weren’t due to any of the people he had worked with, but his own dissatisfaction with the character. As he put it:

That was no fault of any director or writer, that was me personally. It felt like I’d put myself in a box with what the character could do. So on Ragnarok, it was about breaking all the rules, and kinda going ‘as soon as it feels familiar, do something different’, and Taika [Waititi] – the director – had the same vision, and the same, I guess, guts to just roll the dice and [do the] ‘anything goes’ kind of thing. That was so liberating and freeing, you know, to sort of break away who the character was prior.

Mission accomplished! Not only did Thor: Ragnarok take full advantage of Chris Hemsworth’s comedic skills, but it also put shook up Thor’s world by killing his father, destroying his hammer, gouging out his eye and annihilating Asgard. Granted, the lost eye isn’t really an issue anymore since he was given a bionic replacement by Rocket Raccoon in Avengers: Infinity War, but otherwise Thor is definitely out of that box Hemsworth was worried about and has arguably hit his stride.

MCU fans can look forward to Chris Hemsworth’s Thor returning next week for Avengers: Endgame, but beyond that, the character’s future is shrouded in secrecy. Hemsworth seems open to playing the Asgardian hero again and Tessa Thompson said that a Taika Waititi-directed Thor 4 has been pitched, but for now, Marvel’s upcoming slate of films is, with the exception of Black Widow, focused around brand-new and more recently established characters.

Should there be any major update concerning Thor’s future in the MCU, we here at CinemaBlend will let you know about it. For now, the next chapter of his journey unfolds with the release of Avengers: Endgame on April 26, and you can browse through our Marvel movies guide to learn what else this superhero franchise has coming down the pipeline.

Avengers: Endgame Reviews Are In, Here’s What The Critics Are Saying

Avengers: Endgame Reviews Are In, Here’s What The Critics Are Saying

We’re almost there, folks! After more than a decade of set-up and following a year after the devastating conclusion of Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame is only a couple days away from finally being released to the masses. However, some folks were lucky enough to see the movie early, and now, following the social media reactions that poured in last night after the Endgame world premiere, the first reviews for the movie are pouring in, and they’re overwhelmingly positive.

Let’s kick off with CinemaBlend’s own Eric Eisenberg, who awarded Avengers: Endgame a perfect 5 out of 5 stars in his review, noting that his movie is packed with all sorts of surprises, from actors you never expected to show up popping in to plot twists “coming out of left field.” While he felt it would be “reductive” to call Endgame a love letter to Marvel fans, it definitely is a “wonderful gift” for those who’ve been invested in this franchise over the last 11 years, one which audiences “are going to want to experience over and over again.”

Avengers: Endgame is one of the most ambitious, entertaining, emotional, and stunning blockbusters we’ve ever seen, and the best film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon thus far.

Next up, we have Germain Lussier from io9, who described Avengers: Endgame as “everything you’ve ever dreamed a Marvel movie could be” and called it a “complete, complex, and satisfying conclusion” to the last decade we’ve spent with these MCU characters. Endgame becomes more complex as it goes along, which can sometimes make the movie feel “overstuffed and overly busy at times,” but the payoffs are well worth it.

After 11 years and 21 movies, Avengers: Endgame is larger than a mere movie. It’s a personal experience. It works as a singular film and ultimately will be judged as such, but on first viewing, it works even better as a cherry on top of a decade of Marvel storytelling—the final piece of a glorious puzzle we’ve all been working to piece together since 2008.

Entertainment Weekly’s Leah Greenblat gave Avengers: Endgame a B+, declaring that the movie promises many things, like revenge, redemption and a ridiculously long runtime, and it “largely delivers” on that. And if you’re a fan of Marvel cameos, then brace yourself, because Endgame is filled to the brim with surprise appearances.

With the stakes being no less than the fate of the world (or at least approximately 50% of it), there’s an expected urgency to it all, but an underlying melancholy, too — not just for everything that’s been lost, but for what won’t be coming back. After seven years, four films, and uncountable post-credit easter eggs, the endgame of an era has finally come.

Over at Birth.Movies.Death., Russ Fischer, who was not “convinced” by Avengers: Infinity War, found Avengers: Endgame to be a more satisfiable MCU offering. The movie has an “unusual structure,” though that’s definitely appropriate for the kind of story being told, and the second act plays out as a “Marvel’s Greatest Hits” before delving into the final battle. In Fischer’s eyes, Endgame doesn’t create a “seismic shift” like Infinity War did, but it does put everything on the table.

Ultimately, Endgame is an entire movie of payoffs. It plays off and completes thoughts begun in Age of Ultron and Civil War, and even in comics. Conventional wisdom says that a sequel should be able to stand on its own. For the past decade, Marvel has worked to make that true, to whatever degree is possible in a series of more than 20 interconnected films. That changes with Endgame, which has no ambition to stand on its own, and no need to. This Avengers finale is an event as much as a movie.

USA Today’s Brian Truitt gave Avengers: Endgame a 3.5 out of 4 score, describing it as the “triple-disc greatest-hits package with the really awesome cover and a slew of familiar, comforting gems inside.” The movie loses some momentum over its three-hour runtime, but it delivers those emotional gut punches we’ve expected and an explosive finale.

Endgame is tragic and uplifting, rousing and grounding, while leaving minds racing and making everybody cry (even the toughest guys). Marvel movies have managed to find endearing, crowd-pleasing magic amid these fun and flawed comic-book characters in the past decade, and Endgame pays off all that goodwill by letting them do what they do best on the biggest stage yet.

Angie Han from Mashable didn’t find Avengers: Endgame to be the best, prettiest or even the funniest Marvel movie ever made, but she did call it the “most Marvel movie” ever made, and that’s a notable accomplishment. There are some “quibbles” to be had at certain moments, but it ultimately serves as a testament to what this franchise has become.

This is Marvel flexing, building on over 10 years and 20-plus films of careful groundwork and intricate planning to show us what it can do that no other movie franchise can. As such, it's an immensely satisfying finish to this era of the series.

Finally, IGN’s Laura Prudom awarded Avengers: Endgame a 9.5 out of 10 score, calling it a movie that “rewards your knowledge of the MCU in its entirety.” There are some parts that might feel like “outright fan service,” but they feel more as though they’re earned after everything we’ve seen over the last 11 years. Like most Marvel movies, there’s an over reliance on “overproduced CGI battles,” but fortunately, the quieter character moments are still able to shine.

A fitting and surprisingly poetic payoff to more than a decade of storytelling, and the start of a bright new chapter.

These are just a handful of the Avengers: Endgame reviews that are now available, so feel free to venture elsewhere on the interwebs to learn what other critics thought of this movie. Be careful about running into spoilers, though, as there are some reviews that delve into minor plot details that some of you might not want to know. Tread cautiously!

You can judge Avengers: Endgame for yourself when it’s released on April 26, but for now, keep up to date with CinemaBlend for more coverage on this blockbuster event, and be sure to look through our Marvel movies guide to learn what else this franchise has coming down the pipeline.