Avengers: Endgame has no stakes. It's still excellent.

After 11 years and 21 films, Avengers: Endgame marks the end of an era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Or does it?

For a film ostensibly about endings, the last chapter of the so-called "Infinity Saga" doesn't appear particularly committed to the concept of finality. Time travel easily brings back characters thought to be dead. Winking cliffhangers promise future hero franchises. When "the end" so often turns out to be another trap door, it is nearly impossible, as an audience, to feel any investment in the stakes.

And yet, Avengers: Endgame was the first Marvel film I've loved in years.

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The film certainly still has flaws that have plagued the tetralogy since the first installment in 2012: exclusionary storytelling; an unfocused glut of protagonists; a (mostly) obvious and formulaic structure. Its most glaring fault of all, though, is the lack of a reason to care this time around. After all, how can you be invested in a movie in which you know everything is going to work out?

Endgame really should have had the biggest stakes of all. 2018's Infinity War concluded with the purple Titan Thanos snapping his fingers and killing half of the population of the universe, including Black Panther, Spider-Man, and other beloved heroes. Only, it was already impossible from the get-go to feel worried about that cliffhanger: Clearly the heroes weren't going to stay dead, seeing how much money their franchises rake in for Marvel. More telling, though, Infinity War had already illustrated how casually time travel is used in the MCU when Thanos used the Time Stone to revive (and re-kill) the character Vision. Even before Infinity War's credits rolled, then, it was all but certain the surviving heroes would do something similar in Endgame to repair Thanos' snap. Infinity War literally left its sequel's cheat code sitting on the table.

Endgame nevertheless attempts to milk as much tension out of its premise as possible, which is its biggest misstep. Thanos is beheaded in the film's first 15 minutes, with the Infinity Stones explained as having been destroyed in a bit of terrible exposition: "I used the stones to destroy the stones." Ah, right. As if to press the point that things are really, really bad, a title card glacially informs us that five years pass before the surviving heroes think to try to work out time travel all on their own. They figure it out lickity-split, of course, and the rest of the plot follows: They go back in time, get the Infinity Stones, and defeat Thanos. Waiting for the story to catch up with the inevitability of where it is going is the most wearying part of Endgame's three-hour runtime.

When Endgame isn't trying to get you to care about its non-existent stakes, it is electrifying. While Infinity War, likewise directed by the Russo Brothers, was one of the worst films I saw last year, Endgame recovers its footing, bringing back the sort of zesty dialogue Joss Whedon had written for the first two films. Endgame also refocuses on the characters, with the screen's earlier overcrowding blessedly having been thinned down a bit by Thanos. The film's more lighthearted sequences are welcome reprieves: Iron Man, Captain America, and Ant Man's misadventure in New York to get the Tesseract had me in stitches. They even double as a self-commentary on just how little the stakes actually matter: When Iron Man and Captain America botch getting the Space Stone the first time, they simply go further back in time to do it over again.

The only real reason to care about anything in the movie is the possibility of "un-reversible" character deaths, and yes, Endgame apparently delivers two big ones. Even these are strangely sloppy in execution, though. Black Widow is sacrificed in order for Hawkeye to obtain the Soul Stone, but the inability to turn back time to save her isn't fully discussed until after she's dead, giving the moment less emotional resonance due to the lack of clarity over if she's really dying (it's not even fully finalized until the Hulk says at the end of the movie that he tried to bring her back with the Infinity Stones and couldn't, which seems to me like some convenient cherry-picking of the rules by the screenwriters). Iron Man's death, on the other hand, is so gratuitous with its extended funeral scene and message from beyond the grave that it tips back into the obnoxious self-seriousness of Infinity War.

Even as a conclusion to the more than 20 movies in the Infinity Saga, Endgame doesn't feel as if it has any real finality. Endgame could break $1 billion in its opening weekend, which will likely guarantee that Marvel won't just walk away from this franchise or its characters. While there might not have been a post-credits teaser of the next Big Bad, there are plenty of loose ends left, like Steve Rogers' christening of a new Captain America, and the coming adventures of Thor with the Guardians of the Galaxy. Never count out a reboot, either.

What's left to care about if a narrative is so obvious before it begins, then? The answer is fan service, and a lot of it. My Thursday night crowd exploded at every wink to the audience, from the surprising appearance of a depressed beer-bellied Thor to Captain America's ability to wield the Asgardian weapons Mjölnir and Stormbreaker.

And really, isn't that what this is all for, anyway? Endgame was never intended to be a staggering work of narrative genius; in truth, the story is nothing more than a haphazard house of cards built from 21 blockbuster hits, one that quickly starts to tumble down if you prod any one corner of it with too much curiosity. Any "stakes" are really just a renewed pretense for us to see Captain America fight the Captain America of the past, or for all the Avengers to assemble for war in a geographically inconsistent stretch of upstate New York.

So does Endgame make much sense? Not really. Is there anything tangible to be invested in? Nah. But did I have a blast anyway? Oh, absolutely.