WARNING: SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME AND ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY WILL BE DISCUSSED. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The grand finale of Marvel Studios’ highly ambitious Infinity Saga that’s been years in the making has made quite the impact on popular culture, having surpassed James Cameron’s Titanic to become one of the highest-grossing films of all time (behind 2009’s Avatar, also directed by Cameron)! With all this being said, it’s very clear that Marvel Studios has hundreds of thousands, if not millions, fully invested into the encompassing storyline that’s been meticulously unfolding ever since the mid-credits scene of the first Avengers revealed that it was Thanos the Mad Titan himself who’d provided the devious Loki with the means to invade Earth in order to retrieve the Tesseract (which contained one of the six Infinity Stones Thanos sought, in this case the blue-colored Space Stone).
2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, meanwhile, was widely anticipated for its return to the era of the beloved original trilogy (which also meant the return of one of cinema’s most iconic villains, Darth Vader), as well as its narrative that revolved around the fateful mission to retrieve the plans to the first Death Star that was alluded to in the legendary opening crawl of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Thankfully for Lucasfilm, Rogue One managed to turn in quite the profit, grossing more than $1 billion globally, and was generally well received, with some considering it the best of the Disney-released Star Wars movies so far.
With those introductions out of the way, let’s get into why Avengers Endgame is essentially a better version of Rogue One!
A More Compelling Narrative: As I initially watched Avengers: Endgame back in 2019, I noticed that the narrative that takes up much of the second act is, like Rogue One before it, a heist movie to retrieve McGuffins (a term coined by the legendary filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock referring to plot devices that are key to the narrative) that’ll essentially allow the heroes to triumph against the insurmountable odds facing them. In Avengers: Endgame, the McGuffins our heroes are trying to retrieve are the all-powerful Infinity Stones that they intend to use to undo Thanos’ culling of half of all life in the universe (as seen in Avengers: Infinity War). Meanwhile, the McGuffin of Rogue One that the main protagonists are trying to obtain is the first Death Star’s plans, which will play a key role in the moon-sized battle station’s destruction in the original Star Wars.
However, the way in which Endgame differentiates itself from Rogue One is in the execution of this narrative, as the Avengers and their allies end up traveling back in time using the mysterious Quantum Realm (that was previously established in 2015’s Ant-Man and its 2018 sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp) to retrieve the Infinity Stones from various points in the past (as it’s revealed at the start of Endgame that Thanos destroyed the present versions of them). This results in the protagonists traveling to various locations and events from previous installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (or MCU), such as the Battle of New York from the climax of the first Avengers film and the temple on Morag from the beginning of the first Guardians of the Galaxy, meaning that, in addition to being part of the plot (as the characters go to the earlier versions of these and other locations to retrieve the Infinity Stones), Endgame is able to use these visits to the past to simultaneously act as one big celebration of the MCU up until that point (as Spider-Man: Far From Home had yet to be released at the time)! Ultimately, the fact that this movie’s directors, Anthony and Joe Russo, as well as the screenwriter duo of Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus (whose previous credits include the screenplays for all three movie adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia, the Captain America film trilogy, and Avengers: Infinity War) were able to successfully do something new (via the time-travel aspect of the plot) with the ‘heist’ narrative that’s been done in so many movies prior (e.g., Ocean’s Eleven, Reservoir Dogs, and even the MCU’s own Ant-Man) while being able to give shout-outs to the previous Marvel Studios movies who's successes enabled this film to become reality is what really makes Avengers: Endgame’s heist storyline able to stand out from its predecessors!
Rogue One, meanwhile, feels like wasted potential in that it takes what feels like forever to get to the heist plot we were promised in the marketing, as first the protagonists’ journey to the desert moon of Jedha to get a message from the lead character Jyn Erso’s scientist father Galen. Following this, they go to the rainy world of Eadu to rescue Galen (at Jyn’s insistence), which doesn't exactly go according to plan (to put it lightly), before finally getting to the McGuffin-retrieving portion of the movie that we paid to see! This wouldn’t be so frustrating if everything leading up to the last third of the movie actually flowed well. At the end of the first act of Rogue One, in his message to Jyn, Galen Erso reveals the design flaw he hid in the Death Star can be found in the plans on the tropical world of Scarif. However, because Jyn is viewed as untrustworthy due to her checkered past (which is conveyed via an exposition dump earlier in the movie's runtime), the plot doesn’t 'cut to the chase' until 2 acts later! In addition, like several movies that involve some form(s) of espionage, Rogue One involves the main team carrying out the raid while some distraction draws the majority of the enemy forces off their scent. While these events are done quite well, mind you, it doesn’t feel as unique as the way in which Avengers: Endgame executes its own heist plotline (via time travel), which is what makes Endgame come out on top in terms of the execution of the main plotline!
Characters Audiences Actually Care About: While I feel the second act (in which the 'time heist' occurs) of Avengers: Endgame left a bit to be desired in terms of action sequences, at least the film makes up for it in that viewers can readily get invested in what happens to the protagonists (as well as even the main antagonist, Thanos)! Although the characters certainly benefit from having several previous movies to develop them as individuals, even when viewing Endgame on its own, its characters nonetheless manage to stand out as a highlight of the film. This can be attributed to the engaging performances of Endgame's ensemble cast (e.g., Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Karen Gillan, Josh Brolin, etc.) and the solid writing regarding the characters' journeys that've unfolded over the course of the films that make up the Infinity Saga.
Although Rogue One's first two-thirds does a better job of satisfying my action craving, many of the sequences feel too short in length (the biggest offenders arguably being Saw Gerrera's partisans' ambush of an Imperial squad escorting a shipment of valuable kyber crystals on Jedha and the Rebel Alliance's attack on an Imperial lab on the rainy planet Eadu). Unlike Endgame, however, this absence of action of decent length ultimately hurts Rogue One because, with a few exceptions (chief among them being the scene-stealing droid K-2SO and the intriguing Force-believing monk Chirrut Imwe), it's rather difficult to give a hoot about the main characters because of how dull they can come off as onscreen. While they certainly have potential as characters on paper, there's something rather lackluster about their execution, which I blame director Gareth Edwards for, as he seems to have quite the problem (going back to his first big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, 2014's Godzilla) with being good at delivering on spectacle, yet seriously faltering in terms of getting appealing performances out of most, if not all of, his cast (with a select few actors utterly trumping their costars in terms of portrayals, such as Alan Tudyk and Donnie Yen as the aforementioned K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe, respectively, in this movie). Don't get me wrong, the actors themselves did commendably in the film itself, it's just that they could've had a lot more to work with in their portrayals, something Avengers: Endgame outshines Rogue One in!
In general, while there could've been more action during the second-act portion of its runtime, Avengers: Endgame manages to improve upon Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in that it has well-realized characters (thanks to the contributions of the screenwriters, directors, and especially the actors bringing said individuals to life) and a unique execution of the main plotline (through the utilization of time-travel) that enables it to stand out from heist movies before and after it!
Hope you enjoyed my work! If you like this inclusion of non-review content, feel free to let me know; any and all feedback (e.g., comments) is welcome, as it'll be beneficial in helping me refine my 'craft'! Have a good rest of the day (wherever you are) and I'll see you in the next review (or other piece of content)!
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