To love and let go.

Avengers: Endgame,

by Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen Mc Feely.

The business of the great studios behind the seventh art has fatigued its clients, without even blushing and for more than half a century, with a shameless saturation of the same four genres (drama, romance, comedy, action at gunpoint) and its handful of storylines, regurgitated ad infinitum.

       It is true that from time to time the viewer is allowed to enjoy fantasy with its ocean of possibilities, but the results of those brief lapses of unlashed creativity were never more than a few quality jewels quickly buried under an avalanche of mediocre imitations searching for a quick success in the box office.

       However, when the same business understand that artistic renovation would eventually lead to more money, is when creativity and his carriers are not just allowed to exist, but even encouraged.

       Thus, since a little more than a decade, the enthusiastic cinephile enjoys the closest thing to a miracle that the industry could offer: a new flavor to surprise a palate saturated with tons and tons of little or nothing.

       I do not intend to deny that the genre of superheroes has had very good background in cinema, or forget that the serials (Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers as great examples) have existed to delight of the golden age. However, the successive combination of individual and group chapters, replicating on the big screen the experience of the comics and their grandiose sagas, is something that has never been seen before, or at least not on this scale.

       Avengers Endgame, the dreamlike final chapter in the first Saga of the Marvel studios, is an example of everything the genre has been able to offer in almost a century of countless, fruitful color pages.

       But above all things, it is a declaration of true love to the films that preceded it, and to the many audiences that enjoyed them. For the latter, the endearing offering of known places and iconic phrases.

       In conjunction with its immediate predecessor (Infinity War) Endgame surpasses almost effortlessly the original piece of art (The Infinity Gauntlet, by Jim Starling and George Pérez), using the key points of the comic to tell a much more intimate story, which speaks of human pain and urgencies long before the heroic acts with all their inevitable, necessary paraphernalia (as in Civil War, the Russo brothers rethink the unattractive consequences of actions supernatural, that do not skimp vibrant explosions, colorful cosmic rays, and brutal exterminations at the hands of a mad Titan).

       Truly emotional without the need for low blows or melodrama, it shines like a diamond when displays tragedy and failure through humor. As occurs in Pagliacci or The Man Who Laughs, the laughter of the public rests on a mantle of suffering.

       Although covered with an emotional quality unthinkable for the genre a few decades ago (with the sole exception of Unbreakable, by M. Night Shyamalan), at one point the logic of the plot begins to crumble, and this is largely due to the use of a narrative resource that, in itself, has always been an invitation to chaos. Lead by such a device, forced elements are added to the abandonment of all reasoning more than once. And if that alone were not enough, despite their indisputable successes behind the cameras, the Russo brothers have demonstrated with their four interventions in the Marvel universe that they have never had the slightest desire to learn the limits and scope of each one of the heroes whose actions they have directed.

       Unfortunately, at this point in the Infinity Saga the black holes in the plot and the slack, loose treatment of heroes skills are not unique to a single movie or creative team, and have become as inevitable as the mad Titan.

       But far beyond its brief momentes of clumsiness, Endgame succeed where it needs to: wrapping with a golden gauntlet a saga of more than twenty previous chapters. And in doing so, it says goodbye (and invite its public to say goodbye) of some of its fundamental pillars, dressing their fates of tragic sacrifice, expected heroism, and a more than deserved voluntary retirement.

       Undoubtedly the machinery will remain in operation, and with more talent than good luck it will be possible for new sagas to emerge, maybe as good as its precursor.

       For whom this writes, however, the second time will not be as good as the first, because it will not represent the same.

       But don´t get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I can not complain.

       The superhero genre has finally reached the cinemas, with its original collection of narrative gadgets. And that is more than enough for me.

       Like the old, satisfied man that owns a fulfilled life in his memory, we can sit quietly and contemplate the promising waters of the future.