Jack of Harts

A little movie came out a decade ago. It featured an arrogant prick with delusions of grandeur who did not work well with others. He had a laundry list of personal defects, and couldn’t hold to a prepared speech with cue cards in his hands. In the end, he said four fateful words that changed movies for a decade.

“I am Iron Man.”

We were next introduced to a big green guy with anger management issues, an angry Norse god with an affinity for lightning, and a god among men who could fight all day long even before he was injected with a super soldier serum that made his body as strong as his will.

Their stories collided in the first Avengers movie and super hero movies as we knew them would never be the same again.

Avengers Endgame is upon us now, and I will say again what I have said before.

It is a love story.

It is a love story to a decade of films starring actors great and small, and characters of grandeur and substance. And since this is a time travel story, we get to see actors and characters we thought were long gone. And others that are only recently gone.

It is a love story to all the fans who have stuck with them since the day we heard the fateful words, “I am Iron Man.”

Avengers Endgame is a capstone to the story begun in that film. To that story and the stories of so many other characters we’ve been introduced to in the years since. Mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Friends and family. I loved every minute of it, from those packed with action to those slow and poignant.

I give it two Infinity Gauntlets raised high in celebration.

Oh…snap. 😉