(Readers, I never spoil the plots of movies in my reviews, and I didn’t here.)

There is great feeling and engagement in this movie, and true genius in the marketing of it.

If you are approaching the film as a movie with some high standards and critical detachment, it is a pretty wild and but flawed ride.

If you are approaching tis movie as a rabid fan or one of the cult followers Disney is so skilled at creating, it is pure heaven, you will not be disappointed.

There is much hype about not spoiling the film by revealing plot details, and I won’t, of course, but you pretty much know what’s coming all the way through the minute you sit down, especially if you’ve been following the Marvel ride for any length of time.

Those rumors you’ve been hearing are true. Prepare yourself for loss and a dish of bittersweet.

It is a time-honored marketing concept to leak all kinds of rumors in advance of a film, and then beg for silence and restraint. It’s called buzz. The buzz about this movie for a while has been there will be some real sadness and loss, and that is true.

It is also inevitable. All kinds of new heroes and stars are at the gate, raring to go.

The true star of this film is really the Marvel Avenger franchise itself. Marvel is celebrating itself here, and they are not subtle about it.

The Avengers have been marketed,  lionized and romanticized in much the way the Star Wars franchise has been over-hyped and bled to death.  Sequels are by definition anything but fresh and original.

Marvel is ending the Avengers on a high note, for one, the studios didn’t wait too long.

I wish we could like movie franchises without turning them into religious and spiritual experiences. This makes reviewing them complex.

The movie is electric and fast-paced and full of impossibilities.

Don’t even think about following the plot, and the ending, which goes on a minute less than forever is a chaotic, ear-splitting spectacle. If you can follow the time line of this movie, you ought to get on Jeopardy and win a million dollars. I’m not sure it matters.

This is America after all, and Disney never lets us forget about their making money for one single minute of the 180 minutes of the movie. The Avengers were a great and iconic series, the heroes are getting stale and older,  they’re sending it out in style.

They make it very clear that there are more franchises and new stars coming up right behind it. They make it so clear that many of these new stars are in this movie, nobody is waiting for the bodies to get cold.

The major points about the movie.

Real diversity has hit Hollywood, and it is a major event in American culture when so many African-American and female characters play central and heroic roles in a movie, as they did in Endgame. It gives me a lot of hope about the country, no matter what the politicians do.

Perhaps next up will be a gay Superhero, that will be a true test of Disney’s authenticity. This movie looked like America, not  Hollywood’s traditionally narrow vision of America.

In Endgame, our superheroes are all sad and mournful. Sometimes just downers. They have good reason, they lee the earth down bigtime.

Half of the world has been destroyed by the villain Thanos for reasons that are incomprehensible to me.  Something to do with radioactive colored stones.

The Avengers are adrift, depressed and dispirited.  These heroes are not the indestructible heroes of old, they  do not know how to process pain, loss and failure, but they will share their feelings about all three.

The movie focuses skillfully on relationships and friendship, there are witty scenes, touching scenes and confusing scenes.

The plot plays all kinds of games with time, travels backwards and forward.

Speaking only for myself, I often lost track of who was really still alive and who was really dead, and whether we are in the past, the future or the present. If anyone else cares, they have not yet shown themselves.

Some critics have found this brilliant, I found it dizzying.

I’ve been following Marvel for years from its comics to its movies, I thought the movie was overstuffed with characters, scenes and pathos.  It was too long, there were too many stars,  a thousand  twists and turns, and as it happened,  very little of the plot made any sense at all.

Marvel studios – now part of Disney – have been geniuses at taking a once laughed at and inconsequential drama and turning it something popular, profit-making. These superhero films are  important, if not the most important,  happenings in our popular culture right now.

Even the New York Times writes breathless reviews of Marvel movies, they used to turn up their noses at them.

The news is creating a whole new generation of fantasists and escapists, and Marvel knows how to please them.

The movie works best, I think, when it gets human and wise. Life is not glorified here, neither is heroism. Even the most powerful helmets don’t stand up well to a laser blast. and these heroes are anything but omnipotent.

I will say lots of people in the movie theater I went to were sniffing, even sobbing more than once. I teared up twice.

Moviegoers and critics are loving this movie, and it is a monster hit.

Robert Downey stole the show as Ironman, his performance framed the Avenger series from beginning to end. Many say his Ironman really sparked the rise of Marvel Studios. In this movie, he was terrific, a standout.

I loved Chris Hemsworth as a fragile and neurotic Thor running to his mommy, Mark Ruffalo as a re-imagined and very thoughtful hulk, Scarlett Johannson as a melancholic Natasha Romanoff and Paul Rudd as the ridiculous, excitable,  but appealing  Ant-man.

I grew up on Marvel comics, and I am a fan of the superhero genre. It’s about the only mainstream forum for true discussion of values and responsibility in our country at the moment.

In the Avengers, morals really matter, and how many tweets or  movies can you say that about?

I appreciate the streak of humor and wit that runs through the Avenger movies.

I don’t want to say much about the ending except it was a mind-blower on many levels. Too long (three hours is just too long for a movie), too loud, too repetitious, this movie could have shed a half hour easily without pain, except that the last half hour was somewhat shamelessly  constructed by Disney and the Russo brothers to set the stage for what’s to come.

Take out ads, people, please.

At one time the ending might have been controversial and considered a promotional trailer for future films, but that is no longer a problem it seems.

The focus on the humanity and vulnerability of the once confident and almost arrogant Avengers has given way to new sensibilities. They are much softer and more fragile and reflective than I ever remember seeing movie superheroes.

As always, and at the insistence of Stan Lee, the series uses humor continuously and well

A sad movie with lots of laughs.

I think the term riotous grandiosity and sprawling spectacle come to mind, along with delirious absurdity. I think it was the most affecting of the Avenger series and also the most self-referential and congratulatory. (Winter Soldier (2014) was my favorite Marvel movie so far (I haven’t seen them all).

The superhero phenomenon is one of the most interesting cultural phenomenons in my lifetime. The Endgame movie is important, because it marks the end of one period in this culture, and the beginning of another. Movies, like dogs, mirror us, they don’t lead.

This movie felt important to me. Maria was numb by the end, lost in the endless contradictions.

But we both saw the significance.

Endgame marks the end of the white bread male superhero, building on the success of Black Panther, one of the most significant movies in decades. We’re in a new dimension now – blacks, women, hispanics, asians, the future of America, kicking ass all over the galaxy.

Superman looks like a cardboard cutout next to this new generation of heroes, they remind me of us.

The much simpler and whiter Marvel world that I grew up in is officially gone, kissed goodbye by a blockbuster movie that will earn Disney hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. I felt a lot of emotion seeing this movie,  it reflected the changes in my life as well, comic books were such an important part of my life, and such a respite from misery.

My culture is rich and diverse now, and much more sophisticated. But my comic books meant a lot to me, and the name Marvel carries a lot of punch.

As a child, I couldn’t have begun to imagine so many women and people of color in a movie like this. I need to remind myself that we are changing, and even our elected leaders can’t stop it.

I was saying goodbye to the part of that world that I knew, it’s okay, I handle change well.

In some ways, Avenger Endgame offers us a preview of what’s ahead, and that was pretty clever of Disney, if a bit crass. The critics are used to it by now, nobody even mentions it.

The true creative wizards are those who can see the future coming. Stan Lee saw it clearly. Our world belongs to marketers, not artists. Endgame spells it out for us.

This is a fine family movie, there is sadness, darkness and despair but only a drop or two of blood. Bring some tissues and a pillow to sit on.