After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers assemble once more in order to undo Thanos' actions and restore order to the universe. (from IMDb)

In 2019, Marvel brought their massive and ambitious Cinematic Universe to a grand finale with Avengers: Endgame. Well... kind of. It was supposed to be the end of everything that had led up to that point, retiring the original Avengers roster. Since 2019, the MCU has had its ups and downs, hitting some homers with new releases, and also failing miserably a couple times as well. While there have been some big hits - like this year's Spider-Man: Brand New Day topping the All-Time Domestic Box Office list this summer (which still blows my mind), there have been absolute bombs as well, like Eternals and The Marvels.

As Marvel gets ready for the massive cinematic event that is being promised with this December's Avengers: Doomsday, they've re-released Avengers: Endgame to theaters. Dubbed Avengers: Endgame Encore, the film boasts four minutes of new footage added to its runtime to make it an appropriate bridge to Doomsday.

Over the years since Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame released, the pair have become two of my favorite movies. So, hearing Endgame would return to theaters had me plenty excited to see it on IMAX once again. The promise of new footage, however, was truly gravy -- I'm definitely intrigued to see where it's all headed. A lot of speculation as to how much has been changed about the 2019 edit of Endgame has been debated for a while online - even claiming actress face-swaps were happening digitally for Scott Lang's daughter and such, but thankfully, that is not the case. So what is this new footage exactly?

Endgame is the exact same movie you saw in 2019, that is, until the very end of the film. Where the original film ends, the scene continues, merely teasing where Doomsday might be headed. (Think Doc Brown coming back to tell Marty they have to do something more at the end of Back to the Future.) After that brief detour (which does kind of ruin the blissful sweetness of the original edit), the credits roll, but then break again for a new, odd scene that relates to the events of a recent MCU movie, but ties into Doomsday. The credits resume and pause one more time for a scene that, surprisingly, involves the TVA from the Loki TV series. A minute or two later, the credits resume once again and roll till the very end when we get a sound effect and a tiny, brutally brief tease of Dr. Doom's mask. And that's it. They're all teasers that don't really tell you much, but are aimed to build some hype for the upcoming film. Is it worth the price of a ticket just to see the new footage? No, probably not. Honestly, I found the new footage mostly disappointing, but they feel like post-credits-scene buttons that are tailored to tease what's to come. My biggest gripe of the new footage would be the heavy tonal shift from the original ending to this new setup tease.

As for the movie itself - it's still great 7 years later. I love it. It's certainly not perfect, and I still have a few minor gripes, but it's quite an accomplishment. Seriously... when you think about how huge this movie is and how hard it has to be to create a kind of "series finale" to 21 movies in a big interconnective series, it's downright impressive. For my full 2019 take of the movie, check it out here, but I still genuinely love the film all these years later, and it was still an absolute blast to see on the big screen once again!

- John DiBiase (reviewed: 9/25/26)