"Avengers: Endgame" was probably the most anticipated movie of this year. Ending a saga that lasted over a decade, this movie had a lot to live up to.

I just got home from the movie as I'm writing this, so my brain is still reeling, but I'm going to try to keep this review as coherent and spoiler-free as possible.

"Avengers: Infinity War" left us in a dark place, so "Endgame" really needed to raise the audience's spirits without being too campy.

And it did a great job of this. The jokes were all well-placed and offered bright points in an otherwise pretty dark movie.

The movie takes a lot of time establishing where our surviving characters are in the aftermath of Thanos' snap.

In a three-hour movie, you might expect this to get boring after a while, but I never for one second wondered when it would be over.

Even the long character-establishing scenes were rewarding to watch because we got to see these characters we've known and loved for years deal with losing a battle.

The aftermath of Thanos is brutal to see but adds a whole new dimension to the original Avengers that we haven't seen before.

I don't want to give away the actual plot, so I can't say much about the middle of the movie, but I'm just going to say that it was cleverly done. I usually like to predict how heroes in these kinds of movies will solve their problem, but I didn't see this plan coming at all.

The only critique I have is that the middle of the movie could have used some more Captain Marvel.

Obviously, the movie must culminate in a huge battle between the Avengers and Thanos. This battle was epic. You might have thought the "Infinity War" final battle was good, but it had nothing on this battle sequence!

People in the theater were cheering and clapping all the way through. I had to stop myself from jumping in my seat a few times. It was unlike any other movie battle sequence I'd seen before.

And after the battle was done, the writers took good care to end characters' arcs in a good way or continue their arcs for future movies and shows.

Though not every character has a happy ending, each ending feels right for their individual stories. Some were more predictable while others were really surprising.

Yes, there were a couple of characters who sadly took more of a back seat in this movie, but in such a big movie with so many characters it was inevitable that some wouldn't have their time to shine in this one.

Focusing on a smaller group of the original Avengers really helped to keep the movie more centered.

Overall, I highly recommend you see this movie (as long as you've seen the other MCU movies first)! I laughed, cried, cheered, and dropped my jaw on more than one occasion.

It really lives up to all its hype and will be talked about for a long time as one of the most ambitious movies of all time.