Avengers: Endgame & Game of Thrones Win Big at 2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards

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Marvel Studios' Avengers: Endgame and HBO's Game of Thrones win big at this year's MTV Movie & TV Awards. It's been a huge year for the big and small screen, with two massive franchises wrapping up their respective narratives. Endgame is the culmination of everything that transpired in the MCU since 2008's Iron Man, while HBO's series based on George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books, Game of Thrones, ended its eight-season run. Both were pillars of the entertainment industry that have been supported by millions of fans around the globe.

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo from a script written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, Endgame hit theaters in late April and was an immediate hit with critics and fans. Game of Thrones' final six-episode season, on the other hand, began that same month, albeit a couple of weeks earlier, and only ended in May. While a bit of time has passed since both ended, they remain fan favorites, evidenced by their latest accolades.

During this year's MTV's Movie & TV Awards, Endgame won Best Movie of the Year, besting BlacKkKlansman, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, and Us. Meanwhile, Game of Thrones nabbed Best TV Show of the Year, against Big Mouth, The Haunting of Hill House, Riverdale and Schitt's Creek. Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) represented Westeros during the ceremony. Anthony Russo, on the other hand, accepted the hardware for Endgame on behalf of Marvel Studios, but he got a bit of help during his speech from Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Hemsworth.

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The MCU and Game of Thrones are among the most popular entertainments of the current decade, but their respective finales were received differently. For Marvel Studios' The Infinity Saga, Endgame was generally liked by critics and fans, earning praise for the way it balanced handling a massive overarching narrative and character-driven subplots. The HBO fantasy series, however, had a less than stellar final hurrah, with an ongoing online petition signed by more than 1.6 million people calling for season 8 to be remade. What's interesting about this is that they technically have the same premise: a string of prominent characters coming together to fight an evil being who wants to destroy reality.

Much of the criticisms of Game of Thrones' final season stems from the idea that it was rushed, and while it made up for a shorter season with extended episodes, there just wasn't enough time to properly wrap lingering plots for a satisfying ending. But in terms of comparison, the HBO show had a total of 440 minutes to map out a fitting ending against Avengers: Endgame's 182 minutes. Granted that the circumstances were different for them, but in essence, they had the same core task, and Marvel Studios pulling through is proof that it can be done in an even lesser amount of time. So maybe, the problem with Game of Thrones doesn't really lie in a shorter season, but instead, a lack of thoughtfulness with regard to how they handled their big characters at the end of it all. There were a lot of cool running plots that were either cast aside or totally forgotten, and for a show that established itself to be so intricate, going for a simple, straightforward ending was just disappointing. That said, the finale shouldn't cancel out all the good storytelling it had in its early run, and for that it still deserves its recent accolade.