Avengers Endgame spoiler thread

I've joked about the mouse not pressing the button but it turns out the Russos had thought long and hard about it.

Well Tony did flat out say that Scott getting out was essentially a miracle. I suppose that was just the first one they needed.

Doctor Strange is the reason why the mouse pushed the button. His magic works in mysterious ways.

The mouse is actually Loki.

Its really petty, but that one in 14 million line still bugs me a lot.

Because I just think stuff like what if Carol or someone else tanky enough to do at least what Tony did with the Gauntlet did it instead while playing keep away from Thanos.

As I said, really petty, but it still irritates me.

Strange should've checked the 14,000,606th future.

Or it was all just a really elaborate ploy to kill Tony.

The Russo Brothers explained that — when Carol had it, the plan was only to send the Stones back in time so Thanos couldn't get them. But then Thanos destroyed the Time Van, so Tony had to use the Stones to destroy him and his army.

And if you are asking "But couldn't Carol still have tried to use the Stones on Thanos?" Sure, but we don't know if it would have killed her or not — the reason it didn't kill the Hulk was because the Hulk absorbs gamma radiation. Like Bruce said, "It's like I was made for this." Carol, on the other hand, doesn't have that. Sure, she got her powers from the Space Stone, but that's no guarantee that using all of the Stones wouldn't have killed her just like Tony.

Edited by alliterator on May 1st 2019 at 11:26:51 AM

I finally saw Endgame! I can finally look at this thread! I don't have to dodge spoilers anymore! Okay, time to jot down my first impressions.

First off, I guess we can confirm that the Black Widow movie is a prequel, eh. Alas.

Just like Infinity War, I'm pretty conflicted. On the one hand, I'm more than a little conflicted with Steve, Natasha and Thor here. I think they all had some great moments, but Natasha's death and some of the humor revolving around Thor's state and to a lesser extent Steve going back in time to grow old in the 1900s, ehhhh. Also not big on the bit where Scott rapidly ages and de-ages and apparently pisses himself. Also also, Gamora and Nebula (Nebulii?), while I enjoy their moments together, really could've stood to land the killing blow on Thanos.

On the other hand...that entire final battle is genuinely one of the best action scenes I've ever seen. It just...just has to be seen to be believed. So many characters getting time to shine.

Well, one thing for sure: This movie made Infinity War better. I always hold off judging Infinity war because the solution played a huge role in how I would judge it, but the way Endgame is structured, it pretty much ended all my doubts about infinity war except the sacrifice scene for Loki. That still doesn't really make sense. Loki is smarter than that.

Now for Endgame itself, I think the best way to judge it is to take it character by character. So, to list the various storylines from "liked" to "what the hell where they thinking".

10 Points: Nebula. While she wasn't exactly in the forefront, whenever she got something to do it was great. I love the interaction between her and Tony in the beginning. I loved the brief conversations she had with Rhodey. And I love, love, love the symbolism in her having to kill her old self. I hope she and Gamora have fun out there in the Galaxy.

9 Points: Tony. For the first time ever his relationship with Pepper felt like an actual relationship, I loved his interaction with his daughter, and while him finding closure with his father was kind of cliche, it worked well enough. The only reason he doesn't get full points is because somehow I wasn't as emotional as I maybe should have been towards the end. But I guess this might be partly because that is kind of the ending I wanted for his arc. With him, it was just time, due to RDJ not getting any younger.

8 Points: Scott. They stuck a great balance between heartfelt scenes and comic relief for him. And I just adore his not so settled worship for Cap. It was just to bad that he kind of blended in the background at one point, due to him not really having some sort of arc.

7 Points: Thor I don't mind the fat jokes, partly because there weren't really that many (most of the jokes were more about his mental state of mind) and mostly they weren't really about the way he looked and more about his overall fitness. Him being fat was more one sign of many that he was depressed and off his game, it wasn't really the main point of his story. And the jokes about his mental state where more tragic-comical than them making fun of him. I liked the talk he had with his mother, and him swinging hammer and axe was awesome. The only complain I have with his arc is that the jokes were often a little bit drawn out and, well, there was so much else I would have preferred to see over having Thor yell at someone over the internet.

6. Points: The Hulk. Frankly, he was mostly boring in this movie. To my the Jeckyl and Hyde aspect it what makes the character interesting, and having Bruce all hulky happy didn't really work for me. Thus said, it made completely sense for the story.

5. Points: Clint. To be honest, his fight scene in the beginning was boring me (because fights without stakes always bore me), and while I overall liked the storyline he had, as cliche as it was, it felt a little bit undercooked. Especially his scene with Wanda could have been a little bit longer and more emotional. This is the SECOND time someone else died for him, he should be kind of a mess. Renner did the best with what he was given, but the script should have offered him a little bit more.

4. Points: Natasha Okay, her taking over the lead of the Avengers and holding the world together: Great. The sacrifice kind of works for her character but, as I pointed out, not in the larger context. Okay, no big funeral scene for her, but how about showing Clints family grief over loosing her instead of only showing them grieving over Tony? Maybe show Clints daughter putting up a picture of her in her room or whatever. ANYTHING to show that she won't be forgotten. Though in any case, having her die shortly before she finally gets her own movie is like a giant middle-finger.

3. Points: Cap. Okay, the time travel stuff, all that works great. But they really, really ruined his arc in the last five minutes. I have made my objections pretty clear, but I would like to add: If they go that route, why the HELL didn't they at least include a longer scene between him and Bucky? I expected their "hi" moment in Infinity War because I expected to get more about them being reunited here, but nope, after everything Steve went through in The Winter Soldier and Civil War to rescue Bucky, Bucky is here kind of shoved aside. No time for him. No care for him. I NEEDED MORE BUCKY!!!!!

The movie could have also used more Rocket, more Captain Marvel and more Guardians.

Enjoy a good action scene.

Not everything has to be stakeworthy.

Edited by slimcoder on May 2nd 2019 at 2:39:32 AM

Seriously, why are so many people willingly ignoring the whole big scene where the Avengers mourned Black Widow? Hulk threw a bench into a lake? Everyone was sad about her death? Does that just not count? I thought that scene was really powerful.

Hell, Even Joe Russo mentioned it in the Q&A:

Like, it's just straight-up disingenuous to say "everyone just instantly moved on from Black Widow's death" when that is absolutely not what happens in the film. There is a whole scene dedicated to mourning her and deciding not to let her death be in vain.

I fucking loved Nebula in this and I'm so happy she and (a variant of) Gamora made it out alive.

Because after that point the movie forgets about her, but pays huge amounts of attention to all the men on the team and the things they do. I agree with Swanpride, it would have been nice to have a scene after the battle that shows someone, most likely on Clint's family, mourning her as well. But all the focus goes to the boys.

We got a scene of Clint and Wanda mourning Natasha and Vision, and Tony didn't really get much attention after his funeral. At this point, I think it's nitpicking.

I agree. Her death wasn't ignored.

if Loki saw how much weight Thor put on he'd tease him mercilessly,poor Thor

Edited by Ultimatum on May 2nd 2019 at 1:52:30 PM

Also the scene with Bruce saying that he tried to bring Nat back. Hell, who's to say that the funeral isn't for the two, but publicly made it look it was only for Stark as reasons stated by Word of God.

Found an interesting (and confusing) thing about the ending.

"If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality. The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?" Joe Russo asked. "Interesting question, right? Maybe there’s a story there. There’s a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking through it, so it’s fun to talk about it and hopefully fill in holes for people so they understand what we’re thinking.”

Lol, so they basically went "yeah crazy, right? I'm sure there's an answer out there somewhere".

I mean, easy answers exist (after all, if you're making time travel and have someone from another timeline present, I'm sure some combination of Tony, Bruce, Rocket, Shuri, and whoever else could create some way to time travel back to his original timeline), presumably it's just not in the movie because those easy answers exist, in the face of those easy answers logical context isn't as important as the emotional nuts and bolts of the shield passing thing and in a movie that's already three hours long clearly they thought it was more important to get that emotional moment in then answer a question that really doesn't need to be answered, and (and this I think is the most important part), if Marvel ever did want to do "Captain America: Man Out of Time" they presumably don't want to lock themselves or any other prospective filmmaker into following a specific plot structure to answer a question that again, and primarily by nature of how he got to an alternate timeline in the first place, doesn't really need an answer.

Come to think of it, the feedback could well have exploded her like Vision. Same with Wanda, though since Wanda doesn't have super toughness at all using the stones wasn't even an option for her at all.

They already HAVE the answer built into the movie to how Old Steve went back to MCU Prime.

What they spent all the montage developing in the second act is explicitely called a Time GPS. It allows them to move through time AMD space via the Quantum Realm's time pockets, and keep track of their origin point.

It's why, once they begin messing up with the timelines during the time heist, they call all go back to their prime timeline regardless of the changes they made while staying there.

It's how 2014!Thanos can jump fowards into the Prime timeline and fuck that palce up, instead of displacing foward on his own timeline.

As long as you have that device, you can return to the original timeline.

I suppose the prime timeline needs to have a working portal on the other side.

As for why not Old Steve on the plataform, that's pure rule of drama.

I would also argue, and this might seem a little mean that Carol would be more useful in the long run than Tony. She's the only other member besides Thor (who's still massively out of shape and had to dual wield Stormbreaker and a time shifter Mjolnir to make up for that) who can take on entire armies, and it took Thanos bare handing the Power Stone to stop her for a few seconds. Strange might have also seen timelines where she did make the sacrifice, and then something worse came along that they might have needed her for (or maybe both her and Thor).

Tony had to make the sacrifice so that one of their strongest players didn't leave the field.

Dormammu comes back and he can't be bargained with because the time stone is gone.

So...there is that loose end.

Yeah. Strange is gonna have troubles dealing with that I'd imagine.