Avengers: Endgame review

I guess I haven't yet finished processing Endgame, but I wanted to get my feelings down anyway. I enjoyed it, but it made me feel sad. I was pleasantly surprised in some ways, but couldn't help but feel disappointed in others.

This is definitely an emotional movie, yet many times the characters felt less developed to me than they did in Infinity War - while I was expecting many characters who had a lot of screen-time in Infinity War to get much less here, I was still surprised by just how little time some of them got (some didn't even get a single speaking line), while at the same time a few characters got a lot of screen time in both (coughtonycough). Of course some characters who we barely even saw in Infinity War got much more development here as expected, I just feel like I was hoping for a better balance.

Speaking of balance, I feel that Infinity War trumped this film in both action and comedy as well. Somehow, despite being a film with so much loss and death, it feels brighter and more colourful in my mind. As much as I had issues with that movie, and as much as it ended on a downer, it just feels like the better of the two to me.

To be fair though, Infinity War didn't exactly grab me right away. It impressed me, but I had issues. I guess it grew on me more over time. Perhaps Endgame will be the same. It did have some great emotional beats, visual spectacle, and triumphs after all.

At the end of the day, Endgame was an impressive capstone for an impressive cinematic storytelling accomplishment. As Shakespeare once wrote, "Parting is such sweet sorrow"; that's pretty much how I feel right now. I have enjoyed the Marvel cinematic universe, and I am sad that this chapter is over, yet I like a story with an end; better a clean fulfilling ending with closure than to just drag things on forever. Of course Marvel isn't exactly done making these things; I can only wonder what the future holds. How much lore can they build before the universe becomes too unwieldy, the way the comics usually are? Will they decide on a reboot at some point, will they deliberately but softly move away from the "everything is a consistent shared universe" idea, or will they just try to keep it going but create more and more plot holes until the cinematic universe is as inconsistent as the comics? We'll see I guess.

#####SPOILER WARNING#####

I mentioned that I felt like there was less character development here. Specifically I felt like there were character arcs that were set up yet didn't get the payoff.

First of all there's the Hulk. In Infinity War there's a subplot where Bruce Banner can't get the Hulk to come out anymore. This was very interesting; why was it happening and what did it mean? How would he fix it? Remember that the Hulk is a facet of Banner's personality, a manifestation of his repressed anger issues, so this kind of thing is a great opportunity to explore human issues. Instead there's a couple of lines of casual dialogue about how he's all great now. You can't just have that kind of thing happen off-screen! You're telling me that Bruce solved his anger issues and integrated his split personality, learning to control a previously uncontrollable power? Off-screen? At a time when everyone on the planet is at an all time low, when Hawkeye is running around chopping people up and Thor is so down in the dumps that he can't even be bothered to step out of his front door, that Bruce Banner has solved all his emotional issues? To me it made little sense and felt like a big let-down and a hugely wasted opportunity. Also I found it weird that his personality seemed to be different. In all the previous films he was always a little on edge, a little uncomfortable. Here he's just really relaxed and chill the whole time, just sort of passive about everything, even when everyone else is always down. I guess it makes sense if we accept that his whole personality has changed as a result of integrating his two personas, but... it felt weird.

Then there's Quill. There's a lot to be said about how his life has been so strange and unstable that he's only now starting to mature as an adult. In Infinity War he made a terrible and stupid mistake that allowed Thanos to succeed. We needed to see... something. To see him talk about how it happened, to see him tortured by regret, to see him find an opportunity to atone for it. What we got was... nothing. Nothing at all. He just appears, throws some punches, and gets kicked in the crotch.

And then there's Thor. Thor is... strange. In the early films (everything before Ragnarok), he was more of a straight character. Well, he was funny, but that humor mainly came from his constantly being in environments that he didn't understand. Things like the way he went to a pet shop to buy a horse to ride, or how he threw his coffee mug to the ground as a complement, or how he hung Mjolnir on a coat rack. In Ragnarok, he became... a bit of a buffoon. Things like the way he was screaming on the chair, or pleading not to have his hair cut; it was more about him being a clown than being a fish out of water. But in the middle of this his character was growing and changing, and still he was always the noble warrior; he never gave up, always kept trying to do what was right, what needed to be done. Overall the film was so funny and entertaining that it just worked despite being a departure from how the character had previously been portrayed.

Infinity War dialed it back a little bit. He was no longer a buffoon. He had some comedically stupid lines, but there was depth to them. It worked really well. This may have been the best Thor we've seen yet.

In Endgame, he is beyond being a buffoon. He is just... sad. This was the first time Thor ever gave up, the first time he was ever called upon to fight the good fight and he ignored the call. It was painful to watch, but at least I had hope that he would pull himself out of this funk. That... did not exactly happen. They kind of went through the motions, but it just didn't really work, at least not for me. But let's back up a bit.

In his first film, Thor grew up from a spoiled child to a responsible adult. In Ragnarok, he learned to stop crutching on Mjolnir and believe in his own strength. He becomes king of Asgard, and sets off determined to lead his people. In Infinity War he loses everything and everyone he had left (or so it appeared at the time), but bounces right back to his feet; not for a second does he entertain the idea of giving up despite the pain. Yes, he's being motivated by revenge, but that doesn't change the fact that in that situation there would be a strong temptation to surrender to despair, but he never succumbed. In End Game, he starts off by regressing to a useless drunkard who is not fulfilling his responsibilities as king. By the end of it he... has decided to be himself, whatever that means, and completely abandons his people and his responsibilities, running off to have adventures in the stars alongside his friends. Well, some of them; he seems to have left Korg and Miek behind for some reason. Not sure why, I kinda feel like they wouldn't have minded tagging along. Maybe the ship's not big enough?

Initially we are led to believe that he feels guilty for failing to stop Thanos. There's a scene where his mother gives him some speech about not being who we are supposed to be, but being ourselves. Which kind of just feels like a cop-out to me; "just be yourself" is good advice for acting around new people, but never struck me as a good guiding life principle. Anyway, that's pretty much the end of his character arc; it even ends with him feeling overjoyed because Mjolnir responds to his call, proving to him that he is still worthy. But in Ragnarok he outgrew the need for Mjolnir, the need for a weapon to validate his worth. So the scene with Mjolnir here further regresses and undermines his character! It just doesn't work for me, it never felt like his arc had been concluded. I spent the whole movie waiting for the payoff, and I never felt it was there. He failed again, repeatedly, to stop Thanos, and then after the battle is over just runs off and leaves the hard work to Valkyrie.

To be honest I was expecting the payoff to be him actually defeating Thanos this time. It might not have been a very deep arc, but it would have been more satisfying. And I do believe he should have been able to do it; when he lost the first time Thanos had already acquired some of the Infinity stones, and the second time when Thor had Stormbreaker he actually defeated Thanos. So now, with both Stormbreaker and Mjolnir, against a Thanos with no Infinity Stones, it felt like he should have been able to win. Especially alongside Iron Man - who once singlehandedly drew Thanos' blood for the first time himself - and Captain America wielding Mjolnir and therefore power equal to Thor's own.

Actually, I am a bit bitter about the fact that it was Iron Man who actually ended things. I don't really like Iron Man, and the MCU's version is an annoying jerk (entertaining though he may be). He didn't deserve to have that victory. I'm actually even annoyed that he got to be a martyr. Simply coming home to his family would have been enough payoff for his arc, instead he stole the payoff from Thor's arc. Well, that's how it felt to me anyway. He got the most screen-time of anyone in this movie, as well as doing the most move the plot (got the big monologue at the start, invented time travel, dealt the final blow, had the big ending funeral wrap-up), all this despite getting a great deal of screen-time in the last movie as well. Meanwhile Captain America seems to just... be there for most of the movie, despite doing very little in the last one too. Yeah, he gets a couple of good fights, and a nice little story wrap-up at the end, but very little of what he does is actually all that important or something that only he could have done, and overall it was all very much overshadowed by how focused the film was on Stark.

Even Thanos himself is less interesting this time. It could be argued that his character arc was concluded in the first film I suppose, but that doesn't feel satisfying to me because his arc needs to end with him, well, losing. Yes, he loses at the end here and it's a powerful moment. But the thing is, the Thanos who loses here is not the Thanos that we know, it's an earlier version, one who didn't do all the things we saw him do, one with different goals. He feels like a different person.

Perhaps the issue I have is that our heroes' victory is... physical, but I never exactly get the sense that they won the argument? I'm not sure why I feel this way here but not in other films; perhaps this was the first film where the villain's character and motivations were so fleshed out? Maybe I feel this way because the topic of societies surviving and flourishing despite limited resources is never actually discussed in Endgame? In most (good?) comic books, when the protagonists and antagonists are battling due to a philosophical disagreement, the two points of view are usually explored to some extent and the heroes either have their position validated or they have to admit that their position is not perfect, but it's still better than the alternative. That did not happen here; Thanos established his position in Infinity War, but then our heroes never really presented a contrary perspective: they just punched Thanos until they won.

Maybe we are supposed to feel a "moral victory" from how people were really sad for a few years, like that somehow proves that Thanos was wrong? That's not really a compelling argument in my mind. By the way, I don't understand why Thanos changed his goals. He's been running around wiping out half of each planet's population for a very, very long time; you're telling me he was surprised to find that people were sad for a while afterwards? I just feel like this shouldn't be a revelation for him is all.

Several other characters get less to do than I had been expecting - I guess that's because they are still going to be around for a while so they didn't feel the need to squeeze in some screen time for them, but still I felt their absences. Fury doesn't get a single line of dialogue (having Samuel L. Jackson in your movie and not giving him anything to do should be an actual punishable crime imho). Danvers feels shoe-horned in; she never really does anything that contributes to the actual plot, and could be cut out of the movie without changing anything. Strange pops up and then just stands there spinning some water around. I'm very disappointed that they brought in Tom Hiddleston yet couldn't be bothered to give Loki more a than a couple of seconds of "new" material. The dance at the end with Peggy was super sweet and emotional (and made me feel happy), yet I really wish that had given her some actual dialogue or something - Howard Stark got to walk around and talk for several minutes after all, and Peggy was always a far cooler character! Despite technically being there in the action scene at the end, Potts felt like nothing more than background to me - I don't think she had a single scene with her own daughter (which is made far more egregious by Hogan somehow getting a long emotional scene with young Morgan Stark).

It might not be fair of me to complain about some of the side characters getting too little screen time in a film that's already very long, but it's partly because I enjoyed seeing some characters that we hadn't seen for a while - such as Frigg, that was great - so much, that it felt somewhat unfair that some of my other favourites didn't get the same treatment. Oh well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles I suppose.


So let's talk about the "reverse-snap". They brought back everyone who was killed by the Snap. Hulk mentions that he tried to bring back Widow as well, but couldn't. Fine, but does the fact that he tried to bring someone back who wasn't killed by the Snap mean that he tried to bring back other people who were killed by Thanos before the Snap? People that he SAW die? I'm talking about the Asgardians: Loki, Heimdall, and all the refugees that Thanos killed at the start of Infinity War? How about Eitri and the dwarves? Hell, why not bring back Odin and Frigga while he was at it; he may not have been there for their deaths but he did spend some time with Thor. Hell, Thor was standing right there when Hulk had the gauntlet, and he had spoken to his Mother again (and had to deal with the knowledge of her death again) only a few moments ago so it should have been pretty fresh in his mind, maybe he could have mentioned something? I mean, since you're bringing people back from the dead ANYWAY? What about FREAKING VISION (remember that according to Infinity War he didn't necessarily need the mind stone to survive)? How about Agent Coulson - as far as they know he's still dead, and it was his death that got the Avengers together in the first place right? I could go on: Cap was there and he had just seen Peggy again, why not try to bring her back too (at the correct age of course)?


Endgame just felt less entertaining to me than Infinity War. I felt that there was less humor, and generally less interesting action - some of it was very cool, but not as interesting or creative as some of the battles in Infinity War. I feel like a lot of the environments were just darker and less interesting; the big final battle for example was dark, felt de-saturated, and took place in... well, in a big pile of mud. Just... the drab colour palette was a bit of a let-down. It was very emotional to be sure; more so to me than Infinity War - but that might because I never for a moment bought into the "deaths" from the Snap, so I never felt the emotions that a lot of people seemed to when they watched all those characters fade away. For those who did buy into that moment, perhaps Infinity War is the more emotional of the two as well?


Time travel is a real Pandora's Box. I do admit the film made good use of it, allowing us to revisit times and characters in an emotional walk down memory lane. And to a certain extent they limited the potential future damage by establishing that you can't change the past. However... they still opened Pandora's Box. How many problems do you think they will face in the future where the solution could just be "go back in time, borrow some Infinity Stones, save the day, go put them back"? Or even "go to alternate timelines, borrow a few dozen Thors and Hulks, save the day, go put them back"?

What's more, the use of time-travel has created alternate timelines. Now it's a common trope that alternate timelines exist (usually portrayed as an infinite number), but the way they were introduced here suggests that they were only created by traveling back to the past and changing things. In other words the Avengers have created, what, four entirely new universes? That's pretty insane, and the implications are hard to process.

What's more, in all but one of these universes, the Snappening is likely still going to happen! All that pain and suffering will be experienced all over again by multiple universes worth of sentient beings. And in each of them, won't the Avengers pull the same time travel stunt? Leading to yet more alternate timelines being spun off? It's essentially an infinite loop! The more you think about it the stranger it gets. What's more, somehow the creation of all these alternate timelines feels like it lessens the importance of "our" timeline to me. What makes "our" timeline more important than the others after all? I don't know, it's... the idea of actually creating alternate timelines feels too big and messy to me to have been handled as casually as I feel it was.

Speaking of which, how was Captain America able to "target" alternate timelines to travel to at the end? It seems like they didn't need the big time travel machine as their little wrist gadgets allowed them to jump around (as we saw Cap and Stark jumping back further after their first attempt failed). If those tiny little wristbands were self-contained time machines, why did they need the big fancy one? Why did they even need the big time machine if the van worked as a time machine, and if the van didn't work as a time machine then why were they trying to get the gauntlet to it? And even if it did work as a time machine, weren't they out of Pym Particles? If they weren't out of Pym Particles, why did they need the van (if you can use the time machine before it was even created, why can't you use it after it was destroyed)? Perhaps they only needed the Pym Particles for the trip back because they didn't have the big time machine for that? Although they were shrinking stuff (doesn't that use up Pym Particles), so why not shrink a full sized time machine? Also, how did Thanos shrink his whole battleship (it feels like Nebula should not have had that many Pym Particles on her)? Why waste Pym Particles shrinking a spaceship when they could have just sent the two teams directly to the correct planets, instead of sending them together to one place then having them fly off somewhere else? Am I over-thinking this?

While we're on the topic, why the hell was the new time machine set up outside, instead of, I don't know, INSIDE A LAB OR SOMETHING? In the film it feels as if Captain America was waiting for them the whole time, suggesting that he had gone back in the past and lived there. Except that was impossible according to the rules they established. It was explained in an interview that he had lived in an alternate timeline, and used the time machine to come back to that point in order to speak to them. But then why go sit on the bench in the distance? It felt as if he had been there for at least a few minutes, which would have meant that he was there from before he left, which of course was impossible, so I guess he was only sitting there for a few seconds? Are we sure he didn't create any new timelines while he was jumping about? Feels like he must have.

By the way, where did he get the shield? His shield was broken, so I guess he stole another Captain America's shield? Meaning he left another timeline without the iconic shield? Seems like a crappy thing to do; what is that timelines' Falcon going to do? How is that timeline's shield not broken anyway, didn't they have to deal with the whole Thanos thing the same way? I guess it must have been the one timeline where Thanos left for the "main" one? Ugh, this is why I wish they hadn't pulled this time-travel stunt; too many paradoxes!

Of course the Time Stone creates all sorts of questions now that we have established some rules for how time-travel works in the MCU. For example, in Infinity War we saw Strange doing... something with the Time Stone to see the future. But if you're seeing the future, that means the Future already exists? OR it means you're going forwards into the future, then coming back to the past? Does the time stone allow actual time travel, or is Tony's time machine that he put together in one day more powerful than the Time Stone? Was Strange splitting off alternate timelines when he was examining the future?


How did Nebula know where the soul-stone was? I don't specifically remember it ever being mentioned in front of her? I guess I need to watch Infinity War again to be sure.


In all that chaos at the end, Thanos somehow gets his hands on the gauntlet? OK then.


So the infinity gems - or at least the gem of time - protects Earth. That is what the Ancient One said. So now that it's been destroyed in the main timeline... what? Is Earth doomed? The gems will be destroyed in all but one of the created timelines too; does that mean that the only timeline where Earth won't be destroyed is the one where Thanos left to enter another timeline?

Oh, and another thing: in some of these other timelines our Avengers stole the Infinity gems, then replaced them with - hopefully - minimal interference. So in these timelines, when their own Avengers go back in time to steal the Infinity gems, they will logically go to the same moments in time, right? And in doing so, they will bump into "our" Avengers (or rather a new spinoff version of our Avengers... ugh, this is complicated) trying to steal those same stones, right? So now there's THREE instances of the Avengers at that point in time! Oh... I actually want to see that! Imagine the "Cap vs Cap" scene with a third Captain America thrown in! Man, imagine the stories you could tell about the butterfly effects rippling outwards from all these time loops.


How are there any Asgardians still alive? In Infinity War Thanos destroyed their ship and seemingly killed all of them. Even if some of them took escape pods (which I don't think we ever saw), how did they end up on Earth? How is Valkyrie and Korg just casually sitting there - even if escape pods were used, wouldn't Valkyrie have stayed behind to try to fight off Thanos? I'm not saying it's a plot hole or anything, only that there was no mention of them in Infinity War, then they show up here without any real explanation; I would have appreciated at least a couple of lines of dialogue or something. Sigh. I guess it's just my nature to like things to be clear.

Oh, and where the hell did Valkyrie get a pegasus from?


Yeah, so, I was disappointed we didn't see Loki return. I mean, he of all people just keeps coming back right? Either he could have faked his death to Thanos again, or he could have been brought back by the stones; either way I would have been happy.


So the Gamorra we have now is from nine years ago, right? Of course Quill has only aged four years since he's been gone for the last five years. I guess that's fine.


How does Tony Stark know enough about quantum mechanics to figure out time-travel in, like, one day? Isn't his area of speciality... I dunno, things to do with machines and computers? He built missiles, robot suits, and a new power source in the first film, and since then we've seen him build more suits and advanced A.I.s; none of that has very much to do with quantum mechanics and cutting-edge physics does it? In the comics Ant-Man built Ultron, in the films they changed it to Iron-Man. And I was OK with that, because it makes sense: Ant-Man does stuff with... I dunno, quantum everything, Iron-Man does robotics. But by that same token it should have been Ant-Man (I'm talking Hank Pym of course) who figured out time-travel, as that area (quantum physics) been very much established to be his wheelhouse in the cinematic universe. So why did they feel the need to hand it over to Stark? Seriously, Stark gets EVERYTHING in this movie. Is RDJ blackmailing the Russos or something?


When we see Hulk here he seems to be a beloved celebrity. But here's the thing: the whole Earth has suffered the biggest tragedy EVER. People are in pain, even five years later. Normally when this sort of thing happens, people look for someone to blame. I feel like a lot of people would resent the Avengers for failing to stop it; it might not be logical, but we aren't always very logical when we're emotional. Loss leads to resentment. Even if people didn't blame the Avengers, they might not enjoy seeing them as it would just serve as a reminder. And even before the Snappening feelings things were strange; Civil War and all that.

So I feel like Hulk walking around in public might not attract the sort of adoration that we're seeing here. Yes, the kids we see asking for his photo are perhaps too young to carry all that emotional baggage, but still; he just seems to be very happy and comfortable walking around in public as the Hulk. Which felt especially out of place to me considering how down all the other Avengers are. Again, the Hulk was just so weirdly handled here. I mean, the part where he tells the Ancient One that "he's not asking" - while smiling no less - and tries to just take the stone by force rather than trying to actually explain to her why he needs it... it just felt out of character to me.


There's a scene with all the female heroes coming together. It was a cool scene, but it didn't exactly make sense: why in that chaotic maelstrom did all the participants of one gender suddenly congregate? Co-incidence? Unlikely. Weren't they busy with other stuff? If they were, then why did they suddenly all simultaneously think it was OK to leave the guys they had been fighting alongside on their own in the middle of this pitched battle? And if they weren't busy, then why was not a single male free enough to join them? Yes, I know, I'm overthinking this. I dunno why, but this movie really has me picking at the seams; not every movie does this to me you know.


Infinity War dealt with themes of sacrifice. Thanos was prepared to sacrifice anything any anyone to achieve his goals, and in the end he did. Several times the Avengers or Guardians were called upon to make sacrifices, but they weren't prepared to do so; even when they did - such as Wanda destroying the Mind Stone - it proved to be too late. Now, in Endgame, the subject of sacrifice appeared again, but this time the Avengers won through self-sacrifice. Widow, Hulk, Thor, Stark: all were ready to sacrifice themselves. And in the end their sacrifices saved everyone. Is the message here "only self-sacrifice is OK"? I dunno, but it's interesting.