Avengers Endgame- SPOILERS

[Maltaran]

Question for Wert - you said this in your review 

T

here's also the film's possibly most epic shot which was foreshadowed by a single moment (not even a scene) in an earlier movie from years ago which you could have missed by just looking at your phone for a second. Another major plot revelation hinges on a line of dialogue from another, even earlier movie which makes you suspect the Russo Brothers and Kevin Feige are genuine, outright geniuses.

Which moments from the earlier films are you thinking of here? 

[Heartofice]

18 minutes ago, HokieStone said:

Yeah....the last several comments, and the competing "head canon" that people have to use to explain things is why feel this sense of disappointment, I think.  Really wish they hadn't gone the time travel route.

Have to agree. That I need to actively NOT think too hard about it means that the time travel element is causing problems. It also feels cheap as a solution.

[sifth]

5 hours ago, Bastard of Boston said:

One person's hole is another person's "It's not that important." Yes, I'm using my own rationale to fill in a blank, but that's not really problematic if the detail is minor. Maybe one of Tony's distress signals actually reached Earth. By you stating what Carol would've done the moment she found out about Fury, aren't you essentially attributing your own fanfic? Ironing out the details of how 50% of the universe is gone, IMO, is as pressing a concern as getting revenge on Thanos. Maybe Carol was assisting in resolving any number of natural and unnatural disasters stemming from the snap. When we meet them in the conference, it's quite possible it's the first time they'd even gotten to a point where discussing a Thanos plan was a thing.

I'm still not getting how old Steve showing up in prime time is a problem. Young Steve travelled to the past, stood in that timeline, and lived an entire life with Peggy. When he hit a certain age, maybe once his Peggy died, he decided to come back to the prime timeline. Probably because he felt guilty about disappearing on everyone. It falls in line with what was asserted -- time can't be changed, only divergent branches to new existences.

I'm just using the facts the movie told me.

The movie could have done a better job with Carrol meeting the rest of the team. I honestly feel it was done very sloppily. The way this movie portrayed it, she just runs into Tony and Nebula on her way to Earth. Which I'm fine with, since we need get the plot flowing and have a lot of ground to cover. However it in no way implies that Carrol already met the team before hand and goes into space to look for Tony at their request. All I'm saying is we needed a quick scene from Banner or Cap saying; "when you vanished on that spaceship, we sent our new friend to look for you" and I'd be fine.

Same with Cap, if it happens like you mentioned it, it was a again done in a sloppy way. The movie implies Steve meets his friends again by "taking the long way", in his case just living his life with Peggy and meeting his friends shortly after they send him back. Never does it even remotely imply that or hint this elderly Steve traveled from his reality back to the prime one. Again, a scene where he mentions talking to Hank, to help get him back here is missing.

[Heartofice]

My assumption was the Carol has already met the team and that’s how she found Tony. Their lack of surprise at seeing her and Potts being there when she returned suggested to me that they had planned to go find him.

 

[Maltaran]

My personal theory for Carol rescuing Tony and Nebula is that Rocket had some way of tracking the ship, which he gave her in between the Captain Marvel credit scene and the start of Endgame

[sifth]

1 minute ago, Heartofice said:

My assumption was the Carol has already met the team and that’s how she found Tony. Their lack of surprise at seeing her and Potts being there when she returned suggested to me that they had planned to go find him.

 

Just saying, if this is true a scene was missing that established it.

[DaveSumm]

To summarise the time travel discussion so far:

In the MCU, one can visit the past without affecting their own past. This is established multiple times so we can take it as fact. What you are visiting is actually a distinct parallel universe / timeline / dimension which is either pre-existing or created by the act of visiting it. You are free to remove things from it, and then return them to your own present through a quantum tunnel.

The question is, what happens to these universes / dimensions / timelines when you leave?

a) They’re still there, minus whatever you took from them, forever. Therefore, the Avengers create four new ones: one where Cap and Tony visited New Jersey in the 70’s (seemingly minimal consequences), one where Loki escaped with the Tesseract just after the Battle of New York (large consequences) one where Thor and Rocket briefly visit Asgard (minimal consequences), and one where Thanos’s entire army is removed in 2014 (massive consequences). You can’t undo these timelines.

b) They’re still there, unless events somehow work their way back to playing out as they did in the original timeline, at which point they fold back in. Whether this is by intentional repairing (Cap returning the stones) or by some unknown  cosmic force, we don’t know.

c) The stones can repair timelines through some unknown mechanism. If all six stones are present in any given timeline, it folds back into the original regardless of how things play out.

Now a) doesn’t leave any plot holes in the film, it makes logical sense. It just leaves a moral grey area, in that the Avengers disrupted four other universes to fix their own. Which maaaybe is OK, given that Cap returned the stones. In theory, two of them should play out similarly to the original and wind up with the events of Infinity War and Endgame. One of them has a rogue Loki roaming around which is far too chaotic to predict, and one has its Infinity Stones intact and no Thanos to snap them. Maybe someone worse eventually uses them, or maybe that’s fine. But I would argue that none of the four timelines are definitely worse than ours.

I’m not a big fan of b), because we either have to imagine events mystically fixing themselves, or we have to borrow from a) and have loose ends still existing, or we have to imagine that Cap manages to return all the stones AND re-capture Loki AND that Tony has the presence of mind to return Thanos and his army with a wiped memory to their own timeline, which I can’t imagine him doing

I’m a proponent of c) because it fixes everything without Cap needing to be an insanely capable individual or Tony to be that careful with his gauntlet wishing. It also has a pretty big added bonus in that now the stones are destroyed, non-destructive time travel is now basically impossible. Which helps the future of the MCU immensely.

The only wildcard in all this is Old Cap. If you like a), then he must have returned on the platform before anyone was there, then waited on the bench. If you like b) or c), then he could have just grown old alongside the MCU as we know it. He goes back to someone unknown point in Peggy’s life, but keeps things on the downlow (b) or the stones merge his timeline with the original (c) and he just waits on the bench at the right time.

But I think it’s worth noting that a combination of a) and not wanting to believe Cap came back on the platform is the only bonafide plot hole. Everything else makes internal logical sense based on their interpretation of time travel.

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, sifth said:

Just saying, if this is true a scene was missing that established it.

Yeah I don’t think it was necessary. Possibly for those who hadn’t seen the mid credits scene from CM but otherwise I filled in the blanks myself. I actually admired the efficiency of the way they realised that it didn’t need to be explained 

[Mosi Mynn]

5 hours ago, Jeor said:

I think Sam is the most likely to be the actual leader (though there's nothing to prevent the other two being spiritual leaders in the sense of their experience). T'Challa has Wakanda to worry about (unless Shuri acts as a permanent regent) and Strange's home is the Sanctum Sanctorum where he has to protect Earth from mystical threats. Plus Strange gives off more of a loner vibe, I feel like he would act as more of a "consultant".

I think Sam will try and take Cap's role as the leader of the Avengers, but it's an impossible act to follow.

Tony did not play with others (Fury, 2012) either, but he became dedicated to the team.  I hope Strange becomes more involved too.

Steve leaves a massive leadership gap: he was just so natural at it.  Personality-wise, only T'Challa from the newbies gives off that vibe to me, and, as you say, he has a country to run.  Cap only had the Avengers.

[polishgenius]

It's not gonna be Sam if only for marketing/franchising reasons, Anthony Mackie just hasn't the size of name to carry a movie like that. They could try to make him one, they did with Chadwick Boseman after all, but with the TV show on Disney+ it doesn't really feel like they're going to.


The new Avengers Big Three is gonna be Strange, Marvel and BP (it felt like quite a lot of IW and this were sliding Strange in as a sort of magical Tony Stark). All of them could plausibly claim a leadership role but all of them also have other concerns so...

[denstorebog]

Saw it twice. It's definitely one of those movie that will never get better than the first time you see it, because you're constantly surprised and in the dark about where they're going to take things. The second time, all the little imperfections start becoming a lot more obvious.

• I actively disliked the Thor part the second time. The only times it works is when it's not just a lot of fat shaming and 'oh look how pathetic Thor has become', but when there's actually some pain hidden underneath. When Thor tells Bruce not to talk about Thanos in New Asgard, for example. Or when Thor admits that he needs to contribute with something useful after Widow's death. The rest of the time, the comedy surrounding his character and the whole Asgard sequence falls flat, you just don't register it the first time.
• What they should have done was show Thor becoming a drunken, harsh, even slightly tyrannical ruler of New Asgard, trying to be what his father was (or better), but unable to fit the role. This would have had more gravitas, would have given him something fresh to actually talk with his mother about, and would have set up the ending where he abandons his role as king because that's not what he's meant to be.
• I'm pretty surprised the final battle was so short. The MCU movies have always relied on overly long climax fights, but this is the one time I would actually have loved to see more.
• The biggest crime in the movie: It should have been Bucky with old Cap at the end. Bucky, Steve Rogers' childhood friend, who listened as Cap told about the life he'd lived. And it should have been Bucky who took up the mantle as Captain America - it was even foreshadowed in Winter Soldier. It felt like that whole part at the end had been written for Bucky, but someone decided to switch him out for Sam in the last minute.

All that said, it was a good movie. All talks of Oscar nomination and 'best superhero movie ever' is just the usual ridiculous hype over the latest shiny object, but I thought it lived up to the challenge admirably and gave us a fitting end to the saga.

Probably my favorite part of the movie was the decision to start of the movie with the Avengers going off to avenge their defeat and straight up murdering Thanos in cold blood. This led to a really interesting half an hour that explored how killing Thanos gave no real comfort or closure to anyone. I could have watched an entire extra half an hour about the Avengers trying to find their place in the new world.

As for the future, expect Spiderman: Far From Home to spend 30 seconds handwaving away the fact that everything is pretty much back to usual even though half the population has reappeared after 5 years of absence, and the other half has had to survive on their own for all that time.

[Trebla]

1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

My personal theory for Carol rescuing Tony and Nebula is that Rocket had some way of tracking the ship, which he gave her in between the Captain Marvel credit scene and the start of Endgame

 That makes the most sense. Rocket is a genius by universal standards. I love how he snarked with Tony about Tony only being smart by Earth's standards. That's really isn't true, though, and I realized how much Earth and the Avengers would miss Tony's genius. I wonder, though, if Rocket might be a part-time Avenger in the future to fill part of that role along side Banner/Hulk.I think Marvel knows how popular Rocket is and made a conscious choice to make him a big part of both Avenger movies. 

[Trebla]

19 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

The biggest crime in the movie: It should have been Bucky with old Cap at the end. Bucky, Steve Rogers' childhood friend, who listened as Cap told about the life he'd lived. And it should have been Bucky who took up the mantle as Captain America - it was even foreshadowed in Winter Soldier. It felt like that whole part at the end had been written for Bucky, but someone decided to switch him out for Sam in the last minute.

Going into the movie I thought both Tony and Cap would die and also assumed that Bucky would become the new Captain America. He was Steve's best friend, he was a WW II vet, and he also has the super soldier serum. But on the ride home I realized that realistically it would be impossible due to everything he did as the Winter Soldier. Who would accept him? While he might be off the hook in the U.S. he is still probably a wanted man in dozens of other countries. 

Isn't there supposed to be a Falcon (now Cap, I suppose) and Winter Soldier tv show coming to the new Disney+ streaming network. I could imagine a plot line where Bucky goes before an international tribunal for crimes against humanity. There was an Avengers/X-Men crossover miniseries where that exact thing happened to Magneto. 

[Mosi Mynn]

47 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

• The biggest crime in the movie: It should have been Bucky with old Cap at the end. Bucky, Steve Rogers' childhood friend, who listened as Cap told about the life he'd lived. And it should have been Bucky who took up the mantle as Captain America - it was even foreshadowed in Winter Soldier. It felt like that whole part at the end had been written for Bucky, but someone decided to switch him out for Sam in the last minute.

I wanted Bucky to be the new Captain America too because a) Sam is already Falcon, and b) Sam is basically as good and decent as Steve, whereas Bucky would be a very different Cap.

Watching it the second time I got the impression that Bucky knew exactly what Steve was going to do.  He stepped aside for Sam because he had already said goodbye to Steve.

[DaveSumm]

In the comics, where you have a continuing title called ‘Captain America’ then you kinda need someone who calls themselves that. But here in the MCU? Unless you want another movie called Captain America, then it just seems unnecessary to have someone ‘officially’ take over. Falcon can use the shield, but I couldn’t really picture either Sam or Bucky being happy going around calling themselves Captain America.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, sifth said:

Just saying, if this is true a scene was missing that established it.

I just don't see how there is a scene missing, especially if you've seen Captain Marvel.

CM meets the Avengers in CM's mid-credits scene. Pepper Potts knows Tony went into space with Maw. Rocket knows that the other GotG went to Titan to find Thanos. It's reasonable for the team to infer Ebony Maw was also heading to meet Thanos because Hulk knows Maw had the Time Stone. So then it's reasonable for them to assume that Tony met up with the GotG. A homing beacon on the ship is definitely not out of the question of MCU tech, and CM is the only one who can make the trip into space. 

Just seems like there are other things that happened that are less easily explained away in what was arguably a brilliant, if flawed, movie.

[red snow]

34 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

In the comics, where you have a continuing title called ‘Captain America’ then you kinda need someone who calls themselves that. But here in the MCU? Unless you want another movie called Captain America, then it just seems unnecessary to have someone ‘officially’ take over. Falcon can use the shield, but I couldn’t really picture either Sam or Bucky being happy going around calling themselves Captain America.

I think captain America is a symbol though so there's a valid argument for Keeping him around. It also explains why winter soldier isn't a great candidate when using the name as a symbol. 

But it's going to be awkward keeping the wings snd using the shield. Maybe he ditches the wings. But then he's just a regular human. Not that that stops Hawkeye or black widow beating up superstrong aliens.

I sort if feel bad for Vision and Widow whose deaths have been forgotten compared to stark and cap (who didn't even die). I guess it's because it felt like a natural place to end stark and cap's stories but that kind of makes the other two more tragic. Gamorra is an odd one but i feel there's going to be a search for spock style quest for her. Maybe they'll get black widow back in the bargain

[Fez]

2 hours ago, polishgenius said:

The new Avengers Big Three is gonna be Strange, Marvel and BP (it felt like quite a lot of IW and this were sliding Strange in as a sort of magical Tony Stark). All of them could plausibly claim a leadership role but all of them also have other concerns so...

If they're going to have Earth more directly tied to the rest of the galaxy going forward (which I could see, especially if Galactus is the next big bad), I think Chris Pratt will be part of the core Avenger group going forward. He's one of the biggest names in the MCU, and with all the hassle Disney went through to get GOTG3 going again, I'd assume they have plans for him.

[Guest]

On 4/25/2019 at 11:06 PM, SpaceChampion said:

There were a lot of kids in the audience and the humour really worked for them, especially Morgan Stark's saying "shit".  I didn't catch fully what Stark said to Rocket when he said he looked like a (teddy?) bear.  I'm guessing something the younger kids picked up on and found hilarious.  Or they just love Rocket.

Tony told Rocket that until Rocket spoke he thought he was a Build-a-Bear.

[red snow]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Carol can sort of be anywhere in a reasonably short timeframe, so why not be based on Earth? Also the Tony Stark funeral scene with here standing alone on the steps looking over everyone, and then Fury walking up beside her felt like a passing of the torch sort of thing. Actually I'd see Rhodey as a leader too, more so than Sam. For some reason I see Sam as more of a foot soldier.

Avengers pretty much should be a multinational org. So T'Challa leads the Europe/Africa office from his home. As King he can't really move to NY.

It's not a very good time travel theory article then. People who have detailed knowledge of the future because they are placed out of time have a grave responsibility to not interfere. Cap thinks he's thwarting Hydra, but in doing so, maybe Tony's parents aren't murdered by Bucky, so Tony doesn't take over the company, never gets kidnapped and have a piece of shrapnel stuck in his heart, never becomes Iron Man etc etc. Did the writer of the article learn nothing from the brief explanation for why you can't just go back and kill baby Thanos?

The way I imagine it, Cap pretty much has to lead an almost reclusive life, with only Peggy clued in, and even then a strict pact for her to never share work stuff with him, and him to never suggest things she should do.

It wasn't an article about time travel it was about a character not known for standing by when he could do something about it. And knowing hydra and bucky are up to a lit of shit and doing nothing doesn't sit well. It's why I'm going for him being a secret avenger and making sure hydra Don't do anything worse. For all we know hydra could have taken over the world several times prior to cap2 but maybe it was undercover cap thwarting them? That way he wouldn't be passively ignoring things under the guise of "protect the timeline".