Avengers: Endgame (SPOILER THREAD!!!)

[JasonEvans]

Ok, we are just hours from the rest of you seeing this film. So, I am starting the spoiler thread. Do not keep reading if you want to avoid spoilers.

I'm serious...

Stop reading now...

-Jason "the spoilers will begin in the next post" Evans

[JasonEvans]

A few random thoughts...

1) Dr. Strange raising his finger to Iron Man, to indicate there was 1 way... only 1 way... of defeating the Mad Titan. Tony instantly knows what that one way is and gives his life to save everyone else. Amazing. I had tears pouring down my cheeks. Here is my question -- would Tony have given his life if he had not been told by Strange that this was the only way to win?

2) "Cap, on your left." The entire theater went insane when those wormholes opened and every hero in existence walked out to back up Cap.

3) Thanos' two-ended sword thing. That was one bad-!#^@$& weapon!

4) I was so puzzled at the end when it seems like Cap was still alive... and then I thought, "oh, he will just get lost in time so they can maybe bring him back some day." But the notion of him staying in the past so he could spend a lifetime with his true love was so perfect. What a beautiful ending.

5) How did they pull off all those cameos?!?! Robert Redford??!?! I love that Michelle Pfeiffer, Samuel L Jackson, and MArissa Tomei are in the film BUT THEY DON'T HAVE A SINGLE LINE!! I think they used old footage of Nathalie Portman, she didn't actually appear.

6) Was there a better "subvert your expectations" moment than Cap being in the elevator with all the Hydra guys and them not having another fabulous elevator fight? "Hail Hydra," and I died laughing.

7) When Nat and Hawkeye are battling to see which one of them will die, I was totally torn. I mean, how could they kill Barton after showing his family at the start of the film?

8) I love that undoing the snap did not mean going back in time. It means bringing the dead back at this moment in time. That makes more sense and after we were introduced to Tony's daughter, they cannot have her disappear.

9) Loki is alive... in some alternate timeline or something... right? There is some awkwardness with the time travel that I need to get my head around.

10) There is now a huge huge problem for the MCU... they have a time machine. So, any time something bad happens, they will need to explain why they should not just go back in time to fix it. They really need to come up with some explanation for why time travel cannot be used any more or it could become an issue.

11) Ummm, when Thanos first started shooting up Avenger's HQ, Ant Man (who was hit directly by a missile) should have died and probably a couple other characters also should have bit it.

12) No post-credit scene. Perfect! I was terrified they would put something in there and this movie had tied things up so perfectly. I am glad they made the smart choice of not teasing Far From Home or anything else.

-Jason "more later..." Evans

[JasonEvans]

Well...

I know some of you must have seen the 6pm showing tonight. What did you think!?!

[tdrake51]

Just got back from the theater. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. The last two hours were basically perfect.

I agree Loki has to be alive somewhere...

I am surprised more people didn't die, but I'm ok with it.

Fat Thor might be my favorite part of the movie.

When Cap said his "Avengers Assemble" line, the audience lost it.

Is Thor going to be in the next GOTG?

The scene with the women surrounding and fighting alongside Captain Marvel was great.

I want to see it again...

[bigperm13]

That right there was a great friggin' movie. Loved it. Crowd also lost it when Cap summons Thor's hammer. "I knew it!"

[Native]

Same here, just got out. I think your line in the non-spoiler thread about still needing time to deconstruct the movie is spot on, but in the moment, I loved it. A lot to unpack here.

This was honestly the first MCU movie that really, truly felt like a comic book come to life. The sheer ridiculousness of some of the beats in the third act are just... the scale here is just crazy. If you had told me that Peter Parker would be swinging through the ruins of Avengers HQ with an Infinity Gauntlet made by Tony Stark and lands on the back of a horse flown by Valkyrie, I would have called you nuts. I think ultimately this feeling of being close to the comic books will be this film's greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Tonally, though, it's hard to say — from the trailers I thought the atmosphere would be much, much more bleak. There are beats where that's the case: Captain America at the counseling group, Ant Man pulling a cart down a deserted street, Natasha trying to hold things together, and so on. But I thought there was also a lot of humor in the first act and parts of the second which didn't quite fit what I expected. In Infinity War I felt a real sense of urgency and it really felt like Thanos was unstoppable. This time though I didn't really know what to feel... yeah, tons of people are dead but we're still cracking jokes and stuff? I wish they would have really doubled down on the "This is how bad things are and this is the most bleak existence imaginable" in the first act to make the payoff in the third act even better.

So, yeah, the third act. When I heard rumors that there was a single scene with every single Avenger I thought there's no way they'd be able to pull it off. Boy, was I wrong. One of my biggest gripes with Infinity War was that the final battle didn't really ever seem that grand in scope to me, especially once Thor shows up. When the portals start opening... that was absolutely epic.

I thought for sure that Cap was going to bite it when Thanos broke his shield. Once they introduced Tony's daughter I thought he was safe for sure. (And most of the rumors off of the set had Cap dying and Tony surviving to retire.) And Cap finally picking up Mjolnir! The Russos have said that Winter Soldier kind of starts a through line from Civil War through the last two Avengers films, and I think they're absolutely right. Captain America got the arc his character deserved. I'm surprised they gave Sam the mantle of Captain America rather than Bucky, given what happens in the comics. But, hey, whatever. Also, aren't they getting a Disney+ series together? How's that going to work?

I think this film didn't do much for Thor, obviously. For him to have this epic power in Infinity War... it wasn't really put on display here. Part of me worries if they're trying to scale back his power a bit to better fit in with the next Guardians film.

I also didn't think Captain Marvel was really a big influence here. She shows up at the beginning to rescue Tony, doesn't participate in any of the time heist shenanigans, and doesn't really do much at the end except down Thanos's warship. For all of the stuff we got to hear Feige and company talk about how much more powerful Captain Marvel was... I don't think the film showed much of that.

I'm seeing some criticism elsewhere about how Thanos was handled — how he seemed less menacing and dangerous in this one. I think with Infinity War being very much Thanos's film, anything that didn't follow that paradigm would have been a letdown for his character. So I'm actually OK with this.

I LOVED the choice to just chop Thanos's head off in the first ten minutes of the film. I wish they would have done just a bit more subversion of the audience's expectations in that way. A lot of people thought that the survivors would go find Thanos and get their butts handed to them again, and THAT would be the impetus for traveling back in time. The used-the-stones-to-destroy-the-stones aspect was a great choice by the writers to get the film going.

I think your point about time travel as a deus ex machina for future films is a good one, and I don't think they did a bang-up job of explaining the rules for time travel in this one. Can time travelers interact with their past selves? It would have been much more difficult to do, but it would have been a cool exercise to see a script wherein the time travel events actually dictate the events of the movies we already saw. Of course, the Harry Potter franchise already did that, so it probably would have been panned as a rip-off.

I did LOVE all of the throwback scenes, though, particularly from the first Avengers film, which was one of my favorites. So many awesome callbacks and details there that avid fans will catch. Fantastic. In all, this is just three hours of kick-#$@ fan service rolled into a heist-film-turned-Battle-of-Helm's-Deep at the end. It really felt like a love letter to the MCU and all of the fans, which is just what everybody wanted out of this.

P.S.: In the middle where Future Nebula accidentally gets on the same WiFi as Past Nebula and spills the beans on the stones — I thought that was going to be the impetus for Thanos to start going after the stones in earnest in the past, like it's the Avengers' fault that Thanos even knew the stones were unprotected. In the images he gets from Nebula I thought they'd zoom in and see the locations of all six stones on the screen. One of my gripes with the entire MCU is: why did Thanos just sit around and let people like Loki and Ronan go for stones themselves? Why not just do it yourself from the beginning? If the answer was "he just didn't know where they were, it's a big universe and he's been looking for a long time," and the Avengers inadvertently gave him the locations of all six somehow, that would have been cool, but complicated.

[Native]

Oh, and I completely understand all the myriad reasons why they didn't/couldn't/shouldn't have done it, but how amazing would it have been had Stan Lee played Old Captain America at the end?

[luburch]

Have to admit that I am a little frustrated and disappointed with the film. It was obviously good, but had some pretty big problems.

1. Thanos seemed more powerful without the stones in this movie than with the stones in IW. In IW Scarlett Witch is able to hold him at bay for a significant period of time. He tosses her like a rag doll in this one. In IW, a subset of 6 Avengers pretty much defeat him on Titan with the gauntlet. In Endgame, he just flattens everyone without the stone. Also, Thor’s powers seemed off.

2. The first half, 2/3rds of the movie just kinda drug a bit for me. There were nice moments here or there, but it felt bloated.

3. The tone of the movie was all over the place. Doom and gloom one moment, happy and chipper the next. Didn’t flow as well as it could have.

4. It all wrapped up a little too nicely for me. The Avengers only lost, what, 3 members? 4 if you count Cap being old.

Good movie, but not without its frustrations. Some great moments to be sure. Tony had the perfect ending. I’ll watch it again and maybe change my mind on some things, but I doubt it.

[thedukelamere]

As a father with a young daughter, I’m gonna need a few days to process the Tony sacrifice... there were audible sobs in the theater at the “love you 3000” line, and I’m just glad I kept mine muffled.

[Udaman]

Thought it was great. A perfect ending to the storyline. It did what all Marvel movies are so good at - wrap humor into the story. And so many epic moments: Fat Thor, Quill singing from the first GOTG, Captain America summoning the hammer (and Thor summoning the hammer), Avengers Assemble, Tony hugging Peter Parker. Just awesome.

So many things I liked that were subtle. The fact that Hawkeye and Natasha would fight to see who sacrifices themselves, the time travel idea in general (and sending everyone in pairs), the head butted of Captain Marvel that didn’t work), the elevator scene with Captain America. And him fighting himself. Just great moment after great moment.

And agree that Loki gets another movie, which is great. And Thor is with GOTG and now Quill has to make Gamora fall for him again. All good stuff.

Great, great movie. Epic in every way. I always knew Tony would sacrifice himself. And they handled it perfectly. And Captain America got to live (and loved the way they winked at the theory that he was always a bad guy.

I’m rambling, but bottom line it was awesome. Miles above any DC movie except Dark Knight. Can’t wait to see it again.

[acdevil]

Just saw it. Fantastic movie.

[mph]

Just back from an early matinee. Very good movie. Probably the best of the MCU movies but need a little more time to process before committing to that opinion.

Fat Thor was epic. The next movie with Thor needs to start with an Eye of the Tiger workout montage. If I’m the director of marketing for Planet Fitness or Weight Watchers, I’m offering a lot of money for product placement in that film.

[Udaman]

One interesting point - all the “disappeared” who came back are now 5 years younger than everyone else. That’s going to be interesting. It’s clear that Peter Parker’s friend was one of them because he hadnt aged 5 years. If they stick with that it will be a fun theme. Some people would have moved on. Some who came back won’t be hapoppy. Some will blame the Avengers. Either way.

[BLPOG]

A lot of grown men were crying in my theater. A lot.

Damn fine cap to the epic MCU saga. I agree with Jason's points, but especially #11. Ant-Man might actually be my favorite character of the lot, but I think when you show someone getting hit like that, he should be toast. Points off for not being brutal enough, Disney/Marvel. A-

[thedukelamere]

Ok I’ve decompressed. Excellent movie, best super hero movie ever in my opinion, just slightly edging out Heath. The final battle (Cap, on your left!) becoming a full on comic lovefest was too epic not to give it the #1 spot.

As The Ancient One and Professor Hulk would agree, changing anything in the movie would have changed the overal quality of the film, but if I had to go to the quantum realm I’d have changed:

-Gauntletless Thanos was too OP, but not having him go nuts would have ruined the epic final battle, so I dunno what you can do about that one
-They made a big deal in GOTG that handling the stones by hand is a death sentence, yet that wasn’t a problem here... maybe only certain stones are lethal?
-Really really reeeeeally disagree with using Tony as the sacrifice. I understand it, and offing Cap in his place would have had like a tenth of the emotional impact, but maaaaaan. Leaving a daughter without her awesome dad is just brutal and millions of dads out there are emotionally scarred.
-Paul Rudd was my sneaky MVP of the movie, acting-wise. C hero punching waaay above his weight and killed it IMO
-Marvels new hairdo is wack and I don’t see the necessity
-Someone, anyone, multiple ones should have bite it in the bombing. Normal humans without their suits took alien missiles to the face and then had a building fall on them
-Really wondering how they are gonna address the 5 year thing with Peter, Ned, MJ and Flash luckily being dusted
-So is this considered an alternate timeline, or was Loki always supposed to grab the tesseract and his series will be his adventures and end in a time cop taking him back to that point?

[RaiderDevil]

Same here, just got out. I think your line in the non-spoiler thread about still needing time to deconstruct the movie is spot on, but in the moment, I loved it. A lot to unpack here.

This was honestly the first MCU movie that really, truly felt like a comic book come to life. The sheer ridiculousness of some of the beats in the third act are just... the scale here is just crazy. If you had told me that Peter Parker would be swinging through the ruins of Avengers HQ with an Infinity Gauntlet made by Tony Stark and lands on the back of a horse flown by Valkyrie, I would have called you nuts. I think ultimately this feeling of being close to the comic books will be this film's greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Tonally, though, it's hard to say — from the trailers I thought the atmosphere would be much, much more bleak. There are beats where that's the case: Captain America at the counseling group, Ant Man pulling a cart down a deserted street, Natasha trying to hold things together, and so on. But I thought there was also a lot of humor in the first act and parts of the second which didn't quite fit what I expected. In Infinity War I felt a real sense of urgency and it really felt like Thanos was unstoppable. This time though I didn't really know what to feel... yeah, tons of people are dead but we're still cracking jokes and stuff? I wish they would have really doubled down on the "This is how bad things are and this is the most bleak existence imaginable" in the first act to make the payoff in the third act even better.

So, yeah, the third act. When I heard rumors that there was a single scene with every single Avenger I thought there's no way they'd be able to pull it off. Boy, was I wrong. One of my biggest gripes with Infinity War was that the final battle didn't really ever seem that grand in scope to me, especially once Thor shows up. When the portals start opening... that was absolutely epic.

I thought for sure that Cap was going to bite it when Thanos broke his shield. Once they introduced Tony's daughter I thought he was safe for sure. (And most of the rumors off of the set had Cap dying and Tony surviving to retire.) And Cap finally picking up Mjolnir! The Russos have said that Winter Soldier kind of starts a through line from Civil War through the last two Avengers films, and I think they're absolutely right. Captain America got the arc his character deserved. I'm surprised they gave Sam the mantle of Captain America rather than Bucky, given what happens in the comics. But, hey, whatever. Also, aren't they getting a Disney+ series together? How's that going to work?

I think this film didn't do much for Thor, obviously. For him to have this epic power in Infinity War... it wasn't really put on display here. Part of me worries if they're trying to scale back his power a bit to better fit in with the next Guardians film.

I also didn't think Captain Marvel was really a big influence here. She shows up at the beginning to rescue Tony, doesn't participate in any of the time heist shenanigans, and doesn't really do much at the end except down Thanos's warship. For all of the stuff we got to hear Feige and company talk about how much more powerful Captain Marvel was... I don't think the film showed much of that.

I'm seeing some criticism elsewhere about how Thanos was handled — how he seemed less menacing and dangerous in this one. I think with Infinity War being very much Thanos's film, anything that didn't follow that paradigm would have been a letdown for his character. So I'm actually OK with this.

I LOVED the choice to just chop Thanos's head off in the first ten minutes of the film. I wish they would have done just a bit more subversion of the audience's expectations in that way. A lot of people thought that the survivors would go find Thanos and get their butts handed to them again, and THAT would be the impetus for traveling back in time. The used-the-stones-to-destroy-the-stones aspect was a great choice by the writers to get the film going.

I think your point about time travel as a deus ex machina for future films is a good one, and I don't think they did a bang-up job of explaining the rules for time travel in this one. Can time travelers interact with their past selves? It would have been much more difficult to do, but it would have been a cool exercise to see a script wherein the time travel events actually dictate the events of the movies we already saw. Of course, the Harry Potter franchise already did that, so it probably would have been panned as a rip-off.

I did LOVE all of the throwback scenes, though, particularly from the first Avengers film, which was one of my favorites. So many awesome callbacks and details there that avid fans will catch. Fantastic. In all, this is just three hours of kick-#$@ fan service rolled into a heist-film-turned-Battle-of-Helm's-Deep at the end. It really felt like a love letter to the MCU and all of the fans, which is just what everybody wanted out of this.

P.S.: In the middle where Future Nebula accidentally gets on the same WiFi as Past Nebula and spills the beans on the stones — I thought that was going to be the impetus for Thanos to start going after the stones in earnest in the past, like it's the Avengers' fault that Thanos even knew the stones were unprotected. In the images he gets from Nebula I thought they'd zoom in and see the locations of all six stones on the screen. One of my gripes with the entire MCU is: why did Thanos just sit around and let people like Loki and Ronan go for stones themselves? Why not just do it yourself from the beginning? If the answer was "he just didn't know where they were, it's a big universe and he's been looking for a long time," and the Avengers inadvertently gave him the locations of all six somehow, that would have been cool, but complicated.

Regarding Sam getting the Shield, Bucky seemed to know something. Cap was going to be gone 5 seconds, but he talked about missing him. Then he seemed to know to look around for old Cap.

[Gooch]

Just saw it with my 14-year old uber-fan. Hearing his gasping/chuckling at all the callbacks (and his crying at the emotional parts) made it even better for me. I can’t wait to go back and watch the previous movies I missed with this one fresh in my mind.

It really amazed me how all the threads from all the movies weaved together without being forced. Loved it!

P.S. was that our favorite Dukie movie star Ken Jeong as the security guard at Ant-man’s self storage place?

[JasonEvans]

P.S. was that our favorite Dukie movie star Ken Jeong as the security guard at Ant-man’s self storage place?

Yup, the number of cameos in this thing is ridiculous!

[pfrduke]

Really enjoyed the movie. Like others, I thought the continued move of turning Thor into a source of humor (building on Ragnarok, which just had a wonderful tone, and his Guardians interaction in Infinity War) was great - Fat Thor threatening a teenage Fortnite (maybe?) player over the headphones is not something I ever thought I'd see, but really glad I did. For as long as the movie was, I actually thought some things felt rushed: the part from the opening credits (so post-Hawkeye's family, which was a great and gutting way to start the movie) to when they chopped Thanos's head off felt extremely rushed, like they wanted to get to that part of the movie as soon as possible so they could get on with the rest of it. Similarly, with Tony's perfection of time travel, it seemed like they suggested it to him in the afternoon, the problem knaws at him for all of two hours before he solved it, and then he has his heart-to-heart with Potts and heads off to HQ. The emotional beats in there worked, and I'm not sure they really could have spent that much more time on the process, but it seemed like an extremely quick turnaround.

A few questions:

How did any of the New Asgardians survive? I thought at the end of Ragnarok all survivors ended up on one ship, which Thanos then completely obliterated at the beginning of Infinity War after taking the mind stone. Did Heimdall byfrost them all to Earth at some point? Or was there another ship that I'm forgetting about?

These movies always have power imbalances all over the place, but Captain Marvel literally flew through an enormous spaceship and then Thanos kind of brushes off her efforts to engage him in hand-to-hand combat. Those two things happened so closely together that it was a little dissonant.

Where does old Cap come from? Did he return through the quantum portal (in which case why was he not on the platform)? Or did he age in real time from the version of 1945 that he goes back to and then end up organically at that location at that time (because he knows the future)?

[Matches]

Where does old Cap come from? Did he return through the quantum portal (in which case why was he not on the platform)? Or did he age in real time from the version of 1945 that he goes back to and then end up organically at that location at that time (because he knows the future)?

He went back in time to 1970 and aged in real time from there.

It was.. wow. My daughter cried all the way home. I'm still processing it. Amazing capstone to this era of Marvel movies.

Get ready for the New Avengers in 2022-2023ish.