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Avengers: Endgame (Spoiler Discussion Thread)

Seen Avengers: Endgame? Wanna have a nice big rant about it?

Then step right this way.

Since I'm keeping my Endgame review (and the comments) completely spoiler free, I'm starting this discussion thread so everyone here has a place where they can talk openly and freely about the concluding chapter of Marvel's decade long Infinity Saga.

So, was Endgame everything you hoped and dreamed for? Was it the biggest letdown in history? Were you disappointed Ant-Man never made his way up Thanos' backside?

Please, don't hesitate to tell us.


Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig

13 comments:

  1. Since Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D was covered on this channel, does anyone have any idea how the most recent season fits with this movie? If I remember what happened last season correctly it seems like we now have a time loop in which General Talbert destroys the earth shortly before the snap (unclear if the snap does or does not happen in that time line) that repeats a bunch of times until AoS are able to break the cycle and defeat him. Then once they do beat him the end of Infinity War and this movie occur creating another time loop from 2023 back to the 70s? This movie set some rules for how time travel works and did an impressive, if not quite perfect, job of following them. I wonder if AoS follows those rules? I hope someone remembers the details better than me.

    Also I highly doubt it is a coincidence that the new season is starting at a weird time of year that just so happens to be shortly after this movie came out. I would love it if this season deals with the 5 year aftermath of the snap. I know some people think the shows do poorly when they interact too much with there movies, but I really think that is the most interesting part of the MCU. And the main continuity seems to be continuing form Endgame on so that still gives AoS some wiggle room to do their own thing.

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  2. I thought this was a phenomenal conclusion to a 10+ year narrative. The second and third acts really felt like this 'love letter' to fans of the series that have been following this franchise since Iron Man first came out back in 2008. That being said, I did walk out with more issues with this film than I had with Infinity War.

    I really don't know yet how I feel about the conclusion to Natasha's arc. But I know I don't feel good about it. The way it was executed almost seemed like the Russos thought this as the 'be-all-end-all' conclusion for her, but I do think there were many other available options for her story to end that didn't involve the grisly imagery Endgame gave us.

    A lot of the humor in Endgame really feels 'off' or like it's lingering too much. Much of this is because Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) gets the treatment Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) got in Infinity War, where he's mainly relegated to comic relief. Nothing against Paul Rudd, but his lines would really undermine at times the gravity of certain scenes because the writers felt compelled not to end sequences on dreary notes.

    Because she doesn't impact the story too much, I'm just indifferent by the end to her inclusion, but I don't think the character of Carol Danvers yet has earned a moment like "Because last time, you didn't have me." This is in part due to the difficulty it seems her movie had from differentiating her powers from Thor's or Scarlet Witch's; if those two had trouble fending off Thanos in Infinity War, what makes the audience think that with Captain Marvel, things will go any differently? What's more is that Carol doesn't have a personal connection to, or was impacted emotionally by Thanos' actions, so in this movie, it felt as if there were no stakes for that character.

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  3. So excited to have someplace to gush about this movie! (Tumblr did not like it...) I thought Steve's "ending" was beautiful and perfect AND HE FINALLY DANCED WITH PEGGY DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HAPPY THAT MADE ME. Although, I think I THINK that by the movie's own logic Steve should not have been able to visit Sam at the end because he would have started a new timeline? I don't know. One of the few downsides of this movie was that the time travel rules were not explained very well.

    By FAR my absolute biggest complaint about this movie was the treatment of Thor. As someone who suffers from mental illness and is overweight because of that, taking Thor and turning him into a joke went over badly with me. I was REALLY offended actually. And after this emotional time with his mother her parting words of wisdom were for him to eat a salad? I'm still upset about it.

    Is Loki's new series going to center on the timeline where he escaped justice in 2012 and got the tesseract?

    This movie included pretty much every character ever BUT NO COULSON???? YOU COULDN'T HAVE FIT HIM IN ANYWHERE????? HE COULD HAVE BEEN AT THE FUNERAL! C'MON!

    Steve with the hammer...I mean take that scene and project it onto my tombstone because it killed me. Don't worry, I died happy. Such a great payoff.

    I really like that Pepper didn't spend Tony's last few minutes begging him to stay. Instead, she promised him she and Morgan would be okay, that the world would be okay without him, and her final words to him were"You can rest" (or whatever it was, I can't remember exactly). Tony's never been even close to my favorite but boy did I cry for him.

    I know we still have Marvel movies coming out, Spiderman Far From Home is next up, and I'm sure we'll get a Black Panther 2 and a Captain Marvel 2 and a Doctor Strange 2 and a Guardians 3 and maybe even a Thor 4 if Tessa Thompson wasn't just teasing, but with Steve and Tony gone, it feels like the end. Like the end of a decade-plus long series I, personally, poured my heart and soul into, even if I wasn't there from the very beginning (I only hopped on board with the first Avengers). Leaving the theater I felt a definite sense of loss and finality, but also a contentment. "You're going to suffer, but you're going to be happy about it."

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  4. I'm very curious how Endgame affects Marvel TV shows. For Agents of Shield, I heard that the show picks up several years later, which really fits with the 5-year gap between the snap and everyone being brought back. I just rewatched the trailer for season 6, and it sounds like Coulson and May survived the snap (May getting more time with him than they thought) and Mack was snapped and brought back (since he seems very new to his role still).

    But what does Cap staying behind do to Agent Carter? If he goes back to Peggy soon after he crashed, I guess the events of the show become an alternate timeline - which I hate because I loved that show. But if he goes back later, after the 2 seasons of Agent Carter, there's the issue of her love interest in the show. I really liked them together, and am not keen to picture a Jane-the-Virgin-like love triangle. I don't know that Cap stayed in the 1970 time when he returned the stone, but it is possible. However, Peggy Carter would have turned 49 that year, after living without Cap for 25 years, which seems a little cruel. Cap was almost 27 when he was frozen, and lived for about 11 years after he was unfrozen (between 2012's Avengers and 2018's Infinity War, plus the 5 years after the snap), so he's roughly 38. If he did stay back in 1970, that would add 53 years to his age (assuming that Infinity War did take place in 2018 and the MCU is now existing in 2023), making him 91 when he gives the shield to Sam, which does fit his looks. Did he go back earlier than 1970, making him even older? Does the super serum slow his aging to make a 116-year-old Cap possible (if he went back to 1945)?

    Anyway, my headcannon is that Peggy married her love interest from Agent Carter, who later died in the line of duty. Cap went back to 1970 and read Peggy's file (or already knew the information from his visits with older Peggy), and chose a time sometime in the 1950s to return to her, after she'd had time to grieve her first husband.

    But back to Endgame - I LOVED that they brought Jarvis from Agent Carter into the movie! I believe it was the first time a Marvel show character made their way into a Marvel movie. If we couldn't have Coulson or anyone from Agents of Shield, at least my favorite character from Agent Carter made it!

    I'm pretty sad that this is the end of Iron Man and Captain America stories as we know them (though it will be interesting to see Sam as Captain America with Bucky in their life action streaming series, as well as the possibility of Steve Rogers having stories set in the past if Chris Evans ever wants to do them). Black Widow too (though I think she's getting a prequel movie?). It definitely feels like the end of an era.

    I'm glad that Thor made it out alive - he's long been one of my favorites. Even if he doesn't get any more solo films it will be nice to see him as part of the AsGuardians of the Galaxy! I'm not sure what they're going to do with Hawkeye other than him passing the bow to a protegee in another series - it feels like his story is over in a way. And Hulk needs to still be a part of the MCU in some way - not sure how though. With his current condition, I doubt they'd want that much CGI in a TV show, but who knows? (With the ones announced so far, I vote for him teaming up with Loki.) If he's going to join any of the Phase 4 movies, I'd love to see him adding some comedy to Doctor Strange 2!

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  5. Part 2 - my comment was too long!

    But in all, Endgame performed beautifully for what it was - as epic as I'd hoped, with loads of amazing and satisfying moments. From the rat that saved half the universe, Cap wielding Thor's hammer, Natasha and Hawkeye both trying to sacrifice themselves to save the other, Thor saying goodbye to his mother, Iron Man seeing his dad, Cap fighting himself, the "hail Hydra" moment in the elevator, reliving Starlord's dance entrance, seeing how much Nebula has changed, creating a plausible way for Gamora to return, and the payoff of everyone returning through the portals for the final battle!

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  6. Katie Hart, unless all of Peggy's neighbours are into vintage cars, Steve certainly went back to the 1940s. If I'm understanding the film's own time travel rules correctly, which they didn't really explain clearly (would it have killed someone to get out a blackboard?), you cannot change your own history. No matter what you do in the past, your present remains the same, you just create a new timeline that doesn't override the main one. So by Steve going back to the 40s he created a new timeline. The events of Agent Carter still happened in the main timeline. Peggy still lived a life without Steve and still maybe married whatshisname. Steve didn't change any of that. As for how he was there at the end, I'm guessing he held on to his time travel tech and maybe once Peggy passed away in his timeline he returned to the main one somehow.

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  7. Katie I'm SICKENED you would sully the MCU with math. SICKENED. (just kidding...mostly)

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  8. Sunbunny, what was Tumblr's problem with this film?

    I for one really enjoyed it. After the first watch, I thought that maybe it was the MCU's best film. After the second watch, once the surprise effect no longer was a strong, I thought that it has weaker parts, particularly in the middle (the past Thanos/Nebula/Gamora scenes are necessary but not very interesting), whereas Infinity War is all together a more cohesive and thus better film. Still, I absolutely loved it, and I think the final battle is peak MCU.

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  9. Diogo - OH MY GOD EVERYTHING. The time travel rules don't make sense (they may have a point there, but time travel never makes sense), the Tony fans are upset that he died and it was unfair, people are upset that they fridged Black Widow, but most of all people are upset at Steve going back in time. A lot of it is bitter Stucky shippers that hate that he ended up with Peggy instead of Bucky and a lot of it is thinking Cap just let all the bad stuff from the previous movies happen without warning anyone or doing anything? But as I understand the rules of time travel in this movie, by going back in time Steve started a new timeline, one where he can finish dismantling HYDRA and rescue Bucky and save Tony's parents, etc. etc. I mean the Steve I know and love would never sit idly by and let bad things happen. Not ever.

    You know what I was thinking? This is the first Marvel movie EVER where the highlight for me was the big fight at the end. Okay, maybe the first Avengers. But this big fight just...I'm getting chills just thinking about it. Steve with Mjolnir, "On your left," Carol swooping in, "I am Iron Man." It was more than our heroes fighting a disposable army of minions this time.

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  10. Wow. I really don't agree with Tumblr's criticisms at all!

    I seem to be remembering vaguely that Tumblr can get very possessive over their head canon ships... I don't know what I could say to change their minds; Of course Cap and Bucky have a very deep love for each other, but not all love is romantic...

    I understood the movie's time travel without much fuss because it seems to operate on Multiverse theory (ie: you can never alter your own timeline, the most every time travel can do is to create separate timelines, alternate realities). I watch Dragon Ball Z abridged where they explain the concept more clearly, but even then I think the movie gave people enough information to understand what the rules were. Within the multiverse theory framework most of the time travel seemed to make perfect sense, the only missing information is how cap made it back to our own timeline as an old man, but even that can be explained by guessing he found someone else in that new timeline of his who helped him out (like, maybe Pym, or even an alive alternate Tony Stark).

    "the Tony fans are upset that he died and it was unfair" Yeah I don't understand that. We all know that Downey Jr couldn't be make these films forever, the best we could hope for was an ending as beautiful and heroic as this.

    I understand the idea that Natasha was fridged, but personally I don't agree with that at all. Fridging isn't merely killing female characters, it is doing so in a fashion that denies them any agency or character and is only meant to motivate the male leads. The death of Hawkeye's family felt more like fridging. Natasha's death, on the other hand, is a lot more similar to Tony's: it's by her own choice, it's the culmination of her character arc, it is incredibly heroic and worthy. It happens on her own terms, and in the service of her clearly defined goals: to atone for her past as an assassin, to protect her adopted family and her best friend.

    Anyway I agree with you, the big fight was magnificent. It is probably my favorite mcu moment now, and it made me think of Lord of the Rings; that's the biggest compliment I could pay it.

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  11. I loved the movie. The scenes in the past dragged on too long and Thor becoming a punching bag was too mean, but the final fight was epic and they give many characters a chance to shine. My favorite moment was when Spider-Man asks Carol how she can get the glove to the van when she is all alone and then all of the female heroes of the MCU appeared to help her.

    However, time travel confuses me. Thanos left his own timeline before he collected the stones. He jumped forward to the future where he then is dusted. How could Thanos get the stones if he died before getting them? The movie made a big deal of getting the stones back at the exact moment when they were taken. Wouldn't Thanos need to go back to the exact moment he left? Is that what Tony's snap did? And if so, why wouldn't Thanos'knowledge of what happened post-snap affect what he does with the snap when he gets to the point in his own timeline.

    I need Tylenol.

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  12. Knighthawke I don't think you understood the way time travel rules work in this movie. It's very different from most time travel movies and they made sure to specify that. It works on something called multiverse theory. Essentially, you can never actually change your own timeline or your own past;what you can do is create alternate realities based on the changes you made, but your own reality never changes.

    The reason to return the stones to their respective timelines has nothing to do with keeping the space time continuum intact (as it might be the case in other such films). Instead, they are doing it purely out of consideration for the well being of the people in that universe, because according to the ancient one the stones will be necessary to repeal the forces of evil in those universes (like Strange did with Dormmammu and the time stone).

    Both Thanos are dead. It's perfectly OK to kill past people according to multiverse rules, which is why Nebula was allowed to kill her own past self with no consequences. Because as Bruce said, changing the past never impacts your own present.

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  13. Diogo, I understand this movie so much better now! I wish the movie had explained it as well as you just did.

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