The Somewhat Grumpy and Extremely Spoilery Review of Avengers Endgame

Does anyone still care about spoilers at this point?  It's been like 3 weeks so you have to think most of the people who would care have already seen it--and probably don't read this blog.

Anyway, I watched it last Tuesday because I decided I probably should go watch it before people spoiled too much of it.  The thing about spoilers is not so much knowing what's happening it's that you get other people's perceptions of the things that happened.  For a movie I'm on the fence about or don't care about it doesn't really bother me but for a movie I legitimately want to see I don't really want other people's opinions on what happened until I can see it myself and make my own conclusions.

Truth be told I wasn't all that excited then about seeing this.  The 3 hour runtime was one thing.  It's not just the movie's runtime but with all the time getting there and commercials and previews and stuff you're talking about more like 4 hours.  It's kind of annoying to fit that in unless I were going with other people.  Which I wasn't.  I just ducked out of work an hour early and went to a 3:45 showing, which wasn't populated all that much so that was nice.

I liked this slightly better than Infinity War but it was still far from a perfect movie.  To demonstrate that I'm going to go through the whole movie to highlight the many, many problems.  It's kind of a mini-Rifftrax session.

It starts at Hawkeye's house where he's hanging out with his family when they suddenly vanish.  The part that didn't make sense is didn't people turn to ash and blow away?  So shouldn't there have been some sign of their being gone?  Shouldn't he have seen a bunch of ash and wondered where it came from?

Then it goes to Tony Stark and Nebula in space.  They're in the Guardians ship that's dead in space after a battle with...someone.  We last saw them on Titan so I don't know when that happened.  Anyway, Tony recording a message was the first trailer and I immediately thought, "Captain Marvel will come along and save him."  Guess what happened?  Captain Marvel came along and saved them.  How did she find them in the middle of nowhere in space?  Maybe she has some space bloodhound thing?  I didn't see her movie so maybe that's one of her powers?

Then it's funny that she takes the ship to the Avengers compound and no one seems to question who the hell she is or what the hell she's doing there.  And then almost instantly everyone except Iron Man is on the road again because conveniently they've figured out where Thanos is.  Conveniently Thanos has destroyed the Infinity Stones, badly injuring himself in the process.  Otherwise he could have just snapped his fingers and killed all the Avengers.  Instead Thor chops off his head.  Better late than never, I guess.

So then they go back home and Five Years Later our heroes being heroes they've fixed the world, right?  Um, no.  Not at all.  Mostly they're sitting around on their asses.  Captain America is holding group therapy sessions in New York.  Tony Stark is hanging out at a lake house with Pepper and his daughter Morgan.  Banner is posing for Instagrams or something.  Thor is playing video games and guzzling booze and looking like The Dude with a beer gut. (He lives in a colony called New Asgard in Scandinavia, but weren't all the Asgardians on the ship Thanos destroyed? Heimdall sent Thor to Earth but how did others escape?)

(One thing I thought of later:  why is Tony's daughter so exceedingly normal?  I mean Tony is a genius and Pepper is pretty smart and capable on her own.  Tony's father was a genius too so obviously it runs in the family.  So even if she's only 4 or so, shouldn't she be like composing symphonies or building protocol droids out of spare parts or something like that?  Unless the latent sexism is that the Stark genius wouldn't be passed on to a girl.  Or maybe she's a late bloomer?  Or more likely the screenwriters just didn't give a fuck about it.)

Since he lost his family, Hawkeye copes by becoming a murdering vigilante called Ronin who culturally appropriates a ninja outfit.  Which makes sense since Hawkeye totally had so much interest in ninjas and Japanese culture before, right?  Right?  [Crickets.]  But it was pretty much better than Hawkeye in the first two  Avengers movies plus Thor 1 and Civil War.  Not that there was much competition on that score.

Black Widow is still at the compound coordinating with War Machine, Captain Marvel, the Dora Majae (spelling?), Rocket Raccoon, and Nebula to fight fires around the world.  OK, now really Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk should be embarrassed that Rocket and Nebula are being more heroic than they are.  I mean America is in crisis and Captain America is sitting around in church basements like a recovering alcoholic?  All his money and genius and Tony Stark is puttering around by a lake like he's on vacation?  Thor is supposed to be a god but he's acting like the stereotypical gamer living in his mom's basement?  With great power comes...no responsibility, I guess.

Michael Offutt compared this to PTSD and I guess that makes sense a bit.  Though it seems more like self-pity to me.  A 5-year self-pity party.  It was pretty lame.

Then a rat runs over a keyboard on Hank Pym's van and triggers Ant-Man's release from the quantum realm.  So for five years this van was moved into a warehouse and shit and no one touched that button until some random fucking rat walks over it?  Really?  Then he goes to his wife's old house to find his young daughter is now 28 a teenager.  How old was she "five years earlier" like 7 or 8?  Yet now she's like supposed to be in high school.  Apparently she had one of those Pebbles and Bam-Bam growth spurts.

Though Scott Lang is a former thief he somehow figures out that they could use the quantum realm to go back in time to stop Thanos.  Except you can't actually change the past to, say, just kill Thanos as a baby or kill him before he gets all the Infinity Stones because...sciencey stuff.  Something quantum as the late Sir Terry Pratchett would have said.

But fortunately Tony Stark can solve the problem of time travel in one night at his cabin.  And so soon enough they're ready to do some time traveling to pull a "time heist" for the six stones.  Black Widow is the one who figures out 3 of the stones (time, space, and mind) are all in New York in 2012.

So then it turns into Back to the Future 2 as Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, and Ant-Man go to New York during the Avengers 1 to get the stones.  I skipped out to the potty while Banner was going all Rufus in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, telling the "Ancient One" they'd be sure to put everything back once they were done to avoid time tangents.  Meanwhile the others have to get the Tesseract and Loki's staff with the mind stone that gave birth to Vision--who is never mentioned at all.  They brought in Frank Grillo and even Robert Redford to recreate the SHIELD/Hydra agents from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (the first Marvel movie by the Russos) who take the Tesseract.  In a nod to recent comics, Captain America whispers "Hail Hydra" to one agent to get him to hand over Loki's staff.  Except Cap then winds up fighting himself--they're so evenly matched!

But meanwhile Iron Man and Ant-Man bungle getting the Tesseract so Loki disappears with it to...somewhere.  Was that an end credits scene?  I wasn't staying through 12 minutes of credits for that if it were.

Tony realizes they could find the Tesseract back further in the past but they don't have enough Pym particles to go back and then return to the present.  Instead of just going to San Francisco to ask Hank Pym for some more particles, Cap and Iron Man go to 1970 to the army base where SHIELD used to be headquartered.  (Again going back to Winter Soldier.)  But this does allow Tony Stark to have a nice moment with his father to trade notes on parenting and let Steve Rogers peep on Peggy Carter.

Meanwhile Thor and Rocket go to Asgard in 2013 during The Dark World.  Prior footage of Natalie Portman reprises her role as...prior footage of Natalie Portman.  Meanwhile Thor runs into his mom who instantly knows he's from the future because...witchcraft.  I guess they couldn't get Anthony Hopkins to show up as Odin or maybe that would have been redundant with Tony and his father meeting up.  Before he leaves, Thor summons his old hammer Mjolnir (spelling?) back to his hand, proving he's worthy still.  (So, um, what happens to the Thor already there?  Shut up, that's what.)

Also meanwhile War Machine and Nebula get stuck going to the planet at the opening of GOTG 1 to find the power stone.  I guess they're both kinda cyborgs so it makes sense to put them together.  For convenience's sake Nebula's brain connects with the Nebula already in 2014 to alert Thanos to what the Avengers are planning.  War Machine leaves with the stone but Nebula is knocked offline and replaced by (more) evil Nebula.

And also meanwhile Hawkeye (or Ronin) and Black Widow go to the planet where Red Skull is hanging out to get the Soul stone.  To do that they fight each other over who gets to commit suicide to become the stone.  And then Black Widow dies like the climber at the beginning of Cliffhanger with Hawkeye as Sly Stallone.  I guess it made more sense since he had a family who could be snapped back life.  Michael Offutt said he found that heartbreaking but I never really cared about either of them so it didn't matter much to me.  (Though I'd have killed Hawkeye just for his stupid horse-looking haircut.  What the hell was that?)

So eventually everyone gets back to the present so they can put the stones on an Iron Man gauntlet--foreshadowing!  Since Hulk strongest there is he uses the new Infinity Gauntlet to snap everything back.  Except because Tony doesn't want to lose his daughter all the people who disappeared will reappear 5 years later only as they were beforehand.  So 3.5 billion people (give or take a few million) get Flight of the Navigatored.  Or The 4400-ed.  Or whatever that show on NBC was about a plane that disappeared and reappeared like 3 years later.  So all the massive damage and stuff will still be there plus things will be really weird for those who were gone for 5 years and haven't aged while those around them did, but Tony's daughter will still be alive.  That's what heroes do, right?  Screw over billions for themselves?

Evil Nebula could have sabotaged all this by blowing the gauntlet up or killing Banner or stealing the gauntlet or something, but instead she just somehow brings Thanos's flagship into the present.  Thanos blasts the Avengers compound from the air and then decides to literally sit on his ass to wait for his minions to bring him the gauntlet.  The thing he wants most in the whole world, but nah I'll let my minions go find it.

So Cap, Iron Man, and Thor take him on.  The coolest thing about this is when Captain America is able to use Mjolnir (spelling?) and use it against Thanos.  But they all still get their asses kicked by Thanos.  It was also cool when Cap gets back to his feet to face the enemy army alone--that's the character in a nutshell. Why wasn't he like that the whole movie? But then Dr. Strange and Wong begin beaming in all the un-dead heroes like Black Panther, Wasp, Spider-Man, and Star-Lord.  Yet there's someone noticeably absent:  Earth's mightiest hero who shares a name with the comic book company responsible for the characters in this movie.  I guess it does make sense since she never met Dr. Strange (presumably) though if he saw 14 billion futures or whatever shouldn't he know she exists?

The battle then is like some Marvel fanboy's wet dream as you have all these heroes running around fighting miscellaneous bad guys.  It made me think of Ready Player One where they were storming the castle where the final Easter egg was and the good guy army was made of characters from popular culture like Harley Quinn, Freddy Krueger, and that chick from Overwatch.  It's like, Oh, there's Black Panther's sister Shuri!  There's Drax!  There's Groot!  There's Scarlet Witch!  We didn't get to see a lot of them but at least they were there!

As I was wondering if they had just forgotten about Captain Marvel she finally made her big entrance to blow up the flagship.  Better late than never, I guess.  But not even Earth's Mightiest Hero could beat Thanos.  (Earth just sucks, I guess.)  Though it's kind of disingenuous when all the female heroes come to Captain Marvel's aid.  They might as well have held up a sign saying "Marvel [heart] Girls!"  Of course Marvel loved girls so much we wouldn't greenlight a Black Widow solo movie or any other female solo movie until after DC greenlit Wonder Woman.

In all the fighting in Infinity War the one thing no one ever thought of was to just take the stones out of the gauntlet.  That's why Tony Stark is a genius because that's what he does.  (Maybe it was just easier with his gauntlet than Thanos's?)  He puts the stones on his glove and snaps his fingers to kill Thanos and all his minions.

Which something I wondered is why do you have to snap your fingers?  I mean couldn't you wave or do a peace sign or flip Thanos the bird?

Then we go into Return of the King mode with Tony's funeral and everyone saying goodbye and stuff.  Thanks to all the money they've made Disney/Marvel has the power to reduce veteran actors like Michael Douglas, Marisa Tomei, Angela Bassett, and Michelle Pfeiffer into extras just standing around.  Hooray?

For...reasons Thor decides to leave Valkyrie in charge of "New Asgard" because she showed her leadership by...fishing?  Having a flying horse?  Shut up, that's why.  Then he goes off with the Guardians of the Galaxy to maybe be in the next movie?  Or not?  When's his contract up?

To fulfill Hulk's promise to the Ancient One Captain America is tasked with putting all the stones back...somehow.  How's he going to put the ones in space back?  Did he take a spaceship with him?  Does he know how to fly a spaceship?  And what about the Soul stone?  I mean he can't really put that one back, can he?  He can't un-kill Black Widow.  Shut up, that's how.

And then using Forrest Gump reasoning Captain America decides that well since I have a time machine, I might as well go back to 1945 and marry Peggy Carter.  I guess it's OK since the other him is in the ice.  And I guess nothing he does in 75 years affects the timeline at all because...sciencey stuff.  Take that, butterfly effect!

I didn't really like this part.  It seemed forced and contrived as a way to write Chris Evans out.  With the world in chaos, Iron Man dead, Black Widow dead, the Avengers compound destroyed, and Banner injured, would Captain America really decide right then was the time to go off and retire?  I don't think so.  That's not the character.  Really he should have gone back and had that dance with Peggy and then explained that he had to go back because the world needed him, which she would understand.  But we need to get rid of this guy, so the hell with consistent characterization!

So somehow geriatric Cap is suddenly at the funeral and gives his shield to Sam Wilson despite that Sam has no powers, not even a robot arm like Bucky.  He doesn't even have the power to talk to birds like the comic book version of Falcon.  But he does have a flying suit, so that's cool.  Maybe he'll be more popular than comic book Sam Wilson Captain America who lasted about 2 years before being replaced by...wait for it...Steve Rogers.  This a few years after Bucky Barnes Captain America was replaced by...wait for it...Steve Rogers.  Just some historical perspective.  The one difference between comics and movies though is that the actors age in real time and you have to pay them so while it's easy to bring Steve Rogers back after he dies/gets old/turns evil it's harder to bring Chris Evans back again and again.  Even more so for Robert Downey Jr since he's older.  That gives replacement characters a better chance in movies than in comics.

Anyway, while this isn't a bad movie you can see it's got as many plot holes as a slice of Swiss cheese.  And it leaves a real mess for future movies starting with Spider-Man Far From Home to try to clean up.  But like The Flash on CW now we can blame any inconsistencies or stuff on time travel and multiverses.  Hooray?

You do have to admire the ambition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and all the Easter eggs and cameos and whatnot in this movie really bring home the scale of it over the last 11 years.  And now that Disney has Fox Studios it can get even bigger!  Hooray?