Avengers Endgame Discussion (Full Spoilers)

@goosemunch: Yeah, this kind of stuff annoys me. I'm all for time travel just kind of yada-yadaing its way through how it works, because I get that any more than 6.8 seconds of scrutiny will cause it all to unravel, but it's harder to ignore when they make a very specific point of saying "this isn't like that!" It turns out being pretty much like that, just with even more plot holes. And again, I don't really care about the plot holes, I just find it vexing when they conflate pointing out a plot hole to avoiding a plot hole.

Loved it so much. Completely and utterly blown away by it. Best Marvel movie, contender for best comic book movie ever made, one of the best movie endings ever, just in general one of the best action blockbusters ever made.

BOY do I not care about the plotholes and technicalities of it. Time travel doesn't make sense. It literally never make sense. Whooooo cares.

My thoughts on this one are a little all over the place. Theres a ton of little things that bugged me (caps passing the mantle scene, pretty much everything with captain marvel etc) but in the end it's still probably my favorite marvel movie.

It felt genuinely different from everything else they've put out and I think they really did right by iron man and cap. There was a gravity to this that I haven't really felt with any of their other stuff.

Also, fat thor was great and it only continued the tradition of directors not caring about previous plotlines and character growth in thor movies.

Really shows the differences in how well they handled the classic three, right? Captain America and Iron Man get sad, heart felt sendoffs. Thor is a comedic relief who gets to be adopted as a Guardian after his own setting is basically all gone and everyone he knows besides the Ragnarok rookies are dead. I think the way Cap and Iron Man ended up makes sense going back to the first Avengers. I think Thor's journey is insane. Nobody knew how to handle his material.

@redhotchilimist: As much as I didn't mind the first or second Thor movies compared to everyone else I know, it's absolutely obvious that he's a far more popular character when he went from being the broody, cocky, honour and glory bound character he was in those movies, to the more simple minded man child that he became when placed next to the Avengers and in particular in Ragnarok.

He's very much the TV comedy character, the writers put a little bit of this and that into him, like in Thor 1 and 2, he's a little dumb, but not overly so. But people latch onto him being a bit dumb so by season two he has to be dumber and more of what the public enjoyed until that's basically all he is. The Big Bang Theory is an excellent case study in that, as the characters in that first season are just prototypes and test beds. Then the writers or studio found what people responded to and characters become one note.

I think Infinity War was the tighter and better movie, but I still loved Endgame for all the fan service and as a finale to a 10 year arc of movies.

Fun movie. And stayed silly enough that I don't really care about the obvious plot holes that appeared once time travel showed up. I do wish they went further with the time travel stuff though, have more characters meeting their past selfs (and not just fighting the way the Captains did) that kind of thing.

Thor Lebowski was the highlight for me and I'm really excited about the prospect of him being part of GOTG3.

Hard agree. I don't think the time travel issues would have annoyed me much were it not for the movie outright mocking how movies depict time travel, and then proceeding to make more mistakes with the shit than some of the movies they mocked did.

@jesus_phish: I would say Ragnarok and IW had goofy Thor... he was fun and silly, while this movie makes him a clown. If you go back to phase 1 and look where Cap, Tony, Widow, etc are in this movie their progression makes sense. No previous Thor or Avenger movie develops him to turn into a fat drunk lazy shut-in who is addicted to Fortnite and can't control his emotions. He should be the wise powerful warrior who is going to lead the MCU into phase 4... not a bigger fuckup than Starlord. The MCU is bad at Hulk and Thor, but I thought Thor 3 and IW were fixing that with Thor.

I've read arguments that just about everything except for Old Man Cap works according to the established rules

Fucking with the past does not change the present. So shanking baby Thanos would have done nothing because Adult Thanos already went aww snap.

Similarly, stealing the infinity stones does absolutely nothing for their present. However, it does futz with the divergent timelines from the past. That is why Tilda Swinton had a pointless interaction with Ruffles.

So once Hulk snapped they undid Thanos's snap in the MCU-present. Once Thanos arrived in the MCU-present the threat of him doing something worse to the present became a thing. There is also now a timeline where apparently Thanos's entire army disappeared in 2014 or so. That does not impact the timeline where Jurassic Park danced with a really shitty version of Ronan and John C Reilley was briefly in the MCU.

Up to that point, everything (but the perma-death for one actress but not another) "makes sense". I fully agree that poking fun at that is a dick move at best (and ironic hubris in reality) and find it especially funny because BttF and Bill&Ted actually did a much better job of following their own rules.

Then we have Old Man Cap. In theory, it was important to preserve those parallel timelines by returning the stones. In practice, it is kind of questionable if they could have ever returned to those timelines as they aren't MCU-past, but let's just acknowledge that the time travel through the quantum realm also involves parallel universe travelling. So Cap can go back and fix every timeline they messed up (barring The Adventures of Loki on Disney XD or whatever the streaming service is called) by specifically targeting those realities at that time. We're still in the realm where we can head-canon away things and it is all fine

Then we suddenly have Old Cap in MCU-verse. The best we can argue to explain that while still maintaining the rules of time travel is that he and parallel Stark and parallel Ruffles and parallel Lang/Pym built a separate time machine to teleport from the Waltzing-verse to the MCU-verse. Which is pretty stupid when he could have just tapped his bracelet at any time and returned without needing to reinvent time travel in a universe that, presumably, didn't need it. But it is marginally better than acknowledging they threw every single rule out the window and let Cap actually influence their timeline by re-inserting himself in the mid '40s.

Is it possible that Tony, using the time stone part of the gauntlet specifically, willed 2014 Thanos & Co. out of 2023 and sent him back to 2014 where the timeline was reasserting itself as normal since everything was being put back the way it was by Cap?

The Old Cap thing is what annoyed me the most; I really liked the end scene, and honestly wouldn't have cared about the plot hole at all, if not for the fact that the movie was VERY explicit in saying that all the other time-travel movies were nonsense, and this is how real time travel works, except for when it doesn't.

Also, while not necessarily a plot hole, I did think it was weird that no one in the entire movie seemed to care about what damage their past-meddling would cause. If messing with the past doesn't affect the future, it means there has to be some alternate universe that's created when they go to the past. If that's true, they haven't actually avoided the classic butterfly effect time travel problem, they just pushed the consequences onto someone else. And I don't even need to resort to what-if scenarios, because there's real evidence that their meddling will have an effect; namely, they had to knock out Quill before he gets the Power Stone. If Quill is unconscious, that means Ronan would probably get to the stone first, which means he would ultimately succeed in his plan, including the destruction of the Nova Prime planet (the name escapes me). Further, since Nebula and Gamora are gone from the past, the Guardians of the Galaxy will never be created, which means Quill's dad will probably end up succeeding in his thing.

None of that's guaranteed, and again, I don't want to nitpick this kind of stuff in a movie that I liked a whole hell of a lot, but the movie's arrogance regarding their time travel rules rub me the wrong way.

I don't think it's arrogance that made them go "Taking/killing stuff from the past won't affect anything in the future, also don't think about this too hard". Referencing those other movies that did the "do thing in the past to affect the future" isn't some affront to the other movies meant to say they've got a perfect solution, it's just meant to say that it won't work here to just snuff out baby Thanos, and borrowing these stones for a minute won't retcon every movie in the MCU up to this point.

Thought it was excellent, but I think I liked Infinity War more.

And I really hope smart Hulk isn't permanent.

I loved it the entire way through. I think it was a great culmination of the past 10 years of movies and I didn't want anything else from it.

Old Cap found a way just use the bracelet and appear by the lake instead of on the pad: he used the Pym Particles after Carter died of natural causes to bring a shiny shield back to the universe we actually care about.

Yeah, it still hand-waves a bit... he's not wearing a quantum suit, for instance...

So what if: he uses the suit and everything to teleport out of a different quantum tunnel? The van got wrecked, but maybe Pym & co repaired it before they sent Cap back, so he punched in slightly different coordinates on his Garmin to let him do his sneaky "I'm on the bench, check it out!" trick.

Actual answer: it's a comic book movie. Have fun with it. Spend that energy getting worked up over the plot holes on actually deep questions, like what's meaningful in life and how you can improve yourself.

I liked the movie a lot. Interested to see where they take things over the next 10-15 years. That's enough for me.

Couldn't have said it better myself. They did a lot of good for certain characters, but after fantasizing over Endgame and how epic Hulk's and Thor's return would be, I was really disappointed in how they turned out. With Thor, they took a completely different direction then what they were setting up with Infinity War and Ragnarok. Such a shame, he was shaping up as a very kind and just ruler - the last bit of his arc was overcoming his rage and arrogance but instead of making him a bitter warrior they made him "The Dude." I don't even mind the "drunken belly" choice they made in terms of appearance. That could have been reworked into making him a bitter yet wiser king. One who doesn't gloat before the kill or let arrogance and revenge get in the way of what must be done.

Instead, Thor now plays fortnight

Though I will say this, I think He can still recover from this to a certain extent, but I'm not so sure about Hulk. They never know what to do with him and they literally left the "strongest there is" out of the climactic, epic battle...

It's not so much as what they did with Hulk that annoyed me it's the fact that they didn't show us the process of him making peace with his other self. The "Hulk" persona is essentially dead at this point, and we never know how that happened, which is sad because he wanted to be loved and accepted. We get a throwaway breakfast scene that completely undermines the character arc Hulks been going through. We don't even get to see him have an actual cool moment where he smashes or something. No "strongest there is," no "that's my secret," and not even a simple "Hulk Smash!" Such a waste, because I liked how wholesome Banner was in Endgame, I just wished they retained some of that ragingfire Hulk mentioned in Ragnarok. The whole point of "merging" Hulk/Banner is to retain both aspects of the personality.

Other than that it was such an epic movie, it's just sad because we won't see these characters for a while and we barely got anything out of either of them in the climactic battle. It really brought down the overall film for me. In fact, I might be done with the MCU for a loong time, seeing as how they've either turned every character I care about into useless jokes or they've killed them off (save spider-man).

What a damn shame.

This movie was basically just Marvel going "Fuck it!" and taking a victory lap. There's a ton of "wrong" stuff in this movie, but they know the audience doesn't care at this point so why should they. It's pretty much one step away from becoming Transformers. I actually really enjoyed their take on the time-travel stuff though, up to a certain point. They could've made a really awesome time-travel plot with this premise if it had all been planned out all along and wasn't just made movie by movie.

Time travel worked how it's theoretically supposed to work IRL. Since you can't create a paradox, changing the past must create an alternate reality.

Cap went back in time to return the stones to their proper places and wouldn't return (or go to Peggy) until he was done. Presumably he talked with unsnapped Quill about how it really happened, and then just made sure Quill escaped in his ship with the stone, possibly in a different way than before.

The real problems are Cap returning from an alternate reality (Russo's had a Q&A where they explained that Cap had to quantum tunnel back to the current reality), Loki has the space stone (unless Cap fixed that too), and there's a reality where the infinity stones are still extant because Thanos died in 2014.

Traveling to the past in Endgame creates alternate realities, they do not alter the present. Hulk describes it that way, The Ancient One describes it that way, Nebula kills Nebula and is fine, etc. The movie is fairly consistent about it, though not 100%. The movie doesn't explain it well enough though, I don't think I understood the time travel until I watched it a second time.

@boatorious: To be clear, my issue with the time travel in Endgame isn't that it makes less sense than other time travel movies; it's that the movie insists that their way is the REAL time travel, but then sort of ignores any problems that might come about because of that. Instead of just having time travel, the movie tries to act smarter or more realistic than over time travel movies.

In fact, thinking more about it, the idea that time travel creates parallel universes might be more problematic than if they had done it Back to the Future style. If changing the past creates an alternate timeline, an obvious question is "how much change causes a new timeline to form?" There isn't some arbiter of what change is significant and what isn't, and because of the Butterfly Effect there's no way to know which changes will have an impact and which won't, so the only answer is that ANY time travel creates a parallel timeline.

But, if that's the case, then when the Avengers did their whole time heist, it means they created THREE alternate timelines--one for every different year they jumped to. In that case, while Thanos is dead in one version of the past, he's still alive in the other two versions, and in one of these versions, Loki has the Space Stone, which causes a whole bunch of issues. Plus, when Tony and Cap go back again to the 50s, this creates a fourth alternate timeline. So, in summary, this means that by saving their universe, the Avengers have created four alternate universes, at least one of which is possibly doomed to Thanos winning? (since Loki gets the Space Stone, and is working for Thanos, we can assume that Thanos gets the Space Stone far sooner in that universe) That feels... bad.

Also, I'm confused about how time travel works in terms of machinery. At first, it looks like the big machine is used to send them back to the past, and the wristwatches return them to the present; but, Tony and Cap use the wristwatches to go back further in time. Why have the big machine then? What purpose does it serve?

Honestly, though, none of these issues significantly affect my enjoyment of the movie; I think it's my second-favorite movie behind Homecoming, and my only real complaints are the lampshading I mentioned at the beginning, and the fact that Black Widow died instead of Hawkeye.

Yeah, if "changing the past does not change the future" holds for the main timeline, it must hold true for other timelines as well, so 5 alternate universes, counting the one where they had to go back to 70's after failing in new york. 6, if you count the test run with Hawkeye. Assuming the Old Cap wasn't a plot hole and explained away with multiverse, then the entire movie must've taken place in the alternate universe that the captain went back to (and stayed in), and in the "main universe" the old captain never comes back. Of course that opens another plot hole because that means there are (at least) 2 parallel timelines where they invent time travel, so during the heist, they should've ran into multiple version of their future selves all trying to steal the stones at the same time....

Anyway, I'm with you - it feels bad. Surely the conscionable thing to do would've been to keep the stones and spare the other universes the risk of Thanos succeeding? Our heroes are worse monster than Thanos?

But whatever, plot holes aside, the reason why I don't like multiverses is because it deflates a lot of the drama (for me at least). It just feels like nothing is real and nothing is at stake.

edit: although now that I think about it, the timeline split is in the 50s is earlier than any other points in time, so assuming the present-day heroes traveled back in time following their respective branch and not cross into alternate realities, they wouldn't run into multiple future selves during the heist. That still begs the question why none of the other timelines (since new york) figured out time travel. And since the present captain from this alternate universe *also* decides to travel back to 50s and stay, wouldn't they either telefrag each other, or recurse and end up with infinite old captains? this time travel shit makes less and less sense!!!

Clint's daughter is played by Ava Russo, Joe Russo's daughter, so it's unlikely they were setting up any sort of near movie future for her. This might interest you though.

I liked it alot, definitely had a much different tone than i thought it would. Much more back to the future vibes going. It couldn't top infinity war (but nothing probably will) but it was still a great movie. Only issue i had is the Peter parker and friends still in highschool thing. Only thing i can think of is that everyone of them were dusted. Also no clue what happened to Gamora in the end? I guess she just left since she wasn't close to any of the Guardians or she was sent back with the snap to not make a new timeline? Besides the typical time travel paradox things I enjoyed the movie, it definitely went by quick, didn't feel like 3 hours at all.

They say he came back from an alternate timeline to give the shield to falcon, not sure if he went back or not though. But that's what the directors said anyway, could have been more clear though.

Has anybody noted the fact that when cap heads back to return the stones in their respective timelines, for Soul stone at VORMIR he would have had confronted Red Skull his initial enemy....I imagine how he would have had returned the soul stone at Vormir.

What you all think

Assuming he had a way back to the exact same timeline it makes sense. If he upped and abandoned his family making blind jumps until he landed in a branch similar to the one he left just to give Falcon the shield, not so much.

That would make a great Old Man Rogers film though.

it was fun- a solid action flick. and for what it needed/wanted to do, i think they largely achieve that. it's a successful ensemble spectacle.

that said, i think they shortchanged thor (duh), hulk (i don't like that we never get to see his reconciliation with his demons), and they really overemphasized tony's relationship with pepper. i could do with less paint-by-numbers romantic interest and more time spent on cap patching things up with tony. the cap/iron man tension was the most dramatically interesting for me, and IMO isn't properly settled.

I was thinking about this, because I actually read another interview with the Russos, who added the "bagging on Back to the Future" specifically because test audiences kept thinking Endgame was using Back to the Future time travel rules and getting confused haha.

In fact, thinking more about it, the idea that time travel creates parallel universes might be more problematic than if they had done it Back to the Future style. If changing the past creates an alternate timeline, an obvious question is "how much change causes a new timeline to form?" There isn't some arbiter of what change is significant and what isn't, and because of the Butterfly Effect there's no way to know which changes will have an impact and which won't, so the only answer is that ANY time travel creates a parallel timeline.

Banner's line before they travel is that they don't want to create a lot of "nasty" alternate timelines -- which could be taken to mean they know they'll create alternate timelines, they just don't want them to be "nasty". The Ancient One talks about preserving her "reality", as if Hulk just showing up has splintered hers off from his.

But, if that's the case, then when the Avengers did their whole time heist, it means they created THREE alternate timelines--one for every different year they jumped to. In that case, while Thanos is dead in one version of the past, he's still alive in the other two versions, and in one of these versions, Loki has the Space Stone, which causes a whole bunch of issues. Plus, when Tony and Cap go back again to the 50s, this creates a fourth alternate timeline. So, in summary, this means that by saving their universe, the Avengers have created four alternate universes, at least one of which is possibly doomed to Thanos winning? (since Loki gets the Space Stone, and is working for Thanos, we can assume that Thanos gets the Space Stone far sooner in that universe) That feels... bad.

Yup. And that's assuming there's a way for Cap to go specifically back to the altered timelines and not create new branches.

As for Loki and the space stone, I have a weird thought about that.

At the end of the movie, the movie makes a big deal of Sam and Bucky being with Cap, and Cap passing the shield to Sam. This is a big deal in the MCU, but it's also a setup for the rumored Disney+ show about Sam and Bucky.

Guess who else is getting a Disney+ series?

Also, I'm confused about how time travel works in terms of machinery. At first, it looks like the big machine is used to send them back to the past, and the wristwatches return them to the present; but, Tony and Cap use the wristwatches to go back further in time. Why have the big machine then? What purpose does it serve?

Yeah, there are a lot of little things that don't make sense and that's definitely one of them.

This movie was pretty good and I enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the rather depressing first half-hour which was done with great care. Somehow, these movies are good at balancing light-hearted fun and more serious drama without giving you much tone whiplash. Thor was especially great and hilarious the whole way through.

I like to think so. Actually I like to think that actually everything they changed in the past apart from taking the stones made an alternate reality which is actually this reality all the way long, though I have to rewatch all the movies to confirm this to myself. There are pretty neat explanations around about the 2012 Loki tesseract excape thing.

There's an interesting article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2019/04/29/the-avengers-endgame-plot-hole-is-not-really-a-plot-hole-at-all-spoilers/#4078826019e3

But I cannot agree with it, I don't think Cap could have come back from alternate Waltzing reality future to MCU present. I like to think he was present in MCU reality all along hiding. I even like to think he might have met Bucky, or sent him something, because he apparently had knonw all along what Cap was planning to do.

The only valid scenario I can imagine according to the above article is, that after Peggy died, he went back to lets say 1945 again (or whichever time he went back originally to live with her), so before he created the alternate timeline, and cam back with the big time machine as it was originally intended, but for him a 70ish years have passed. But for this he would have needed to steal 5 phials of Pym particles, not 4, though I don't think he should have stopped and not steal all of them. But if the movies intention with the 4 phials was to hint at this theory, then my theory fails.

My other idea is that Cap created an alternate reality where the only difference to MCU reality is that he went back to stay with Peggy. But everything else is tha same, and there is an original Cap there under the ice ready to be defrosted later, face Thanos in that universe's Infinity War, participate in time travel and finally decide to go back to live with Peggy, creating a new alternate universe again, and again and again. Where finally an infinite number of universes are made, the only difference between any of them being that an old Cap from another reality is present parallel to their own Cap. And it this is an infinite number, than it's very probable that in MCU there's also an old Cap coming from originally an other timeline, and having been present hiding in MCU all along.

I'm still buffled by the shield, though.

It was okay. I thought the action was pretty poor though. The CG was great, as it always is with these movies but the fight choreography just lacked any real punch. You could argue that the action isnt the draw and it's the characters who have had multiple movies dedicated to them to build them up and flesh them out and that this is the culmination of all that but it all felt fairly predictable. I also agree that the movie calling out the stupidity in other time travel movies was very hypocritical.

Personally I preferred MK11 and even Days of Future Past when it comes to time traveling heroes/mutants/ninjas. (also why the fuck was hawkeye a ninja?)

@boozak: I want to preface this by saying that I know this isn't a very good reason but Clint has had a few different super identities over the years and one of them was Ronin. So, I guess their idea was that they could have this bit of comic geekery and justify it with Clint getting super emo after the snappening. Comics are goofy.

Just saw it, not a Marvel fan at all, can't stand Tony Stark, so that stuff didn't get to me that much. For as much as they made it a big joke, the Thor stuff was more resonant than pretty much everything else.

Time travel doesn't make sense, but what are you going to do. There are worse offenders out there and they kept enough of an atmosphere of "we don't know how this works" and "it's space magic" that I can let some stuff slide.

The best part, and honestly the best part of all Marvel movies, is probably Nebula. She's got a fantastic character arc, and I'm happy they gave her so much screen time, I never would have expected it given she started as a secondary antagonist. I wish she had a little more direct interaction with Thanos, but I don't think she needed to kill him like some people wanted.

My biggest issue was that the pacing felt off, getting all the stones took a really long time and some of that could definitely have been trimmed. Thanos seemed much more straight up evil in this one, and much less interesting overall.

Also they absolutely wasted Hiroyuki Sanada in such a nothing role.

Overall, the movie was ok. Not as good as the last part, but as someone who doesn't like the majority of these movies, I did enjoy it.

I like the setup for Guardians 3, but Guardians 2 was already about that egotistical "I'm the boss" stuff that they were doing at the end, so hopefully there's more to the dynamic than that. Gamora being missing is a neat setup though, as is her being a different Gamora entirely.

Yeah as the Time Travel thing confused a lot of people it seems. As really wonder what would happen if it omitted it huh?!

This movie did so many things are fantastically, and reading all the comments has lessened my energy to write my own big one, but I'm writing a big one any way!

1. I'm a little bummed they didn't really know what to do with Captain Marvel...I wonder if it would have been better to introduce her to the MCU after Endgame.
2. I'm most excited to the new GOTG with new Thor; it's too bad that movie isn't coming out until 2021 or whatever
3. I think the way Spiderman deals with a post snap world won't be satisfying, and I"ll just have to make peace with them downplaying how drastically the world will have changed due to half the population having aged in a husk of a world. If they confronted it realistically, the whole movie would have to be centered around it and there would be no room for a big bad which would actually make for a super interesting "neighbourhood spiderman" flick where he has to deal with crime and society rebuilding in his local space, and half the people he knows being older. It's obvious by the trailers since his whole friends group + MJ are all the same age still that they are trying to avoid that scenario being a big deal.
4. I wonder if this movie will have signified my waning interest in this franchise, since it can't go on forever, but the new players heading it (Black Panther, Captain Marvel) are actually the most successful at the box office ever so the franchise will continue on as a juggernaut probably
5. I'm bummed about Captain America being over because I feel like every other hero at this point has enough CG space magic, beams shooting out of their hands, or technology assisted combat that I won't get the super cool raw combat that I got from Winter Soldier. Even Spiderman has been a little overly Starked-up, and Black Panther has his own Q and his suit does a bunch of fancy super shit so I feel like there isn't a move any more where a hyper athletic person just does grounded, cool looking shit.

I was on board until the last hour then everything got way too predictable and obligatory for me. Thor scenes were great, "Thor, that kid in the TV called me a dickhead again!" had me laughing my tits off. Pretty sure the first time Thanos used the infinity stones he didn't blow himself up so it felt like they introduced that just to give Downey Jr an out. And what was with Pepper's reaction? "Don't worry we'll be fine, rest now" What the fuck lady!? I've seen more emotion and compassion out of Reggie "Fuck-Em" Fils-Aime.

The time traveling internal logic was inconsistent, they can't change the past unless Captain America wants his end away and to give Evans an out... I was never a huge fan of either of their characters but they were characters I was familiar with at least, not sure what an Avengers B-Team movie will look like but its gonna be a tough sell for me.

Asguardians of the galaxy is a film I'd watch in a heartbeat and I'll probably watch the new spider-man but the MCU doesn't have anything else that interests me really. A bunch of sidekick movies... maybe a second Catain Marvel / Black Panther could be good but the characters are pretty dull imo.

Huge insight. Just speaking personally, it's why Winter Soldier is still my favorite one of these Marvel movies. Captain America gets to flirt with the boundaries of realism in, as you said, really grounded ways. Which gives his stories and action sequences an added intimacy, added stakes.

Um, I just played Mortal Kombat 11 and they said if either young Johnny Cage or Sonya died, then Cassie would cease to exist. So don't talk to me about alternate timelines, nerds.

@brendan: When it comes to fights with someone who doesn't have a lot of powers, Shang-Chi could fill that void. Seems like he's basically "if Bruce Lee was a superhero". It doesn't seem like he has many powers.

They referenced to this a few times, hence why Bruce did the initial snap because a mortal human wouldn't be able to take the power it emits. Tony Stark being a human couldn't take it but sacrificed himself to save the Universe..

tbh, I would’ve watched an entire movie that was like the first 20 minutes. They all get ready to track down Thanos and do some superhero punchy-punch, but he’s retired to farming, puts up no fight, dies, and his atrocity cannot be undone. The rest of the movie is scenes like the Black Widow faux-SHIELD scene, where they keep trying to do their old job but they’ve already failed and there aren’t enough supervillains to justify their job anymore. Then we get like 2 hours of the surviving heroes looking for purpose in their lives, maybe some kind of Good Will Hunting-esque emotional breakthrough, and call it a day on the whole MCU and learn a life lesson about how the good guys can’t always triumph.

I recognize that the thing I’m asking for is basically Watchmen, and is not what the Marvel movie audience is looking for, but I’m just saying, I would’ve watched that.

Anyway, Endgame is some good fan service. Thanos seemed more shallow in End Game than Infinity War. It’s the kind of big self-indulgent finale you would expect, overall.

@philipduck: I've no problem with how they reference the dangers of the gauntlet in Endgame, they spell that shit out. My problem with it is that when Thanos used it at the end of Infinity War it didn't behave that way, so it seems like a conceit they added after the fact just to give Iron Man something to die from. Not a huge deal overall but one example of the little ways they killed my investment by changing the rules arbitrarily.

what was dr strange's plan all along?

so he gave up the stone in infinity war. why did he do this? in endgame, he reappears and assembles all the forces to fight thanos. was this the plan and why/how?