Avengers: Endgame (2019)

[Ragedaug]

I know I've partaken in some of the debate about how time travel worked in the film, but it occurred to me this morning that sorting it out to the level of detail being discussed here just seems unnecessary.

Based on the film itself, we can tell that the characters didn't have complete understanding of how it works and almost certainly made several mistakes. And it also seems that this will be used to tell future MCU stories.

So we know on the surface level how it worked. We know that the characters left behind some messes. We know that the MCU is not going to act like no messes were created. These three statements combined are sufficient to understand the movie and consider the film internally consistent.

That's good enough for me. We're not spending pages in the thread sorting out how Tony's latest suit works, or what material Thanos' blade needs to be made out of to break vibranium, or when Pepper had time to master an IM suit, etc.; we just generally accept these things. If this were hard sci-fi, perhaps I'd feel different.

There's a couple reasons why I have a problem with time travel when I can more easily suspend disbelief for the other issues you bring up. One is because of how often it is used. When you have a story that's not about time travel, then time travel is introduced, it's almost always (if not always) the answer to the writer admitting either, "I don't know how to fix this situation" or "I have no more ideas for where this story goes next". It's an overused trope. You can see movies like Superman I and Superman II where Richard Donner used it almost identically to fix both movies. Secondary, it's the ultimate story mulligan, and ends up removing tension, because you know someone somewhere can just time travel us to the point before the point and fix whatever was unfixed or refixed, by which point you might as well just be watching Stewie and Brian trying to re-fix their mistake over and over again.

[tyrlaan]

There's a couple reasons why I have a problem with time travel when I can more easily suspend disbelief for the other issues you bring up. One is because of how often it is used. When you have a story that's not about time travel, then time travel is introduced, it's almost always (if not always) the answer to the writer admitting either, "I don't know how to fix this situation" or "I have no more ideas for where this story goes next". It's an overused trope. You can see movies like Superman I and Superman II where Richard Donner used it almost identically to fix both movies. Secondary, it's the ultimate story mulligan, and ends up removing tension, because you know someone somewhere can just time travel us to the point before the point and fix whatever was unfixed or refixed, by which point you might as well just be watching Stewie and Brian trying to re-fix their mistake over and over again.

That's fair.

I feel like the MCU overplot was steering us toward a time travel story since IW, but not out of lack of a better idea on how to resolve IW but because they wanted to do a time travel story (for better or worse). Clearly Endgame could have avoided time travel entirely by just not having the entire opening sequence, for example.

The concern of time travel being used again the next time things get "too hard" for the Avengers is a concern I agree with. So far the best counter to that might be the introduction of the notion that their time traveling caused a bunch of messes. The Spidey2 trailer seems to be introducing this. While not quite the same as "the ability to time travel is completely gone now", that might serve as enough of a deterrent to see it used over and over, if even ever again.

[Ragedaug]

That's fair.

I feel like the MCU overplot was steering us toward a time travel story since IW, but not out of lack of a better idea on how to resolve IW but because they wanted to do a time travel story (for better or worse). Clearly Endgame could have avoided time travel entirely by just not having the entire opening sequence, for example.

The concern of time travel being used again the next time things get "too hard" for the Avengers is a concern I agree with. So far the best counter to that might be the introduction of the notion that their time traveling caused a bunch of messes. The Spidey2 trailer seems to be introducing this. While not quite the same as "the ability to time travel is completely gone now", that might serve as enough of a deterrent to see it used over and over, if even ever again.

I'll share your hope.

[Sunseeker]

The concern of time travel being used again the next time things get "too hard" for the Avengers is a concern I agree with. So far the best counter to that might be the introduction of the notion that their time traveling caused a bunch of messes. The Spidey2 trailer seems to be introducing this. While not quite the same as "the ability to time travel is completely gone now", that might serve as enough of a deterrent to see it used over and over, if even ever again.

Honestly, what they need now is for a bad-guy to time travel. Because nothing says "we just opened pandoras box" like using time-travel as a way to put House of M on the big screen.

[Adam Jensen]

There's a couple reasons why I have a problem with time travel when I can more easily suspend disbelief for the other issues you bring up. One is because of how often it is used. When you have a story that's not about time travel, then time travel is introduced, it's almost always (if not always) the answer to the writer admitting either, "I don't know how to fix this situation" or "I have no more ideas for where this story goes next". It's an overused trope. You can see movies like Superman I and Superman II where Richard Donner used it almost identically to fix both movies. Secondary, it's the ultimate story mulligan, and ends up removing tension, because you know someone somewhere can just time travel us to the point before the point and fix whatever was unfixed or refixed, by which point you might as well just be watching Stewie and Brian trying to re-fix their mistake over and over again.

I try writing my own novels, and who knows if I'm any good, haven't even finished, so, that's probably a no. But anyways, if there's one thing I refuse to write, it's time travel. First rule to any magic system I create? No time magic. First rule to any technology or wormhole devices in any sci-fis? No time travel.

I don't mind that Endgame did it, I can wave away the plot holes because the movie was overall an amazing experience and I loved it despite the time travel, but I personally will never use it.

[Very Tired]

I actually found it a touching detail that when Alexander Pierce noticed Tony having some heart problems, he looked towards Tony with genuine concern completely disregarding the briefcase enough for it to be taken even though he was so dead set on it before.

It got me thinking that maybe that that Nazi who was willing to murder millions of people in order to seize control of the entire world... maybe wasn't such a bad guy after all.

[Leih]

It got me thinking that maybe that that Nazi who was willing to murder millions of people in order to seize control of the entire world... maybe wasn't such a bad guy after all.

You are the bad guy. But that doesn't mean you are a bad guy.

[Nerraw]

Honestly, what they need now is for a bad-guy to time travel. Because nothing says "we just opened pandoras box" like using time-travel as a way to put House of M on the big screen.

They already did that with 2014 Thanos, and the universe came two seconds away from flashing out of existence.

[Jessicka]

I was disappointed.

Too much sentimentality, unnecessary link ups with the past. too much looking back at prior movies - it felt at some points like one of those retrospective episodes they do in TV to pan out the season. And too much blatant hand waving off of “Oh Captain Marvel is too busy somewhere else”.

Then the end felt rushed as it tried to cram everyone in because they hadn’t been able to get the screen time before.

Also laid on the pop culture references a bit too thick, more than any other in the franchise; not just in the conversations, but the cinematography too.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly, what they need now is for a bad-guy to time travel. Because nothing says "we just opened pandoras box" like using time-travel as a way to put House of M on the big screen.

Well Thanos and co. didn't seem overly surprised about time-travelling Nova's origin - it was literally the first conclusion they came to, and they [I]didn't require the special suits the Avengers did, and were able to bring their ship and crew with them, without miniaturising it.[/I] They got to that point from 1 bracelet with 1 vial of Pym's particles to bringing their entire army to Earth. Maybe it was something already open to them? They obviously didn't use the Bracelet, because they didn't recall to the pad; they just nuked it from orbit.

I have other questions.

- Why is Peter Parker going back to school 5 years later? [I]Why are his classmates still there?[/I]
- Where did Cap leave Mjolnir? He took it with him, but didn't have it with him when he passed on his shield.
- How did they build the time machine so quickly?
- Hawkeye's happily married with kids; yet he's still so in love with Black Widow that he'll kill himself for the Soulstone?
- How do we go from Infinity stones requiring either some kind of housing or levitation to carry around, to literally bare hands carrying?

There's more, but the more I'm thinking about this, the more annoyed I am at it all.

[Crillam]

the thing I got from watching endgame for the 2nd time is that there are no more infinity stones due to Thanos of 2018 snapped away. With Steve sending back the gems to their proper place, there are bound to be some backlash due to what was told by the ancient one.

You're right. But they might introduce the cosmic cube in the future which he can go after.

[Super Kami Dende]

- Where did Cap leave Mjolnir? He took it with him, but didn't have it with him when he passed on his shield.
- How did they build the time machine so quickly?
- Hawkeye's happily married with kids; yet he's still so in love with Black Widow that he'll kill himself for the Soulstone?

-Thor took Mjolnir out of a different Timeline, When Cap went back to fix them each himself he put Mjolnir back so that timeline wasn't without it.
-They already had the technology from Hank Pym and Tony Stark has been shown to be resourceful with Robots so it would only be a small matter of time building it.
-Hawkeye/Black Widow Soulstone moment wasn't that he wanted to die just for her, he felt he didn't deserve to live since he went all rogue as fuck on people for 5 years. Him and Natasha were also extremely close to the point that his Kids and Wife refer to her as their kids Aunt. It was much more family love than romantic love.

[Crillam]

I have other questions.

- Why is Peter Parker going back to school 5 years later? Why are his classmates still there?
- Where did Cap leave Mjolnir? He took it with him, but didn't have it with him when he passed on his shield.
- How did they build the time machine so quickly?
- Hawkeye's happily married with kids; yet he's still so in love with Black Widow that he'll kill himself for the Soulstone?
- How do we go from Infinity stones requiring either some kind of housing or levitation to carry around, to literally bare hands carrying?

There's more, but the more I'm thinking about this, the more annoyed I am at it all.

-Why is he going back to school? Because he never finished it before he dusted? Easy, some of his classmates also got dusted and came back 5 years later.
-He left it in 2013 in Asgard were he also left the reality stone.
-We're talking about FTL travel, aliens, superheroes, real actual AI, objects that can turn back time, or fast forward, create portals, mind control and so much more, but then complain about the time machine and how fast they built it? Anyway they had the quantum tunnle from Ant-man 2 which more or less kinda worked like a time machine. So they didn't have to start on page one when they built the "real" one.
-Different kinds of love. I love my dad, I love my friends, but not in the same way as I love my gf.
-The only stone they have showed us that is dangerous to carry is the power stone.

[crono14]

There's a couple reasons why I have a problem with time travel when I can more easily suspend disbelief for the other issues you bring up. One is because of how often it is used. When you have a story that's not about time travel, then time travel is introduced, it's almost always (if not always) the answer to the writer admitting either, "I don't know how to fix this situation" or "I have no more ideas for where this story goes next". It's an overused trope. You can see movies like Superman I and Superman II where Richard Donner used it almost identically to fix both movies. Secondary, it's the ultimate story mulligan, and ends up removing tension, because you know someone somewhere can just time travel us to the point before the point and fix whatever was unfixed or refixed, by which point you might as well just be watching Stewie and Brian trying to re-fix their mistake over and over again.

But time travel doesn't work at all like it did in Superman or BTTF. Them doing things in the past does nothing to the future, it only creates problems in other realities. For example now that past Gamora is no longer there, does Ego the Living Planet potentially wipe out life and seed every planet now without Gamora being in that reality anymore? Gamora can no longer be an emotional anchor for Star Lord in that movie and maybe Drax doesn't join the guardians in that reality(who knows). Nebula from that universe is also gone. It just creates problems and possibly potential fun ideas for other movies possibly, though I doubt it ever happens.

Overall, when you start trying to nitpick time travel and most sci-fi/fantasy movies in general, you will end up just not liking the movie anymore. No time travel movie will ever be perfect and it just opens up a can of worms that can never be closed. I enjoyed what they did with the movie, and it's nothing the comic books haven't done for decades with alternate realities, alternate stories where dead characters are alive and all sorts of crazy shit.

[tyrlaan]

Well Thanos and co. didn't seem overly surprised about time-travelling Nova's origin - it was literally the first conclusion they came to, and they didn't require the special suits the Avengers did, and were able to bring their ship and crew with them, without miniaturising it. They got to that point from 1 bracelet with 1 vial of Pym's particles to bringing their entire army to Earth. Maybe it was something already open to them? They obviously didn't use the Bracelet, because they didn't recall to the pad; they just nuked it from orbit.

It is the first conclusion they came to because they didn't jump to conclusions and instead investigated the situation first. I mean, when "their" Nebula is replaying things from her memories that everyone knows didn't happen, you've got 3 conclusions - it's a glitch (insanely unlikely that a glitch would be so precise), it's something from another reality, its something from another point in time.

Considering the resources at Thanos' disposal, its safe to assume (and has been since confirmed by the Russo bros) that he had the single vial of Pym particles reverse engineered to then produce enough to jump the ship etc. He had arguably all the time in the world to do this.

- Hawkeye's happily married with kids; yet he's still so in love with Black Widow that he'll kill himself for the Soulstone?

Why do you think Hawkeye was romantically in love with Natasha?

[Jessicka]

The deal was that you give up what you love. Suicide to avoid doing that, isn’t that; that didn’t make sense to start with. I’m not suggesting they were romantically involved; but Thanos had to give up the only thing he loved by throwing Garona over the edge.

The deal seems unbalanced and inconsistent. The universe should be smarter than that.

[tyrlaan]

The deal was that you give up what you love. Suicide to avoid doing that, isn’t that; that didn’t make sense to start with. I’m not suggesting they were romantically involved; but Thanos had to give up the only thing he loved by throwing Garona over the edge.

The deal seems unbalanced and inconsistent. The universe should be smarter than that.

No the deal was a soul for the soul stone.

[PrimiOne]

I'm gonna totally ignore the "coherence" discussion because after decades of comics I'm more interested in the awe factor than the "coherence" factor. It didn't broke the film for me...I wasn't thinking "Given that the time travel restriction was Pynk particles and Hank Pym is here again...why dont they....<insert one million solutions>".

So,let get to the point(s).

Puny writters forgot to put Hulk into the film!!!!! No,really,there's Banner but for 2 hours and 10 minutes there's absolutely no reason to be on Hulk state. Hulk (as in: Banner could not have done that) do the un-snapping and holds the plaform so Rocket and Rhodes don't get crushed. Period.There's not a single slap to a single wanderer Chi-Tauri.Nothing.Niet.Nada....

This is a clear case of Hulkism and I wanna say that gamma irradiated people lives matters!!.

So we got...

Tony vs Thanos
Double Wield Thor vs Thanos
"Worthy" Steve vs Thanos
Wanda vs Thanos (btw they should just let her do this thing because it's clear that Wanda >> Thanos allthough Thanos + Battleship > Wanda).
Carol vs Thanos
...

I fully understand why there's not a Hawkeye -Thanos direct confrontation but...come on....

If a time traveller (pun intended) would have said to me 2 years ago that Natasha dies I would have bet my house and car ( and lose them) that it would be the emotional trigger to see a gamma spilling Hulk crashing half of the continental plate with Thanos ass....and they don't so the opportunity to see a World War Hulk is gone.

I just came here to ask ...WHY??why oh Why in the name of everything that is good and true in the multiverse did they choose not to do Hulk?

And now that I have spiut it out another random thoughts:

1. Hail Hydra. Totally. For all the people who have spent 3 years outraged this should be funny.......ooor not?. I loved it btw.
2. This is not E616.This is E199999 but I don't think there's another single universe where Carol is more full of herself. This is not confidence,reaffirmation and strong presence...this is plain bragging.
3. Gamora the daughter of Thanos ,the most dangerous woman in the galaxy turned into a soft kitten for the movies and then the comics followed the movies...and then the comics reversed the situation with the Black Vortex...and then the comics reversed the reverse of the Comics....and then the movies reverse the situation and comes back to an edgy 2014 Gamora. I'm getting dizzy here,no really....she does not deserver this shit ( if Adam could see you....)
4.Tony's goodbye lacked emotion. I didn't liked it. The Russo's (btw) filmed an scene where ,after dying, Tony goes to a dimension where he finds an adult Morgan Stark (played by Katherine Langford if you were asking...wasn't this girl in the casting?) that forgives him and explains she understand why he left to save the universe. That scene was cut because the pre-screenings indicated people couldn't understand what was happening but I really think Tony's goodbye just don't work without it ( maybe in the Bluray).
5. Who's gonna paint some color in the poor Vision? Because the Disney+ series is coming and is coming in a few months.
6. Steve's goodbye worked. Very good. The life he deserve but I can't see if he gets back to 1970 (the moment he meets Carter) or 1945 because old Steve could be 60 years of 85...I don't know.
...
and many other ideas but that's enough endgaming for today.

[tyrlaan]

6. Steve's goodbye worked. Very good. The life he deserve but I can't see if he gets back to 1970 (the moment he meets Carter) or 1945 because old Steve could be 60 years of 85...I don't know.

Definitely the latter because as the pan into the house to show the two dancing, you see cars that are from the 40s, not the 70s.

[Jessicka]

No the deal was a soul for the soul stone.

I suggest you watch Infinity War again, I mean they made a big enough deal of Thanos ‘loving nothing’. Either way, if you want to keep up the mental gymnastics, Hawkeye did not volunteer the Soul.

- - - Updated - - -

2. This is not E616.This is E199999 but I don't think there's another single universe where Carol is more full of herself. This is not confidence,reaffirmation and strong presence...this is plain bragging.

This is what annoyed you about Carol, and not the turning her into a ‘our princess is in another castle’ meme?

[Leih]

This is what annoyed you about Carol, and not the turning her into a ‘our princess is in another castle’ meme?

I mean people would have whined if:

1) she wasn't there at all
2) she was there the whole time and yet didn't contribute for [insert excuse]
3) she was there the whole time and kicked ass, for stealing the show.

They couldn't really win because of how divisive the character has been so far. I thought what they did in the end was probably the best of a shitty situation.

Bear in mind also Endgame was filmed before Captain Marvel.