Avengers: Endgame - Review Thread (Spoilers!)

-The beginning. The shift from "damn, they're starting fast" to Thanos having already destroyed the stones, to "five years later", the opening offered a lot of surprises real quick and changed what I was expecting

-The first act in general. I love the tone and slow pace; the fact the filmmakers were really willing to really spend time dealing with mourning and loss

-Tony's family. It was nicely rendered and added a nice wrinkle to his character

-The time travel stuff was a lot of fun. Some very creative scenes and generally this stuff was really entertaining

-Korg is still wonderful

-"That's America's ass"

-the reversal of the elevator fight from Winter Soldier. Fun stuff.

-"I could do this all da-" "I know, I know"

-the fan-service was really well-done and satisfying

-the Nebula twist that got Thanos involved again was neat and made for some good drama. Having Nebula have to destroy her old self is a nice step in her arc

-Iron Man, Cap, and Thor throwing down with Thanos was awesome and could have been the climax to the whole movie

-Cap wielding Thor's hammer got me stupidly excited

-that moment of everyone coming out of the portals was pretty cool

-"I am Iron Man". Nice touch. Tony went out in style.

-basically every character gets at least one moment to shine. The main cast all get substantial dramatic beats and in general everyone gets to do something fun in the action scenes

-Gamora essentially having two movies of character development wiped away really bothers me. This is maybe a necessity of the story, but given that so much of what I love about GOTG Vol. 2 is rooted in character building and development, this change does not sit right with me.

-funny Thor was played up a bit too much. There was some good here, but the filmmakers also bulldoze some genuine drama with Thor in favour of some cheap laughs, which is lame and disappointing

-Tony's scene with his father sort of landed with a hollow thud for me. Not really "bad", but just kind of empty. I wish this relationship was trimmed.

-The big battle at the end. There's definitely some fun stuff here, but we really didn't need ANOTHER giant battle after Infinity War. Thor, Cap, and Iron Man wailing on Thanos was enough.

-there's sort of a Return of the King thing going on with the ending, and I don't think it works as well. It both goes on for too long but also not long enough. I definitely prefer the cleanness of Infinity War's ending.

-I like Tony's exit, but I was less fond of Steve's. I don't know, going back to be with Peggy definitely makes sense, but it felt clunky in execution. Not sure Steve dancing with Peggy is really the image to close out this chapter of the MCU, but, whatever.

Does this mean half of Peter Parker's friends are in their 20s now? This is going to lead to a whole lot of weird age dynamics. Is Far From Home set after this?

Did the disappeared re-appear right where they were they were when they first left? Like, if they were on a busy highway when they left did they re-appear right there five years later only to get run over?

Hawkeye is statistically incredibly unlucky to have four family members all die. You'd think at least one of them would be among the half that lived.

Did they really bother getting Robert Redford out of retirement over that two-minute scene?

So even thunder gods need to watch their calories?

Was that Black Widow solo movie just announced to throw people off the trail?

Professor Hulk not kicking ass. Seriously, it didn't really happen, did it? You figure with his strength combined with intelligence, he would be able to do some spectacular stuff, but we didn't see him do much of anything in that last battle. Pretty disappointing, especially after his ass got beat down in IW. I figured that redemption would be coming. Did he fight Thanos at all during the battle? I don't recall him having done so, but I would have liked to have seen a "rematch". I would actually say the Hulk was the most disappointing part of the movie for me, and ultimately, an overall disappointment in these two movies as a whole.

The girl power moment felt too over-the-top and forced. It was fine in Infinity War with them backing up Scarlett Witch, but in this? It went way overboard. If you want to push for equality, I'd rather just have seen them all working well together in different moments, instead of bizarrely having all our main heroines just happening to show up in the same exact area at the exact same time. Just felt weird and eye-rolly. Again, just very fan-servicey, but I guess for the ladies?

Doctor Strange. Wanted to see him do more. That's all really. His moment(s) in IW was great. Didn't feel like he got to shine much, especially for being the one ultimately responsible for the success of all this.

Hawkeye and Black Widow scene seemed to go on too long. I would have liked that she zapped him, and that was it. She jumps off. It made sense that she would be sacrificing herself when he's the one with the family. It didn't need to be dragged out with the back and forth, back and forth.

I loved that Cap ended up with Carter in the end. I figured that was going to happen, but yeah, not sure I liked old-man Rogers just chilling there at the end. Visuals looked amazing (make-up? CGI? Both?), but felt off. I was kinda hoping he was just going to say his goodbyes and explain to them that he wouldn't be coming back, and they'd be resistant at first, but ultimately would understand. THEN we could see him wind up with her back in the past. Didn't think him being old was totally necessary. Knight one of em as the new Captain America, then go on your way through the time vortex. Done.

Anyone else discuss the alternate timelines thing? That seemed to be a main aspect of the story discussed between Banner and the Ancient One, that as long as he brought the stones back to the exact moment they removed them, all would be well. But who cares if they restored the stones where they were at the time? This would all hinder on it not really affecting anything else that really happened at those times, but everything that happened in this movie would have resulted in a BUNCH of different alternate timelines. The discovery of future/past Nebula, Gamora's new memories/development, Thanos bringing his army and children to the future, dying before enacting any of his original, eventual plans that lead to the snap to begin with, Loki teleporting out, Thor's hammer, etc etc.

Unless I missed something and maybe Tony's snap did more than just dust them away, but restore them all nicely in their own timelines? *shrugs*

I think it was Banner later on saying they needed to get the stones all back to make sure all the timelines are restored. It definitely implied they were trying to keep the one timeline intact and prevent alternate timelines.

But otherwise that's acceptable. Not a big deal, but I would definitely like to see this play into future stories someday. The alternate timelines, where we MAY see now these alternate reality characters show up somehow (preferably much later in the new sets of movies). Unless it was just sloppy writing and they completely forget about it. But that could potentially be a way to bring back Tony or Steve way down the line for a cameo.

Because think about that... you now have an alternate universe where Thanos and his children have completely disappeared and Quill never meets Gamora or (possibly) the other Guardians. And if they do follow these possibilities in the stories one day, it could still leave potential for Adam Warlock to get the stones himself.

Now there's a chance maybe we WILL see some other characters or him just seeing some older actors that can talk about how they're older now and out of highschool, while they're all still having to go.

The only thing that bugged me was them just going to class as normal. How much time had passed at the point that we saw that? You'd think schools would be closed down for a bit as they now have to situate having all these new students coming back. In the movie it just looked like a normal school day.

While Marvel's track record of making TV has been kind of shit, I would be interested in seeing them make a The Leftovers type TV show about what society was going through after "the snap" and how the newly returned re-acclimated to society.