Avengers: Endgame Review

Well, after three viewings, I think I'm finally ready to share my thoughts on Avengers: Endgame.

This has got to be the most secretive film in any franchise that's ever existed. I can't think of one other movie where the directors withheld something as basic as its title for nine months and then wrote a public letter to fans right before its release asking them not to spoil it. I'm kind of surprised the Russo brothers didn't borrow a page from Alfred Hitchcock and bar people from entering the theaters once the showings began while they were at it.

One reason for all this secrecy could be that the MCU is one of the few adapted film franchises that doesn't directly follow its source material, so its plots actually CAN be spoiled, and also because Endgame throws so many narrative curveballs that no one could have predicted. Seriously, the first ten minutes alone had me at a loss. So with that said, I'm going to try to avoid spoilers.

First of all, I have to admit that I liked Endgame slightly less than Infinity War. It's a lot more emotional and exhilarating, but its overall plot isn't as solid. Four of the core Avengers go through major changes off camera early in the film, but only two of those changes really serve any purpose to the story beyond a visual gag. Thanos is far less complex this time around, and this movie (while it's probably earned the right to) leans way more on the previous MCU films in order to tell its story than Infinity War did.

It actually took all three of my viewings to decide that I really was happy with Endgame. I saw Infinity War five times in theaters because I loved it so much the first time that I wanted to keep seeing it over and over again. And that movie killed my favorite character before the title even came up.

And then of course, there's the time travel aspect of Endgame.

I don't think that's a spoiler for anyone. Set photos hinting at it were leaked a year ago around the same time that Infinity War first came out. As the internet guessed from those photos, the Avengers' plan in Endgame is to go back to several points in the past, including to New York City at the time of Loki's Chitauri invasion, and collect the Infinity Stones so they can undo Thanos's snap with their own Infinity Gauntlet. We get some exposition about how time travel works in this universe, and I think the gist is that changing your past just creates alternate branching timelines instead of changing your future. At least I think that's what I think.

To paraphrase critic Greg Stevens from the Pop Arena YouTube channel, the key to writing good time travel is to not write time travel. More often than not, it just creates plotholes and raises billions of hopeless questions about how it works. The Russos have come forward and addressed a few questions concerning this aspect of the plot (I know, right? They're actually answering questions about Endgame now!), but the fact that any explanation has to be given outside of the film itself shows that there's a flaw in its storytelling.

And for me, this was a huge flaw. I didn't get the least bit emotional the first time I saw Endgame. By my third viewing though, I'd made enough peace with the film's troublesome elements that I could finally appreciate the heartfelt ones. I just hope that wasn't Marvel's plan to squeeze more ticket sales out of anyone.

At the end of the day, I think the best way to approach superhero movies like the MCU is perhaps to think of them as modern-day fairy tales. They're fantastical stories aimed mainly at younger people that teach lessons and have a certain emotional impact, and their logic is kind of beside the point. People today ask why the townsfolk in Beauty and the Beast never wondered what happened to the prince after he became cursed or why Sleeping Beauty's parents didn't put her under constant surveillance on the day of her sixteenth birthday, but the people who first read those stories didn't question those things. The point of those stories was what happened and what the characters did to overcome it, not the how or why, and they're still famous classics to this day. Taking time out of the plot to address questions like that might make those stories more cohesive, but I doubt it would really make them better.

Overall, Avengers Endgame is a very emotionally satisfying conclusion to the MCU's first major story arc, but to quote Sarah Connor, "God, you can go crazy thinking about all this."

Also, if you're worried about Captain Marvel ruining the movie, relax. The Russos didn't go for the head with that blow either.

One Strange Scene

As the final clock winds down to Avengers: Endgame, I want to make a last-minute prediction or two on this blog. I don't even know if they're so much predictions for Endgame as much as predictions for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general. That's because I originally assumed them to be predictions for last year's Avengers: Infinity War, and they ended up never factoring into that movie.

My predictions all center around the scene in Thor: Ragnarok where Thor meets Doctor Strange in New York. The setup for this scene is that Thor just exposed his brother Loki as an imposter who's been posing as their father Odin on Asgard for the last four years, and now he's forcing Loki to bring him to the real Odin on Earth. They can't find him in New York, the place where Loki imprisoned him, and then Doctor Strange shows up and takes them to his Sanctum to question what they're doing on Earth. After some comical banter and slapstick, he sends them to Odin in Norway.

I've had a complicated relationship with Ragnarok ever since it came out, but the one aspect of it that I've actually argued about is this scene. Forget about the Avengers crossovers just for a second; in the context of the single movie Thor: Ragnarok, this scene is completely pointless. It brings the pacing to a halt, nothing that Thor and Doctor Strange talk about comes into play later in the plot, and including Doctor Strange in this story at all just raises questions about why he didn't help to fight the villain when she first showed up on Earth. You could easily rewrite the script to just have Loki know where Odin is and take Thor straight to Norway himself.

What's more, Strange doesn't cross paths with Thor or Loki in Infinity War, so this scene doesn't even work as a setup for future MCU films.

At least not yet.

Strange was one of the characters who died from Thanos snapping his fingers at the end of Infinity War. Since the majority of Endgame's plot will most likely center around the Avengers trying to undo that snap, I suspect that Strange will make a comeback somewhere in the second half of the film. It's also been speculated that Loki, who appeared to die in a more traditional way in Infinity War, will also come back. Perhaps the scene in Ragnarok was a means of introducing him and Thor to Strange in order to set up a two- or three-man teamup between them in Endgame.

Loki and Strange working together especially would be interesting, since having Loki use his powers for good in alliance with someone who once dismissed him as a threat for having them would show all the more how much he's come full circle. In turn, it could show growth on Strange's part by having him acknowledge that a fellow magic user he once dismissed from Earth can have some use if enough need arises for it. Strange's mastery of the Time Stone could also come into play and turn out to be the force behind some of the bizarre circumstances of Loki's (again, we'll say "alleged") death in Infinity War.

If that doesn't happen in Endgame, then there could still be a chance of something along those lines occurring in Phase Four of the MCU. Tom Hiddleston's contract with Marvel Studios is expiring after Endgame, but Chris Hemsworth has said on multiple occasions that he'd be interested in reprising his role as Thor afterwards if possible. Maybe this is a well-disguised spoiler being leaked about Thor's status at the end of Endgame, or maybe it isn't. What we do know is that a Doctor Strange sequel is in the works for Phase Four, so if Hemsworth does end up coming back for that phase, there's a real chance that we might get a Strange-Thor team up after all.

That would make a lot of sense, since their predecessors Odin and the Ancient One who once oversaw the universe have effectively passed on from it. I feel like Thor meeting Doctor Strange in Ragnarok is so beside the point for that movie that it HAS to serve as a setup for something bigger, maybe as a preview of how the future Allfather and Ancient One will interact when protecting the universe post-Endgame.

It's hard to say how far ahead Marvel Studios plans their MCU movies anymore. Given their history with the Infinity Saga though, I'm willing to believe that they have enough foresight to plant seeds five or six movies in advance.

Or maybe that scene in Ragnarok was just an excuse to put more pratfalls in the movie and the studio's still looking for a sequel where they can shoehorn in justification for it. Neither one would surprise me.