Surviving Endgame

One and only warning: Spoilers ahead. Still here? Good.

21 days after the Snappening, the surviving Avengers meet a new character, Captain Marvel. Offscreen, they explain everything, then she’s off to rescue Tony Stark. She brings him home, along with Nebula. Captain America wants to confront Thanos, Tony wants nothing to do with this plan, fearing it might just make things worse. Still, most of the Avengers take off and confront Thanos. They learn he has destroyed the Infinity Stones, and while I think many of us longtime fans feared Captain Marvel would steal the spotlight and get the kill shot, she doesn’t. Thor goes for the head. This isn’t what I expected. I don’t think it’s what anybody was expecting. But it was good.

Is it possible to love a movie and hate it? That’s how I feel about this movie. Honestly, for a lot of the same reasons I love and hate the movie Logan, a film that, to date, I insist is the best superhero movie and should have gotten an Oscar nod for best picture. Endgame isn’t quite that good, but it broke my heart the way Logan did, and then some. Then it disrespected one of the greatest heroes ever created. It has logic problems, and plot holes, but remains a great final chapter for at least two of the actors who have decided not to re-up their contracts. It also has gaps in the story with details I would like to have seen. And yet I love the movie despite its flaws.

The opening was fine. I expected a bigger battle with Thanos. I had thought they would lose the initial battle and retreat to the past out of desperation and despair. But they won. But five years into the future, while the planet has begun to heal, humanity hasn’t. People are still suffering. Cities are now derelicts. There’s a post-apocalyptic feel as a rat accidentally steps on the correct button that ejects Ant-Man from the quantum realm. After a desperate search for his daughter, which ended successfully, he makes a mad dash for the Avengers HQ. There he presents an idea for time travel, through the quantum realm, as a means to bring everyone back.

The remaining Avengers try to recruit Iron Man, but Tony has moved on, married Pepper Potts, and had a kid. The kid is absolutely adorable. He doesn’t want to risk losing his family. So they go to Bruce Banner who has become, “Professor Hulk.” This was an awesome development, but that change happened off screen. They opt to tell us when this is a change I had hoped to see. We knew it was coming, but the way this was executed was a little disappointing.

While Hulk fails to make the time travel work, Tony’s OCD kicks in and he sets about creating a mechanism for navigating the quantum realm safely. He the. Shows up at HQ with his own design and puts forward his own plan, which everyone agrees to. They would divide into teams, each team responsible for getting one stone. Then they would get out before damaging the timeline.

At about the same time, Rocket Racoon and Hulk retrieve Thor, who has established the small fishing

kingdom of New Asgard, then, in his inability to heal from his encounters with Thanos, has retreated to life as a drunken frat boy, defending his flap mates from trolls on Fortnight. He’s not in a good place, and while elements of the Internet are furious about how Thor was portrayed here, I am not. Of all the characters, he has suffered the most. Losing his mother, then his father, then his closest friends at the hands of his sister, then that sister, then his kingdom, then half of the survivors of Asgard, then half of those half being snapped away. Of course, he is going to be broken. To pretend anyone would just weather that much storm is ridiculous. Still, Thor serves as a good chunk of the film’s much-needed comedy relief. He is reluctant to return to the Avengers until he’s promised beer.

Finally, Black Widow has to find Hawkeye, who now goes by the name Ronin. Ronin is dealing with his pain by killing the people that should have died in the Snap but didn’t. Criminals, drug dealers, warlords. Nat is able to convince him to come home.

With the team together, they are each given their assignments. Here is another point I have an issue with. Nebula’s sister, Gamora was sacrificed in the last film to obtain the Soul Stone. Nebula knew what it would take for Nat and Clint to succeed, and didn’t warn them. It seems to me that if she had, an unnecessary tragedy could have been avoided later in the film, as it seems that the Avengers could have worked out a means to deal with that. Still, contracts are up, so…

At any rate, each team going after their stones. Cap goes after the mind stone, and ultimately succeeded, Hulk had a long heart to heart about the situation with the Ancient One and convinces her to lend them the time stone with a promise to bring it right back. But Stark and Ant-Man run into trouble procuring the space stone, and accidentally aid in Loki re-acquiring it, and escaping from the end of the first film. Leading me to wonder, how will this impact the timeline? Is Loki alive? Or is this a closed loop that will eventually lead Loki to his fate at the beginning of Infinity War regardless?

Still, Cap and Tony realize they’ve made a mess and can’t fix it. The solution, then, is to travel further back in time to a location where the space stone and more Pym particles (basically the fuel for their suits) will be in the same place. Cap squires the particles, while Tony acquires the Tesseract, which houses the space stone, and has a heartwarming chat with his father on the way out. Space stone in hand, Tony and Cap return to the not too distant future.

War Machines and Nebula then steal the Power Stone right out from underneath Peter Quill. But then Nebula somehow accidentally connects with her past self, which alerts Thanos to what they are doing. Another reason I would like to have had Thanos win the initial encounter at the beginning of the movie, and not destroy the stones is that seeing him watch the stones disappear from the gauntlet one by one would have been a lot less convoluted. Seeing him spring into action to stop these time heists, and adding a chase element to the story would have been fun too. I’m not sure that alerting past Thanos this way was the best way to go. Nevertheless, Thanos manages to swap out past Nebula for Present Nebula, and now Nebula serves as a saboteur and spy. Meanwhile, present Nebula tries to appeal to Gamora’s past self, who has yet to go on her hero's journey.

Now comes the first part I hate. Clint and Nat arrive at the site of the Soul Stone. Long story short, Nat sacrifices herself for the Soul Stone. Yes, I cried. Black Widow is one of my favorite characters, and my wife’s as well. This was especially hard for Becky. As both of us are infertile, we both identified and sympathized with Nat. We are both grateful to Joss Whedon and Marvel for addressing this difficult issue in Age of Ultron. I know they took flack for it, but we appreciated the representation. But more than that, Nat was an all-around badass. The template for how to do strong female characters right. She was a great and powerful fighter who used finesse, and agility to beat larger, stronger opponents. She had an air of mystery about her, a past she was trying to atone for. But more than that, she genuinely cared about her friends, ultimately sacrificing herself for them.

Then there’s Thor. Thor is a mess and almost compromises the mission. Again, this portrayal of Thor is taking the heat. They don’t like seeing Thor so broken. While Rocket procures the reality stone, Thor has to confide in his mother. I want to defend this. There are times in even the strongest men’s lives that they hit a low point. Their mother is often the first person they turn to. Freya offers Thor some much needed motherly wisdom, and its enough to get his head back in the game. He summons Mjolnir, his hammer which is destroyed in present time, then leaves with Rocket, back to the future.

At any rate, everyone gathers the stones they were sent to find and re-emerges into the present. Iron-Man fashions his own Infinity Gauntlet, which Hulk uses to Snap the dead back into existence, but not without a cost. The Snap severely damages Hulk’s arm. Meanwhile, past Nebula uses the time portal to being past Thanos into the present, where he attacks the Avengers. There’s a massive fight between good and evil. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America try to fend off Thanos. At one point, Captain America manages to get ahold of Mjolnir and ends the debate over whether or not he could have lifted the hammer during Age of Ultron. He’s worthy. What’s especially fun is that Cap gets some hefty time with it too. It's not just a one and done stunt. Thor fights with his new weapon, Stormbreaker, while Cap continues the battle with Mjolnir. It’s absolutely awesome, and I loved every second of it.

As the battle progresses, Dr. Strange re-emerges on the scene, alongside an army made of previously

dusted super-heroes. Spider-Man is reunited with Iron man in a touching moment. The battle is among the biggest we’ve ever seen in a Marvel film. Thanos soon realizes he’s losing and orders his ship to fire on the battlefield, even his own army. Then Captain Marvel shows up in a pretty cringy moment and single-handedly destroys his ship. We all know I think Captain Marvel is OP. I don’t think she’s an interesting character at all. I had thought this moment was going to ruin what would have otherwise been a decent film, but aside from leading to another cringy A-Force moment where Marvel Studios tries to prove that they haven’t been ignoring female superheroes, but having all the female heroes appear on screen together… something they shouldn’t have felt the need to do because real fans already know they’ve been diverse from the beginning… Captain Marvel only really gets that one big moment. After getting ahold of the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos kicks her trash into kingdom come with the Power Stone. Ultimately, it's Iron Man who manages to get the Infinity Stones away from Thanos, and snaps killing himself but dusting Thanos and his army in the process.

The film ends on a somber note. A funeral for Tony… though they appear to have forgotten that Nat died as well… thus undoing all the goodwill they tried to build up with the Radical Authoritarian Identarian Left with their cringy A-Force moment… At any rate, the remaining Avengers then decide to return all the Infinity Stones to their timelines, as well as Mjolnir. Captain America is chosen for the task but doesn’t come back. Instead, they find an old man sitting on a bench nearby. We then learn that Cap stayed behind, married, and lived his life. He passes the shield on to Falcon.

The passing of the shield to Falcon gives Disney the chance to re-introduce the fan-panned Captain Falcon. Maybe this time it will work, but I doubt it. If Captain Marvel’s controversial solo film is any indication, the long loathed SJW Marvel, which is less about superhero antics, and more about pushing Radical Leftist Identarian ideology is about to hit the films. This ending bothers me for that reason.

With that said, Anthony Mackie’s Falcon has been fairly apolitical in the films, and I hope he remains so. If he does, then I welcome this change. Should he follow in the footsteps of his Radical nutty Leftist comic counterpart, count me out. Captain Marvel fans love to remind people like me that Captain Marvel wasn’t made for me, and I agree. But then they shouldn’t call me names for pointing out exactly that and taking my business elsewhere.

Endgame was good but telegraphs the intent to follow the comics into Radical Leftist Identarian politics, a direction I cannot follow. At the same time, they still have only one mandate: Tell good stories. If they do, they can count on my money and support. If they don’t, I will take my business elsewhere.

I’m at a point that I have had it with the backlash against fan backlash. The attitude that creatives have that they are entitled to our money and that we should sit down and shut up when they move in directions that we don’t like, some even going so far as to use attacks on Fandoms as a means to attack capitalism and Free Markets, because, “fans act entitled because they feel like they should get something for their investments,” -1. As if socialist art is art made in freedom. The premise is entirely dumb. In Capitalism, if we don’t like your art, we won’t buy it. In socialism, if the government doesn’t like your art, you die. Socialism won’t save you from criticism. Not for Marvel, not for Game of Thrones or any other product that is failing their fans right now…. And there are a lot. Because of this, I no longer call myself a fan of anything. I am a customer, and you will please me, or I will take my business elsewhere. You are not entitled to my money, and if you want it, making me happy or go to hell. Sure I’m not entitled to the ending I want, but in kind, you’re not entitled to my money, period.

Art enjoys a symbiotic relationship between the creator and the sponsor. The sponsor takes many forms, but ultimately is an end user of sorts. If that end user doesn’t like what they are getting, they can and will pull their support. And again, that’s the Capitalist version. The Socialist version will end up with the creative, and their entire family, in an unmarked, shallow grave, and the entire record of their existence being erased from the record. Either way, there’s no escaping critics.

Getting off my soapbox, I wouldn’t say that Endgame was a bad film, it's not. But Captain Marvel was, and Marvel is telegraphing a future that might be as cringy, and ridiculous as the comics are now. Naturally, sales will eventually decline. Even after the success of the Captain Marvel movie, her comic book was recently canceled… again. But it looks like Marvel Studios is going to have to learn the same lesson that their comic book counterparts have had to learn, and that’s unfortunate.  

Captain America’s choice to stay in the past was also severely out of character. Cap has always been about personal sacrifice for the greater good, and duty. The idea that he would shirk such responsibility is unfathomable. I believe it would have been a more satisfying ending to have Cap fall in battle and let Iron Man retire. For me, this movie is enjoyable right up to the point where Iron Man passes away. After that, it starts to fall apart, leading to an end that is disappointing, and as a long-time customer of the comics, troubling.

But then there’s one more cringy slight against the classic characters. King Thor of New Asgard

abdicates to Valkyrie because of course he does. Maybe to try and make up for forgetting to give Nat a funeral? Who knows? At the same time, I am looking forward to As-Guardians of the Galaxy. Thor belongs with the Guardians. Tonally, they’re a much better fit for Hemsworth’s hilarious take on the character.

Because they forgot that Nat died because Cap’s behavior was so out of character and because they telegraphed a foray into SJW political propaganda, I have to doc this movie points. What could have easily been a 4 or 4.5-star film is getting a 3.5 from me.

3.5/5

1- https://youtu.be/gNbQLLSoD-E

A note on the images used. These were randomly selected from a google search. I don't know whose they are but will happily provide attribution if someone can tell me who to attribute to.