** SPOILERS ** Avengers Endgame

Disappointment on two particulars. I came out of Infinity War confident of two things I'd picked up on.

• When Strange told Stark "This was the only way," it signaled that he had something up his sleeve. OK, he did, but it wasn't much, was it? The stone Strange had was a the time stone, so he could have had some really cool time trick going on, but it was just a way of signalling Swinton that she should give it away too. A bit anti-climactic. That's the lesser of the two.
• Loki pulled such an obvious and lame double cross against Thanos, one that couldn't possibly have worked, that it had to be a cover or the start of something bigger and more subtle. When has Loki ever pulled something and not been playing two or three layers deep? Then when he got the teseract and escaped I thought "Aha, here we go". And then nothing! WHT? Are you telling me that Loki actually died in Infinity War after actually pulling a double cross that was actually so completely lame? Nothing more up his sleeve? Impossible!

In China, there's no post credits scene (unlike scene showing the removal of the shrapnel in Tony's chest) from Iron Man 3.

Hmm. In the US, the shrapnel romoval was before the credits, and not even the last thing before. For End Game there was no stinger except the sound of someone happering on metal with a datk screen. The meaning is not clear, or at least it is not simultaneously obvious and clear. To me is seemed to be a reference to Tony in the cave where it all began.

It is Aamazing how an appeal to quantum mechanics can explain anything including time travel. And if Captain America relived the rest of his life differently wouldn't that confuse the time lines and violate all the time-travel rules that all the super-heroes vowed not to do.

aerostadt said:

It is Aamazing how an appeal to quantum mechanics can explain anything including time travel. And if Captain America relived the rest of his life differently wouldn't that confuse the time lines and violate all the time-travel rules that all the super-heroes vowed not to do.

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You would think it would. Now, if he didn't sire any children, didn't alter Peggy's work, didn't save anybody that should have died, Didn't advise anybody to alter their direction in life, then maybe the timeline would not be affected. But, as CA, could he really hold back from righting injustices that he encountered during a long life? I doubt it, meaning it was a "happy" ending, but not a satisfying one from a physics perspective.

My daughter pointed this out to me. Peggy Carter married and had children.

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Peggy_Carter's_Husband

Just saw it. I cried all through it. These were more than just movies to me. As a kid, I collected comic books. I stopped around 1979, and got back into it in 1986. I finally quit and got rid of all my comics when I got married, in 2002.

Giving up my comic collection was a great loss, but when Iron Man came out in 2008, it was like my heroes were reborn. And then when I saw the first Avengers, I couldn't believe the thrill I got seeing Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America all together on the screen. With each movie having its own star, how do you get them all together to share the spotlight?

But they did it. And then it just became a known quantity in like that there was going to be an Avengers-related movie every year.

This year, the thrill of seeing those first characters for the first time on the big screen, ended. Stan Lee is dead, and the rebirth of my childhood heroes is now behind me.

I will continue to enjoy Marvel's movies, but I left a piece of myself in the theater today.

I don't really care if it had plot holes or discontinuity or whatever. It was a beautiful tribute to Stan, the actors, and the audience. Well done.

aerostadt said:

My daughter pointed this out to me. Peggy Carter married and had children.

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Peggy_Carter's_Husband

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Well that does it! Now I'm all confused about this whole time travel thingy, just when I thought I had it all figured out....

Bat-mite said:

Just saw it. I cried all through it. These were more than just movies to me. As a kid, I collected comic books. I stopped around 1979, and got back into it in 1986. I finally quit and got rid of all my comics when I got married, in 2002.

Giving up my comic collection was a great loss, but when Iron Man came out in 2008, it was like my heroes were reborn. And then when I saw the first Avengers, I couldn't believe the thrill I got seeing Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America all together on the screen. With each movie having its own star, how do you get them all together to share the spotlight?

But they did it. And then it just became a known quantity in like that there was going to be an Avengers-related movie every year.

This year, the thrill of seeing those first characters for the first time on the big screen, ended. Stan Lee is dead, and the rebirth of my childhood heroes is now behind me.

I will continue to enjoy Marvel's movies, but I left a piece of myself in the theater today.

I don't really care if it had plot holes or discontinuity or whatever. It was a beautiful tribute to Stan, the actors, and the audience. Well done.

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I saved a few...

jqavins said:

Are you telling me that Loki actually died in Infinity War after actually pulling a double cross that was actually so completely lame?

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Yup! It was the completion of his redemption arc and perhaps the single genuine thing he did. No escape plan, no tricks, just risking his most important value (his own skin) for his people and the rest of the galaxy.

This ending really surprised me.

First, Thanos is supposed to yell, "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT?!?!"

Nytrunner said:

Yup! It was the completion of his redemption arc and perhaps the single genuine thing he did. No escape plan, no tricks, just risking his most important value (his own skin) for his people and the rest of the galaxy.

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Not buying it. Because he didn't risk his own skin, he threw it away on the most lameass ploy imaginable. A good but risky plan is redemptive even if it fails. Walking up th Thanos, spitting in his eye, and saying "OK, kill me now" isn't.

jqavins said:

Not buying it. Because he didn't risk his own skin, he threw it away on the most lameass ploy imaginable. A good but risky plan is redemptive even if it fails. Walking up th Thanos, spitting in his eye, and saying "OK, kill me now" isn't.

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I'm not saying it was a good plan, just genuine

Bat-mite said:

Just saw it. I cried all through it. These were more than just movies to me. As a kid, I collected comic books. I stopped around 1979, and got back into it in 1986. I finally quit and got rid of all my comics when I got married, in 2002.

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I was also a big comic fan growing up, mostly Marvel stuff from c.1984-1998. These were also more than "just movies" to me. They were a shortcut to the same characters and stories I once enjoyed in print growing up, but in a more efficient and quickly-digestible movie form. I watched all 22 MCU movies at least twice and invested myself heavily in the nuances of plot and character development. Endgame made me well up a little a few times each time I saw it. It was a really rewarding payoff to faithfully following this crazy MCU universe that started so humbly with "Iron Man" back in 2008.

Nytrunner said:

I'm not saying it was a good plan, just genuine

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I'm just saying that Loki is utterly incapable of such a bad plan. Or should have been, if some mortal with a typewriter hadn't reallly effed up.

Bat-Mite amd Muddymoose, you ralk as if it's all over. No, Phase 3 is over. An 11 year story arc, Phases 1, 2 & 3, is over. Phase 4 is comimg, starting in just two months. Several more MCU movies have been announced, and dates only for a bunch more.

jqavins said:

I'm just saying that Loki is utterly incapable of such a bad plan

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Apparently not

jqavins said:

Bat-Mite amd Muddymoose, you ralk as if it's all over. No, Phase 3 is over. An 11 year story arc, Phases 1, 2 & 3, is over. Phase 4 is comimg, starting in just two months. Several more MCU movies have been announced, and dates only for a bunch more.

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Yep I'm aware this isn't "the end" but it was a rewarding finale for the first major story arc. Moving onward I'm really looking forward to what they do with Thor and the Guardians, Dr. Strange, and everyone else that is still active. It'll be interesting to see if they repeat the same basic build-up with a new super-villain over the next ten years (Dr. Doom, Annihilus, etc.) or go in a completely new direction.

The new "Spider-Man: Far From Home" trailer has dialogue saying "the Snap opened a rift in the multiverse" so unless Mysterio is full of crap (possible) that opens up some intriguing (if potentially messy) story possibilities.

jqavins said:

Bat-Mite amd Muddymoose, you ralk as if it's all over. No, Phase 3 is over. An 11 year story arc, Phases 1, 2 & 3, is over. Phase 4 is comimg, starting in just two months. Several more MCU movies have been announced, and dates only for a bunch more.

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The crux of these movies has been, for me, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America. I know there is a Black Widow movie coming out, so she is not gone (although it is an origin story set in the past). I don't think there will be any more Hulk, due to the rights disputes and Ruffalo's age.

So "the original seven" are done, and that is sad to me. Maybe Thor is up in the air, I don't know. Not thrilled about the idea of Falcon as Cap, although it was inevitable, I guess.

I've been following the movies for years, it seemed like we always had something to talk about or to look forward to. We saw Endgame Sunday night and me and the wife both came away with a sense of loss and a bit of sadness. They are movies to entertain the mind but you gain a sense attachment when you move from one to the other over the years. For the most part it's a good movie but for me there was not a whole lot that I really liked about it. It had Disney's " Correctness" written all over it. I did not like the treatment that the Hulk and Thor received nor did I care for what happened to Widow but it was understandable when you reflect her sense of mind after the War. The soundtrack was excellent and the graphics were fantastic but it still left you a little wanting in the meld of the story. A lot of it was handled well concerning Hawk, Tony Stark and the others. But the ending for Captain America just plain sucked but you do know in the back of your mind something like that was going to happen. There were hints all over the place. One of the biggest disappointments was Captain Marvel she was just plain lame and really didn't gel. At the end of "War" you were let to believe that she was going to really rock in "Endgame" and then when they really didn't explain things well in her first movie it just did not connect. This is just how I saw it and this was my .02

Cheers..........

JLP1 said:

I've been following the movies for years, it seemed like we always had something to talk about or to look forward to. We saw Endgame Sunday night and me and the wife both came away with a sense of loss and a bit of sadness. They are movies to entertain the mind but you gain a sense attachment when you move from one to the other over the years. For the most part it's a good movie but for me there was not a whole lot that I really liked about it. It had Disney's " Correctness" written all over it. I did not like the treatment that the Hulk and Thor received nor did I care for what happened to Widow but it was understandable when you reflect her sense of mind after the War. The soundtrack was excellent and the graphics were fantastic but it still left you a little wanting in the meld of the story. A lot of it was handled well concerning Hawk, Tony Stark and the others. But the ending for Captain America just plain sucked but you do know in the back of your mind something like that was going to happen. There were hints all over the place. One of the biggest disappointments was Captain Marvel she was just plain lame and really didn't gel. At the end of "War" you were let to believe that she was going to really rock in "Endgame" and then when they really didn't explain things well in her first movie it just did not connect. This is just how I saw it and this was my .02

Cheers..........

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Can't argue with any of that. But I'm feeling VERY forgiving.

I have to agree about Captain Marvel. She joined too late in the series to become melded into it, and didn't have enough screen time in Endgame to make up for it.

Tony, Steve, and Natasha are the only ones definitively gone, are they not? Am I forgetting something? Yes, two of those are really two of the three core characters in the arc, and that means that going on there will be either a new core or a more equal ensemble. I, too, would like to have seen someone else take up the shield; maybe Bucky, maybe a grandchild of Steve and Peggy's. And that's not out of the question; Falcon could easily decide after a little while that it still feels like someone else's and find a new someone else to pass it on to.

Bat-Mite: after Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, who is the seventh of "the original seven"? Fury? Coulson?

I also suspect that someone else will put on the red and gold armor one day. I don't know who, but I like to think it might be Morgan Stark, after about 12 to 16 years of story time. Call her "Iron Maiden". Katherine Langford's reported deleted scene makes this seem plausible (except that I made up the name).

All in all, I'm optimistic about Phase 4.

jqavins said:

Bat-Mite: after Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, who is the seventh of "the original seven"? Fury? Coulson?

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Uh, I miscounted.

It has been stated that the upcoming Spider Man movie is actually the end of phase 3.

Finally saw Endgame last night and I enjoyed it. It did feel quite long, though I wouldn't have wanted it shorter. I heard sniffles and sobbing in the theater in many different parts. Not from me though; I felt a sort of sadness throughout but it didn't affect me on that deep a level.

I agree that Captain Marvel was not satisfactorily integrated into the storyline. That seems like a missed opportunity.

I think what Captain America's ending was completely consistent with the time travel rules that Bruce Banner stated early on. What I didn't get was how he came to be sitting in that chair at that moment.

I thought it was hilarious that Thor went through the whole movie with that belly and beard. Hemsworth was born to do comedy, despite his looks and physique.

Finally: the cast is really fantastic in these movies. Robert Downey is given a lot of role to work with and he makes the most of it. I really like Chris Evans as well. Paul Rudd is surprisingly good in the dramatic bits. Just really consistently excellent all the way through. I wonder how much total budget goes to paying salaries in these movies?

neil_w said:

I think what Captain America's ending was completely consistent with the time travel rules that Bruce Banner stated early on. What I didn't get was how he came to be sitting in that chair at that moment.

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Oh, that's easy. Well, three possible variations of the basic premise. He knew the date of when he went back in time, and where he left from. So decades later (his perspective), old Steve just went there and sat down on the bench at the correct place and time. Either they were all were too "busy" preparing for the time jump to pay attention to some old guy on a bench, or old Steve hid and waited till the time jump to walk over and sit down.

Or else (most likely) old Steve did not exist there beforehand, but did exist after as a result of the time jump, had lived those years, and went to the bench without being noticed (as per above, everyone else was paying attention to other things till he failed to come back from the jump).

That sort of thing reminded me of the ending of Back to the Future Part 2, when a flash of lightning set off the time machine and Doc Brown and the Delorean disappeared. Then within a minute, Marty was handed a telegram that Doc wrote in 1884, telling Marty what had happened, the telegram having instructions not to be delivered until that exact time and place.

Explain this to me. If Cap takes the stones back in time, isn't Thanos still alive then? Am I missing something? What's to keep him from grabbing them?
As far as Peggy is concerned, maybe he went back to her in the 1970's? Where he saw her in the earlier part of the movie? She might no longer be married by then?
We just saw it last night, so it's still processing...
The younger boy wants to go see it too, so I'll have another viewing to sort through.

They needed Thanos to get the stones and do the snap in order to keep events as they had already unfolded; no snap means no unsnap. What I don't get is how he managed to get them with the changes that were made. Manly that it's pre-snap Thanos who is re-snapped (actually, snap 3) to dust. And if there's some weird timey-wimey way out of that, how about the fact that past Gamorrah turned against him (early) and wasn't around to be sacrificed in return for the soul stone.

As for Steve and Peggy, if he does go back only to the '70s, when he saw her then she was the director of SHIELD, i.e. Fury's predecessor. So getting together then would surely change things, even if less than getting together in the '40s. (And, in the flashback to them dancing in their house, she doesn't look 30 years older than when we first saw her.)

I liked how Thor was a pot-bellied, stoned gamer dude when they found him, but I was waiting for a sudden transformation back to his godly physique (maybe with the beard still there) after the talk with his mother when he decided to be a god again, the outside reflecting the inside. (Humans don't loose weight and muscle up in an instant, but hey, he's a god.)

I agree about the acting, and the writing and characterization is a big part of it too. Downey Jr. couldn't have acted the change in Tony's personality if it hadn't been in the scripts. Rudd couldn't do Scott's back and forth between buffoon and really smart fellow if the smart part weren't established with the MS in EE. And so on. As a TTRPG player, I really liked how Cap's script proves that the paladin in the party doesn't have to be stupid, and Evans executed it perfectly.

Cap ... let's see. He is 18 when he enters the Super Soldier program. Let's say he's 22 when he got frozen, which was in, say, 2012. Endgame takes place in 2023. That makes him 33 or 34 during Endgame.

He goes back to 1946 to be with Peggy, and lives a normal life through 2023 when he is on the bench. That's 77 years. He was 33, so he is no less than 110 years old while sitting on that bench.

I guess the Super Soldier Serum was more than just a muscle and reflex enhancer.

Biggest plot hole / question: where did the people who got snapped out of existence reappear? Exactly where they were when snapped out? If so, then there were likely hundreds of people on ships and in airplanes that immediately died after coming back. Hmmmmm.

Bat-mite said:

Cap ... let's see. He is 18 when he enters the Super Soldier program. Let's say he's 22 when he got frozen, which was in, say, 2012. Endgame takes place in 2023. That makes him 33 or 34 during Endgame.

He goes back to 1946 to be with Peggy, and lives a normal life through 2023 when he is on the bench. That's 77 years. He was 33, so he is no less than 110 years old while sitting on that bench.

I guess the Super Soldier Serum was more than just a muscle and reflex enhancer.

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So either A) the super soldier serum did extend his life, which is perfectly believable if it amped up both his immune system and healing capacity; or B) he met with Peggy in the '70s after all. I still favor A, but B is certainly possible.

Bat-mite said:

Biggest plot hole / question: where did the people who got snapped out of existence reappear? Exactly where they were when snapped out? If so, then there were likely hundreds of people on ships and in airplanes that immediately died after coming back. Hmmmmm.

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Unless Bruce thought of that when he did the re-snap (or snap 2, if you like, since there's also snap 3 when Tony sent Thanos's forces away) and took care that they all come back safe. After all, the intended effect of any of the three snaps is never stated out loud, so it must just be whatever the snapper is thinking and wants it to be.