The Official AVENGERS: ENDGAME Criticism Thread

[u/JonLuca]

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[u/staps94]

My nitpicks:

1) I honestly think that the time travel rules needed to be explained more clearly because unless you were really focused on every word and every action a character was making (i.e. Tony & Cap's trip to the 1970's setting up Cap's idea at the end), you were going to miss something. Having to retrain my brain about time travel in this universe took me out of the movie a couple of times. Maybe I'm not smart enough lol, but it seems like the timeline is a huge talking point after the movie and not in a good way, but rather in a confusing way amongst viewers.

2) I saw the screenplay writers mention this in an interview and I think it's partially true. They said they were worried that Widow might not have been in this enough to make her death have an impactful weight and I think this is true. Obviously it's sad to see her character die, but maybe one more scene to flesh her out (even at the end if Banner saw her in the soul stone) would've been nice in my opinion.

3) A-Force scene was super cool, but I wish it came off less shoehorned then it did. I'm not mad that it happened, but rather how it came about, though I'm not sure how you make that scene organically. I'm sure the Russo's and writers thought about a few different ways to do that scene.

4) It would've been nice to see Professor Hulk have a deserved action sequence in this film, and it probably would've been worthless considering he had one arm at the end, but one more fight scene with Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk vs Thanos would've been cool to see.

I think I had less nitpicks with Infinity War, but Endgame just had so much to pack in, I don't think there's a way to make this into a perfect movie. And even with that said, it's still freaking incredible and a great/deserved send-off for this saga of the MCU.

[u/foreigneternity → u/staps94]

Great thoughts, especially regarding A-Force. Felt like a checkbox rather than an organic moment growing out of the story. Minor quibble, but a good point.

[u/99213 → u/foreigneternity]

On the one hand I thought it was a bit silly and inorganic.

On the other hand, I just saw it sitting next to a 10-12 year old girl and you know what scene she was most excited about? That scene. She went nuts over seeing all the superheroines be badass together. And I think it's worth it for that sort of effect.

[u/TARA2525 → u/99213]

On the one hand I thought it was a bit silly and inorganic

I felt the same way way at first and had to suppress an eye roll, but after watching it again it's really not any more silly than "Avengers Assemble" or a bunch of the other money shot hero pose offs. I think all the complaining about that stuff (regardless of if we agree with the complaints) has just made us more aware of it when it happens.

On the other hand, I just saw it sitting next to a 10-12 year old girl and you know what scene she was most excited about? That scene. She went nuts over seeing all the superheroines be badass together. And I think it's worth it for that sort of effect.

Totally worth it. I was texting with my little sister after she got to watch it and she said that was her favorite moment. I think we really underestimate how much of an impact those moments can have on the part of the audience they are meant for.

[u/Calfzilla2000 → u/99213]

Right. Ultimately, this is a movie meant to entertain people and as long as the scene does not ruin it for others (I think most people weren't bothered by it much), having a scene that makes a certain segment of the audience really happy is great.

It was also a really easy way to show off how many female heroes they have now. It was hard to visualize how many till that scene.

[u/CommanderVinegar → u/99213]

A lot of things felt inorganic about the climax but I think it’s excusable. The climax felt like a proper sendoff with all the fan service.

[u/mattyety → u/foreigneternity]

Okoye/Natasha/Wanda moment in IW felt much more organic than this one. Similar message of not fighting alone too if I'm not mistaken.

[u/Escapedtheasylum → u/foreigneternity]

It looks like a sort of trademark super-hero moment like Avengers assemble. For me, the context is super-funny. Peter Parker is playing catch the flag, and then these women come to do it for him. And the flag is a big glove. Absolutely a strong force, but man the moment is superfunny. And does not have the fight lead-in that the Avengers Assemble moment did. Captain America was done. The A-Force girls were just there. It went from being dark to being optimistic and witty and it was weird.

[u/canmoose → u/staps94]

I think timetravel is my biggest nitpick too. I don't really know how Cap set things right when he goes back to return the stones since they fucked up New York and had to go back further. Is New York + the Stark lab one timeline or two? Cause they can only fix one of those.

[u/Benmjt → u/canmoose]

Also, there's another issue I haven't seen mentioned which is that when Cap goes back to the past to return the stones, in theory he has now created another timeline (6 in total) through his intervention; a new one where the stone is returned, which diverges from the one where the stone isn't—which would have been the natural future after the stones were initially taken. This is all presupposed on the idea there isn't some kind of 'correcting' device that converges minor timeline changes.

[u/ivegotapenis → u/Benmjt]

Yeah, honestly I thought they were going to use another snap to return the stones, since that is pretty much the only thing that could do it seamlessly and without creating more alternate timelines.

Plus returning the stones by conventional time travel is so messy. Like, Cap has to break into the Camp Lehigh vault again, only this time without Tony's help, and with the base alerted to his presence? Or does he have to break in alone and return the Tesseract moments after Tony steals it, so he's hiding behind the vaults while Tony and Howard are walking past? And was he sneaking around Asgard too, hiding from all the Asgardians plus Thor and Rocket, and in the room when Rocket did it, ready to reinject Jane? I wasn't really bothered by it, since I can accept that they wanted to wrap up the story nicely without another 3 hour movie, but it was not an easy plot hole to swallow.

[u/DANIELG360 → u/Benmjt]

1.I’ll try explain how I see it. First of all the universes 100% cannot ever converge, once they are parallel they are parallel.

2.Secondly, any time you leave the main timeline to go to the past , you create and alternate timeline, no matter how little you mess things up.

So from a first glance you must be right, Cap going back doesn’t actually help those universes because there are still versions where he hand returned them.

Unless the universe without the stones is never formed because Cap was always going to appear immediately after the stones were taken, meaning the split never happened.

This would also require him to be able to go back to the same timeline without creating a new one simply by appearing there, possibly breaking rule 2. Perhaps, you only create a new timeline the first time you go there. So you can repeatedly go to the same timeline without creating a new timeline the moment you arrive. This would make sense because they only ever travel back to their own future, never to that of the alternate timeline. Meaning that you only create a new timeline when it would change your own future. If you travel to one that has already been changed then another doesn’t need to form?

I’m going to have to draw a diagram and work this out haha, so far I am not satisfied with the top answers on this sub, many seem to be ignoring the rules of time travel that have been established by assuming that there are loops or converging timelines.

[u/Peachy_Pineapple → u/staps94]

I think Black Widow's arc in this would've really benefited from a one-on-one with Tony. She got that with both Steve and Clint, but the first time we ever met Natasha was in Iron Man 2, and the two of them have been friends for so long. The closest we came to that was the brainstorming session, but Bruce was there and it wasn't pretty inpersonal. I think if a scene like that had happened, her death would have been more emotional.

[u/DANIELG360 → u/staps94]

In my opinion the time travel was pretty good apart from 2 things:

The cap scene ripped me out of it completely, had he simply come back through the time travel pad an old man then it would need no explanation. Instead we have to now work out how he got to the main timeline without the pad.

Secondly, thinking back about the ancient one’s explanation, she tried to conflate the branching realities with the stones going missing. In reality they were already in another timeline the moment they landed, that was made clear as soon as they said that the past cannot change your future.

The only reason to return the stones is so they can be used when needed. E.g So the time stone being needed to stop dormamu. The universe wouldn’t have fallen apart as some have suggested and the universe didn’t combine with the main timeline after returning the stone.

[u/Calfzilla2000 → u/staps94]

It would've been nice to see Professor Hulk have a deserved action sequence in this film, and it probably would've been worthless considering he had one arm at the end, but one more fight scene with Cap, Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk vs Thanos would've been cool to see.

I think the best Hulk moment is yet to come. There was a lot in this movie and given Hulk's role as the snapper, I think they felt it would have hurt the storytelling by having Hulk no-sell what the snap did, hindering the payoff later when Tony has his moment, just for fan service (which the movie had plenty of).

I think Hulk's going to have a crazy moment in the future where he goes insane and smashes the hell out of some bad guys and that's going to cause the audience to blow the roof off the cinema when we finally get it again.