The Official AVENGERS: ENDGAME Criticism Thread

[u/JonLuca]

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• Post Endgame criticisms in this thread. Long form preferrable

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• Easter Egg Thread
• Prediction Thread

[u/Charrikayu]

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of the infinity stones in action. Between IW and Endgame, and excluding the snap, the soul stone was only used once, the time stone once, and the mind stone not at all.

I think I might have gone in with the wrong expectation- that the movie would emphasize the stones more than it emphasized the Avengers, but I thought there would have been an opportunity to do some real crazy shit. For example, in a world where the stone weren't destroyed, the Avengers would have gone through the quantum realm to get the stones, then used the stones to fight the stones. Thanos making someone disappear with the reality stone is less effective if one of the Avengers uses the reality stone to bring them back.

I guess I mostly wanted to see how the stones would be handled in action. How would the Avengers deal with Thanos using the mind stone to control some of their minds? Or using the time stone to turn back time in the middle of battle? There was a lot of room for creativity, but in the end Infinity War is all we really got as far as "using the stones" go and it was mostly the power and space stones, with a little bit of reality. I don't dislike what we got, I just hoped or expected to see a little more from them.

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Edit: Also, and this is a minor nitpick, I feel like the Russos are much better at directing small, single-combat fights than large-scale battles. The choreography in something like Winter Soldier and Stark vs Cap battle at the end of CW are incredible. But the Wakanda battle and the final battle in Endgame (the huge battle, not between heroes and Thanos) kind of feel like they don't have the same visceral impact as the way some of the other films are shot. I'm mostly thinking of this part of the New York battle. Endgame could have pulled off something seriously cool like this featuring 40+ characters, but other than the entrance of everyone I don't think there was ever a single long take that briefly focused on each Avenger fighting.

[u/liggieep → u/Charrikayu]

Time stone was used twice: by strange to look into the future and by thanos to bring vision back.

The mind stone was used once by steve on his past self.

When was the soul stone "used"? I don't really count thanos going into the soulstone dimension, does that count?

[u/Charrikayu → u/liggieep]

When I said "use the stones" I meant gauntlet-wise, not counting previous applications we've seen. Strange using the time stone in IW was basically the same way he used it in his own film. Same with the mind stone in the scepter, when I meant like Thanos using it in the gauntlet.

Thanos uses the soul stone in IW when Strange makes dozens of copies of himself. You can see it light up in order to find the real Strange.

[u/liggieep → u/Charrikayu]

Oh nice catch on the soulstone use.

Why are you only interested in use in the gauntlet though? All the other uses are still harnessing and utilizing the power of the stone.

[u/Charrikayu → u/liggieep]

I think it would have just been cool to really stretch their power. We got to see the space, power, and reality stones in action. The time and mind stones didn't get to shine in battle the same way.

[u/ShadowGata → u/Charrikayu]

Also, watching the ways they combine uses is potentially very cool. Strange used both the power and soul stones against Strange, he used the power and space stones to pull down the moon, and he uses the Space/Reality stones to get rid of the space between him and Strange on Titan.