AVENGERS ENDGAME SPOILERS

[The Natural]

Fun cameos I forgot to mention in Alexander Pierce(!), The Ancient One, Jasper Sitwell, Brock Lumlow, Howard Stark and Edwin Jarvis(!) making appearances.

Edited April 28, 2019 by The Natural

[JonnyLaw]

I feel like the time travel shenanigans of Cap were definitely a string left for them to pull later if they want, but done in a way that can serve as the end to that story. I mean, they explicitly warned Cap about doing anything to create alternate timelines before he left, so there are obvious implications to what he did, it’s just a matter of if those are revisited.

I also assume Loki’s Disney+ show will feature the timeline where Loki escaped, since og Loki is still dead.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some of this timeline stuff is resolved in Secret Wars, which the Russos have said they would come back to direct, and that could be used to bring in the Fox characters.

 

[The Natural]

One moment not mentioned yet, the look between Stark and Strange with Strange raising his finger to signify this is the one outcome where we win. Before that Strange explained he couldn't go into details with Tony.

[RonL21]

One thing I caught on the second viewing was when Nat and Clint left for Vormir, Nebula said to Rhodey that everything would work as long as they don't fall out. I completely missed that the first time. 

[Matt D]

35 minutes ago, The Natural said:

One moment not mentioned yet, the look between Stark and Strange with Strange raising his finger to signify this is the one outcome where we win. Before that Strange explained he couldn't go into details with Tony.

Can we talk about this for a minute?

For something so thoroughly set up, I think they didn't hit the landing on that. There's no real thought provided for WHY this was the only path, for how Strange giving up the Time Gem meant that they won in the end. Was it just that in every other reality, he let Tony die, Thanos got it anyway, and since Tony wasn't there to take the gems at the end, they lose? Without Tony, there's no time travel in the first place though. I don't know. It all seems pretty flimsy to me as it was presented (or not really presented).

[EVA]

32 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Can we talk about this for a minute?

For something so thoroughly set up, I think they didn't hit the landing on that. There's no real thought provided for WHY this was the only path, for how Strange giving up the Time Gem meant that they won in the end. Was it just that in every other reality, he let Tony die, Thanos got it anyway, and since Tony wasn't there to take the gems at the end, they lose? Without Tony, there's no time travel in the first place though. I don't know. It all seems pretty flimsy to me as it was presented (or not really presented).

Yeah, inventing time travel seems like the most essential reason Tony needed to survive, but the way it’s presented, with Strange making a big, dramatic gesture, certainly makes it seem like *that* is the defining moment that makes this timeline the one.  But all Tony seems to do is...run up and grab the stones off the gauntlet?

Its a pretty anticlimactic finish to the battle, really.  Maybe if they set up the idea that Tony made the new gauntlet and therefore gimmicked it so that he could release the stones in an emergency, it would’ve played a little more clever.  Or at least like it was something only he could do.

Of course, Tony building a working gauntlet also kinda undermines the idea that there’s only this one dwarf king in deep space that can make one, which was a pretty significant plot point in the last movie.  (I’ll be interested to see how they plot these movies going forward without being able to say, “Um, Tony figures it out.”)

So, yeah, there was a lot of flimsy plotting going on.

Edited April 28, 2019 by EVA

[Casey]

44 minutes ago, EVA said:

I’ll be interested to see how they plot these movies going forward without being able to say, “Um, Tony figures it out.”

“Um, Shuri figures it out.”

[nate]

When Cap was choking Cap, and Cap said "Bucky's not dead," I was waiting ... waiting ... waiting for Cap to say, "WHY DID YUO SAY THAT NAMM?!??!"  I would have laughed.  But what we got was a nice moment, and close enough to a nod without going all stupid.

At the Stark funeral - and this was my only complaint - it was painfully obvious that Cumberbatch was inserted via CGI that it kinda took me out of the moment.  Once I saw him and noticed he wasn't moving and seemed to be standing at an odd angle, I watched his face.  He never blinked during his entire camera pan time.

[nate]

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

Can we talk about this for a minute?

For something so thoroughly set up, I think they didn't hit the landing on that. There's no real thought provided for WHY this was the only path, for how Strange giving up the Time Gem meant that they won in the end. Was it just that in every other reality, he let Tony die, Thanos got it anyway, and since Tony wasn't there to take the gems at the end, they lose? Without Tony, there's no time travel in the first place though. I don't know. It all seems pretty flimsy to me as it was presented (or not really presented).

In IW, Strange looked ahead into 14M+ futures and found 1 that worked.

I can't math like that, but imagine, with a literal gogolplex of living beings throughout the universe, each having a 50/50 chance of surviving the snap, how precise it had to be that Tony survived AND Widow survived AND Thor AND Cap ...

Then the question of Tony making the Gauntlet instead of the Trolls ... Thor was in a hurry and needed another Mjolnir, that was why he went to visit the trolls; the gauntlet was discovered by Rabbit as an afterthought..  Plus, was anyone aware of where Tony even was, in IW?  Tony was never given the impetus to try building a gauntlet until now.

I like the drama of Quill finding Past Gamora, I would have liked a little more gravitas in the moment, but I also wish we could have gotten more from Quill about being back on Earth for the first time since his mother died.

[John Austin]

33 minutes ago, Casey said:

“Um, Shuri figures it out.”

I was thinking about this too. I forgot about Shuri, I kept thinking Disney got lucky with the Fox deal, could be Reed? He was always the guy in the comics. I don't know. 

[nate]

Or Banner.

[Matt D]

6 minutes ago, nate said:

Or Banner.

Do you want babies in spacesuits?

[EVA]

Yeah, Banner has always been booked as a lower-tier intellect compared to Tony in these movies.

[John from Cincinnati]

8 hours ago, The Natural said:

Cap's always given all he has. Was he right to not come back and stay with Peggy? What does that mean for Peggy's life prior to that, when she gave that interview in Captain America: The Winter Soldier about her husband saved by Steve, is that husband now Steve or someone replaced by him? 

a) Cap didn't ask to be displaced in time. I don't resent him taking the opportunity to go back,

b) Peggy's still got her original husband in the main timeline.

c) Steve handles just about everything the honourable way. I'll assume he handled courtship the right way too, because I'm not going to imagine something as shitty as Captain America breaking up a family. 

I'm making some assumptions, sure. At least it wasn't Pepper's cool reaction to Tony's impending death. 

EDIT: The What We Do In The Shadows movie is great, but I was speaking of the series. Good stuff. Do recommend to all in this thread.

Edited April 28, 2019 by West Newbury Bad Boy

[Casey]

Opening weekend worldwide box office is 1.2 billion. That’s insane.

[The Natural]

22 minutes ago, Casey said:

Opening weekend worldwide box office is 1.2 billion. That’s insane.

Insane is right. Wow...

Raining money!

Edited April 28, 2019 by The Natural

[Matt D]

Re: Black Widow and her upcoming movie.

I get the sense that most of you would strongly dislike this notion, but I think the way to go is to set it in the soul realm (I'd say soul stone, but we'd actually be talking about two soul stones, so it's best to fudge it as sort of a nexus between realities. I think you can get away with it), with the premise being that Natasha was being judged/living through her past/etc. It'd start out with us thinking it's just a spy movie set in the past but things get increasingly weird as it goes on, and at the end, she finds closure and self-forgiveness and peace, while also encountering Gamora and starting her back towards the living world (which would culminate in Guardians III: The Search for Gamora with her merging with Past Gamora, who would be unstable in mind, body, and soul post Iron Man snap).

I just think they can't do a normal spy movie with her with no stakes or weight after Endgame. 

[COLETTI]

So it's the next day and I've watched various clips of the final battle over and over. Say what you want about the entire three hours but from the moment Stark, Rogers, and Thor approach Thanos, all the way through Tony's death? I could seriously watch that shit a hundred times and not get tired of it.

[The Natural]

17 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Re: Black Widow and her upcoming movie.

I get the sense that most of you would strongly dislike this notion, but I think the way to go is to set it in the soul realm (I'd say soul stone, but we'd actually be talking about two soul stones, so it's best to fudge it as sort of a nexus between realities. I think you can get away with it), with the premise being that Natasha was being judged/living through her past/etc. It'd start out with us thinking it's just a spy movie set in the past but things get increasingly weird as it goes on, and at the end, she finds closure and self-forgiveness and peace, while also encountering Gamora and starting her back towards the living world (which would culminate in Guardians III: The Search for Gamora with her merging with Past Gamora, who would be unstable in mind, body, and soul post Iron Man snap).

I just think they can't do a normal spy movie with her with no stakes or weight after Endgame. 

 

10 hours ago, The Natural said:

@West Newbury Bad Boy

Black Widow's dead which I don't like. May find an out of that. So the solo movie is either a prequel with perhaps the Winter Soldier, a lost year's type story or perhaps as she's in the Soul stone reflecting on her life.

I'm for that idea, @Matt D expanded on.

[Contentious C]

4 hours ago, EVA said:

Yeah, inventing time travel seems like the most essential reason Tony needed to survive, but the way it’s presented, with Strange making a big, dramatic gesture, certainly makes it seem like *that* is the defining moment that makes this timeline the one.  But all Tony seems to do is...run up and grab the stones off the gauntlet?

Its a pretty anticlimactic finish to the battle, really.  Maybe if they set up the idea that Tony made the new gauntlet and therefore gimmicked it so that he could release the stones in an emergency, it would’ve played a little more clever.  Or at least like it was something only he could do.

Of course, Tony building a working gauntlet also kinda undermines the idea that there’s only this one dwarf king in deep space that can make one, which was a pretty significant plot point in the last movie.  (I’ll be interested to see how they plot these movies going forward without being able to say, “Um, Tony figures it out.”)

So, yeah, there was a lot of flimsy plotting going on.

Yeah, that's easily one of my biggest beefs with it.

Thanos, as presented in the comics, and as implied in this film, has visited hundreds of civilizations.  And Tony fucking Stark is really, REALLY, the only one who sticks the landing on time travel?  In a night, at that, with some of Pym/Lang's data?  Really?  Ugh.

Thanos himself frankly should have been more than an out-and-out brawler for this reason alone.  If he's so damned smart, so damned unbeatable, then it's because any warlord worth his salt would have raided all those planets for their best technology and co-opted it into his own.  He should have had answers to the Avengers' best shots that weren't just fisticuffs.  We see literally none of that other than modifications to Nebula or big spaceships.  Instead, we get the Universe's Smartest (and Somehow Dumbest) Version of Mike Tyson.

Gimmicking the gems kind of made sense, since on the new Gauntlet itself, they just sort of emerge from the nanotech in the initial scene, so you can imagine Tony can pull them through the glove on Thanos into his own.  But, that moment should have been dragged out longer so we get a sense that it wasn't instantaneous, that Tony is really just stalling for time, and so it didn't feel like such an ass-pull.

There are moments of this that feel a lot like the last Harry Potter movie: fun in the moment, but step back at all to process them...and oof.

[Eivion]

2 hours ago, EVA said:

Yeah, Banner has always been booked as a lower-tier intellect compared to Tony in these movies.

He isn't lower-tier so much as he has a different specialty. 

1 hour ago, Matt D said:

Re: Black Widow and her upcoming movie.

I get the sense that most of you would strongly dislike this notion, but I think the way to go is to set it in the soul realm (I'd say soul stone, but we'd actually be talking about two soul stones, so it's best to fudge it as sort of a nexus between realities. I think you can get away with it), with the premise being that Natasha was being judged/living through her past/etc. It'd start out with us thinking it's just a spy movie set in the past but things get increasingly weird as it goes on, and at the end, she finds closure and self-forgiveness and peace, while also encountering Gamora and starting her back towards the living world (which would culminate in Guardians III: The Search for Gamora with her merging with Past Gamora, who would be unstable in mind, body, and soul post Iron Man snap).

I just think they can't do a normal spy movie with her with no stakes or weight after Endgame. 

I fully expect the soul realm/revived soul gem will be involved with Gamora and GotG 3. Keep in mind they teased Adam Warlock in both GotG movies, and the third was seemingly the when they were finally going to use him.

[John from Cincinnati]

4 minutes ago, Eivion said:

He isn't lower-tier so much as he has a different specialty.

Exactly. If I needed a neuro surgeon, I might want to give Ben Carson a call. But you wouldn’t use his intelligence in that arena to tap him to run housing and urban development.

[John from Cincinnati]

Seems they're assuming most die-hard who've had a chance to see it already have. Welcome to the adverts, Hulk and Thor!

 

Edited April 28, 2019 by West Newbury Bad Boy

[nate]

34 minutes ago, Contentious C said:

Yeah, that's easily one of my biggest beefs with it.

Thanos, as presented in the comics, and as implied in this film, has visited hundreds of civilizations.  And Tony fucking Stark is really, REALLY, the only one who sticks the landing on time travel?  In a night, at that, with some of Pym/Lang's data?  Really?  Ugh.

I've seen this going around in other forums I visit, but my take on it is -- it didn't become Tony's priority until Lang returned.  Had Tony really considered time travel (remember, he was pretty skeptical from a guy who was repping for Pym), he probably *would* have cracked it on his own.  As it was, it took Scott's anecdotal data, having actually *been there*, to begin thinking of the possibility.  He ran a sim with the caveat, "If it doesn't work, don't worry about it."  Dude was ready for bed, about to out his daughter to sleep.  His five year routine was set.  The ultimate resolution seemed more like convergence in discovery, a bunch of people working on one problem and coming to a linear solution.  Psychology is full of two-surnames-of-people-who-were-never-in-a-lab-together theories 

[nate]

3 minutes ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Seems they're assuming most die-hard who've had a chance to see it already have. Welcome to the adverts, Hulk and Thor!

 

Thor, yes.  But they manage to keep the lid on the main selling point ... the Big Thorbowski.