I finally got around to watching Avengers Endgame.

I finally got around to watching Avengers Endgame.
by Bacchus (2019-05-22 12:50:53)
Edited on 2019-05-22 15:55:32

I’m not much of a fan of Marvel or the comic book genre, but these movies had the virtue of providing opportunities for shared experiences with my kids throughout their teenage years. That has value in and of itself.

I had no idea until recently that Marvel Studios has made 22 of these things. I’m sure I’ve seen fewer than half, and I’d be hard-pressed to name them.

So, these are a non-fanboy’s impressions of Endgame:

At the end of Infinity War, Dr. Strange used the Time Stone to forsee over 11 million possible outcomes and in only one of those scenarios do the good guys prevail and thwart Thanos. And that one scenario depends on a random rat wandering across just the right switch on a shrinking machine to release Ant-Man from the quantum realm. Against those odds, If I were Dr. Strange, I would have let Thanos have Tony Stark and then taken advantage of the cheap Manhattan real estate deals available after the great cull. And the rat should have demanded gross points.

Thanos’ reasoning for vaporizing half the population of the universe was because of overpopulation and resource depletion. That means that the ramification for Earth was to reduce the population of homo sapiens to roughly where it was in 1970, a time when Paul Ehrlich was publishing The Population Bomb and predicting gloom and doom. So, it seems that Thanos went to a whole lot of trouble to buy maybe 50 years of additional Malthusian handwringing before he would have had to come back from his retirement as a gentleman farmer to wreak havoc on the universe again. It would have been easier if he had just gone back in time to become a charter member of the Club of Rome and earned praise and celebrity for delivering environmental harangues. The only downside would have been that he might have lost a couple of bets to Julian Simon.

Thor gone-to-seed was a masterstroke. It made the movie watchable. He stole every scene and practically turned the insufferable Rocket into a straight man.

I liked Ant-Man’s pivotal role. Without the cliffhanger ending to Ant-Man and the Wasp I wouldn’t have predicted it. He stands in for us normal human beings. While the rest of the characters in the Marvel Universe (excuse me, the “MCU”) react to the mayhem and absurdity with a grim-faced matter of factness, Paul Rudd has the best WTF face in the business. He reminds us that there’s a limit to our willing suspension of disbelief.

Fusing the Hulk and Bruce Banner into Jolly Green Dr. Banner worked for me. The story needed Banner’s brain more than Hulk’s brawn, and not having to gin up bespoke rage inducers for the Hulk kept events moving along.

Nebula’s may have been one redemption story too many. She was vital to the mechanics of the plot, but her defection (twice!) left Thanos with little more than an off-stage Loki and the equivalent of flying monkeys as allies. Kind of thin, even for a cartoon.

On the subject of Thanos, Josh Brolin deserves an Oscar for his ability to express a full range of subtle facial expression beneath the blue makeup and prognathous CGI. I look forward to watching him in the upcoming No Universe for Old Demigods.

I have trouble looking at Tilda Swinton in any role she plays. She always looks like she’s playing a Star Trek alien without need of prosthetic makeup.

Conversely, I can watch John Slattery in anything. In a small role, his scenes with Robert Downey, Jr. were effective and affecting.

Speaking of Robert Downey, Jr., I couldn’t fathom why they felt the need write off Tony Stark other than that RDJ has decided that he has enough money. The first Iron Man movie was the best of the series and the only Marvel movie I unabashedly enjoyed.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked murderous, badass Hawkeye, but did it strike anyone else as incongruous that the motivation for his murderous badassery was the loss of his beloved wife and children to Thanos’ cull, that his motivation to retrieve the Soul Stone was to restore his wife and family by undoing the cull, but that now he was willing to the blow off reuniting with his family because of his cinematic love for Black Widow? Let her jump. Better yet, where’s Groot when you need him? He can grow back from a graft.

Like most, I’m satisfied that Captain America got to relive the life that fate and duty conspired to take from him. He returned to his own time and to the love of his life and got to live happily ever after. But did he have to stay completely on the sidelines? Couldn’t he have un-lost China, for instance, or at least prevented the Kennedy assassination? Was he on a cruise during 9/11?

Hawkeye and Widow were after the same thing

A way to redeem themselves after all the murdering and end the painful guilt.

It wasn’t about how much they loved each other although they certainly did. It was much more about how neither of them felt they were as worth saving as the other one.

It was easy to know it was going to be widow and I found the 3 flips to be stupid. She could have tricked him into letting her do it easily.

A few responses.

Hawkeye went on a murderous rampage because he was pissed that criminals remained while innocents were snapped. And he was torn about not making the self sacrifice because he believed he was unworthy to return to the family he lost due to his murderous turn.

Captain America was in a different timeline when he returned to Peggy and only returned to our timeline at the end. So nothing he did would have effected our world.

My biggest complaint was that "old Cap" looked, dressed, and sounded almost exactly like my Dad. Took me right out of the movie!

Some thoughts

You have to suspend your disbelief when watching these movies. I suppose the rat springs Ant-Man every time, but there are a lot of other variables that change. Someone said the rat was the true hero of the story.

I don't think the consequences to wiping out 1/2 the population would have been so dire. Cars would have been towed and impounded, maybe resold. Baseball would have continued with minor league players being called up, etc.

I agree with you on Hawkeye, although they are heroes and supposed to do heroic things.

Thor was the only Marvel magazine I read as a kid, so I didn't like seeing him a wreck. Chris Helmsworth has terrific comedic ability, though.

2024 Nebula was always anti-Thanos. 2014 Nebula stayed loyal to Thanos. 2024 Nebula killed 2014 Nebula. That was wild. The other Thanos minions were more powerful than Nebula - as evidenced by beating up some Avengers in Infinity Wars.

Time travel causes all sorts of logic issues in stories. As I understand Endgame's time travel rules, changing the past doesn't change your reality/future, but creates a separate timeline. Cap created a separate timeline in which he might have done all sorts of heroic things, which no one in the timeline he left knows about. I don't how Cap was able to get back to his old time line to give Sam the shield, but hey, it's fantasy and made for a nice ending.

I like time travel stories.

A lot of the sci fi I read features time travel in one way or another.

On a different level, I look at the history books in the bookshelves where I live and consider them as dear friends and my very own time machines.

I will never forget the short pre-graduation conversation I had with an ND classmate a few days before our June 1970 graduation ceremony.

We were standing in front of Father Sorin’s statue and talking about what we were going to do after we were graduated.

I said, “I’m looking forward to reading whatever I want, whenever I want.” I was headed for Montessori training in LA, but that was not going to be a challenge like ND.

My friend, a pre-med student, heading to med school, said, “Not me. I’m looking forward to the day when I never have to read another book.”

We talked a bit more and headed our separate ways in post Kent State America.

I felt sad for him.

Back when my daughter was in high school and chose her path afterwards, I told her, “If you go into a guy’s apartment or house and you see more DVDs than books on his shelves, run!”

He was played for laughs

and it certainly humanized Thor, which makes him more relatable.

But it also was a nice touch to show someone working through grief and depression and showing they are fact not broken, but still a valuable member of the team (and still worthy of picking up Mjolnir)

The Hawkeye thing made sense to me. He was another guy working through grief and depression. Instead of beer and Fortnite like Thor, he decided to slice and dice bad guys. But in the end, all he really wanted was his family to get another chance at life, whether he was around or not. Seems like a thing just about any normal dad would do.

RE: Hawkeye

I also think he was willing to sacrifice himself as penance for the slaughter he committed after he lost his family.

You make many good observations, Grasshopper.

Marvel should hire you as a plot consultant. I’m serious.

If Dr. Strange was betting on that one chance involving the rat - and now that you mention it, he must have - then I need to dig out some of my Stainless Steel Rat sci fi novels and re-read them.

Good observations.