First post left mostly blank to avoid mouseover spoiling.
Just one thing - if you’re into these movies at all, run don’t walk to the theater!
Okay, my wife and I saw it this morning, and I’m still tamping it down in my mind. We’ll see it again tomorrow afternoon. So this is a little scattershot and stream of consciousness.
First off, you will have to have seen most of the previous MCU films to have any hope of getting what’s going on. Marvel is having no pity and making no accomodation for those who haven’t.
Three hours went by in a flash - I never felt bored or inclined to look at my watch. It is a truly satisfying end, not only to the Infinity War storyline, but to the character arcs that have been shown in the previous movies. The “core” Avengers - Thor, Cap, Tony, Bruce - get most of the screentime and attention; there’s a fair bit of Rocket and Nebula as well. Most of the others get very few lines.
Surprises: Hulk and Banner have come to an accomodation, and are more or less sharing, with Bruce’s brain combined with Hulk’s body. This was more or less glossed over, in a short scene presenting it as a fait accompli. It’s another example of how the MCU is willing and eager to overturn the comic book traditions, along with secret identities and such like.
I was not surprised by Tony dying heroically, especially now that he had a kid. I was surprised that Natasha bought it, after establishing that Clint had been corrupted to a degree by his grief and rage. I thought it was great that Steve got his opportunity for a life, the life he’d always wanted.
I was thrilled when Cap lifted Mjolnir, and amused that Thor seemed equally happy about it. It was just as bad-ass as I’d been hoping.
Speaking of Thor…well, Chris Hemsworth is a masterful comic actor, and his desscent into slobhood was both hysterical and touching. Actually, all of the performances were wonderful. When present-Thor had his talk with his mom, I was both laughing and teary-eyed. Similarly, Tony had his chance to speak with his dad, man-to-man, and lay to rest some of the issues he had.
When all seemed lost at the big battle scene, and all of those gates opened, and all of the people who had been lost to the Snap started pouring in and tearing into Thanos’ army - well, that was just another bad-ass moment. The battle scenes were well laid-out, by the way, and pretty easy to follow, despite their massive scale.
Some things that are going to annoy the reactionary types: Steve handing off the shield and title to Sam Wilson, and the final charge with the Infinity Gauntlet toward the quantum truck by just about every female character thus far - and no men. Women saving the day?!?
Still, the important moments were character moments. Whether it be Tony bitterly blaming Steve at the beginning, or their coming together in the middle, or the conversations about loss that intersperse the whole movie - well, that’s the heart and soul of the movie, literally.
I’ll come back to this later, I’m sure, with more thoughts. This is a dense movie, and I’m a poor communicator at best.
I have pacing questions.
when would be the best time to “skip to the loo”?
should one buy a large beverage, how should that be paced? what would be considered the half way mark?
The first half is slower paced, it settles in with the various consequences of the snap. Once Tony returns to the Avengers Building it starts to ramp up with action and comedy you ought not to miss. So somewhere around when Scott Lang is struggling with his taco.
Spoilers!
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It starts out with Hawkeye playing a trick on Winchester by putting ketchup on his ham sandwich instead of Grey Poupon.
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There was an epidemic of upper respiratory disease in China so I heard more coughing than dialog.
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It was filmed entirely in lo-res shaky cam as if on somebody’s phone.
I saw it last night as part of a double feature with Infinity War first and then Endgame right after midnight. Gotta say, I loved it! The pacing of the story was not at all what I was expecting, in a good way. Going after Thanos and taking brutal revenge on him right at the start, and then giving the surviving characters 5 years to let the consequences of his beating them settle in before Scott Lang provided the kick to giving them hope again was not how I thought they were going to handle it. I really enjoyed all the interactions with the past characters like Frigga and the Ancient One and of course Howard Stark. I was curious about how familiar the Ancient One was with Stephen Strange given that he hadn’t even started on his path to the mystic arts, or did I miss something there?
Chris Hemsworth is so, so funny. I would love to know how they turned Hardbody Thor into Potbelly Thor. Is it the same tech they used to de-age various actors or what they used with original scrawny Steve Rogers?
I wouldn’t have been happy with the story in the end if they had won the day with no price paid. The sacrifices all felt totally justified and appropriate. I’m happy Steve Rogers finally got that dance with Peggy and got to live his life in the right order at last.
But let’s talk about the true shocking development in the movie: no end credits scene! When the movie just … stopped and the lights went all the way up in the theater where I watched it, everyone was stunned at first and then burst out laughing.
I wonder if they’re actually going to give Sam his own Captain American movie.
I thought it was strange that they made the decision to bring back all the world’s missing population in present time, rather than undoing Thanos’ work five years before so the ‘incident’ basically never happened. I thought that doubling the/every world’s population instantly was a recipe for world/galaxy-wide famine. No way they can raise enough foodstuffs quickly enough for double the mouths in a short time.
And, hell, how do all these people not appear inside new construction or in front of moving vehicles?
I don’t know about this movie. It didn’t feel like a movie so much as an… epilogue. Like they spent 2 hours going around tying up all of the character’s loose ends, and sending them off into the sunset.
Like, I don’t feel like I really want to watch any more Marvel movies after this. After the end of Civil War, I wanted to know what happened to the team, things were moving forward etc, and I suppose Guardians + Thor is where they’re going next, but nothing about Strange, Marvel, Spiderman even, it didn’t feel like they were going anywhere or that a new team was taking over the old team, or anything like that. It just felt like… the end, I guess.
I was also really annoyed about the time travel shenanigans. Particularly since the time stone was right there, and particularly since they actually brought Gamora back - and then she disappears again? Why don’t they bring Nat back using the same time travel nonsense rather than using the glove?
Just… didn’t feel this movie.
Re time travel, agree. I couldn’t have rolled my eyes harder when the ‘time caper’ plot was laid out.
Because then that would be the answer to every problem they face. They had to lay down a rule that said they cannot change the past without messing up the present. They’re not fracturing the timeline like DC does with Flashpoint, they’re using the stones to bring everyone back. It works and it’s safe, even if in ongoing stories there will be some characters who are five years older than they used to be. e.g. I figure some of Peter Parker’s class at school will not be returning.
Kind of a shame that Abby Ryder Fortson won’t be back in the next Ant-Man though.
Isn’t Far From Home supposed to be set right after Endgame? How will that work? Actually, didn’t Peter return to high school at the end of the movie and see Ned there?
Maybe FFH is set before Infinity War and Endgame after all. Wouldn’t be the first time filmmakers have lied to keep a secret.
I meant ‘they’ meaning the characters, not the writers. Before Banner did The Snap, there was some brief strategizing and they agreed to bring back the other half of the world Now, not Then. This seems like a troublesome choice; e.g what happens to folk that were on aircraft when they disappeared? Ocean liners? And how do we feed them all?
And re the writers: it’s easy not to fall in the trap of time travel rules that break your universe: don’t write stories with time travel.
It amounts to the same thing. But in-universe, they didn’t want to wipe out the five years that did happen for those who were left, Tony Stark’s daughter being the prime example.
I just got back from seeing it. My take: if someone would have just told me what happens in the first two hours and I would have been pleased as punch to just watch the last hour. I admit, I was very tired going in and I found myself nodding in a few spots - for example, I saw Cap walk into the elevator with all the bad guys (flashback-like) then I kind of drifted and I snapped to to see Cap walking calmly out of the elevator with the case with Loki’s scepter in it. I have no idea what happened or what was said in the elevator.
Overall, I thought it was great and I’m glad I saw in a packed theater. The cheers, especially when Captain America started swinging Thor’s hammer, made the film.
Well, the Ancient One was walking around with the Time Stone around their neck, probably for years if not centuries. It seemed they were pretty adept at looking both backward and forward in time by this point.
I just got back.
To address what I thought at first was a continuity gap, the reason Ned Leeds seems to be the same age and is still in HS is he got snapped too. One has to assume a lot of Peter’s “gang” did.
Another thing, I don’t think Hulk JUST brought back everyone, I think he brought back all the infrastructure too.
As for the movie…
Oh.
My.
GOD.
That was the most incredible spectacle ever put to film. I can’t imagine how they’ll ever top this.
It basically gave me everything I wanted out of the movie. I have nothing at all to complain about.
I did the 22-movie marathon at AMC and seeing Endgame with a full theater of people I’d just spent 3 days with was amazing. I want to see it again because there’s much to process but I have a lot of sleep to catch up on.
Biggest delightful surprise for me: that it was Carol Danvers who rescues Tony Stark and Nebula. Biggest sad surprise: Natasha committing suicide to save Clint. (Tony Stark dying wasn’t a surprise. I hadn’t been spoiled, but we knew that either Cap or Tony or both would die).
I just got back from seeing it in IMAX and I loved it! I was truly surprised with Thanos being dispatched so quickly and the the 5 year jump. Seeing this in a packed theater added to the enjoyment, lots of cheers and clapping, the most was probably when Cap picked up Mjolnir!
I was surprised at how much of the movie was very quiet and introspective, almost like a straight drama. It was quite a ways into it before there really was any big action scene. It really did feel like an ending, especially with the montage during the credits and then, shocker! No after credits scene!
I spent an hour trying to figure out what I missed. The space stone’s on Earth as is the time stone. The reality stone is on Asgard, the power stone on whatever the opening of GotG was, and the soul stone is on the someone has to die planet. So who and where, I wondered, picked up the mind stone? That’s what I get for forgetting why they needed the scepter (and generally trying to forget I ever watched Age of Ultron). Somebody please tell me I wasn’t the only one.