This IMHO is going to go a bit different.
I’m going to be briefly talking about my thoughts on Infinity War, and then its sequel Endgame. I feel this is necessary, given I never talked about the first one, but I should since I wish to draw some comparisons between them. I will not be discussing the plot in great detail, but there will absolutely be spoilers. Consider this your final warning if you haven’t seen the movie yet; I recommend you watch Endgame if you generally enjoyed Infinity War, but if not, you didn’t miss much.
So, to start: Avengers, Infinity War.
It wasn’t great. A lot of people loved it, especially because it subverted expectations by having Thanos win in the end. But I find such endings rather obnoxious for a couple reasons.
First, a lot of kids watch these movies. I think it’s rather cruel to take a kids favorite hero and kill them without warning at the end of a superhero movie where the main characters usually have incredibly thick plot armor. A rather minor nitpick, as we are talking Disney here, which has a long track record of killing their characters.
Second, subverting expectations isn’t necessarily good writing. More frequently, it’s the opposite, especially when you don’t have the kahunas to actually commit. Everyone watching with an ounce of awareness knew the death wasn’t permanent, which made the event far more obnoxious. It feels like a slap in the face to suggest that these characters are dead when a sequel to Infinity War was already announced and some of the characters who died are not only cash cows for their parent company… they already have movies scheduled to come out in the future.
Third, and this relates to the subversion point: it’s both unsatisfying, and a “jump the shark” moment. Half the characters in the universe just died. Not only does it suck to watch a paper thin villain best the heroes you probably were rooting for, but where do you go from there? They immediately look into bringing them back in the next movie, and the audience knows they will succeed in some capacity. But any death in the future? They can stomp and cry all they want about how this time, the death will be permanent, but it’s too late. They established the precedent of reviving dead characters using time travel nonsense.
But let’s rewind. Another thing that annoyed me was Doctor Strange. He basically formulated a secret plan to defeat Thanos, but doesn’t tell anyone. The problem is he clearly could have defeated Thanos with his incredible power; the only reason he didn’t was plot necessity, because they wanted another movie. That annoys me, because it means they aren’t even trying to do power balancing anymore. That fact is further cemented by Captain Marvel. If every character has constantly varying levels of power based on what the plot needs to happen, then nothing feels organic. That’s just poor writing.
Frankly, all of Infinity War suffered from what I consider to be poor writing. They jammed way too many characters into the movie, with the only good decision being that they focused more on Thanos rather than the various groups of heroes. But that still couldn’t save a plot where they constantly jumped between both perspectives and locations, desperately trying to tie in all the heroes to the story. It was a bloated movie with shallow characters who were actually explored in entirely separate movies, which is never a good thing to do when you have upwards of twenty characters like that. It is similar to the problem I had with Aragmar’s Starshatter series; offloading character development to sterile, self contained stories separate from the more epic storyline while giving them no real development in that larger story bringing them all together makes them feel cheap. Their appearances feel like cameos, because most of them don’t do anything really important that couldn’t be done by a side character.
So, that’s a somewhat economical description of Infinity War. Bloated, yet shallow, with a subversive but unsatisfying ending meant solely to setup another movie. Now, let’s get into Avengers, Endgame.
It wasn’t good, but surprisingly, it almost inverted a lot of the issues with Infinity War.
First, because they killed off half the characters in the previous movie, they had a much more manageable cast of characters. This actually helped with giving characters the chance to have interesting dialogue and actually contribute to the plot in meaningful ways. The downside of this was how they absolutely tarnished multiple characters in entirely unnecessary ways.
The Hulk was changed to always be in Hulk form, but still have his higher than average human intelligence and articulation. I never expected them to do this, and after seeing it, I felt a bit disgusted. Hulk’s strength and ferocity was his main characteristic, and removing that made him feel… hollow. Especially now that he was a permanent CGI abomination wearing stupid nerd glasses and normal civilian clothes while talking with an uninteresting, monotone voice. That voice suited Bruce Banner, it does not fit the Hulk.
Thor was the other main offense. They made him a depressed, fat, drunk slob. Not only does that neuter him as the confident, imposing character he used to be, it slows down an already extremely long movie in unnecessary ways. It’s just sad to see a hero who had previously sacrificed so much personally and fought so hard to get where he was to just completely check out like he did. It would have made sense if he got a grip and regained his previous heroic status in some way, but he never really did, to be honest. They papered over it rather quickly after he spoke with his mom from the past, but never did it ever factor into him being worthy to wield his hammer. Awful convenient that a headstrong, reckless Thor is unworthy while a drunk, hopeless Thor who had to get a pep talk from his mom to end his continuing psychotic breakdown is still worthy. Is it just humility that is required? Am I reading too much into this? Whatever, moving on.
I could go on about some other characters, but for the most part the rest were at least passable. Captain Marvel, though a terrible character, was wisely removed from any significant involvement in the plot altogether. She only showed up a few times as a plot device, which limited the damage her void of personality could do. That was a good call. Now let’s talk about plot.
The plot of Infinity War was rushed, and generally too simplistic in the vein of characters running from place to place for very specific reasons to have too many obvious plot holes. Sure, there are a couple, but they aren’t too bad. But Endgame got progressively worse. I will try to run through them rapid fire, because they are plentiful. But feel free to read a few, skim, or just skip the next section… because, after writing it… holy crap.
START OF RANT
Why does Tony and several others act like time travel is crazy when the infinity stone of LITERALLY TIME existed till Thanos destroyed it(which Doctor Strange actually used to screw around with time), and Antman came to them not just with the idea, but with a practical example of time distortion? Why would Thanos destroy the Infinity Stones, given the half of remaining life would, in his mind, repopulate unchecked and eventually reach the same critical mass he sought to actively prevent? Is his lifespan just too short to keep killing half the universe as necessary, but if so, why didn’t he establish a lineage to indoctrinate and carry on with his task of maintaining balance? Why didn’t he just change everyone’s nature to not populate out of control, sterilize half the universe rather than killing, or destroy the universe to replace with one he prefers, especially since that last option was his plan after learning the results of his initial plan? Why do the early tests for time travel using shrinking into the quantum realm change the age of the test subject, but not kill them? If it’s accelerating or winding back biological processes, aging even one month beyond current age should be fatal, right? Once they have functional time travel, why do they not immediately go acquire more fuel in the form of Pym particles in the past? They end up doing this later, so it was clearly an option. When Nebulae realized her computer mind had accidentally connected with that timeline’s version of her, why did she not immediately timejump back to the present? She was acting as part of a larger plan, as I understand it, but also as I understood it, she had already completed her part and could have had Warmachine take the power stone and head to a slightly different location if necessary. Why is Black Widow dying a big deal when they could travel back in time and grab her before she dies, especially since they have all but openly stated that paradoxes are a non-issue due to multiple timelines, and they can give the soul stone they have to Hawkeye while saving Black Widow, creating a kind of infinity pigeon hole problem which guarantees all timelines will have a living Black Widow due to the nature of infinity? Why didn’t Tony, Bruce, or someone put even the most basic form of security on their time machine, especially a failsafe that would notify them when someone tried accessing the time machine? Did they really plan out their time heist over what appeared to be several days at least, but it never occurred to them that they should acquire more Pym particles to increase their odds while also making sure their plans couldn’t be sabotaged by a nefarious being similar to the one that just killed half the universe? For that matter, why didn’t Tony have a self destruct protocol for his custom Infinity Gauntlet, given he clearly understood the potential for disaster it represented? Alternatively, why didn’t he at least have some authentication system so someone like, I don’t know… THANOS… couldn’t use it, making the infinity stones eject out of their compartments or even locking up the fingers of the gauntlet to make it impossible to snap? It probably wouldn’t have completely stopped Thanos, but it would have bought them time and made a lot more sense given the situation they found themselves in previously. Why did Captain Marvel show up at the end with a clear ability to destroy Thanos’ ship, but never did this before? Thanos had been a constant threat to the entire universe, killing half of entire planets while searching for infinity stones so he could kill more efficiently, so why had Captain Marvel not made it more of a priority to stop him, or at least sabotage his efforts by ruining his main ship? He wasn’t hard to find, and if he supposedly was, how did she realize he was on Earth so soon after he appeared, despite the fact she thought he was already dead, and she had not been involved in the time travel activities whatsoever? Why is Captain America suddenly considered worthy of Thor’s hammer, despite the fact he didn’t go through any major character growth moments throughout this movie? He’s not really significantly more humble than he was all the way back in his origin movie, after which he was shown as still being unable to actually lift Thor’s hammer? Why did Doctor Strange’s plan involve allowing Tony to die, rather than using some of his magic or some other emergency critical care for Tony given he knew what was going to happen well ahead of time? Doctor Strange can create portals and push people’s souls out of their bodies, I find it hard to believe that Tony was so weak as to be completely unsalvageable after a single use of the infinity stones, given his strength of spirit he had shown up to that point. Why did Captain America stay in the past with his wife rather than bringing her to the future with him so he wouldn’t be abandoning his long time comrades in arms, given him staying in the past is already messing with that timeline? Why did he age and remain in the same timeline as the one containing the time machine, despite the fact that Bruce specifically stated altering their own past won’t change their own present?
END OF RANT
Frankly, there are probably more. When you get this sheer scale of broken plot, it hides the more minor errors under the deluge of more serious ones. Suffice it to say, the plot was broken, partially because of what the previous movie left them to work with, and partially because they introduced time travel and didn’t bother to even attempt making it work consistently, instead using it as a wishy washy plot device. But, as much as all of that grinds my gears, it isn’t the worst part of this movie.
The movie starts with an apparent introduction a definitively gay man in a support group. This has no significance in the movie other than political grandstanding. In the final battle, we have all the female characters group up in a kind of “girl power” moment. This has no significance in the movie other than political grandstanding. All of the most iconic Avengers have either died or gone their own way by the end, leaving characters like Captain Marvel to now carry on the main franchise. While I think this is also political, by killing off the majority white male characters to replace with a female going forward, I desperately wish I could say this had no significance within the movie. But it obviously does.
Not only did they deliberately remove most of the more iconic characters, they thoroughly humiliated most of them. Captain America abandoned all of his friends for a girl, which was also noted as unnecessary in my above plot hole rant. Thor lost his impressive physique and became even more laid back than before, going so far as to become a slob to fit in with a ragtag group of space bandits while he surrendered the throne, specifically to a minority female. Tony Stark nearly allowed half the universe to remain dead simply because he wanted to keep his own life from being uprooted again, and when he did get involved, it ended with him sacrificing himself because he could not handle the power of the infinity stones, leaving behind a widowed life and fatherless daughter. The Hulk, though I think he’s still on the team…? Anyways, the Hulk became a soft spoken, cautious, polite gentle giant, entirely neutering the Hulk persona as previously mentioned.
The main standard bearer of the Avengers now seems to be Captain Marvel, the hero that is gifted with overwhelming power and no struggles to obtain that power or temper her humility. All those previously mentioned heroes? Their movies varied in quality, to be sure. But they at least had arcs where they overcame obstacles and struggled with their flaws. Marvel did not have that, so everything she does have feels undeserved. She is the inverse of Captain America, who was a wimpy kid given above average strength but still very human limitations who had to struggle against adversity, while she is an alien monster with no real humanity or inspiring story behind how she became who she was; it was just some random accident, and now she’s basically invincible.
They tried this with Star Wars. They killed off most of the original protagonists, and went so far as to almost outright state they are leaving those relics behind. Then sales tanked, so in the previews for the very next movie, they brought back the Emperor and put Skywalker right in the title. So much for letting the past die. Turns out, the new characters riding off the coattails of the old were not able to hold up all on their own.
I think, like Tim Pool in his own video about Avengers Endgame and the MCU in general, that they really shot themselves in the foot. They’ve sapped all creativity and originality out of the new characters they are introducing, and didn’t even treat the characters being phased out with respect. Perhaps I’m jaded from all the political games I see going on around me and in the news, but I think other people are going to notice at least some of this too, even if they can’t put it into the same words.
Politically motivated fiction is almost always bad because it starts to preach rather than tell a compelling story. Captain Marvel was not the first example of a movie that demanded to be liked simply because it checked some interesectionality boxes, but the initial reviews that came up before being purged as quickly as possible by big corporations showed that it was the first to be truly seen for what it was. Propaganda grafted onto what was supposed to be a story.
Same post on Minds