The Avengers: Endgame is a Bad Movie. Stop Lying to Yourself.
By: James Khubiar
Tags: Avengers, Avengers Endgame, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios

The Avengers: Endgame is a Bad Movie. Stop Lying to Yourself.

NO, REALLY, A LOT OF SPOILERS AHEAD

The flow of the movie was all over the place. Not even the time traveling aspect but just how people were appearing, changing, and disappearing without any context in the film. There was a lot of this. It is a stupid excuse to argue a lot of this happened for the sake of brevity. The reason why Infinity War and Endgame are almost 6 hours total is because Marvel had to stuff the movies with as much content as possible to tell the story without needing more movies to do it. While the Thanos saga could have easily merited a third film (the “Infinity Stones Trilogy”), it would have required an extra film from the likes of Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, and Chris Evans which they couldn’t get resulting in an abattoir of lost character development, plot points, and arcs.

2. Captain Marvel is a bad Avenger. Full stop. She’s like an absentee father where she will only be there if you really, really, really need her. She’s in the film for a grand total of seven minutes and for what? She rescues Tony at the start and then she leaves because she’s guarding “thousands of less fortunate worlds” which okay, fair. But WHY was she not involved in the Avengers’ super important, “we only get one shot at this, we can’t fail” mission to undo the snap? Like it didn’t occur to anyone to bring the one person who could do the whole thing by themselves? Even in the climax of the fight, she didn’t really do anything. They tried to book her arrival like the battle of Wakanda where the Avengers were losing and Thor showed up to even the playing field but if that was happening on Earth they didn’t show it because they seemed alright despite the ship shelling them. It’s honestly a waste of a character that truthfully Marvel doesn’t seem to know what to do with. She’s basically a female version of Superman in that they’re a living god and aren’t really challenged / threatened by anything. In short: after a year of hearing fans say “where was Captain Marvel during Infinity War?” Marvel seemed to have learned nothing and left us asking “where was Captain Marvel during the time heist?”

3. The final battle made no sense. On Wakanda in Infinity War, 10 Avengers (including a very late Thor and a shieldless Cap), and the Wakandan army nearly defeated Thanos (who had five stones), 3 of the Black Order sans Maw, and his army. Somehow in Endgame, a very full strength 20 Avengers plus like 4 armies plus Thor there from the start plus Cap with a shield AND Mjolnir plus a late Captain Marvel plus a completed Infinity Gauntlet couldn’t immediately beat Thanos (with zero stones), the Black Order, and one army? It doesn’t make sense. At all.

4. The entire soul stone / Black Widow death scene was bad. The Avengers spent five years reviewing what went into getting the stones. They KNEW someone has to die to get the soul stone. Like that’s necessary, they wouldn’t not tell you that before you went. Nebula knew it. Stark knew it. For them to act shocked and resigned was disingenuous. Beyond that, the entire fight scene was just confusing. It was like a race to make the sacrifice. Yes, it made sense to kill Black Widow and that was the right call but how they got there was bad. It would have made more sense for Ronin to be like “I have nothing to live for, I’ll die for the stone” and then right before he jumps they pull an Armageddon where Black Widow trips Ronin and she kills herself with some line about how it’s her turn to make the sacrifice (because up to now she’s the only one who hasn’t lost anything / anyone). It would have made the death itself way more powerful than the version we got.

5. Why didn’t Black Widow get a funeral? Seriously. Her death was treated like some flimsy ancillary character like Doby from Harry Potter (and even he got a funeral). There was a brooding scene right after when everyone is sad (akin to Coulson’s death reaction in the first Avengers) and Hulk throws a bench but other than we don’t receive a lot of closure with the character. Outside of Banner saying he tried to wish her back and Ronin (and this should have been Banner) / Scarlet Witch commiserating at the end, she gets no fanfare. She was literally an Avenger before Stark even was and she deserved more than what she got.

6. They don’t properly explain why they couldn’t bring back Gomorrah and Black Widow (or Vision for that matter). Like the stones can do literally anything…. except reincarnate the dead? It doesn’t make sense. Especially because in the comics you definitely CAN. It’s a common plot hole for devices that deal with unlimited power that these films try to skate on.

7. Why was Pepper Potts just randomly hanging out at Avengers HQ when Stark’s ship arrived? No one knew they were coming so what gives?

8. Where and when did Pepper Potts go from a corporate executive who becomes hysterical during every battle (see: Infinity War’s first act) to “has her own suit and is ready to do battle”? I understand they NEEDED her there for Stark’s death so she was the last face he saw but that doesn’t excuse the plot hole that got her to the battlefield. Like scenes where she got into the suit and went to the fight (potentially because she knew it may be the last time she sees Tony), saying goodbye to her daughter (who is being watched by Happy) and explaining that she’s going to help ensure the world is safe for her would have been good. You kind of had this for Tony earlier in the movie but they really needed to flesh out how and why Pepper got there and they missed an opportunity to do this well.

9. The whole female Avengers charge scene was so heavy handed that it negated its significance. It’s the MCU’s version of Spider-Man jumping in front of the American flag in Spider-Man 3. The main issue is that the last two movies send a message to the audience that women and men can NOT fight together (save for Captain Marvel). They did this in Infinity War too with Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and Okoye fighting Proxima Midnight. By trying to be inclusive, the films somehow became more exclusionary of female characters. Joss Whedon has a lot of issues as a writer, but he understood the important symbolism of a female character taking men to task in battle. He did it with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and he did it in The Avengers. It’s something that Infinity War and Endgame failed to do (sans Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel going after Thanos).

10. After spending a year mourning the Avengers who were dusted in Infinity War, audiences were rewarded with a grand total of 10 minutes of screen time for the lot of them. For one thing: we’re not actually shown how people return from the dust (which would have bene the emotional payoff from Infinity War’s dusting). They don’t explain what people are like when they come back or what actually happened to them while they were gone. How were the dusted Avengers able to rally armies to fight so quickly? Like none of it makes sense other than it led to an otherwise entertaining fake Hobbit Battle of Five Armies sequence and a catch phrase. Again, a great opportunity missed to further develop the audience’s emotional investment to these characters (especially since a lot of them are the stars of the franchise going forward).

11. Black Widow’s character arc was really confusing. Was she in love with Ronin? Was she in love with Banner? What was the point of the build up in Ultron with her and Banner, tease it further in Infinity War, then just kinda blow it off in Endgame? The ultimate issue here is it robbed the audience of any kind of emotional payoff for Bruce Banner’s character. More troubling because it happened at the mercy of Ronin’s development even though his arc had already been written (and who got an emotional payoff at the end of the movie). Once again, bad character development that cheats Bruce Banner out of closure.

12. Endgame clearly tried to correct the Thanos character. In short, they made him way too sympathetic in Infinity War. There have been a lot of people who have said Thanos is the hero of Infinity War. To fix that in Endgame, Thanos was written more as a nihilistic sociopath which kind of works because ultimately it’s Thanos from the past but his motivations for the Infinity Stones wouldn’t change so why should his mannerisms / motivations? It worked from a raw storytelling perspective of giving the audience a pure villain to root against but considering the existing character arcs, we know that Thanos is more than a pure villain.

13. Why not use the stones to revive Tony Stark? It’s a simple question. They could. Captain Marvel (presumably is the only one strong enough to safely wield the gauntlet) could have used the gauntlet, snapped her fingers, and he would be alive.

14. How did Cap return the soul stone? There’s a lot of questions here like a.) what it was like seeing Red Skull again? b.) How do you put back the soul stone since the films never actually show where you get the stone? c.) Do you get the life back for the stone or is it a no refunds situation?

15. The Cap old man ending is literally impossible. Based on the very same rules on time travel as defined by Hulk and the Ancient One. When you go through time, whatever you do does not change your present, it simply creates an alternate track where your changes are reflected. So Cap going back to the past to marry Peggy Carter and die an old man would NEVER have happened in the reality that Falcon / Bucky were in. It would have happened in the alternate track Cap created in the past meaning the shield handoff and everything would never have happened.

In conclusion:

1. Brand loyalty does not make a bad movie good

2. Nostalgia does not make a bad movie good

3. Crying at the end does not make a bad movie good (otherwise Marley & Me would be Citizen Kane)