Avengers: Endgame

[kerravonsen]

So I've finally seen "Avengers: Endgame". I was astonished to realise that this movie was Three Hours Long. No wonder they packed so much into it. So many feels. Even though I had already been spoiled for the major events, they still got me right there.

Toneeeeeeee!
Natashaaaaa!

But at least there is Endgame-fix-it fic I can read now.

I really liked what they did with so much characterisation:

• Clint: the absolutely devastating opening
• Tony: the whole "I'm about to die on a spaceship so I'll record messages for my loved ones" thing.
• Tony: the way Tony basically said to Steve when he returned to Earth: "no, I'm done, I'm done, I'm really done this time."
  • And the pain Tony shows when he says to Steve "You weren't there."
  • Considering how many times Tony had said "I'm done" in the past and then not stuck to it, it's no wonder he had to say it multiple times with feeling.
  • (Mind you, Tony still didn't stick to it, but five years has to be a record.)
• Thor: finally managing to behead Thanos, and it's completely pointless, and Thor just goes into a depression spiral
• Steve: telling everyone else to move on when he knows he's lying to himself
• Natasha: trying to hold herself together doing good
• Tony: the bit where Tony of course has to check out the numbers after he told Steve "no, time travel is impossible, go away"
  • and the way Tony was totally gobsmacked when his final simulation worked
    • I liked how they conveyed in a subtle way that Tony had been working on the thing for hours already.
  • "Honey, I've solved time travel."
  • "I want to bury it, throw it in the lake and forget about it, and go to bed."
    "But you would never rest."
  • "Getting you to stop is the one thing I completely failed at," says Pepper.
    • Oh Pepper, oh Pepper, I love how you are with Tony
• Bruce: oh golly, he's so laid-back.
  • And during the time-heist, he's so lacklustre with his pretend roaring, hah.
• During the time-heist, that whole thing with Tony and Steve "do you trust me?" -- it is clear that those five years have brought some healing, whew.
• The way Clint, Steve, and Tony are confronted with parts of their past they either didn't know or didn't want to remember.
• Clint & Natasha fighting on Vormir.
  • I still think Red Skull is lying.
• Tony & Peter: that hug.

Some people criticised how Pepper said to dying!Tony "You can rest now," as saying something trite and not consistent with what Tony was like, but I think it ties in with the "But you would never rest" that Pepper said earlier. Besides, what the heck is one supposed to say to one's dying husband? Something trite and vaguely comforting is probably the best Pepper could come up with at the time.

The Doylist reason that Captain Marvel spends so much time in space is that her power-levels are so enormous that it is better for the story if she's only brought out if absolutely no-one else can save the day.

Now... let us look at the Time Travel.

• Bruce was terrible at explaining it.
• The Ancient One was a bit better.

So I think what they were getting at is that you can't change your own history, you can only add branches to the multiverse. I'm not sure whether Bruce thought that returning the stones afterwards would "restore" the timeline, or whether it was just important to get the stones beyond anyone's reach. (And of course, he'd promised the Ancient One, but that wasn't a factor in his original planning.) Because it's clear that, especially with Loki and the Tesseract, that they were making changes.

And how do you know that the future you return to is the one you came from?

Which is a BIG problem with the "Steve stayed in the past and grew old with Peggy" thing. Because that's a huge change, and by the multiverse theory, a new branch split off at that point, and it would have been impossible for that new branch to join up with the old branch in such a way that Old!Steve could turn up and give Sam his shield. (How many shields were there at that point? Original!Steve's shield got destroyed by Thanos in the battle.)

Then we have the problem with Thanos and his entire bloody army travelling forward from 2014. Oh, one half of that is okay, in that 2014!Nebula travelled forward in the place of her future self, and thus managed to get at the time travel machine in order to bring Thanos forward. Thing is, the tech was built for moving individuals through time, not bloody great spaceships. It's not like Thanos could wrap a quantum-suit around his spaceship. Not to mention, 2014!Nebula could only have stolen one dose of Pym Particles, because that's all that Future!Nebula had. The writers seem to have conveniently forgotten that. Oh well.

Guess they just couldn't resist having one more Epic Battle. I did like how Doctor Strange and his sorcerors brought the cavalry. Almost as breathtaking as Gandalf the White riding in on Shadowfax at the head of an army...
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