The whole time travel aspect and explaining it was done pretty well up to the last Cap's scene. I'm assuming that he stayed in an alternative timeline until he got old, otherwise his scenes in other films with both Carters would rise a lot of questions and it explains where he got the shield. For it to fully work, he should return as an old man in the machine, not sit on a bench nearby. It gives an impression he lived in this timeline and you need to assume that someone from the other timeline helped him to get back differently than he normally would.

While it's a small thing, you can tell that in this case directors decided that having a nicer send-off for Cap was more important than avoiding a confusion with the time travel rules.

 

Just saw it for second time. Glad I went opening day with everyone in cinema gasping ect. Added a lot to the movie. This was mostly quite.

Still great, my two points are still only Thor and Hulk going a bit far off in their character development.


So 6 new Avengers:

Spiderman
Dr Strange
Black Panther
....

I think they are the only current main avengers.

Bucky, Clint, new Captain. They are all the B grade, they’ll be supporting in others movies of in the next ensumble movie.

Captain Marvel is simply broken, far to powerful to be around normal plots and baddies. She is pure cosmic scale.

I can see them maybe trying with Shuri and a few others.

 

I was a bit disappointed with Shuri tbh. Like, she's got a pair of ballin' laser glove guns, but otherwise it was like if Stark had rocked up to a fight with only his repulsor gloves.

 

A few weeks ago people were arguing if Endgame can break $300m opening weekend in the US. Most assumed that it will have the record, but somewhere around $270-280m, but few said it will cross that line if barely. Well, there is nothing barely about it anymore. Not only it will go above $300m, but it's very close to being above $350m too.

Previous records from the last 30 years for comparison:
1989 Batman $40,505,884
1992 Batman Returns $45,687,711
1993 Jurassic Park $47,026,828
1995 Batman Forever $52,784,433
1997 The Lost World: Jurassic Park $72,132,785
2001 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone $90,294,621
2002 Spider-Man $114,844,116
2006 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest $135,634,554
2007 Spider-Man 3 $151,116,516
2008 The Dark Knight $158,411,483
2011 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 $169,189,427
2012 The Avengers $207,438,708
2015 Jurassic World $208,806,270
2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens $247,966,675
2018 Avengers: Infinity War $257,698,183
2019 Avengers: Endgame ~$350,000,000

I'm not sure what kind of film you would need to break that record. Avengers: Secret Wars with all O6 actors returning after 10 years of retirement from MCU?

 

I wonder how many spiderman films they'll do.

 

TL;DR -- It's good. Liked it a lot. Personally, I still enjyed IW more. IW just did a lot of very good things. Making the villain the protagonist, then letting that protagonist succeed, yada yada. This isn't the IW thread. Endgame: 8/10 for enjoyment factor.

I have some thoughts. I'll be jumping around different trains of thought, bear with me.

The opening scene was great. Stark contrast between relaxing family time and what we know was going on in Wakanda at that very moment. Most of the planet was either unaware or at best watching Twitter for news updates.

2014 Thanos was an interesting take, given his strong "this is my destiny" vibe in IW and the fact that this was several years before that, but when Nebulas interfaced, he took it all in stride, no hammy "but what does this mean?????"--straight to business. Pragmatic, calculating, self-assured, competent. No faffing about. He knows where the Stones are, he goes straight for the Stones, even using himself as bait for the Avengers to give Nebula time to find them. (IW Thanos was still better, but really great effort)

Curious contrast between Thor and Hulk. Thor, always so baller and confident, so very fake-it-till-you-make-it in IW, completely breaks down, to the point of becoming a sad parody of himself. Banner was always the opposite: calm, withdrawn, entirely at odds with Hulk. He spent Ragnarok and IW having even that one reliable vector of defense and attack ripped away from him, and the Hulkbuster couldn't exaxctly replace it. So Banner spends the time skip coming to terms with what happened perhaps better than any other Avenger and finally figures out himself. Then again, I would've liked to actually have seen the completion of this arc rather than having it briefly mentioned, so a bit of a fuckup there.

Subtle acting from Widow. She's unravelling. She clearly feels lost without the structure of Shield or the Avengers team, and is grasping at emulating some of that structure. She was at peace with her self-sacrifice, even likely knowing that this would truly be the end for her. I could say that she was underutilized in the film, but so was pretty much every character outside of Tony, Cap, and Thanos. It's just not possible to really do everyone justice when you have to fit in eleventy million cameos in your already densely populated ensemble movie. I thought what she was there for was well done.

Lots of moments were great. Cap vs Cap (although I kinda expected 2023 Cap to basically have a clear upper hand, my impression was always that Cap learned all the modern martial arts post Battle of New York when he started working with SHIELD, but then the movie also suggests that Cap had already worked with the Strike team for ~1 year between his deicing and New York, so okay). And I was wrong about the America's ass line. Poking fun at Phase 1 costumes, I approve. That suit always looked a bit too cartoony for me, I much prefer the look Russos gave him.

So many stairs, RAAAAAAAAHH. Golden.

I like that they kept continuity with the shwarma post-credits scene in 2012 Avengers when Thor said "lunch, and then back to Asgard".

Very much enjoyed Hulk's scene with the Sorcerer Supreme. Like Thanos, she took it in stride and accepted Banner's reasoning when he suggested that Strange must have had a good reason for giving up the Stone. She had that proper wise old mentor vibe with just the right amount of superior sass.

Even with their limited shared time onscreen, I thought that Rhodey and Nebula had a good vibe together. ("So... he's an idiot." "Yeah". Second best joke in the film, after Rocket slapping Thor.) However, the bulkiness of War Marchine's armor was fucking ridiculous. I legit thought he wore the Hulkbuster to the final battle for a moment.

Avengers Assemble was pure orgasmic awesomeness--or would be pure awesomeness if the final battle wasn't. Taking. Place. In. Goddamn. Darkness. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity. Fuck.

I also liked the moment when all the ladies lined up for battle. This was fanservice done properly--it highlighted something cool without dragging some other character(s) down to elevate itself.

Cap's "Hail Hydra" and the smirk afterwards. He's like, "these guys are damn gullible". Easiest theft of cosmic super-universe-breaking-weapon ever.

When Banner reluctantly tried--and failed--to get in character to impersonate Hulk. "Hulk smash... I guess. Damn, I'm pants at this."

Giant-Man punching out one of Thanos' Chitauri robot space whales, priceless.

The pose Thor struck when summoning the hammer in Asgard was funny as fuck. I understand they didn't have a lot of time to spend on this, but the joy on his face when Mjolnir still judged him worthy was great. And then Cap takes the hammer in battle--woah, dude.

"And I... am... Iron Man". Woah, dude. I choked up.

Clearly, there's a lot to like in Endgame. But it's okay to be critical of things we like. There's lots to nitpick here, too. Big ticket items first.

Time travel. Suspension of disbelief has to be stretched when you're dealing with a culmination of a 22-film arc that went from realistically-grounded sci-fi through space high fantasy, a spy thriller, a sort of political thriller, funky space adventure and comedy heist to Balls-out Superhero Salad Deluxe, all while juggling humor and drama. I can do that. But the logic with timelines was fuzzy, especially with 2012 Loki escaping and old!Cap at the end. It didn't diminish my enjoyment of the film because of all the things Endgame did right, but I did notice, so there.

The Infinity Stones. I mean, sure. The source material is comic books, which, as I understand, aren't known for their adherence to consistency regarding power levels, timelines, characters, and whatever else. But it is an elephant in the room. I can get Widow's death if the Soul Stone kinda hard-locks it into the state of the universe, but Vision, for example? I know he didn't die in the Snap, but the Stones literally give you power to do anything you want. The power scale of the Stones themselves is out of whack, which is understandable, given that directors changed between movies, but nonetheless, the question lingers. Loki used just the Mind Stone as a weapon and an easy-to-use mind control device. AoU suggested it literally has a mind of its own, and Vision--presumably--had most of his fantastical powers because of it, which included interfacing with all of the Internet at will, power beams, flight, phasing through shit, changing appearance... Strange saved the planet with the Time Stone. Thanos was able to use a moon for orbital bombardment with four of the Stones and had a duel with a straight-up wizard, and won.

I just fail to see how having all the Stones wouldn't grant power to instantly undo all the bad that happened in the 21 previous movies, but okay. I guess some limits have to exist for the narrative of the MCU to not completely fall apart.

The Infinity Stones are terrible plot devices is what I'm saying, and I hope the MCU is done with them for good, at least the feature films.

Character power levels is another issue rooted in the inherent problems of the source material and different directors having different takes on characters. Whedon's Iron Man was easily on par with Thor and certainly stronger than Cap. Russos' Iron Man was on par with Cap and apparently weaker than IW Thor, but then Endgame Thor was plainly weaker than IW Thor. We all remember when Thor rolled in and singlehandedly exploded the entire army, right? Could you put down Thor's subpar performance in Endgame down to the fact that he let himself go? Maybe. But he's still a 1500 year old god. In IW, the complete Infinity Gauntlet couldn't stop Stormbreaker, now 2014-no-Stone Thanos was beating the shit out of post-Ragnarok Thor.

In 2012 Avengers, Iron Man gutted one of those space whales, now Captain Marvel was the one to destroy Thanos' flagship, and she held her own against Thanos. I mean, he fucking headbutted her and she didn't even flinch. It took the Infinity Gauntlet to punch her out. She's at least as powerful as Thanos (and Thanos has been the most powerful MCU character thus far, given his feats without the Stones), so any future film that takes place on Earth is entirely below her. She was very poorly used in the film. I'd have preferred that her introduction had been saved until Phase 4 entirely. The rescue of Tony and Nebula could have been handled with Thor's Stormbreaker Bifrost shenanigans and the Ravagers could have bombed Thanos' flagship out of the sky or whaterver. She was shoehorned into the film and completely unnecessary.

Wanda held her own against a 5-Stone Gauntlet in IW long enough to destroy the Mind Stone (btw, the Time Stone's power was enough to restore another Stone, so yeah, the Stones just suck ass) and tossed those fuckhuge wheel-like siege engines in IW, here she took her sweet time to dismantle Thanos' armor instead of doing what Hulk did to Loki in 2012 and helping out with the rest of the battle.

My point is, I have to accept that power levels are a distant second priority to writing in the desired character moments.

Why does the final battle have to be in darkness? Fucking hell, IW did this right. I'm not saying it had to be sunny like Wakanda, but the battle on Titan managed to be in a wrecked environment and I could still see what was happening.

Fat!Thor was something I'd expect to see in Ragnarok, it was completely out of place here. The joke with Thor threatening some shittalking 10 year old on Xbox fell flat. I understand Thor's arc--he got his ass kicked and had to talk to his mum to get his shit together. I just didn't like the execution. Fat!Thor and all that it entailed was the one element of the film I think was plain bad, from Thor living like a slob to wearing pyjamas, to failed attempts at humor, to apparently slipping back into the immature frat boy persona at the end of the film when he seemed like he grew up in Ragnarok and IW. IW!Thor was the height of the character. Endgame!Thor fell off a cliff and became a complete disappointment. And I'm not sure his power level will fit into the Guardian crew.

So yeah. I like the movie, but I don't love it. It won't hold up for me as well as some of the other MCU films.

 

A visual cue I really, really enjoyed was Natasha growing her hair out, with the blonde tips and her sort of reddish-brown (not quite sure) natural colour coming through. It’s a bit stupid perhaps if you really think about it, considering it’s been five years, but I still really liked it as a visual reminder that time has moved on (which is otherwise barely visible on the characters’ faces.

Going for my second showing tonight. Cinema will still be pretty much packed according to the seat map I’ve seen.

 

Bucky would be a little better because his redemption arc and wanting to prove himself worthy of the shield would work well togerther. Sam is a supporting character without any arc for himself at the moment.

And to be honest nothing in the past films convinced me that either of their actors can be a good replacement for Chris Evans in future films. Which is probably why instead of getting a solo film, they will star in Disney+ TV Show.

 

RE: Time Travel

I didn't see Cap's showing up as an inconsistency. He went back, created a totally new timeline in which he lived out the rest of his days with Peggy. The OG timeline still exists where he -didn't-. Him showing up at the end there is essentially those two timelines meeting and merging.

RE: Power Levels

I actually don't see much of an inconcistency. We do see Tony become more powerful and consistently stay more powerful thanks to nanotech. Endgame Tony would wipe the floor with Iron Man Tony.

Cap? He beat his old self. Didn't completely overpower him, but he won.

Thor? I think it's easily explained as "letting himself go." He still was a badass. He still fought and took out numerous enemies. He still would destroy Thor/Dark World Thor in a fight. Regarding his combat vs. Thanos in this film...let's remember that he didn't fight Thanos in Infinity War. It was more like a headshot! (chestshot technically) stealth kill from Call of Duty or something. This is the first time Thor actually fought thanos for real.

 

But nothing in the film suggests that merging that different timelines can happen allowing this situation? Unless I missed something.

 

Merging is perhaps the wrong word. Meeting is best. Cap showing up there doesn’t mean his past is now their past. It just means he went where he knew they would be.

Eh...I don’t see anything contradictory but I do see a mystery. I hope Far from home addresses a lot of this

 

Mind giving more examples of what you mean? Because in the Marvel movies I think they have done an amazing job of being consistent.

I disagree that Iron Man has ever been vastly more powerful than Captain America at least until perhaps IW and the nanotech.

 

@Arthellion

Maybe I'll grant you Thor, but he should still be summoning lightning on a massive scale. Getting fat shouldn't affect his storm manipulation powers. Just watch a clip of his entrance into battle in IW again.

Tony might be the most inconsistent with power levels in the MCU. In AoU he and Vision were the only ones who could hold their own against Ultron, even Thor struggled. Then a year later in Civil War Cap was beating Tony's fucking metal AI-driven armor in hand to hand combat, until Tony remembered that he has an AI and finally used the suit properly and briefly had the upper hand. In IW nanotech Tony had a duel with Stone-wielding Thanos and wasn't immediately smacked down. In Endgame, nanotech Tony (presumably with 5 more years of nanotech advancement because we see in the film that he never stops tinkering and building, hence Pepper's armor) against Stoneless Thanos needs Cap and Thor to hold Thanos at bay.

 

Did you watch in 3D? The final battle was lit perfectly fine in my screening, but I saw 2D and 3D is known to be significantly darker.

 

Thor: He was using his lightning in the final battle there in endgame. On a massive scale. This army was fricking huge.

Tony: I reject your premise that Cap didn't hold his own against Ultron. Did he get beat down? Eventually yeah, but he survived. Tony did better against Ultron I'll grant you that, but not to such an extent that he's on a "different level." And a year passes. A year where Tony wasn't fighting. Wasn't doing much of being a hero. Cap was leading the Avengers. Cap was growing his skills. It's not absurd to think that Cap (+Bucky) could beat Tony.

Regarding IW Tony vs. Thanos. It's worth noting Tony had a much larger team with him vs. Thanos in that fight. Also, Thanos had just lost Gamora. Also, Thanos had a different goal. His goal was the time stone. In Endgame, his goal was to kill them. So yeah. makes a difference.

Ultimately, I think it's worth remembering that these aren't video game characters. They don't "level up" and then get to beat down someone several levels lower. Circumstances matter.

That is what I mean by consistent. I can't think of any time where it's been illogical that someone is beating another.

 

I pretty much wholeheartedly agree with @ScottPress. I didn't like the fact that Iron Man and Nebula were rescued, like, 5 mins into the movie, but eh, that's all right. Could have been handled better, but it's no biggie. Iron Man mentioning eigenvalues brought a smile to my face.

The reason I gave myself for the wonky power levels was the time lapse. Tony and Thor haven't trained at all those 5 years. Tony gave his suit up, Thor gave himself up. 5 years of rust is a lot to shake off when you're fighting people of Thanos's calibre. Cap seemed okay when it comes to consistency. Him shooting lightening at Thanos beggared belief, though.

Also, I'd really have loved a Hulk vs Thanos rematch, with that aggressive personality overpowering Bruce's for one last smackdown. Would have been brilliant.

Edit: I didn't find the final battle too dark. Everything was perfectly visible, and I saw it in 3D.

 

I never watch 3D. It fucks with my eyes. I acknowledge that my piss poor eyesight might be adding something regarding the cinema image, although my glasses are a current prescription. I just don't like the trope of battles in darkness. Wakanda was brightly lit in the middle of the day and I don't think it lost any urgency or atmosphere because of it. Edit: also re:3D, I haven't seen a 3D movie in years. People who are on topic with this, is 3D worth watching? Like, does the image actually jump out at you or not?

@Genghiz Khan re:Cap shooting lightning, I find no fault in it. Mjolnir was also Thor's lightning rod all through Ragnarok until he learned to channel thunder himself. If Mjolnir found Cap worthy, I'm fine with it lending its full range of power to him. Cap was even swinging it like Thor used to for flight before he got Stormbreaker.