Avengers Aftermath: A Cautionary Tale of the 4 Percent
‘Avengers: Endgame’ just shattered every box office record imaginable and pumped the waterworks for audiences across the globe. But was it the cinematic masterpiece we were all expecting? Here’s one heartless critic’s take on why it didn’t quite stick the landing.
Warning: HUGE spoilers for Avengers: Endgame. Please go into seeing this movie without having it spoiled. It’s one of the rare unpredictable big-budget movies you will see.
I should have felt more.
Eleven years. Twenty-one films. One massive cliff-hanger. A genius marketing campaign. The buildup to Avengers: Endgame could not have been more perfect.
Did I set my expectations too high? Do I take superhero films too seriously? All possible answers, but I left my Thursday night showing of the MCU finale feeling hungry and tired rather than awed and moved.
I will note, every single one of my friends who accompanied me to the theater (like 20 dudes, lots of friends, slight flex) LOVED the film. So I, along with the four percent of critics on Rotten Tomatoes who didn’t give the film a fresh rating, clearly reside in the minority with this take.
I did not hate the film. I just didn’t feel the weight of the most important franchise in film history crashing down upon me like I should have. Let me explain.
I understand why Grandmaster Feige hesitated to call this one Infinity War: Part II like he initially planned. Infinity War — perhaps the best MCU film — and Endgame were completely different animals.
To make the former work, the Russo Brothers needed to craft a film which could balance the sheer amount of characters thrown on to the screen and still remain coherent. Given their experience with ensemble television, which drew Disney towards the two as potential directors, Joe and Anthony knew how to send our heroes out on their own individual arcs so the film would function on a character level. Hence the very separated storylines traversed by the various Avengers, some more important and cathartic than others.
Further props to the Russos for slowly developing Thanos as the main character of Infinity War. By introducing a new protagonist for the third Avengers film — rather than focusing on any one hero too much — the plot propelled forward with a more natural progression.
Without their expertise, Infinity War would have felt like a lifeless mess of a film. Instead, audiences got one of the simplest MCU films, which could be boiled down to “Thanos wants to acquire all the stones to save the universe from overpopulation, and the Avengers are unable to make the necessary sacrifices to stop him.”
Infinity War was straightforward. It made sense. It was a tragedy which permeated with themes of selflessness and loss.
Endgame was anything but.
I predicted time travel would comprise a key element of the plot, but boy, was I ever underprepared for what I would encounter. Whenever you mess with time travel, you risk losing your audience (looking at you, X-Men franchise). The rules are convoluted, contradictory, and if you watch the film with a bunch of nerdy engineers like I did, perhaps scientifically invalid. The jury is still out on that one.
It was a huge risk for the film to begin with a all-out mission to kill Thanos which ends in them anticlimactically killing Thanos. It was an even bigger risk for Endgame to suddenly jump five years into the post-Snap future. Surprising the audience for the sake of crafting an interesting story is one thing. Doing so to circumvent expectations is another. That moment in the film felt a little too close to a certain Rian Johnson and another Disney property than I would have liked.
The time jump actually could have set up some intriguing dilemmas for our characters. Tony Stark now has a young daughter, and seems happy in the short time we spend with the two of them. When proposed with the opportunity to change the past in order to avert the Snap, I actually imagined a much more troubling prospect for Iron Man than the way the timelines ended up unfolding. I falsely assumed Tony hesitated to join the mission for fear of changing the past and erasing the existence of his daughter. Now that would be an interesting character motivation, rather than the stereotypical “I have a family now” Iron Man gave us.
What follows is what I’ll describe as an extended “best of the MCU” montage, with our characters returning to seemingly random moments throughout the franchise to pull off the most ambitious time-heist ever put to film.
This was fun at times. I enjoyed seeing Cap use his knowledge of Hydra existing within S.H.I.E.L.D. to make off with Loki’s scepter. The Ancient One retcon answering where the Wizards were during the battle of New York was a cool scene (Tilda Swinton is just the best), and for a second helped me think I was understanding the implications of the Avengers’ time shenanigans.
However, the sheer amount of fan service really took me out the viewing experience. We got to see Loki again! Is that Hank Pym? Oh, Crossbones, I liked him. They really got Robert Redford to come back for this? I thought he was retired.
Eventually, I felt like I was watching a film created by the internet for the internet. I imagined people that look like me around the world cheering loudly for even Jasper Sitwell. Which is not a comforting feeling.
No scene demonstrated the lack of restraint of the time travel storyline better than the return to Vormir. We had seen this once before. We knew what to expect. Either Hawkeye or Black Widow was not making it off that planet.
In Infinity War, this scene was a painful slow burn. We slowly realized Thanos was both crazy and dedicated enough to throw his daughter off the cliff to acquire the Soul Stone. And Gamora did her best to make sure he did not accomplish that goal, even attempting to take her own life in order to protect the universe. It was tragic. I was upset.
In Endgame, we got a cutesy transition, a joke about the two not being on the same page, and ultimately an impromptu action scene with Hawkeye and Black Widow fighting for the opportunity to jump. The two even do a last-second switcharoo which felt extremely out-of-place and deflated the moment.
This should have been so painful. We all love ScarJo. She’s been one of the original six for almost a decade, the matriarch of the MCU. Instead, I felt like I was watching a discount recreation of the scene from the previous movie, devoid of the same themes and weight. Dare I even say this moment verged on Last Jedi status? It comes close.
Editor’s Note: Not sure where you’re going with all of this Last Jedi slander, but I guess I’ll allow it.
If we fast forward to the final battle, I did think it was super intelligent to include Thanos from the past as the final antagonist. I did not see that one coming, and I love feeling that way when I watch these big-budget films.
I also loved the final battle. Fan service, again, perhaps. But the fight outside Avengers headquarters had an almost Lord of the Rings vibe to it, with the forces of good rallying together one final time to fight the inevitable evil of Thanos and his army. Even if I knew they were going to come back, seeing Black Panther, Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Doctor Strange teleport to the battle just as all hope seemed lost was a great crowd-pleasing moment. So was Cap’s wielding of Mjolnir in the duel with Thanos, which — while slightly cheesy — had at least been teased by Age of Ultron.
For all my griping, the battle did a lot well. There was the large-scale CGI army fare, but also the very personal battle between Thor, Iron Man, and Cap against Thanos to balance out the madness. The pursuit of the Infinity Gauntlet also gave the secondary Avengers something to do, so that was nice of the Russos. To not Tolkien-ize the ordeal too much, it felt like Frodo and Sam destroying the Ring while Aragorn rallies the Armies of the West to charge the Black Gate. In my mind, both battles will probably go down in film lore as some of the best, most epic fights put to the silver screen.
Editor’s Note: The Battle at the Black Gate is only the third-best fight in the movies, but I guess I’ll allow it…again.
Yet the film ended in such an unsatisfactory way. Forget the silliness of Tony somehow snatching all the stones from Thanos and wielding them without immediately imploding. That was the big payoff with Dr. Strange’s whole 14,000,605 possible outcomes spiel? That Tony needed to live because he was going to die snapping his fingers? I thought with all of his years of planning, Feige would have delivered a little more interesting of a resolution to the one timeline nonsense.
The films have also incessantly teased Tony’s death twice now (Avengers and Infinity War), leading to me groan and wonder “This again?” as Tony collapsed after the third snap. This groan turned to “Oh wait, he actually dies this time. Oh no…”
I should have felt more. Instead, I was painfully reminded of The Last Jedi. Again.
The endgame took two of the oldest Avengers from us, and I didn’t even shed a tear. This was the same Tony Stark who escaped from the cave all those years ago to become a hero. The same Natasha Romanoff who put her demons behind her to become the leader of the Avengers.
Pulling a “gotcha!” moment on the audience is no proper way to send these characters off, nor is it a way to evoke deep emotion. At least from me. Maybe I am heartless.
There was a simpler, more weighty film buried under the mess of Endgame. One which would have used time travel in a straightforward manner, to reverse the past and prevent the snap. To present our characters with hard choices — like erasing the existence of Tony’s daughter — to perpetuate the fantastic themes present in Infinity War. Imagine a story where the remaining Avengers risked their new families, their new realities, undoing their current existence.
That’s how you lend gravity to a situation. Not through fan service and simple choices.
I guess I’d say I wasn’t mad with Endgame. Just disappointed. I do commend the Russos for a beautiful ending to Cap’s saga. After all he’s been through, he deserved to sit down and have the fairy-tale life we all were rooting he’d find (even if that creates an awkward dynamic with his niece).
I feel like a huge weight has lifted off of my shoulder. I haven’t complained enough to anyone in person about all my aforementioned problems with the newest MCU film. Maybe I should take my experience as an opportunity to reflect on myself. I should turn my brain off more. I should expect less from a movie with a talking racoon.
Regardless of my thoughts on Endgame, I’m happy I grew up with the MCU. Thank you to Kevin Feige for giving me my Star Wars. I look forward to watching these films with my kids one day and telling them I was there for the opening night of the endgame. I’m finally feeling the nostalgia and emotions I was supposed to feel Thursday night, so I better sign off before it’s too late.
Jake Graber-Lipperman is a soon-to-be Duke graduate who invests his free time in everything that’s all and well in pop culture. You can find more of his work here.
