Avengers Endgame (Contains ALL THE SPOILERS)

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Sorceress Supreme told Hulk that the infinity stones are responsible for maintaining the flow of time. In the future the stones are gone because Thanos blew them up. Shouldn't this put an end to the whole time/space continuum?

If the Infinity Stones create time (and other aspects of reality?), how could Thanos destroy them and there still be time and space and ?

Asked and discussed.

[Shrapnel]

But I really do think that discussing the science in comics is a fools game, and doesn't make for very interesting discussions.

I get that, and I actually agree with you, I personally find discussing (most) movie-time-travel-science boring. But obviously some people find it interesting, so you should just let the discussion happen without comment. I don't think many people find imported-toy-guns-with-orange-safety-caps an interesting topic either, yet that discussion was held without interruption.

You're right. The main thing you have to realize, tho, is that I'm not very bright.

On a totally related track, I'm really hoping Thor goes back to being hunky. The "fat and drunk" thing worked for a while, but he's supposed to be hot! I can't get it off to flabby god nipples.

Anyway, I'll shut up now.

[Whiysper]

Given that was blatantly Hemsworth in a fat suit and/or CGI-ing his head onto a fatter body, I suspect that Thor and Quill will be competing to get back into shape. Recall that in Infinity War they told Quill he was getting fat - I could totally see them both spamming crunches together or something. Or sharing their 'I really want that cheeseburger, but I'm going to settle for this salad instead' pain .

ETA: Yes, blatantly Thor will be returning to form if he carries on with the character. .

[Pariah Dog]

Given that was blatantly Hemsworth in a fat suit and/or CGI-ing his head onto a fatter body, I suspect that Thor and Quill will be competing to get back into shape. Recall that in Infinity War they told Quill he was getting fat - I could totally see them both spamming crunches together or something. Or sharing their 'I really want that cheeseburger, but I'm going to settle for this salad instead' pain .

ETA: Yes, blatantly Thor will be returning to form if he carries on with the character. .

Hes signed on for 4 more movies

[Whiysper]

4 more? Oh, magic. I really like what he's done with Thor so far, that's great news . Thanks!

[Username17]

4 Marvel movies goes faster than you'd think. For example, Benedict Cumberbatch has been in four Marvel movies despite there having only been one Dr. Strange movie.

-Username17

[Whiysper]

Good point, I'd forgotten his Ragnarok cameo . Dr. Strange, Ragnarok, Infinity War, Endgame. Still, like, 3 years worth . I'm curious to see where they take him - he's just started swinging up from his lowest point .

[virgil]

For all the damage caused by using the Infinity Gauntlet (or even just putting it on), why didn't Banner or Stark just enhance their bodies to the point where it wouldn't be such a struggle to handle its use?

[K]

Personally, I'm giving superhero movies a break for the next ten years.

This movie was peak fan-service of superheroes. The genre is dead.

[MGuy]

For all the damage caused by using the Infinity Gauntlet (or even just putting it on), why didn't Banner or Stark just enhance their bodies to the point where it wouldn't be such a struggle to handle its use?

Because that wouldn't be as dramatic.

[maglag]

For all the damage caused by using the Infinity Gauntlet (or even just putting it on), why didn't Banner or Stark just enhance their bodies to the point where it wouldn't be such a struggle to handle its use?

Even Thanos suffers heavy feedback from using the gauntlet.

And Thanos can outpunch Banner and Stark.

So if Banner/Stark could enhance themselves to the point they could easily use the gauntlet, then they could also enhance themselves to the point they could easily solo Thanos and thus would've stopped him by the first movie.

[Foxwarrior]

I think I'd have liked this movie a lot more if it had been a couple times stupider, as it is, it's kind of in the stupidity valley. Ant-Man getting aged and de-aged without starving to death was a funny visual gag, and if three times as many of the scenes had been silly gags like that or Black Widow's suicide, it might have been a good movie.

Also, it turns out I have a lot of unfounded hope for time travel, because time travel is one of my favorite things. The aging and deaging scene, and the scene where characters claim that "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (which is a smart movie written by intelligent people) and "Back to the Future" (which is about time-themed voodoo magic) work the same way, should have been enough for me to know the time travel mechanics were going to be totally borked.

[Username17]

The fact that the movie took time to tell you that they were not doing movie time travel and that they were doing "real" time travel and then they shat all over that by doing rule of cool time travel anyway was pretty messed up. I probably would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they had either not given the rant by Banner about how movie time travel isn't real or they had skipped the age change jokes and not done the flagrant disregard of their own rules by having Captain America age himself into their time branch while obviously living in a different time branch. The thing where they set up rules and then broke them took me out of the movie hard.

But I mean, the whole movie was basically just a victory lap. Like the epilogue to a JK Rowling series where she goes through all the characters and tells you who lives and who has heroic deaths and who canonically ends up with who so you know what fanfiction isn't canon. I didn't feel like there was any plot or story for the movie as a complete thing - just Marvel ticking off boxes of who gets to be in movies going forward and who doesn't.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

There was a lot of fun in the movie, and there was a lot of stupid. I admired the balls of setting up a Time Heist movie; I would have enjoyed it more if they had actually stuck to the Time Heist concept, where they aren't making a lot of actual changes and all the Infinity Stones go back to where they're supposed to be.

...but then there wouldn't have been any huge set piece battle with all the characters and moments. Which is apparently what Strange had been planning all along. But yeah, I wish they had kept playing it along a lot more seriously instead of going for easy jokes.

[Foxwarrior]

I didn't feel like there was any plot or story for the movie as a complete thing - just Marvel ticking off boxes of who gets to be in movies going forward and who doesn't.

And a series of disconnected scenes that seem kind of neat individually works much better as a set of comedy skits than of attempts at being serious.

But yeah, I wish they had kept playing it along a lot more seriously instead of going for easy jokes.

Sure, that would have been good too... with different writers maybe. There are half as many time travel rulesets as there are stories about time travel, most of them are dumb and some of them are fantastic, and someone who lumps them all under "movie time travel" is nearly incapable of picking a fantastic one instead of a dumb one.

[Username17]

The rule they claimed to have was that any changes you made to the past would create time branches and only by popping through your original time tunnel could you get back to your own time branch. You needed to put the time stone back because otherwise you were fucking over a time branch by leaving it in a situation where Dormamu was going to swallow the Earth.

If they'd stuck with that, it could have been fine. But they completely skipped over the fact that several of the stones actually were not used to save anything at any point. Removing the Power Stone from the timeline wouldn't obviously have any negative consequences for the people of the Nova homeworld, for example. It's unclear that there was ever any advantage in having a Soulstone in any version of the timeline because it was never used for anything but evil. They made the case for why they'd want to put some of the stones back, but they made no case at all for why they'd want to put all of the stones back.

And then there's the issue of people jumping from time branch to time branch with no obvious cause. If you go back to the past where Loki escapes at the end of Avengers 1, that's a different time branch. Natural aging will not take you back to the time branch you're originally from. Neither Captain America nor Loki have access to the time tunnel, so whatever antics they get up to in the past should affect a separate time branch where they never return to the timeline that we normally follow.

-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

I guess the time branch thing is technically coherent, maybe... although why would going back to give Dormamu the time stone give the same Dormamu a time stone, rather than now resulting in another sub branch, one where they borrowed the time stone and never returned, and one where they borrowed the time stone and returned it immediately?

[Username17]

I guess the time branch thing is technically coherent, maybe... although why would going back to give Dormamu the time stone give the same Dormamu a time stone, rather than now resulting in another sub branch, one where they borrowed the time stone and never returned, and one where they borrowed the time stone and returned it immediately?

The Time Tunnel presumably allows two-way travel between the branch it creates. If that's how it works, then the invasion by the Thanos from the time branch works and the suggestion that they'll come and bring the stones back also works.

The thing is that going through the time tunnel into Branch B to put the stones back still has you in Branch B until you go back through the tunnel into Branch A. There's no way for Branch B Thanos to naturally age into Branch A, he needs to come through the Tunnel (which he does with the aid of pre-redemption Nebula).

The Ancient One in Branch B refused to send her Time Stone into Branch A on the grounds that then her Branch would have no Time Stone and then Dormamu would destroy Earth in the events of Dr. Strange. Banner promised to bring her stone back to Branch B after they'd used it. Fine.

Then they throw all of that out the window by having Captain America go to Branch B to put the stones back, and then stay there and then end up in Branch A through natural aging - precisely the thing that's literally
impossible and required Thanos to hack the time tunnel in the first place.

Which would all be fine if they had just said "wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff." But they said that they were not using movie time travel and their time travel had real rules and then they decided to scrap it all because they thought of a cool sendoff for Captain America they wanted to use and the themes and structures of the rest of the movie could go hang.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

I guess the time branch thing is technically coherent, maybe... although why would going back to give Dormamu the time stone give the same Dormamu a time stone, rather than now resulting in another sub branch, one where they borrowed the time stone and never returned, and one where they borrowed the time stone and returned it immediately?

The Time Tunnel presumably allows two-way travel between the branch it creates. If that's how it works, then the invasion by the Thanos from the time branch works and the suggestion that they'll come and bring the stones back also works.

The thing is that going through the time tunnel into Branch B to put the stones back still has you in Branch B until you go back through the tunnel into Branch A. There's no way for Branch B Thanos to naturally age into Branch A, he needs to come through the Tunnel (which he does with the aid of pre-redemption Nebula).

The Ancient One in Branch B refused to send her Time Stone into Branch A on the grounds that then her Branch would have no Time Stone and then Dormamu would destroy Earth in the events of Dr. Strange. Banner promised to bring her stone back to Branch B after they'd used it. Fine.

Then they throw all of that out the window by having Captain America go to Branch B to put the stones back, and then stay there and then end up in Branch A through natural aging - precisely the thing that's literally
impossible and required Thanos to hack the time tunnel in the first place.

Which would all be fine if they had just said "wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff." But they said that they were not using movie time travel and their time travel had real rules and then they decided to scrap it all because they thought of a cool sendoff for Captain America they wanted to use and the themes and structures of the rest of the movie could go hang.

-Username17

According to the director, Captain America spent 70 years in Branch B, then used the time machine to return to Branch A and give his shield to the Falcon.

[Shrapnel]

Isn’t that in the realm of authorial intent?

[Ancient History]

It's in the realm of bullshit. They totally fucked up the Time Heist, Thanos & army invaded the future, and in the end they didn't explain jack shit and a bunch of people died for stupid reasons.

We generally forgive them for it because it was a fun movie with lots of fun, cool moments. But the thing is that they shit on movie time travel mechanics and then did movie time travel mechanics that they just shit on.

[Username17]

According to the director, Captain America spent 70 years in Branch B, then used the time machine to return to Branch A and give his shield to the Falcon.

Unlike what they actually did, that would have been consistent with their time travel mechanics spiel. What they actually did was make a big deal out of Captain America not coming through the time tunnel and then they meet him waiting on a park bench.

They have two cheap "surprises" one which they ask the audience to gasp that perhaps Captain America didn't make it through the time heist, and the second where they ask the audience to be surprised that he is in an unexpected place - the park bench waiting. But it's fucking unexpected because it's fucking impossible according to the rules established by the rest of the movie.

They made a conscious choice to have that ending be slightly "more exciting" by taking a giant shit on every single part of the movie's main storyline. Which ultimately is the core decision they made every time. The final battle takes place in an uninhabited wilderness, why don't they use the portals to get all the heroes out and nuke the area instead of using the portals ro take all the disappeared in to have a lot of them fight to the death against an enemy that Dr. Strange knows is about to be dusted by the gauntlet? Because that way they can work in a bunch of "cool scenes" where various random heroes get to be on screen doing something cool even though overall it makes no sense with the plot they actually have.

And then... why put the Soulstone back in Timeline B at all? In Timeline A, the Soulstone is harvested by Thanos, used with the snap, and then smashed to pieces. In Timeline B, Thanos has used the timetunnel to go into Timeline A and then been eradicated. Timeline B no longer has a Thanos in it. There's no one in Timeline B left who knows where the stone is or has any use for it. Timeline A could just keep the thing because otherwise it sits in an empty temple on the ass end of an uncaring galaxy in Timeline B.

Again and still, it's OK if your movie about Superheroes punching each other runs on rule of cool and doesn't make sense. But Avengers Endgame also took time to lecture the audience about how they weren't going to do that and name checked a bunch of movies and specifically underlined that they were not going to use movie logic and instead do something internally consistent. And then they said "Nah, just kidding, none of this makes any fucking sense, we're just going to have Captain America swing Mjolnir because it's awesome."

-Username17

-Username17

[Foxwarrior]

name checked a bunch of movies and specifically underlined that they were not going to use movie logic and instead do something internally consistent.

But several of the name-checked movies are internally consistent, and the description of how Endgame time travel works:

Think about it, if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes the past. Which can’t now be changed by your new future.

Is being intentionally opaque for laughs. Which is why my first post on this topic listed the "took time to lecture the audience about how they weren't going to do that" scene as one that should have been a blatant clue that the time travel mechanics in this movie were going to be bad.

[erik]

Could Captain America have lived out his desired life in timeline B and then finally returned to Timeline A as an old pop cap after Peggy passed away?

[Username17]

Could Captain America have lived out his desired life in timeline B and then finally returned to Timeline A as an old pop cap after Peggy passed away?

That is a thing they could have done. But then he would have walked out of the time tunnel instead of having nothing come out of the time tunnel and then have people see him waiting on a park bench.

If he had walked out of the time tunnel as an old man it would have still been surprising, but it would have been within the boundaries of the time travel rules established by the movie. That is not what they did though. They decided to do two surprises back to back and in so doing required shitting all over their own narrative rules.

-Username17