Tempy wrote:

some fun stuff here

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/movies/avengers-endgame-explainer.html

So, I think this backs up those of us on the "different timeline universes " side if things.

Always like hearing the reasoning behind decisions made for these things.

I wonder if they will do a proper Scarlet Witch "House of M" comic storyline. She's a stupidly powerful character and her ability to change reality could be alot of fun on the big screen. Especially her changing the lives of the avengers I.e. doctor strange is a psychologist etc.

Yeah, that was a really nice interview. Cheers for the pointer Tempy.

I still have so many questions.

*Charlie in the mail room.img*

Apparently it's all alternative time lines Reg and we've just got to accept that or something

I have seen this now. Thoughts later.

The first half had me worried tbh, thought it was weak. I was sold by the end.

Someone behind me started eating a katsu curry 2 mins in

nick_md wrote:

Someone behind me started eating a katsu curry 2 mins in

that’s a power move

Tempy wrote:

nick_md wrote:

Someone behind me started eating a katsu curry 2 mins in

that’s a power move

Yep. Its a move that says "I'm in control of this cinema"

So, Avengers: Endgame.
Never in the history of cinema has one film elicited so many different responses from one viewer.
I laughed. I cried. I yawned. I was confused. I was disappointed. I was satisfied...and that was just the first hour.
Mercifully my bladder rose to the challenge, but my lower back may never forgive me. Few films genuinely merit a three hour run-time, and this wasn't one of them. What could have been a breathlessly inventive two hour thrill ride, turned out to have more false endings and goodbyes than Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy.
It's a wildly uneven experience, and I pity anyone going in who has perhaps only seen Infinity War, because none of this film will make much sense. But hold on a minute. I've seen all twenty two of these films and I still didn't have a fucking clue what was going on at times. After the sublime meal that was Infinity War (which for a long time will be the benchmark for this sort of film), Endgame turns out be be the culinary equivalent of making soup with the leftovers, and I suspect that much like soup, it will actually improve for a second helping the following day.

What saves the film (as with all the Marvel canon), is the characters. This one is basically three hours of fan-service where everyone gets to shine as they reach their own final destination and alight the Marvel Hype Train. The performances are universally great, and that's really what separates the MCU from the myriad failed attempts at jumping on that bandwagon by other studios.

So it's a pity then that the plot and structure of this one are such a jumbled mess. It's been well documented here that the time-wimey stuff just doesn't wash and has left most people just scratching their heads. It's quite ironic that they namecheck Back To The Future in the script, because their attempts to ape the second instalment in that franchise are pretty damn poor.
After the overlong moping of the first act that left me yawning dangerously, I had even more issues with the second act's time heist. It was probably a great idea to go back and revisit scenarios from previous entries in the MCU, but it just didn't really land for me. If you're going to do that, then it has to be fucking audacious in it's execution, and this was all just a bit half arsed and confusing for me.

It was a mistake to bring back Thanos. There I've said it. He's the elephant in the room. A great idea to have Thor behead the purple bawbag so early on, but that should have been it for him. I would much rather have seen a film focussing on the Avengers trying and failing then trying again to reverse the snap, with their main enemy perhaps being time itself, than having them just come up against Thanos for a cgi slugfest again. Still, I suppose if nothing else that gave everyone their Bring Me Thanos! moment.
It's also worth noting that when they fight Thanos at the end, he doesn't have any of the Infinity Stones in his possession, so any one of the Avengers should have been able to just annihilate the big purple fucker because he just doesn't have any powa at that point. Hmmmmm...

Captain America suddenly has the ability to use Thor's hammer. What the fuck? That just left me scratching my head when I should have been invested in the battle.
Scarlet Witch absolutely bosses her return.
Captain Marvel's inclusion was an embarrassing mistake.
Fat Thor was a decent joke that didn't merit it's running gag status.
Smart Hulk was a mistake. When Bald Lady separated Banner from Hulk I would have been happier if she'd left them separate. 
And Tony Stark? Well I thought his end was poor. He basically snaps his fingers and dies. Hmmmm. I would like to have seen him make the ultimate sacrifice to save his wife and daughter when the time-wimey stuff in my draft of the screenplay beats him into a corner, but again, it's fan service, and it tied up his arc nicely. It's just a bit underwhelming given everything that's come before, and his hug with the returned Spider-Man rather than his demise, was easily his highlight in this film.

The Captain America time paradox was also nice fan-service, but opens a whole can of worms for the timeline, and while we're on the subject of time travel, How does Thanos, his mothership, and his entire army travel forward in time without the Pym Particles? I'm afraid much of this film just left me baffled, and relegating the entire explanation of what happened to the disappeared to one line from Spider-Man in the midst of a chaotic battle was a poor choice. There was so much going on at that point that I couldn't process anything he said. Were they all dead and then brought back? Were they somewhere else? Were they in the Quantum realm? Were they in Bradford? I have no idea, but hey, they're all back now and Doctor Strange is refusing to explain any of it. O-K.

So where does all this leave us going forward? I guess The Avengers will be renamed The Diversity Warriors. We've got a bunch of B-listers like Random Black Man, Multi-Cultural Viking Lady and Captain Marvelous to carry the torch. I expect that post-studio merger, Professor X will also join them because he's in a wheel chair which makes him an A-list diversity pledge. Anyway, good luck to them all. If they can make a success of this lot then it won't be the first time they've surprised me.
Their brightest hope for the future has to be Thor joining The Guardians of the Galaxy for Guardians III: The Search For Spock Gamora. Now that put a big smile on my face. 

So when all is said and done, and dust has finally settled, it's a big old bloated mess of a film, but it's still a hell of a lot of fun. It's not as good as Infinity War, but then again, what is?

five infinity stones out of six

g.man

I don't doubt any of that, but it's a film where there's so much going on it's very easy to miss stuff.

Wouldn't Nebula have needed them to travel forward before Thanos and Co?

So google "Thanos" and click on the gaunlet. Very cool. Wait till its finished and click on the gaunlet again. Nice.

Yes, but Thanos wouldn't have had them.