Avengers: Endgame ... and Infinity War

Yesterday, I saw Avengers: Endgame. I thought I'd put my thoughts here where I can probably finagle some spoiler-font, and I'm going to discuss both Infinity War and Endgame as if they were one movie released in two parts, because they were. Fair warning: If you loved the movie and don't want to hear anyone bad-mouthing it, you should probably leave now. Because I didn't. I went in knowing I wouldn't, and the movie didn't do enough to change that.

Okay, here goes: Spoilers Ahoy!

These were not good movies. Sorry, they weren't. And the problem stems from Marvel, itself, which announced its continuing plans for their Cinematic Universe long before Endgame came out. So we knew that when Doctor Strange, Spider-man, The Scarlet Witch, Quill, Drax, Groot, Mantis, Black Panther, The Winter Soldier, Falcon, The Wasp, the original The Wasp, the original Ant-Man, and Nick Fury and Maria Hill turned to dust and when the new Ant-Man was left in the Quantum Realm, they were all going to come back. Because there were going to be more Black Panther movies, more Spider-Man movies, more Guardians of the Galaxy movies, more Doctor Strange movies, and probably another Ant-Man movie. So the entire first movie was a cheap stunt to guarantee an audience for the second movie.

And if half the population (presumably of the universe, after all, Drax and Groot had never been to earth), disappeared, why were so many of the Avengers and Avenger associates destroyed? It sure seemed like of all the cast of all the MCU movies, we were left with 5 Avengers, Ant-Man in quantum space, and a talking racoon. And Nebula, who's still finding her inner anti-sociopath. It defied all statistical logic. Then again, I suppose we should be glad Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel) made the cut, because otherwise, Fury's last-ditch SOS would have gone to nobody.

Then there's the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff ( © Doctor Who ). Marvel, for some strange reason decided to make their own time-travel rules that completely ignore reality. Why can't they go back in time and kill Thanos as a baby? Tony Stark's answer: Because you can't. Thanos grew up. It's reality. You can't change reality. But the reality of time-travel is that of course, if traveling through time were possible, you *could* but that there would be consequences and we don't know what those consequences are. This is why you can't go back and kill Hitler as a baby: despite how horrible he was, the outcome could just possibly wind up worse. (Example: Nazi Germany conquers the planet *without* World War II.) Okay, so they created that rule. Then they broke it, at least twice. First, when Thanos of the past finds out that the Team was gathering Infinity Stones and decides to come to the present/future to take them, which might be Thanos of the Past's future, but it was Dead Thanos of the Present's past-which-didn't-happen. Then when Steve Rogers gets to go back in time to the 1940s and live happily ever after with Peggy Carter, which we know didn't happen before.

Then there's the math. If Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr) was born in 1970, I was the Quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys (also in 1970). Sorry, Robert. You had your film debut in 1970. Admittedly, you were 5, but there's a big difference between 0 and 5. Also in the same year that Captain America and Iron Man went back to, Captain America gets to see Peggy Carter (but not let her see him). On the up-side, it means the end where he goes back to her in the late 1940s, that doesn't come out of the blue. But if she's living the happy homemaker life in the 40s and 50s, did she come out of retirement to be at that military base in 1970? And only have aged about 5 years instead of 25? And I suppose when 38-year-old Captain America (I'm being kind and ignoring the fact that most of Endgame occurs 5 years from now) goes back to the late 1940s, does he then jump back forward in time when he hits 75 (circa 1982 - 1987) so he can be 75 when he meets Sam Wilson (The Falcon) again? Because otherwise, dude looks pretty good for 110 years old.

Final issue is the animal: I don't care about the horrible storage unit that van was put into. Hell, maybe it was an impound lot, although it looked a lot more like random storage (no idea who would have been around to put it in storage since apparently no one's collecting garbage anymore … not that anyone used much over five years) … No, the problem is that this Quantum Tunnel Controller that takes three nuclear physicists to operate to send Scott into the Quantum Realm can be reactivated to bring Scott back by an animal jumping on it and pressing some random button. I guess it's a good thing the people who put that van into storage didn't try to figure out what that machine did.

Ah, but there were some good moments. Not good enough to make it a good movie, but they were good. Apparently, after 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's now finally official! Steve Rogers, aka Captain America is not a homophobe. That's right: when he's running his support group for people who lost people in the purge, a man tells them that he went out on a date – with another man. And Steve isn't taken aback at all. Plus, we get our first gay character in the MCU … for about 30 seconds. Out of 48 hours and 11 minutes (including credits, because even though there were probably a lot of gay people listed in the credits, we can't count them as movie characters, and because I can't separate out the time of the credits from the movie run times). So, not exactly a great moment, but a nice little one. Emphasis on little. There were actually a few nice moments when people were brought back from the purge. No, Spider-Man and Iron Man hugging while there was a war going on wasn't one of them. But seeing Scarlet Witch come back, seeing the Ant Team come back, seeing All of Wakanda come back were. Not quite sure how Doctor Strange managed to get a message to all of those people that this was what was going on in the 10 minutes or so between the finger snap and when they appeared, but … it was off-camera, so I can't really complain about how it happened. Seeing The Women form a battle line to protect little Spider-Man was nice, although I would have liked to have seen Big And Powerful Captain Marvel actually whip Thanos' butt instead of just knocking him down a couple times. Hell, a few of them did *that*. Finally, a question: Did they give Black Widow blond hair for Infinity War just so she could have the red hair with blond ends in the Five Years Later portions of Endgame? I guess her hair dresser didn't make the purge.