#pure chaos from here on out btw i only have vague ideas and absolutely zero time on my hands !!

[lizzyelmsworths]

12 DAYS OF RINA DAY TWO → ricky day [insp]

[jbk405]

Maybe I’ll get that List out tonight after all

Avengers: Endgame spoilers.

SPOILERS.

SPOILERS.

Do not read further.

In no particular order...

1) The entire climactic fight makes no sense.

Thor already beat Thanos all by himself at the climax of Infinity War.  Not just beat him, but beat him easily.  Beat him easily when Thanos had all six infinity stones.  Thor took a direct energy blast from the Infinity Gauntlet without even noticing it and literally cleaved through it with Stormbreaker.  It took him all of five seconds, and Thanos had to literally re-write reality to get around it.

This Thanos is four years older than the Thanos we saw in Infinity War, pulled out of time from the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  He’s functionally nothing but a roving warlord, powerful on a human scale yes but also reduced to working with the likes of Ronan and Loki.  Outcasts and vagabonds working as mercenaries.  And he’s weak enough that Ronan was comfortable telling him to piss off once he got a single infinity stone of his own.  The thought that Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor -- Thor wielding both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker -- together couldn’t take him down without any stones in his possession is ridiculous.  When you add in the likes of Captain Marvel -- who we see punch through warships singlehandedly -- I wonder what the point of the entire affair is.

On that note...

2) This Thanos barely even knows Earth.  All his talk at the end about how he’s going to enjoy destroying the Earth, about how they’ve finally made it personal and earned his ire, makes no sense.  He has had only one single encounter with the planet, when he sponsored Loki’s invasion in The Avengers.  He hasn’t even dealt with Peter Quill and the Guardians and made the connection that Peter’s from Earth, to then by transference blame Earth for the betrayal of Gamora and Nebula.  He’s got absolutely zero beef with either the planet or the Avengers.

This Thanos hasn’t reached into his safe in frustration at the end of Age of Ultron to pull out the Infinity Gauntlet and claim he’ll do it himself, he’s at the start of the quest.

And on that note...

3) In Guardians of the Galaxy Gamora had already decided to betray Thanos in the timeframe when she appears here.  We see her attempting to steal the stone from Peter Quill as soon as he shows up on Xandar.  Nebula hadn’t already decided to betray Thanos, but that was only because she didn’t think it was viable and she jumped ship to Ronan the second he got the stone and said he would turn against Thanos.  The idea that past-Nebula would try to prove her loyalty to Thanos when she’s seen that future-Nebula has already seen him die and later refuse to turn against him, and that Past-Gamora would need to be convinced by future-Nebula, is ridiculous.  These two were aching for the opportunity to betray Thanos.

4) The Avengers compound is destroyed by a bombardment from a spaceship, which presumably has destructive technology at least comparable to a modern-day missile, and not one single Avenger dies?  Not even the purely-human, non-mechanized, unprotected humans?  Tony got more knocked about by the helicopter attack on his home in Iron Man 3.

5) Why the hell is Alexander Pierce walking in the lobby of Stark Tower practically during the invasion of New York?  Yeah, yeah, fun cameo callback and Hydra tie-in and all that, but there are still Chitauri corpses falling from the sky at this point.  He shouldn’t have had time to even get here, let alone actually done so.  Same with Sitwell and the Strike team.  Again yeah, fun elevator bit, but it makes no sense.

And on that note...

6) Why the heck are the Avengers trying to steal the stones from their past selves instead of just asking for them?  They state repeatedly and explicitly that they are not worried about paradoxes or damage to the timeline, that no matter what they do they will not change their own history, so in that case why not have Stark fly up to the group as they’re huddled around Loki and say “Hey, we’re from the future and we need that glowing blue box”.  And if they think that won’t work -- past-Avengers might assume it’s an illusion from Loki as Past-Cap did -- why not have that as a backup plan in case their original plan falls through?  When Future-Cap is accosted by Past-Cap who demands to know who he is, why doesn’t he even once say “Time travel”?  Even if Past-Cap doesn’t believe him and they fight anyway why not try?

7) Why do Natasha and Clint jump directly to a suicide contest?  Why don’t either of them turn to the Red Skull and try shooting him?  Try tying him up and interrogating him?  Try rappelling down the cliff to see if the stone is just waiting for them at the bottom?  Why not try anything instead of just saying “Oh, crap, I guess it’s time to bump myself off”?  It’s not like they’re on a tight timeline or anything.

8) The un-snap at the end isn’t a Happy Ending and I can’t understand why the movie tried to portray it as one.  Sure, it’s happier than letting everybody stay snapped, but it’s been five years.  Parents are going to come back to find that their kids died in the chaos.  Spouses are going to find their loved ones have either mourned them and moved on, or been fixated and depressed for five years.  At the very least you missed formative years, like Scott and Cassie (BTW, I don’t care what timetravel shenanigans they need to do in the next Ant-Man movie, they better get Abby Ryder Fortson back as Cassie).  Society has crumbled and been reshaped, the entire population will have mass PTSD.  This is going to be like somebody returning home after the end of World War II: It’s good that the war is over but it still happened.  They specifically shaped the un-snap so that it wasn’t a reset button, which means that the universe is still absolutely wrecked.

I’m not the only one who realizes this, right?

9) The biggest problem: The close-out with Steve Rogers does not work.  Not on any level.

As I lightly touched on above in Point 6, this time-travel operates on the branching timeline theory: Every alteration to the timeline generates a new reality spinning from that point and does not change the past/future of the timeline that you came from.  This isn’t my theory, this is explicitly stated by the characters and is shown to be how it works.  They cannot alter their own history.  So no, Steve cannot go back and live out his life in the past and then take the Slow Path to get back to “now”: If he did decide to stay in the past it would generate a completely new timeline and “our” Sam, Bucky, and Banner would never see him again.

If alterations to the timeline do effect “this” timeline then their actions in this movie should have wiped out their entire recent history.  Loki escaped with the Tesseract after the Battle of New York, not being brought back to Asgard and not being caught in the Dark Elf attack, from there never impersonating Odin and thereby causing Hela to escape and later help start Ragnarok.  Thanos disappears four years before he performs the Snap.  Nebula died.  If these things now happened in the past of the main timeline then the entire current MCU would be different.

Thematically....what the fuck?  As I saw somebody else say in a post, practically Steve’s entire arc in the MCU has been him chasing after Bucky and now he just hops right to the past when he finally has Bucky back and conscious and sane for the first time?  Barely even says goodbye, instead spending more time talking with Sam?  Again talking with Sam when he comes back?  I love Sam Wilson and he damn well better be Captain America going forward, but Steve’s plotline has literally been about Bucky.  Where’s their drawn-out goodbye and legacy?  All they get is one single back-and-forth callback. Why didn’t Steve consider bringing Bucky back with him to give him the chance to live the life he deserved?

Still on this same point, why the hell would Steve not tell Sam about Peggy?  What possible reason could there be for him to keep that a secret?  Forget the fact that Sam already knows who Peggy Carter is, even if she was a stranger to him why wouldn’t Steve tell a friend about the woman he married?  Even if we-the-audience didn’t hear it because they wanted to keep it vague for some reason, they could have just faded out on Steve’s smile.  What possible reason was for him to actually say he wouldn’t tell Sam about her?

All told, the movie was actually a lot better than I expected.