Spoilers Avengers: Endgame grade and discussion thread

[theenglish]

That's a sad worldview, their imagined superiority is entirely dependant on silencing everyone else because the mere idea of any disagreement causes it to collapse. It's like claiming you're the boxing champion of the world without having a single fight and refusing to take on any challengers.

I think it is a cultural worldview--and I am not saying it is mine--that is not going to change overnight. Being aware of that worldview and challenging it, as Brie Larson attempted to do, does not make someone a bigot. Larson is being very brave about all of this, especially in light of the attacks on her person including things like that idiotic interpretation of her body language during the Avengers interview when she was criticized for holding her body in such a way that she was challenging the masculinity of her male co-stars.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I think it is a cultural worldview--and I am not saying it is mine--that is not going to change overnight. Being aware of that worldview and challenging it, as Brie Larson attempted to do, does not make someone a bigot. Larson is being very brave about all of this, especially in light of the attacks on her person including things like that idiotic interpretation of her body language during the Avengers interview when she was criticized for holding her body in such a way that she was challenging the masculinity of her male co-stars.

I love Don Cheadle's reply to that-- "You should see my 'body language' right now."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.in...ody-language-expert-criticism-1202130256/amp/

 

[theenglish]

It's not the same timeline, the Directors said that Cap created another alternate timeline by staying with Peggy and when she died he left it and came back to the Prime one to pass his Shield and title to Falcon.

Whether he went back to the alternate timeline he created to be with the family he had there or not, they haven't confirmed.

I just saw this interview--very interesting and I was wrong in my initial interpretation of the time travel--which means that Gamora could definitely be hanging around in the current timeline.

 

[Gavin70]

I went to my niece's wedding over the weekend, which was cosplay sci-fi/fantasy/superheros. I spent a lot of time creating my costume (my family went as the Teen Titans with me as Cyborg). I said afterwards, if Endgame had been out sooner, I'd have suggested going as the Avengers as I can finally portray Thor credibly.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I don't think the dialogue supports the reality collapse idea:

AO: "The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one stone and that flow splits. Now, this may benefit your reality but my new one, not so much. In this new branched reality, without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness, our world will be over run. Millions will suffer. So, tell me Doctor, can your science prevent all that?"

BB:"No, but we can erase it. Because once we are done with the stones, we can return each one to it's own time line at the moment it was taken. So, chronologically, in that reality, they never left."

AO:"But you are leaving out the most important part. In order to return the stones, you have to survive."

BB:"We will, I will. I promise."

AO:"I can't risk this reality on a promise. It is the duty of the Sorcerer Supreme to protect the time stone."

Banner does use the term "erase" but in the context of preventing a bad future in the new timeline, not erasing it from existence.

I think it does. 'That flow splits. Now this may benefit your reality, but in my *new* one, not so much.' 'We can erase it. Because once we are done with the stones, we can return each one to it's own time line at the moment it was taken. So, chronologically, in that reality, they never left.'

Her reality is only new if the stone is taken - not, apparently, altered by her having a conversation with professor hulk. And returning the stones will explicitly reset and erase the realities created by removing the stones.

Not to mention, if multiple realities existing is normal then there's actually no particular reason to return all the stones. Sure, maybe the Time Stone is the Sorceror Supreme's great weapon against the darkness. But the Soul Stone is just sitting on Vormir and the Reality, Power and Space stones are just sitting in people's basements, and the Mind stone is mainly Hydra's great weapon.

Yeah, given that the Ancient One wasn't the one who introduced the idea that time-travel automatically created parallel universes, I'd take her illustration as more indicating that there's a generally beneficial big-picture flow of events that all timelines tend towards which requires all of the Infinity Stones to be present. Removing a stone is catastrophic on a history-of-the-universe level, while changes like Loki escaping New York or Thanos and his army disappearing are comparatively marginal and will eventually smooth out over decades, centuries, millennia, eons...

After watching specifically for the time travel dialogue during my second viewing, I couldn't find anyone in the movie who did introduce the idea that time-travel automatically creates parallel universes. What they hammered on over and over again was that you can't change your past or change your future by changing your past and time travel doesn't work like in the movies. The Ancient One is the only person in the movie who even mentions alternate timelines, and she's talking specifically about the stones the whole time.

 

[David cgc]

What they hammered on over and over again was that you can't change your past or change your future by changing your past and time travel doesn't work like in the movies. The Ancient One is the only person in the movie who even mentions alternate timelines, and she's talking specifically about the stones the whole time.

Then what's happening? You're going back in time, something happens that didn't happen in the flow of history that you came from, but the flow of history you came from is not being overwritten and replaced. That's splitting off an alternate timeline. I'm not seeing the option you're proposing; either going back in time replaces the events that happened without time travel, or it creates a new, parallel sequence of events.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Then what's happening? You're going back in time, something happens that didn't happen in the flow of history that you came from, but the flow of history you came from is not being overwritten and replaced. That's splitting off an alternate timeline. I'm not seeing the option you're proposing; either going back in time replaces the events that happened without time travel, or it creates a new, parallel sequence of events.

Or nothing you do when you go back in time is new. It always happened, you just didn't know about it before.

 

[Captrek]

As of the end of IW, Steve and Natasha are fugitives, and Rhodey is facing court martial for harboring them. Yet in Endgame they’re not on the run or hiding. Did they get pardons or something?

 

[Gavin70]

It was not Steve, since elderly Peggy (in The Winter Soldier), would have mentioned something so consequential instead of pressing Steve to move on with his life as if the past unfolded without him.

Did you miss the bit where Doctor Strange explicitly said that if you tell people the future it basically prevents that future happening?

 

[Grendelsbayne]

As of the end of IW, Steve and Natasha are fugitives, and Rhodey is facing court martial for harboring them. Yet in Endgame they’re not on the run or hiding. Did they get pardons or something?

Governments collapsed. They probably didn't need any pardons. Especially if the survivors were looking to the Avengers specifically for hope and an example on how to move forward (which seems to be the role Steve was filling, at least).

 

[Gavin70]

The withholding of valuable tech from humanity isn't their decision. Stark's is. They made a slight gesture in saying he was going to introduce clean energy with the arc reactor, but that would change the world.

The withholding of technology is a common comic book storytelling techinque. There's even a trope called Reed Richards is Useless. The reason it's done is because the mass production of the technology would result in significant changes to the world. The comic book medium is generally working to tell stories about superpowered people in our world. If you change that world too much it becomes a different type of story. And there have been times when those stories have been explored. But the general medium is about seeing our world with superpowered people. It's especially an issue when you're trying to interest new readers. There's enough back story explanation about the characters without having to explain a whole new futuristic style world every couple of issues. It's an storytelling issue/flaw, but it's there for a reason.

If you want to see a movie where the heroes introduce world changing technology to the world, I'd probably watch it too. But that's a whole different movie to the story being told by Marvel (or any comic book movie).

 

[JoeZhang]

As of the end of IW, Steve and Natasha are fugitives, and Rhodey is facing court martial for harboring them. Yet in Endgame they’re not on the run or hiding. Did they get pardons or something?

In the aftermath of IW, I doubt there was either the energy or political will - it wouldn't be beyond the realms of possibility that only the most series criminals weren't pardoned to help with reconstruction.

Or more simply going on what was on screen - maybe nobody cared anymore.

 

[Trekker4747]

Pursuing the "Avenger fugitives" was mostly the charge of General Ross who likely was snapped, any remaining law-makers had a lot bigger things to deal with afterwards.

 

[Seven of Five]

I'm so annoyed. I was supposed to be watching Endgame again last night with a couple of friends. I think we made it about half an hour into the actual film, and there was a power cut.

The film came back on a couple of times, but alas, the building ended up being evacuated! The power cut was quite a big one, over a few miles, and it took a few hours to come back on apparently.

KKKKKAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Did you miss the bit where Doctor Strange explicitly said that if you tell people the future it basically prevents that future happening?

...but in production order, that's writing for something that was not intended from the start, otherwise, the Russos--in all of the post Endgame release statements--would have clarified, saying elderly Peggy not telling Steve was for the reason Strange mentions. Apparently (until the Russos suddenly tell the world something else), Peggy not telling Steve anything regarding himself in The Winter Soldier was due to the writers of that film not knowing anything about any future MCU time travel plans (specific to Cap) at the point the film was in production. As originally intended, Peggy moved on with her life, married someone else, and in the present day, she was telling Steve to do the same, which is where the introduction of Sharon--and additional development in Civil War--comes into play.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

I think it is a cultural worldview--and I am not saying it is mine--that is not going to change overnight. Being aware of that worldview and challenging it, as Brie Larson attempted to do, does not make someone a bigot. Larson is being very brave about all of this, especially in light of the attacks on her person including things like that idiotic interpretation of her body language during the Avengers interview when she was criticized for holding her body in such a way that she was challenging the masculinity of her male co-stars.

I love Don Cheadle's reply to that-- "You should see my 'body language' right now."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.in...ody-language-expert-criticism-1202130256/amp/

What fresh hell is this madness? I hadn't heard about this..."criticism"...against Larson until now and it's so utterly bizarre and absurd that I couldn't believe it was real until I read that linked article.

 

[Trekker4747]

What fresh hell is this madness? I hadn't heard about this..."criticism"...against Larson until now and it's so utterly bizarre and absurd that I couldn't believe it was real until I read that linked article.

I know, right? I saw it to and was in disbelief. I mean, look at her! She has good posture! She CLEARLY thinks she's superior to everyone else!

 

[Captrek]

How exactly does one become known as a “body language expert”? Is it just a matter of proclaiming your own expertise and saying what you think with a lot of confidence? How is anybody supposed to know whether your inferences are accurate?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I hadn't heard about this..."criticism"...against Larson until now .

I take it you had not watched any of the 150,000 YouTube videos on the subject, with many claiming Hemsworth and Cheadle's replies to or about Larson meant they "hated" her. Its clear they were messing with her / the interviewers, much in the way Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan have a string of clips where they're obviously teasing Tom Holland as if they're irritated by him.

 

[Captrek]

I love Don Cheadle's reply to that-- "You should see my 'body language' right now."

That totally sounds like something Rhodey would say.