Avengers: Endgame

[SSJPhenom]

**Slyfox Note - Please no Spoilers, even in Spoiler tags. Thank you!**

Well the time is nigh for yet another entry into the MCU and according to reviews and fan reactions; this may be the best one yet. It's currently sitting at a comfortable 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and every review that I've read or watched has said that all the storylines set up over the past 11 years are paid off brilliantly. I can't wait to see it myself.

How about anyone else? Is the hype real?

[Jack-Hammer]

A friend of mine who lives out on the west coast saw it when it premiered earlier this week. I didn't ask for spoilers, tempted though I was, and I told him not to give me any. I asked him if the hype was worth it and he believes, if anything, the hype underplays the thing.

He says that, as you'd expect, there's a ton of great action, there's great storytelling and all sorts of other little details that connect all the happenings of the MCU together to culminate in this film. One thing he did tell me, and this wasn't a spoiler as I expected it, was that time travel does play a significant role in the movie but it's not some cure all/fix all. I was soooooooooooooooo glad to know that because that would have undermined the emotional impact of Infinity Wars and probably cheapened the emotional impact of this movie as well. The bad guy will ultimately lose, as is always the case in the movies when you get right down to it, but based on my friend's explanation, the good guys will stull suffer a very heavy emotional toll even if they manage to fix most of what Thanos did in Infinity War.

As I mentioned time travel, I fully expected that it had to play some part in Endgame because they have to find a way to undo everything that Thanos does. I suppose it could happen if they get hold of the Infinity Gauntlet themselves but based on various monologues and explanations from past MCU films, nobody among the good guys seems to be powerful enough to handle the cumulative power of the stones. In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, all of the Guardians had to join together in order to just briefly control the Power Stone long enough to use it to destroy Ronan, and even that was only for a minute or two and the Collector revealed in the movie that the stones could only be wielded by someone with "extraordinary strength." At the same time, I've thought that Thanos might have some sort of contingency plan if someone simply tries to attack him and take the gauntlet to undo everything; it's part of what made him such a great villain in that he's insanely powerful but he's not arrogant to a fault, as most villains tend to be. I figured he'd have some sort of backup plan in place that necessitates a more complicated story involving time travel as he has something in place that'll make it really, really difficult, on top of the difficulty already, of merely getting the gauntlet.

In the comics, all of the stones put together are enough to make Thanos more powerful than literally anything in the Marvel Universe, except the Living Tribunal and the "One Above All', which is a being that's been mentioned in some storylines but never seen and could be the "God" of Marvel's multi-verse. During the Infinity Wars story arc back in the early 90s, the stones made Thanos more powerful than the combined forces of abstract concepts, though sentient beings, like Eternity, Infinity, Love, Hate, Order, Chaos, Life and Death all put together. Now, obviously, the power has been scaled down in the movies because while that sort of overwhelming might works in the comics, sometimes, it's probably too much. In the comics, Thanos has sort of an inferiority complex that rears itself when he has all of creation at his command and it winds up undoing him, That doesn't seem to be the case with MCU's version; for instance, he's not with the literal personification of Death and they've steered clear of those sort of abstracts anyway. While it could be awesome to see beings like Eternity on screen, such beings could take away from the overall impact of the movies because these are supposed to be concepts with power that literally is beyond the imaginings of mortal beings. So yeah, the stones are scaled down in for the sake of the movies and even Thanos can't be on his guard forever and that's why I think he has some sort of plan. Maybe he has the stones in some sort of little pocket dimension that's just outside of space-time and that only he can get to it or something along those lines.

Anyhow, I've rambled on quite a bit and while my friend didn't confirm or deny this, for which I'm glad, I have a feeling that some of the principle characters in this movie will either stay dead when it's all finished or will die themselves. I mean, can't you just see Captain America, shield in hand, his body broken, bleeding, half dead already yet clinging to life just enough to strike out one last time?

[Storm Trooper]

Saw it twice (Thurs. 6PM and Friday 1:45AM). Oh. My. God. If you were a fan of any of the 22 previous films, or the characters therein, see this movie and see it now.

This was insane. And for a 3 hour movie it flew by pretty quick. They had a good amount of fan service, and they really told a good story.

I honestly don't have any problem with how they did anything in the film.

[Y 2 Jake]

It was a cop out but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Jack-Hammer]

Yeah, I have to say that the MCU has set the bar even higher. I've no idea where they go from here as there's not going to be anything that can come about for a while that can equal the sheer epic happenings of Avengers: Endgame. That might be for the best, however, to give fans some breathing room and start out on a much smaller scale with the next set of MCU films. As to what the next culmination might be, it'll have to involve a big bad on the same level as Thanos or even greater, whenever it goes down. My guess is that it might wind up involving Galactus as the next ultimate baddie. Over the course of the next 10 years or so, I think most are anxious to see Disney incorporate the X-Men and Fantastic Four franchises into the MCU.

At any rate, Avengers: Endgame was just epic all around. Great action, great storytelling, genuinely emotional performances from the actors and the movie kept moving at a great pace, it didn't drag or slough off.

[Slyfox696]

Just finished watching it tonight. I thought there were a few things here and there I would have wanted done differently, but all in all, I quite enjoyed myself.

[SSJPhenom]

Yep, Avengers: Endgame is that rare perfect season finale that ties up all loose ends and is epic and awesome in it's own right. How the MCU keeps raising the bar is beyond me. The movies just keep getting better and better. The first phase of movies were great in their own right. Then Winter Soldier took the franchise to a new level of greatness that the following films did a great job of keeping pace with. Then Civil War once again raised the bar even higher. So high that the movies started becoming, not just great popcorn/action flicks, but great all around films. Films with emotional resonance, stakes, and gravitas.

Endgame once again raises the bar to how good these flicks can be. Not just for the genre but for films in general. I have no problem at all saying that there was twice during my watching of this film that I was audibly sobbing like a teenage girl. Just shows how well this franchise has been built and how much these characters have grown on me over the years.

There'll never be another franchise/movie event like the MCU. Endgame is such the perfect way to wrap up the last ten years of the MCU. The film is beyond great. It's one of those movies that 20-30 years from now, when we're old and grey, the world will look back on as one of those cinema game changers. Love love love this film.

So good.

[Jack-Hammer]

Yep, Avengers: Endgame is that rare perfect season finale that ties up all loose ends and is epic and awesome in it's own right. How the MCU keeps raising the bar is beyond me. The movies just keep getting better and better. The first phase of movies were great in their own right. Then Winter Soldier took the franchise to a new level of greatness that the following films did a great job of keeping pace with. Then Civil War once again raised the bar even higher. So high that the movies started becoming, not just great popcorn/action flicks, but great all around films. Films with emotional resonance, stakes, and gravitas.

Endgame once again raises the bar to how good these flicks can be. Not just for the genre but for films in general. I have no problem at all saying that there was twice during my watching of this film that I was audibly sobbing like a teenage girl. Just shows how well this franchise has been built and how much these characters have grown on me over the years.

There'll never be another franchise/movie event like the MCU. Endgame is such the perfect way to wrap up the last ten years of the MCU. The film is beyond great. It's one of those movies that 20-30 years from now, when we're old and grey, the world will look back on as one of those cinema game changers. Love love love this film.

So good.

I think why the movies continue to do so well and continue to raise the bar is because of the people involved. You have people like Kevin Feige, the Russo brothers, Joss Whedon and the various actors that actually care about the movies beyond the fact that they're essentially licenses to print money. Sure, if these movies didn't do well financially, they wouldn't get made, and rightly so considering that these 22 films cost somewhere in the neighborhood of about $4.5 billion to make. However, the actors, directors, producers and writers care about these stories and the characters involved and it shows. A cohesive goal to create a consistent continuity involving a shared universe was there from the beginning, it was ambvious as all get out and it couldn't be accomplished if the people involved didn't love the characters, didn't respect who they were and didn't treat the films as if they were hollow, CGI cash cows. By doing what they did, movie audiences came to also love and respect the characters so much that they couldn't wait to see what would happen to them, even with Thanos. Thanos is an evil sumbitch, no matter what motivations he may have had; you're an evil, evil, butt-fucking evil sumbitch if your goal is to literally wipe out half the sentient population of the universe, yet people were enthralled by him because he was such a different villain. Much like Hugh Jackman's devotion to Wolverine, Robert Downey, Jr. fell in love with Tony Stark. Stark is an interesting and complex character and the character revived Downey's career and accelerated it to heights he never dreamed it'd reach. Anything that Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pratt, Mark Ruffalo, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Rudd and various others do in their careers going forward came about, in a significant part, due to the characters they portrayed in the MCU.

Marvel has a rich roster of characters and near countless storylines that can be adapted.

[SSJPhenom]

So when can we start discussing spoilers? I've some things I'd very much like to discuss...

By the way, this movie made more than 1 billion world wide this past weekend with 350 million coming from the US. It's shattered any and all opening records.