TL;DR review - Boring and predictable in general, the only reason to watch this is to see who lives and dies at the end. However, it does provide a very clear ending to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that began with Iron Man.
Introduction
Endings are important. Endings provide the last emotions and impressions your audience and readers will have. A satisfying and appropriate ending is also hard, even more so are endings to multi-film stories. There are a lot of details to keep straight, lots of plot threads to wrap up, continuity and character drift (as opposed to development) is a danger. In fact, there are very few multi-part movies that 'stick the ending'. Perhaps the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the only one to get it right, partly due to it being one story, told in three parts.
I mention the Lord of the Rings because the last movie installment, The Return of the King, was criticized for the prolonged endings, especially in the Director's Cut version. Avengers: Endgame is basically the ending of the Return of the King stretched out over 3 hours and made with less skill. Tearjerking? Maybe but dull, and uninteresting except as a monument.
But to Marvel's credit, this IS an ending. An ending to over a decade's worth of superior superhero movies, an end to iconic characters who, despite limited pre-movie fame, have become beloved. That's not nothing. But I'm not here to review the MCU series as a whole, but rather to discuss the anticlimax that is Endgame.
Anti-climax is the 'falling action' and it covers everything that happens in a story after the climactic final conflict. And make no mistake, the Climax of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not here, it was in the superior Infinity War. What we have now is more aftermath and not so much avenging. The drop off in quality and the bobbling of so many characters and plots, handled so deftly in Infinity War is baffling as the same two writers, Markus and McFeely are credited on both movies. I cannot believe that. Some other hands must have gotten into the broth, that or lightning struck in Infinity War and it could not be brought back here, at the end.
But let me go on and give my reasons. I'll discuss the plot overview, yes with spoilers, then what worked, what didn't and how I would have fixed it, if possible. Without using time travel. Hey, someone has to try it without stupid mode turned on.
Plot
The movie opens with a great 'showing' scene with Hawkeye losing his family to Thanos' snap. We then spend a good hour watching a world trying to deal with the sudden loss of half of every living thing. It's misery porn. None of Thanos's 'better world' where there is less drain on resources and none of the resilience and adaptability that has been a very human and very American hallmark through past tragedies. But perhaps this current generation is more fragile, as delicate as a snowflake...but let's keep moving.
There's a little action as the Avengers somehow are able to find where Thanos has retreated to through some hand-waved technomagic by Rocket. (seriously, it might as well be magic. The technology involved in scanning so many light years is mind-boggling) The Avengers + a charming and not at all robotic and lifeless Captain Marvel find a crippled and ruined Thanos and murder him. Thanos, it seems, has used the Infinity Stones one last time to destroy the stones to make his act permanent and irreversible. So the Avenger's big plan of gathering the stones and 'snapping' everyone back into existence is blocked. For a few hours. This IS the big solution they've settled on to the problem they have: just to gather and use the stones again.
Sigh.
Ant-man reappears out of the quantum realm via rat ex machina. He returns to an almost post-apocalyptic world full of grief and grieving but brings to the Avengers news that 'time flows differently in the quantum realm'. Thus bringing into play that worst and laziest of all plot devices: Time travel to fix everything. It sucked in Star Trek, it sucked in Deadpool 2 and it sucks in any drama as plot resolution. And I need to spend a paragraph explaining why.
The essence of drama is conflict over important stakes. The goals for comedies are different but we're talking about The Avengers movies as a dramatic series, despite all the jokes. Time travel removes both conflict and stakes. Since any conflict can be resolved by simply going in back in time to before the conflict existed and any stakes or consequences are lost by that same expedient. Death means less when you can undo it with time travel. So is defeat. When you inject time travel into your story, you cannot help but make the story all about the time travel, the rules and complications of it, rather than the plot or the problem that time travel is supposed to solve. It's like injecting a long discussion about watchmaking into someone asking your the time so they don't miss your flight home. And, sadly, you have to spend that time doing info dumps about how time travel works in this story: what you can and can't do, and that all eats up time, ironically, runtime in your movie. Runtime that should have been spent developing your plot and your antagonist. Worse, they already had the TIME stone before this and didn't use it, then, to stop Thanos. So now, without the Time Stone - which is at least set up to control time- were still going with a Time Travel plot. What horrible thinking and writing. Digression over, for now.
The Avengers now hit upon the idea of going back in time and stealing all 5 Infinity Stones and using them to undo everything Thanos did. To do this, they use Ant-Man technology to shrink and we get an hour of redoing the Back to the Future 2 plot as they sneak around their past selves and try to steal things and get away. This goes a little wrong when the future version of Nebula apparently uses the same wifi network and password as past Nebula. This tips Thanos to the Avenger's presence and by capturing future Nebula and replacing her with past Nebula, it allows Thanos to come into the future to try to steal the Infinity Stones the Avengers have gathered. Now mind you, this version of Thanos does not treat Nebula or anyone else with the same care and concern as the real, Infinity War Thanos...but we'll get to that later.
The first Avenger deaths, out of two, happen during the retrieval of the Soul stone as the writers break their own rules set up just one movie ago as Black Widow sacrifices herself (not IS sacrificed, as is required) instead of Hawkeye (neither of whom is 'what they most love', as is required as well). And past Loki gets ahold of the Tesseract and escapes...only for this plot hole to be ignored. Or maybe it's here to set up a terrible, terrible tv series or some crap.
The Hulk, now permanently big and green but with Banner's brain only (I'll get to him, too), uses the Infinity Stones, which are mounted on an Iron Man gauntlet, not magic giant dwarfs required, it seems. Everyone is brought back to life who died from the snap and all of earth's heroes fight Thanos and his children and his army in a CGI mess that was never in doubt that the heroes will win. Iron Man uses the 5 stones a second time to 'snap' Thanos and all his allies to dust and he dies after using it. Thence commences a very long series of moping and funeral scenes as everyone grieves the loss of Tony Stark...and apparently only Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch bother remembering that, oh yeah, Vision and Black Widow are dead too.
Captain America uses the time machine to return the Infinity Stones back to where they belong...off-camera...without a spaceship to return the Power stone...and without the ability to sneak into Asgard and avoid the all-seeing eye of Heimdall...and without explaining how he's putting the Soul stone back...but never mind that, apparently. Cap decides to STAY in the past and live a normal life with Peggy Carter and age and show up to pass on a shield to a very not-supersoldier Falcon.
The end.
What worked
1. The tech. It almost goes without saying, but the special effects for the Marvel movies have been nothing short of magical. From motion-capture and animation to constructing beautiful vistas in space or on planets, to digitally aging and weathering actors, this is a triumph of applied technology. And a lot of the miscellaneous, non-nanotech bullshit, science in the movie seems very plausible, which makes for good sci fi.
2. Character development. The strength of having these characters in so many movies over the years means there's a body of work that you can trace the character development. (I have a related complaint below) Iron Man changed from being a footloose playboy who was Libertarian in views into a obsessive/compulsive family man who believed that The State knows best. Whether you find that a GOOD arc or not, is debatable (it's not good) but it's a real character development driven by his experiences. Likewise Captain America developed, not always in good ways, but he also adapted to his circumstances and came to understand his own compromises of his ideals. Thor turned into a punchline, which at least gave his character something to do. Black Widow turned from spy and temptress into a leader and lonely cat lady. Again, not all arcs are good or satisfying but the people feel real and react to the events of previous movies. Compared to most superhero movies, that's not nothing.
3. The End. It takes guts and vision to put a period to a money making monster like The Avengers. Sure, there will probably be new Avengers but this is the end for the characters we've known and loved. I doubt any serious affection will attach to what comes after. This gives an arc and ending to both Captain America and Iron Man, which I approve of. Though the biggest sadness for a character comes from Black Widow, who dies unloved, childless, almost forgotten. Damn sad, far more so than the guy who dies using the Infinity Stones and has a wife and child preserved by his sacrifice. But hey, at least she'll finally get her own movie, years after when it would have been relevant.
What Didn't Work
1. The Antagonist. This is also related to character drift, below, but Avengers: Endgame has a problem with its antagonist. They kill Thanos off early, and then it's a struggle against...time? Against their own own plot? By the time Thanos comes back into the story, it is not the nuanced, interesting character that was shown so brightly in Infinity War. Instead we have a cardboard cutout who has no chance to actually defeat anyone. But I'll talk more about Thanos' problem in the Character Drift section.
2. Lack of focus. Infinity War was fast-paced, no fat and no time wasted yet it managed to do a lot of character work and put in best-ever superhero action. But it's real strength was its focus. The whole plot plays out in one day of movie time. Avenger Anti-Climax, in contrast, is mostly padding. We first have to 'wrap up' the last movie by finding and murdering Thanos. (Our Heroes!) Then we have to wallow in misery porn as the movie shows a world that cannot get past this tragedy. Earth should be a beehive of activity as we have not only proof of alien life but proof of alien enemies, but no..everyone is just mopey and sad. We have a drawn out sequence of showing an Earth adrift with no purpose or leadership. Ant Man shows up to try to kick off the plot but again, the pacing is slow, the solution is pokey and, again, preposterous. We don't get a tight focus on the discovery of how to time travel, it's just 'poof invented'. And we get a long series of scenes showing how useless and unfocused most of the Avengers are now. That's fun. We don't get a tense debate about how to fix this problem, how time travel is going to work, the rules and complications, all that is rushed past so we can get to the fan service. The heist, or heists, themselves are given a couple of good set pieces in 2012 New York but again, there isn't a tight focus or good pacing. We just dawdle over most scenes and handwave the rest.
A good heist movie has: problem setup, character recruitment and persuasion, solution setup, rehearsal, reversals, and final success. Oceans 11 with George Clooney does it right. So does The original Italian Job with Michael Caine. This is where the lack of focus comes in. This movie should be a heist movie, but it's not. It's: an epilogue of Infinity War, it's post-apocalypse misery porn, it's cameo fanservice, it's a heist, and finally its a big martial arts/super power action set piece. This is two, maybe three movies of content here and jamming it all into one makes it impossible to succeed at any one story. Endgame needed to be 10% of its runtime dedicated to setup, then recruitment and persuasion, and so on and so forth. Basically, it needs to be revised and re-edited.
3. Character drift. If you don't like or care about your characters, it makes it a lot harder to care about your story. Avengers Anti-Climax is the character arc ending of all of the Avengers, not to mention all the secondary characters. You CAN'T screw up your characters now in the last segment. Yet that's what happens here. All the backstory and development of the previous movies are discarded in favor of jokes and plot convenience, utterly ruining the opportunity they had and tarnishing the work of the previous movies. Only Cap and Iron Man are given good writing focus, the rest of the characters must have been handed off to someone else, someone who wasn't talking to the Continuity co-ordinators and who hadn't watched the previous movies very closely. This is going to be a big section but I have things to say, so let me get specific, starting with the Avengers themselves.
The Hulk has always been depicted as being a separate person from Bruce Banner. He speaks, he thinks, he IS his own person. He's not some 'side' of Bruce Banner, like Mister Hyde is for Doctor Jekyll. Bruce and Hulk coming to terms with sharing a body has been a very, very long running conflict throughout the Hulk comics. Here, that huge conflict is resolved OFF CAMERA. Last we saw, Hulk would not come out at all after Thanos whipped him. Now, Bruce Banner's mind is in charge of a smaller, weaker Hulk body. (Hulk is powered by Rage and Banner doesn't have enough of that himself) He smiles, he laughs, he dabs, he signs autographs. THIS is not the Hulk. It's not Bruce Banner, either. It's terrible and it's terrible that they wasted this chance for character drama and character resolution for the Hulk.
Black Widow is now the leader of the Avengers. But she'd always been sneaky, shady, the person who gets things done under the table. She was never the spandex clad front-and-center. She's a spy. The attempts to make her a leader fall flat. I can't even say it's due to the...specialized acting range of Scarlett Johansson. She's given nothing to do and no way to do it. She's not even given a resolution for her emotional and romantic plots, despite the fact that her story ending pivots on that. She's not around Bruce Banner, who she was attracted to. She's not romantically or emotionally involved with Hawkeye. Her screen time is wasted making her 'the leader of the Avengers' because of the fallout of Civil War's flawed storyline.
Thor is now Fat Thor, punchline to every joke. He's also a murderer. A sniveler. A coward. A weak man abdicating his responsibilities. This is a HUGE character derailment in the service of comedy. I get that folks liked Thor: Ragnarok. And that movie did break open a lot of character opportunities for Thor. But it didn't JUST make him a comedian. In Infinity War, Thor was driven and in pain as well as funny. Here, we are given a character that we have no respect for. A man who murders a prisoner and then never is called to account for that, who abandons his people and his title without motivation apart to empower a new female character apparently. He refuses to see his 'love' Jane Foster. He steals his own hammer back, breaking time and continuity without consequence. He has no plot-related work to do, everything he 'does' to get the reality stone happens off camera. He's a joke character now and that's a shame. And it's a shame the writers couldn't figure out what to do with him besides put Chris Hemsworth in a fat suit and make jokes.
Hawkeye isn't derailed, his character is changed by the death of his family and that's actually fine. But the movie again wastes opportunities to have him bond with Black Widow, so that stupid sequence with the Soul Stone makes sense.
Iron Man and Cap both are given good treatment so let me move onto the derailment of the non-Avengers characters.
Gamora is dead. What we have in this movie is, supposedly, pre-crisis of faith Gamora who is supposed to be an assassin and on good terms with her father and not good terms with Nebula. So they rush to make her be on the hero's side and it doesn't really work. I give the movie half credit for keeping Gamora dead. But only half, because it doesn't capitalize on her child scene with Thanos in Infinity War and, if you have time travel, why isn't there any attempt to save Gamora? I realize there are story reasons why she maybe had to die, but no one even tries. But more on that in the Time Travel section below. As she is, she's aggressive and abrasive and we lose all her character development from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Infinity War. As a result, we cram in too much development, too fast and not believably. Like most of the Guardians of the Galaxy characters, except Rocket, she's wasted in this movie. She's also incredibly unlikeable, though not to Captain Marvel levels.
Nebula is treated well enough in Anti-Climax as is Ant-Man and Rhodey. Despite the fact the Ant Man drives this plot, he barely has any character development or moments. Captain Marvel also is just as wooden and maintains her record as most unlikable MCU character as well as most overpowered and useless. So let's address the big, purple giant in the room:
Thanos. How you go from one of the best written and realized villainous protagonists in cinema history to being a cardboard cutout deserves novel-level treatment. And McFeely and Markus deserve to be beaten, along with Producer Trinh Tran. Trinh's personal character arc from production assistant to Producer is a monument to the Peter Principle and a damning indictment possibly of gender and racial quotas. I'll move on but let me give you the basics of why this happened and then I'll discuss what happened. Basically, McFeely and Markus wrote themselves into a corner. Thanos has won. He had no more goals and ambitions. And they lacked the skill and creativity to address this. So, instead of a story that involved persuading or confronting a fully-powered Thanos, they decided to kill him off. To have Thor murder him. What we get instead is cardboard Thanos.
Cardboard Thanos is the past version of Thanos who, apparently, had not gotten to the point in his emotional development to go after the Infinity Stones. He was still killing people and enjoying it, instead of viewing it as a grim duty or a penance even. He exists because Markus and McFeely couldn't come up with a new antagonist and couldn't write the same character who was in Infinity War into Anti-climax. Cardboard Thanos is arrogant, bloodthirsty, ruthless and a little dumb. The perfect punching bag, physically formidable but nothing more. This is not the Thanos who is testing everyone he encounters as in Infinity War. This is not a man who has sacrificed to get what he needed to perform what he saw as his duty. This is not the man to speak gently and lovingly to his daughter Gamora, who repaired his daughter Nebula, who wept over Gamora's death, who liked Peter Quinn. This is basically a Wakandan war rhino, only purple and biped.
Cardboard undoes all the character work from Infinity War. The only reason it's not worse, is that this isn't the 'real' Thanos. It literally is some other idiot and nothing Cardboard Thanos does affects the real character we saw in Infinity War. It reminds me of the way Atticus Finch is treated in 'Go Set A Watchman'...there's a reason Harper Lee didn't release that book while she was alive and in her right mind. I have nothing but hatred and spite for what Mcfeely, Markus and Tran did here.
4. Time Travel. Unless your story is about time travel (Back to the Future, Somewhere in Time, etc), adding it into your story is a terrible idea. It ruins basic fundamental storytelling rules, in that actions have consequences. With time travel, why there are no consequences, you can do anything. It's stupid and lazy. Harry Potter is worse with time travel in it, Star Trek is worse with time travel in it. It also creates a metric fuck ton of plot holes.
Worse, there already IS a time reversal tool, the Time Stone. But they don't use that, instead they use the, sigh, Quantum Realm from Ant Man vs The Wasp. Seriously, when Dr. Strange is searching all the millions of possible futures, THIS is the timeline he saw working? This explains so much about 2020. So we have to invent a whole new method of time travel, with its own set of McGuffins, the Pym Particles, have to explain it all to the audience. Wasted time, wasted imagination, wasted opportunities. If you didn't want to use the Time Stone, you could use this stupid time travel plot to introduce a whole new character or villain even, so we aren't' stuck with fucking Cardboard Thanos. You could introduce Doctor Doom, Kang the Conqueror, Morgan Le Fey...fucking Bishop or Cable even!
When I say Time Travel is lazy, Avengers Anti-climax provides a perfect example itself: returning all the infinity stones. After all the crap the heroes went through to get the stones, returning the stones is all done off camera and by Captain America, alone. That's right, the pervious missions were so complicated that it took more than a half dozen heroes but Cap does it all by himself. How? Well...that would take too much time to show...
So why do it? Again, Mcfeely and Markus wrote themselves into a corner and lacked the skill and confidence to get out of it gracefully. So they used time travel. It's lazy and it doesn't work. The only grace note to all of this, is it gives Captain America a good ending....by creating a huge new plot hole and continuity break by having Cap live his life all the way up to the present, with knowledge of the future and super powers. But if Marvel doesn't care, why do I? I guess because I care about good stories. And I hate bad writing. And Infinity War was so good that getting THIS as our last taste of the classic MCU is like pouring motor oil down my throat after a prime porterhouse steak.
How do you fix it?
Let me run through my list of what didn't work, briefly and suggest some changes that would have made Avengers Anti-climax into a proper Endgame. Some of this might require re-shoots. Some might require setup in a previous Marvel movie, which Feige is capable of...but that also requires this script being completed before filming begins on Infinity War and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case here, regardless of release dates.
The antagonist. Thanos as antagonist again is a tough sell. I think it COULD work, Brolin and the Russos have shown they have a good touch and vision for Thanos. But you'd have to have your heroes try force to 'Avenge' the universe...and have that fail. Then try guile...and have that fail. And then have it come down to REASONING with Thanos. Having your movie climax come down to a conversation is risky but it worked well in Doctor Strange and it's a reasonable approach when dealing with a god. Or you could use the Quantum Realm crap to provide a 'back door' into the Soul stone and all the dead perhaps stored there. Have them work with the Avengers to torment or persuade Thanos into reversing his snap. The alternative?
You need another big bad. Or big good. The Guardians of the Galaxy have already brought the Celestials into continuity. The Heroes could go to find them and the struggle to find allies and prove to them that they need to intervene could be your story. Or you could have someone ELSE get involved, making this the introduction of Kang or Doctor Doom. Have him steal the infinity gauntlet before Thanos can destroy it. You can even have THANOS forced to ask the Avengers for help in getting it back. Then you have some outstanding tension and drama of having to team up with the universe's greatest mass murderer.
See, there are options that don't involve time travel or derailing the character development from Infinity War.
Lack of focus. This is a 100% writing issue and is thus solvable with minimal money spent. It means removing elements rather than adding them. Endgame has to restore the status quo of life before The Snap. It has to deal with the consequences of The Snap. It has to deal with Thanos. I think I've suggested several good options above to do that. The rest is just writing and execution. First of all, you have people dealing with The Snap while doing other story-related things. And, for myself, I'd rather you showed an active and determined Avengers and human race rather than the weepy, mopes we got in Anti-climax. Honestly, I would not use Pym particles and time travel. The Quantum Realm could still work, if we use my 'backdoor' into the Soul gem idea, but if the intention is more action and less acting, then dropping the Quantum Realm entirely is wise. You still have cosmic forces and powers, they can provide guidance and advice. Earth becoming part of the larger universe, building starships maybe. Sure it means changing the status quo, but so did killing half of the human race off.
But you decide early what kind of movie it is going to be and you focus like a laser on just those elements. The emotion and closure can happen along the way. Other Marvel movies have handled that to more or less success in the past. But you keep it moving, the way Infinity War did.
Character Drift. The easy answer is just 'don't change your characters' but let me offer specifics for everyone I said was adrift.
Starting with the big one first, you DON'T derail Thanos. If anything, his character development can continue, he can evolve. He can have regret, torment, second thoughts, even - as a wild idea- uniting with the Avengers verses a greater threat. You have great work in Infinity War, don't undo it.
Gamora is still dead and unless time travel comes back, which I maintain is stupid AF, she stays dead. But not uninvolved. She and Peter Quill could both be inside the Soul Gem, based on the little cameo at the end with Young Gamora. She can still be the whole, developed character. She can even drive the change for him. It's a drama role, not an action role, but let's be honest, Gamora has not been an action star since her introductory scene. But show me an actress who doesn't want a pivotal role where she gets to act and not just look good in leather and I'll show you a hack fraud.
Hawkeye can ditch the 'Ronin' stuff as that doesn't actually go anywhere interesting in this story....unless...his Ronin activities reveals Doctor Doom or the like before he steals the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos. I WOULD have him bond with Black Widow, emotionally or romantically. It would be nice to have someone getting laid in this series besides Peter Quill and Wanda.
Thor is not Fat Thor. He is not a murderer because we're not writing a stupid plot. He is badly shaken by the death of his brother and the rest of his family. He should throw himself, perhaps recklessly, into danger trying to save people. Valkyrie's role can be expanded or she can remain the non-entity she is by staying in the background until she reminds Thor that he's a king as well as a god, making Thor responsible by the end of Endgame and not a wild man, completing his character arc instead of derailing it.
Black Widow is another good candidate for finding out information about Thanos' weaknesses. Or about Doctor Doom/Kang or whoever we have as antagonist. She'd be a natural teammate for Nebula and that gets her off world as well. Alternatively, she and Hawkeye can, as I mentioned, bond again. This time she 'saves' him, giving a small arc to a character who barely has any.
The Hulk has his character resolution ON CAMERA. Giving Ruffalo, who is a dumbass in so many ways, an irresistible chance to actually act, which he ought to jump at. (see above). Resolving this provides drama, a character arc and returns a physical powerhouse to the Earth. Not to mention, if Thanos and the Avengers team up, it's a chance to have someone slap the Hulk around instead of vice versa, which echoes the way Hulk treated Thor and Loki. You can even have the Synthesis Hulk, where Banner is in charge of the Hulk's body. I wouldn't but if you want to, you can spell out the risks and weaknesses of this hybrid, even demonstrate a new vulnerability in what has been an unstoppable rage monster before Thanos neutered him.
Cap's story arc may have to change. So might Iron Man's. This isn't a problem, it's a chance to tell a different ending. One that doesn't break it's own universe's rules or further strain the audience's disbelief. If you feel you NEED to have Cap become an old man, then Time Travel needs to be either one-way trip, as a reward perhaps, or by going into an alternate universe for Cap to 'fix' all the mistakes we made. I'd rather live in that timeline, I think.
Iron Man NOT dying leaves Robert Downey Junior around for future cameos, with some financial costs sure, but it gives you a solid anchor or advisor for future Avengers. Iron Man 3 made the point that Iron Man is not the suit and that Tony doesn't need it to be a hero. Maybe this time that lesson sticks, especially as The Snap has shown him how fragile life is and how much he needs to dedicate himself to being a father and not just a superhero. A new adventure for him, completing his arc without the funeral.
Need more sacrifice and character death to end the Avengers? Can do, but not in the way Anti-climax did it. All of the flaws of Anti-Climax are fixable.
Without time travel.
Conclusion
To fall from the heights of Infinity War to Anti-climax was disappointing and frustrating. Frustrating, because all of the problems are, I believe, fixable. And most are fixable just by telling a different, better story.
In an odd and melancholy way, I feel that the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended already. What we have left now are lesser gods, gods of identity politics, representation, politics over storytelling. The Wuhan Flu of 2019 and ongoing has basically killed movies. Will they ever come back? I don't know.
Everything ends. Everyone dies. That's life. That's why stories have power, because they HAVE endings, just like we all do. Your parents, your pets, your friends, your children, and you are going to die some day. What story will your life tell?
I hope it's better than what we were given in Avengers: Endgame.
Introduction
Endings are important. Endings provide the last emotions and impressions your audience and readers will have. A satisfying and appropriate ending is also hard, even more so are endings to multi-film stories. There are a lot of details to keep straight, lots of plot threads to wrap up, continuity and character drift (as opposed to development) is a danger. In fact, there are very few multi-part movies that 'stick the ending'. Perhaps the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the only one to get it right, partly due to it being one story, told in three parts.
I mention the Lord of the Rings because the last movie installment, The Return of the King, was criticized for the prolonged endings, especially in the Director's Cut version. Avengers: Endgame is basically the ending of the Return of the King stretched out over 3 hours and made with less skill. Tearjerking? Maybe but dull, and uninteresting except as a monument.
But to Marvel's credit, this IS an ending. An ending to over a decade's worth of superior superhero movies, an end to iconic characters who, despite limited pre-movie fame, have become beloved. That's not nothing. But I'm not here to review the MCU series as a whole, but rather to discuss the anticlimax that is Endgame.
Anti-climax is the 'falling action' and it covers everything that happens in a story after the climactic final conflict. And make no mistake, the Climax of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not here, it was in the superior Infinity War. What we have now is more aftermath and not so much avenging. The drop off in quality and the bobbling of so many characters and plots, handled so deftly in Infinity War is baffling as the same two writers, Markus and McFeely are credited on both movies. I cannot believe that. Some other hands must have gotten into the broth, that or lightning struck in Infinity War and it could not be brought back here, at the end.
But let me go on and give my reasons. I'll discuss the plot overview, yes with spoilers, then what worked, what didn't and how I would have fixed it, if possible. Without using time travel. Hey, someone has to try it without stupid mode turned on.
Plot
The movie opens with a great 'showing' scene with Hawkeye losing his family to Thanos' snap. We then spend a good hour watching a world trying to deal with the sudden loss of half of every living thing. It's misery porn. None of Thanos's 'better world' where there is less drain on resources and none of the resilience and adaptability that has been a very human and very American hallmark through past tragedies. But perhaps this current generation is more fragile, as delicate as a snowflake...but let's keep moving.
There's a little action as the Avengers somehow are able to find where Thanos has retreated to through some hand-waved technomagic by Rocket. (seriously, it might as well be magic. The technology involved in scanning so many light years is mind-boggling) The Avengers + a charming and not at all robotic and lifeless Captain Marvel find a crippled and ruined Thanos and murder him. Thanos, it seems, has used the Infinity Stones one last time to destroy the stones to make his act permanent and irreversible. So the Avenger's big plan of gathering the stones and 'snapping' everyone back into existence is blocked. For a few hours. This IS the big solution they've settled on to the problem they have: just to gather and use the stones again.
Sigh.
Ant-man reappears out of the quantum realm via rat ex machina. He returns to an almost post-apocalyptic world full of grief and grieving but brings to the Avengers news that 'time flows differently in the quantum realm'. Thus bringing into play that worst and laziest of all plot devices: Time travel to fix everything. It sucked in Star Trek, it sucked in Deadpool 2 and it sucks in any drama as plot resolution. And I need to spend a paragraph explaining why.
The essence of drama is conflict over important stakes. The goals for comedies are different but we're talking about The Avengers movies as a dramatic series, despite all the jokes. Time travel removes both conflict and stakes. Since any conflict can be resolved by simply going in back in time to before the conflict existed and any stakes or consequences are lost by that same expedient. Death means less when you can undo it with time travel. So is defeat. When you inject time travel into your story, you cannot help but make the story all about the time travel, the rules and complications of it, rather than the plot or the problem that time travel is supposed to solve. It's like injecting a long discussion about watchmaking into someone asking your the time so they don't miss your flight home. And, sadly, you have to spend that time doing info dumps about how time travel works in this story: what you can and can't do, and that all eats up time, ironically, runtime in your movie. Runtime that should have been spent developing your plot and your antagonist. Worse, they already had the TIME stone before this and didn't use it, then, to stop Thanos. So now, without the Time Stone - which is at least set up to control time- were still going with a Time Travel plot. What horrible thinking and writing. Digression over, for now.
The Avengers now hit upon the idea of going back in time and stealing all 5 Infinity Stones and using them to undo everything Thanos did. To do this, they use Ant-Man technology to shrink and we get an hour of redoing the Back to the Future 2 plot as they sneak around their past selves and try to steal things and get away. This goes a little wrong when the future version of Nebula apparently uses the same wifi network and password as past Nebula. This tips Thanos to the Avenger's presence and by capturing future Nebula and replacing her with past Nebula, it allows Thanos to come into the future to try to steal the Infinity Stones the Avengers have gathered. Now mind you, this version of Thanos does not treat Nebula or anyone else with the same care and concern as the real, Infinity War Thanos...but we'll get to that later.
The first Avenger deaths, out of two, happen during the retrieval of the Soul stone as the writers break their own rules set up just one movie ago as Black Widow sacrifices herself (not IS sacrificed, as is required) instead of Hawkeye (neither of whom is 'what they most love', as is required as well). And past Loki gets ahold of the Tesseract and escapes...only for this plot hole to be ignored. Or maybe it's here to set up a terrible, terrible tv series or some crap.
The Hulk, now permanently big and green but with Banner's brain only (I'll get to him, too), uses the Infinity Stones, which are mounted on an Iron Man gauntlet, not magic giant dwarfs required, it seems. Everyone is brought back to life who died from the snap and all of earth's heroes fight Thanos and his children and his army in a CGI mess that was never in doubt that the heroes will win. Iron Man uses the 5 stones a second time to 'snap' Thanos and all his allies to dust and he dies after using it. Thence commences a very long series of moping and funeral scenes as everyone grieves the loss of Tony Stark...and apparently only Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch bother remembering that, oh yeah, Vision and Black Widow are dead too.
Captain America uses the time machine to return the Infinity Stones back to where they belong...off-camera...without a spaceship to return the Power stone...and without the ability to sneak into Asgard and avoid the all-seeing eye of Heimdall...and without explaining how he's putting the Soul stone back...but never mind that, apparently. Cap decides to STAY in the past and live a normal life with Peggy Carter and age and show up to pass on a shield to a very not-supersoldier Falcon.
The end.
What worked
1. The tech. It almost goes without saying, but the special effects for the Marvel movies have been nothing short of magical. From motion-capture and animation to constructing beautiful vistas in space or on planets, to digitally aging and weathering actors, this is a triumph of applied technology. And a lot of the miscellaneous, non-nanotech bullshit, science in the movie seems very plausible, which makes for good sci fi.
2. Character development. The strength of having these characters in so many movies over the years means there's a body of work that you can trace the character development. (I have a related complaint below) Iron Man changed from being a footloose playboy who was Libertarian in views into a obsessive/compulsive family man who believed that The State knows best. Whether you find that a GOOD arc or not, is debatable (it's not good) but it's a real character development driven by his experiences. Likewise Captain America developed, not always in good ways, but he also adapted to his circumstances and came to understand his own compromises of his ideals. Thor turned into a punchline, which at least gave his character something to do. Black Widow turned from spy and temptress into a leader and lonely cat lady. Again, not all arcs are good or satisfying but the people feel real and react to the events of previous movies. Compared to most superhero movies, that's not nothing.
3. The End. It takes guts and vision to put a period to a money making monster like The Avengers. Sure, there will probably be new Avengers but this is the end for the characters we've known and loved. I doubt any serious affection will attach to what comes after. This gives an arc and ending to both Captain America and Iron Man, which I approve of. Though the biggest sadness for a character comes from Black Widow, who dies unloved, childless, almost forgotten. Damn sad, far more so than the guy who dies using the Infinity Stones and has a wife and child preserved by his sacrifice. But hey, at least she'll finally get her own movie, years after when it would have been relevant.
What Didn't Work
1. The Antagonist. This is also related to character drift, below, but Avengers: Endgame has a problem with its antagonist. They kill Thanos off early, and then it's a struggle against...time? Against their own own plot? By the time Thanos comes back into the story, it is not the nuanced, interesting character that was shown so brightly in Infinity War. Instead we have a cardboard cutout who has no chance to actually defeat anyone. But I'll talk more about Thanos' problem in the Character Drift section.
2. Lack of focus. Infinity War was fast-paced, no fat and no time wasted yet it managed to do a lot of character work and put in best-ever superhero action. But it's real strength was its focus. The whole plot plays out in one day of movie time. Avenger Anti-Climax, in contrast, is mostly padding. We first have to 'wrap up' the last movie by finding and murdering Thanos. (Our Heroes!) Then we have to wallow in misery porn as the movie shows a world that cannot get past this tragedy. Earth should be a beehive of activity as we have not only proof of alien life but proof of alien enemies, but no..everyone is just mopey and sad. We have a drawn out sequence of showing an Earth adrift with no purpose or leadership. Ant Man shows up to try to kick off the plot but again, the pacing is slow, the solution is pokey and, again, preposterous. We don't get a tight focus on the discovery of how to time travel, it's just 'poof invented'. And we get a long series of scenes showing how useless and unfocused most of the Avengers are now. That's fun. We don't get a tense debate about how to fix this problem, how time travel is going to work, the rules and complications, all that is rushed past so we can get to the fan service. The heist, or heists, themselves are given a couple of good set pieces in 2012 New York but again, there isn't a tight focus or good pacing. We just dawdle over most scenes and handwave the rest.
A good heist movie has: problem setup, character recruitment and persuasion, solution setup, rehearsal, reversals, and final success. Oceans 11 with George Clooney does it right. So does The original Italian Job with Michael Caine. This is where the lack of focus comes in. This movie should be a heist movie, but it's not. It's: an epilogue of Infinity War, it's post-apocalypse misery porn, it's cameo fanservice, it's a heist, and finally its a big martial arts/super power action set piece. This is two, maybe three movies of content here and jamming it all into one makes it impossible to succeed at any one story. Endgame needed to be 10% of its runtime dedicated to setup, then recruitment and persuasion, and so on and so forth. Basically, it needs to be revised and re-edited.
3. Character drift. If you don't like or care about your characters, it makes it a lot harder to care about your story. Avengers Anti-Climax is the character arc ending of all of the Avengers, not to mention all the secondary characters. You CAN'T screw up your characters now in the last segment. Yet that's what happens here. All the backstory and development of the previous movies are discarded in favor of jokes and plot convenience, utterly ruining the opportunity they had and tarnishing the work of the previous movies. Only Cap and Iron Man are given good writing focus, the rest of the characters must have been handed off to someone else, someone who wasn't talking to the Continuity co-ordinators and who hadn't watched the previous movies very closely. This is going to be a big section but I have things to say, so let me get specific, starting with the Avengers themselves.
The Hulk has always been depicted as being a separate person from Bruce Banner. He speaks, he thinks, he IS his own person. He's not some 'side' of Bruce Banner, like Mister Hyde is for Doctor Jekyll. Bruce and Hulk coming to terms with sharing a body has been a very, very long running conflict throughout the Hulk comics. Here, that huge conflict is resolved OFF CAMERA. Last we saw, Hulk would not come out at all after Thanos whipped him. Now, Bruce Banner's mind is in charge of a smaller, weaker Hulk body. (Hulk is powered by Rage and Banner doesn't have enough of that himself) He smiles, he laughs, he dabs, he signs autographs. THIS is not the Hulk. It's not Bruce Banner, either. It's terrible and it's terrible that they wasted this chance for character drama and character resolution for the Hulk.
Black Widow is now the leader of the Avengers. But she'd always been sneaky, shady, the person who gets things done under the table. She was never the spandex clad front-and-center. She's a spy. The attempts to make her a leader fall flat. I can't even say it's due to the...specialized acting range of Scarlett Johansson. She's given nothing to do and no way to do it. She's not even given a resolution for her emotional and romantic plots, despite the fact that her story ending pivots on that. She's not around Bruce Banner, who she was attracted to. She's not romantically or emotionally involved with Hawkeye. Her screen time is wasted making her 'the leader of the Avengers' because of the fallout of Civil War's flawed storyline.
Thor is now Fat Thor, punchline to every joke. He's also a murderer. A sniveler. A coward. A weak man abdicating his responsibilities. This is a HUGE character derailment in the service of comedy. I get that folks liked Thor: Ragnarok. And that movie did break open a lot of character opportunities for Thor. But it didn't JUST make him a comedian. In Infinity War, Thor was driven and in pain as well as funny. Here, we are given a character that we have no respect for. A man who murders a prisoner and then never is called to account for that, who abandons his people and his title without motivation apart to empower a new female character apparently. He refuses to see his 'love' Jane Foster. He steals his own hammer back, breaking time and continuity without consequence. He has no plot-related work to do, everything he 'does' to get the reality stone happens off camera. He's a joke character now and that's a shame. And it's a shame the writers couldn't figure out what to do with him besides put Chris Hemsworth in a fat suit and make jokes.
Hawkeye isn't derailed, his character is changed by the death of his family and that's actually fine. But the movie again wastes opportunities to have him bond with Black Widow, so that stupid sequence with the Soul Stone makes sense.
Iron Man and Cap both are given good treatment so let me move onto the derailment of the non-Avengers characters.
Gamora is dead. What we have in this movie is, supposedly, pre-crisis of faith Gamora who is supposed to be an assassin and on good terms with her father and not good terms with Nebula. So they rush to make her be on the hero's side and it doesn't really work. I give the movie half credit for keeping Gamora dead. But only half, because it doesn't capitalize on her child scene with Thanos in Infinity War and, if you have time travel, why isn't there any attempt to save Gamora? I realize there are story reasons why she maybe had to die, but no one even tries. But more on that in the Time Travel section below. As she is, she's aggressive and abrasive and we lose all her character development from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and Infinity War. As a result, we cram in too much development, too fast and not believably. Like most of the Guardians of the Galaxy characters, except Rocket, she's wasted in this movie. She's also incredibly unlikeable, though not to Captain Marvel levels.
Nebula is treated well enough in Anti-Climax as is Ant-Man and Rhodey. Despite the fact the Ant Man drives this plot, he barely has any character development or moments. Captain Marvel also is just as wooden and maintains her record as most unlikable MCU character as well as most overpowered and useless. So let's address the big, purple giant in the room:
Thanos. How you go from one of the best written and realized villainous protagonists in cinema history to being a cardboard cutout deserves novel-level treatment. And McFeely and Markus deserve to be beaten, along with Producer Trinh Tran. Trinh's personal character arc from production assistant to Producer is a monument to the Peter Principle and a damning indictment possibly of gender and racial quotas. I'll move on but let me give you the basics of why this happened and then I'll discuss what happened. Basically, McFeely and Markus wrote themselves into a corner. Thanos has won. He had no more goals and ambitions. And they lacked the skill and creativity to address this. So, instead of a story that involved persuading or confronting a fully-powered Thanos, they decided to kill him off. To have Thor murder him. What we get instead is cardboard Thanos.
Cardboard Thanos is the past version of Thanos who, apparently, had not gotten to the point in his emotional development to go after the Infinity Stones. He was still killing people and enjoying it, instead of viewing it as a grim duty or a penance even. He exists because Markus and McFeely couldn't come up with a new antagonist and couldn't write the same character who was in Infinity War into Anti-climax. Cardboard Thanos is arrogant, bloodthirsty, ruthless and a little dumb. The perfect punching bag, physically formidable but nothing more. This is not the Thanos who is testing everyone he encounters as in Infinity War. This is not a man who has sacrificed to get what he needed to perform what he saw as his duty. This is not the man to speak gently and lovingly to his daughter Gamora, who repaired his daughter Nebula, who wept over Gamora's death, who liked Peter Quinn. This is basically a Wakandan war rhino, only purple and biped.
Cardboard undoes all the character work from Infinity War. The only reason it's not worse, is that this isn't the 'real' Thanos. It literally is some other idiot and nothing Cardboard Thanos does affects the real character we saw in Infinity War. It reminds me of the way Atticus Finch is treated in 'Go Set A Watchman'...there's a reason Harper Lee didn't release that book while she was alive and in her right mind. I have nothing but hatred and spite for what Mcfeely, Markus and Tran did here.
4. Time Travel. Unless your story is about time travel (Back to the Future, Somewhere in Time, etc), adding it into your story is a terrible idea. It ruins basic fundamental storytelling rules, in that actions have consequences. With time travel, why there are no consequences, you can do anything. It's stupid and lazy. Harry Potter is worse with time travel in it, Star Trek is worse with time travel in it. It also creates a metric fuck ton of plot holes.
Worse, there already IS a time reversal tool, the Time Stone. But they don't use that, instead they use the, sigh, Quantum Realm from Ant Man vs The Wasp. Seriously, when Dr. Strange is searching all the millions of possible futures, THIS is the timeline he saw working? This explains so much about 2020. So we have to invent a whole new method of time travel, with its own set of McGuffins, the Pym Particles, have to explain it all to the audience. Wasted time, wasted imagination, wasted opportunities. If you didn't want to use the Time Stone, you could use this stupid time travel plot to introduce a whole new character or villain even, so we aren't' stuck with fucking Cardboard Thanos. You could introduce Doctor Doom, Kang the Conqueror, Morgan Le Fey...fucking Bishop or Cable even!
When I say Time Travel is lazy, Avengers Anti-climax provides a perfect example itself: returning all the infinity stones. After all the crap the heroes went through to get the stones, returning the stones is all done off camera and by Captain America, alone. That's right, the pervious missions were so complicated that it took more than a half dozen heroes but Cap does it all by himself. How? Well...that would take too much time to show...
So why do it? Again, Mcfeely and Markus wrote themselves into a corner and lacked the skill and confidence to get out of it gracefully. So they used time travel. It's lazy and it doesn't work. The only grace note to all of this, is it gives Captain America a good ending....by creating a huge new plot hole and continuity break by having Cap live his life all the way up to the present, with knowledge of the future and super powers. But if Marvel doesn't care, why do I? I guess because I care about good stories. And I hate bad writing. And Infinity War was so good that getting THIS as our last taste of the classic MCU is like pouring motor oil down my throat after a prime porterhouse steak.
How do you fix it?
Let me run through my list of what didn't work, briefly and suggest some changes that would have made Avengers Anti-climax into a proper Endgame. Some of this might require re-shoots. Some might require setup in a previous Marvel movie, which Feige is capable of...but that also requires this script being completed before filming begins on Infinity War and I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case here, regardless of release dates.
The antagonist. Thanos as antagonist again is a tough sell. I think it COULD work, Brolin and the Russos have shown they have a good touch and vision for Thanos. But you'd have to have your heroes try force to 'Avenge' the universe...and have that fail. Then try guile...and have that fail. And then have it come down to REASONING with Thanos. Having your movie climax come down to a conversation is risky but it worked well in Doctor Strange and it's a reasonable approach when dealing with a god. Or you could use the Quantum Realm crap to provide a 'back door' into the Soul stone and all the dead perhaps stored there. Have them work with the Avengers to torment or persuade Thanos into reversing his snap. The alternative?
You need another big bad. Or big good. The Guardians of the Galaxy have already brought the Celestials into continuity. The Heroes could go to find them and the struggle to find allies and prove to them that they need to intervene could be your story. Or you could have someone ELSE get involved, making this the introduction of Kang or Doctor Doom. Have him steal the infinity gauntlet before Thanos can destroy it. You can even have THANOS forced to ask the Avengers for help in getting it back. Then you have some outstanding tension and drama of having to team up with the universe's greatest mass murderer.
See, there are options that don't involve time travel or derailing the character development from Infinity War.
Lack of focus. This is a 100% writing issue and is thus solvable with minimal money spent. It means removing elements rather than adding them. Endgame has to restore the status quo of life before The Snap. It has to deal with the consequences of The Snap. It has to deal with Thanos. I think I've suggested several good options above to do that. The rest is just writing and execution. First of all, you have people dealing with The Snap while doing other story-related things. And, for myself, I'd rather you showed an active and determined Avengers and human race rather than the weepy, mopes we got in Anti-climax. Honestly, I would not use Pym particles and time travel. The Quantum Realm could still work, if we use my 'backdoor' into the Soul gem idea, but if the intention is more action and less acting, then dropping the Quantum Realm entirely is wise. You still have cosmic forces and powers, they can provide guidance and advice. Earth becoming part of the larger universe, building starships maybe. Sure it means changing the status quo, but so did killing half of the human race off.
But you decide early what kind of movie it is going to be and you focus like a laser on just those elements. The emotion and closure can happen along the way. Other Marvel movies have handled that to more or less success in the past. But you keep it moving, the way Infinity War did.
Character Drift. The easy answer is just 'don't change your characters' but let me offer specifics for everyone I said was adrift.
Starting with the big one first, you DON'T derail Thanos. If anything, his character development can continue, he can evolve. He can have regret, torment, second thoughts, even - as a wild idea- uniting with the Avengers verses a greater threat. You have great work in Infinity War, don't undo it.
Gamora is still dead and unless time travel comes back, which I maintain is stupid AF, she stays dead. But not uninvolved. She and Peter Quill could both be inside the Soul Gem, based on the little cameo at the end with Young Gamora. She can still be the whole, developed character. She can even drive the change for him. It's a drama role, not an action role, but let's be honest, Gamora has not been an action star since her introductory scene. But show me an actress who doesn't want a pivotal role where she gets to act and not just look good in leather and I'll show you a hack fraud.
Hawkeye can ditch the 'Ronin' stuff as that doesn't actually go anywhere interesting in this story....unless...his Ronin activities reveals Doctor Doom or the like before he steals the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos. I WOULD have him bond with Black Widow, emotionally or romantically. It would be nice to have someone getting laid in this series besides Peter Quill and Wanda.
Thor is not Fat Thor. He is not a murderer because we're not writing a stupid plot. He is badly shaken by the death of his brother and the rest of his family. He should throw himself, perhaps recklessly, into danger trying to save people. Valkyrie's role can be expanded or she can remain the non-entity she is by staying in the background until she reminds Thor that he's a king as well as a god, making Thor responsible by the end of Endgame and not a wild man, completing his character arc instead of derailing it.
Black Widow is another good candidate for finding out information about Thanos' weaknesses. Or about Doctor Doom/Kang or whoever we have as antagonist. She'd be a natural teammate for Nebula and that gets her off world as well. Alternatively, she and Hawkeye can, as I mentioned, bond again. This time she 'saves' him, giving a small arc to a character who barely has any.
The Hulk has his character resolution ON CAMERA. Giving Ruffalo, who is a dumbass in so many ways, an irresistible chance to actually act, which he ought to jump at. (see above). Resolving this provides drama, a character arc and returns a physical powerhouse to the Earth. Not to mention, if Thanos and the Avengers team up, it's a chance to have someone slap the Hulk around instead of vice versa, which echoes the way Hulk treated Thor and Loki. You can even have the Synthesis Hulk, where Banner is in charge of the Hulk's body. I wouldn't but if you want to, you can spell out the risks and weaknesses of this hybrid, even demonstrate a new vulnerability in what has been an unstoppable rage monster before Thanos neutered him.
Cap's story arc may have to change. So might Iron Man's. This isn't a problem, it's a chance to tell a different ending. One that doesn't break it's own universe's rules or further strain the audience's disbelief. If you feel you NEED to have Cap become an old man, then Time Travel needs to be either one-way trip, as a reward perhaps, or by going into an alternate universe for Cap to 'fix' all the mistakes we made. I'd rather live in that timeline, I think.
Iron Man NOT dying leaves Robert Downey Junior around for future cameos, with some financial costs sure, but it gives you a solid anchor or advisor for future Avengers. Iron Man 3 made the point that Iron Man is not the suit and that Tony doesn't need it to be a hero. Maybe this time that lesson sticks, especially as The Snap has shown him how fragile life is and how much he needs to dedicate himself to being a father and not just a superhero. A new adventure for him, completing his arc without the funeral.
Need more sacrifice and character death to end the Avengers? Can do, but not in the way Anti-climax did it. All of the flaws of Anti-Climax are fixable.
Without time travel.
Conclusion
To fall from the heights of Infinity War to Anti-climax was disappointing and frustrating. Frustrating, because all of the problems are, I believe, fixable. And most are fixable just by telling a different, better story.
In an odd and melancholy way, I feel that the Marvel Cinematic Universe ended already. What we have left now are lesser gods, gods of identity politics, representation, politics over storytelling. The Wuhan Flu of 2019 and ongoing has basically killed movies. Will they ever come back? I don't know.
Everything ends. Everyone dies. That's life. That's why stories have power, because they HAVE endings, just like we all do. Your parents, your pets, your friends, your children, and you are going to die some day. What story will your life tell?
I hope it's better than what we were given in Avengers: Endgame.
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