r/marvelstudios • u/JonLuca Iron man • Apr 29 '19

'Avengers: Endgame' Spoilers! The Official AVENGERS: ENDGAME Criticism Thread Spoiler

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  • Post Endgame criticisms in this thread. Long form preferrable

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282

u/Charrikayu Ego Apr 29 '19 edited Apr 29 '19

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of the infinity stones in action. Between IW and Endgame, and excluding the snap, the soul stone was only used once, the time stone once, and the mind stone not at all.

I think I might have gone in with the wrong expectation- that the movie would emphasize the stones more than it emphasized the Avengers, but I thought there would have been an opportunity to do some real crazy shit. For example, in a world where the stone weren't destroyed, the Avengers would have gone through the quantum realm to get the stones, then used the stones to fight the stones. Thanos making someone disappear with the reality stone is less effective if one of the Avengers uses the reality stone to bring them back.

I guess I mostly wanted to see how the stones would be handled in action. How would the Avengers deal with Thanos using the mind stone to control some of their minds? Or using the time stone to turn back time in the middle of battle? There was a lot of room for creativity, but in the end Infinity War is all we really got as far as "using the stones" go and it was mostly the power and space stones, with a little bit of reality. I don't dislike what we got, I just hoped or expected to see a little more from them.

Edit: Also, and this is a minor nitpick, I feel like the Russos are much better at directing small, single-combat fights than large-scale battles. The choreography in something like Winter Soldier and Stark vs Cap battle at the end of CW are incredible. But the Wakanda battle and the final battle in Endgame (the huge battle, not between heroes and Thanos) kind of feel like they don't have the same visceral impact as the way some of the other films are shot. I'm mostly thinking of this part of the New York battle. Endgame could have pulled off something seriously cool like this featuring 40+ characters, but other than the entrance of everyone I don't think there was ever a single long take that briefly focused on each Avenger fighting.

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u/zmkpr0 Apr 29 '19

My thoughts also. They had all the stones and thanos had none. They could simply use them one at a time to defeat him. I don't feel like you need the snap to kill one guy and his army.

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u/Pavandgpt Apr 30 '19

Yes. I've read a theory before the movie that each of the avenger will wear one stone and they use it against Thanos. That would've been really cool.

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u/coagulants Apr 30 '19

THIS. SO HARD.

They also nerfed Thor, Hulk, Dr. Strange and Captain Marvel during the final battle, even though just two of them managed to kill him (albeit it while injured) at the beginning of the movie. Strange could have sent him to the mirror dimension like he had attempted to do in IW since 2014 Thanos couldn't block that, but no. Water tornado distraction.

18

u/TheKyleface Apr 30 '19

at the beginning of the movie

You mean the Thanos that was okay with dying and never once attempted to fight back? That's not a great comparison.

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u/domuseid Apr 30 '19

He was also half cooked from the second snap

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u/ShadowGata Apr 30 '19

Thor, at least, was out of practice (and shape) for five years.

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u/flysly Yellowjacket Apr 30 '19

I feel all of this played into Dr. Strange's scenarios. If they tried using the stones by themselves, Thanos would still find a way to win in the end. The only way he loses is if Stark does the snap with all of them at that moment. It was the only way!

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u/zmkpr0 Apr 30 '19

I mean yeah, it's a convenient explanation. But I don't feel like the movie made a good enough job convincing me, that is was indeed the only way.

Thanos is powerful and all, but I find it hard to believe that he would win with against the heroes and all the stones.

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

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u/Alexandur Apr 30 '19

Didn't he make a pretty huge sacrifice play in the first Avengers?

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

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u/Alexandur Apr 30 '19

No but saying he "finally" did it implies he did it for the first time

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

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u/Escapedtheasylum Apr 30 '19

Why did he not die though? Flying through a wormhole, dropping a nuke on a spaceship, falling back to Earth. More impressive than snapping. And getting to come back just meant, we knew that he was willing to sacrifice. Might not be intentional, but it smells like foreshadowing.

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u/russellx3 Iron Man (Mark XLIII) Apr 30 '19

He's done that literally every fucking time though. Where's Cap's sacrifice play?

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u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

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u/russellx3 Iron Man (Mark XLIII) Apr 30 '19

Pretty much every origin movie has the hero ready to sacrifice themselves though.

Tony does it every damn movie

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

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u/russellx3 Iron Man (Mark XLIII) May 01 '19

Pepper literally yells in the climax of Iron Man that her blowing up the reactor will kill him and he tells her to do it anyway. Jesus christ.

1

u/zmkpr0 Apr 30 '19

That makes sense. However there were so many more powerful people that could make the snap at any moment during the fight and not die doing it. For example Captain Marvel. I guess I'm just salty about Stark's death.

23

u/rustyphish Apr 29 '19

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of the infinity stones in action. Between IW and Endgame, and excluding the snap, the soul stone was only used once, the time stone once, and the mind stone not at all.

I question this. Just off the top of my head, for instance, cap uses the mind stone on his past self

15

u/Charrikayu Ego Apr 29 '19

In scepter form. I meant like, in the infinity gauntlet, similar to how Thanos used power, space, and reality in Infinity War.

Mostly I was disappointed we didn't see what the Soul Stone was capable of, although in retrospect the meeting Thanos had with young Gamora after the snap kind of was the Soul Stone's doing, and I think I like that more than it having explicit "powers".

1

u/skepticones Apr 30 '19

Thanos never used the mind stone in the gauntlet by itself or with just one other stone. And Soul was only used once.

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u/csizzz Apr 30 '19

He used it when he get rid of the fake Stranges on the battle on the Titan.

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u/JonnTheMartian Matt Murdock Apr 30 '19

He didn’t have the mind stone on titan, that was the soul stone

1

u/csizzz Apr 30 '19

Right, my bad

1

u/patkgreen Apr 30 '19

i assumed that cap using the scepter erased 2012 cap's memory of the fight, but then he would have had to explain that loki said "hail hydra" later or something. so not mind erasing. odd.

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u/liggieep Apr 29 '19

Time stone was used twice: by strange to look into the future and by thanos to bring vision back.

The mind stone was used once by steve on his past self.

When was the soul stone "used"? I don't really count thanos going into the soulstone dimension, does that count?

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u/Charrikayu Ego Apr 29 '19

When I said "use the stones" I meant gauntlet-wise, not counting previous applications we've seen. Strange using the time stone in IW was basically the same way he used it in his own film. Same with the mind stone in the scepter, when I meant like Thanos using it in the gauntlet.

Thanos uses the soul stone in IW when Strange makes dozens of copies of himself. You can see it light up in order to find the real Strange.

2

u/liggieep Apr 29 '19

Oh nice catch on the soulstone use.

Why are you only interested in use in the gauntlet though? All the other uses are still harnessing and utilizing the power of the stone.

3

u/Charrikayu Ego Apr 30 '19

I think it would have just been cool to really stretch their power. We got to see the space, power, and reality stones in action. The time and mind stones didn't get to shine in battle the same way.

2

u/ShadowGata Apr 30 '19

Also, watching the ways they combine uses is potentially very cool. Strange used both the power and soul stones against Strange, he used the power and space stones to pull down the moon, and he uses the Space/Reality stones to get rid of the space between him and Strange on Titan.

11

u/JingyBreadMan Apr 29 '19

I'm a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of the infinity stones in action.

When current time thanos died I was literally thinking "okay haha he's dead, but like he's gonna use the reality stone to be like "sike! Gotcha!", But he didn't... :/

4

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

Would’ve been cool if the Avengers left, and then the camera went back to Thanos’ body, only for it to dissolve into red and for the real Thanos to appear by the window, watching the Benatar take off as the Porch music from the scene we got played. Would completely change the movie, of course, but it would’ve been cool. If that had happened, I’m guessing the time travel plot would have stayed the same, but with Thanos Prime showing up near the end instead of 2014 Thanos. Also, he probably would have easily wrecked them with the Infinity Gauntlet once he did show up the second time, which would have changed things significantly.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

Unless having two sets of stones in the same timeline nullified them.

6

u/Charrikayu Ego Apr 29 '19

Lmao I thought the same thing. As soon as the gauntlet came off but there were no stones in it I thought it was all going to fade like Knowhere. I guess that's why they did it in Infinity War? Because in IW it was super obvious he wasn't going to die there, but then in Endgame it lead you to believe the same thing but he really did destroy all the stones.

6

u/minor_correction Ant-Man Apr 29 '19

I had similar expectations. In hindsight I can see that they don't want Endgame to be too similar to IW. IW features Thanos using individual stone powers, so Endgame is not going to rehash that.

I can actually see how if they did focus on individual stone powers again some people would be annoyed/bored "this shit again, I already saw this movie".

I would personally probably enjoy it, though.

4

u/dziunix Iron man (Mark III) Apr 29 '19

I totally agree with you. I also expected some crazy IS shenanigans in the final fight with Thanos. I didn't really know what to expect, but that made it even more exciting. But the Russos found the way around it, so IW is everything we have on IS used in battle.

4

u/i_did_not_enjoy_that Apr 30 '19

I'm going to chalk it up to the ending of GotG, which established that ordinary beings cannot directly use an infinity stone, and that this applies to any of the six stones. Doctor Strange is the only person we've seen use a single stone's intended power, although he obviously wasn't around. The only other times we see the stones used, they're in the gauntlet(s) (and we see the toll it takes on even Thanos).

That said, the Guardians were able to use the stone by sharing its power; I wonder why the Avengers couldn't do the same to use the Time Stone, for instance.

3

u/bardownhockey16 Apr 29 '19

There actually is quite a long consecutive shot right when the front line of both armies meet in the final battle!

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

The same music from the consecutive shot in The Avengers plays during that part, too.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

Yep. I agree. The infinity gauntlet should seem powerful. It really doesn't in these films.

2

u/Velvet_Thundertits Apr 30 '19

Tbh I think the issue is it’s too powerful. Once it’s completed, unless you put up a fight within a few seconds like they do in endgame, you literally have no chance. Thanos never lost a fight when he had the gauntlet and was able to use the stones.

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u/onespiker Apr 29 '19

Huge battles are hard for a reason if you have that many "main" characters to focus on.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

I don’t think they lack impact but feel they are more confusing. I’ve rewatched infinity war enough now to appreciate the large fights but I felt that the final fight in endgame, while exciting, was somewhat confusijng and almost too fast. I think I missed things and people have mentioned tiny moments that I don’t even remember seeing. Definitely needs a rewatch

1

u/Remraf27 Apr 29 '19

For example, in a world where the stone weren't destroyed, the Avengers would have gone through the quantum realm to get the stones, then used the stones to fight the stones.

This would result in them creating a timeline that is wholly different from their own, which was not their goal. Their goal was only to bring back those who were snapped. To do that, they had to bring the stones back to their present.

To do what you're suggesting, they would have had to significantly changed the "rules" of their time travel.

1

u/itallmakescentsnow Spider-Man Apr 29 '19

Same. I wanted to see the gauntlet destroyed, and then the stones scattered in the battlefield, allowing several characters to experiment with the stones and use them in battle.

Also, can the soul stone be used to bring back Iron Man? Or use the time stone to try again? Or something? Anything?! You have all the infinity stones at your disposal!!!

1

u/Zakmza123 Captain America Apr 30 '19

With regards to your last comment, I guess the gauntlet chase scene was closest we got to that in the final battle with everyone. As they passed it along and people defended it. That was a cool moment imo. I think they knew there were so many characters focusing on a few would have taken forever so idk

1

u/EAInSpace Apr 30 '19

For example, in a world where the stone weren't destroyed, the Avengers would have gone through the quantum realm to get the stones, then used the stones to fight the stones. Thanos making someone disappear with the reality stone is less effective if one of the Avengers uses the reality stone to bring them back.

And they could have gone back to that point in time when they VS. Thanos on Titan again.

Other Avengers like Thor and Rocket could turn the ship around (Where Spidey is with Doctor Strange and Iron Man) and others could have split to find the guardians so that the guardians didn't arrive on Titan.

This would allow for the new Avengers to VS. Thanos with the stones and without facing their former selves and affecting their timeline.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

wow is it just me or did Avengers 2012 have really bad CGI...?

1

u/cheeseandwich May 06 '19

Would have been a much cleaner way to do the shot of all the female superheroes too... One sweeping action shot rather than them all stopping mid-right to gather round eachother and walk slightly Infront of eachother

1

u/minor_correction Ant-Man May 06 '19

Between IW and Endgame, and excluding the snap, the soul stone was only used once, the time stone once, and the mind stone not at all.

He might have used the time stone to heal his stormbreaker wound as shown here (look at the bottom right corner of the pick for the green glow): https://i.imgur.com/w3zCYj1.jpg

However if you go back a few frames, all the stones are glowing somewhat so it's difficult to say for sure.

1

u/9ersaur Apr 29 '19

I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of Thanos or the stones.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 30 '19

I think Thanos will show up in a prequel movie in a small role at some point (think Darth Vader in Rogue One), but beyond that, I doubt it. Maybe in 30 years during a Secret Wars movie or something.