“I have often said that if knowing what happens actually spoils a movie, that movie probably sucks.”
-Robert Bridson
The only real spoiler I got from Avengers: Endgame before seeing it was a very minor but very telling one: There are no after-credits scenes.
Quite a few non-Marvel movies had scenes during or after the credits, including of course Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. But it wasn’t until Nick Fury showed up at Tony Stark’s house at the very end of Iron Man to discuss “the Avengers Initiative” that the idea became a running premise, linking together the various movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and teasing the next one in the series. The fact that such a scene doesn’t happen this time only emphasizes that while there will of course be other Marvel projects, for the Avengers story arc, this is it.
Finality is the main theme of this movie. More than once, Thanos says, “I am inevitable.” Thanos, of course, is taken from Thanatos, the Greek word for death. In the original Marvel Comics, Jim Starlin’s Thanos was romantically obsessed with Death (since Death is a personality in Marvel Comics). In the more “realistic” movies, this obsession was turned into a Malthusian sociology. In Infinity War, Thanos told everyone that the populations he decimated (or rather, bisected) before getting the Infinity Gauntlet were happier and better off for his work. That is clearly not the case after the “snap.” On Earth, world governments have collapsed and cities are hollowed out, with sullen, scattered survivors. The cosmic hero Captain Marvel has her hands full dealing with similar crises on other worlds. But then Scott Lang (Ant-Man) returns from the Quantum Realm and discusses a way to reverse the events, in what he calls a “time heist.” And while some deaths are unavoidable, there are a lot of appearances from almost every other Marvel movie up to this point (although in some cases these characters appear VERY briefly) and this leads to some happy reunions, demonstrating to Scott’s surprise, time travel doesn’t work like in Back To The Future, Bill & Ted, or any other examples of time travel, which, like in this movie, are entirely fictional and speculative, because time travel isn’t real.
After the movie, my best friend and I briefly discussed it and he said that the premise created plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. And I start to think about them more and more.
Like….
…..
…..
If Endgame was five years after Infinity War, and the Avengers brought back all the people who got ‘snapped’ without going backwards in time, why is Peter Parker still in high school with Ned?
And….
We all know who guards the Soul Stone, right? So what happened when Steve had to give it back?
But again, the result creates a true narrative finality- as with The Long Night at Winterfell, the casualty count of principal characters was very light, though the losses were a lot more substantial. But most characters had at least a satisfying ending, and one in particular had the happy ending that should have happened all along. And instead of an after-credits scene we got a big production ending with each of the original Avengers actors pictured with their autographs on the screen.
I can’t help but think that the producers were inspired by the final scene of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, where the senior crew of the Enterprise have just returned to the ship after stopping a military conspiracy and saving the galaxy from a general war – only to be given orders to turn the Enterprise in to be decommissioned. And Captain Kirk- like Tony Stark, an example of Peter Pan masculinity if ever there was one- just said “second star to the right, and straight on til morning.” And the Enterprise sailed toward the nearest star and disappeared into the light. And the screen showed the autographs of the seven principals of the original cast, one by one.
And that was indeed the last time that all seven members of the original cast appeared in the same movie together.
RIP The Avengers
They Saved The World
A Lot