I cried a little and will probably cry myself to sleep because I will not be able to stop thinking about it

got homework to do but I will wordvomit in here later tonight or tomorrow

I woke up upset about it

I also woke up upset about it

myself as well

aight I'm gonna be working on homework all day, but before I dive into that, thoughs

OKAY HERE WE GO

questions I still have:
did they create a stable time loop or a branched timeline? if it's supposed to be a closed loop, how did they deal with the fact that 2014 Nebula is dead? did Tony's snap bring her back to life and send her back as well?

what about Gamora? I'm pretty sure she's confirmed for GotG3, so doesn't she have to stay in the future, and wouldn't that alter the timeline?

and if it's a closed loop, where the heck did Cap get the un-busted shield at the very end?

table lime soup

On the second watch-through I did catch some stuff that I missed the first time around that I had questions about (2014 Nebula has her fleshy arm covered, Cap takes mewmew back in time with him at the end) but I feel like the more I think about it and the more times I see it the more continuity questions I'm going to come up with

which leads me into my criticisms:

-god, I hate time travel

I'll admit that it wasn't as bad as it could have been, framing it as a "time heist" was hilarious, and the Steve/Tony/Scott trip to the Battle of New York and the Steve/Tony trip to 1970 were far and away the best sequences of the movie

but time travel is utilized poorly in 99% of media and it's really, honestly, never a good idea to use it in a blockbuster. not only does it introduce a fuckton of continuity questions here, but it also makes the fatal mistake of introducing time travel as an unrestricted plot device

pym is back so they have as many pym particles as they want. tony worked out how to navigate the quantum realm so anyone with the right tech can time travel at will. what's to stop them from using time travel for EVERYTHING now? this opens a huge can of worms that should not have been opened. fuckin time travel, christ. what a mess.

TIME TRAVEL: NOT EVEN ONCE

-way too much slapstick and mood whiplash. Chatvert made the observation that the mood whiplash and tone of the jokes felt like a whedonesque callback to A1, which I think is true, and unfortunate

(I...love mood whiplash, but I know it's not for everyone)

number one because, for all of Whedon's flaws, no one does Whedon like Whedon, and it just wasn't handled as successfully as he would have done. number two, because it was totally inappropriate for what should have been the tone of the movie

like okay, sure, you can't have a 3hr slog without any humor to lighten it up, but you can be lighthearted without being puerile and awkward. and come on, it's THE CULMINATING MOVIE. it's allowed to have a little gravitas, jeez

I really feel like the antman movies and scott as a comic relief character have done humor the best, and I wish they'd pulled more of that tone into endgame rather than... whatever the fuck all those awkward and badly-timed jokes were

I did like Rocket's one liner about nobody throwing up

Scott works because his character is that he's a funny person, not that he's a person we make fun of. he has a good sense of humor and is willing to have the mickey taken out of him, but that's a part of his character, and he's still a complete character otherwise. that's why his movies are funny but still heartfelt

too much of the humor in EG seemed like the writers metatextually pointing and laughing at the characters, which felt mean and out of place

and the hard cuts between serious scenes and goofy scenes, or serious moments and dumb jokes, was extremely jarring. let the moment breathe, holy shit

worst offender by far: that fucking Guardians endcap?? what the FUCK was that, y'all. someone needs to just recut the movie with that scene removed, because splicing that between Tony and Cap's endings was bizarre and totally tonally inappropriate and really undermined the emotional impact of the end

that was the only creative choice in the movie that actually made me angry with how poorly-conceived it was

that guardians endcap was so wtf

Delet

-which leads me to my next point. this veers into EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR OPINION territory, so be ye warned: Ragnarok negativity ahead

okay. so. I didn't like Ragnarok. and I like it even less the more time goes by. it was total character assassination of Bruce and Thor, the humor was horribly mean-spirited, and I honestly don't like Valkyrie. Alcoholism isn't a hilarious quirk and "generally bitchy" isn't a personality

and it really pisses me off that they pulled Thor and Bruce's Ragnarok characterizations into EG

Professor Hulk is such an interesting character development, but Bruce just spent the whole movie being goofy and annoying. Thor is still begging for direction for his character arc, and instead of the development and narrative weight he deserved, he loitered on the sidelines filling his beer gut and being the butt of Big Lebowski jokes

The scene with his mom??? which should have had SO much emotional impact? and instead we get "eat a salad" and blubbering "I'm totally from the future"? what the fuck? why would you even include that scene if you're going to intentionally undermine all of its emotional weight?

it seriously felt like Bruce and Thor were still in Ragnarok and their movie just incidentally stumbled into Endgame

The tonal and narrative mishandling of those two characters was one of the most glaring flaws of the movie, imo

"Eat a salad" was a bad line

so, yeah. I think the worst failures of humor were due to EG trying too hard to be Ragnarok, which was really, really unfortunate

okay Ragnarok negativity over

time to talk about the elephant in the room

-good lord. what the hell was that Cap ending?

what a hot mess

if I was a Cap fan I would be furious

this deserves an essay all its own, which plenty of other people have already written/are writing better than I ever could, but, boy, what a huge disservice to his character and what a strange way to end his story

that cap ending jraltkwlfnlalfkqlfkoskf

until proven otherwise I'm going to headcanon that he fixed the alpha timeline and then went back to Peggy and created a branched timeline for himself to live in, and just got somebody to port him back to the alpha timeline at the end so he could hand off the shield

because if he was living in the stable looped alpha timeline..... what, he made a fake identity and became her established canon husband? did he live his whole life with her and never tell her that Hydra was right under her nose, infiltrating her organization? he let Bucky be tortured for 70 years and murder Tony's parents?

he faked his death and abandoned her to waste away in a nursing home while he dicked around for a few years waiting to meet up with Sam? or, alternatively, he just ditched her and jumped forward in time and left her to die alone?

AND ON TOP OF THAT.... he abandoned Alpha Bucky? after everything they've been through? I guess "to the end of the line" means "until I get bored with your trauma and remember that dead broad who gave me feelings in my boner"? even if you don't ship it, jesus christ

there is just no way for Steve to have lived his life in the alpha past without turning him into an enormous, irredeemable asshole

I can only accept this if he talked to Bucky and was like "hey I'm gonna go back and fix this timeline, but then I'm gonna create a branch reality where I save you and marry Peggy and we avert all the suffering caused by Hydra and get to live the lives we deserved"

that still makes him a huge asshole because lol fuck his frozen self in that timeline I guess, but it makes him slightly less of an asshole

I kind of like the idea of a Hydra-free timeline where Steve and Bucky get to live their lives, and Steve is like an uncle to Tony and nudges Howard to be a better dad, and Howard and Maria don't die

and I'm okay with Alpha Bucky moving on from Steve b/c tbh at this point he deserves better

I just don't see how any of this can happen in any way that makes Steve not a fuckhead

tl;dr Steve's ending is a big ol'

we're all whisper yelling because marilyn's in the other room and hasn't seen endgame yet

okay last thought regarding the branch timeline theory: the idea of frozen Branch Steve waking up to discover that not only has he lost everything, but his FUTURE SELF FROM AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE CROSSED THE MULTIVERSE TO STEAL HIS LIFE is so horrible I actually find it darkly hilarious

and that about does it for my big complaints, so
SALT PURGE COMPLETE, TIME FOR THE GOOD STUFF

where's all my happy mcu emotes

despite its numerous flaws this movie will always be great in my mind because it did EVERYTHING that I wanted for Tony

this movie was a love letter to Tony fans and it was beautiful

while I will still say I really didn't want Tony to die and I was really, really hoping he'd survive and take on a mentor role

if he had to die, this was the best way to do it

if I dig back through my discord history I'm pretty sure I can find my "Tony wishlist for endgame" which this movie literally followed to the letter

HE HAS A HAPPY DOMESTIC LIFE WITH PEPPER
HE HAS A BABY GIRL (WHO ISN'T ERASED BY THE TIME TRAVEL)
HE GETS THE CHANCE TO TELL CAP TO STUFF IT AND THEN THEY MAKE UP
HE RECONCILES WITH HOWARD
HE SAVES THE DAY
HE WIELDS THE INFINITY GAUNTLET

MY BOY WIELDS THE INFINITY GAUNTLET AND HE DOES SO GOOD AND I'M SO PROUD OF HIM

I have some deeper thoughts on Tony and Cap's resolutions and the kinds of stories we tell as a culture generally, but I'll leave that essay for another time

and for now I'll just say that I'm fucking heartbroken and I don't know what the MCU even means to me anymore without Tony, but

it was good

it was so good

this was the blaze of glory Tony always deserved

other things I really liked: Nat's development! wow! I think it was a shame to kill her off in the first movie that actually gave her character some depth, lol, but it was nice to see her come into her own. her interactions with clint and her talking about why she does this and what the Avengers family means to her were so great

I thought it was really nice that the movie put a lot of effort into showcasing Nat, Clint and Bruce (despite my established issues with Bruce's characterization) because they're the "second tier" Avengers and often got sidelined in the other movies

it was wonderful that they were finally allowed to shine

it's a shame that Hawkeye's Ronin storyline was so rushed, but I think they gave us enough narrative shorthand to fill in the blanks, so I look forward to all the fanfiction on that, lol

in general Clint was actually really enjoyable. having gone into the movie certain that he was a goner, I came out of it glad that he survived. he was so well done in this movie.

Rocket was really good?? I've always thought that he's the best-developed of the Guardians and they took that even further here. He's like ant-man for me: a character who has a lot of inherent comedy, but who is well-written enough that the humor doesn't come at the expense of depth and pathos

Nebula was ALSO great, wow. there were just a ton of interesting characters who never got enough screentime in past movies who really flowered in this movie and that was so awesome

the Nebula + Tony interactions at the beginning fucking SLAYED me. i lov emy children so much

random and small, but I super liked getting to see New Asgard. I'm glad we have canon about what happened to the Asgardians

also, like, in general, everything up to the nebula switcheroo was basically "FANON: THE MOVIE"

lmao

the first time I watched it I spend the whole first half going "holy shit, I can't believe they made that real canon now" every five minutes

fantastic

given the number of things they hit, I can only assume that they had a dedicated team of interns trawling tumblr for the internet's most popular mcu headcanons

and I just want to restate what an absolute riot the Team Stony portions of the Time Heist were

unmitigated brilliance

I JUST WANT THREE HOURS OF THAT, THANKS

THAT'S AMERICA'S ASS

"Mr. Rogers, that suit did no favors for your ass." "Nobody asked you to look, Tony."

I appreciate that someone has grabbed this already

a+

also I was fucking screaming at how that whole section was chock-full of what were essentially A1 outtakes

NEW A1 FOOTAGE, SEVEN YEARS LATER

what a blast

and now I must get down to business on my homework, but everybody feel free to chime in and I will ramble more when I take breaks

Korg's scene was great, even if I know u disliked ragnarok

I actually hated cyberbully thor

very ooc

yeah what the fuck was that

DigitalSocrates ehhhh. Korg just doesn't have any characterization other than being comic relief so I can't bring myself to be interested in anything he does

that's fair

I think they had an opportunity there to show or imply Korg offering some kind of meaningful emotional support to Thor, but instead it just came off that Korg is cluelessly enabling Thor's self-destructive behavior, which was

not great

imo