Review of Avengers: Endgame (2019) by Yakusokunoji — 18 May 2019

This was an absolutely fantastic movie.

I am not sure which Avengers movie, 2 or this one, I would choose as the top movie from the Marvel cinematic universe but it definitely is one of the best ones, one of the 2 top ones.

First my main gripe, combined with an admirable effort:

The writers use Bruce Banner to establish the axiom of how a Consistency Paradox cannot be occuring. And I am glad that they did that. You cannot overwrite something. You cannot destroy the existence of something by overwriting its state and thus also not overwrite the event that served as initiation of the overwrite itself.

That was perfect.

What was not perfect? Well, first of all, they used Multiverse Theory. That is bad, because it is also inconsistent but whatever - let's accept that, it fits the comics overall and is at least no Consistency Paradox. BUT the story tries to establish "if we bring the stones back we dry out those time branches" - what? No. Either they exist or they don't. Trying to "dry them out" would mean you would actually depend on the Overwrite Consistency Paradox which the writers so skillfully already cancelled out. Now IF they establish "the stones were always brought back, we do not overwrite a timeline/delete it, we simply are talking about something that is possibly but never comes into existence" then okay, then it would mean that within a timeloop they always brought back the stones after getting them. But they very well established that they want to get rid of the timelines so they were no talking about timelines that never existed in the first place. A timeline without a Thanos because Past Thanos travelled to the other branch will always exist. A timeline where Loki stole the Tesseract and fled will always exist and there is nothing they can do about it by bringing back the stones. At best they "always brought back the stones" and that's it. The timelines that we know definitely exist even if there might have never been a timeline "without Infinity Stones".

Now this being said, I am glad that they at least tried and of course its fine that they at least tried to make an effort caring about causality but treating it like there are no other timelines now is just nonsense because from a chronological perspective and the establishment "we cannot overwrite/delete things" they very clearly (and realistically) could not do anything about that. The timeloop by the way was also sloppy because Cap cannot bring back the stones in their original state so he definitly "has not always brought them back to his own timeline". I do not know if they forgot about that but I can turn a blind eye on that because they really tried other than other movies and Tony's fate was heartbreaking but he got a solid sendoff, so did Captain America. It is great how the movie ended with him giving him "a second chance", but I think the writers wanted us to just think about the joyful side of this because the reality is: Even that was another timeline. Captain America had a life with an Alterative Magaret. His own Margaret still became an old, lonely lady in his "home timeline" and that is pretty sad and depressing for both.

Well, nevertheless for what the movie tried, establishing good character scenes with all kinds of emotions, wrapping up things (even if not completely correct but the effort was here) and offering spectacular finale to this story arc it did a absolutey fantastic job.

By the way - there was no solid reason why they could not snap their own set of Stones back into existence. On top of that: I understand why they cannot bring back Gamora and Natasha as they ARE the Soul Stone but Vision existed together with the Mind Stone and Thanos already proved the Stone together with Vision can be brought back so they should have brought him back.

I love it times 3000. By the way - half of the time travelling complaints here on this site come from ordinary pop-culture fanboys that have no idea of time phenomena, causality, et cetera. Just as the other half is from Thanos fanboys that really thought Thanos was a hero in Infinity War just because he "wanted something good for 50%" completely dismissing the psychopathic part of the character.