Avengers: Endgame Discussion Thread

[Kitten Champion]

Can we get a spin-off series about alt-universe Director Margaret Carter's mild-mannered househusband 'Roger Stevens' and his secret vigilante adventures?

...and they shall call him --

[ben-zayb]

You need to follow a very specific path to reach Vormir, not even Thanos could space warp into it he had to travel.

Tony Stark literally created nanomachines.

I mean this is just something you need to get over if you like consuming media.

That's demonstrably false.

And yet somehow they literally didn't use these nanotech immediately after Thanos destroyed their base to find each other. I tell you, it was Strange's secret telepathy magic.

Not yet. It was used sparingly, if at all, during Civil War's airport fight. Hella awkward if T'Challa would suddenly pop off his mask while talking to Bucky, or Spidey taking his off when doing his signature midfight quips. If Civil War can do it, then there's no excuse for other Marvel films.

[Rakaydos]

Can we get a spin-off series about alt-universe Director Margaret Carter's mild-mannered househusband 'Roger Stevens' and his secret vigilante adventures?

He presumably went back to the late 60s. Mar'Vel was on earth in the 80s, working for Shield. Secret Wars anyone?

[LaZodiac]

Can we get a spin-off series about alt-universe Director Margaret Carter's mild-mannered househusband 'Roger Stevens' and his secret vigilante adventures?

We are apparently getting more Captain America stuff on Disney's streaming thing, so maybe!

That's demonstrably false.

And yet somehow they literally didn't use these nanotech immediately after Thanos destroyed their base to find each other. I tell you, it was Strange's secret telepathy magic.

Not yet. It was used sparingly, if at all, during Civil War's airport fight. Hella awkward if T'Challa would suddenly pop off his mask while talking to Bucky, or Spidey taking his off when doing his signature midfight quips. If Civil War can do it, then there's no excuse for other Marvel films.

That's already been discussed, my apologies for being wrong on that. A more likely answer then is that really only Nebula and Rocket know where all this space stuff is.

They absolutely used the communicators to discuss with each other after the base attack, and in fact did use it to find each other? The problem was that the entire base is destroyed so how would you go about getting over to say, The Hulk if you were over near Iron Man.

T'Challa was played up as a revenge seeker who would stop at nothing to stop Bucky, so him not removing his helmet is meant to help sell his quasi-villainous role. Note that he removes his mask to deal with Zola, the moment where he shows that no he actually is human and capable of remorse. As for Spider-man, he doesn't remove his mask since he's a literal child who requires the mask to focus his Spider-Sense. It's to protect his identity as a child, and to his benefit to not remove it.

[Psyren]

We are apparently getting more Captain America stuff on Disney's streaming thing, so maybe!

Wouldn't that "Captain America" be Falcon?

I mean this is just something you need to get over if you like consuming media.

Yeah, I don't think you're going to get a lot of support for "I want realistic fight scenes in my Hollywood action movie which means everyone needs to keep their helmets on for the duration."

[zimmerwald1915]

Wouldn't that "Captain America" be Falcon?

No, it'd be Captain America. But it would also be Sam Wilson

[Wookieetank]

No, it'd be Captain America. But it would also be Sam Wilson

Well we've already had

Spoiler

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Captain Hammer

So having Falcon with

Spoiler

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Capt's Shield

would be pretty cool if you ask me.

[Ramza00]

Yeah, I don't think you're going to get a lot of support for "I want realistic fight scenes in my Hollywood action movie which means everyone needs to keep their helmets on for the duration."

It works well with Iron Man's helmet but at the same time it is not done much with Iron Man for two reasons.

Filming just his face is much cheaper.

1) The Iron Man 2 suit in many ways looks better and more "real" less CGI than the more recent Iron Man Suits for they spent more time in getting the special effects just right on the suit. Yes we can do more work for the same amount of computer man hours due to technology but also they were spending more time on getting the suit just right in the Iron Man 2 movie and now they are trying to spread that special effect budget around all the different actors and environments instead of hyper-specializing just on the Iron Man Suit.

2) It is different for each person the duration of this effect, but if we do not see human faces with human eyes, and the emotion of the face with muscles being moved we lower our arousal. How long this takes is different for each person. Thus you need to get the shots interesting, keep it creative, and do other things that maintains a person investment and arousal. One of the things they did in the Iron Man movies is they showed Tony's suit behind the mask while he talks to Jarvis (even though that holographic display made no sense from a real point of view, his eyeballs would be the only part getting the hologram and the hologram is less than a half an inch from his eyes.) Well this is more special effect shots and you can't really do that for the other heroes. Thus the solution is to remove the person's masks. It is not realistic but it is a compromise you have to do not just for costs but to keep the humans watching the movie invested for we are more invested when we can see human faces and human eyeballs moving.

Thus we see more scenes of Iron Man outside his suit helmet, even if he is using suit powers for it just much cheaper to film, and even more so for other superheros. But yeah what Psyren said.

[Psyren]

^ Yeah, even with Iron Man (who needs the full suit on in fights for practicality, brand recognition etc.) we get big closeups of Tony's face inside the helmet in almost every IM fight.

No, it'd be Captain America. But it would also be Sam Wilson

My point is that I'm down for that, and that is likely what the show will be. So any kind of exploration of solo Steve Rogers in whatever decade is out.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by LaZodiac
…so him not removing his helmet is meant to help sell his quasi-villainous role. Note that he removes his mask to deal with Zola, the moment where he shows that no he actually is human and capable of remorse.

I never saw him as remotely villainous, just driven by grief and rage.

As for keeping his helmet on, I recall a long stretch when he’s been captured with Cap and Falcon, and spends a few hours sitting under genteel supervision, and then interacts in a sensible, humanizing fashion with Natasha when she offers to work with him. He was showing plenty of humanity in those scenes, even to the point of making a little joke.

Originally Posted by Ramza00
Filming just his face is much cheaper.

I’m not sure if RDJ’s time is any less expensive than adding a few more seconds of CGI.

Originally Posted by Ramza00
…even though that holographic display made no sense from a real point of view, his eyeballs would be the only part getting the hologram and the hologram is less than a half an inch from his eyes.

I see our view of the helmet display as an approximation of the virtual space that he’s working in. Yes, the actual images are only a few millimeters from his eyes, but distorted accordingly to make a virtual environment—and then our view is a “virtual virtual” take on that, if you get my meaning.

[Lethologica]

I never saw him as remotely villainous, just driven by grief and rage.

Quasi-antagonistic is probably a better description.

[understatement]

He's an antagonist in that he's actively hindering the protagonist's (Cap's faction) journey. A villain would mean he's antagonistic out of evil motives or methods.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Spoiler: First Beef

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Since that's where we started, Cap and time travel.

We've established that they're not actually traveling back to their past, because in the past they never traveled back there. Rather, they are traveling to an alternate past, in which them traveling back is an established historical fact.

They hammered that home, to make clear that they were not changing - and could not change - things that had actually happened. That was the point of the Hulk/Ancient One conversation - that their actions would save their timeline, but at the expense of that timeline, unless the stones were returned.

That also makes the plot function. If they were traveling back to their past, then it was their Thanos who traveled to their present, and died there. Which means he never went back to their past, never gathered the stones, and never Snapped half the universe. So obviously, this was alternate Thanos from an alternate timeline, one in which they did go back.

That's a problem. Because when Cap returned the Stones, he did so by returning them to the alternate timeline. Not their past, the alternate past. Which means that's where he lived his full, happy life. Which means that when he took the long way back to the present, he wound up in the alternate present, not this present. The whole mechanic they set up to make time travel function - alternate realities - renders this wonderful, sweet moment that Cap totally deserves you guys impossible. He can't just live through an alternate timeline and magically wind up back here. He winds up there. Those are the rules you established, movie!

Spoiler: Timetravel and Cap

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The way I understood the Ancient One's exposition, they do travel back to their own past. But they can't change anything in it without creating a branch off the main line and leaving the main one untouched. The film is pretty vague and hand-wavy about what counts as a change, but I understood that if everything sufficiently important* is returned to its place-time, if appearances are saved, as Aotrs called it, the alternate line merges back with the original. And everything will retroactively always have been exactly as you just made it be (time travel makes for fun sentences!). However, Thanos catching wind of Nebula in the power/soul branch and the events that followed mean that particular branch of the main timeline is effectively a parallel timeline now.

Under this interpretation, Cap does travel sideways and back to alternate timelines, with the intention of putting things back in their place to "undo" the changes made and so merge the lines back. So if he was able to complete his job perfectly, he'd end up in the only timeline left. Instead there's one (two? three?) lines that are FUBAR and there's no way to save appearances. But one of those universes enjoys not having Thanos in it anymore, which is pretty cool. And I still wanna believe Cap fixed everything fixable, and then went back to the 70's, returned the last two stones in his possession, and took the scenic route home.


*I suspect the criteria is along the lines of "anything that would necessarily change events as shown on-screen in past MCU films".

[LibraryOgre]

I think this thread has insufficient use of the very useful phrase,

"Wibbly wobbly timey wimey".

[Ramza00]

I see our view of the helmet display as an approximation of the virtual space that he’s working in. Yes, the actual images are only a few millimeters from his eyes, but distorted accordingly to make a virtual environment—and then our view is a “virtual virtual” take on that, if you get my meaning.

Yes it is not literal, it is figurative and humans are fine with figurative story telling as long as it is internally consistent for the more we have to think of how it works it breaks the perception / immersion flow.

It is a spectrum of possibilities.

Spoiler: Some Film Terms

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We are fine with stylized story telling much like we are fine with the techno magic that is the Iron Man 1 armor.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

I think this thread has insufficient use of the very useful phrase,

"Wibbly wobbly timey wimey".

This is true and I am a fool for not using it in my previous post.

[LaZodiac]

Wouldn't that "Captain America" be Falcon?



Yeah, I don't think you're going to get a lot of support for "I want realistic fight scenes in my Hollywood action movie which means everyone needs to keep their helmets on for the duration."

They've said that they might be doing an actual Steve Rogers miniseries sort of thing, like what they're doing with Loki. That's what I'm getting at. Falcon will always be Falcon, he'll just have the shield now.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by LaZodiac
They've said that they might be doing an actual Steve Rogers miniseries sort of thing, like what they're doing with Loki.

Do you have a source for this? There are apparently three miniseries planned for Disney+, one of which involves Falcon and Winter Soldier, but not seeing anything about Steve Rogers.

[LaZodiac]

Do you have a source for this? There are apparently three miniseries planned for Disney+, one of which involves Falcon and Winter Soldier, but not seeing anything about Steve Rogers.

Coulda swore I heard something about it, but I can't recall where...

I think the Russo's explicitly said that "CAptain America's adventures aren't over yet" and maybe I extrapolated too hard?

[Majin]

There's some info here.

So if that's true, the Captain America miniseries would a What if starring Peggy Carter as the supersoldier, not Steve Rogers/Chris Evans.
EDIT: Ah, that would be animated series, so it's not like they even need Chris Evans that much.

Falcon and Winter Soldier series also sounds fun, I liked their scenes in Civil War.

[Anteros]

So am I the only one that's just absolutely not interested in any of that? I've really enjoyed the MCU. It's been a great ride, but as far as I'm concerned it's over. They told a good story and entertained millions, but I was already suffering from Superhero fatigue before endgame. I'm certainly not going to invest in a dozen new spinoff cash-grabs. I might watch the next Thor and the next Guardians but that's it.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone who is still enjoying it, but personally I think I'm done.

[gomipile]

So am I the only one that's just absolutely not interested in any of that? I've really enjoyed the MCU. It's been a great ride, but as far as I'm concerned it's over. They told a good story and entertained millions, but I was already suffering from Superhero fatigue before endgame. I'm certainly not going to invest in a dozen new spinoff cash-grabs. I might watch the next Thor and the next Guardians but that's it.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone who is still enjoying it, but personally I think I'm done.

I think there's certainly enough material to adapt and MCU-ify that they won't have to make anything that could be described as primarily as a "cash-grabs" any time within the next several decades. Or, at least, they can avoid that for the majority of their next 60 or so films.

After having the past 22 films centered around introducing this set of Avengers and the story of Infinity War, the next couple dozen could easily be about the introduction of the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and related characters and an overarching plot like, say, Secret Wars. That's another entire decade of film making during which they can take the time to decide what to adapt and modify next.

I think it's rather conservative to say that they could easily keep up the same level of output for the next 3 decades just with plots that have been popular in the comics for decades already. At that point, they'll have three extra decades of comic history to draw from that don't exist yet today.

Avoiding pure "cash-grabs" should be easy, and I think it's likely that they will avoid that sort of film.

[Aedilred]

So am I the only one that's just absolutely not interested in any of that? I've really enjoyed the MCU. It's been a great ride, but as far as I'm concerned it's over. They told a good story and entertained millions, but I was already suffering from Superhero fatigue before endgame. I'm certainly not going to invest in a dozen new spinoff cash-grabs. I might watch the next Thor and the next Guardians but that's it.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone who is still enjoying it, but personally I think I'm done.

I think I'm largely done too. I will check out Far From Home, since I like Tom Holland and I liked Homecoming, and maybe the next Thor and Guardians, but I don't think I'll be picking up any of the new character series from here on.

[Zevox]

So am I the only one that's just absolutely not interested in any of that? I've really enjoyed the MCU. It's been a great ride, but as far as I'm concerned it's over. They told a good story and entertained millions, but I was already suffering from Superhero fatigue before endgame. I'm certainly not going to invest in a dozen new spinoff cash-grabs. I might watch the next Thor and the next Guardians but that's it.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge anyone who is still enjoying it, but personally I think I'm done.

I'm not interested in the tv/streaming shows, but that's largely because I haven't been watching much in the way of such shows in a long time now. And there's certainly no chance I'd subscribe to Disney's new service that will only have their shows on it to see them.

But superhero movies in general? No fatigue here. They're the only films I actually pretty consistently go to see, barring specific heroes that don't interest me. Very eager to see the next Guardians, and any post-Ragnarok Thor if we get that rather than just having him join up with the Guardians, but I'll also be quite happy to check out sequels to Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange, and possibly any new heroes they introduce that catch my eye. If we start seeing the X-Men or Fantastic Four integrated into the MCU I'll likely be interested, would be nice to see those teams done well for once.

(Okay, so the X-Men did have First Class, at least, but other than that. And Logan reputedly I guess, but I don't like Wolverine enough to have bothered watching his solo films.)

[LaZodiac]

I'm not interested in the tv/streaming shows, but that's largely because I haven't been watching much in the way of such shows in a long time now. And there's certainly no chance I'd subscribe to Disney's new service that will only have their shows on it to see them.

But superhero movies in general? No fatigue here. They're the only films I actually pretty consistently go to see, barring specific heroes that don't interest me. Very eager to see the next Guardians, and any post-Ragnarok Thor if we get that rather than just having him join up with the Guardians, but I'll also be quite happy to check out sequels to Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange, and possibly any new heroes they introduce that catch my eye. If we start seeing the X-Men or Fantastic Four integrated into the MCU I'll likely be interested, would be nice to see those teams done well for once.

(Okay, so the X-Men did have First Class, at least, but other than that. And Logan reputedly I guess, but I don't like Wolverine enough to have bothered watching his solo films.)

Highly recommend Logan. You don't need to know anything about Wolvy's other solo films and truthfully not watching those will lead to a better life experience over all because literally all of them sans Logan itself are trash.

[lord_khaine]

Highly recommend Logan. You don't need to know anything about Wolvy's other solo films and truthfully not watching those will lead to a better life experience over all because literally all of them sans Logan itself are trash.

See i guess that says a lot about how subjective taste are.
Since i think its Logan that are utter trash.

[Lethologica]

Second the Logan rec, would basically say you'd like it if you liked Westerns about cowboys who are too old for this s*** having one last go-around. Also, if you think Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman were the best things about the old X-men. Also, if you liked Fury Road. Don't need to watch Wolverine's solo films beforehand - I certainly didn't.

Y'all, if taste is subjective, then you gotta at least try to figure out what tastes the movie appeals to. Just saying X is trash and Y is trash ain't gonna cut it.

[Zevox]

If recommendations were enough to get me to watch Logan, I already would have. Sorry, I'm just not interested in a Wolverine-centered film, however good it may be.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Majin
Falcon and Winter Soldier series also sounds fun, I liked their scenes in Civil War.

Yeah, they’d be a great anti-buddy pair. “I hate you, but I have to work with you.” It’ll be fun for everyone but them.

Originally Posted by Anteros
So am I the only one that's just absolutely not interested in any of that? I've really enjoyed the MCU. It's been a great ride, but as far as I'm concerned it's over. They told a good story and entertained millions, but I was already suffering from Superhero fatigue before endgame.

Right there with you. I didn’t bother with Captain Marvel and I don’t feel like I missed anything. Ditto for Ant-Man 2, GoTG 2, etc. etc.

I have a serious case of superhero fatigue in general, and a recent Chinese animated film reminded me of how much else is out there beyond superhero movies. Apart from the next Spider-Man, and maybe Black Widow, I’m just not motivated to watch more punching.

[Talakeal]

See i guess that says a lot about how subjective taste are.
Since i think its Logan that are utter trash.

Seconded. I would watch The Wolverine over Logan any day of the week. Origins on the other hand...