Avengers: Infinity War

It's kind of poetic now that I think about it. The would-be conqueror managed to finagle stewardship of an infinity stone and an entire planet of his own. Just, y'know, a stone he can't use and a planet that's a barren rock. And he has to dress like a high school graduate for the rest of forever.

Or a high school student attending his graduation, rather. I forget sometimes that continuing to wear the gown is a choice I make daily and not a dictate imposed on all graduates in perpetuity.

It's kind of poetic now that I think about it. The would-be conqueror managed to finagle stewardship of an infinity stone and an entire planet of his own. Just, y'know, a stone he can't use and a planet that's a barren rock. And he has to dress like a high school graduate for the rest of forever.

― Ce Ce Penistongs (Old Lunch), Friday, 3 May 2019 14:40 (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not a bad metaphor for how high-profile/ambitious failures end up in public sector orgs tbh

Yeah this was fine, especially Hulk and Thor.

Several things bugged me though:

SF has just about got its shit together but NYC is still a complete shithole after 5 years with deserted cars still in car parks etc. I get that narrative causality says that the 50% is weighted in favour of the plot (so all Hawkeye's family, all Spidey's school etc) but too many people to play baseball in a city that's been routinely destroyed in these movies? I guess there must be whole countries less 'important' completely unaffected.

Cap goes back in time with just the gems. Yes to the 'what happens when he meets the Red Skull, but how does he get it into Nathalie Portman's bloodstream?

The worst one is in the completely gratuitous A Force scene.
"How do we get this glove through them? <points at Thanos' giant army>"
Dunno, why don't you ask The Wasp? She was literally by the camper van in the preceding scene and has come here just to get in the shot so presumably she just waltzed through them. So give her the glove again and let her take her one step to the side to where it needs to be. (Or if she holds it and shrinks presumably that will work too.)

I didn't think about any of that. I’ve never seen any of the Ant-Man movies though.

New spiderman trailer is nice because it isn't stuffed with superheroes. I would be happy if it stayed that way for the whole movie. The universe needs a break from “everything is a crossover”.

It does have Spider-Man and Nick Fury and Happy Hogan and Maria Hill (and Mysterio) in it tbf

Chris McKenna wrote this, so I'll catch it for free one day and probably enjoy it

xpost Well...

CHRIS IN IN THE FFH CAST???? DONT PLAY WITH MY FEELINGS MARVEL pic.twitter.com/JUlNZguv2A

— hels (@nomadcevans) May 6, 2019

He was in Homecoming in the PSAs if I recall correctly

Meantime, this interview with Jon Watts has a lot going on:

https://www.fandango.com/movie-news/exclusive-interview-spider-man-far-from-home-director-jon-watts-breaks-down-that-wild-new-trailer-753743

Fandango: Gotta ask about Miles Morales, who was hinted at in Homecoming. Does this new multiverse mean we get to meet Miles in this film?

Jon Watts: There is no Miles in this film, or at least not yet. But who knows... we edit these films down to the last second, so you never know.

...

Fandango: In the trailer, Fury says it was the "snap" that caused this rip in the universe. Does your film answer which snap it was? Was it the one that brought the heroes back or the one that killed the villains?

Jon Watts: Yeah, these are all great questions and there are so many answers, but I don't want to give it away.

Fandango: Five years have passed and Peter's friends are all still the same age. Will there be characters who we met in Homecoming who appear in Far From Home having aged those five years?

Jon Watts: Yeah, that's one of the fun things that we get to play with -- the sort of real-world, ground-level implications of something like that. You don't get to see any of the fallout in Endgame, and we get to explore that in our movie. It's really interesting and fun.

I predict the next MCU phase will be about them realizing they have to fix this tear in the universe, so they traverse the galaxy in search of these magical glowing geme that, if you possess them all, can magically alter reality.

I’m totally cool with Spiderman focusing on Spiderman Universe is what I meant to say. I know parallel universes colliding could bring back any MCU character but all the action in the preview is Spidey characters doing their thing.

We just had the parallel Universe Spiderman event though didn't we?
Great cartoon from last year.

would have enjoyed seeing that Captain America quest to return the gemstones though. I take it it's not going to be shown now. Did think it was what the next CA film might be for all of a couple of minutes there.

I wouldn't be surprised if it gets done as an animation or something

Let's face it, production wise it probably boils down to a choice between 30 minutes of live action footage vs 30 minutes of character animation, with the rest of the film the same.

One of the interviews with Endgame team revealed that Captain America had to get back to Endgame Universe in order to sit there on the bench. I found that more fascinating then him just staying in one place getting old. He had to cross universes and perhaps even time travel.

Perhaps!

Yeah, if he travelled back to the 1940s to be with Peggy, he automatically created a new timeline where Peggy wasn't left to mourn him. There's no way he was there all along in the original timeline, as Agent Carter and other media have shown what happened to Peggy after the events of the first Cap movie. So maybe after alternate Peggy died of old age, he wanted to come back and spend the rest of his days in his original timeline? Or maybe he just wanted to visit there to let the Avengers know he was successful in returning the Infinity Stones, since presumably he now has family and friends in the alternate timeline, so he'd still want to go back there?

(xpost)

I haven't finished the second series, but it presumably only shows what happened to her up to a point?

I haven't finished the second series, but it presumably only shows what happened to her up to a point?

The second season is set in 1947. We don't know when the last scene of Endgame takes place, but presumably Steve would want to return to Peggy as soon as possible after his "death", instead of letting her mourn for a long time, get over it, find a new love, etc? Which is exactly what happened in Agent Carter.

Anyway, according to the time travel logic laid out earlier in the movie, the mere fact that Steve returns to the 1940s and starts a new life there automatically creates a new timeline. There's no way to create a "you already changed the past" type of loop in the MCU, just like it isn't possible in the comic book universe either.

Correct. The way I've tried to explain it (and which the movie itself did an adequate job imo) is that, when they travel to the past, time changes from a capital I to a capital Y, with one of the forks being the timeline they came from and the other being the new timeline they've created through their temporal meddling. Tony's GPS effectively pulls them back to the bifurcated point in the timeline and then back up the 'correct' timeline such that it's as if they never left (the only subjective passage of time for each traveler being however long he/she spends in various other timelines before returning to their starting position).

i think the easiest explanation for cap's adventure--he went back and re-delivered all infinity stones except for the time stone, lived a full life with peggy, then whenever he was ready to go back to his original reality, he went to the sanctum and delivered the time stone to the ancient one, who portaled him back to the moment he left.

Or maybe he was a Skrull

He didn't need the time stone because he was utilizing the quantum realm.

Also everyone is a Skrull now.

People I've talked to keep focusing on how Captain America couldn't go back without creating an alternate timeline when Thanos from 2014 (or whenever) is right there in the giant battle and gets turned to ash

Seems like a loophole that's a little bit larger

that's why i think the time lords probably would have to get involved

Imma draw y'all a diagram of how this shit works when I get a little free time and an appropriately large whiteboard.

that whiteboard in full

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JMFM__XdmG8/TFdWxa5WSHI/AAAAAAAAAmw/FpwueSoNOsg/s400/glennbeckblackboard.jpg

The
Heroes
Are
Now
Ugly
Skrulls

DO U SEE

^^^ This made me laugh a lot harder than I expected it to

Basically the ending would have worked better had Captain America simply never come back and left the others hanging. Then they could flash back to the same scene of him dancing with his girl, and might have been more bittersweet and affecting than old Captain America.

That would have been incredibly dumb because there wouldn't have been any closure for the characters re: Captain America's story and the universe's narrative would not be able to move beyond him without making the remaining Avengers seem even more callous/dismissive than they've already been in the movie (see everyone letting Black Widow wallow aside from the folks on her conference calls).

I, personally, do not want three more movies of "whatever happened to Captain America?" when I could have "Sam Wilson is now Captain America; how is the world reacting to that?" instead.

mh, all that happens there is that there's another timeline where Thanos disappears in 2014, and so Endgame doesn't happen in that one.

Cap only creates a new timeline if he changes the past - there's no evidence that he does, and some evidence that he doesn't (IE his appearance at the end of this film)

1) Sam could still be Captain America.

2) Who cares about closure? Anyway, the fact that people, including us, are discussing and debating whether what Captain America did was even possible, or what it means for the multiverse and so on, shows that there has been no closure on that front.

"who cares about closure," he says about the movie "endgame"

xp I am sort of wondering if you know what that word means, Josh.

Thanos got closed.

And endgamed.

Sam would not be Captain America without Steve's blessing. His respect for/deference to Cap is a core part of the character, both in the movies and in the comic books; he would never see himself worthy of the position without outside influence from the man holding it. It's even there in that final scene where he hesitates and checks with Bucky before going to talk to old Steve; in Sam's mind, Bucky is Steve's best friend and should have first dibs but Bucky knows Sam has been Steve's partner in crime for years at this point, plus Bucky already said goodbye to Steve by calling back to their exchange decades ago when Steve sets off to return the stones.

Also yes, you don't know what "closure" actually means in the context of a narrative.

I'll go one step forward, I don't know what closure means at all. I am just that ignorant.

Sam would not be Captain America without Steve's blessing. His respect for/deference to Cap is a core part of the character, both in the movies and in the comic books; he would never see himself worthy of the position without outside influence from the man holding it. It's even there in that final scene where he hesitates and checks with Bucky before going to talk to old Steve; in Sam's mind, Bucky is Steve's best friend and should have first dibs but Bucky knows Sam has been Steve's partner in crime for years at this point, plus Bucky already said goodbye to Steve by calling back to their exchange decades ago when Steve sets off to return the stones.

OTM. I enjoyed that scene.

My only quibble is whether Bucky would prefer to live in the past is never clarified. My preference is more White Wolf character development!

Well, prepare for clarification from the upcoming Disney+ series (now almost certain to be entitled Captain America & the Winter Soldier or somesuch).

Their choice of characters to make shows about, btw, makes much more sense now that we've seen Endgame.

(now almost certain to be entitled /Captain America & the Winter Soldier/ or somesuch).

I mean I guess he could still be Falcon for the show but that seems like a demotion at this point.

I mean it feels a little like the loose plan atm is to relegate what's left of the Avengers-qua-Avengers to a handful of short streaming series while the films shift focus toward the outliers and weirdoes, but I'm sure they'll mostly be back on the big screen at some point down the road.

I mean

Avengers Endgame 2 - a film for the nerds where all they do is sit in a room and describe how the time travel worked