Faiz Elahi
What does the unprecedented culminating film of 22 interconnected superhero movies mean to a 21-year-old whose entire personality was defined by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? In 2019, Avengers: Endgame was my sliced bread, not even the greatest thing since.
I vividly remember how Martin Scorsese angered me that year when he said that Marvel films were “not cinema.” He said they were rather akin to “theme parks.” Five years later, I seem to embody that supposed elitist contempt for these films because the recent MCU output has become avoidable sludge to me. I had a stark realization that my taste had changed during the release of Deadpool & Wolverine (2024). This is why I rewatched Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Endgame.
This essay is Part Two of two in which I analyze Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Endgame. I’ve returned to my two most significant early cinematic experiences with a newly developed critical lens. In Part 1 of this two-part exploration, I wrote an entire essay analyzing Avengers: Infinity War’s focused screenplay, character-driven story, and use of its McGuffin as an excuse to sing my praises for it.
In this essay, I analyze Avengers: Endgame based on my observations about Infinity War. I argue that Scorsese was right, almost. I argue that of all the films in the MCU, Avengers: Endgame is the theme park. This is a movie beholden to its mandates.
Infinity War explores its core theme of conviction through Thanos as its default protagonist. Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely apply the Infinity Stones to reveal Thanos’s character and progress his power. Infinity War is Thanos’s story in which he defeats the Avengers in combat and commitment. Endgame, however, fumbles its way around the same theme, has an uninteresting villain, and reduces the Infinity Stones to McGuffins for collection and nothing more. This is strange, considering it needs to manage half the characters and is 33 minutes longer.
“Whatever it takes” …right?
In The Avengers (2012), the six heroes are at odds with one another for most of the film. They are constantly bickering until Phil Coulson’s death brings them together. They set aside their differences to avenge his death and defeat Loki in the Battle of New York. The film is satisfying because the protagonists are in conflict until the final act. When they finally start working together, it’s immensely gratifying, because the screenplay combines the catharsis of a teamwork story and a vengeance story to bring us the Avengers.
Infinity War’s roster of 22 heroes is equivalent to the original six in the first film because they’re divided into smaller subgroups. Loosely, Infinity War tells a similar story as The Avengers until Coulson’s death: villain seeks Infinity Stone(s) and, in the process, exposes a group of heroes for their individual and collective shortcomings. The Avengers (2012) happens because Thanos sends Loki and the Chitauri to collect the Space Stone. In Infinity War (2018), he’s collecting them himself. The correlation between the two movies is both explicit and implicit.
Endgame is a direct sequel to Infinity War because its narrative continues from the ending of the previous film. The Avengers’ goal is to bring back the trillions of erased. They are whom the heroes avenge, for whom they must defeat Thanos. The Mad Titan beat them in combat and conviction, fair and square. Thanos believes he’s bringing “salvation” to a “dying universe.” I described Thanos’s commitment to his cause as a sociopathic, maniacal stoicism. The Avengers lose because their anger and their compassion aid Thanos in his win. They lose because of their humanity. Because of the nature of Thanos’s victory, his defeat cannot just be physical; it must also be mental, emotional, and philosophical. Only through a victory on all fronts can the Avengers make Endgame a dramatically satisfying sequel.
The second trailer for Endgame will have you believe that the Avengers are learning from their failures. In it, the Avengers repeat the phrase “whatever it takes” four times, which is a rephrased sentiment of the same conviction with which Thanos defeated them. The trailer suggests that Thanos’s success through indomitable dedication will be reversed. The Avengers will out-commit, outsmart, and prove Thanos wrong this time. However, their success doesn’t hinge on the sheer dedication exhibited by Thanos. The Avengers win because its creators chose to upend the storytelling foundation built for Infinity War.
Who is/are the Protagonist(s) of Avengers: Endgame?
Endgame retains the bleak tone and stakes of Infinity War for only 20 minutes, after which it ceases to be the latter’s dramatically direct sequel. Within 20 minutes, the Infinity Stones are “reduced to atoms,” and Thanos is killed. As the intertitle reads, “Five Years Later,” Endgame eliminates the central character and storytelling mechanic of its predecessor, leaving its continued theme of conviction to float around what remains.
Thor chopping off Thanos’s head is a reasonable conclusion to a cataclysmic collective failure that hinged upon one grieving individual. But…why? Why would screenwriting team Markus and McFeely, directing team Joe and Anthony Russo, and the MCU’s primary producer Kevin Feige make this creative decision? Why kill the dramatic core of the film—Thanos and the stones—like this?
At first, I thought Thanos was killed to make space for the original Avengers to occupy the dramatic center of the film. If that’s the case, why is Bruce Banner aka Hulk’s journey from Jekyll and Hyde dichotomy to Jekyll-Hyde hybrid completely skipped over? Why is Clint Barton aka Hawkeye/Ronin’s descent into mass murdering assassin left unresolved? Why is Thor’s depression arc from self-pity to self-worth handled with an utter lack of tact? Like her run throughout the MCU, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow has no story, only the crumbs of one. Steve Rogers aka Captain America doesn’t evolve on screen—his change is only subtextual. The only Avenger who gets a semblance of an arc is Tony, whose ending serves as the climax for this film and the 22-movie run.
How many characters with dramatic arcs does it take to make a grand finale? One? None? If Thanos was killed to explore the six Avengers, then Endgame isn’t utilizing the space to tell much of a story. They’re given some context, a few tasks, and a victory. Endgame doesn’t chart the Avengers making any meaningful personal change. They have no arcs. If neither the villain nor the heroes are the story, then this is not a narrative structured around its characters. It’s structured around something else.
The Infinity Stones are Tickets to a Theme Park
It could be argued that Tony, like Thanos in Infinity War, is the core storytelling piece of the Endgame puzzle. However, Infinity War is built around Thanos, so he influences every moment of its story, even when he isn’t involved. Endgame, however, is only built around Tony’s actions in theory. In practice, the narrative is built around the time heist. Thanos is killed and the Stones are destroyed, so the Avengers travel back in time to get the Stones, which is how 2014 Thanos comes back in time, so Tony sacrifices himself by using the Stones to disintegrate 2014 Thanos and his army. The Time heist is the romp, the disengaging theme park upon which the entirety of Endgame is built.
The movie introduces its time travel element through the contrivance of a rat scurrying over a button. This brings Scott Lang aka Ant-Man and his quantum technology into the fray. From then, Endgame has no time for the necessary conflict and resistance to the idea of time travel. Tony is resistant to the idea for only two scenes. He then stumbles on to the math for time travel with his first try on screen. Thanos’s win in Infinity War is earned because he worked to win over the Avengers. Here, that necessary work is bypassed to get to the gleeful time travel as quickly as possible. We just get to the time heist with no difficulty in the unfolding of the story. The story and the Avengers don’t earn the deus ex machina of time travel. It doesn’t compel from its inception.
In Infinity War, the Battles of Wakanda and Titan are reinforced by the tension of consequence. Losing entails the loss of an Infinity Stone. In Endgame, the time heist is reinforced by nothing. Thanos is dead. The Avengers can take an eternity. It’ll make no difference as long as they return to the present. There is no tension in the time heist, so we can just enjoy the ride.
During the Mad Titan’s conquest in Infinity War, the Stones revealed his character and served as signposts for his growing power. He acquired the stones in a linear order. In Endgame, the Avengers split up and acquire the stones tangentially. There is no feeling of progress in the narrative. Instead of progress, Endgame could make the act of collecting the stones into moments for drama. However, it’s never the Avenger who has a connection with a Stone that collects it. Thus, there is no drama to the time heist either.
Allow me to list the dramatically vapid collections of the stones. Thor doesn’t collect the reality stone despite his emotionally demanding encounter with it in Thor: The Dark World (2013). Rocket collects it instead. Rhodey collects the power stone, not Rocket or Nebula. Rocket had a particularly poignant encounter with the Power Stone in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Cap collects the Mind Stone in the Scepter, not Clint, who was mind-controlled with that Stone in The Avengers (2012). Cap could have collected the Space Stone because he fought over it in Captain America: The First Avenger (2012) but Tony collects it instead. Tony invents time travel, but he doesn’t acquire the Time Stone, Bruce does.
The Stones do not reveal character, incite tension, create difficulty, or produce drama. Unlike in Infinity War, the McGuffin in Endgame has been reduced to objects to be collected. As a result, the mechanical purpose of the Stones is to function as tickets to the Marvel Cinematic Universe theme park. A theme park is an amusement park whose content and form are based on a central theme. The middle of Endgame is an indulgent shrine to the MCU. We have The Avengers ride, the Captain America trilogy ride, the Thor: The Dark World ride, and the Star-Lord ride.
In The Avengers ride, we see the iconic circling shot of The Avengers (2012), both to orient and amuse the audience. There’s the shot of Tony in freefall from Stark Tower as he suits up and the shot of the Avengers confronting a defeated Loki. In the Captain America ride, there’s the tense buildup to the iconic elevator scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014). He then fights 2012 Cap and escapes by citing Bucky and Peggy Carter, the two most important people to him. We also see shots from Thor: The Dark World (2013) as Thor and Rocket sneak around. We have the same needle drop and shots from the iconic opening of Guardians of the Galaxy, where Star-Lord dances while listening to his Walkman.
Endgame’s nostalgic victory lap isn’t nefarious, but what purpose does 2012 Cap saying “I can do this all day” at the beginning of a fight serve? The last time Cap said this he was bloodied and bruised, having betrayed one friend to save another. Now, the line’s made into a joke. Much of the time heist is meant for the MCU’s loyal viewers to snap their fingers like DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). It only amuses its uncritical loyal audience into salivating over its indulgent and trivial self-referentiality. But the time heist can do more.
When the time heist does leave theme park territory, it shows how morbidly frivolous it was. In seeking the Reality Stone, Thor gets to meet his mother, reunite with Mjolnir, and disengage from his spiral of depression to find self-worth again. The Soul Stone allows Natasha to sacrifice herself to give Clint the chance to redeem himself—to save his soul. Seeking the Space Stone allows Tony to meet his father, fully resolve his resentment towards him, and learn of Howard’s self-sacrificial interest in serving the greater good. This meeting gives Tony what he needs to ultimately fulfill his growth as a superhero and sacrifice himself to save the universe. None of these scenes work without relying on the context derived from Endgame’s predecessors. The movie is a climax, a theme park, and a victory lap for 21 films before it. It has no story of its own.
The Facsimile of Thanos ruins Avengers: Endgame
After the time heist, the Avengers return to the present with all Infinity Stones, mourn the loss of Natasha, and snap the erased back into existence. Concurrently, 2014 Thanos makes it into the present with his entire army using the same Pym particles as the Avengers. How exactly does he do that? The Avengers each use one vial per trip, yet Thanos has none and brings his entire army and ship with him. Only with several leaps of logic can Endgame’s time travel rules be accepted. Not even the directing and writing team can agree on its exact parameters. Does Endgame have a time loop mechanic or an alternate timeline mechanic?
Endgame declares that it has a branching timeline mechanic. Bruce says that “changing the past doesn’t change the future,” and he is told by the Ancient One that a new branched timeline opens when a significant alteration to the main timeline is made. The Stones need to be returned to eliminate the branches and restore the original timeline. At the same time, 2014 Thanos understands future versions of a person as the “same [person] from two different times.” By calling himself “inevitable,” 2014 Thanos believes that he will achieve the same exploits of the original Thanos. So, is Endgame a time loop?
The logic of time travel isn’t my biggest concern here. My issue is that the film’s implicit and explicit inconsistency presents 2014 Thanos as if he’s the same as the original. But he’s not. He only catches up to the original Thanos’s life via montage. 2014 Thanos hasn’t completed any of the feats that the original did. He hasn’t displayed the conviction that helped him achieve his “destiny.” He isn’t philosophically compelling in the slightest. His conclusion after watching the original Thanos’s montage is that eliminating 50% of all life isn’t good enough. Now, he will destroy all life in the universe and start life anew. If he was the original, wouldn’t he now consider multiplying the available resources? Why does he even come to the present for the Infinity Stones? Why not go back in his timeline to get the Stones and avoid resistance from the Avengers?
Nothing about this film saddens and frustrates me like 2014 Thanos facing up to Thor, Steve, and Tony. He says, “You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to me.” The coldest line of this duology isn’t said by the Mad Titan who won. It’s said by someone else. We are to accept that this is the same Thanos because he walks, talks, and looks like him. But he lacks the gravitas of the original.
This Thanos has an armor and a weapon. He’s shinier. He’s louder. But knock at his armor and listen. You’ll hear nothing but the silent, reverberating echo of a hollow shell. This purple alien is the facsimile of the original. The tragic consequence is that the Avengers don’t get to bring their vengeance on the sociopath who wronged them. Instead, they assemble to fight the villain’s facsimile—a pretender, a fake, the quintessential and vapid Marvel villain that wants to destroy the universe. We are deprived of the opportunity to see the Avengers assemble and defeat Thanos. Once the Avengers assemble, the battle isn’t really about stopping this uninteresting villain. It’s just a romp where the heroes interact with one another. It becomes a vague comedy happening in an indiscernible CGI wasteland. There is no fear that they will lose, and the farce is only saved by Tony’s sacrifice.
What Should a Movie Do?
Killing Thanos and destroying the stones in the first 20 minutes trivializes the Avengers’ eventual victory. Thanos’s success in Infinity War is implicitly an indictment of the Avengers’ humanity, both good and bad. He’s a villain because he’s willing to sacrifice anyone to render the universe in his image of “salvation.” Because Endgame doesn’t offer an ideological victory over the original Thanos, the MCU inadvertently suggests that the narrow-minded drive of sacrificing anyone else for our success is the right thing. Given that Disney eats up other films of lesser budgets to take over commercial theaters, it’s an appropriate message for Disney to make with the second-biggest film ever.
In Infinity War, Doctor Strange says there were 14 million possibilities, and the Avengers only win in one. There were 14 million permutations to writing the story of Avengers: Endgame. This is the one that Markus, McFeely, the Russos, and Feige chose. I can’t shake the feeling that there is a more focused story about learning from failure, coping with grief, and coming together as team to correct an irreversible failure.
But there is no denying that Avengers: Endgame had a difficult juggling act. It had to be a sequel to 20 other films, a direct sequel to Infinity War, a thank you to the fans that made the MCU a box-office juggernaut, and a coherent movie. That it ended up being satisfying upon release is an achievement.
But to fully accept, enjoy, and understand this movie, it needs to be placed in the context of its predecessors. My issue with it, five years after release, is that it doesn’t tell a story that truly continues from its predecessor. It doesn’t tell a story of its own. In revisiting Infinity War and Endgame, I’ve learned therein lies my change in taste. I can’t enjoy a story when it’s so caught up in referring to something outside of itself. I just want a film to have its own beginning, middle, and end.
