So … it’s been a while since I actually watched Avengers: Endgame and, to my very great surprise, I haven’t had the urge to rewatch it at all. In all honesty, as time has passed and I’ve really digested it, I’ve realized that I actually didn’t like it as much as I originally thought I did. It’s still a tolerably decent flick and, whenever I do get around to watching it again, I’m probably going to fast-forward to some of the more exciting scenes – Worthy Cap remains my hands-down favorite scene – but I’ve come to that uncomfortable realization that some of the stuff in it sort of fell flat for me.

For example:

• Black Widow’s death makes no sense when you think about the Rules of the Soul Stone. In Infinity War, a superior flick, IMO, they establish that Thanos has to sacrifice what he loves … but Natasha commits suicide so Clint can’t, which means this it doesn’t quite track. I’ll have to rewatch the bit in Infinity War to confirm that this is the rule, but I’m pretty sure it was.
• Cap’s return to Peggy just breaks his character for me. There’s no way he would just sit on his hands, knowing that his best friend is being mind-screwed and is going to murder a lot of people, including Tony’s parents. I think, in my head-canon, the last scene of Endgame where Steve is kissing Peggy isn’t indicative of their marriage, but just a quick stop-off on his part before he continued on to finish returning all of the other stones. Peggy marries the dude she was kissing at the end of her show and honestly, I’d prefer Cap to end up with Natasha anyway.
• And how did Cap get to the planet for the Soul Stone or, for that matter, back from it?
• Restoring everyone who was wiped out by the Snap five years later is kind of a mess. Imagine: Jack and Jill are happily married and Thanos Snapped Jill out of existence. Jack grieves for a couple of years but manages to move on when he meets Jane, whose husband John was Snapped away. They fall in love, get married and Jane is expecting a child … and the Snap is undone. Now Jill and John are back, having lost no time and their spouses are with someone else! Or what about Tom, who was in the plane that Richard was piloting. And then, Richard was Snapped away. The plane crashed and Tom died … but where does Richard return when its undone? That’s a mess…
• And don’t get me started on Fat Thor. Ugh. It seems like they turned him into a joke so as to further ensure Carol (aka Captain Mary Sue) is highlighted as the most powerful…

Eh. The whole thing was sloppy and that just makes me sad.

And not very optimistic about the next phase of the Marvel movies. We’ve got Captain Marvel with her short haircut, old man Steve Rogers and Falcon-Cap, does that mean Fem-Thor is right around the corner? I want someone to point out to Feige that all of those changes failed …

Alas…

Wow. Just … wow. Ten years has led to this and … in the end, it was pretty damned awesome.

Yes, I have quibbles. I ultimately didn’t like the very last scene (which was a flashback) and thought it was unnecessary, and there’s a Grrrrrrlllll Power moment during the big, climactic battle that irritated me to no end, and they had the same problem with Carol Danvers that Justice League had with Superman, but apart from that, I really enjoyed it.

Plot descriptions can be found online – hell, you can find it on Wikipedia – so I’m not going to rehash all of that. So I’ll break it down into the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Amazing.

Good

The opening scene with Hawkeye at a picnic with his family and they’re all dusted (though he doesn’t actually see them disintegrate; he’s looking away when his daughter goes and while he’s looking for her, the rest of his family goes) … just oomph. That was brutal. Professor Hulk (aka Banner’s brain in Hulk’s body) was hysterical. Once again, the humor. All of the amazing callbacks to the previous movies. They got Frigga back, and Secretary Pierce, and the STRIKE team with Cap in an elevator with them, and so on and so forth. Beautifully done.

Bad

As stated, I legitimately didn’t like the final scene which is Cap & Peggy dancing in the past. The movie basically has Steve return to Peggy (post-Agent Carter) and apparently marry her where he lives out his life with her. This doesn’t work for me because it means he sat by while the Russians used his best friend as a mind-controlled assassin who ultimately kills Tony’s parents, or Hydra infiltrating SHIELD, or his new friend Natasha raised to have red in her ledger by the Soviets, and all that other bad shit … but he did nothing? He just let it play out? In Civil War, we have that exchange where he talks about not being able to let a situation go south without intervening … yet I guess he was able to do it okay as long as he got laid by Peggy (who, admittedly, is hot.) For that matter, how is it that none of her co-workers (like Howard Stark, for example) actually meet him? Keeping Old Man Cap in the final scene is fine, but drop the flashback so we don’t know who he lived out his life with (even if everyone knows it was Peggy). I was also not a super big fan of how they killed off Nat at Vormir even though I went into it prepared. Would have liked for there to be some sort of way to bring her back like they did with Gamora, even if she’s still “Evil Nat” or something … at the same time, though, I do appreciate that they killed off two of the original Avengers … and they ain’t coming back. The Black Widow movie is evidently a prequel (which means they did the same thing to her that they did to Han Solo: whack her, then give you a prequel movie with her.)

And while I was admittedly pleased that Carol Danvers was barely in the movie – she showed up in the beginning to rescue Tony, then accompanied the team that went to find post-Snap Thanos, then had a brief cameo in the middle and finally showed back up at the climax – it seems clear to me that they’re not quite sure what to do with her yet. Put simply, she’s too powerful. Look, I love Superman when done right, but Justice League Supes wasn’t – once he showed up, the fight versus Steppenwolf was done, and Carol is like that in this movie. She is literally able to take on Thanos while he has an assembled Infinity Gauntlet and overpower him. This makes no sense to me. She gained her abilities via one Infinity Stone in the form of the Tesseract (I can’t remember which one that was and can’t be bothered to look it up.) He had six. He should still be curbstomping her. But … grrrrrllll power is even greater. I dunno … she just felt shoehorned into this story and honestly didn’t add anything to it.

Ugly

And speaking of Grrrrrllll Power. Seriously, there’s a scene in the big battle where all of these powered chicks form up to rush the Iron Gauntlet to Luis’ van, and it is sooooo cringeworthy that it literally made me wince. I legitimately don’t understand how anyone can look at that sort on nonsensical pandering and not be offended. Fat Thor is also pretty rough, although once he summons his armor, he actually looks pretty badass, extra gut and all. Seeing what the Gauntlet did first to Thanos, then to Banner, then finally to Tony? Brutal.

Amazing

Captain America … wields Mjollnir during the big battle. And OMFG, it was freaking awesome. He’s got his shield and Mjollnir! I was literally cheering when Mjollnir jumped back to Steve’s hand for the first and he kicked much ass with it. Not quite enough for me, a certified MCU Cap fanboy (even if I find Chris Evans eye-rollingly dumb at times.) But it was glorious.

So ultimately … yeah, I’m going to watch this again and likely love it just as much. I’m not quite sure where I put this movie on balance just yet, but it is definitely an A- or B+ for me.

Yeah. Sounds like I made the right choice in skipping this mess. Just watching this makes me think some thinky-thoughts about how I think they should have made it. Note that this is pretty much all stream-of-consciousness and would obviously need some more in depth thinkage about various plot points.

1. First. Recast. Brie Larson is flat-out wrong for this character. Carol should actually come across as tough, not … this. Katee Sackhoff would have been 100% better.
2. Do NOT set this in the 90s. She should never meet any of the characters back then, particularly Fury. So they couldn’t screw up his awesomeness.
3. Begin in media res during Thor: The Dark World. Carol and Monica Rambeau are Air Force pilots who are responding to the insane portal stuff that is going on. They are sent tumbling through different portals and Carol crashes…
4. She wakes somewhere else and discovers that Mahr-Vehl has saved her life. He reveals that they had to make some bio-enhancements to her to ensure that she survived, so she is faster, stronger and tougher than she was before. As this is a post-Avengers setting, she should make a comment about them turning her into Captain America … which they do not get. Mahr-Vehl acknowledges that they had to ensure she was not one of their ancient enemy…
5. Mahr-Vehl is an older character – I’m thinking mid-50s to early-60s – but in tremendously awesome shape. He knows of Carol’s species because of certain Kree experiments in the past, a clear reference to Inhumans. Eventually, it will be revealed that Mahr-Vehl has been effectively exiled to this world to stand as a sentry or protector or defender – Carol could inject “Avenger?” during this as a reminder that they’re running around at the moment.
6. Eventually, Carol should be well enough to want to go home, but Mahr-Vehl will reveal that she is stuck here. There is no way off this world because it is “outside reality” (or something like that) and is used to watch for a great and terrible destroyer of worlds that left this galaxy long ago but could always return. The powers that Mahr-Vehl has at his disposal should let him stand against this entity, though they have never been wholly tested and that’s just a theory.
7. Skrulls attack the Kree community and many are lost. Carol witnesses firsthand the level of power that Mahr-Vehl has at his disposal, but then also sees the toll it takes on him. He reveals that the power he has comes at a cost – it is tearing him apart from the inside (cancer callback to the original Mar-Vell’s death) and the Nega-Bands (rename?) he wears helps him keep this cancer at bay. But one day, it will kill him, leaving the Kree scientists on this world defenseless … unless he can find a proper successor. (Obviously, he’s talking about Carol and she should be smart enough to know this fact.)
8. Training montage as Carol learns about becoming Mahr-Vehl’s replacement, along with hints by various scientists to her that her human side should prevent the same fate from affecting her … although this will eventually be revealed to be a lie. Also during this, Carol should start noting things that indicate the other Kree (not Mahr-Vehl) are lying to her about stuff. None of them buy this whole destroyer of worlds thing; they’re here to study Mahr-Vehl’s abilities and try to harvest them when he dies. And he’s here because he offended the Supreme Intelligence by not being a mindless drone but rather being a truly honorable dude.
9. Eventually, Carol discovers that her close friend, Monica, also survived the portal trip but appeared in a different part of the galaxy where she was taken by other Kree … who are experimenting on her! Also, Carol should learn that there is a way to escape this world … but the Skrull have it. So she tries to defect to them…
10. Mahr-Vehl is given instructions by the Supreme Intelligence to capture/kill her for … reasons, and he swears to do so without actually swearing to do so. Exact words and all. Something like ‘I’ll stop her or die in the process’ with his actual intent being ‘die in the process’ because his arguments with Carol have reminded him of who he was before he was exiled here.
11. Surprise reveal: the Skrull are as big of scum as the Kree and they use Carol as bait to capture Mahr-Vehl, then blast him with some doo-hickey that mostly strips him of his powers. He and Carol must now fight side-by-side against a “super” Skrull (to establish the precedent should future MCU Fantastic Four want to use this.) In the process, Mahr-Vehl actively sacrifices himself to save Carol, thus ensuring that she is the receptacle of the his abilities … and this should be hideously painful for her, revealing the need for the nega-bands.
12. Carol kicks some butt (but clearly doesn’t fully know how to use her abilities). She wins clear of the Skrull … then is promptly attacked by the fricking Kree! Both sides kind of suck. She escapes the planet (should be narrowly) and finds herself in space … this part is problematic, I think. Maybe makes more sense for there to be some sort of pseudo-Stargate thing that she can power up with her abilities that takes her to the Kree homeworld? Even then, she’s going to be surrounded on all sides by enemies so … maybe have Mahr-Vehl have provided her with coordinates to Nova Prime …
13. Oh. Yeah. She needs to arrive at Nova Prime after Thanos has attacked (pre-Infinity War). And then she needs to learn that he’s going after Earth (maybe through John C. Reilly’s character from Guardians of the Galaxy?) That would be a decent ending to the flick, I think.

And then, the stinger. Back on the planet Carol just escaped, one of the Named Kree who survived is picking through the wreckage when an alarm begins sounding. S/He reacts and looks up in horror; to another Kree, she reveals … its coming. The devourer of worlds is coming! (Guess who the big bad of phase 4 to 5 is?)