Endgame VS. The Snyder Cut Pt. 1: Endgame
It takes something better to realize how bad something you thought was good actually is.
That’s right, I think Zack Snyder’s Justice League is better than Avengers: Endgame.
But before I get into the two biggest problems with this film, I want to address the fact that the writers seem to have taken a page from Stephen King’s On Writing (hehe, see what I did there) and wrote themselves into a hole so deep with Infinity War, they had to invent time travel to get themselves out. Even worse, it was clearly used as an excuse to revisit previous MCU moments in order to include as many cameos as possible. Endgame was nothing more than Fan Service: The Movie.
Misused Characters
Can we just agree that Captain Marvel is the very definition of a deus ex machina? Both in the beginning and at the end, when our heroes found themselves in situations where literally nothing else can save them, she magically appears with no indication or reason for being there.
Addressing the literal elephant in the room that is Thor.
Come Endgame, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely were finally hitting their stride as writers, but for some reason Thor seems to be their kryptonite as they also wrote what’s probably the weakest film in the MCU, Thor: The Dark World. Now I know there’s the obvious argument that considering the change Thor went through, he’s actually the most relatable character in the movie, I’ve even said this myself. His deteriorating mental state, his self-isolation, his glutinous and alcoholic lifestyle, these were all worthwhile additions to his character to help showcase his PTSD and inability to cope with his failure. The problem is that Marvel did such a great job of examining PTSD in Iron Man 3 (which Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely did NOT write), it’s surprising they would take it to an even greater degree, and yet turn it into a joke. We saw that he was struggling and in a place, both mentally and physically, that no one should ever be, but we didn’t care because it was funny. We were enjoying it so much that his return to form at the end of the film didn’t feel like a true moment of redemption, because it was borderline unwanted. As awesome as it was when he donned the cap once again with thunderous lightning while summoning both the Mjolnir and Stormbreaker, that moment of redemption could have, and should have, been even more impactful.
The (Not-So)Epic Final Battle
Even before The Snyder Cut came out, I always hated the finale of Endgame. It’s not the grandiose, epic battle that it’s meant to be, it’s just a collection of smaller fight scenes one after another masquerading as something larger. We see the individual heroes have their own small victories against individual enemies, but there’s never a sense of the army as a whole army making any progress. The movie focus’ so much on the micro that it forgets about the macro, often ruining the pacing by stopping the action around certain characters so they can have their little interactions. The Starlord and Gamora meeting is particularly annoying, as it seems like the battle is suddenly off in the distance.
Going back to the macro and the armies’ progress, a big problem is that there is no defined goal beyond just trying to kill each other. For the first few minutes of the battle, as exciting, flashy and bombastic as it is, nothing’s really happening. It’s all style and no substance, they’re just fighting each other for the sake of on screen action. It isn’t until the gauntlet makes it out of the rubble and onto the battlefield that there’s even a semblance of an objective, but that objective is quickly reduced to a game of keep-away, still with no end goal in sight. This creates the issue where the audience can’t root for the protagonists to achieve their goal when they have no goal. Rooting for the Avengers here is like rooting for the home team of a sports game, you’re doing it more out of obligation.
Eventually, well into the finale, they remember Ant Man’s time machine van and our heroes finally have a legitimate goal they need to achieve in order to win. At this point we’ve reached a good narrative, but we’ve lost sight of the epic battle and the massive armies are no longer serving a purpose. I would argue that, from a narrative perspective, the only reason Thanos’ army is even there in the first place is simply to keep the many heroes occupied so they can’t gang up on Thanos all at once (because a gauntlet-less Thanos would definitely lose that fight). From the beginning, neither army does anything to affect the statuesque of the story, they are simply there to create a battlefield backdrop to serve as the setting for the final fight, the battle itself does not matter.
Finally, this might sound pessimistic of me, but there’s too much positivity in the scene, too much hope. Other than their headquarters getting destroyed at the beginning, there’s hardly any setbacks. Quite simply, the Avengers and Wakandan army are putting up too good of a fight, and the outcome is pretty clear. Now you could chalk this up to the nature of the superhero genre, but I’m not talking about the inevitable outcome we know is coming, I’m talking about how that outcome is alluded to. There’s a clear lack of dread and lack of tension. We all love a good underdog story, but as soon as Dr. Strange showed up with a massive army, the Avengers are no longer the underdog. It’s not that we know the Avengers are going to win, it’s that we’re never given a reason to think otherwise.
It’s crazy to think that this film, the highest grossing film of all-time, a film with ridiculous amounts of star-power, a film regarded as one of the best superhero movies ever made, could have been better.
