5W Panel: Avengers: Endgame

Whenever Thanos attempts to exterminate half the universe, the Fifth World will host a virtual panel session about it. This week's subject: Avengers: Endgame!

Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

Chris Maka
Fifth Worlders, Assemble!

Marc Singer
So, Endgame: did it live up to your expectations?

And if it didn't, did it defy them for the better or the worse?

JL Franke
Expectations... I think it's fair to say that the first two hours failed to meet my expectations but the third blew those expectations away.

Marc Singer
This was a little unusual for a Marvel movie. Or for any big-budget superhero movie.

JL Franke
For me, I was expecting a really taut, nuanced film since Infinity War reduced the cast to some of the MCU's most accomplished actors. Plus Nebula. But I found the first two hours kind of dull to be honest.

Marc Singer
I never felt like the movie was long, but there were definitely places where it felt slow.

Chris Maka
I've seen Endgame twice. The first time I was mildly disappointed because I felt that it wasn't as tightly put together and start-to-finish awe-inspiring the way Infinity War was. I felt the first two-thirds of the movie were a little too slow and uneven, but the last third was awesome.

JL Franke
Apparently Chris and I shared a brain while watching.

Marc Singer
Lots of scenes stretched out past the point where they made their point, and then just kept going.

JL Franke
Yeah, there was a bit of SNL sketch writing effect going on there.

I found myself wondering about a number of... I'm not sure if I'd call them plot holes so much as faulty logic... in the setup of the plot.

Marc Singer
I didn't think the directions they went in were bad (well, except for one or two areas which I am sure we will cover). But they took so much time doing them.

JL Franke
I think the time travel element was fine, and in terms of wrapping up the first overarching segment of the MCU, it was brilliant, as it allowed almost everyone not from the original Thor movies to make at least a token appearance.

Chris Maka
The cameos are terrific.

Marc Singer
I thought that sequence was a lot of fun, and then overstayed its welcome. Almost all of those scenes could have been halved. And the part that didn't run long, the scenes in the aftermath of the first Avengers movie, seemed to be leading up to a set-piece fight that never happened.

But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Jerry, what didn't you like in the logic/setup of the plot?

JL Franke
Several items bugged me. Each of them small, but added up, they were aggravating.

Marc Singer
Let's dig in!

JL Franke
First, the time travel concept was great. But why in the world would you travel back in time to two space missions and not wait for your one hero who can travel all by themselves through space to get back to earth to join you? You're traveling through time! You can afford to wait!

Second, if you're going to send heroes on space missions, why send the raccoon with the freaking space ship off with The Big Thorbowski? And why leave the only other person to pilot a spacecraft behind on a planet while two space rookies fly off with the only spacecraft? Because the plot demanded it!

And of course there's setting up specific time travel rules then breaking them to satisfy your plot.

Marc Singer
I don't have as much of a problem with that kind of "gamer logic" objection. Like, I accept that characters in a movie will not optimize their strategy like gamers ransacking a dungeon (even though it's their job and they ought to be doing that). The dramatic logic takes precedence, and this one mandates that Hawkeye and Black Widow have to be on Vormir, Cap and Tony have to go back to the 1970s, etc. I get that.

JL Franke
See, I hate having competent characters make bad decisions because the plot demands it.

Marc Singer
But it's an objection that makes the most sense for the world within the movie, the world where the characters live, not the one we live in where we watch them. What bugged me were the places where the dramatic logic also fell flat.

JL Franke
So why not have Nebula drop Nat and Clint off on her way to her mission? You still get them to Vormir but without having bad decisions be made.

I'm interested in which case you're thinking of.

Marc Singer
Eh, that's just logistics. As long as all the characters get where they need to be, fine.

I did have a problem with setting up the time travel rules--and building the heroes' entire plan around them--only to break them immediately. That's something that became especially apparent in the Cap epilogue... but I'm getting ahead of myself again.

JL Franke
One more note on the Nat and Clint thread. I agree they don't have to be master tacticians -- though one wonders how Cap came up with a crappy plan like that -- but I find it illogical that at least one of them wouldn't have spoken up about being left to pilot a spacecraft across the galaxy for the very first time on a mission where the lives of half the universe depend on it.

Marc Singer
What bugged me about that was they went off to Vormir with no idea what would be required to get the Soul Stone. Did Nebula not tell them? But at that point it became apparent that the heroes had no plan.

Chris Maka
Well, Thanos himself didn't know what acquiring the Soul Stone would require, so I guess it's not unbelievable that Nebula wouldn't know

Marc Singer
But they knew that Thanos went to Vormir with Gamora and came back alone, right? They didn't know why she died but they should have had some clue that something bad happened there.

Chris Maka
Fair

JL Franke
Very true. Maybe they just decided to assign the task to Clint hoping the problem would take care of itself.

I'm also not terribly happy with what they did with Clint and Thor. Not the Big Thorbowski turn: I thought that was inspired. But having them immediately turn into murderers. We often give DC lots of crap because of the body count their characters rack up. But c'mon, even Spider-Man went into murder-death-kill mode.

Marc Singer
I thought it made sense for both of those characters in that extreme situation. (Agreed about Spidey going into Kill Mode, even in the midst of a battle for all life in the universe.)

I think that scene on Vormir would have been even more powerful if at least one of the characters (probably Nat) knew exactly what would be required of them. Really powerful if she knew and didn't tell Clint ahead of time.

JL Franke
Ooh, that would have rocked. Because I could totally see Natasha doing that. And maybe she specifically recruited him for that mission because she thought he'd be willing to kill to get his family back.

Too bad you didn't write the movie, Marc.

Marc Singer
See... "dramatic logic!" (makes jazz hands)

Moving back a little bit... this is probably the part of the movie we are most inclined to skip over, but I wanted to talk a little about the opening and the post-disaster scenes that followed.

JL Franke
As much as I complain about the first two hours though, there were things I did like. The beats of Tony getting to see his dad. Cap facing off against himself (and "America's Ass" was too funny).  Freiga being as sly as you'd expect the queen who adopted Loki to be.

Sure, fire away!

Marc Singer
What was your reaction as you watched the opening scenes with the revenge mission against Thanos? It felt like it was moving entirely too quickly, but of course that was the point.

Chris Maka
Yeah, I felt the same way

JL Franke
Yeah, I felt like they'd somehow started the film partway through the movie.

Marc Singer
It ended with a nice gut-punch.

JL Franke
I was still in shock over the beheading.

Marc Singer
The post-disaster, PTSD scenes that followed also worked for me. Not at all the tone I was expecting from a Marvel movie, but it made sense given the enormity of the loss.

JL Franke
Cap leading a support group was so dead on. Pardon the pun.

Marc Singer
It was absolutely perfect. All of the Avengers' reactions made sense given who they were and what they'd been through. (Even Thor, though I wish they hadn't milked it for laughs quite so much. But then, the Marvel movies never quite know when to let go of a joke.)

JL Franke
Poor tone control on Thor especially is not something new.

Marc Singer
Also loved Steve trying to find the bright side of a halved population... even he knew it was wrong, but he just couldn't help himself.

JL Franke
I am so going to miss Chris Evans' role in the MCU.

Marc Singer
(FWIW, I think he was trying to cheer up Natasha and most likely himself, nothing more.)

Chris Maka
Yeah, me too

Marc Singer
Oh god yes. That speech he gives right before the Time Heist... that is the perfect inspirational Cap speech.

Chris Maka
Yeah

Also, Endgame Cap has the best Movie Cap costume. Truth

Marc Singer
It was a wise decision to have a different character assume the role of Cap, rather than try to cast a different actor as Steve Rogers... I truly pity the person who has to follow in Chris Evans' boots.

JL Franke
And it's kind of funny. Go back ten or fifteen years and would you expect the guy who played Johnny Storm to be the emotional center of the MCU?

Marc Singer
He always manages to hit the sincerity without ever tipping over into corny.

JL Franke
I became a Chris Evans fan for life thanks to these movies. I'll always watch anything he is in.

Marc Singer
Can I also say that the Scott Lang scenes really worked for me, especially when he first came back? I think Paul Rudd is the unsung hero of Endgame.

JL Franke
I do believe you're right. Rudd can be extremely nuanced when he wants to be, which you don't often picture when he's joking and mugging.

Marc Singer
They needed Scott to be the normal guy in this movie, and Paul Rudd can certainly do that.

Chris Maka
Speaking of Ant-Man, his daughter seemed to have aged more like ten years.

JL Franke
Ok, so I wasn't the only one who noticed that...

Marc Singer
Relativistic distortions! From the quantum... in the, um... okay, I got nothing.

(Also, I loved that Scott conceived the retrieval mission as a Time Heist. Because of course he would.)

JL Franke
And it's not surprising, but I think RDJ did his usual brilliant job capturing the selfish selflessness (or is that the selfless selfishness) of Tony Stark.

Marc Singer
Another actor who cannot be replaced.

JL Franke
While I objected to some of the other plot-driven time travel assignments, I had no problem with Cap and Tony deciding to go back on the Hail Mary surprise mission. It did make logical sense in-universe, and getting the opportunity to see them work together just a little bit longer was really needed.

Marc Singer
It was, but I also felt like that was the part of the movie that dragged out the longest.

Chris Maka
Yeah, I agree

Marc Singer
Not just the 1970 trip, but Thor on Asgard too. I get that they wanted to give their stars/fan favorites big sendoffs before their contracts were up, but those scenes all felt really indulgent.

JL Franke
I think the actor who was given the short end of the stick was Scarlett Johansson. Despite being the glue holding the post-snap Avengers together, she really didn't get to do that much, and then of course she sacrificed herself, but the movie seemed to put more focus on Clint's reaction to it.

Marc Singer
Yeah, I want to talk about that, too.

JL Franke
Aside from Rene Russo's performance, I found the Thor mission to be very dull, I agree.

Marc Singer
Honestly, they were all kind of dull, weren't they? 2012 had the Cap vs. Cap fight, and it teased us with a recreation of the elevator fight from Winter Soldier, which... I get why the Russos didn't want to repeat themselves, and Cap's trick made sense, but dammit, Elevator Fight will always be better than No Elevator Fight.

JL Franke
They were often unnecessary at the very least. I think they could have tightened up those trips and brought the movie in much shorter without sacrificing anything.

Chris Maka
Heh, I had the same thought on the Elevator Fight, or lack thereof

Marc Singer
Yeah. I will say that using the 2014/GotG trip to bring the younger, even crazier Thanos into the plot was inspired.

JL Franke
At least they partly made up for it by having Cap face his most difficult opponent.

I thought that was fine, but he seemed to lack all of the nuance and deep motivation that the Thanos of Infinity War had, and I refuse to believe that Thanos was just a general power-mad bad guy until just recently.

Marc Singer
I thought that made sense--he was more like the Thanos we saw in GotG v1, cocky and full of himself because he hasn't paid the price yet. Though his reaction upon seeing his own execution established that this was in fact the same guy who was willing to sacrifice everything for his insane dream. But yes, in some ways the young zealot Thanos made an even more dangerous opponent in the final battle. It's like the Avengers traded down for an even worse enemy.

But before we get to the big beat down...

I enjoyed Mark Ruffalo as Professor Hulk. (And I liked what I took to be the implication that he was the only superhero in the post-disaster world. The last superhero.)

JL Franke
I'm not sure that's completely accurate. After all, Natasha was coordinating what was left of the Avengers.

Marc Singer
But having him see his own younger, crazier self and just ham it up with a halfhearted smashing scene, rather than recoiling in horror at what he used to be, felt like a missed opportunity.

JL Franke
Yeah. And I really wasn't getting why he/they felt like he had to do that in any event.

Marc Singer
Natasha was doing the work behind the scenes. Hulk was taking selfies, which implies he'd done some very public things to earn his new reputation.

So, about Natasha...

JL Franke
What a waste.

Marc Singer
What do we make of the decision to kill her off? I get that the writers wrote themselves into a corner with the Vormir thing, but did it have to play out that way?

JL Franke
I don't feel like it had to go that way. I can understand the selection of Natasha, as they needed Thor for the final fight and they wanted to give Evans and Downey the sendoffs that they got. But I found her sacrifice to be terribly anti-climactic. It wasn't in service to her story. It was in service to Clint's story. Kill the woman to move the guy's story along. She was stuffed in the refrigerator.

Marc Singer
Yeah, it was a perfect example of the sort of thing you'd hope superhero comics (and movies) would have outgrown by now.

JL Franke
And this was going to be ScarJo's last film outside of the standalone Widow movie.

Marc Singer
Also seemed weird to subordinate Natasha, who's been such a major presence in the MCU--Iron Man 2, Winter Soldier, Civil War, all the Avengers movies--to Clint, who's barely been there. And in a movie that was bending over backwards to give the other stars their big sendoffs, it felt wrong to write her out halfway through the script.

JL Franke
Yeah. And let's face it -- ScarJo and Renner are not on the same level as actors. I think if the film had not decided to give Clint the big revenge plot and instead reversed the roles in that sacrifice, it would have played much better.

Marc Singer
Yeah. And much as she would have hated doing it, killing her best friend would have highlighted the dangerous edge that Black Widow always needs.

JL Franke
Oh yeah. To save the universe, Nat would have had to momentarily turn into the old Black Widow. That would have been good drama.

Marc Singer
Jazz hands! But then they couldn't have had the scene where Clint has his heartwarming reunion with his family.

And let's face it--given the choice between a devoted family man and a woman who Joss Whedon went out of his way to tell us was infertile, well, we know who Hollywood is going to save every time.

JL Franke
I hadn't thought about that, but yeah. Parents' lives are just worth more for some reason.

Marc Singer
The family must be restored. Which raises the question of why they just didn't give the heartwarming reunion scene to Scott if they had to go that way!

JL Franke
True. That would have been pretty painful if Scott had gone back to find Cassie gone. And Rudd would have played the hell out of that situation.

Marc Singer
(In case you can't tell, I will always look for ways to add more Scott Lang. Whenever Scott's not onscreen, all the other characters should be asking "Where's Scott?")

JL Franke
I was thinking the same thing, except the question was, "Where's Carol?"

Marc Singer
I have to say, Endgame almost did the one thing I was most afraid it would do--turn Carol into the deus ex machina who fixes everything.

JL Franke
I will agree the film had decent logic in having Carol out among the stars helping the other 99.9% of the universe, but honestly, I was looking forward to seeing her interact more with the cast.

Chris Maka
Yeah, me too

JL Franke
Thankfully, they didn't quite go there. But they came close.

Marc Singer
More interaction, fine. But having her be the one to defeat Thanos wouldn't have felt right. You don't introduce your pivotal character in the second to last chapter.

JL Franke
So do we want to shift to the final hour?

Marc Singer
Yeah, let's do it!

Chris Maka
So the one thing I was bummed about in the otherwise spectacular and fan-satisfying final battle, is that we didn't get to see the Hulk pop Thanos a good one right in the chops. Was that too much to ask for?

Marc Singer
Hell, no.

Hulk didn't really play much of a role at all in the final battle, did he? Though I did love the shout-out to that Secret Wars issue.

JL Franke
Yeah, they did seem to neuter the Hulk in this movie.

I thought they handled the (re)introduction of everyone relatively well, even if there was a bit too much posing involved.  It gave the audience the time to react, and at least in my theater, there was much cheering with each successive appearance.

Chris Maka
I admit, I loved it. Pose away!

Marc Singer
Yeah, it was forced as hell but they earned it.

JL Franke
And while it caused me to wonder what Cap did to purify himself since Ultron, the scene where he starts wielding Mjolnir was wild.

Chris Maka
I think Cap was always worthy, he just didn't really want to wield Mjolnir until that moment

Marc Singer
Huge applause moment in my theater. After catching Infinity War at a deserted weekday matinee, I was really glad I saw this one with a crowd.

JL Franke
I was in a packed theater at Disney Springs. The audience came primed to enjoy themselves.

Chris Maka
Yeah, the crowd was great in my theater too. Really added to the energy and enjoyment.

Marc Singer
Also, of all the characters who returned in that scene, Spidey was the one who really hit home for me. I knew we were never going to get a replay of that Marvel Two-in-One Annual, but it just felt right to have Spider-Man there for the defeat of Thanos.

Chris Maka
If only they could have worked in a Thanos-copter somehow (kidding)

You laugh, but the Thanos-copter is no joke, my friend.

JL Franke
I did have one awkward element. The guys sitting next to me (they were strangers to me) were a son-in-law/father-in-law pair, and the FIL had just lost his wife. They came in drunk, and with all the death and revisiting dead loved ones, FIL became really, really devastated, which led to even more drinking. They became increasingly loud as the movie went on, which was not a problem during the battle, but during all the talky-talky scenes in the first two thirds, it was distracting. The audience around them tried to shush them, but it just made them louder. It was a bizarre experience sitting next to two guys who alternated joking loudly and ugly crying.

Marc Singer
That would have been genius.

(Okay, that just won the award for the most mistimed comment segue...)

JL Franke
Spidey got the biggest round of applause. T'Challa received the second loudest.

Marc Singer
I also loved Giant-Man crashing out of the underground (which I totally saw coming) and then completely accidentally stepping on that dude from Thanos's Black Order (which I totally did not).
As much as Peyton Reed gets how to film Ant-Man, the Russos really, really get how to film Giant-Man. He's the most visually dynamic character in their hands.

JL Franke
Yeah, it seemed like the Black Order went down way more easily this time around, and not because of the benefit of experience on the part of the heroes.

Marc Singer
They were facing like a billion more heroes this time.

JL Franke
I'm not sure if there's a third Ant-Man movie planned, but if so, I hope that we get to see Scott Lang, hero this time around. He's pretty awesome when in that mode.

Marc Singer
Other thoughts on the battle? I have to say, as much as I don't think Clint should have been there, he finally got something cool to do in this one.

JL Franke
I saw the all-woman strike team coming, and I still enjoyed it. The reaction it got from the audience I was sitting among was very encouraging, too.

(That time the pun was not intended.  Oops.)

Chris Maka
Several of my friends and coworkers have complained about the all-woman strike team moment, but I enjoyed both for its own sake and as an A-Force callback.

Marc Singer
This movie had a low-key but persistent message of resistance in the face of seemingly overwhelming evil. At that point, the message was no longer low-key, but it fit with everything that came before it.

JL Franke
What didn't they like about it? And are they the same kind of people who hate Arya Stark?

(Yeah, that's right.  You knew there was going to be a GoT reference thrown out there sometime.)

Marc Singer
(Oh man, there's a whole other chat...)

JL Franke
Not wanting to turn this into a GoT chat, I will say that despite looking forward to Endgame, the real highlight of my weekend was the Battle of Winterfell, both before and after viewing.

Chris Maka
No, they're Arya fans. They just felt the moment was too contrived and/or too corny. I disagree.

Marc Singer
Give Endgame this: the Avengers didn't wrap up the existential battle midway through the film and then spend the last hour gearing up for the big fight with, idk, the Lethal Legion.

JL Franke
I have to admit, I don't remember a lot of the details of the battle, just specific moments. Cap with Mjolnir. A-Force. Captain Marvel entering the battle. The fire brigade for the Gauntlet. And of course, Tony victorious.

Marc Singer
Watching Thanos get his comeuppance was cathartic.

Chris Maka
Very

JL Franke
Things ended for Tony pretty much how they needed to. With a wisecrack and a sacrifice, calling back to both the end of Iron Man I and Avengers I.

Marc Singer
So, should we talk about the aftermath and the future of the MCU?

JL Franke
Sure! I'm very curious about what they're going to do with Spider-Man's upcoming movie, considering half of Peter Parker's classmates should be five years older than him now.

Marc Singer
I feel like this movie scarred the MCU so deeply that their only choice will be to completely ignore it in every future movie.

Maybe one character in Spider-Man: Far From Home will make a wisecrack about it. (My guess is Martin Starr or Hannibal Burress.) That'll be it.

JL Franke
One question that comes to mind is how much do the returned remember their deaths? The survivors all needed psychological help. I can only imagine what remembering your own death would do to you.

Chris Maka
Peter didn't seem to remember anything. "I must've passed out..."

JL Franke
I missed that (must have been some noise from the dudes next to me). That's good to know. So half of the population will be okay and the other half will have gone through traumatic loss and mind-bending recovery.

Marc Singer
Yeah, my big "the movie cannot possibly acknowledge this" question is, what about all the people who died after the snap? I mean, the global chaos and depression in the aftermath must have claimed a lot of lives. The Avengers' plan didn't do anything for them.

JL Franke
True. Or the people who died just before the snap.

Marc Singer
Like the Vision, dammit!

JL Franke
Well, he's supposed to be showing back up on WandaVision, coming to a Disney+ subscribed box near you!

Marc Singer
Here's a question for you: everybody assumed that Endgame would just rewrite time and undo the snap. That would have been the predictable way to go... but would it also have been the right one?

JL Franke
I didn't assume that. I thought that, like the comics, it would happen by overpowering/tricking Thanos and undoing the snap a short time after the snap. But they killed that idea really early. I think narratively, simply rewriting the snap would have been a cop out. But it would prevent the metric ton of continuity and tone problems that they're going to have moving forward.

Marc Singer
I expect they will mostly just ignore those problems, and it might be the best option remaining to them. But I wonder if pruning off this post-traumatic future a la "Days of Future Past" would have been the cleaner solution.

JL Franke
They could have always gone the sci-fi route and, since they introduced the concept of alternate timelines, they find the timeline in which the exact other half of the universe's population is the one that survives, so they just bring everyone from those two realities together and presto, you have whole population once more.

Marc Singer
Even weirder. "We failed in two universes, so we made a third universe!"

JL Franke
Which is fine, until two Thanoses come for them.

Marc Singer
We should also talk about Cap's ending.

JL Franke
Loved the reverence given the character with that kind of ending, but only made possible by not following their own rules.

Marc Singer
Which makes the decision not to just undo the snap that much stranger in hindsight. "We can't rewrite time, unless I want to go see my old girlfriend."

JL Franke
I would have preferred for Cap to make the same decision and live happily every after in an alternate timeline. Perhaps leaving behind the shield and a note to his loved ones.

Marc Singer
I can buy Cap making the decision, but again, it raises all sorts of question that future movies do not dare try to answer.

JL Franke
Yep.

Marc Singer
For example, he knows the Winter Soldier assassinated Howard and Maria Stark. He's not just going to let that happen, is he?

Or Hydra taking over SHIELD? Or his best friend spending decades as a brainwashed killbot?

JL Franke
And of course they could have not talked about the solidity of time and still forced the heroes to not do a preemptive strike on Thanos. After all, without Thanos, you'd have no Avengers, which means humanity gets wiped out when Tony's Ultron experiment goes awry, just as one example.

Marc Singer
The only logical conclusion is that Steve would run around trying to change the history of the MCU, which they told us in no uncertain terms the Avengers cannot do.

JL Franke
True.  Though it doesn't look like Bucky changed any, so any changes that Steve did within this timeline were centered around Peggy.

Marc Singer
Which is insane. "I guess I have to let my best friend kill my other friend's parents, no biggie."

I also thought the appearance of Old Steve and the handover to Sam was way too protracted... but that's just because I liked the Ed Brubaker comics and would love to see a movie where Sam and Bucky are both competing to take over as the new Captain America.

JL Franke
I thought it was fine for Bucky to nudge Sam into the role. After all, the Bucky of the MCU was never a kid sidekick with aspirations of maybe one day becoming Cap. Completely different relationship.

Marc Singer
Oh, Sam is the only choice for the job, but I'd rather see him work for that shield and win it instead of having it handed over as a fait accompli. And the appearance of Old Steve feels like something that would work better as a cameo in the new Cap movies.

JL Franke
True. Assuming there is a new Cap movie. I've yet to hear they have that planned.

Marc Singer
I kind of feel like they have to after that buildup.

So, where does this leave the Avengers as a franchise? Will we see another Avengers movie, and if so, who do you want to see on the team?

JL Franke
I think it's inevitable for there to be another Avengers movie as long as the MCU doesn't implode with so many of their pantheon heroes gone.

Marc Singer
With the line-up they currently have--Hulk, Dr. Strange, Valkyrie, Ant-Man--I almost feel like they could stock a Defenders movie more easily.

Chris Maka
Yeah

JL Franke
I think they've set up natural replacements for Cap and Thor. I'd prefer an Iron Man replacement be Riri instead of Pepper. And Spider-Man and Ant-Man make logical additions if the actors are available.

True on the Defenders movie, but I wonder if they'd reuse the name after using it on an underwhelming Netflix series.

Marc Singer
No, and the Avengers name is too valuable. But they're just one Nighthawk away from a full house!

JL Franke
I guess they can now bring in Namor and the Silver Surfer too.

Marc Singer
I figure they'll roll Rhodey in there as Iron Man. But they could have an interesting, unusual line-up of Avengers: Sam, Rhodey, Valkyrie, Hulk, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Spidey if they want to bring him in...

JL Franke
Darn it, I completely forgot Rhodey. Shows how memorable Don Cheadle was in this film.

Marc Singer
C'mon, he was great in that scene where he... beamed home...

JL Franke
So I know that we're getting Spider-Man. We're supposed to get a Black Widow movie, which I guess will be set in the past now. Guardians of the Galaxy are getting a third movie (which I'm oddly not looking forward to -- the Guardians were easily the weakest part of IW and Endgame). And they're introducing The Eternals, which will be interesting to see how they play it. There should be a Black Panther 2 in the works and there darn well better be a Captain Marvel 2. What else should we look for?

Marc Singer
I'm slightly more interested in the Guardians if Thor is part of the team, but I can't imagine that will last. (Can it?)

Chris Maka
I think we'll get a Dr. Strange sequel, and they're talking about a Shang-Chi movie (!!)

Marc Singer
I'd be a lot more interested in Guardians if Thor is part of the team and Star-Lord, Groot, and Drax aren't. And Mantis. And Nebula. Basically just Thor and the rabbit.

JL Franke
"Thor and Rabbit" would make for a much better film.

Marc Singer
Throw Korg in there too.

Dvandom
(Especially if we get Throg in the second act.)

JL Franke
I'm surprised they still aren't biting on a Hulk film.

Marc Singer
What the--did Dave just come back from the snap?

JL Franke
Alternate timeline Dave?

Marc Singer
Jerry--I think Universal still has the rights to distribute any Hulk film. Which probably means that Marvel will never make another Hulk film until they have those rights back. (And probably also explains why we didn't get a standalone Planet Hulk movie.)

Dvandom
(I've been watching the chat, but since I didn't actually see the movie, I wasn't going to contribute to the actual analysis.)

JL Franke
I hope you enjoyed the spoilers!

Marc Singer
Um... is it too late to post a spoiler warning?

Dvandom
I read Terence Chua's flowchart posts of the time travel stuff, don't worry

Chris Maka
On that note, guys, I have to bow out. I have an early day tomorrow.

Dvandom
I had NO illusions of staying unspoiled for however long it takes this to hit DVD or second run, so I was just careful to read spoilers from people with a decent ability to analyze stories.

Marc Singer
Goodnight, Chris.

JL Franke
Bye Chris!

Brave man, Dave.

Marc Singer
Shall we call it a night?

JL Franke
I hadn't accounted for Universal still having Hulk's rights. In that case, it would have been fun to have him join the Guardians. He does work well in space sagas.

I think we're at a good stopping point. I'm (pleasantly?) surprised we all had similar takes on the movie. I thought surely I'd be alone in being somewhat disappointed by the film. I even saw a YouTube review in which the reviewer said it was one of her top five movies of all time. That threw me for a loop.

Marc Singer
I wouldn't say I was disappointed, but this is one of those movies you don't dare think about for too long afterwards. Tremendous fun in the moment, but as I watched it I kept alternating between "I am going to see this in the theater again" and "when do we get to the hitting?" And I completely understand Marvel's desire to give their stars big farewells, but nothing wears out its welcome faster than a goodbye that never ends.

All in all, though, I'd say it was mostly a fitting end to this stage of the MCU.

JL Franke
Have a good night one and all!

Dvandom
Night

[...but wait! The chat isn't over yet! Stick around for...]

THE OBLIGATORY MARVEL POST-CREDITS SCENE

JL Franke
I can’t believe we didn’t talk about this during our round table, but am I the only one wishing the movie would have shown Cap’s reaction when he went to return the soul gem on Vormir and ran into the Red Skull?

Dvandom
Wonderella's twitter even brought that up.

JL Franke
<nods>

Marc Singer
Yeah, that was a missed opportunity.
Also, I meant to bring up the Stan Lee cameo and totally forgot about it.

JL Franke
Kind of weak for a Stan cameo, but I believe it’s the last one so very important nonetheless.

Marc Singer
Yeah, I thought it was one of the least amusing cameos.
I wish they'd brought him back as the bus driver from Infinity War.

JL Franke
That would have been incredibly emotional.

Marc Singer
And then he could drive off into the sunset.

JL Franke
I’m getting misty just thinking about it.

Marc Singer
Jazz hands!
This is totally going in the chat, btw

JL Franke
Definitely.
Can we get a gif of you doing jazz hands for the post?

Marc Singer
I would murder half the universe first.