Current Events > Was Avengers Endgame actually off-message? *SPOILERS* (article)

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.themarysue.com/the-disappointing-rejection-of-found-family-in-marvels-avengers-endgame/

Don't get me wrong. I'll still love the MCU and will probably watch it all again in a year or so, but there's some truth in this take.

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thanos predicted coronavirus

steve rogers endorsed it
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I mean, yes.

The entire movie was stereotypical fan service shit.

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I never really thought about it like that. but that article actually has a good point

Nah. Alex in the comments has a good argument.

I'm not convinced by this. In part because "found family" is a bit overdone as a trope in general and can be found as the intentional theme in so many media franchises (including, within the MCU itself, in Guardians of the Galaxy) that it feels a little unnecessary to try and force it as a macro theme for the entire MCU. And in part because this reading seems to assume that the MCU essentially means "The Avengers".

I think Infinity War is twice the movie that Endgame is but not for the reasons the writer is talking about in this article.

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The article is right in that the final chapter was different from the beginning, at the start they were all misfits and came together to be their missing family and also save the world.

However this is the final chapter of those Avengers. Families don't stay together forever, people leave the house and start their own families, live their own lives, and pass the torch on to the next generation. I think the article misses the major point that Endgame was a conclusion.

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Sometimes you learn the differences between others are more than you can always overcome. Like, remember Civil War?

I'm not a big MCU fan but I'm not really convinced Infinity War set up for this interpretation

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This is a critique you'd expect from an 11th grader having to bs on "themes."

They weren't separated for any reason other than that's how the story progressed.
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This article came off as wah wah wah to me

Like.. Some of the points, like about Tony caring about his daughter who only had like 5 minutes screen time.. It's almost as if they completely missed the fact that this was five years later for our characters, at a time where they suffered their biggest defeat, and are all still struggling to find their new lives. Of course Tony is going to care about his daughter.

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The problem with this article is that it's overly fixated on physical togetherness when that really doesn't matter.

What's more important is that this is the first time the Avengers are fighting on a unified front since, what, Age of Ultron? After that point, Thor and Hulk are off world and Civil War happens, fracturing the group further.

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lilORANG posted...

This is a critique you'd expect from an 11th grader having to bs on "themes."

They weren't separated for any reason other than that's how the story progressed.

It also makes logical sense story wise to have characters group up to find the stones as quickly as possible.

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RchHomieQuanChi posted...

The problem with this article is that it's overly fixated on physical togetherness when that really doesn't matter.

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Tbh I'm still just pissed that endgame took all of thor's development between ragnarok and infinity war, and completely threw it out the window for the sake of some fat jokes. Was super excited for his character/franchise before, and now I just dont care. And no amount of Guardians comedy shenanigans is gonna change that.

Fuckin 'One More Day' levels of bullshit, there

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

Tbh I'm still just pissed that endgame took all of thor's development between ragnarok and infinity war, and completely threw it out the window for the sake of some fat jokes.

I don't think they did though. It was clear that Thor was going through some deep depression and dealt with it with excessive partying and overeating.

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Endgame is such a massive movie, it's ripe for a range of interpretation. That said, I don't find this take to be a compelling one. I mean, just to focus in on the central character (because I don't have time to write about all of them)... Tony's relationship with Pepper had been growing since the very beginning of the MCU, and his relationship with his father was central to the Avengers splitting up in Civil War. It would be weird if the movie didn't spend some time resolving those relationships. (And keep in mind, this comes after Infinity War spent a good chunk of time on the Tony / Peter Parker relationship).

True, the original team is split up for most of Endgame's runtime... because that's how badly Thanos beat them; he destroyed everything they stood for. The turning point of Endgame is when Tony decides to leave his family (by blood) behind to save the people he lost (found family).

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No, and the Mary Sue is a garbage site full of whiny crappy articles like this.

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

I don't think they did though. It was clear that Thor was going through some deep depression and dealt with it with excessive partying and overeating.

Yeah, I thought it was great. He was basically eating and drinking his guilt: he blamed himself for the snap. If he had been a little stronger, a little wiser, a little faster, if he had just aimed for the head, none of this would have happened(not quite true, of course, but Thor certainly believes it's true). He was clearly consumed by grief and guilt and felt utterly useless and unworthy, that he had failed everyone.
Undoing the snap doesn't undo his torment, his trauma, his loss of self-worth, nor does it restore the faith of the Asgardians who looked to him for leadership in their darkest hour and were disappointed. That part is actually more realistic than Thor instantly getting his groove back and returning to where he was at the end of Ragnarok.

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

I don't think they did though. It was clear that Thor was going through some deep depression and dealt with it with excessive partying and overeating.

Which would be all well and good if they did anything compelling with it. But they don't. We get:

Fat jokes right out the gate
Fortnite jokes
A potentially compelling bit with his mother that caps off with more fat jokes
A fanservicey fallback to the hammer, which we JUST had a movie painstakingly explaining that he didnt need
Thor reniging on his responsibility to his people, jokingly pawning everything on valkyrie, and going to make more fat jokes and measure dicks with star lord

I get they wanted a coping-with-depression angle, thats obvious, but they do it so poorly. We get exactly TWO scenes that even touch on that angle: him "going for the head," and flipping his shit when someone says thanos' name at the start. That's it. He does not grow, change, Express anything relating to the issue, or anything even once after that. It so blatantly comes off as an excuse to get him into space to quip with the guardians. A focus tested writing decision because people liked it in infinity war.

Ffs, as far as his arc is now, ragnarok and infinity war may as well have not even happened, for all they mattered for him. Asgard is on earth now, and there's less of them. Not like they mattered much to start. Whoop de doo.

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DarkBuster22904 posted...

Fat jokes right out the gate
Fortnite jokes
A potentially compelling bit with his mother that caps off with more fat jokes
A fanservicey fallback to the hammer, which we JUST had a movie painstakingly explaining that he didnt need
Thor reniging on his responsibility to his people, jokingly pawning everything on valkyrie, and going to make more fat jokes and measure dicks with star lord

And these were some of the best parts of the movie tbh

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Always get a kick about articles like this. Because of how quickly and how eager some haters are to dethrone the MCU. They DESPERATELY need any ammo they can get and theyll jump on things like this immediately, without taking two seconds to think critically about it.


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DarkBuster22904 posted...

Which would be all well and good if they did anything compelling with it. But they don't. We get:

Fat jokes right out the gate
Fortnite jokes
A potentially compelling bit with his mother that caps off with more fat jokes
A fanservicey fallback to the hammer, which we JUST had a movie painstakingly explaining that he didnt need
Thor reniging on his responsibility to his people, jokingly pawning everything on valkyrie, and going to make more fat jokes and measure dicks with star lord

I get they wanted a coping-with-depression angle, thats obvious, but they do it so poorly. We get exactly TWO scenes that even touch on that angle: him "going for the head," and flipping his shit when someone says thanos' name at the start. That's it. He does not grow, change, Express anything relating to the issue, or anything even once after that. It so blatantly comes off as an excuse to get him into space to quip with the guardians. A focus tested writing decision because people liked it in infinity war.

Ffs, as far as his arc is now, ragnarok and infinity war may as well have not even happened, for all they mattered for him. Asgard is on earth now, and there's less of them. Not like they mattered much to start. Whoop de doo.

The thing with Thor is that he's never been a character to outwardly show his anguish. He plays off everything as a joke because doing anything else would make him seem weak. It's literally what he did throughout most of Ragnarok and even Infinity War.

But there's still quite a few great scenes that show where he's at mentally. Him breaking down at the mere mention of Thanos' name. Another really great one that I don't see mentioned enough is him retrieving Mjolnir from the past. When the hammer actually comes to him, he says "I'm still worthy!" as if he's shocked that it worked.

Reminder that Thor is probably the most boastful and prideful of all the Avengers, and yet he had doubt about whether he was worthy enough to wield Mjolnir. When have we ever seen Thor doubt himself? And that's kinda where Thor's at right now. Sure, he didn't drastically change as much as the other characters, but that's kinda the point. Defeating Thanos and bringing back the snap victims didn't undo everything he had to go through, and it's why even after defeating Thanos, he passed on leadership of Asgard to Valkyrie. He felt he wasn't fit to lead. Even the Thor of Infinity War (pre-snap) wouldn't have made that decision.

Also worth noting that Endgame wasn't the conclusion of Thor's story arc in the first place.

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Thor was perfectly in-character for Endgame. Dude has always tried to carry the world on his shoulders, thinking he's the only one that can save everyone. This came to a head in Infinity War, where he failed and half the universe just disappeared. And his final chance (or so he thought) of making it right collapsed when Thanos destroyed the stones.
Add on that he'd lost his father, his hammer, his home, his brother, and half of his people all in the span of maybe a week, and of fucking course he's going to just snap eventually. People just don't like issues like depression being accurately depicted, which is why they deflect to the like maybe one fat joke when most of the humor at his expense is about his drinking.

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