Board 8 > Board 8 Ranks: The Marvel Cinematic Universe (Phase III!)

(+) Yeah! (+)

^5


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Despite my somewhat low ranking relative to others, I will say Endgame was probably the best experience Ive ever had going to a movie theater. In fact, I almost feel like thats the only appropriate way to see Endgame.

Jesse_Custer posted...

Despite my somewhat low ranking relative to others, I will say Endgame was probably the best experience Ive ever had going to a movie theater. In fact, I almost feel like thats the only appropriate way to see Endgame.

Yep. I saw it multiple times in theaters (I'll keep the exact number to myself for the sake of my pride) and haven't watched it since. Good chance I never do again unless they do a special event where they bring it back to the big screen for a weekend or something. Only other exception would be with, like, an SO that had never seen it before or if I have kids to watch it with someday. It really feels like it'd cheapen the experience somehow, strange as it sounds.

Also, anyone who doesn't like Cap's ending hates love and happiness and all nice things in the world.

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I prefer Endgame slightly over Infinity War but mostly because it has more substance. Honestly the Avengers movies (aside from Age of Ultron), to me, feel like movies that accomplish what they set out to do and not much more.

I don't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but I first saw Iron Man 1 and The First Avenger after seeing Endgame and those two movies felt more poignant knowing what was in store for Iron Man and Cap. To be fair I had a general idea of how the MCU had progressed, so it wasn't TOO jarring to head from Avengers 1 to Ragnarok and then from there to Infinity War.

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1.
2.
3. Captain America: Civil War
4. Spider-Man: Homecoming
5. Black Panther
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Spider-Man: Far From Home
8. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
9. Doctor Strange
10. Captain Marvel
11. Marvel's The Avengers
12.
13. Ant-Man And The Wasp
14. Thor: Ragnarok
15. Ant-Man
16. Avengers: Age of Ultron
17. Captain America: The First Avenger
18. Thor
19. Iron Man
20. Thor: The Dark World
21. Iron Man 2
22. Iron Man 3
23. The Incredible Hulk

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Yeah despite ranking it low Endgame was a ton of fun to see in theaters. We had a group of seven or so people and played a prediction game prior to it.

My sister predicted that Tony would refer to Thor as Lebowski at some point during the movie. And we saw it opening night so we had no clue about Fat Thor going in. Then when it happened we all collectively lost our shit.

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also I will point out my outlier ranking is what it is and there still remains a very strong chance my #1 is #1.

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My favourite subtle Endgame call-back is to the argument Tony and Cap had in The Avengers. Cap says Tony is never the one to make the sacrifice play, and Tony says everything special about Cap came from a bottle. Endgame's climax goes on to prove both of them wrong.

I'll guess Winter Soldier for third, but it could reasonably be any of them.

Inviso posted...

Spoiler for Number 3: All three remaining films have at least one ranking outside the top ten, but unlike the other two, third place only had ONE such ranking (which, I might add, I was very disappointed by, since aside from watching the Spider-Man movies ping pong back and forth, the saga of this movie always being top ten-worthy was one of the funnest parts of compiling the list).

I'll break my silence here to say that, since I ranked two of the remaining three movies outside my top ten, and since my list was among the first ten or so submitted, this pretty much has to be the other one, i.e. Guardians of the Galaxy.

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i know i'm late on this but the carpet rollout gag in GotG2 was good. one of the few jokes in the movie that really worked imo.

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If I recall from the first topic, aren't 2nd and 3rd place actually tied? I think the rule said that the tie is broken by removing highest and lowest rankings?

So essentially this 3rd place movie has only 1 ranking outside the top 10, which is going to be removed because of the tie, and it still isn't enough to come out ahead!?

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MetalmindStats posted...

I'll break my silence here to say that, since I ranked two of the remaining three movies outside my top ten, and since my list was among the first ten or so submitted, this pretty much has to be the other one, i.e. Guardians of the Galaxy.

I dont think that logic fits

Think the tiebreaker is more 1s right, so this is probably Infinity War then


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TomNook posted...

If I recall from the first topic, aren't 2nd and 3rd place actually tied? I think the rule said that the tie is broken by removing highest and lowest rankings?

So essentially this 3rd place movie has only 1 ranking outside the top 10, which is going to be removed because of the tie, and it still isn't enough to come out ahead!?

I'm guessing that one person just absolutely despises it? Every movie left has a 1st place ranking, so that's probably it.

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Meh I shoulda known Endgame would be what makes me lose 2nd place or whatever. I liked it, but definitely thought it was upper mid tier for a marvel film. Some fun scenes, some heartwarming scenes (thor talking to his mom mostly), but overall was a bit lacking at times idk.

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LiquidOshawott posted...

I dont think that logic fits

Think the tiebreaker is more 1s right, so this is probably Infinity War then

I think tiebreaker was removing highest and lowest ranking.

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Okay, as promised here comes the sap:

I went to a midnight screening of Avengers Endgame (double billed with Infinity War) and it was genuinely unlike anything Ive ever been a part if. Over here loud audience reactions are pretty rare, and that held true through the Infinity War screening, laughs aside. Then we get to Endgame and it was something between a concert and a religious experience. There were cheers and applause at all the right moments, and there was just this incredible sense of community as we all reacted to this story wed been going through together. It was easily the best cinema-going experience Ive ever had.

And that really brings into focus for me what has been lost to film as a result of the pandemic. Cinemas are an incredibly vital part of the arts world, they change how we experience film. Its not just the cinemas themselves either - that experience of being so close to people in a collective event is so precious, and this was the ultimate version of that.

Of course, it helps that the film is also a tremendous artistic achievement. Not only does it tie it all together and offer a satisfying conclusion, it is also a great, twisty action film with some fantastic character work. It is better than Infinity War without a doubt, and while some of my reasons for saying that are better discussed when Infinity War comes up, a big reason is the depth of the character work on display here - it would have been so easy to just have this be about smashy crashy superhero action, but the biggest film ever made dedicates a solid hour just to discussing how the characters are feeling.

Endgame rules, and the time travel is fully internally consistent, even that one thing.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

and the time travel is fully internally consistent, even that one thing.

eh

i like endgame a lot but i don't think this is a claim you can back up >_>

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Lightning Strikes posted...

and the time travel is fully internally consistent, even that one thing.

Im sorry, but no.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

and the time travel is fully internally consistent, even that one thing.

*tidus laugh*

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Okay, lets get into it.

Travelling back in time creates a parallel timeline. At the end Cap travels back, stays in the other timeline with Peggy presumably until she dies, then as an old man uses the second batch of Pym particles to travel back to his original timeline, which is why hes old at the end. This is fine. Overly convenient? Definitely. It is, however, internally consistent.

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Hot take: Movie theaters can stay dead. I'll take being able to watch movies on my TV and immediately be able to rewatch them over again any day. Plus we live in such a connected world its not like we cant see everyones reactions.

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Endgame rules, and the time travel is fully internally consistent, even that one thing.

Nah Loki escaping isn't and Thanos' army dying in the future isn't either.

The only way they can work is through retcons. For Loki to work the Avengers need to capture him at the end of his Disney+ series

I think Thanos' army only works if Tony snapped them back into 2014. But Nebula is dead and I think Gamora is still in the present so that doesn't really work either tbh.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Nah Loki escaping isn't and Thanos' army dying in the future isn't either.

The only way they can work is through retcons. For Loki to work the Avengers need to capture him at the end of his Disney+ series

I think Thanos' army only works if Tony snapped them back into 2014. But Nebula is dead and I think Gamora is still in the present so that doesn't really work either tbh.

This is the problem most people who think there are timeline problems have - not understanding how the time travel worked in End Game

It uses the branching timelines model. Any time they go to the past, they aren't going to *their* past. They are going to an alternate timeline/universe and taking things.

The intent was to borrow the Infinity Gems from an alternate timeline and return them to the exact point that they were borrowed from, in effect not actually creating any alternate timelines since everything there would play out exactly the same.

However, since things went sideways, they did permanently change the confluence of events for alternate timelines. Nebula killed the version of herself from the alternate timeline - this didn't kill her past self and affect her own history, it just killed the Nebula of that timeline. That timeline will no longer have a Nebula. Thanos and all his goons from that timeline are also now dead, so they will not arrive on Earth in the future and do the snap. so... good news for that timeline. Since the Gamora from that timeline is now stuck in the prime timeline, the Guardians of that timeline will not have a Gamora, so possibly bad news for that time timeline.

Loki escaped - but that doesn't change the history of the current timeline's Loki. There's just now a timeline where Loki escaped. The new Loki show looks like it's going to be about this Loki. This means he will have a very different personality from where he ended up in Infinity War, as he was at the height of his madness at that point and his choices to help Thor and consider himself an Odinson have not happened yet.

This is why undoing the snap to begin with was never an option. There is no time travelling back to the current timelines history and changing events happening. Everything that happened has already happened and cannot be changed.

It's theoretically possible that if things had gone smoothly and they had managed to return the gems with no influence on the alternate universe, then the same thing could had happened to the prime tlmeline with *their* gems being borrowed by a different timeline and then returned with no impact, but since we know there was impact, that's not the case. There was no time interference in the current timelines history.

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CoolCly posted...

This is why undoing the snap to begin with was never an option. There is no time travelling back to the current timelines history and changing events happening. Everything that happened has already happened and cannot be changed.

Undoing the snap was an option. Tony didnt want that because it would erase 5 years of his life.

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Winter Soldier would have been my predicted winner for this thing pre-reveals.

I'm significantly less sure on that with the way things have dropped so far.

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CoolCly posted...

This is the problem most people who think there are timeline problems have - not understanding how the time travel worked in End Game

It uses the branching timelines model. Any time they go to the past, they aren't going to *their* past. They are going to an alternate timeline/universe and taking things.

The intent was to borrow the Infinity Gems from an alternate timeline and return them to the exact point that they were borrowed from, in effect not actually creating any alternate timelines since everything there would play out exactly the same.

However, since things went sideways, they did permanently change the confluence of events for alternate timelines. Nebula killed the version of herself from the alternate timeline - this didn't kill her past self and affect her own history, it just killed the Nebula of that timeline. That timeline will no longer have a Nebula. Thanos and all his goons from that timeline are also now dead, so they will not arrive on Earth in the future and do the snap. so... good news for that timeline. Since the Gamora from that timeline is now stuck in the prime timeline, the Guardians of that timeline will not have a Gamora, so possibly bad news for that time timeline.

Loki escaped - but that doesn't change the history of the current timeline's Loki. There's just now a timeline where Loki escaped. The new Loki show looks like it's going to be about this Loki. This means he will have a very different personality from where he ended up in Infinity War, as he was at the height of his madness at that point and his choices to help Thor and consider himself an Odinson have not happened yet.

This is why undoing the snap to begin with was never an option. There is no time travelling back to the current timelines history and changing events happening. Everything that happened has already happened and cannot be changed.

It's theoretically possible that if things had gone smoothly and they had managed to return the gems with no influence on the alternate universe, then the same thing could had happened to the prime tlmeline with *their* gems being borrowed by a different timeline and then returned with no impact, but since we know there was impact, that's not the case. There was no time interference in the current timelines history.

You're right, but that still breaks the time travel rules. They explicitly show the Mobius Strip as well explain that anything they do in the past has technically already been done. That's how the Cap explanation makes sense. He was technically always with Peggy as everything else was going on.

I think the only time they mention alternate timelines is with the Ancient One. At the end of the movie though they act as if nothing is wrong even though they clearly created alternate timelines. However I did mention in my write up that if they make their screw ups a future plotline and actually address the alternate timelines then cool, but as it stands there are currently issues with their 'time travel'

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Cap did not exist in our current timeline with Peggy - she married someone else and lived her life running SHIELD. This is established canon before Endgame and this didn't change. Cap lived his life with her in an alternate timeline and returned back somehow with a different method than the Hulk's gear.

It's explained several times in the movie that the point of the time travel here is not to change how events happened, that they can't be changed like that. It's also been Word of God'd that the movie uses the branching timelines model, but that's really not necessary because it's all there in the script.

red13n posted...

Undoing the snap was an option. Tony didnt want that because it would erase 5 years of his life.

No, this is a character thing. It's Tony expressing his boundaries and terms for getting involved. There could be other methods and who knows what will happen when someone has the gauntlet - he's making it clear what this mission is and is not trying to do, or else he's not getting involved. It's not a statement about what the Pym Particle time travel can do.


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There has never once been a time travel movie where everyone goes "Yeah, this checks out".

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I live in fear of the possibility that I'm the sole non-top-10 ranker of the next movie.

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CoolCly posted...

Cap did not exist in our current timeline with Peggy - she married someone else and lived her life running SHIELD. This is established canon before Endgame and this didn't change. Cap lived his life with her in an alternate timeline and returned back somehow with a different method than the Hulk's gear.

I always took it as 'the guy Peggy married' was just Cap all along. They just couldn't say it was Cap, I think that's much easier to explain than Cap went to an alternate timeline got old then found a way to come back.

CoolCly posted...

It's explained several times in the movie that the point of the time travel here is not to change how events happened, that they can't be changed like that. It's also been Word of God'd that the movie uses the branching timelines model, but that's really not necessary because it's all there in the script.

But that's my issue. When Tony discovers how to time travel they use the Mobius Strip a one timeline model, but then outside the movie they say oh well it's actually alternate timelines.

And yeah not all time travel movies make perfect sense, because it's not possible. I've just noticed a lot of people acting like this is the perfect time travel movie and acts like it's super realistic when it very obviously isn't.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

I think that's much easier to explain than Cap went to an alternate timeline got old then found a way to come back.

This is the explanation they have gone with.

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when i saw Endgame, I instantly figured out it had alternate timelines. I don't get why so many people have trouble with this

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As I understood it, its basically the same time travel rules of Dragon Ball Z.

Hbthebattle posted...

when i saw Endgame, I instantly figured out it had alternate timelines. I don't get why so many people have trouble with this

Because the whole scene with the Ancient One and Banner is all about how alternate timelines are bad and should be avoided. And she literally refuses to help him until he explains his plan for preventing them. But then they end up creating multiple alternate timelines anyway and completely punt on addressing it at all.

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Hbthebattle posted...

when i saw Endgame, I instantly figured out it had alternate timelines. I don't get why so many people have trouble with this

The issue isn't that we don't understand it. The issue is that we do, it's just that the characters explain it one way, when what is actually happening is completely different. Thus it being inconsistent.

red13n posted...

This is the explanation they have gone with.

This from an admittedly quick search, but according to this article. The directors support the alternate timeline Cap whereas the writers support the idea that he was in the main timeline all along.

https://www.looper.com/161504/we-now-know-how-old-man-cap-got-back-to-the-main-timeline/

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redrocket posted...

But then they and up creating multiple alternate timelines anyway and completely punt on addressing it at all

They don't address it cause it's outside the scope of the movie to resolve every splinter timeline. Dormammu showing up because they screwed with time too much was how I figured he might get in there but alas the plot wasn't ambitious enough for that.

But anyway imo in terms of internal consistency this is okay. In fact the only real positive I have for the movie is I like their explanation for time travel and how they implemented it worked given the rules they set

I can't imagine how low I'd rank the movie if I thought there were a ton of plot holes jeez

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redrocket posted...

Because the whole scene with the Ancient One and Banner is all about how alternate timelines are bad and should be avoided. And she literally refuses to help him until he explains his plan for preventing them. But then they end up creating multiple alternate timelines anyway and completely punt on addressing it at all.

It's because they failed at their main mission... And it is out of greed. Their inability to accept what happened motivated them to do something that couldn't turn out right no matter their intentions.

Their intentions were to do so being unseen and not affect anything by taking and returning items to their same points without anynnotice, which I am sure they all knew on the surface was impossible but turned an eye to it because of their again greed to change what happened.

The entire movie is showing how their plan doesn't work at all. Almost every single person involved in the jumps in some way makes a mistake that causes issues. In theory, the Hulk was correct, but in actuality it was never an obtainable result.

The movie explains what it supposed to happen. Unfortunately, the result is alternate timelines being created. It may be nice that Captain America finally got Peggy. But, it was a greedy choice that will have consequences as well and that created another timeline too. Every interaction in the past created a new timeline.

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BetrayedTangy posted...

The issue isn't that we don't understand it. The issue is that we do, it's just that the characters explain it one way, when what is actually happening is completely different. Thus it being inconsistent.

I don't think this is necessarily inconsistent. They intended for it to go one way. And the most important part is not removing the stones from the universe(They are removed and then put back in exactly the same moment still).

But obviously the plan goes wrong and they have pretty harsh consequences for certain universes.

It is still possible we may see these consequences play out in other media.

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Lets not forget that The Ancient Ones conversation with Bruce isnt just about avoiding alternate timelines, its about avoiding a timeline that descends into chaos because the stone was removed. We know there is an alternate timeline now because of Thanos, Loki, and Cap, but they still achieved their main goal by returning the stones.

But also... Bruce explicitly says that its not their world and things they change dont affect their timeline. Even if they had left things exactly the same, it would still be another timeline, just one that was exactly the same as the main one other than the arrival of the Avengers and the temporary removal of the stones. This is all explained in the movie.

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1. ???
2. ???
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
4. Black Panther
5. Thor: Ragnarok
6. ???
7. Avengers: Endgame
8. Iron Man
9. Doctor Strange
10. Spider-Man: Homecoming
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
12. Spider-Man: Far From Home
13. Marvels The Avengers
14. Ant-Man
15. Captain America: The First Avenger
16. Captain America: Civil War
17. Ant-Man and the Wasp
18. Iron Man 2
19. Thor
20. Captain Marvel
21. Iron Man 3
22. The Incredible Hulk
23. Thor: The Dark World

As the last person to submit a list I take full responsibility for the coming tie.

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The time travel isnt even worth arguing about because the guys who worked on the movie cant even agree on how it works

I cannot imagine anything more dull than arguing about time travel logic

The way a story decides to use time travel is more important than the logistics of how it works

Paratroopa1 posted...

I cannot imagine anything more dull than arguing about time travel logic

The way a story decides to use time travel is more important than the logistics of how it works

I find it amusing. I never even though about the fact that past Thanos sending his whole army forward in time completely screws up the whole multiple timelines theory. Though I suppose that would just be a new split timeline, wouldn't it?

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To me, contrivances like that are part of the appeal of a movie like Endgame. But I always just saw the Avengers movies as mostly fanservice and on that level they (Age of Ultron aside) fulfilled that.

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Paratroopa1 posted...

I cannot imagine anything more dull than arguing about time travel logic

The way a story decides to use time travel is more important than the logistics of how it works

My objection isnt the way they used time travel - its that the climax of a 23 movie series is that "oh yeah we can just time travel to erase the consequences of our actions, of course."

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Eddv posted...

My objection isnt the way they used time travel - its that the climax of a 23 movie series is that "oh yeah we can just time travel to erase the consequences of our actions, of course."

Theoretically, they introduced the Time Stone as a thing back in Doctor Strange though, so they could've just gone the lazy route and found a way to use that to reverse everything. Once the Time Stone was introduced (and used by Thanos to erase the consequences of HIS actions in Infinity War), there really wasn't any reason not to go full bore with the time travel shenanigans.

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The MCU version of the time stone was never shown to be capable of more than a localized short-term time rewind

thats a very different kind of thing than back to the future level shit

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yeah the issue is more that they try to have it both ways, both time travel and alternate universes (and if it was alternate universes, the stones wouldn't necessarily be in the same place at the same time due to differences between universes). And glossing over any issues by saying putting back the stones afterward would keep new alternate universes from forming (instead of creating more alternate universes, so there would be a universe where they didn't take the stone, a universe after they took the stone, and a universe where they took the stone and put it back) and imply it would wave away anything they fucked up with time travel. (Not to mention that it definitely glosses over how "putting the stones back where they were before" would essentially be Cap giving the space/mind stones back to SHIELD/HYDRA and the soul stone to Red Skull. Though Mar-Vell would get the space stone for a while for her light speed engine before they try to make weapons with it again)

On a related note, was there any explanation outside of the movie why they couldn't say, give the borrowed time stone to Strange for like 10 minutes and have him use time reverse on the empty infinity gauntlet they got when they killed Thanos to get their universe's infinity stones back (like Thanos did with the mind stone) before returning the stones instead of "oh there's going to be some sort of universe destroying threat in a few years that can only be stopped by infinity stones BUT SURELY WE CAN STOP IT WITHOUT THEM!".

Also it kind of bugged me rewatching it, not giving a reason why Carol couldn't use the nano gauntlet. Like it's not unreasonable to say he's the only one other than Thanos to be able to survive the backlash, but they could have done a little more setup like examining the after effects of Rocket helping to use the power stone or Jane being host to the reality stone or how Carol gained super powers by being exposed to the energy from the space stone first, comparing it to the level of energy observed when Thanos used it, and THEN saying "yeah Hulk is probably the only one of us able to use it without dying". (at least in the former two cases, the energy from the infinity stones almost killed them). Instead the only reason that Carol couldn't use it is because she wasn't present. Carol just fucked off somewhere else in the universe for most of the movie while everyone else did all the actual work, and only showed up at the last minute to get part of the credit for saving the day.

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Captain Marvel had to be gone most of the movie because shes seemingly powerful enough to 1v1 Thanos? I think its the same reason Hulk was benched a ton in the movies. Too strong relative to what they were fighting and it wouldnt be exciting