First let me say that the Doctor has stated many times that paradoxes are bad. In classic Who, there is an episode, The Mawdryn Undead, where the Brigadier meets his past self. The Doctor tells him they must never actually meet and by all accounts, they must absolutely never touch. Well, they do and, thankfully the universe does not end, but a very large explosion does take place. In new Who, there is an episode, Father's Day, where Rose wants to see her dad on the day of his death. The Doctor hesitantly allows this, but of course, she saves his life. The event is put on lock down and the cleaners of time come in to destroy it. The only way to fix it is to allow her father to die, in effect setting time back to normal. These are just the two instances that I immediately recall. There are more.
In the Time Machine movie of 2002, the main character is Alexander Hartdegen. He builds his time machine to go back in time and save his fiance. In each instance, he has to watch her die a different way, but she must die. In the future, he asks the Morlock leader why he can't change the past. The Morlock gives him a very plain answer. If you could change the past, it would change the future. You would have no reason to build a time machine, therefore you never would have built one. You would never have gone back in time. Creating a paradox. You can't change the past without changing the future.
***Endgame Spoilers Ahead -- Turn Back Now If You Have Not Seen It -- You Have Been Warned***
*
*
*
*
*
*
*** Ready?***
*
*
*
Okay, hopefully you're still here because you've already seen the movie and are curious what others might think. I would like to think that from reading my opening that you believe I was not satisfied with the ending of Avengers: Endgame and you would be right.
Barring that, you're here because you have no desire to see the movie and just want to know what all the hype is about and get a general idea of plot to at least somewhat participate in the water cooler talk at work. That's fair. Here it is.
The Avengers: Endgame opens where Infinity War left off. Half the world's population has been clicked out of existence. Dr. Strange's proclamation hangs in your mind, "I've seen all possibilities and only one outcome is successful." Can this be it? The Avengers that are left are depressed, disorganized, and unable to fully move on. It is a slow beginning for an action movie, but if you care about the characters, you let it slide.
They are looking for Thanos, with a plan to get the stones from him to try and bring everyone back. Captian America, Black Widow, Rocket, Nebula, War Machine, Thor, and Banner are doing various things, but ultimately waiting. Thanos uses the stones again and they get a fix on his location. So they all get into Rocket's craft, and by way of Captain Marvel, get to the planet where Thanos is living in retirement. He tells them he used the stones to destroy the stones so no one could undo what he had done. In a rage, Thor kills him.
Thor falls into despair. He has let himself go to the point that he has a beer belly and dreadlocks. He basically has given up. Hawkeye lost his family and is now a vigilante, the Captain has begun a support group for people trying to move on, Tony and Pepper are married and have a daughter, living outside of the city trying to keep their family together. Suddenly, Antman returns from the quantum realm because a rat wanders over the controls in the van. He gets out of the storage facility that houses the van and after a scary moment of where and when am I, and where is everyone, he determines a way to get things back. He does find that while Hope and Hank are gone, his ex-wife and her husband are gone, his daughter is still here. They comfort each other and Antman seeks out the Avengers.
Once he has gained admission to the compound, he comes face to face with Black Widow and Captain America. All of these series of events are logical and while a bit slow moving, it is still somewhat satisfying. I like to think that I would also be quite morose if my family was in tatters because of a cataclysmic event that took half of them away. I feel for the characters and their motivations. They even manage to get a cameo of Stan Lee in there.
Antman's idea involves time travel. He states that time in the quantum realm behaves differently. That while for them it has been five years, for him it's been five hours. He thinks that if they can somehow harness the quantum realm and leave from a specified point, they could go back to before Thanos had the stones and stop everything before it happened. He's an engineer though, not a physicist. They go to Stark. He doesn't even want to try. He doesn't want to risk losing his new family in the process. He is intrigued by the idea of changing things, but he won't let himself work it out. Upset, but not ready to give up, they go see Banner. He has embraced the Hulk. He is now a large, green, bespectacled scientist. He tells them he really isn't the right scientist for the job, but he will try to help.
They build a machine, utilizing the quantum tunnel from the van. Banner and Captain America get to a point where they are ready to run a trial on the machine and send Antman back in time. Through some almost hilarious snafus, they bring him back as a kid, an old man, and even a baby before they get the right Antman back. That's when Stark shows up.
He was curious about the concept and worked on it after they left. He figured it out even, and talked it over with Pepper, finally deciding that he had to help no matter the risk. They get it built and are ready to go. They decided that they must not go back to the war and try to prevent Thanos from clicking his fingers, or even to the point of Thanos's birth and kill him as an infant. Instead, they have to go back before the war, before Thanos has found the stones and, after collecting them, take them back to the future to undo what Thanos has done. the plan is to take the stones back to the exact point and place they were taken from so as not to change the course of history as they know it.
Okay, this is where it falls out of logic. The Marvel Universe is no longer in a world where physics is a real thing and time travel has no consequences. This is where my suspension of disbelief becomes a wide eyed gasp of incredulity. How could they even think that would work? If they succeeded perfectly, just as they planned, it would maybe work, but of course nothing goes exactly the way you planned. They did decide to only bring back everyone lost in the Event, the snap of Thanos's fingers, and nothing to alter the five years that followed. Stark doesn't want to lose his daughter. By bringing everyone back in that moment, it would be a world of reunions. The population would, in an instant, be doubled. There would be a lot of cleanup from the destruction that occurred when half the population disappeared. But okay, my suspension of disbelief is only slightly riled at this point.
It only takes a scene change to throw it out. Wide eyed incredulity is the state in which I watch the film from this point on. They prepare, and after making the decision of who will go where, they leave. And by doing what happens next, they completely alter the time line.
Stark, Captain America, Antman and Hulk go back to the point of Loki's invasion of Chitauri, when he is caught, to get the tesseract, the mind stone and the time stone. Hulk goes to get the time stone and is actually the least of the problem. The Grand Sorceress sees all and she tries to explain that the timeline will branch off if even one stone is removed. He shows her that if it is then put back it will be like it never left. She still won't give it to him, until he wonders why Dr. Strange would have given it away. She is then willing to part with it. Easy, done, and Dr. Strange's past timeline is not affected.
Stark, Antman, and Captain America, however, make a mess of the original Avengers story line. Loki escapes with the tesseract. Not the worst of things, though he wouldn't be in prison when Thor and Rocket go to Asgard. No, the worst of it is when Captain America meets himself while carrying the staff with the mind stone in it. It does not matter that the younger Captain believes the Captain of our movie to be Loki in disguise. Remember the situation where the Brigadier meets his younger self? Only, no explosions happen when they touch, they simply fight and are equally matched. Our Captain America wins, of course, because he has to, but this would change his timeline at the very least. He should remember this happening even before it actually happens, because it did. But it didn't. Anyway, because they lose the tesseract, they have to regroup. Banner and Antman go back, Captain and Stark go on. There isn't a whole lot that would kill the timeline when they go back to get the tesseract from an earlier timeline, but I think this is where Captain gets the idea that he might like to stay. Needless to say, they get the tesseract out of a locked vault that Stark cuts open and go back.
Thor and Rocket go to Asgard with the intention of retrieving the ether from Jane and thereby retrieving the reality stone. This of course would change the the course of the story in Thor: the Dark World. Because it leaves one huge hanging question: How are they going to put it back in Jane when they finish? Also, Loki shouldn't be in prison when they arrive as he has escaped Earth with the tesseract in hand.
Perhaps the worst offender is when War Machine and Nebula go to retrieve the power stone. They get it, but then Nebula's mechanical eye syncs with the Nebula of that time and Thanos is able to see the future. War Machine gets the stone away, but Nebula is disabled and caught by Thanos. On his ship, she encounters her younger self. Again, no explosions when they touch. Instead, past Nebula, with major contempt for her future self, disguises herself to look like her future self. Confused yet? She goes back to the future to allow Thanos to bring his ship and his army through to the future. Heck, the Avengers have the stones and so Thanos doesn't need to go looking for them.
In the meantime, Gamora of the past approaches the Nebula of the future and they make a pact to try and stop Thanos. They encounter past Nebula and try to convince her to change, that she has changed, that she can change, but the past Nebula refuses to let her father down, so yes. Future Nebula kills past Nebula. Let me say that again. FUTURE NEBULA KILLS PAST NEBULA. And then doesn't disappear. If past Nebula is dead, future Nebula would not be there, yet, there she is.
Leaving that aside for a moment, let's turn to the fact that past Thanos is now in the future and ready to take the stones from the Avengers. And, yes, the Avengers have made a gauntlet and Hulk used it, but they don't know if it's worked yet. Before they really get to explore that concept, Thanos destroys the compound. Now an epic battle ensues. Really, it is beautifully choreographed, emotionally charged, wonderful to watch, but in the end, horribly disappointing. They kill Thanos. In fact, Stark gets the stones and uses them to click away Thanos and his entire army, ship and followers. THANOS FADES TO DUST. Let me say that again. PAST THANOS DIES IN THE FUTURE, BLOWING AWAY TO DUST. So he would never have gotten the stones in the first place.
The universe disappears in a puff of logic and is replaced with everything as it was before Infinity War.
Just kidding. It doesn't. Everyone is relieved that it's over and everyone clicked away is back and all the bad guys are now clicked away. Biggest spoiler here, if you don't want to know, skip to the next paragraph and don't read up. In a very touching scene, Tony Stark dies. But of course he would. He was a mortal who used the infinity stones. Now when your eyes wander up, stop here and you won't see the spoiler.
I realize that Marvel is explaining this all in a multi-verse sort of way, but that is royal cop out. It says to everyone watching that they don't care about physics and logic and neither should we. It's an insult. It's a writer's way out of a situation they are too lazy to really explain.
That would be bad enough, but after the world gets back to normal, like it really could, they gather again to return the stones to where and when they got them. Captain America takes on this task himself, but then after leaving, never returns. At least not via time travel. He makes it to the bench on the property, but now he's old. He decided to stay in the past with his love, Margaret. Because that wouldn't change anything. (Yes, that's sarcasm.)
Let's dissect what we don't see. Captain America could give back the time stone, certainly, with no problem. Even the tesseract, the space stone, he could conceivably get back to the safe, though how he would reconstruct the cube it was in and repair the damage done to the cut safe is questionable. The mind stone would be difficult as they broke it out of Loki's scepter. He would have to somehow reconstruct the scepter without encountering himself at all and get the scepter to Hydra, or risk changing the future. Remember, there are potentially three Captain Americas there. The reality stone would be next to impossible to replace. Rocket had guards chasing him as he had stabbed Jane for the ether with out any sort of preamble. First, I can't imagine Jane would let him put it back. Getting free of the ether is a major premise of Thor The Dark World. The other being to keep the ether from the dark elves. So, my question is simply how did he get the reality stone back where and when it belonged without changing the events of The Dark World further. Remember, Loki escaped and was never imprisoned, so he wouldn't be there to help Thor get off Asgard and take revenge on the dark elves either. Moving on. When he went to return the power stone, he might encounter Quill, just waking from being knocked out so that War Machine and Nebula could take it. But for sure he would encounter Nebula, on the ground, disabled by the connection through her eye. I want to see this movie. The spin off that follows Captain America as he puts the stones back. I can't see him leaving her there to be captured. And if he waited for her to be captured before putting it back, he would encounter Quill. This does affect the story line of Guardians of the Galaxy. Lastly, the soul stone. I'm not concerned about the Red Skull. Cap is putting it back, not getting it. But how does he put it back? Does he drop it off the cliff? Also, if he's giving it back, would he be able to negotiate for the soul that had been given to get it? That's just a musing on my part. However, if he put it back, but Thanos was dead and could no longer go stone hunting, Gamora would be alive. But, then, past Gamora stayed in the future after Thanos died, so even if she were never sacrificed, there wouldn't be two of them. Once the stones were returned, and by the ending of the movie, we are supposed to believe he was successful, Captain went back to spend the rest of his life with Peggy. That would negate Captain America Winter Soldier and Civil War, mainly because he wouldn't be there to do it. Lastly, I simply wonder how Captain America actually grew old. In one of the films he remarks that the state of his cellular regeneration won't let him get drunk. Wouldn't that serve to keep him young as well? Maybe not.
But don't let me end on the negative. Let me tell you what I liked about Endgame.
I really enjoyed that we got to watch Tony Stark grow. His character went from being an entitled womanizer to a man who cares about nothing except the safety of his family. He is a fun character to watch and I cared very deeply about him. I liked watching Captain America hold on to the last threads of what he considered normal and the closest we got to seeing him break was when he said "We have to win, because I don't know what I'd do if we didn't." I liked Thor. In true form, he fell into despair and let himself go. I don't understand why, when they won, he didn't clean up. At least comb your hair, god of thunder. But he came to a good conclusion and I look forward to seeing him in the next Guardians of the Galaxy.
The movie, while it had a slow start, was beautiful to watch. The cinematography was spot on. Seriously, though, the first hour was a bit long to build the characters up to where they needed to be for the final two hours. I love that we see Hawkeye in his home. As a supporting character, he still has a story and we got more than a glimpse of it in Endgame. I wish we saw more of a few people. I want to know Falcon's story, and Scarlet Witch's story. I want to know if Vision is able to come back. After all, he was powered by the mind stone, and now that Thanos never went stone hunting, there is no reason the stone would have been ripped from his head in the first place.
I read that Disney's new streaming service will have Loki's story as well as the Scarlet Witch's story and Falcon's story, as well as Bucky's story. Too bad I don't have the service.
I realize I'm not the first to bring up the paradoxes in this movie, or even the entire Marvel Universe now, but I hope you at least found this interesting. Perhaps, without having read any of the other theories I touched on something already explained. Perhaps I had a new way of looking at it. Either way. I liked Avengers Endgame, but was entirely frustrated by the ending and the movie's complete disregard for physics and logic and the resulting paradoxes. I suppose they summed it up when Stark says, "You mess around with time, it tends to mess back."
To finish, I'll just leave this image of Loki. I like looking at him. Even if he has spun off into an alternate timeline. 😍
Stark, Captain America, Antman and Hulk go back to the point of Loki's invasion of Chitauri, when he is caught, to get the tesseract, the mind stone and the time stone. Hulk goes to get the time stone and is actually the least of the problem. The Grand Sorceress sees all and she tries to explain that the timeline will branch off if even one stone is removed. He shows her that if it is then put back it will be like it never left. She still won't give it to him, until he wonders why Dr. Strange would have given it away. She is then willing to part with it. Easy, done, and Dr. Strange's past timeline is not affected.
Stark, Antman, and Captain America, however, make a mess of the original Avengers story line. Loki escapes with the tesseract. Not the worst of things, though he wouldn't be in prison when Thor and Rocket go to Asgard. No, the worst of it is when Captain America meets himself while carrying the staff with the mind stone in it. It does not matter that the younger Captain believes the Captain of our movie to be Loki in disguise. Remember the situation where the Brigadier meets his younger self? Only, no explosions happen when they touch, they simply fight and are equally matched. Our Captain America wins, of course, because he has to, but this would change his timeline at the very least. He should remember this happening even before it actually happens, because it did. But it didn't. Anyway, because they lose the tesseract, they have to regroup. Banner and Antman go back, Captain and Stark go on. There isn't a whole lot that would kill the timeline when they go back to get the tesseract from an earlier timeline, but I think this is where Captain gets the idea that he might like to stay. Needless to say, they get the tesseract out of a locked vault that Stark cuts open and go back.
Thor and Rocket go to Asgard with the intention of retrieving the ether from Jane and thereby retrieving the reality stone. This of course would change the the course of the story in Thor: the Dark World. Because it leaves one huge hanging question: How are they going to put it back in Jane when they finish? Also, Loki shouldn't be in prison when they arrive as he has escaped Earth with the tesseract in hand.
Perhaps the worst offender is when War Machine and Nebula go to retrieve the power stone. They get it, but then Nebula's mechanical eye syncs with the Nebula of that time and Thanos is able to see the future. War Machine gets the stone away, but Nebula is disabled and caught by Thanos. On his ship, she encounters her younger self. Again, no explosions when they touch. Instead, past Nebula, with major contempt for her future self, disguises herself to look like her future self. Confused yet? She goes back to the future to allow Thanos to bring his ship and his army through to the future. Heck, the Avengers have the stones and so Thanos doesn't need to go looking for them.
In the meantime, Gamora of the past approaches the Nebula of the future and they make a pact to try and stop Thanos. They encounter past Nebula and try to convince her to change, that she has changed, that she can change, but the past Nebula refuses to let her father down, so yes. Future Nebula kills past Nebula. Let me say that again. FUTURE NEBULA KILLS PAST NEBULA. And then doesn't disappear. If past Nebula is dead, future Nebula would not be there, yet, there she is.
Leaving that aside for a moment, let's turn to the fact that past Thanos is now in the future and ready to take the stones from the Avengers. And, yes, the Avengers have made a gauntlet and Hulk used it, but they don't know if it's worked yet. Before they really get to explore that concept, Thanos destroys the compound. Now an epic battle ensues. Really, it is beautifully choreographed, emotionally charged, wonderful to watch, but in the end, horribly disappointing. They kill Thanos. In fact, Stark gets the stones and uses them to click away Thanos and his entire army, ship and followers. THANOS FADES TO DUST. Let me say that again. PAST THANOS DIES IN THE FUTURE, BLOWING AWAY TO DUST. So he would never have gotten the stones in the first place.
The universe disappears in a puff of logic and is replaced with everything as it was before Infinity War.
Just kidding. It doesn't. Everyone is relieved that it's over and everyone clicked away is back and all the bad guys are now clicked away. Biggest spoiler here, if you don't want to know, skip to the next paragraph and don't read up. In a very touching scene, Tony Stark dies. But of course he would. He was a mortal who used the infinity stones. Now when your eyes wander up, stop here and you won't see the spoiler.
I realize that Marvel is explaining this all in a multi-verse sort of way, but that is royal cop out. It says to everyone watching that they don't care about physics and logic and neither should we. It's an insult. It's a writer's way out of a situation they are too lazy to really explain.
That would be bad enough, but after the world gets back to normal, like it really could, they gather again to return the stones to where and when they got them. Captain America takes on this task himself, but then after leaving, never returns. At least not via time travel. He makes it to the bench on the property, but now he's old. He decided to stay in the past with his love, Margaret. Because that wouldn't change anything. (Yes, that's sarcasm.)
Let's dissect what we don't see. Captain America could give back the time stone, certainly, with no problem. Even the tesseract, the space stone, he could conceivably get back to the safe, though how he would reconstruct the cube it was in and repair the damage done to the cut safe is questionable. The mind stone would be difficult as they broke it out of Loki's scepter. He would have to somehow reconstruct the scepter without encountering himself at all and get the scepter to Hydra, or risk changing the future. Remember, there are potentially three Captain Americas there. The reality stone would be next to impossible to replace. Rocket had guards chasing him as he had stabbed Jane for the ether with out any sort of preamble. First, I can't imagine Jane would let him put it back. Getting free of the ether is a major premise of Thor The Dark World. The other being to keep the ether from the dark elves. So, my question is simply how did he get the reality stone back where and when it belonged without changing the events of The Dark World further. Remember, Loki escaped and was never imprisoned, so he wouldn't be there to help Thor get off Asgard and take revenge on the dark elves either. Moving on. When he went to return the power stone, he might encounter Quill, just waking from being knocked out so that War Machine and Nebula could take it. But for sure he would encounter Nebula, on the ground, disabled by the connection through her eye. I want to see this movie. The spin off that follows Captain America as he puts the stones back. I can't see him leaving her there to be captured. And if he waited for her to be captured before putting it back, he would encounter Quill. This does affect the story line of Guardians of the Galaxy. Lastly, the soul stone. I'm not concerned about the Red Skull. Cap is putting it back, not getting it. But how does he put it back? Does he drop it off the cliff? Also, if he's giving it back, would he be able to negotiate for the soul that had been given to get it? That's just a musing on my part. However, if he put it back, but Thanos was dead and could no longer go stone hunting, Gamora would be alive. But, then, past Gamora stayed in the future after Thanos died, so even if she were never sacrificed, there wouldn't be two of them. Once the stones were returned, and by the ending of the movie, we are supposed to believe he was successful, Captain went back to spend the rest of his life with Peggy. That would negate Captain America Winter Soldier and Civil War, mainly because he wouldn't be there to do it. Lastly, I simply wonder how Captain America actually grew old. In one of the films he remarks that the state of his cellular regeneration won't let him get drunk. Wouldn't that serve to keep him young as well? Maybe not.
But don't let me end on the negative. Let me tell you what I liked about Endgame.
I really enjoyed that we got to watch Tony Stark grow. His character went from being an entitled womanizer to a man who cares about nothing except the safety of his family. He is a fun character to watch and I cared very deeply about him. I liked watching Captain America hold on to the last threads of what he considered normal and the closest we got to seeing him break was when he said "We have to win, because I don't know what I'd do if we didn't." I liked Thor. In true form, he fell into despair and let himself go. I don't understand why, when they won, he didn't clean up. At least comb your hair, god of thunder. But he came to a good conclusion and I look forward to seeing him in the next Guardians of the Galaxy.
The movie, while it had a slow start, was beautiful to watch. The cinematography was spot on. Seriously, though, the first hour was a bit long to build the characters up to where they needed to be for the final two hours. I love that we see Hawkeye in his home. As a supporting character, he still has a story and we got more than a glimpse of it in Endgame. I wish we saw more of a few people. I want to know Falcon's story, and Scarlet Witch's story. I want to know if Vision is able to come back. After all, he was powered by the mind stone, and now that Thanos never went stone hunting, there is no reason the stone would have been ripped from his head in the first place.
I read that Disney's new streaming service will have Loki's story as well as the Scarlet Witch's story and Falcon's story, as well as Bucky's story. Too bad I don't have the service.
I realize I'm not the first to bring up the paradoxes in this movie, or even the entire Marvel Universe now, but I hope you at least found this interesting. Perhaps, without having read any of the other theories I touched on something already explained. Perhaps I had a new way of looking at it. Either way. I liked Avengers Endgame, but was entirely frustrated by the ending and the movie's complete disregard for physics and logic and the resulting paradoxes. I suppose they summed it up when Stark says, "You mess around with time, it tends to mess back."
To finish, I'll just leave this image of Loki. I like looking at him. Even if he has spun off into an alternate timeline. 😍
