January Meme: Endgame How?

[selenak]

musesfool wanted to know: Keeping everything the same up through Infinity War, how would you have written Endgame?



Well, first of all, I'm not the ideal person to ask, because by and large, I was okay with Endgame. Doesn't mean I loved every minute or character turn, but practically the only plot bit that stuck in my throat was Steve returning to Peggy in the 1940s, because I loved Agent Carter, and one of the aspects I most treasured about it was Peggy having a "grief, but moving on" arc. I love stories where without denying the powerful emotion of the past the character manages to heal, move on, form new meaningful relationships. All of which Peggy did. There's also the basic problem of any story where a character with full knowledge of ensueing disasters - not just for the world at large, but for his nearest and dearest in particular - goes back in the past and doesn't change this, but honestly, the negation of Peggy's moving-on-story bothered me more.

Other controversial storyelements of Endgame, like the five years between the Snappening and the return of the blipped not being reversed, I actually approve of. I was pleasantly surprised, because I expected everything to go back to the point of the snappening, as opposed to the MCU truly having to deal with the intervening years and half the population disappearing, then returning. If you kill off half the universe, I much prefer there to be actual consequences, not a return to business as usual. However, let's assume I'd have to write Endgame without any knowledge of what the canonical writers would do. I think:

- Tony definitely would have died as well; it really has been building up for a good long while

- after "Infinity War", I had read a great fanfiction about his and Nebula's road space trip (I much liked the canon version as well, and only regretted there wasn't more interaction between them later), so there would have been screen time for them en route back to Earth

- no "Professor Hulk"; Bruce and the Hulk have come to an accomodation another way, and also, Bruce, Tony and Shuri together develop whichever MacGuffin allows Our Heroes to accumulate the Infinity Stones

- I wouldn't have killed off Natasha, because she's one of my favourite characters (btw: I liked both the Black Widow solo movie, which we got too late, and Hawkeye the Series), and she had untold stories, but I wouldn't have killed off Clint, either; if someone had to die for the Soul Stone, I'd have killed off Steve, who also realistically could have won the fight with whichever other Avenger went with him there

- I'd have given some agenda to the snapped people; maybe they are trapped in the orange dimension of the soul stone, and Wanda, Strange, Peter and Gamora organize them, and the combination of Wanda's and Strange's powers plus whatever Tony, Bruce and Shuri have been inventing enables a return of the dusted population

- since I had really liked Thor's scenes in Infinity War (more so than Ragnarök, which was way too jokey to me), I'd have built on his newly formed relationship with Rocket; no fat belly of depression, because that wasn't funny when Lee Adama had it on BSG, either, but depression would have happened (well, continued)

- there would have been some price to pay for the return of the dusted (other than Tony and Steve dying, I mean); I have no idea how much time I'd have let pass between the Snappening and the return, but I would have wanted either to keep that time intact or to let everyone (snapped and not snapped population alike) maintain their memories of what had happened, as opposed to going back to business as usual.

I'm sure there'd be other things, but thankfully I did not get that job, because writing movies with a gigantic cast and gazillion individual storylines to consider really is not my forte.


The other days

Comments

[muccamukk]

Not Endgame itself, but I'd have liked to see SOME cultural impact of having half of everyone vanished for five years. I have no idea how to handle writing fic set during, say, Hawkeye, because I can't get a handle on the *massive* rift that would have made, and other than Clint's backstory, and Yelena missing Natasha dying, it's not addressed AT ALL. The only thing that seems to have changed is some people are randomly five years younger.

[kore]

They sorta tried to address that in Falcon and Winter Soldier with Karli and the Flag Smashers, but it was very muddled and superficial.

My brain just gets broken at the probable apocalyptic events of half of everything just vanishing and then, five years later, everything that had vanished reappearing. It's got almost a kind of fairy-tale quality to it that just doesn't work for me in realistic media.

[muccamukk]

I really want to write some of the femslash pairings for Hawkeye, but honestly the worldbuilding just breaks my brain every time I think about it.

[kore]

I think most people are just treating it sort of lightly (the way Marvel does, lol). It seems easier to downplay it in fic?

[kore]

I would have liked that movie so, so much better if they hadn't killed off Natasha. I was really worried they'd kill off Steve, and then found out he wasn't going to die! No, they killed Nat off instead. I felt monkey pawed. -- I did love the Black Widow movie, wasn't so crazy about Hawkeye but loved Yelena and Kate and Echo.

I've read in some various interviews that Bruce was supposed to maybe integrate Hulk and himself on the battlefield in Wakanda -- he was trying so hard to make Hulk come out, and instead maybe Smart Hulk would have come out of the Hulkbuster and been more helpful. But apparently they felt that was too much of a "win" and they really wanted everyone in IW to lose and lose hard, and that also overshadowed Bruce's change too much. (Which might have been better than leaving it out entirely!)

I loved the idea of the snapped people all stuck in the soul stone world or whatever and it was disappointing that they all literally went poof. Not to mention the entire giant problem I had with Thanos's "solution" vs the law of the conservation of energy (at least as I understand it), but whatever.

I think the biggest change I would have made to Endgame apart from all the plot and Snap stuff is, I would've made it two regular-sized movies. It just felt like there was so much character development and action plot they were trying to stuff into even a three-hour-long movie.

[musesfool]

Thanks for answering! Killing off Natasha is the thing that galls me the most (never over it!) but also Steve going back to the past was a huge wtf, so I'm glad you'd have fixed those. *g*

[selenak]

You're welcome. :)

[chelseagirl]

Yes, agree about Peggy.

And killing off Natasha.

And Professor Hulk.

Come to think of it, as I had very few other problems with it, your version sounds perfect to me.

[selenak]

I'm glad to hear it!