‘Avengers: Endgame’ May Be an Even Better Watch at Home

Avengers: Endgame is a lot of movie. It’s maybe too much movie, like going to an ice cream shop and getting a brownie sundae with chocolate ice cream shop, hot fudge, rainbow sprinkles, Reese’s Pieces, and topped with whipped cream–which is a thing I do as a 35-year-old. And just like trying to watch Avengers: Endgame as a 35-year-old, it was too much! Too much sundae is the same as too much Marvel! I left the theater happy but stuffed, and I felt just awful later.

I’ve had hard times at movies before. Star Wars: The Force Awakens gave me a panic attack and Star Wars: The Last Jedi stressed me out. But that said, I still loved both experiences and both movies while having those extreme reactions and I only grew to love them more afterwards. Avengers: Endgame, a movie I had a blast during, left a bad taste in my mouth. Someone put walnuts in that brownie.

This is why I’m a big advocate for watching movies twice before you form a definitive opinion about them, especially if you have an overactive viewer brain like I do. When I watch a movie for the first time, I can’t stop trying to outthink it. I try to figure out the twists, predict dialogue, and figure out whether or not a character can die during this fight depending on what other looks I saw them serve in all the trailers. I think other people think of this kinda stuff as being “pulled out of the movie,” but it’s just how I experience all movies (I’ve never understood the “took me out” critique, ever). That’s why movies like Last Jedi and Endgame were really torturous for me; they never let up and sneakily defy every expectation. That’s why a second viewing is key–because then I can just relax and enjoy the movie! It’s the second viewing where I can get lost in a story.

I did not see Endgame a second time, though. That’s a big statement right there, considering that I saw 2012’s Avengers at least six times in the theater and even saw 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War about half as many times. Instead of spending another 3 hours watching Endgame, I instead spent–no joke–another two hours having my husband talk me through my issues and deep feelings of confusion, anger, betrayal, and hurt… all over a movie! A movie I liked! But two things cut me to my core, and my fandom was bleeding out. Note, Star Wars haters, that I didn’t take out my frustrations on fans of the movie on Twitter. I talked them through IRL and I didn’t spit in a stranger’s sundae.

With Avengers: Endgame now on VOD, I could finally get that second viewing and see if the wounds had healed. It turns out that time and the comfort of watching a mega-movie like this on your own terms and in your own home help tremendously.

Avengers: Endgame, the biggest movie worldwide of all time, might just be a better watch at home. At home, all the things that work against it–okay, the runtime, the 182 minute runtime is the thing that really works against it–don’t matter. You can put down the spoon and go, “Y’know what? The rest of this will be a good dessert tomorrow.” My VOD rewatch took place in two chunks, pausing just past the halfway mark after Captain America and Iron Man’s emotional trip to 1970. I felt full when I hit “stop” yesterday afternoon and I felt hungry for more when I hit “play” this morning.

But Avengers: Endgame doesn’t just work better at home because of your ability to take as many bathroom breaks as you want and not miss a thing. It also works better because the genres the film really dabbles in lend themselves to a small screen experience. Really, Endgame is only a sweeping Lord of the Rings: Return of the King style war-film for the last hour. The first two hours–and it is truly wild that I’m talking about full hours here–are a combination time travel comedy and heist thriller punctuated with Leftovers style drama. It’s a really weird mix, and I think a lot of the nuance is lost when it’s blown up to ginormous proportions.

For one thing, you somehow don’t notice all the tears and pain on everyone’s faces in the first hour. The screen being smaller and closer to you, you really feel that hurt. That’s really clear with what Chris Hemsworth is doing with Thor. The absolute devastation in his eyes cuts through all that sloshed behavior.

And then you also feel the comedy scenes, like Cap, Black Widow, and Ant-Man trying to recruit Smart Hulk in that diner. That was hilarious in the theater, too, but at home it plays like a goofy HBO comedy starring Paul Rudd and Big Green Mark Ruffalo.

And with all the time travel stuff being so hijinks heavy (Smart Hulk halfheartedly “hulking out” on a flipped car, Rhodey reading a dancing Star-Lord to filth on Morag), those jokes really pop on TV.

Even the big war at the end works well on TV, and it works because Marvel has always prioritized characters over spectacle. In the theater you marvel at Scarlet Witch tearing Thanos’ armor to shreds, but at home you really see all the fresh fury on Wanda’s face as she exacts revenge for Vision’s death, which just happened moments ago for her. If the big Marvel battles were just generic capes crashing up against no-name CGI baddies, it would be tedious at home. But after all these movies, you know Thanos as much as you know Tony Stark–and that’s why the “I am inevitable”/”I am Iron Man” moment still slays on TV.

But… what about my issues, the issues I still haven’t clarified almost 1000 words in? Did rewatching Avengers: Endgame at home, for a second overall time, allow me to move the hell on? My issues were, possibly still are:

1. Black Widow’s sacrifice, while incredibly/tragically/beautifully in character, is an example of the laziest, most unaware screenwriting I have ever witnessed in a Marvel movie.
2. Forcing half the population of the MCU to endure five solid years of a hellish rapture scenario and then dropping the other half into a presumably destabilized, rundown, grim AF world fundamentally obliterates the principle truth about Marvel as a brand, from comics to movies: it’s the world outside your window, but with superheroes.

So, to the first point, the Soul Stone has a type and that is some bullshit. How Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely–writers I completely adore and marvel at!–wrote two halves of an Avengers story wherein the badass assassin woman was sacrificed to retrieve the Soul Stone in each half is baffling.

I try not to use the same noun or adjective in back-to-back sentences, and they killed Gamora and Black Widow the same way in back-to-back movies and didn’t think it was predictable and tired?? Especially when the universally “meh” Hawkeye is right there begging to die??? Especially when the end of the movie has a “Hell yeah, lady Avengers assemble!” moment that now feels incredibly hollow because the film just killed it’s lone female lead and then swapped Good Nebula out with Bad Nebula????

Ten Avengers went on the time travel mission, eight men and two women–and both women got screwed over during it, turning a not insignificant chunk of the movie into Avengers: Manpain. I love some fan service and I love feeling good feelings, so I love that A-Force style team-up moment, but good god does it feel hollow without Black Widow.

Do I still feel this way? Absolutely. I’m not wrong here. What I will say, though, is that this film, despite having zero Black Widow fight scenes (a travesty!), gives my favorite live-action superhero a real emotional depth that feels like the culmination of her 9 years in film. I love her being the boss of all the good guys, her coming up with the “duh, we just go to New York in 2012” plan was a brilliant move, and her pragmatic determination is what I’ve always loved about her. So. Sure. I’m getting a Black Widow movie. I’ve waited long enough. Killing her and then trumpeting all the female heroes was the definition of bad optics, but, I don’t have to let it ruin the whole movie anymore. Because now I can fast-forward through the shot of her lying at the bottom of the Vormir cliff. And also I know how I would bring her back to life so, I’ve got that…

As for the five-year jump obliterating the principle truth about Marvel, I’m not wrong there either–but I can see that I was wrong to, uh, care so hard, to the point of it hurting my brain. I could write five thousand words about this and still not articulate my point well. I said I talked to my husband about this for two hours, so I know it’s hard to explain. It boils down, maybe, to Marvel taking place in New York City and DC taking place in Gotham and Metropolis. Different vibes, and–this is a weirdly personal thing!–I’ve always connected to the former because it felt real even if Marvel’s NYC is as phony as DC’s Keystone City. The Leftovers time jump, woof, it hurt me!

But watching Avengers: Endgame without waiting for the reset button to be hit, without having to wrap my mind around this new reality while it’s unfolding in front of me, it was way more relaxing. And it helps to have seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, which lessens the “oh my god, what about all of the people who came back from dust to find out their home is gone or their partner is dead?!” dread I felt by turning the snap into a fun little wrinkle in a story that had very little to do with rebuilding society.

And that’s my rant. Avengers: Endgame is a fun movie with some very frustrating parts that works just as well, if not better, at home. The best parts pop more and the gripes don’t make me as gripey, possibly because fast-forward is now an option. And because I seem to have lost my sundae metaphor as things got more personal, I’ll close with this: you better believe I’m going to get another brownie sundae with the works, but I’m not gonna rush to finish the whole thing next time.

I think that last bit was actually just about a sundae…

Where to watch Avengers: Endgame