It’s no surprise Avengers: Endgame was released in 2019, approximately 50 years after the moon landing. Because just like space exploration, the MCU has been trying to keep itself fresh thanks to a worldwide pandemic and whatever Eternals was supposed to be.
Flashing back to 2018 when Avengers: Infinity War opened, it all ended with Thanos (Josh Brolin) obtaining all infinity stones in the gauntlet and snapping his fingers thus destroying half of all living organisms in the universe (people, animals, exterterrestial beings on foreign planets and so forth). And some MCU characters such as Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Tom Holland) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) all turned to dust and went away. The movie ended on a cliffhanger it really couldn’t resolve.
And the MCU hasn’t fully expanded much on it.
When Avengers: Endgame begins, Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) is enjoying a nice afternoon barbecue with his family when they all disappear. Naturally, he is shocked by what happens and then turns to bloodlust and begins killing a lot of crooked people. So, the Snap turned one of the most unintersting characters in the MCU into Charles Bronson. And you’re thinking, okay, so he’s just following the Dexter Morgan mindset and killing bad guys. But how many of them turned to a life of crime following the events of the Snap? Maybe some were just regular family men like Clint.
One thing the end-credit scene of Infinity War touches on that more or less happened worldwide is that Fury and Maria Hill (Colbie Smulders) are in Atlanta when the Snap happens and they noticed car accidents happening before they start to turn to dust. That’s just one neighborhood street in a big city. Imagine what happened in traffic areas on a global scale.
Imagine all the vehicles all going 70 mph on a busy freeway and suddenly there’s no driver. The traffic accidents would be enormous. Or imagine how many pilots were flying airplanes who were turned to dust with people who can’t fly crashing to their deaths? How many people were operating heavy machinery and all of a sudden, a crane lifting a cargo trailer drops it on some dock workers?
How about an open-heart surgeon or someone performing brain surgery? What happened to the patients? In WandaVision, we see Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) coming back following the Blip to an empty hospital room where her mother was once a patient. So, it’s a sure thing that many people who relied on medical care coded and died or at least suffered permanent damage because they couldn’t be helped as soon as needed.
Now, here’s a very horrible part. Imagine how many young infants died due to neglect? How many young children were left alone for days before they were checked on and what they went through? Imagine how many pregnant women lost the babies they were carrying. A miscarriage or stillborn is very traumatizing to a person.
Imagine how many people killed themselves. Imagine how many people turned to alcohol and substance abuse to deal with the emotional pain of losing their children, their partner, their parents, their good friends? Like Clint, imagine all the people who turned violent when they had nothing else to lose. In Endgame, we only see a little of this through Scott Rogers (Chris Evans) moderating a support group. Later when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is spit out of the quantum realm, he notices people are very depressed. My guess would be there’s probably a lot of people who are still coming to grips with things after five years.
Now they have access to time travel and decide they have to go obtain the infinity stones so they can snap everything back. Ok, but it would’ve made more sense to go back and have Thor (Chris Helmsworth) chop off Thanos’ head before he could snap. Or have someone beat the shit out of Peter Quill/Star Lord (Chris Pratt) so he doesn’t allow Thanos to get away. But apparently, that won’t matter because they’re going back in time to a different timeline.
I like this theory but it doesn’t make a lot of sense because they once again have to face off against Thanos and his minions at the end of Endgame. Well, they wouldn’t have had a dramatic movie if they just went back in time to kill Thanos. They’d still have to deal with the rest of Thanos’ army in Wakanda.
So, Endgame pretty much ends with everyone coming to grips with the death of Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) who sacrificed himself by obtaining the gauntlet and stones and snapping Thanos and his evil army away. And while Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johannson) killed herself by jumping off the Vormir mountains so Clint could obtain the soul stone, it would’ve seemed more fitting had Clint done it. He is a serial killer and I think it would’ve been more meaningful had he unalived himself to bring his family back. But as we observe in Hawkeye, he didn’t have a hard time readjusting.
But there would have been so many problems with the Blip. How would they know to bring everyone back to safe places? And while it’s been five years, surely some people would’ve moved on. You come back and your spouse is remarried. Your home has been repossessed by a bank and someone else is living there. Someone else has your job. Someone else is driving your car.
We also don’t see the impact of parents returning five years later to see their kids grown. We’re show a little of this when Scott sees Cassie. But what about someone who is 17-18 and they’re married now five years later. And now they have to have their parents come back because it’s technically their house. It’s way too much of a sitcom theme.
And let’s look at the elected officials. It’s never discussed what happened in Washington, D.C., but special elections and appointments had to be made because things had to be voted on. Was the President and Vice-President victim to the Snap, that means the Speaker of the House is now the President. Do you think an asshole like Trump would’ve just been okay with it.
Then, there’s issues pertaining to resources. Spider-Man: Far From Home mentions that the school decided to restart the term even though they were already halfway through it. Yeah, the pandemic showed that was bullshit. They wouldn’t have the resources at any school to do anything. We’d probably do what happened during the pandemic and go to distance learning. No fucking way would they’d be planning a European trip. We do see Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) holding a fund-raiser but it seems to not fully understand the impact. This isn’t some Masonic Lodge giving people a check for $500.
Homelessness would be rampant on a global scale. I mean, you could argue since they weren’t legally declared dead after seven years, they’re not dead. But there was evidence of people turning to dust. If that’s not dying, I don’t know what is. We’re not just talking about 3.5 billion people suddenly reappearing. We’re talking about other species. There wouldn’t be enough food supplies to go around at first and then we’d be on a full-blown scale of rationing food. Look what happened with the toiler paper during the first few months of the pandemic. This would lead to more thefts and robberies. Crime would increase.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier touched on this subject a little they gave us a whiny emo like Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) who was the leader of the Flag Smashers and felt things were better during the Blip. Unfortunately, they made her so annoying that you really want to skip through her scenes. Then they turned to Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) to deliver an out-of-place preachy speech as if it made it all better.
And as we can see by the Hawkeye series, everything seems to be forgotten as they still dwell on the very destructive but not as devestating Battle of New York from the first Avengers movie. Even Eternals seemed to skip over the Snap/Blip. Or I think they did. I was bored by that movie and left wondering why they let Thanos twice attack Earth and did nothing about it.
So, while it seems Spider-Man: No Way Home has breathed life back into the MCU, they pretty much set the bar high with the Infinity Saga. You almost wonder why they couldn’t have just ended everything right there. But it’s all about business and Kevin Feige (and more importantly Disney) will keep the MCU going as long as it remains profitable.
NASA realized in the 1970s they couldn’t just keep sending astronauts to the moon. They had to do something else and we got the Space Shuttle. I haven’t seen No Way Home but it looks good and the next Doctor Strange movie might have some interests. But if MCU just wants to change things by throwing in a multiverse in every movie, they really need to focus on something else to make us forget how the Snap/Blip made no sense.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 