MCU Commentary Rewatch: Avengers: Endgame

(Cover art by Matt Ferguson, for the Blu Ray release. https://www.cakesandcomics.com/)

Like with INFINITY WAR, I’m really not looking forward to watching this. ENDGAME’s been getting some pretty heavy cable play, and I did see this one 5 times in the theater (thrice in the first week).

But it’s the end of the road. The grand finale.

It’s the most deeply flawed fan-favorite I’ve ever seen, and it made THREE BILLION DOLLARS worldwide.

So moreso than any other film so far, I’m here for the commentary, and the commentary only. Searching for pearls of wisdom from 4 white dudes who have already given me 4 other views of their views.

On the one hand, I have three more bottles of cider and plenty of bourbon to get me through the next few hours.

On the other, the movie is three hours long.

So please keep the comparisons and complaints to a loud whisper until I put up a MCU Personal Preference post.

TL:DR;

Running Ranking: #10 of 23

For reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_Endgame

Commentary Takeaways:

This movie is very, very long, and I’ve seen it a dozen times now between theaters, cable, and on various home video formats.

In fact, this is the third time I’ve watched this commentary track, and even though I took a couple breaks for my health (mainly to fix snacks, grab more cider, and possibly vacuum the living room in-between L’s dance classes), there wasn’t a lot of “new” to be had in my rewatch.

Until there was. In the closing minutes of the film, one of the four interchangeable white men who’d been narrating the film shot for shot the entire time said something that was like ringing a bell.

They said that watching the MCU, even as directors, was like watching STAR WARS as a kid. About how exciting it was to wait in line for the new movie, and how awful the wait was until the next one.

Then another interchangeable white man mentioned it was the same for Indiana Jones, or any other big series. The waiting was almost more important than the films themselves, because of how good it felt to finally see the next picture.

That ain’t nothing, and I probably would have missed it again had I not spent the last two weeks obsessing over what does and does not make a good commentary track.

One of the interesting things about watching INFINITY WAR and ENDGAME on Disney+ is that all the special features are grouped together in one menu. So after the movie finished, I noticed some deleted scenes I somehow hadn’t seen before, and that six (6!) of them had Russo Brothers ™ commentary.

“Hey,” says I. “We have to watch that, or we’re not doing our job the right way.”

“We’re not exactly getting paid for this. And we didn’t do it for the other films.”

“That’s exactly why we have to do it. And look, there’s the one they were talking about during the commentary!”

And indeed, there it was. The early version of Natasha and Clint/Hawkeye and Black Widow on Vormir scene they’d mentioned, with the heroes still arguing about who gets to die to save the universe when Thanos Attacks!(TM!)

No joke.

Right before the two heroes beat the shit out of each other to prove who’s more worthy to commit suicide, a bunch of faceless CGI mooks and Josh Brolin’s body double show up out of fucking nowhere and start blasting the place.

So Natasha goes all WILD BUNCH, and before long she’s literally dragging herself to the edge of the cliff with a trail of blood behind her.

Then she more literally spends her last breath to shoot a mook who’s about to kill Clint, while he is reaching out an impotent hand to try and stop her from 50 yards away.

The Russo’s are not kind to the scene. They know it doesn’t work, and said as much during the main commentary. Audiences in particular did not respond well to it, even though it’s completely finished with flashy effects.

But it was something I hadn’t seen before, and despite its flaws I enjoyed it.

So then I watched two different scenes of the Ancient One having a bbq on the roof of the Sanctum Santorum, chatting with a motion capture harnessed Mark Ruffalo. They were >very< alternate takes (the grilled salmon being the first clue, and the fill-in animation Hulk the second), but there was some interesting stuff in there, as the lines Banner says about time travel in the “present” actually came from the Ancient One once upon a time.

It was the kind of thing I wish they’d included in the main commentary track, their discussion of the 7 minute deleted scene where all the unsnapped heroes have a cool HS reunion in a trench protected by Doctor Strange while Thanos’ minions kill the hero’s minions.

Wakanda Forever! Or not…

These micro-nuggets of substance made me want more from the main event, which was three hours of the 4IWM breaking down the motivations and inner demons of everyone in every scene. It’s stuff I got from one viewing in the theater, let alone my repeated watches over the last two years. I kind of wanted them to talk more about how seeing Peter Parker swing into frame made them felt, or how every second of him on-screen made my soul leak out of my eyes.

But they can’t do that. They’ve spent the last 7 years of their lives making movies about Captain America and his very special friends, and are more than a little bit war-weary.

So I cried for them, and just now made up my mind never to listen to this commentary track again.

I wanted more from it. I needed more. Which is a completely unreasonable desire. They owe me–a whitish man on middling years on the internet–absolutely nothing. But despite 4 previous group attempts at enlightenment, I was still hoping they might have learned something new about the process of filmmaking, specifically about How To Make A Marvel Movie ™.

And after 21 other movies in the franchise, I certainly was expecting them to.

But they didn’t, and I didn’t, and here we are. With a dead Iron Man, an old Cap, and a sacrificed Black Widow you can replace with some Pym particles and half an hour of planning.

Alas, Antonio. We knew you well. And the sooner they bring some alternate timeline versions of you and your friends over to visit, I’ll be the first in line to see it.

End Trans.

Final Infinity Saga Commentary Ranking:

1. BLACK PANTHER

2. DOCTOR STRANGE

3. CAPTAIN MARVEL

4. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Vol. 2

5. THOR: THE DARK WORLD

6. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 1

7. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

8. ANT-MAN

9. THOR: RAGNAROK

10. AVENGERS: ENDGAME

11. AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR

12. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

13. CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR

14. IRON MAN 2

15. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP

16. AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

17. INCREDIBLE HULK

18. IRON MAN 3

19. MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS

20. IRON MAN

21. THOR

22. SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING

23. SPIDER-MAN FAR FROM HOME

So here’s the deal. Using the y/n system I outlined in my last few posts, the first “is this better than___” no result was ANT-MAN, and the second was THE DARK WORLD. But after writing the long and depressing takeaway above, I realized that there was a second necessary calculation:

“Is this better than the last time these four interchangeable white men talked about the exact same shit,” and I got two yes results.

Which means that CIVIL WAR and THE WINTER SOLDIER, which are among the best superhero films ever made, had only average MCU commentary tracks, and they needed to be reduced in rank FOR COMMENTARY PURPOSES ONLY. Further, looking over my notes, they were not only not as good as ENDGAME, CIVIL WAR got worse when the same metric was applied.

So then I ran the analysis for other movies in similar situations, resulting in most of the movies on the list shifting at least one place, and sometimes many more.

You may disagree, and are more than welcome to complain below should you so choose. But the only possible change I see coming is if FAR FROM HOME has some amazingly revelatory special features.

Because while Kenneth Branagh’s Oration ™ is by far the worst track of the entire INFINITY SAGA, he at least got the chance to show up and record it.