My Thoughts on Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame came out in 2019, when I was a junior in high school. I saw it twice, once with each of two groups of friends. After the first time, I don't think it had fully sunk in that Iron Man was dead. The second time, when I watched him snap his fingers, I bawled my eyes out.

In the blink of an eye, seven years have gone by. I've graduated from college and been working for a few years, and right before Avengers 5 comes out, I never expected Endgame to be re-released.

For someone like me who's been watching Marvel since 2008, Endgame is a true milestone, so there was no way I wasn't going.

Seven years ago I had no idea how much the theater affects the experience. Seven years later I bought the dead-center seat in the best theater in Chengdu, at full price. For me, it was something like a pilgrimage.

Why? Because I really wanted to know what it would feel like, seven years on, to watch a movie I loved as a teenager. Biologically speaking, supposedly seven years is enough time for every cell in your body to be replaced.¹ In other words, the me from seven years ago and the me now aren't the same person, but Endgame is still the same Endgame it was seven years ago. Wouldn't that collision be interesting?

I actually wrote a review of Endgame seven years ago. I'll upload it to my personal website, so anyone interested can go read it. In this post I just want to talk about what this viewing made me feel.

Crying

If I had to pick a few keywords for my youth, Marvel would definitely be one of them.

I still remember crying for Iron Man in the theater seven years ago. It was the first time a movie ever made me cry.

This time, I knew every scene and every plot point. I even remembered a lot of the shots clearly. So I knew exactly what I was going to see, and I was curious: would I cry again this time?

As it turned out, over the course of the movie my eyes welled up twice, and then at the end I sobbed my heart out.

What I Didn't Get Seven Years Ago

The first time.

Thor and Rocket travel back to Asgard to get the Reality Stone.

The why and the outcome don't matter. What matters is what happens in between. Along the way, Thor sees his mother.

What state is Thor in at this point?

He's the son of Odin, once Asgard's proudest, most dashing prince. But he's lost his mother, lost his father, lost his brother, lost his sister, and lost half the people of Asgard.

For him, that's without a doubt a crushing blow. So when he sees his mother, I immediately felt a lump in my throat. Thor at this point has a big belly, and I thought he must have so much pain inside and no one to tell.

The me of seven years ago couldn't have thought of any of that, and didn't get what the director was going for.

Just as I was thinking all this, I saw his mother, Frigga, say:

Seriously, I lost it right then. She knows instantly that the Thor in front of her isn't her son from this time. She knows he's come from the future. And just from the way he looks, as a mother she knows at once that the future Thor must have suffered a lot.

He hasn't said a word yet, and she understands all of it.

The second time.

In the final battle, all the Avengers return, and in the chaos, Spider-Man and Iron Man are reunited.

Peter is chattering away nonstop, a classic Peter Parker motormouth, and Tony looks at him for a long time. In the end he doesn't say a word. He shows how he feels with a single gesture.

Seven years ago, all I felt here was hyped and happy: Spider-Man's back, everyone's back. Back then I was about Peter's age, and I saw everything from his side.

This time, my eyes stayed on Tony.

Tony carries enormous guilt over losing Peter. He really likes and admires this young Avenger, was looking forward to seeing him grow, and gave a lot for him. Think about it. Why would Tony go back in time to save everyone? Pepper and his daughter are alive in the present. Rationally, he hasn't lost anything. If there's one thing that pushed Tony to do it, I think Peter has a lot to do with it.

So that hug holds five years of guilt, and the relief of getting back what he'd lost.

The me of seven years ago only saw a reunion. This time I finally understood: it's a grown man pulling back into his arms the kid he couldn't protect back then.

Sometimes a simple hug says more than a thousand words.

Knowing How It Ends

The third time is Tony's iconic shot.

Unlike seven years ago, this time I completely lost control the moment Thanos snaps his fingers, sees that nothing happens, and turns his head.

I knew what was coming. I knew exactly what was coming. I really wanted to keep it together, but I couldn't.

I cried hard, but I didn't actually know why I was crying.

Maybe because I love Iron Man so much. Maybe because, in this whole movie, almost everyone is running around for someone they can't let go of: Thor goes back to see his mother, Hawkeye wants his family back, Cap finally goes back to Peggy.

And Tony gives his life for it.

While I cried, one question kept going through my head: why does it have to be Iron Man?

Why does it have to be Iron Man who snaps his fingers? Why does he have to be the one to bear all of it?

In 2008, Tony was just an arms dealer. He built weapons and never thought about whose hands they'd end up in. That same year, I stepped into the Marvel world for the first time.

In 2012, Cap told Tony, "You only care about yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play."²

By 2019, he had Pepper and he had Morgan. By any measure, he had no reason to take this gamble. But he went anyway.

It took Tony eleven years to go from a selfish man to a man who saves the world.

Eleven years earlier, at a press conference, he said, "I am Iron Man."³

Eleven years later, right before he snaps his fingers, he says the same thing: "And I... am... Iron Man."

He opened it, and he closed it.

It was the first meeting, and the final ritual.

Walking out of the theater afterward, I think I figured something out. Seven years ago I was about Peter Parker's age, the chattering kid someone else was protecting. Watching it again seven years later, I finally understood Frigga's look and Tony's unspoken hug. The movie hasn't changed a single frame. What's changed is where I'm standing.

Walking back into a theater after seven years was a look back, and a goodbye. The cells in my body have probably been replaced once over, but the tears still fall in the same place.

Seven years isn't long. But it's long enough for us to grow up, and for heroes to grow old.

Footnotes

1. "Every cell in the human body is replaced every seven years" is a widely repeated claim. In reality, different cells renew at very different rates, and some neurons and the cells of the eye's lens are almost never replaced. I'm using it here as an image. ↩

2. From The Avengers (2012), in the scene where everyone argues in the lab on the Helicarrier. The original line is: "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you." ↩

3. From the press conference at the end of Iron Man (2008). In release order, it's the first film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and this is the last line of the film itself. ↩