The biggest let down with Endgame was not Fat Thor. (Spoilers)

[AJBopp]

That sounds plausible, but that still leaves the wider question of how did we end up with what we saw, and also whether the previous version was significantly different in its actual message.

Do we know there was a previous version? Perhaps they just added a new scene.

[Powerboy]

She basically say by removing the time stone he would create a new time line and Doom hers to darkness. And then Hulks states if they put it right back where they got it nothing changes and that timeline gets erased. Which would have worked if they got all the stones without changing anything took them back to the present undid the snap and then brought the stones back to the exact place and time they got them. But they screw up and change a bunch of stuff along the way. I dont get where people are getting this idea that you can only create a new timeline by removing a stone. She never says that, the example she gives is by removing a stone since that's what Hulk was there for. She very Vague when talking about her reality and his and the Stones purpose with time. They create the flow of time but removing doesnt destroy her reality just leaves them no way of stopping Dormammu and the forces of darkness. Everything she says is vague and open to interpretation. But the movie itself if it wants to make sense is pretty clear.

I just dont see how ones closed loop timeline makes any sense. Unless your only explanation is.. Magical Stones... dont worry about it. Alternate timelines fits works perfectly and the only issues are questions that can be answered later or not. Like how cap got back and where that Sheild came from. Either he took somebody's or Tchalla secretly made another one for him.

I thought what Banner was saying was that once the gem is returned to the exact instant it was taken from, anything that happened after that in that reality will cease to have happened because you've gone back and erased the event that started all those changes. In effect, it will be the base reality again.

[Powerboy]

This all sort of makes me long for the days when I was a kid reading Legion of Super Heroes stories with the original Superboy and nobody cared about things like him gaining knowledge of the future or technicalities about time travel but just used time travel for a great adventure. Was Endgame time travel 100 percent consistent? No. Was it consistent enough that it didn't pull most people out of the story? Yes.

[80sbaby]

I thought what Banner was saying was that once the gem is returned to the exact instant it was taken from, anything that happened after that in that reality will cease to have happened because you've gone back and erased the event that started all those changes. In effect, it will be the base reality again.

No. That would just erase the "dark" timeline from her perspective. It's still a branched time line/alternate reality in comparison with the "main" time line.

[WebLurker]

Where'd the shield come from? I dunno. I assume there's a story there that they chose not to tell. There are infinite possibilities for it though. Would be interesting to hear it one day, but not knowing that story doesn't leave me unsatisfied with what I experienced.

I would assume that he brought it back from the timeline where he and Peggy were married, like how Thor brought back the hammer from alt-Dark World timeline.

No. That would just erase the "dark" timeline from her perspective. It's still a branched time line/alternate reality in comparison with the "main" time line.

Difference with no difference?

[JKtheMac]

Do we know there was a previous version? Perhaps they just added a new scene.

Yes. In an interview with Tilda Swinton she talks about being brought back to refilm that scene.

[JKtheMac]

The movie gives us one explanation for what creates alternative timelines - removing a stone to a different time. Every other potential reason an alternative timeline might be created is immediately dismissed by the brightest brains in existence, and since it's Marvel's world and Marvel's laws of physics, they get to do that if they want to.

Some as where we get the idea that you can only create a new timeline by removing a stone. I ask where do you find in the movie an explanation for any other way to do it? Assuming new timelines are created because Captain America talked to Captain America, or Steve went and married Peggy, requires an assumption of evidence not put forth in the film.

There was one alternative timeline created and not restored- Loki's. There were five other timelines created, but not one frame of film actually showed us any of them. Captain America promised at the end to clip all the branches. I'm pretty sure he did.

Where'd the shield come from? I dunno. I assume there's a story there that they chose not to tell. There are infinite possibilities for it though. Would be interesting to hear it one day, but not knowing that story doesn't leave me unsatisfied with what I experienced.

I agree with all of this aside from one small issue for which we need to wait and see. Just because Loki stole a stone, does not suggest that he removed it from the timeline, he didn’t have a means to time travel. So we have seen no evidence so far that he created a timeline that was not closed off. However, I imagine he will time travel. It is too good an opportunity to miss. So like I say, it’s a small issue.

[JKtheMac]

I thought what Banner was saying was that once the gem is returned to the exact instant it was taken from, anything that happened after that in that reality will cease to have happened because you've gone back and erased the event that started all those changes. In effect, it will be the base reality again.

Pretty much yes.

The only proviso is that some changes to the primary timeline, like Thanos2 showing up in the finale, will still have happened, despite the fact that their timeline was erased.

So now, if you look at it from outside of time, the result is that a different Thanos with knowledge of the time travel plan, a Thanos who never previously existed in the main timeline, jumped from a branch created by that reality’s stone being moved, into the primary timeline. When he was clicked away we don’t actually know what happened from dialogue but the visual choice of him disintegrating into dust tells us he was just wiped away. Then, when Cap goes back that branch is dusted so Thanos2 becomes an anomaly. The cause and effect of him jumping is messed with. Thanos2 just appears in the primary timeline having jumped from a now nonexistent place. This is a paradox, but it’s one the story doesn’t suffer for. There are even apparently repercussions in that Gamora2 is now running around. Time travel stories can cope with these things.

The thing that seems to be challenging some viewers is the fact that Banner claims nothing can be changed in the past because the reality that those characters in the past will have experienced will be different, and yet we see things being changed in the past and apparently it doesn’t have a butterfly effect or a cascade of changes through the timeline. The simple explanation is that Banner was wrong. He was never held up as the expert anyway. He says as much when he struggles to send and retrieve Lang. He is just asserting a theory and he was only partly right.

So for those that really care about how time travel works in this movie we need to look elsewhere, and the other thing we know is that the Infinity Stones create what we perceive as time, and we know when wielded together they can reshape reality entirely in whatever manner the wielder chooses.

So we just have to assume the stones tidy up the timeline.

How? We are not shown this.
Do they totally reject change? Not if we assume Cap lived two lives in the same timeline, and not if we assume Thanos2 suddenly did not timetravel and got erased from the main timeline.

There is nothing in the movie that suggests anything else happened to Cap, and nothing to suggest they reset Thanos2. Indeed Gamora2 demonstrates that they didn’t.

Future movies can elaborate and come up with their own explanations. That’s called a plot thread. Not as some want to claim a plot hole. That’s actually an entirely different thing.

The threads remaining here are Gamora2, Black Widow, Loki, Cap’s second life, a few characters like past Cap, Thanos and even Freyja despite soon dying, having new knowledge. A future writer can pull on these and write whatever they want. That’s how serial fiction works.

P.S. one way they can tidy up most of the anomalies, if they felt like they wanted to, is assert that the moment time travellers turn up in the past to remove a stone, is the moment that the stone is effectively removed. In other words, Cap’s Job is to jump back, not to the exact moment they jumped ‘back to the future’ but ‘back to the past’. This would be neat and tidy from a timestream perspective, but it would tidy up too many things. Loki’s thread would cease to exist, Thanos2 wouldn’t have existed, Gamora2 wouldn’t exist, Black Widow wouldn’t currently be dead. What would the fun be in that? A tidy timetravel story in the context of an ongoing narrative closes off future story. Worse, it can lessen the story because it has the reset problem. Lots of things we cared about wouldn’t have happened. Most of the movie in fact.

[AJBopp]

I agree with all of this aside from one small issue for which we need to wait and see. Just because Loki stole a stone, does not suggest that he removed it from the timeline, he didn’t have a means to time travel. So we have seen no evidence so far that he created a timeline that was not closed off. However, I imagine he will time travel. It is too good an opportunity to miss. So like I say, it’s a small issue.

Yeah you're right. Didn't think about that. Which means there are no left over branches and the only question is where the shield came from. A story for another day.

[luprki]

I’ve been reading this thread for the last couple of days and you guys are proving what I’ve been saying. Endgame is a convoluted mess full of contradictions. It’s a poorly written script, even the Russo’s can’t make any sense out of it. Kevin Feige has been silent about Endgame because he can’t explain it either. Disney didn’t care that this movie is stupid, because they know fans and movie critics would accept anything coming from the MCU.

[JKtheMac]

I’ve been reading this thread for the last couple of days and you guys are proving what I’ve been saying. Endgame is a convoluted mess full of contradictions. It’s a poorly written script, even the Russo’s can’t make any sense out of it. Kevin Feige has been silent about Endgame because he can’t explain it either. Disney didn’t care that this movie is stupid, because they know fans and movie critics would accept anything coming from the MCU.

The thread proves nothing of the sort. All it proves is that people like to pick holes in successful movies even when there are none. Some of these are Science fiction fans mistaking the superhero genre for a science fiction genre. Some are just confused because they think there are only certain rules for time travel movies, and there are not. Time travel movies are fantasy and are governed only by imagination.

As I said months ago, I worried about the implications of Cap breaking the rules set up in the movie for a few seconds on the way out of the movie, and realised that I was applying rules that were dismissed by the movie. There was no need to worry because it’s all governed by magical stones anyway. It’s a superhero story. The time rules are not the most unbelievable element by any stretch.

The fact that multiple YouTube channels and click bait pages pointed out the movie was flawed doesn’t show us that it was flawed, they make money from making such claims and frankly most of them have spent no time to actually understand what the movie is telling us as viewers.

If I can demonstrate that the movie is self-consistent then why doesn’t that placate people? Because they are invested in their own perspective. Maybe they don’t like rules effectively governed by fantasy genre expectations? Seems odd though for an essentially fantasy genre. Why are they not moaning about Gamma radiation, or the use of magical portals?

[Beaddle]

Yeah you're right. Didn't think about that. Which means there are no left over branches and the only question is where the shield came from. A story for another day.

The shield could have come from nowhere, its called the Bootstrap time travel paradox. its a paradox where an object, person or item has no real origins. My issue with Endgame's time travel is not how messy it is, its how it was introduced, used and gotten rid off in the full story of the film.

[JKtheMac]

The shield could have come from nowhere, its called the Bootstrap time travel paradox. its a paradox where an object, person or item has no real origins. My issue with Endgame's time travel is not how messy it is, its how it was introduced, used and gotten rid off in the full story of the film.

The issue isn’t where did the technology of the shield come from. This isn’t a bootstrap issue. The issue is that cap’s shield was broken. He went back to the past, supposedly laid low and yet when he’s an old man he has a whole shield.

This means we don’t have the full story. That’s not a problem, just interesting and intriguing. Maybe he didn’t live a quiet life after all. Or maybe he collected the shield just before he handed it over from someone who knew he was coming back the long way and had it made for him.

[WebLurker]

The thing that seems to be challenging some viewers is the fact that Banner claims nothing can be changed in the past because the reality that those characters in the past will have experienced will be different, and yet we see things being changed in the past and apparently it doesn’t have a butterfly effect or a cascade of changes through the timeline. The simple explanation is that Banner was wrong. He was never held up as the expert anyway. He says as much when he struggles to send and retrieve Lang. He is just asserting a theory and he was only partly right.

What part of the "they only create alternate timelines when going back in time" explanation (that we were all spoon-fed twice) are people either missing entirely or refusing listen to.

I’ve been reading this thread for the last couple of days and you guys are proving what I’ve been saying. Endgame is a convoluted mess full of contradictions. It’s a poorly written script, even the Russo’s can’t make any sense out of it. Kevin Feige has been silent about Endgame because he can’t explain it either. Disney didn’t care that this movie is stupid, because they know fans and movie critics would accept anything coming from the MCU.

The only thing I'm seeing proved that some people will ignore information explained in the movies in order to believe what they want to believe.

[Donald]

I agree with all of this aside from one small issue for which we need to wait and see. Just because Loki stole a stone, does not suggest that he removed it from the timeline, he didn’t have a means to time travel. So we have seen no evidence so far that he created a timeline that was not closed off. However, I imagine he will time travel. It is too good an opportunity to miss. So like I say, it’s a small issue.

But Loki got the Tesseract and escaped before any of the Stones left the timeline. Would returning the stones "back track" time to prevent his escape?