Avengers Endgame - How To Waste A Climax

the final battle of Avengers endgame was a tragic waste of potential now just before you hit that dislike button let's get one thing straight overall the end of Avengers endgame was out standing iron man sacrificed Captain America going back in time with the portal scene the fight with the big three souped out with Thanos all of that was just a fantastic spectacle I mean if you tell me that you didn't have the biggest smile on your face when Captain America picked up neon year you're either a liar or just not a human being but this video essay it is not talking about that rather it's about this so first we get the portal scene and it is bone chilling we have this great shot of the entire MCU lining up for their very final fight and it is awesome this portal scene left me on the edge of my seat in anticipation for this epic battle that was about to take place I mean the entire MCU has been building up to this moment this is gonna be one of the most epic battle scenes ever created and after this outstandingly well executed build-up we see everyone remember each other and I was left profoundly disappointed because we didn't get this nail-biting climax of epic celestial proportions that had every last viewer nervous beyond belief for the fates of these characters that we loved instead we had a five-minute scene of these hundred or so characters just punching and blasting their way through a CGI army a fight were at very few points does it actually achieve these strong dread that any good climax needs and if the Russos were trying to create said dread in this battle maybe they didn't completely fail but they seriously could have done a far better job because the epic finale to the largest franchise in cinematic history is essentially the same scene we've all seen before a hundred times just with instead of a few characters involved a few hundred this time and okay I imagine a fair few of you are already making the entirely valid point but don't you see this scene doesn't have to be a masterpiece of a battle because it is a celebration of all that's come before the moment is great because of all the groundwork all the films and character arcs that have made this moment possible they are the reason this scene is a good one now that is a very good point and it's a very correct point however that point is exactly the problem because the reason why this scene is good is it because of all the work that's come before it and if you strip away all of the context so you are just left with this battle scene in itself this scene doesn't do anything mean and in terms of battles we've seen before on our screens like the Battle of the Basterds the opening of Saving Private Ryan the battle for minister if the end of Avengers endgame doesn't even hold a candle I mean when you look at the siege of helms deep for example the plot to destroy the One Ring the character arcs the world building and all of the great storytelling done before the scene begins that's only one part of the many reasons why the siege of Helms Deep is such a legendary battle the main reason why is because this whole battle on a craft level it's a masterpiece and it does so many things right at the end of Avengers endgame got wrong and this of course presents the question why did the siege of Helm's Deep feel so crammed and epic and nail-biting while the climax of endgame well just didn't do that how do you make an epic fight epic and how do you make it well not there are several things that the battle of Avengers endgame fails to do and the foremost is this making a great fight scene is just like any scene in your story it is telling a story in miniature you can't do what a child does with his toys you can't just grab all of your characters throw them into a field together with no clear rhyme or reason as they Duke it out then all of a sudden one side wins the battle in a single move in order for an epic battle seemed to be at its most engaging it needs to be structured like its own story and the more epic the battle the more complex that story needs to be when you look at the siege of Helm's Deep you can see exactly this in action we have the exposition beforehand we know who the characters are we know why they're fighting and why the attacks are trying to kill them we have survived the battlefield we know what the fort looks like with the ramps and the gates and the overall defences we know that the attackers are aware of a weakness in the fall that being a drainage gate that they plan to exploit we have the calm before the storm as the enemy slowly marches forwards we have the inciting incident as one of the archers accidentally kills an dog then throughout the fight we have this rising action as the fight progresses and the orcs overwhelmed the defenders more and more as they'd reach towards their breaking point and I won't labor the point but the whole siege of Helm's Deep could have been its own contained short film because of its brilliantly executed structure but honestly the big one the main reason why in my opinion the siege of Helm's Deep is such a compelling battle scene and why endgame is less so is that very ingredient that I just mentioned the ingredient of progression and if you ask me whenever a battle scene fails to be compelling it's usually for this exact reason I mean throughout the endgame fight we see the heroes kill some of Thanos his goons then we see them kill some more of thinness his goons then more then more then more and what I think is really damning is for the first two and a half minutes of this battle nothing actually happens for a whole lot of Wiz and bang and fighting and punching a whole lot of nothing actually comes from it the dynamic of the fight in the first two and a half minutes never shifts to any one sides favor I mean the battle doesn't even have a beat to its story until far into it when they mention oh hey by the way we need to get the coordinates to ant man's van and finally after two and a half minutes of punching the characters actually have a goal they need to achieve which gives the fight at least some basic sense of a story this lack of Direction serves to make the epic battle feel the opposite of epic I mean helms deep has a fantastic sense of progression and how does jackson create this feeling well it's simple progression is signified by ground taken now of course this isn't the only way to do progression in a fight but as the siege of helms deep moves along we see the aux charge the wall they put up ladders and climb and then they destroy the wall in this crushing blow to the heroes which allows the orcs to come pouring into the courtyard and push further into the fort and this carries on as the enemy pushes further in and breaks down line of defense after line of defense now endgame doesn't totally fail in this aspect I mean there is that one moment where Captain Marvel destroys Thanos ship and that does create a grand feeling of progression as the dynamic of the fight shifts but overall we have extremely few examples of this great grand change to the status quo as one side as a whole gets an edge over the other and on this point one of the main reasons why endgame fails to feel truly epic is because it spends far too much time focusing on the micro while other battles show the armies as a whole having successes and failures endgame only shows individuals having successes and failures we have Scarlet Witch successfully attacked Thanos and do a little damage we see the woman form and kill a bunch of banishes goons and we see ant-man kill one of Thanos his lieutenants by seemingly accidentally standing on him and that right there is the problem because the kind of little victories we see in the endgame battle those work well when you have a small contained action with only a handful of characters but not so much when you have a battle involving whole armies of thousands of troops fighting one another the whole idea of an epic fight scene is to have a grandiose scale and an equally grand sense of progression to go along with it and if you fail to create that feeling of whole armies not individuals making progress in your battle you will undermine that epic feeling your battle otherwise could have hands I mean here's a good question that strikes at the root of this problem what does Thanos his army actually achieve in this scene remove Thanos entirely from the equation so it's just his forces left what objectives do his forces complete in this fight and that is exactly it his forces never do anything that actually affects the status quo of the battle Thanos his army could have been several thousand mannequins standing still in a field as the Avengers fight them as if they were real foes and the battle wouldn't have changed in the slightest for it and after a little for I realize that the only reason that his army is even on the field for a narrative perspective aside you know giving the excuse for a big fight is to stop the viewers from asking the question wait so why didn't all the heroes just rush Thanos at the exact same moment and that is a really poor basis for an epic battle every last bit of stake in the fight the only true source of dread in this climactic battle is what fan oohs as an individual achieves not his whole army as a collective getting closer to achieving a very tangible goal this is a critical problem with Avengers endgame because if you really had to boil down this battle it isn't actually about two armies fighting each other this battle is a disguise it's a front or even worse than that it's a setting the same way the opening scene of Pulp Fiction is set in a diner or the same way that Harry Potter is set in a medieval castle and what is the setting of this battle for a game of hot potato where Thanos is chasing all the characters around the battlefield trying to get the gauntlets this battle is not an epic one it is a small-scale one between a handful of characters fighting over a MacGuffin pretending to be something larger than it really is and no matter how well that game of hot potato is depicted it has a critical flaw because it simply is not epic enough a premise for the climax of the largest movie franchise in human history if you ask me this film really would have benefited from the roux so spending more time learning about creative writing I mean they're great storytellers there's no doubt about that but even the best always have another area they can and should dedicate themselves to improve on and that goes for you whether or not you're writing novels or screenplays or Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction if you dream about one day breaking into the industry and making writing your full-time job you should always be on the lookout for more resources to improve your craft and if you are a writer a great audiobook I can't recommend enough is save the cat by Blake Snyder for a listen that's just over five hours long it gives out an impressive amount of actionable advice and frankly fascinating insights throughout the movie industry that I've learned a ton from and you may be wondering why on earth is Henry recommending an audiobook in the middle of his video on Avengers end game well that's because it's a good audio book and also audible has ever so slightly sponsored today's a video but seriously I adore audible and listen to their audiobooks every day if I can help it the reason why I adore audible service and pretty much exclusively listen to audiobooks at this point rather than reading their paperback Cousins is because it's a fantastically easy way to optimize your time and fill in those mundane gaps of your life so a great example let's say that you're on your commute to work you could sit in the car or train and just stare out the window for an hour more or you could use that time to listen to an audio book get gripped in a brilliant story or just learn a ton about your chosen subjects for me personally the commute from my kitchen to my computer lasts all of 20 seconds so I'm not sure how well those seconds would be spent listening to an audio book but what I like to do is listen to novels and writing-related audiobooks just like this one while playing games and that works out great for me and if you click my link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or if you text closer look to 500 500 you will get any audiobook you like totally for free plus two audible originals totally for free plus a 30-day trial for free when you sign up through either of those options you'll get a credit for one free audiobook and you can use it to get any audiobook you want in there massive library but I recommend save the cap by Blake Schneider is a great place to start one caveat about save the cap while I add or save the Karin have learned a ton from it the book does have a tendency to suggest all of the tips in its are rules and that you simply must follow them otherwise your story will crumble and fail but if you put that aside and simply look at the advice as just guidelines for how to write a kick our story rather than the irrefutable laws of physics you will learn a ton from it like I've done and improve your craft and all you have to do to get started is click my link in the description that's audible.com forward slash closer look or text closer look to 500 500 and you'll get this brilliant audio book or any other one you like for no cost whatsoever anyway back to avenges endgame in the best epic battles there is give and take it's like a seesaw as we go from palpable dread to filled with hope and back to palpable dread as that hope gets undermined this is all a part of that grand story structure of the scene that we just talked about so as the enemy gets closer to achieving victory the heroes deploy a tactic that stifles the enemy progression and gives hook that there's a fighting chance then the enemy shift strategies and kills that hope the orcs charged the Forge creating dread the defenders loose arrows killing many of the attackers and creating hope the orcs put up ladders creating dread the heroes manage to kill those who climb and kick down the ladders creating hope but the orcs just keep raising more and overwhelm the defenders creating dread and then it gets even worse as the orcs placed bonds at the base of the wall Legolas tries to kill the guy with a torch but fails creating even more dread and then the whole wall explodes in this soul-crushing development of this battle the enemy has breached the wall and made a considerable amount of progress to securing victory on this seesaw of epic proportions the whole of the helms deep siege is just like this never spending too long in that dark dread to overwhelm the viewer never spending too long in hope and victory as when you spend too long focusing on hope and victory that in turn kills the terror of the moment and when we see exactly this as an audience we think well it's gonna be okay The Avengers will win this battle no problem because the past three minutes straight have been nothing but the heroes kicking the bad guys us in a very one-sided battle in my opinion the greatest epic battles out there in furnaces words are perfectly round it's all friendship they find a delicate balance between the two opposite feelings of hope and fear and this is something that Avengers endgame really falls flat on its ass within the final battle it is true that in this fight we have little moments of dread here and there Thanos nearly getting the gauntlet towards the end that does create dread spider-man getting hit by the cannons from Thanos his ship that creates dread - but these sparse moments of hopelessness they are utterly drowned in positivity and this feeling of victory to the point of its own detriment although now I see that out loud I kind of realize how cynical that may sound but he is an example of that so we have the admittedly hopeless moment with Hanno's a ship is bombarding the characters I mean no character we know are killed by this move in the battle and the only real effect that this has is spider-man getting hit but he does get at moments later only slightly winded so it's not really ok to give credit this is a hopeless moment then the ship turns all of its guns towards the sky giving the characters some relief as there is this gush of hope they open fire and do nothing to stop Captain Marvel as she barrels through Thanos his ship in this forty second long sequence as all the characters look up and smile in this hook filled moments then we immediately cut to Captain Marvel taking the gauntlet from spider-man passing on the torch this is yet another gush of hope then we have that diversity moment of all the women coming together which is yet another gush of hope then all of those women kick absolute arse and kill a ton of Thanos his soldiers with incredible ease this is another great gush of hope I'm sure you can see the point I'm making here because this whole two minutes section of the battle provides an utterly huge amount of yin and absolutely zero yang to go with it the heroes achieve victory after victory and deal with the situations so easily it actually kills our dramatic investment because how can we feel afraid for our characters when all they do is win win win and overcome ten hurdles in a row as if they were all only an inch tall I mean I'm a 22 year old with limited writing experience living in my mum's house I am no expert but right off the bat he is a better alternative for this sequence so we have Captain Marvel arrive in the exact same way she obliterates the ship and is doing a ton of damage to Thanos his army so let's change the battle a little bit so the Infinity stones get separated at one point and Thanos manages to get his hands on the space stone and after Captain Marvel is done obliterating his fleet she screams towards him ready to take his head off when fellows simply waves his hand and using the space stone teleports Captain Marvel to the other side of the Milky Way and she appears somewhere so outrageously far away that it would take a literal years just to travel back to earth which would be a really cool and creative way of you the magic system that they've already established in the Infinity stones so in this improved version of the fight we have that victorious feeling of Captain Marvel's arrival and all of a sudden Thanos obliterates that hope by taking out the Avengers most powerful member with a literal wave of his hand what we've done here is we haven't radically altered what was in endgame we've just optimized it doesn't that sound so much more exhilarating to watch than three minutes of positive beat after positive beats when you compliment the positive moments with the negative like a never-ending sandwich it makes any fight scene or screw it just any scene so much more gripping it makes the positive moments more heroic and the negative ones more soul-crushing and it's something that the climactic battle of Avengers endgame almost entirely fails to do and if you thought I'd run out of reasons where the end battle of Avengers end game is flawed make I haven't even started by this point because another flaw in the Battle of endgame the viewer has an extremely poor understanding of the geography so in Helm's Deep the audience at all times has a comprehensive understanding as to where the characters are and what they're doing let's take this part of the siege when the lower area is already breached and the orcs are trying to access the keep we know that Aragorn and Gimli are at the ramp stalling the orc so the defenders can barricade the door we know that the orcs try setup ladders to reach the keep and Legolas is on the battlements trying to repel them and the fact that Jackson establishes actually strong understanding of exactly where everyone is and what they're doing it does more than just prevent confusion it makes the twists and turns the battle that come up later all the more satisfying but how does this easy to Grass geography make the scene more satisfying to watch well here's one example well Aragorn Gimli are exposed on the ramp they ordered by the king to retreat because the barricade has been re-established but now how the hell are they gonna get out of there they have a solid wooden door to their back and an army of Orcs to their front we feel genuinely worried for our characters as they seem to have route of escape then Legolas appears up above and throws down a rope saving their lives and this right here makes for a really satisfying beat in the overall battle and part of the reason the save by Legolas is so cathartic is because of the audience's comprehensive understanding of the geography they know that moments before Legolas was repelling the ladders right here on the battlements so in the viewers mind it makes complete and perfect sense that Legolas is in the right place at the right time to save their lives as all these have to do is run along grab some rope and then throw it down because the audience completely understands where everyone is and what they're doing it makes every beat of the fight more satisfying but here's another similar moment in avengers endgame so Black Panther gets hit by Thanos so then Thanos charges in to finish the kill when Scarlet Witch flies down from the sky to save Black Panthers life but there is something horribly wrong with this beat in the battle because for some reason that moment in Helms deep where Legolas throws down the rope is cathartic and this moment an end game isn't even half as satisfying to watch and why until this moment when she comes down from the sky the audience has no idea where Scarlet Witch even is on the battlefield and as a result of this poor understanding this moment has zero foreshadowing and when you reveal any form of twist in a story with zero foreshadowing it always has a watered down effect as opposed to when it does I mean the moment of Captain America lifting Thor's hammer was powerful but it would have been nowhere near as powerful if we have never had that moment in age of Ultron when cap nearly lifts the hammer but no one else who tried could and that concept applies to everything in storytelling including those little moments where in the heat of battle a character leaps in to save another from a killing blow when you provide no foreshadowing at best your twist will be a met moment that evokes little emotion in the all at worst it will feel like lazy writing and the audience will feel frustrated as they feel like they've been cheated by the fact that you pulled a mini deus ex machina and saved your characters life in a totally unforeseen way I mean this moment of Scarlet Witch coming to Black Panthers aid you could have replaced her with literally any of the other characters who are on the battlefield and it would have made equally as much sense because of how poorly this moment was set up and that is a really damning thing to say now for those of you out there who are longtime subscribers of this channel you'll know that I hate being just a cynic I hate to just criticize and not provide something constructive so today let's use the end of Avengers endgame as a case study for how to craft a really epic battle so let's go one by one on the issues we've identified and apply a fix of them so we can outline an improved version of this fight all the while learning a few things along the way for our own writing so problem 1 this battle lacks a sense of progression all we really have in this scene are two armies in the field punching each other until one side gets snapped away from existence so let's take a page from Lord of the Rings book and say that the Avengers aren't missing Thanos in a field rather they are defending a location let's make it a siege so how about we establish a few things first in this new battle so first we're going to change the rules ever so slightly in order to use more than one Infinity stone you simply need to use the Infinity Gauntlet if anyone even tries to hold more than two stones at any one time without the gauntlet they evaporate into dust almost immediately let's tweak the story just a little bit and say that the gauntlet Thanos had commissioned by Peter Dinklage is the only gauntlet in existence that can hold all of the stones they took it off Thanos body after Thor killed him at the start of endgame and that is the gauntlet that Hulk used to reverse the snap and let's say that just after Hope does the snap nebula as she does in the film let Stannis through the portal but then tries to steal the Infinity Gauntlet and the Avengers manage to pass we stopped her plans as they take away the Infinity stones before she can get the glove so before this epic battle has begun the Avengers have all of the stones and Thanos has the only device capable of using them and the second thing we establish Thanos existing in the future is a paradox forget alternate timelines and dimensions vir status being here is a complete paradox however the Infinity stones are enabling that paradox as they are from his time if the Avengers can manage to repair the time machine that nebula destroyed then send the stones back to where they belong then the paradox will be rendered impossible and Thanos and his armies will be ripped away from our timeline and sent back to their own with no memory of the event in effect if the Avengers send the stones back in time they win the battle and all of a sudden we have an improved premise Tony and Bruce and ant-man are in the time-machine room desperately trying to repair the device all the wealth fans in his army are seizing the Avengers compound trying to reach the time machine before it can be reactivated and already this idea is a better one than the one we got because it allows us to have a strong sense of progression as Stannis's army beats the Avengers and gets closer and closer to the time machine room and the second problem we identified this battle is not enough of an emotional rollercoaster we spend too long focusing on hope when we should have had a better balance with dreads so how can we fix them well firstly let's add that idea of Captain Marvel to strengthen as a ship then being teleported to another galaxy but also how about we altered the story a little so Black Widow actually survives her trip to acquire the soul stone and is there at the final fight so then we get this heartbreaking scene where maybe she sacrifices her life to save Hawkeye or Captain America but Bruce is watching the security feed and he sees her die and he just breaks down crying but then something snaps he just breaks he boils into a complete total feral rage the likes of which we have never seen before unknowingly Thanos had killed the person that Hawke loved the most and as a result made him more angry than he had ever been for at any points in history and Thanos accidentally unleashes the true power of the Hulk that he'd been suppressing all of this time so then Hulk charges onto the field and massacres his way through Thanos his forces in this epic switch as we get the tragedy of black widows death this truly sad moment then the gush of hope as hope tears through thanasis forces in retaliation the more you fill the battle with moments like that the more gripping and exhilarating that fight gets but also let's take another page from Lord of the Rings so a great be in the helms deep siege as Gandalf or he says he's gonna fetch reinforcements for the upcoming battle and he says to Aragorn midway through the film then at the very height of the helms deep siege as the enemy has neared total control over the fort and all hope seems lost we see the sunlight of a new day spill through the window then a few minutes later the cavalry arrives on the hill and charges in this glorious hope-filled moment has the final beat of this battle well how about we take the portal scene and just move him Tapan a little later on in the fight so immediately after nebulus steel was the gauntlet and the avengers begin their race to build the machine Doctor Strange teleports by with spider-man and the rest of the guys from Titan and promises further reinforcements he says that he'll go around and muster every last soldier he can find but you can't just snap your fingers and have an army come all at once organizing such a force takes time he says give me two hours then teleports away to gather the troops then that way when the battle is well underway and all hope seems lost Thanos is knocking on the time rooms door and cap is facing him down ready to die we see a portal on the hill then several more and before you know it Doctor Strange is back with the reinforcements that he promised in this incredible hopeful moment in the middle of such a dark one where the Avengers have been all but totally defeated when you have it in this way you still have the same portal scene but you place it in the middle of this well-structured dread and hope-filled story it makes the scene even more powerful than already was as it serves as another beats in this epic battle but then just the whole MCU arrives in the battlefield in this glorious moment Thanos dispatches of Captain America gets the reality stone then the time stone and adds them to his gauntlet so now sure we have the whole MCU rhymers much needed reinforcements but Thanos now has three Infinity stones on his gauntlet the last time he had three stones the Avengers didn't even stand a chance does the entire MCU even stand a chance at beating Thanos at this point that right there is how you structure an epic climax to the largest franchise in human history not with five minutes of punching a generic CGI army until they're all dead and how do we sign off this epic battle every battle needs an apex so what's ours well it's simple we take that fight we got in the film of Thor cap and Tony versus Thanos and we simply shift it to take place in the teleport room right at the very end of this climactic battle so this is the true climax of the film when every other Avenger is defeated or too far away to help we see the three original Avengers the last line of defense take the final stand against Thanos to decide once and for all the fate of the universe so now when Thanos is hurting Thor and we get this moment where the hammer lifts and Captain America kicks Thanos his ass with it I mean that moment in endgame was already exceptionally powerful but now in this new context when it comes at ly true all hope is lost moments I don't think I need to tell you how unquestionably epic that would be that is the reason why I was so disappointed with the end of Avengers endgame because that right there was the climax that we should have had and honestly what did we actually change in order to get this vastly improved version of the battle well it's simple all we did make it so the Avengers were defending a location rather than just meeting in a field we gave fellows a very tangible goal and location that he slowly works his way towards achieving and we complimented all of the positive moments with moments of dread and when you know that we could have had that it's such a crying shame that we were left with the one we gots am i right or am I wrong if you were in the place of the Russo brothers how would you have done this scene I'd love to know what you think in the comments down below anyway thanks for watching and I'll see you guys next time on a closer look

Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 2,704,134

Keywords: avenger, avengers, endgame, avengers endgame, end game, marvel, video, essay, video essay, iron man, captain america, thor, captain marvel, battle, climax, the closer look, closer look, the closer, lord of the rings, lotr, how to, guide, advice, thanos, infinity war, infinity, russo, helms deep

Id: m8VU2GwkBtY

Length: 33min 49sec (2029 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 12 2019