Avengers Endgame - How To Waste A Climax

the final battle of the

avengers

finale was a tragic

waste

of potential now just before you hit the dislike button let's make one thing clear overall the end of the

avengers

finale was left standing iron man sacrificed captain America going back in time with the portal scene, the fight with the big three facing Thanos, all of that was just a fantastic spectacle. I mean, if you tell me you didn't have the biggest smile on your face when Captain America picked up the neon year, you're either a liar or you're just not a human being, but this video essay isn't about that, it's about this , so first we have the portal scene and it's chilling.

We have this great shot of the entire MCU lining up for their final fight and this portal is incredible. The scene left me on the edge of my seat with anticipation for this epic battle that was about to take place. I mean, the entire MCU has been building up to this point. This is going to be one of the most epic battle scenes ever created and after this extraordinarily well-executed build-up, we see everyone remembering each other and I was sorely disappointed that we didn't get this nail-biting

climax

of epic heavenly proportions that had everyone watching. nervous beyond belief about the fate of these characters we love.

We had a five-minute scene of these hundreds of characters just punching and blasting their way through a CGI army, a fight in very few spots. Does it really achieve that strong dread that any good

climax

needs and were the Russos trying to create ? said dread in this battle maybe they didn't completely fail, but they seriously could have done a much better job because the epic finale to the biggest franchise in movie history is essentially the same scene we've all seen hundreds of times before, It's just that instead of a few characters they involved a few hundred this time and okay, I imagine some of you are already making a completely valid point, but can't you see that this scene doesn't have to be a masterpiece of a battle?

Why is it a celebration? From everything that happened before, the moment is great because of all the groundwork, all the movies and character arcs that have made this moment possible, they are the reason why this scene is good, that is a very good point and , however, is a very correct point. That point is exactly the problem because the reason this scene is good is because of all the work that preceded it and if you remove all the context to be left with this battle scene itself, this scene will not do anything bad and in terms from battles we've seen before on our screens like the Battle of the Bastards, the opening of Saving Private Ryan, the battle for the Minister, if the ending of Avengers Endgame doesn't even compare to the candle, I mean, when you look in the siege of Helms Deep for example, the plot to destroy the One Ring, the character goes through the world building and all the grand narration done before the scene begins, that's just part of the many reasons why the siege of Helms Deep is so legendary.

The main reason for the battle is because this entire craft level battle is a masterpiece and does a lot of things right at the end of the Avengers ending. He was wrong and this, of course, presents the question of why the siege of Helm's Deep felt so crowded and epic and exciting, while the

endgame

climax just didn't do that - how do you make an epic fight? epic and how to do it right? There are several things that the end of the Avengers battle does not achieve and the most important is that making a big fight scene is like any scene in your story, it is telling a story in miniature, you can't do what a child does With their toys, you can't just grab all your characters, throw them onto the field along with there's no clear rhyme or reason as they face off, and suddenly one side wins the battle with a single move.

For an epic battle to appear more engaging, it needs to be structured as its own story and be more epic. The battle, the more complex the story must be. When you watch the siege of Helm's Deep, you can see exactly this in action. We have the exhibition beforehand. We know who the characters are. We know why they are fighting and why they try to attack. to kill them we have survived the battlefield we know what the fort looks like with the ramps and the doors and the general defenses we know that the attackers are aware of a weakness in the fall which is a drainage door that they plan to exploit we have the calm before the storm as the enemy slowly advances, we have the inciting incident when one of the archers accidentally kills a dog and then throughout the fight we have this escalating action as the fight progresses and the orcs overwhelmed the defenders every more and more as they went.

They reached their breaking point and I'm not going to belabor the point, but the entire siege of Helm's Deep could have been its own short film due to its brilliantly executed structure, but honestly, the main reason why, in my opinion, The siege of Helm's Deep is such a compelling battle scene and the reason the

endgame

isn't so compelling is that same ingredient I just mentioned, the ingredient of progression, and if you ask me when a battle scene fails to be convincing, it's usually for this exact reason, I mean throughout the end of the game. In the fight, we see the heroes kill some of Thanos, his goons, then we see them kill some more of his goons, then more, more, more, and what I think is really damning is that for the first two minutes and in the middle of this battle, nothing really happens. for a lot of Wiz and punches and fights and punches, a lot of nothing really comes from that, the dynamics of the fight in the first two and a half minutes never change in favor of either side, I mean the battle doesn't even have a beat in their story until the moment when they mention oh, hey, by the way, we need to get the coordinates of Ant Man's truck and finally, after two and a half minutes of hitting, the characters actually have a goal they must achieve, which giving them the fight with 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? It is a simple progression that is indicated by the terrain taken. Now of course this isn't the only way to progress a fight, but as the siege of the helms progresses we see the auxiliaries charge the wall, set up ladders and climb up and then destroy the wall in this crushing blow to the heroes, allowing the orcs to enter the courtyard en masse and advance further towards the fort and this continues as the enemy advances further and breaks defense line after defense line, now the endgame does not totally fail in this aspect, I mean, there.

It's that moment where Captain Marvel destroys Thanos' ship and it creates a great sense of progression as the dynamics of the fight change, but overall we have very few examples of this big change in the status quo, since one side as a whole gains an advantage over the other and at this point one of the main reasons the endgame doesn't feel truly epic is because it spends too much time focusing on the micro, while other battles show that the armies As a whole they have successes and failures. The end of the game only shows the individuals having Successes and Failures, we have Scarlet Witch successfully attacking Thanos and doing some damage, we see the woman form and kill a group of banished thugs and we see Ant-Man Killing one of his Thanos lieutenants apparently accidentally standing over him and that's it.

The problem is that the kind of small victories we see in final battles work well when you have a small contained action with just a handful of characters, but not so much when you have a battle that involves entire armies of thousands of troops fighting each other. The whole idea of ​​an epic fight scene is to have a grandiose scale and an equally grandiose sense of progression to go with it, and if you fail to create that feeling of entire armies, not individuals, progressing through your battle, you will undermine that epic feeling in your battle. . Otherwise, the battle could get hands-on.

I mean, here's a good question that gets to the root of this problem. What does Thanos actually accomplish with his army in this scene? He removes Thanos completely from the equation, so only his forces remain. What objectives complete his forces in this fight? and that's exactly what his forces never do anything to really affect the status quo of the battle. Thanos, his army could have been several thousand mannequins standing in a field while the Avengers fight them as if they were real enemies and the battle wasn't. I've changed in the slightest and after a bit I realize that the only reason his army is even on the field for a separate narrative perspective, you know, giving the excuse for a big fight is to prevent the viewers ask the question, wait. so why didn't all the heroes attack Thanos at exactly the same moment and that's a really poor basis for an epic battle?

An individual does not achieve all of his or her ability as a collective to get closer to achieving a very tangible goal. This is a critical problem with the Avengers ending because if you were to really sum up this battle, it's not really about two armies fighting each other, this battle is. a costume is a facade or even worse than that it is a setting in the same way that the opening scene of Pulp Fiction takes place in a restaurant or in the same way that Harry Potter takes place in a medieval castle and what is the setting of this battle for a game of hot potato where Thanos chases all the characters around the battlefield trying to get the gauntlets.

This battle isn't epic, it's small scale between a handful of characters fighting over a MacGuffin that pretends to be something bigger than it really is. is and no matter how well that game of hot potato is portrayed, it has a critical flaw because it simply isn't an epic enough premise for the climax of the biggest film franchise in human history. If you ask me, this movie would have really benefited from the roux, so spend more time learning about creative writing. I mean, they are great storytellers, there's no doubt about that, but even the best always have another area they can and should dedicate themselves to improving and that applies to you, whether you write or not. novels or scripts or Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction, if you dream of 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're a writer, a great audiobook .

I can't recommend Blake Snyder's Save the Cat highly enough for a listen that runs just over five hours and provides an impressive amount of practical advice and downright fascinating insight into the film industry that I've learned a ton from and you may have too. you are. I wonder why Henry recommends an audiobook in the middle of his video about the end of the Avengers. Well, that's because it's a good audiobook and Audible has lightly sponsored today's video, but seriously, I love Audible and I listen to the audiobook of it every day. If I can help it, the reason I love Audible and almost exclusively listen to audiobooks right now instead of reading their paperback cousins ​​is because it's an incredibly easy way to optimize your time and fill those mundane gaps in your life so that great example, let's say you're on the way to work, you can sit in the car or train and just stare out the window for another hour or you can use that time to listen to an audiobook and get caught up in a brilliant story or just learn a ton On the topics chosen for me, personally, the trip from my kitchen to my computer takes 20 seconds, so I'm not sure how well those seconds would be spent listening to an audiobook, but what I like to do is listen. to writing related novels and audiobooks like this while I play and that works great for me and if you click on my link in the description which is audible.com slash look closer or if you text look more of close to 500 500 you will get any audiobook you like totally free plus two audible originals totally free plus a 30 day free trial when you sign up through any of those options you will get a credit for a free audiobook and you can use it to get any audiobook you want a huge library but I recommend saving the cover by Blake Schneider is a great place to start a warning about saving the cover while adding or saving Karin has learned a ton from it the book tends to suggest everything The advice in it is rules and you just have to follow them, otherwise your story will fall apart and fail, but if you leave that aside and simply look at the advice as guidelines on how to write a good story rather than the irrefutable laws of physics.

You will learn a lot like I have done and you will improve your craft and everything.what you have to do to get started is click on my link in the description which is audible.com forward slash look closer or text look closer to 500 500 and you will get this brilliant audiobook or any other that you want at no cost anyway. Back at the end of Avengers in the best epic battles ever. It's like a seesaw as we go from palpable fear to hope and back to palpable fear. As that hope is undermined, this is all part of that larger story structure of the scene we just talked about, so that as the enemy gets closer to achieving victory, the heroes deploy a tactic that it stifles the enemy's progression and hints that there is a chance to fight.

Then the enemy changes strategy and kills that hope. The orcs charged against the Forge, creating fear. The defenders released arrows, killing many of the attackers and creating hope. The orcs raised stairs, creating fear. The heroes managed to kill those who climbed and knocked down the stairs. kicks creating hope but the orcs continue to surge and overwhelm the defenders.creating dread and then it gets even worse when the orcs placed restraints 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 heartbreaking development to this battle.

The enemy has breached the wall and made considerable progress to secure victory in this seesaw of epic proportions. The entire deep helmet siege is like this. Never spend too much time on that dark fear to overwhelm the viewer. Never spend too much time on hope. and victory as when you spend too much time focusing on hope and victory, which in turn kills the terror of the moment and when we see exactly this as an audience we think everything will be okay. The Avengers will win this battle easily because the last three. The minutes in a row have been nothing more than the heroes kicking the bad guys in a very one-sided battle, in my opinion, the greatest epic battles that exist in the ovens.

The words are perfectly round. It's all friendship. They find a delicate balance between the two opposing feelings of hope. and fear and this is something that the Avengers ending really falls flat on its face in the final battle. It's true that in this fight we have little moments of dread here and there. Thanos almost gets the gauntlet towards the end that creates Spider-Man's terror. being hit by the cannons of Thanos, his ship, that creates dread, but these rare moments of hopelessness are completely drowned in positivity and this feeling of victory to the point of its own detriment, although now I see it out loud, I realize of the cynical That may sound, but he is an example of that, so we have the certainly desperate moment with Hanno, a ship is bombarding the characters.

I mean, no character we know dies with this move in battle and the only real effect this has is that of a spider. The man is hit, but moments later he's just a little out of breath, so it's a no-brainer. This is a desperate moment, then the ship turns all its cannons towards the sky, which gives the characters some relief, as there is a glimmer of hope. open fire and do nothing to stop Captain Marvel as he tears through Thanos' ship in this forty-second long sequence as all the characters look up and smile in these hook-filled moments, then we immediately cut to Captain Marvel taking up the gauntlet of Spider-Man's passing. at the torch, this is another spurt of hope, then we have that moment of diversity where all the women come together, which is another spurt of hope, then all those women kick ass and kill a ton of Thanos, their soldiers , with incredible ease.

Another great burst of hope. I'm sure you can see what I'm saying here because this entire two-minute section of the battle provides an absolutely enormous amount of yin and absolutely zero yang to go with it, the heroes achieving victory after victory and dealing with situations with such ease that it actually kills our dramatic investment because how can we feel scared for our characters when all they do is win, win, win, and overcome ten obstacles in a row like they're all just an inch tall? a 22 year old guy with limited writing experience who lives in my mom's house.

I'm no expert, but from the beginning it's a better alternative for this sequence, so Captain Marvel arrives exactly the same way she destroys the ship and is doing a lot. of damage to Thanos his army, so let's change the battle a little so that the Infinity stones separate at one point and Thanos manages to get his hands on the space stone and after Captain Marvel finishes destroying his fleet, she she screams ready to take. His head splits when the companions simply wave their hand and use the space stone to teleport Captain Marvel to the other side of the Milky Way and she appears somewhere so outrageously far away that it would take literally years just to travel back to Earth. , which would be a really cool and creative take on the magic system they've already established in the Infinity Stones, so in this enhanced version of the fight we get that victorious feeling of Captain Marvel arriving and suddenly, Thanos erases that hope by eliminating the most powerful member of the Avengers with a literal wave of his hand.

What we've done here is we haven't radically altered what was in the endgame. We have simply optimized it. It doesn't sound much more exciting to watch than three minutes of positive things. Beat after positive beat, when you complement the positive moments with the negative ones like an endless sandwich, it makes any fight scene or to hell with any scene that much more gripping, it makes the positive moments more heroic and the negative ones more heartbreaking and it's something that Avengers Endgame's climactic battle almost fails to do and if you thought I'd run out of reasons why Avengers Endgame's final battle is flawed, I haven't even started at this point because there's another flaw in the endgame battle, the viewer has an extremely poor understanding of geography, so in Helm's Deep the audience at all times has a comprehensive understanding of where the characters are and what they are doing.

Let's take this part of the siege when the lower area is already breached and the orcs are trying to access the fortress. We know that Aragorn and Gimli are on the ramp holding off the orcs so the defenders can barricade the door. We know that the orcs are trying to put up ladders to get to the fortress and Legolas is on the battlements trying. to repel them, and the fact that Jackson establishes a really solid understanding of exactly where everyone is and what they're doing, does more than just prevent confusion, it makes the twists and turns of the battle that ensue afterwards even more satisfying, but does How does this work?

Grass's easy geography makes the scene more satisfying to watch - well, here's an example. Aragorn Gimli is exposed on the ramp that the king ordered removed because the barricade has been reestablished, but now how the hell are they going to get out of there? They have a solid wooden door in their back and an army of Orcs in front, we feel genuinely worried for our characters as they seem to have an escape route, then Legolas appears above and throws a rope to save their lives and this here It makes for a really satisfying pace in the overall battle and part of the reason Legolas's salvation is so cathartic is because of the audience's comprehensive understanding of the geography, they know that moments before Legolas was repelling the stairs just here on the battlements, so viewers keep in mind that it makes complete and perfect sense for Legolas to be in the right place at the right time to save their lives, since all they have to do is run, grab a rope and then throw it away because the audience completely understands where everyone is and what they are.

What we're doing makes every beat of the fight more satisfying, but here's another similar moment in the Avengers finale, where Thanos punches Black Panther and then Thanos charges in to finish the carnage as Scarlet Witch flies out of the sky to save Black Panther's life, but there's something terribly wrong with this pacing in the battle because for some reason that moment in Helms Deep where Legolas throws the rope is cathartic and this endgame moment isn't half as satisfying to watch. and why until this moment when she descends from the sky, the audience has no idea where Scarlet Witch is on the battlefield and as a result of this misunderstanding, this moment has no foreshadowing and when you reveal any kind of twist in a story without any foreshadowing, always has a watered down.

Downstream effect rather than when it does. I mean, the moment when Captain America lifted Thor's hammer was powerful, but it wouldn't have been as powerful if we never had that moment in Age of Ultron when Captain almost lifted the hammer but no one else did. whoever tried could, and that concept applies to everything in storytelling, including those little moments where, in the heat of battle, one character leaps to save another from a fatal blow when you provide no foreshadowing, at best. In most cases, your turn will be a mixed moment that evokes little emotion. At worst, it will feel like lazy writing and the audience will be frustrated because they will feel like they have been cheated by the fact that you pulled a mini deus ex machina and saved your characters' lives in a totally unforeseen way.

The moment Scarlet Witch came to the aid of the Black Panthers, you could have literally replaced her with any of the other characters that are on the battlefield and it would have made the same sense because of how poorly this moment was set up and that's really damning. What I have to say now for those of you who are long time subscribers to this channel, you will know that I hate to just be a cynic. I hate to just criticize and not provide something constructive, so today let's use the ending of Avengers: Endgame as a case in point.

Let's study how to create a truly epic battle, so let's look at the problems we've identified one by one and apply a solution so we can outline an improved version of this fight while learning a few things along the way for our Written on my own, so the problem 1, this battle lacks any sense of progression, all we really have in this scene is two armies on the field beating each other until one side disappears, so let's take a page from the Lord of the Rings book and say that. The Avengers aren't missing Thanos in a field, they are defending a location.

Let's turn it into a siege. How about we establish a few things first in this new battle? So first we are going to change the rules slightly so that you can use more than one Infinity Stone, you simply need to use the Infinity Gauntlet, if someone tries to hold more than two stones at a time without the gauntlet, they evaporate into dust almost of Right away, let's modify the story a little and say that the glove Thanos had commissioned by Peter Dinklage is the only glove in existence that can hold all the stones that were removed from Thanos' body after Thor killed him at the beginning of the endgame and that's the gauntlet that Hulk used to reverse the snap and let's just say that right after Hope makes the nebula like she does in the movie, she lets Stannis through the portal, but then he tries to steal the Infinity Gauntlet and the Avengers get through, We stop her plans when the Infinity Stones are taken from her before she can get the gauntlet.

Before this epic battle begins, the Avengers have all the stones and Thanos has the only device capable of using them and the second we establish that Thanos exists in the future is a paradox. Forget alternate timelines and dimensions and the state of being here is a complete paradox. However, the Infinity Stones allow for that paradox as they are from their time, if the Avengers manage to repair the time machine that the nebula destroyed and then send the stones back to where they belong, then the paradox will become impossible and Thanos and their armies will be ripped 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 suddenly we have an improved premise: Tony, Bruce and Ant-Man are in the time machine room, desperately trying to repair the device, all the wealth freaks in their army are taking over the Avengers compound trying to get to the time machine before it can reactivate and this idea is already better than the one we have because it allows us to have a strong sense of progression as Stannis' army defeats the Avengers and gets closer and closer to the time machine room and the second problem that We identify, this battle is not enough of an emotional roller coaster, we passtoo much time focusing on hope when we should.

We have had a better balance with dreadlocks, so how can we fix them well? First, let's add the idea of ​​Captain Marvel being strengthened like a ship and then teleported to another galaxy, but also how about we alter the story a little so that Black Widow actually survives her journey? to acquire the soul stone and it's there in the final fight, then we have this heartbreaking scene where maybe she sacrifices her life to save Hawkeye or Captain America, but Bruce is watching the security feed and sees her die and he just breaks down crying, but then something breaks, he just breaks, he boils in total feral rage like we've never seen before.

Thanos had unknowingly killed the person Hawke loved most, and as a result, made him angrier than ever. points in the story and Thanos accidentally unleashes the Hulk's true power that he had been suppressing all this time, then the Hulk charges onto the field and slaughters Thanos through his forces in this epic turn as we have the Black Widows tragedy. death, this truly sad moment, then the gush of hope as hope rips through Thanasis' forces in retaliation, the more you fill the battle with moments like that, the more gripping and exciting the fight becomes, but let's also take another page from The Lord of the Rings, so it's cool. be in the deep helm siege as Gandalf or says he is going to get reinforcements for the next battle and tells Aragorn halfway through the movie and then at the highest point of the deep helm siege when the enemy has approached the control Total about the fort and everything.

Hope seems lost, we see the sunlight of a new day pour through the window and then a few minutes later the cavalry comes to the hill and charges in this glorious moment filled with hope, it has the final blow of this battle, well how about we take the portal scene? and just move Tapan a little bit later in the fight, so immediately after Nebulus Steel was the gauntlet and the Avengers begin their race to build the machine. Doctor Strange teleports with Spider-Man and the rest of the Titan boys and promises more reinforcements. He says that he will go and gather 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 and then teleports to meet them. the troops then that way when the battle is already underway and all hope seems lost Thanos is knocking on the door to the time room and the cap is in front of him ready to die, we see a portal on the hill, then several more and before Before you know it, Doctor Strange is back with the reinforcements he promised in this incredible moment of hope in the midst of such a dark one where the Avengers have been almost totally defeated.

When you have it this way, you still have the same portal scene, but you place it in the middle of this well-structured story full of fear and hope, it makes the scene even more powerful than it already was, as it serves as another pace in this epic battle, but then the entire MCU hits the battlefield in this glorious moment. Thanos sends Captain America getting the Reality Stone, then the Time Stone and adding them to his gauntlet, so now it's safe. we have all the much needed reinforcements of the MCU rhymes but Thanos now has three infinity stones in his gauntlet the last time he had three stones the Avengers didn't even have a chance does the entire MCU have any chance of beating Thanos in this point?

This is how you structure an epic climax for the biggest franchise in human history, not with five minutes of beating a generic CGI army until everyone is dead and how we sign off on this epic battle. Every battle needs a vertex, so what is ours? It's simple, we took that fight we had in the Thor Cap and Tony versus Thanos movie and just changed it to take place in the teleportation room right at the end of this climactic battle, so this is the true climax of the movie. When every other Avengers is defeated or too far away to help, we see the original three Avengers, the last line of defense take the last stand against Thanos to decide once and for all the fate of the universe, so now when Thanos is hurting Thor, we have this moment. where the hammer is raised and Captain America kicks Thanos' ass.

I mean, that moment at the end of the game was already exceptionally powerful, but now, in this new context, when it becomes truly true, all hope is lost, moments where I don't think I need to tell you. how unquestionably epic it would be, that's why I was so disappointed with the ending of the Avengers finale because right there was the climax we should have had and honestly, what did we really change to get this massively improved version of the game? battle, well it's simple, all we did was have the Avengers defend a location instead of just gathering in a field.

We gave the companions a very tangible goal and location that they gradually strive to achieve and we complemented all the positive moments with moments. of dread and when you know that we could have had that, it is a shame that we have stayed with the one we have, am I right or am I wrong? If you were in the Russo brothers' shoes, how would you have done this scene? Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments below, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time for a closer look.