Like many Disney movies, Avengers: Endgame threads the needle between age groups, trying
to offer a solid story that youngsters and adults can appreciate, but also adding enough
mom-and-pop jokes to keep Mom and Pop engaged. Avengers: Endgame had plenty of things that
went right over kids' heads. Spoilers ahead.
After the five-year time jump early in the film, we see Captain America leading a grief
counseling group meant to help people move on after Thanos' snap. With half the living
creatures in the universe gone, there are a lot of issues left unresolved.
All the surviving Avengers are struggling to move on after the weight of a crushing,
genocidal loss that's beyond alien to most kids. Adults, on the other hand, are more
likely to key into what are obviously some largely unhealthy coping mechanisms for the
Avengers' loss. Of them all, Tony is the closest to moving on in a healthy way, but he's done
so by moving as far into the country as he can so as to never engage with the wreckage
of his biggest heartbreak. He's deep in denial, to the point where he kicks the Avengers out
when they try to convince him there's a chance to make things right.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers:
Endgame are built on father issues. You've got the ultimate abusive big dad in Thanos,
who tells everyone he meets that his genocidal warpath is all for the good of the people
he's killing; that he's actually being the good guy by doing the bad thing for the right
reasons. Then you've got Tony Stark, who struggles with being a father figure for Peter Parker,
and for whom the latter's death weighs heavily enough in Endgame to lead Tony to undertake
a mission through time to bring Spider-Man back. Then there's Thor, who often struggles
under the weight of his own father's expectations.
Basically, a lot of the Avengers are working through their dad issues, which is crystallized
in a long moment of Tony talking to his father, Howard Stark, while on a mission through time
in the 1970s. Tony manages to have a pretty in-depth heart-to-heart with his old man,
even though Howard has no idea that he's actually talking to his son. Tony finally gets to work
through some of his feelings and admit that Howard was a pretty good dad underneath it
all. It's the kind of perspective that you're not likely to get until you're well on your
way to becoming a dad yourself.
"What is and always will be my greatest creation is you."
When Thor and Rocket go back to Asgard to get the Reality Stone, the God of Thunder
pretty immediately gets sidetracked when he sees his mother, Frigga. Thor remembers that
the day they're visiting Asgard is the same day his mother dies in the past, which brings
up some understandably complicated emotions for him. Frigga finds him, however, and they're
able to have one last loaded conversation about family, the future, and the burden of
expectations.
It's the kind of perfect last conversation that many adults wish they could have had
with their parents after they've passed. That level of melancholic fantasy isn't common
for most kids, thankfully, and the opportunity for Thor to have one last chat with his doomed
mother likely put more than a few adults in the audience to tears. Real people don't have
the ability to go back in time and get closure with their parents, but plenty have dreamed
of the chance.
While Captain America has been leading therapy sessions, and Natasha has been leading superhero
teams, Thor has been leading New Asgard… at least in terms of alcohol consumption.
The massive amount of alcohol Thor's been drinking has given the God of Thunder a bit
of a beer gut, which leads to a handful of fat jokes throughout the rest of the movie.
He's clearly dealing with depression and grief, and it's led him into a destructive lifestyle
that's radically changed his body. Kids may or may not recognize that Thor's newly rotund
figure is a product of beer drinking, and they certainly aren't going to clue into Thor's
decision to look for a way out of the emptiness of his life at the bottom of a bottle.
When it comes to time travel in movies, things almost never make sense for very long. Most
of the time, these movies just kind of ask you to accept the basic concept and ignore
anything weird that happens later. Endgame, however, spends a lot of time calling out
various misconceptions about how time travel works in the MCU. Movies get involved when
Rhodey and Scott Lang list off some of their time travel favorites: Back to the Future,
Hot Tub Time Machine, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Star Trek, Quantum Leap, Time Cop,
and The Terminator.
Most kids aren't going to have seen more than a couple of movies on the list, and they rattle
them off so quickly that even adults might have trouble keeping up. Still, even if you
were quick enough to recognize the films and remember each one's specific rules regarding
time travel, it doesn't matter. Hulk pretty quickly shuts Rhodey and Scott down immediately
by telling them that they're all wrong.
After Scott finally escapes the Quantum Realm thanks to a helpful rat, he has to alert a
security guard to let him and his Quantum Realm doohickeys out of the storage space
they're being held in. That security guard is played by none other than Ken Jeong, who's
previously worked with the Russo brothers on the series Community.
"And a one, a two, a Chang Chang Chang four."
The cameo alone might be enough to mention here, but there's one more detail in that
scene that's just for adults.
The security guard is reading J. G. Ballard's The Terminal Beach, a collection of science-fiction
short stories. One of the most famous stories in The Terminal Beach is called "End-Game."
It doesn't bear many similarities to the film, but the shared title is certainly no coincidence.
If you thought there was something vaguely familiar about Thor's hair, beard, and sunglasses,
you weren't the only one. Tony Stark noticed, too. For a good chunk of the film, it seems
like Chris Hemsworth's Thor is taking style lessons from Jeff Bridges' The Dude, of Big
Lebowski fame.
"I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me, you know?"
The R-rated cult classic from 1998 isn't a movie that most kids are going to be familiar
with, but Endgame isn't content to just leave it as a visual gag.
When Stark calls Thor "Lebowski" in passing, it takes the quick gag into meta territory.
Bridges played both the Dude and also Obadiah Stane way back in Iron Man. Stane was Tony's
business partner and, eventually, his supervillainous rival as Iron Monger. That Tony is the one
to call Thor out on his resemblance to one of Bridges' less-villainous roles is icing
on a cake that's just for the adults in the audience.
Just because it's a serious mission doesn't mean that there's not a bit of room for levity.
Ant Man and Iron Man certainly take that to heart when they journey back to 2012 along
with Captain America in order to get some of the Infinity Stones. Both Tony and Scott
take a moment to critique the past version of Captain America's hindquarters in his Avengers-era
get-up. Ultimately, Scott proclaims it to be "America's ass," which is hard to argue
with.
Later in the film, when present Cap is fighting past Cap, he takes a moment after the fight
to admit that he really does have America's best butt. It's clear in just about every
scene, but that rearward-looking dialogue is likely to fly right over kids' heads, albeit
with some giggling that their favorite heroes just said a mild cuss word. Meanwhile, the
adults in the audience are likely to feel a bit called out for staring.
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