The Snap Should Have Been Phase IV

When we discuss the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. it’s generally to complain about how the shared universe went off the rails. Marvel had the most successful cinematic universe in the history of Hollywood (not to say that they invented the concept as the Universal MonstersThis franchise, started off with Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931, was a powerhouse of horror cinema for close to two decades, with many of the creatures continuing on in one-off movies years later. were doing crossovers as far back as the 1940s and 1950s) but, over the course of Phases IV and V they went from making films that grossed a Billion dollars easily at the Box Office to financial bomb after financial bomb. While some might chalk that up simply to “superhero fatigue”, critics have been saying that since before Phase IV even started, even while Marvel was printing money in movie theaters.

No, the issue with Phases IV and V is that they’ve felt largely directionless. Heroes are introduced and then we don’t see them again for years (if ever). Plotlines are raised that then go nowhere. Massive events happen that are treated like shrugs. Villains are introduced, and then quietly shuffled away. Marvel had supposed big plans but didn’t know how to execute them, which is strange when you consider the company was able to easily interconnect 21 films over 11 years, but then in just the six years after they feel completely adrift.

Much of the blame can be placed on oversaturation (too many TV shows and movies competing all at once) and likely Marvel not having as comprehensive of a plan for “The Multiverse Saga” as they did for “The Infinity Saga”, but I think there’s also another problem that we need to discuss: “The Infinity Saga” left the MCU on shaky ground to begin with, acting as, functionally, a series finale when Marvel needed it to be more of a season finale. They weren’t ready to let go of the franchise, but due to actions they took in the last film of the saga, Avengers: Endgame, they wrote themselves into a corner they couldn’t get back from. They’ve spent six years trying to do just that, without much progress.

There is one decision in particular that clearly illustrates the problem they wrote and how they weren’t really thinking about the long term health of the franchise: The Snap, which eventually became The Blip. Consider this: when fans came out of Avengers: Infinity War they left the first part of a two-part finale that would then conclude with Avengers: Endgame one year later. Half of the Earth’s population (in the MCU, not in real life) had been snapped away by Thanos, wiped off the planet, turned into dust and blown away. Everyone assumed, after a year-long wait in real time, that when we caught back up with the heroes they’d chase after Thanos and find a way to get the Infinity Stones back and reverse his actions. That’s how the story should go, right?

This did not happen. Instead, while the opening of Avengers: Endgame sees the heroes charge off into battle, chasing Thanos across the universe to get the stones back, what they find is that Thanos has already snapped the stones out of existence, preventing them from ever being used again. The heroes had lost and, they think, there’s absolutely no way to reverse the damage he did. It was a ballsy setup, don’t get me wrong, and the fact that this was the direction the film took let us think, “yeah, this isn’t the movie we were expecting.” And that’s true, just not for the reasons we were all expecting.

See, Avengers: Endgame commits a number of writing sins to get the happy ending the cinematic universe needed. It jumps ahead five years to show us the world after everyone has gotten used to the ramifications of The Snap. It then introduces time travel to let the heroes have an easy way out. It lets them make changes to the timeline in odd ways that shouldn’t work. And, narratively, it skips over a lot of character development that was needed all so we could get to the big, bombastic ending that the franchise required. In effect it shortchanged the whole story to get the desired result.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the film when it came out. I think that for the kind of story the studio mandated, Avengers: Endgame was about the best version of it we could get. It has fun character asides, a fair bit of action and humor, and a character death that felt earned. But all of that doesn’t excuse all the flaws that I see any time I go back and watch the film again because there are flaws and, once you realize them, it’s hard to see anything else, and that really sucks.

Let’s start with the biggest issue I have with the film: the five year time jump. I know that audiences wanted to see what happened next, and I have to assume that Marvel wasn’t willing to make fans wait five years to get a resolution to their Thanos storyline. The thing is, though, that skipping ahead five years takes away a lot of character development that happens, now, off screen. These heroes all lost people they cared about, people they should be grieving. We should feel their pain, their heartbreak, and while we get a few moments of that early on the film quickly has to rush ahead to reset it all back to the way it was beforehand. My point is that instead of doing that the franchise, instead, should have made people wait five years. Really wait.

In effect, Avengers: Infinity War should have been the end of Phase III, but the story should have continued from there. In a different version of Phase IV, one where Marvel was willing to make audiences wait, we would have gotten a film, maybe a Captain America movie, where the Avengers all go charging after Thanos in the opening scene of the film only to find that the stones are gone. They go back to Earth and have to then focus on what is left of the planet now that half of all life is gone. For Cap this means working with the governments of the world to defend against some New World Order (see what we did there) that wants to topple the old governments now that they’re weakened. And then the franchise continues on with all the heroes getting their own films exploring their grief, sadness, and loss while they try to rebuild in this new era.

We could get a Black Widow movie that doesn’t feel tacked on after her character died because, in this version, she hasn’t died yet. We could get an Iron Man movie that has him out in space, trying to get home to Earth. We could get a Black Panther film (in this version of the universe we don’t kill him at the end of Avengers: Infinity War) where the hero tries to extend aid from Wakanda to the rest of the world but has to fend off outside forces trying to steal Wakanda’s resources. And while this is going on some new heroes, like Shang-Chi, could be introduced to fill the ranks of the Avengers after half their team has been lost, integrating them better into the story so that they can be used after Phase IV in new and interesting ways.

Yes, the audience would probably be a little upset that Thanos’s Snap wasn’t immediately reversed, but in the long run the effect would be the same. We can still have the the heroes eventually find a way to reverse the destruction of the Infinity Stones (maybe by hopping dimensions instead of introducing time travel, or maybe Tony and Bruce could find a way to rebuild them by tracking their energy and finding a way to harness it once more) but that comes after the series commits to exploring a world where half of all life has been eliminated.

The time travel storyline creates all kinds of problems, honestly. It’s fine in the moment when you are just sitting in a theater, eating popcorn, enjoying the action as it plays out. But now we have time travel. Now, any time there’s an issue and the heroes lose they can grab some Pym Particles, jump into the Quantum Realm, and reverse it. It’s like the Harry PotterFirst released as a series of books (starting in the UK before moving worldwide), the Harry Potter series gained great acclaim before even becoming a series of successful movies. Now encompassing books, films, a prequel series, and a successful two-part play, the series even now shows no end in sight. series introducing the Time Turner (and then ignoring it for years after) because, in effect, it’s the same thing. Once you have time travel and it can be used to fix things you can’t not use it any time it’s relevant.

It’s actually similar to a problem Marvel is having right now in “The Multiverse Saga”. Any time a hero dies, audiences don’t really feel connected to it because all the Marvel team has to do is introduce an alternate from another universe and, voila, the hero or heroine is back. They all act the same in every universe (as Marvel Zombies shows), so why should we care if Thor dies in one universe? He’ll be back from another universe any day now, being the big, dumb lunkhead we know and love. Time travel does the same thing, just in a different way, and it causes the same effect: nothing matters when it’s easy to effectively reverse the problem

The worse issue, though, is that Avengers: Endgame shortchanges the characters. Think about the arcs that were either set up before or during the film. Tony and Steve were at odds with each other over the Sokovia Accords (and then the reveal that the Winter Soldier killed Tony’s parents) and this created a rift that split the Avengers in half, leaving the Earth defenseless against a threat like Thanos. Avengers: Endgame, though, wipes all that away with a handshake between friends as if five years, and a lot of hurt, didn’t still hang between them. Thor watches most of his people die at the hands of Thanos and, instead of grieving and finding a way to rebuild, he gets drunk and sits around. Bruce becomes Smart Hulk without any development for it. Clint loses his entire family to The Snap and then we see him already as a revenge ninja at the end of his arc five years later. Nat throws herself off a cliff because, out of nowhere, someone has to die, and that’s the whole of her character. The film fails all of them.

Most of these storylines should have played out in their own films. We should have gotten another Captain America, an Iron Man, a Thor, a Hawkeye, a Hawkeye (or, at least, Hawkeye-adjacent film that handles his storyline without getting into contract and license issues over the character), and a Black Widow that sets up these characters for their eventual storylines in Avengers: Endgame. Instead, because we only had one movie and three hours to cover it all and fix the universe before Phase IV started, all of this got truncated, handwaved away, and lost to bad writing.

Worst of all, it also wastes Thanos. Avengers: Infinity War was his film, showing his story, lending nuance and realism to his character. We learned who he was, what he wanted, why he was such a threat, and, in a way, we came to care about him. That version of Thanos, though, is killed at the start of Avengers: Endgame, replaced by one from years early (because time travel) that has little connection to the heroes he’s battling. He’s there because we needed a Thanos for them to properly defeat, but it’s an empty version of Thanos because he’s not the one that defeated them. That guy already won, and then gave up his life to prove a point. Instead of killing him at the start of the film, Avengers: Endgame should have kept him alive so that, five years later, he could return to stop the heroes from reversing his grand plan, leading to a proper confrontation that we could all really enjoy.

Could a Phase IV that was part of “The Infinity Saga” have worked if Marvel had committed to it? Maybe. Probably. Sure, some audience members would be shocked that The Snap was kept, but it would have been a stronger storytelling decision than how it was handled in the Avengers: Endgame we got. It would have built anticipation, letting audiences feel the highs and lows, all while old and new heroes came together to try and rebuild the world. And then, when The Snap was reversed and became The Blip, it would feel properly cathartic, like the heroes had accomplished something real instead of simply making us wait a year for a story that could have been solved in minutes otherwise.

What Marvel did not only made for a weak season finale but it also effectively killed all momentum for the universe going forward. All the old Avengers (other than Thor) were gone, retired at the end of the film, and in their place came new heroes no one knew or cared about. Without Thanos and his Magic Stones (also the name of my dad rock cover band) Phase IV and beyond have felt directionless and hollow. We haven’t had a good villain at his level, and it feels like the cinematic universe doesn’t even know how to pull that off at this point, A better fourth phase, one that tied into what came before, could have set up the groundwork for the next phases, introducing new heroes among the old ones and setting up new threats that can’t be easily Blipped away. But that’s not what Marvel did and, ever since, they’ve been reaping what they sowed (or, really, didn’t sow).

And it’s sad because it turned the MCU from a powerhouse into a hollow shell of itself. Current momentum says that this isn’t going to shift any time soon.