Over-analyzing the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ special look trailer | Lifestyle.INQ

OCTOBER 27, 2022

It’s April, which means it’s just days before Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Endgame” arrives in Philippine cinemas on April 24. Marvel is clearly upping the ante on their cinematic attack by dropping a new trailer. This “Special Look” trailer may only be one minute long, but it is almost completely made up of new footage from the film! It also drops some pretty major spoilers.

You can watch the trailer here courtesy of YouTube:

The trailer opens with a shot of the Avengers HQ from afar, over a fence.

Bruce Banner is in the lab: “If we do this, we’d be going in short-handed.”

Thor, in civilian garb, is sitting at the end of the table, listening as he plays with the food in front of him.

Also in civvies, War Machine answers: “Yeah, you mean, because he killed all our friends?”

Black Widow is sitting outside in the rain, deep in thought.

Natasha: “We owe this to everyone who’s not in this room to try.”

Dressed in a white tank top, a cleanly-shaven Captain America is looking at himself in the bathroom mirror.

The Marvel Studios’ 10th anniversary logo is shown.

The new Avengers Quinjet is flying into Tokyo at night.

Nebula and Rocket are sitting together, then hold hands.

We hear Tony Stark’s voice: “It’s not about how much we lost. It’s about how much we have left.”

Tony is hugging Pepper Potts tightly. Pepper is in tears. Stark is talking about Pepper.

We cut to Avengers HQ seen from above.

Iron Man is flying above a city in the daylight.

Hawkeye, wearing a sleeveless shirt that shows off the tattoos on his arm, is chilling in Avengers HQ. He nods to someone.

He’s nodding to Natasha, who nods back with a smile.

Stark: “We’re Avengers. We gotta finish this.”

Thor is facing Captain Marvel and holds out his hand. His axe Stormbreaker flies to him. Captain Marvel smiles.

Hawkeye, Tony Stark, Cap, Nebula, Rocket, Scott Lang and Natasha are all in HQ, standing up to look at something at the same time.

Out in a New York street, Stark is talking to Cap. “You trust me?” A pause. Then Cap answers: “I do.” They shake hands.

The date card is shown: “On April 26.”

The spaceship Benatar leaves Earth orbit into deeper space through lightspeed.

Inside the ship, we see: Captain Marvel, Natasha, War Machine, Thor, Cap and Rocket. Carol Danvers and Rocket are piloting the ship.

Tony holds in his hand a photo of him with Peter Parker at Stark Industries. They are holding Peter’s Stark Industries certificate upside down and Peter is putting up horns behind Tony’s head.

Out in space, Thanos’ mothership is shown retrieving the dropships used by the Black Order.

In the Benatar, Nebula and War Machine look on with trepidation. Thor looks on as well. There’s a close-up of a fearful Rocket.

We hear the unmistakable voice of Thanos: “You could not live with your failure. Where did that bring you?”

A masked, bloodied Cap is shown trying to get up.

There is an energy burst and Thanos appears.

Thanos: “Back to me.”

Stark, sans helmet but in armor, is walking around some kind of wreckage.

From behind, we see Iron Man, Cap and Thor walking towards Thanos. Thanos is sitting, without his helmet, on some more rubble. His sword is stuck into the ground.

We get the “Avengers: Endgame” title card. “Tickets on sale now.”

Analysis:

It is surprising that the previous trailers have very little new footage in them. This “Special Look” (Marvel’s term) makes up for that.

First warning: The scenes in the trailer are not shown in chronological order. In fact, the images and dialogue are taken from very different parts of the film and cobbled together. So don’t trust the SEQUENCE.

The Avengers HQ is seen from a new angle, at dusk, with lights on. This shot establishes that a big chunk of the movie (probably the assembly and planning stage) happens in or around the HQ.

We’ve established in the past over-analyses that there is a mission planned from the HQ, most likely to get to Thanos (Josh Brolin). So the scenes we’ve scene indoors in the trailers—and the mid-credits scene in “Captain Marvel”—happen in the rooms and labs of Avengers HQ. The next few scenes are set there as well.

That’s where we see Banner (Mark Ruffalo). He’s dressed in the same shirt he was in when seen looking through the images of the decimated. What he says here ties into that.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is here, as is War Machine (Don Cheadle). We actually don’t know if these two pieces of dialogue are together, if they are talking to each other, or just for the trailer.

Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) has clearly been affected by the events. Note that, in the shot where she’s in the rain, she’s wearing the long red hair in a braid. That means this shot happens later in the film.

The shot of Cap (Chris Evans) betrays his doubts and recrimination as he stares hard at himself.

The first re-used shot is the Quinjet over Tokyo, seen in the last trailer.

Now here is the first big spoiler.

The shot of Nebula (Karen Gillen) and Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper) holding hands indicates a thawing between the two of them: They are in this together.

But the importance of that scene is that it proves Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Nebula make it back to Earth. Remember the previous trailer showed the two of them stranded in outer space on the Benatar with Oxygen running out.

This confirms they survive and make it back to Earth, because Rocket was on Earth with Thor at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.”

This is proven without a doubt in the next shot, which had Stark hugging Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) on Earth, proving Pepper did indeed survive the snap. Their hug here looks like Stark is about to go off somewhere (most likely to wherever Thanos is), hence the tears, Pepper has had to say goodbye to Stark so many times not sure if he would come back and here—after surviving a crazy space battle—he is saying goodbye again. Or it could be Stark just returning to Earth and Pepper seeing him for the first time.

The birds-eye view of Avengers HQ was seen in a previous trailer.

This shot of Iron Man flying over New York shows him wearing his new nanotech-powered Iron Man Mark LXXXV armor. You can tell it’s not the Mark L he wore in “Infinity War” because of the shiny gold parts. He’s upgraded too!

This shot of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) chilling indicates he has left Tokyo (where Natasha found him) and is at Avengers HQ.

His smile and nod—returned by Natasha—reinforces the return of their tandem as partners. Note that Natasha’s hair is longer and blonde at the ends, meaning this scene happens in the middle of the film.

The statement, “We have to finish this,” is a very good summary of the role “Endgame” plays in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It’s the end of the first book.

The next shot, of Thor and Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) meeting cute, came from the last trailer.

The hero shot follows. This shot establishes that all of these heroes are together at Avengers HQ. The question is: What are they looking at?

The Internet exploded with this scene of Stark and Cap seeing each other for the first time since they fought at the end of “Captain America: Civil War.” Cap was in Wakanda and Stark in space by the end of “Infinity War,” so they have yet to meet, especially since they’re on the same side.

The subtle question here is when does this meeting happen. Cap is wearing the torn, dirty costume he wore from “Infinity War,” but he is cleanly shaven, not the beard he wore then. We also know from the poster that Cap will wear a new, bright and clean version of this suit.

This scene might happen early in “Endgame,” shortly after Stark returns to Earth.

It is pretty cool to see them together again.

So we know now that the Benatar clearly gets back to Earth in one piece, which is how Stark and Nebula make it back. They have repaired the ship so they can go back to space (probably thanks to Rocket). This is a shot of the Benatar jumping to lightspeed from another planet (not Earth, you can see other planets nearby).

The interior tells us who are on the ship. It is very cool to see that Marvel and Rocket are in the pilot’s chair. Marvel returned to Earth on her own power after being summoned by Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson, not in the trailer) upgraded pager, so she can fly in space without a ship. But the Benatar needs pilots who have been flying in deep space to get to Titan 2, where Thanos is, meaning it has to be Marvel and Rocket.

This shot leaves us with a question. Natasha is shown with her shorter blonde hair. She had the same hair in the Thor scene. So this scene happens early in the film. That also means Captain Marvel does not appear in any of the later scenes shown thus far. Why? What happens to her? This is crucial considering she is perhaps the most powerful of the Marvel heroes and would be important in a throwdown with Thanos. Is this time travel? Fans want to see more of Captain Marvel, not less, so hopefully we get a lot of scenes with her.

Let’s get this done: It seems like the Avengers, using Quantum tech, travel back in time, or simply straight up goes up to Thanos several times earlier in the film. They appear to not be very successful.

We get a reminder of the losses, as Stark looks sadly at a photo of the decimated Peter (Tom Holland). The photo tells of a bit from “Captain America: Civil War” where Peter has to pretend to be an intern at Stark Enterprises to cover up his trip to Germany with Stark. This photo is actually their cover-up to convince Aunt May (Marisa Tomei, not in the trailer) of the excuse.

Sanctuary 2, Thanos’ mothership was shown at the end of “Thor: Ragnarok” menacing the Asgardians before they got to Earth. “Infinity War” showed the dropships carrying Thanos’ personal minions the Black Order to Earth in an attempt to retrieve the Mind Stone. This shot is of the dropships returning to the mothership. That is most likely Titan 2 behind it. Thanos is staying on that planet, so it makes sense that his forces would be around there.

This is an intimidating sight, and that’s why Nebula, War Machine, Thor and Rocket look alarmed.

Now, we know there’s a big battle in this movie, and that’s what we see next. Cap is trying to get up from a fight. He is wearing the clean version of the suit.

When he materializes, Thanos’ armor was shiny and untouched in his earlier appearances and the flashbacks, but he wasn’t wearing his helmet and his armor was all dinged up in “Infinity War.” This really looks like he has been fighting (most likely the Avengers over and over) and the big bad blue boy has come to Earth. Uh-oh.

Now, we get Stark in the same armor he wore in “Infinity War,” and he is walking around some freshly destroyed stuff. It looks like what’s left of the Avengers HQ, probably after Thanos laid waste to it.

He hasn’t come alone. This final shot is of the big three Avengers—Iron Man, Cap and Thor—come to defeat Thanos.

One interesting note: Thanos looks tired and his helmet and sword are off. Could he have just destroyed Avengers HQ and thus in a weakened state? It sure looks like it.

There is a subtle question about this as well: When exactly does this battle happen? Does the mission with the white Quantum armor happen in the first part of the film, or the last part? Is this battle because of Thanos’ attack (we know from the previous trailers that the other Avengers such as War Machine, Nebula, Rocket and Ant-Man–Paul Rudd– join in) in the past or the present?

While the “Special Look” trailer gives us more new footage than ever—and confirms Stark’s safe return to Earth—it also leaves us with more questions than answers. Because of how parsimonious Marvel has been with “Endgame” footage, this feels like a lot, but it really isn’t. Last year, we had far more “Infinity War” footage before that movie opened than we do with “Endgame now.”

Final warning: It’s also important to note that the directors—Anthony and Joe Russo—have admitted to misdirection and last year included footage in the trailer that was not in the actual finished film. Even if “Endgame” is supposed to run over three hours, there’s still a good chance there are scenes in this trailer that aren’t included in that runtime.

With only weeks to go, it is safe to assume that this is the last trailer we will get before the April 24 opening.

By the way, the context for this final trailer dropping on April 2 is that tickets on Fandango and other reservation sites were now available on this date. That’s why we got this trailer. You can now reserve your tickets in Philippine cinemas as well. Projections have “Avengers: Endgame” making the most of any Marvel movie at the box office, upwards of $800 million. Don’t miss the opportunity to be among the first in the world to see the film as it opens earlier here in the Philippines than anywhere else. April 24? Avengers assemble!

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