Geek Sheets - Avengers: Endgame Edition

by Steve “America’s Ass” Monnich, Co-Founder of GGR and Fat Thor Cosplay Champion

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Geek Sheets. So it has come to this.  11 years of world-building, cinema changing, money-raking movies have culminated into a galactic level epic of hype satiating goodness.  Avengers: Endgame has erupted into theaters, and we would be remiss if we didn’t hit on the more interesting news tidbits here on the Geek Sheets.  While the film has been out for a week now, and our typical stance on spoilers here at GGR is usually pretty soft, I also want to point out this article will contain a few spoilers for the movie.  If you didn’t get a chance to run out and see the movie on the opening weekend for some reason and have been doing your best Kanan Jarrus impression trying to navigate the world without seeing anything, maybe bookmark this article for a later read.  Ok, now that the requisite warnings have been issued, AVENGERS ARTICLE…ASSEMBLE!!

Endgame Box Office Explodes

Avengers: Endgame has made almost as much real world money as Tony Stark has in the fictional world.   In nine days, the movie has become the 8th highest grossing movie of all time, already surpassing notable hits such as Black Panther, The Avengers, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, and Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi. As of the writing of this article, it stands at a whopping $1.639 Billion before even hitting the second weekend of its release.  Now, I will be one of the first to agree that the monetary performance of a film does not correlate to the quality of the film (I’m looking at you Furious 7), however it cannot be ignored that for any film to reach these levels of profit, the film has to be far more than serviceable to whatever fan-base or demographic they are aiming to reach.  Take a film I recently just took a shot at in Furious 7, which ironically at the moment is the 7th highest grossing film of all time.  While I personally may not have seen a single Fast and Furious film, the creators of that film tapped into every aspect that fan-base was hoping to see, and as such they voted for its quality with their dollars. We see the same level of enthusiasm with multiple viewings with Endgame and the huge investment cinemas are making in dedicating so many show times to a 3 hour film.  Time will tell if this is the flick to finally topple Avatar’s nearly $2.788 Billion, or even crack the mythical $3 Billion mark.

“I Stayed for the Post-Credits Scene and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt”

“There’s a post credit scene!”
”Is there, though?”

“I bet they will tease a setup of the Fantastic Four against Galactus! No way, it will be some kind of hint that the time travel opened the door to the X-Men!  Maybe it will be something bittersweet with Spider-Man leading into Far From Home?”  WRONG, ALL WRONG!!! Literally ever since the first entry into the MCU, we have been waiting through credits hoping to see what kind of trick Marvel Studios have up their sleeve for next year. But this is the finale of what has been deemed The Infinity Saga, and as such with the close of the film with Old Man Cap (which gives me a new nickname for Lunsford: Old Man Caps Fan) is also the end of your time sitting in the theater for the show.  Seriously, get out unless you want to hear metal banging sounds after the entirety of the credits.  When asked about the choice to break a 21 movie streak of dropping hints after the film proper, the Russos commented that it was nice to not have to worry about the future and leave that aspect up to the next team.  The bar has been set pretty high for whatever sucker has to come in and direct next.

But What About Far From Home?!?!

So for anyone who has seen Endgame, there is a pretty significant time jump from 2018 up to 2023, and that is the exact moment all our snap victims return to.  So then that begs the question, what the heck is going on with the upcoming Spider-man: Far From Home in regards to the timeline?  We see Ned and Peter reunite, and they are clearly the same age as before the snappening.  When asked about this issue, as well as other classmates from Peter’s high school, the Russos confirmed that Ned was indeed snapped, and the moment in the movie is the first time Spidey and his “Guy in the chair” saw each other in five years.  They also noted that a hefty chunk of the high school would have been snapped, which is a nice way to explain the 5 year jump without having to recast the key players in the upcoming movie.  Although that being said, I kind of hope that we see some of the fallout from this new dichotomy.  There is a big gap between a 15 year old and a 20 year old, so seeing former classmates who could now be interning for future careers while to Peter just a minute ago they were getting ready for Junior year of high school could be quite trippy.

I want to thank anyone who took the time to read this article between screenings of Endgame because based on the numbers that’s the most statistically probable location in which you would be located at any given moment this week.  I thoroughly enjoyed the film and I hope you did as well, but if you didn’t, we are always looking for people with something interesting to say and contribute to the site.  We have a whole network of podcasts and a site full of articles, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for yours! Until next time refugees, I’m Steve Monnich and don’t be a juicebag.

Make sure you tune in to the latest episode of GGR Pirate Radio as Mike, Steve, and MC talk all about Avengers: Endgame!