For a mega-blockbuster that had one of the most convoluted build-ups in the history of cinema, Avengers: Infinity War opted to end on one of the biggest audience bummers since The Empire Strikes Back. Spoiler warning: big purple bad dude Thanos succeeded in wiping out literally half of the entire universe, including a considerable proportion of the Marvel heroes fans had grown to love over the course of an eventful movie-going decade. So where do you go from there? Today’s new trailer for Avengers: Endgame has a few suggestions, squashed into two and a half minutes. Here’s what we learned.
Tony Stark is bad at voicemails
After getting his tin-can ass kicked by Thanos and witnessing his cosmic strike team of impromptu Avengers disintegrate into confetti on a far-flung moon, Tony Stark was in a bad place. Now, he’s somewhere even worse: floating through space in a dead spacecraft, four days without food and about to run out of air. That’s when this flippant motormouth decides to record a message for his beloved Pepper via his semi-wrecked Iron Man helmet – rambling, wry and, as ever, a little self-involved. Save that oxygen, Tony!
Thanos is a Gladiator fanboy
After pledging to pull off the greatest workforce reduction in the history of the universe, Josh Brolin’s stocky bruiser mused that he would crown his galactic victory by retiring and becoming a farmer, watching sunrises and whatnot. There was a taste of that rural retirement in the final scenes of Infinity War but in the Endgame trailer, we see that he has genuinely repurposed his dread armour as a scarecrow. Surely the Mad Titan is now at peace? Except Thanos seems to enjoy walking through fields of space-thistles caressing his crop like Russell Crowe in Gladiator, which surely signals some retributive smackdowns ahead.
Cap’s beard should be counted among the fallen
Infinity War came unofficially billed as the most ambitious crossover of all time and many beloved Marvel characters did not survive to see the end of it (peace out Peter Parker, so long Doctor Strange, bye bye Black Panther, Star-Lord, Falcon and many more). Yet even among the sprawling cast list, one performer stood out among the sprawling Spandex crowd, and that was the beard that Steve Rogers grew to symbolise his outlaw angst. Weirdly, even though Cap should technically be sadder than ever now that his best pal Bucky is literally dust, Steve’s sadbeard has suddenly vanished. Thanos’s fateful finger-click should have sheared off half of it just for the LOLs.
Hawkeye is back, baby! You know … Hawkeye?
Despite Infinity War being full of ’arrowing scenes – stay with me here – there was no sign of black-ops archer Hawkeye, nominally because Clint Barton had apparently cut a deal to lay down his quiver and return to civilian life on that homely farm we saw in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Yet up Jeremy Renner pops in the Endgame trailer, with a vaguely new look (prison haircut, shadowy costume, constipated frown) and some sort of upgraded weapon that looks more like a sword than a bow. Admittedly at this stage, the Avengers need all the help they can get.
Paul Rudd will save us all
At first, we all assumed that Paul Rudd aka Scott Lang aka Ant-Man had survived the Infinity War cull, partly because Rudd didn’t star in that film but mostly because he had his own Ant-Man sequel coming out very soon afterwards. But those who stuck around for the post-credits scenes of Ant-Man and the Wasp saw poor Scott seemingly stranded after spelunking into the teeny-tiny quantum realm. The fact that he has managed to find his way back for the Endgame trailer suggests Ant-Man holds the key to restoring the natural order: perhaps the seemingly ageless Rudd has some killer skincare tips that will sway the permanently crinkle-chinned Thanos?
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