Avengers: Endgame had some bad CGI for such a big-budget movie

A movie that relies so heavily on special effects needs to nail all of them, and Avengers: Endgame does not accomplish that.

Warning: Avengers: Endgame spoilers abound in this post.

After 24 hours of living life in a having-seen-Avengers–Endgame world, it’s safe to say that there are things that are sticking with me. One of them is how frequently the movie dips into the CGI well of altering familiar heroes that we love, with mixed to negative results. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America all get hit with the computer magic, and it’s awfully distracting each time.

Let’s start at the beginning, when a starved Tony Stark returns to Earth. This may be the least-bad of the CGI examples we’ll talk about, but that doesn’t make it good, necessarily. In particular, his body doesn’t seem to match his face, as if it was digitally shrunk just a touch too much to hammer it in that Tony spent three weeks adrift in space. Fortunately, he gets to die in something like his proper form.

But then we come to Thor. Outlets like The Mary Sue have already discussed, in detail, how Thor’s entire storyline reduces him to a joke, over and over again, and writer Kaila Hale-Stern even briefly mentions the “bad effects” used in the film. There’s a sheen to Thor’s torso, and the contrast between his pecs (which still look quite a lot like pecs) and his stomach is again, overblown — and comical. Even if that was the intended effect, as it seems it was based on the dialogue, that doesn’t make it okay. It’s bad on a storytelling level in two ways, since there’s the horrible treatment of Thor’s issues, and it’s bad because the effects don’t enhance the (already-horrible) story.

Finally, Captain America appears in his old form at the end of the film, in order to pass his shield on to Sam Wilson. There’s already a brewing discourse on whether or not this was a fitting end to Steve Rogers’ story, but this writer can’t begin to wrestle with it based on the digital aging techniques used on Chris Evans. In particular, the wrinkle placement seemed particularly strange, enough that I couldn’t help but focus on that instead of what Steve was saying.

Marvel movies have always required a high suspension of disbelief, but one thing a viewer can usually count on is that the effects will help in that regard. Instead, with all the closeups that the Russos insist on, we’re forced to look at some uninspiring CGI work that won’t age well — and already doesn’t seem to compare to previous efforts in similar spaces, including Samuel L. Jackson’s remarkable de-aging in Captain Marvel.

For a movie that’s already made a billion dollars, one wonders if it’ll be remembered for the work it did in effects, like Avatar — or just for how it closed a saga that has done better before.