Eleven years after audiences first watched Robert Downey Jr. become an armored superhero in Iron Man, the climax of the interconnected story which that movie began has arrived in the form of Avengers: Endgame. While the picture is nominally a direct sequel to last year’s Avengers: Infinity War, seeing as how the titular superhero team once again battles intergalactic baddie Thanos (played by Josh Brolin), Endgame is also the last installment of a 22-chapter saga inclusive of every Marvel Studios theatrical release from Iron Man to Endgame.
Much has already been written about Endgame, mostly to do with box-office performance and guesses about how events in Endgame will inform Marvel’s next steps. This particular discussion of the film will take a different tack, exploring how the ambitious script that Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely crafted for Endgame exemplifies certain best practices in mainstream screenwriting.
***Out of respect for the hard work Marvel did in keeping the movie’s secrets safe prior to release, and also out of respect for viewers who haven’t yet seen Endgame, this discussion will be 100% spoiler-free.***
Wrap It Up
While Endgame is unique in cinema history—no previous film has resolved the storylines of 21 previous movies—it also tackles something that every screenwriter faces with every script: the challenge of concluding a narrative in a satisfying way. This naturally prompts musings on what constitutes an effective ending. Is predicting expectations and then doing your best to satisfy those expectations the best path to follow? Or is considering the moral implications of a story and then conjuring a finale that either reaffirms morality (a happy ending) or subverts morality (a tragic ending) a wiser course?
Without getting into the spoiler-y particulars, Endgame—which works extraordinarily well as a culmination, since it isn’t precisely an absolute conclusion—reveals some powerful methods for providing closure.
First, the movie delivers an ending by way of a pleasing stand-alone narrative. Broadened to a screenwriting principle, this means that when you construct the final act of any story, it should have a distinctive structure. In action/adventure tales, for instance, often the climax involves a pre-climax (e.g., the siege on a fortress), a false climax (e.g., a showdown with a henchman), and a true climax (e.g., the last battle against a principal antagonist). Endgame does these things and more—once the Avengers score a seemingly historic victory at great personal cost, the audience learns before the Avengers do, that the stage has been set for an even more momentous confrontation.
Second, the film balances spectacle with pathos. Two of the easiest ways to get emotional hits out of endings are killing likeable characters and showing previously villainous characters experiencing redemption. Both happen in Endgame, but fitting the picture’s more-is-more ethos, some of the biggest swells of feeling in Endgame arise from more complicated (and more surprising) plot twists. The beautiful final scene of Endgame won’t be spoiled here, but it’s fair to say that some of the most touching grace notes in Endgame can’t be fully appreciated until a second viewing. (Once you realize what it really means when Dr. Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, holds up his index finger at a dramatic moment . . . man, that’s a punch in the gut.)
This list could go on and on, because Endgame is full of endings—as noted earlier, the entire picture comprises the last act of a 22-chapter narrative. However, the two ideals cited above generally define each ending in Endgame: deliver the moment by way of properly constructed narrative so the audience gets context, and make each moment the delivery device for some sort of emotional peak. Following these examples can help you craft endings that move readers/viewers and thrill them at the same time.
Takeaway: Treat endings as distinct mini-narratives instead of perfunctory add-ons to a larger narrative.
A Moment for Everyone
The obvious conundrum that Markus and McFeely faced while writing Endgame involves juggling over three dozen significant characters. While the exact story mechanics that they used to surmount this problem are clever and resourceful, their apparent guiding principle can be summarized in one word: priorities. Certain characters, notably Thanos, require lengthy scenes because their actions drive the plot. Other characters, particularly the six heroes featured in the first Avengers movie, need ample screen time because they’re the stars of the show.
Yet, it was also necessary for Markus and McFeely—together with the larger Marvel Studios machine, under the leadership of Kevin Feige—to consider another equally important nuance. Not every segment of the Endgame audience wants exactly the same experience. While it is fair to assume that nearly every Endgame ticket-buyer wants to see the next stage of the crucial relationship between Tony Stark/Iron Man and Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans), it is also fair to assume that some viewers hope to see female characters in the spotlight, while others hope to see characters of color receiving significant screen time, and so on.
Even with a three-hour running time, it would have been impossible for Markus and McFeely to address every single one of these specific audience desires, so the storytelling path traveled by Endgame represents a good compromise. Nearly every major character in the MCU gets a moment, whether it’s a badass combat move or a funny line or merely a dramatic entrance. After accepting that it was impossible to make each of these characters essential to the storyline, the Endgame team made the presence of each character essential to the experience. Some viewers may wish that X, Y or Z character was featured more prominently, but none will feel that a character whom they enjoy was ignored.
Can this data-management technique be applied to the smaller-scale movies that new writers are crafting as they seek entrance to the industry? Absolutely. Even though you cannot know in advance which of your brand-new characters will resonate with future readers/viewers, you can strive to ensure that each character makes an impression. Getting there involves asking why each character deserves space in your script. To put this back in MCU terms, Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) matters to the franchise because he matters personally to Captain America. We need to see him in Endgame because seeing him helps us track Captain America’s emotional arc.
Similarly, in your scripts, each character must have a specific purpose, otherwise future readers/viewers won’t care whether the character exists.
Takeaway: The process by which characters earn screen time should be a meritocracy.
Life Lessons
Tony delivers an Endgame line that was featured prominently (and poignantly) in trailers for the movie: “Part of the journey is the end.” It’s a heavy line, the sort of thing that would sound bizarrely precocious emanating from a very young person, but has real weight when uttered by a person with decades of life experience. Given the consequential storyline that sprawls across Infinity War and Endgame, it is natural that mortality occupies the thoughts of the MCU’s most beloved character.
One of the joys of serialized storytelling, whether the narrative appears in books or movies or TV episodes, involves watching characters learn. In Tolkein’s Middle-Earth novels, for instance, Hobbits Bilbo and Frodo Baggins evolve based on life-changing adventures. The same is true for the principal characters in the MCU. Tony is not the same man in Endgame that he was in Iron Man. Not only has he been humbled by near-death experiences, but he has learned to love selflessly, thereby personifying the franchise’s central metaphor—each of us belongs to a larger universe.
Again, this raises the question of whether a technique from Marvel’s big-canvas storytelling can be applied to your scripts, which don’t have the benefit of building upon extensive previous storytelling. But again, the answer is yes. It’s all about context. In each MCU movie, the central character learns some sort of lesson, then brings that knowledge to his or her next adventure, changing and growing after each episode. In your scripts, well-conceived characters should do the same. Everything that happens to a character should change that person, either elevating them to a higher level of understanding or dragging them to a lower level of misunderstanding (e.g., despair, hatred, intolerance, etc.). In the language of theater, this is the difference between a dynamic character (one who changes) and a static character (one who does not).
Lessons that characters express verbally serve two purposes: 1) They help us grasp where the characters are in their journeys; and 2) They allow writers to articulate meaningful themes through the device of dramatic circumstance. When this doesn’t work, it feels as if the writer is speechifying obnoxiously at the cost of story logic. When this does work, as with the memorable Endgame line, we believe the lesson was learned through experiences that we saw happen.
Takeaway: Wisdom born from dramatic circumstance resonates.