WARNING.  SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS. 

If you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame yet and care about it not being spoiled, you are running a greater risk each day that passes of running across massive spoilers online (like the ones posted in this article).  Get out there, see the movie, then come back.  You done been warned.  

If you don’t care about spoilers, or you’ve seen the film already, well, let’s get down to it.

 

This past weekend, the highly anticipated Avengers: Endgame was released into theaters and had the world throw approximately half its wealth at it as a result.  The public rushed in to see not only the conclusion to the massive success known as Avengers: Infinity War, but the conclusion of the entire 11 year, 22 film saga that comprised the MCU.

 

To the surprise of no one, the film has broken almost all (if not all) opening weekend box office records across the globe.

 

 

 

The response to the film has been overwhelmingly positive thus far.  People are boasting to have already seen the film three to five times in theaters, which, at three hours a pop and approximately $10.00 a ticket, is no small sacrifice in terms of time and treasure.  Many have claimed to have cried like babies.

 

For me personally, this finely crafted, epic scale movie exposed a pet peeve of mine.  Time travel.  In particular, bad time travel.  And, don’t be fooled, this movie is FULL of bad time travel.  Now, you could argue that they established the rules within the film about their particular brand of time travel, and you would be right.  They did.  That doesn’t make it good time travel. 

 

You could also argue that comics have long since written their own rules when it comes to the fantastical and, as long as they stuck to the rules that they established, it becomes an acceptable suspension of disbelief.  I’m actually with you on that argument, and I will happily buy the film on Blu-ray once it’s released, despite all of my issues with its story (and them bending their own rules with one particular character, but I digress again…).

 

We’re not here to discuss the quality of the story right now. What we’re here to talk about is the revolutionary technology the Avengers developed in trying to beat Thanos, and no one seems to have noticed it.  No, I’m not talking about the time travel, though that was a big deal.  And I’m not talking about the sudden Stark Tech that can somehow manage to hold all of the Infinity Stones, when there used to be only ONE place in the entire galaxy you could get something like that built.  I’m talking about something that’s, in a way, even more groundbreaking.  

 

I’m talking about the Fountain of Youth.  Literally the technology to keep people alive forever.  It’s right there, and no one’s noticed yet.

 

Remember when Ant-Man was performing the test for time travel early on in the movie after Tony dismissed the notion, and it didn’t go well because they were, as Stark says, “Running time through him” instead of running him through time.  Scott Lang became old, a young lad, a baby, and then exactly his current age when Professor Hulk does whatever dial turn he does at the end of it all to set Lang back to normal.  It was admittedly a pretty hilarious scene.

  
But can’t you just picture Scott Lang quipping something like, “You know what?  I’m pretty stiff, and I’ve got these bags under my eyes.  You mind setting the clock back about ten years once you get this stuff dialed in?”  And there’s the thing.  They just proved they could.

 

Imagine it.  Anyone, anywhere could step in front of the machine and shave off ten, twenty, fifty years in about two seconds and do it over and over again throughout the course of their existence.  Life everlasting.

 

If you want to know how Stark Industries can fund the Avengers forever, especially with the loss of its founder, just imagine the lines out the door to get their turn in front of that thing.  It would be one hell of an employee perk, too, wouldn’t it?  Who needs a 401k when you’re never going to get old enough to retire?

 

Now, I know the writers intended for this to be a much needed tension release for the audience, a gag for them to laugh at before things got serious again, and it worked.  But I don’t know if they grasped EXACTLY the ramifications of what they had written here.

 

And it could come in handy, you know, if and when Chris Evans decides it wasn’t such a bad gig after all and wants to have another go as Cap.  All they would have to do is stand Old Cap (who shouldn’t have been in that timeline, but I digress AGAIN) in front of the machine and BLAMMO, he’s back into fighting (i.e. whatever Evan’s age is at that time) form.