The Big Problem With Avengers: Endgame Nobody's Talking About
It might not seem like much, but having Iron Man suffer a panic attack was boundary pushing cinema. From there, we learn of his sleepless nights, how he’s haunted by the battle of New York and how he’s having these sudden, intense and debilitating episodes as a result. Despite what he says in the film, the clinical reading of this, as done by numerous doctors and journalists, is that he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
PTSD is a mental illness. The central figure of the biggest movie franchise in history, one of the most iconic characters in cinema not only has a mental health problem, but becomes defined by it. Tony Stark has everything, he’s a successful businessman, a genius, a literal superhero but his brain breaks as easily as anyone else’s.
As far as addressing the stigma surrounding mental health goes, I cannot tell you how important that is.
So what’s the problem with Endgame then? Well, as I’ve said it’s not Tony. He may have moved on from the man he was in Iron Man 3, but that trauma still defines his actions throughout the rest of the MCU. It's still fundamentally the reason behind his addiction to being Iron Man - it being very much his only coping mechanism for it - and is what ultimately leads to his death.
The problem, is Thor.
For all the ways that the Battle of New York would come to define Tony Stark, by the time we pick up in Endgame that failure to kill Thanos has come to define Thor. He saw all those people die, he fundamentally blames himself for that unquantifiable loss of life and his realisation at the start of the film that he can’t fix it breaks him.
On paper, this is a brilliant narrative decision. The 5 year jump has allowed Tony to lead a different life, it’s allowed him to start a family, to hang up his suit, to recover if not necessarily to heal. Replacing that in the story with one of the strongest characters is very interesting but they way they approach it is so counter-productive.
When we catch up with the God of Thunder he had settled the survivors of Asgard somewhere on earth. New Asgard to be specific. But far from being the benevolent and magisterial ruler his father was he’s a washed-up, overweight, drunk who lives in a hut with Korg and Meek while playing Fortnite all day. This is a cheap image to go with but still, in of itself, it's not the problem.
The problem comes because this profound trauma he’s suffered, the guilt he feels and what it’s done to him, is almost entirely played for laughs.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying it isn’t funny, as some of the film’s best moments of brevity arise from it and Thor is historically one of the funnier characters. But the problem is that you can’t set the groundwork for these topics as sympathetically and complexly as you do for Tony, and then pretend they don’t matter for Thor.