Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Physics

Why films like Avengers: Endgame can get away with time travel tricks

In his monthly film column, Simon Ings finds that invoking the quantum world is a great way out for Avengers-style franchises when they want to mess with time

By Simon Ings

15 May 2019

Ant man

Ant-Man has no clue about the science of the time machine

Marvel Studios/Disney

directed by Anthony and Joe Russo

HALFWAY through Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Endgame, Tony Stark knocks together a time machine. He is out to stop Thanos, a villain whose solution to the universe’s resource shortages has been to wipe out half of all life.

Stopping Thanos won’t be easy, since the film – the capstone to 21 interconnected movies in the Marvel cinematic universe – opens with him having already achieved his goal. Many favourite characters are already dead.

Resetting past narratives is a hard trick…

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