Avengers: Endgame snapped its way back into theatres worldwide in a bid to show more content (including post-credit scenes), that fans had been clamouring for. And while fans trooped in to watch the re-release, it was a serious letdown and had no impact to the movie or the MCU at large.
The new release had a Stan Lee tribute, an unfinished deleted scene with the Hulk, and a sneak peek at Spider-Man: Far From Home. And save for the Stan Lee tribute, every other added scene could have been done without.
The only way to look at it is, Avengers: Endgame was re-released in a bid to beat Avatar as the highest-grossing movie of all time, and for Marvel Studios, that is not a good look at all.
It’s important to note that Avatar‘s box office includes a re-release as well, but James Cameron took a very different approach to Marvel. For the Avatar re-release, Cameron went back to the material he’d cut from the finished film and completed its CGI (at a cost of $1 million a minute). He then stitched nine minutes of new footage back into the movie, meaning the re-release had a sense of value to it. The new version was so long that the end credits had to be cut down because at the time the IMAX platter had a maximum of 170 minutes.
On the other hand, Avengers: Endgame re-release featured only 1 new material, which was an unfinished deleted scene shown as a post-credit scene. The scene featured an alternate introduction to the Professor Hulk character, showing the Hulk operating as a superhero and diving into a burning building. The CGI is low quality; the flames lack definition, the Hulk’s mouth doesn’t move at all when Mark Ruffalo says his lines, and at one point he pulls out a mobile phone that’s literally just a grey rectangular block. It’s easy to see why this single deleted scene was cut because it doesn’t add anything at all to the story.
Then there is the Spider-Man: Far From Home clip, which was really sad, considering the fact that the clip shown lasted barely a minute and saw Nick Fury and Maria Hill head to the remote Mexican town of Ixtenco and meet Mysterio. One would have expected a surprise or something that will build hype for Far From Home, like Venom did for Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, but this was just like a regular post-credit scene that people could have done without watching.
There’s nothing wrong with doing a re-release, but the additional content has to make the rewatch worth it. Over the last decade, Marvel has built a strong and positive relationship with their fanbase, but the Avengers: Endgame re-release frankly feels as though they’ve taken advantage of their most devoted fans. It feels cheap and cynical, and strangely desperate, as though Marvel really felt Avengers: Endgame wouldn’t have been enough of a hit if it didn’t dethrone Avatar. Hopefully, Marvel never tries anything quite like this again.