By Andrew Ivimey

When you break comic book movies down to their core they are about villains trying to destroy the world, and heroes trying to stop them. This means writers have to create the most powerful problem they can, and then an even more powerful solution, and then NEVER BRING IT UP AGAIN because it would ruin every storyline going forward. It was only a matter of time before the Marvel Cinematic Universe started asking us to forget a few things we saw because in their 23 movies and 48 hours of screen time the MCU found the time to create a few weapons that were just broken powerful. Things so busted they should ruin the plot of any movie after, like ...

4. YELLOW JACKET’S GOOP GUN IS THE ULTIMATE MURDER WEAPON

You probably don’t remember the villain of 2015’s Ant-Man, and we can’t really blame you, Darren Cross (aka Yellow Jacket, aka knock off Iron-Spider but yellow and gets small) was the former protege of Hank Pym, and was obsessed with recreating the shrinking technology his mentor hid from him. He also lacked any kind of charm or interesting character traits except for the fact that he is the most successful failure of all time. Cross couldn’t quite get the shrinking technology right and any time he attempted to shrink a life form (mice, sheep, a member of his executive board who asked perfectly reasonable questions) they wouldn’t shrink so much as have their atoms turned inside out transforming them into a tiny pile of goop.

Okay, so he made a cool gun that … REDUCES ALL ORGANIC MATTER TO A THIMBLE OF GOOP!?! This C-list villain just accidentally made the ultimate weapon of destruction, a gun that destroys all organic matter at the atomic level, which is a big deal because organic matter and atoms are the thing that everybody is made of. Everybody, hero and villain alike. He made a handgun that could kill The Hulk. Darren Cross (RIP) could have stopped Thanos with one shot and cleaned it up with a wet wipe. Hell he could have killed Thanos without even having to climb into his butt.

And the wildest thing about Darren Cross is that he’s furious about this Goop Gun. He hates his Goop Gun. He doesn’t care that it’s the ultimate superhuman killing machine, he hates that it doesn’t make cute little tiny pocket soldiers to the point where he doesn’t even try to sell the Goop Gun to Hydra who could use it to kill say, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, just a few people they might wanna kill. But yeah, tiny soldiers are definitely what Hydra would rather have, they’re known for how much they love whimsy and cute stuff.

3. EVERY SORCERER HAS AN INFINITY STONE

The first Infinity Stone the MCU introduced to us was the Tesseract, aka the Space Stone, which we learn has the ability to teleport things across space (and also power Hydra Laser Guns cause why the hell not?) but the teleporting thing is considered a cosmic ability, one of six ultimate, coveted powers that the Infinity Stones possess. It’s a big deal.

Except in Doctor Strange the MCU introduced the Sling Ring, a piece of mystical jewelry that gives any sorcerer the ability to teleport wherever they want and take whatever or whoever they want with them. Oh, and it’s not an exclusive item, every single magician has one of these things. So why are Thanos, Red Skull, Loki and most of the rest of the universe obsessed with the Space Stone when hundreds (thousands?) of magicians have the same power?

And the sling rings don’t just have the ability to teleport through space, Mordo says “Mastery of the Sling Rings is essential to the Mystic Arts. It allows us to travel throughout the Multiverse” which means the sling rings can jump through dimensions. Thanos gets the Space Stone and is able to move his spaceship a little further, Red Skull gets it and is cursed to watch over a different stone for eternity, Loki gets it and dies, meanwhile all of Earth’s magicians are casually rocking the power of an Infinity Stone, teleporting around the planet and could also go hang out in alternate dimensions any time they like, and no, they won’t take us with them.

2. THE U.S. MILITARY HAS A WORKING SUPER SOLDIER SERUM

Remember back when Bruce Banner looked like Edward Norton? It feels like a lifetime ago but it was a thing. There was a lot that 2008’s The Incredible Hulk introduced into the MCU and then dropped faster than Edward Norton’s contract, like, where did Betty Ross go? Where’s the Abomination? Or Doc Samson or The Leader? General Ross is basically the only one that survived the purge of this movie from the MCU but there were other big plot points from The Incredible Hulk that the MCU would like you not to think about, like the fact that General Ross recreated the super soldier serum and successfully injected it into soldier Emil Blonsky.

If you forget Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) in that movie it’s probably because you better remember that he turns into the Hulk villain the Abomination in the end. Now, you may be saying “So the super soldier serum turns you into an Abomination, that’s no good.” No, Blonsky only turned into the Abomination because he combined his super soldier serum with Hulk blood to become more powerful. So if General Ross just doesn’t combine the serum with Hulk blood (which should be super easy. Just don’t get Hulk blood in it, I do that all the time) then it’s a perfectly working super soldier serum. This means the military could fulfill their World War II era dreams and create an entire army of Captain America level super soldiers. In Civil War General Ross is so stressed out about stopping Captain America and friends because they don’t follow orders, so just juice up some new soldiers then Ross, how did you forget that you solved that?

1. ENDGAME ACCIDENTALLY INVENTED AN IMMORTALITY MACHINE

Let’s be real, time travel is really hard to write at the best of times, it’s especially hard to write when you combine it with science, space travel, an all powerful gauntlet, stones from the beginning of time and 23 movies of continuity. But we can’t just ignore that along the way to figuring out time travel Avengers Endgame accidentally invented an immortality machine. Yeah, remember how before Tony Stark joined the team Bruce Banner gave inventing time travel the old college try, and turned Scott Lang into a baby?

Once Tony arrives he immediately knows what happened, easily guessing Lang was turned into a baby because apparently on the drive over Tony figured out that Bruce Banner was going to invent an immortality machine instead of time travel. Tony describes that the ‘problem’ with their time machine is that “instead of pushing Lang through time, you pushed time through Lang” but is this a problem? If you want to time travel, sure it’s a problem. If you want to make an old person younger, it is absolutely not a problem. Like say, just as an example, off the top of my head, totally hypothetical, you have a super soldier who keeps the world in line and saves it again and again, but still deserves the life he wanted, and owed somebody a dance in the 40’s, and went for that dance while time travelling, and was now back, and was the saviour of the galaxy, and couldn’t continue to be that cause he was an old man and you wanna make him young again. Just a random example.

Oh, and did we mention that you also get to keep your memories? Scott remembers being both young and old when they’re done zapping time through him, which means if you just use it as a fountain of youth you will retain all your memories and be functionally immortal. It’s the ultimate Disney de-aging technology.

I understand why they can’t use the time travel pad ever again in the MCU, because time travel is dangerous and, I can’t understate this enough, really hard to write. But the first version, Bruce’s version, with a few tweaks is a functional immortality machine that can revert your body to the younger you. Like, if you put Tony’s body in there he might come back to life! Maybe that’s too morally grey, perhaps we shouldn’t have immortality you think, but it could also be used to cure the genre of heroes and villains who tragically don’t want their powers. Put Hulk in there and revert him back to when his arm wasn’t messed up from snapping, or back to when he was a Hulkless Bruce, get Bucky his arm back, undo the experiments on Rocket and make him a normal Raccoon. Or just make Scott a baby again. Have fun with it.

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