The One Problem Ruining Superhero Movie Endings 

The issue is when a third act doesn't actually resolve the "conflict", it's just a fight. Diana's "conflict" was figuring out how the human world works. Her final fight was just a fight. Same issue with the sequel.

Logan is the one that comes to mind on having a full third act. As its character and theme of flow and match completely give Logan a fully realized ending that feels hole and earned.

Spiderman 2 really nailed the third act. It wasn't a brawl between Doc Ock and Peter, it was Peter finally learning from all of his struggles to save Doc's character, enabling him to redeem himself from being a monster.

“When’s the last time a super hero movie had a third act that worked?” SPIDERVERSE!!!!!!

Shazam. The suicide squad. Spiderverse. Their third acts hold on to the themes - family, these villains showing that everyone has purpose & value and taking a leap of faith / anyone can be Spider-Man.

I really though they were going to do something interesting with Ares in Wonder Woman. In the New 52 run, Ares wasn't an antagonist. He had lost his bloodthirsty nature through thousands of years of conflict and had realized that mankind was violent and cruel by themselves. He didn't seek to punish mankind or sow war, he was tired and only still had respect for the soldiers caught up in war. When he was revealed as that posh British guy who was negotiating a peace treaty, I really thought they went that direction. That would make Wonder Woman's arc complete. She went to man's world because "Well clearly WWI is Ares' doing." Only to realize that mankind is not innocent in this conflict. Then Ares reveals himself as not only not the cause, but as someone horrified by humanity and who is trying to stop the war.

Winter Soldier had a great third act, there is this window dressing of this huge cgi battle with Cap saving the day, but the core of the third act was him trying to save his friend. The movie has some second act issues, but the third act is top notch.

Her monologue leading up to when when she expresses the word “love” killed Wonder Woman for me. Everyone wanted to praise this movie for the first femme led superhero movie but I presume they all meant the first 88% of the movie and pretended the last 12% never happened.

The GCI battlefest doesn't bother me as much if characters are different. Hero vs villain with similar power set gets boring, but it's definitely how the most stories have done it 'forever', for most heroes (Spidey is a big exception, but for Venom really). When you can get a different power villain, full team, or bigger villain (Thanos, Doom, Kang) vs a hero or two it's definitely better because of the variation in powers. I definitely think NWH is a great Third Act, both for Tom's Peter, and the third act of the film itself is also great. If the first 3 movies are acts 1,2&3 then it works really well.

There's plenty of things to hate about the TASM movies but this is something I've loved about them because both the movies' third acts echo the themes of the movie so well and give their characters a proper lesson to learn. Where in TASM1 Peter spends his entire runtime learning what it's like to be a hero and loses his way trying to find a father figure that he misses out on saving the one he did have. He has to find the humanity in him to truly become Spider-Man. And in the end, Dr. Conners', who saves Peter and clearly shows that he still has humanity left in him, literally lifts him up with his human half because he can't do it with his non-human one. Humanity quite literally saves Spider-Man at the end. And that's been the theme of the movie, the humanity of the people and the humanity of Spider-Man and what it means to be both. It's so fucking good. Whereas for TASM2, we quite literally open on the shot of a watch because the theme is running out of time and struggling to catch up and remembering to enjoy the time you do have. Now TASM2 does have a messy structure, I don't think that's even possible to argue, but its themes and the point of the story don't really get lost in it. The shock of the ending make it kind of impossible to do that tbh. Throughout the entire movie, Peter is struggling to catch up with time and his time is divided between trying to be Peter and find out what happened to his parents and trying to be Spider-Man and save the city. He's torn in two different directions by time and no matter what he does, he never has enough time. Even the people he saves (see: the slow-mo scenes) are barely saved by a fraction of a second. In the end, it all comes to a head as time quite literally breaks and in the one moment Peter needs to be fast and catch up, he's not fast enough. Even Spider-Man can't beat time. All of the characters in the movie are racing against time. Harry was racing against his disease and his arc climaxes with him trying to cheat time and it literally broke him (his bones). None of the characters in the story could beat time. And at the end Peter learns that he needs to make the most of the time that he has. Even with all of the interference with the movie from the studio, they couldn't bury the story Marc Webb and the writers wanted to tell and its themes. They may not be perfect movies but goddamn they are truly amazing when it comes to their themes and their characters (especially if you see the deleted scenes that were unfortunately cut and deserved to be in the movies).

I wish an example of a third act done well, according to your criticism was presented. Without it I found the argument to be lackluster.

This would have been a great video if it didn't make one absolutely absurd claim. "No superhero movie has a good third act". Just, what? The Dark Knight. The Suicide Squad. Sam Rami's Spiderman 1 and 2. Infinity War (Wow). The Avengers 1 (wow, wow). I personally think Dark Knight has the GOAT third act of any movie, superhero or not.

3rd acts in super-hero movies (or really most action movies nowadays) are usually underwhelming because the climax is often treated like a setting rather than a plot. The plot always makes a dramatic shift from real storytelling to more of a checklist: go here, stop this bad guy, and then the story will conclude. When the fight itself continues the story and visually culminates the conflicts up to that point, then it becomes a real final act.

There are plenty of super hero movies that do this. One in particular I’d point to is Thor Ragnarok. It isn’t just Thor vs a cgi army (the third act does feature that a little bit but it is mostly just to show his new power boost which is argue is worth it for reasons I’ll get to). Thor embraces his role as king of asgard and understands what he must do to be the king he wanted to be and that his father knew he could be. This is interesting because it happens in a way that isn’t what Thor initially thought would be a good thing, the destruction of asgard. The plot of Thor getting more powerful than any hero we’ve seen in the MCU and having it STILL not be enough to defeat Hela to me is amazing. He doesn’t just punch harder and use bigger lightning blasts, Loki even asks him to hit her with another lightning blast and Thor admits he’s tried and thrown everything he has at her and it did nothing. Then he has a very unique solution of having Surtr destroy everything (including Hela). This ties in events from the first act and also connects to the overarching theme of Thor learning to see value in things that aren’t tangible like his hammer or the grand nature of asgard as a city/planet. He learns that Asgard is not a place, it’s a people, and he learns that Mjolnir didn’t make him who he is, the fact that he’s the god of thunder and willing do whatever he must do for his people…. THAT is what makes him a true hero. All of that and throw in the fact that his relationship with Loki reaches a really nice climax that fits right in with Thor’s maturation, he accepts the person Loki is and their differences but they have a genuine moment together where they fight for their home side by side. If that qualifies as a dull uninspired generic third act, then no movies are worth watching. I may be biased because I am a big Thor fan but it’s stories like that which are responsible for me being such a fan of the character. To me the movie was a masterpiece and shows what MCU movies and superhero movies in general can be… good movies, not just good superhero movies.

I think that’s why the Tony Stark character in films has been so beloved. There’s character arc throughout the whole film series. Even in films he just appears in.

Spider-Man No way Home 3rd act is Amazing! Tears to my eyes

I don't think RU-vid review culture ever really includes this very important element. Every year, there's a new generation of fans that reach the age of viewership. What's "old" or played out to us is brand new to that new generation. The tropes are worn out if you ask someone who's been watching movies for literally 20-30yrs. For a 7-10yrs old kid.... it's all still fresh. It may take them 20yrs before they're actually tired of the content that the older generations have already grown out of. These movies are marketed and advertised for all ages but they're primarily directed at that younger generation. This is why you don't hear kids and teens complaining or nitpicking the content. They're still at the age where they can shut their brains off and just enjoy. It's not old to them yet. They still want the toys, they want to wait in line with their friends, they want to be there opening night, they want the clothes and other merch, and they generally love every aspect of the experience. Kids aren't showing up to analyze the 3 act structure or to grade the pop culture references.

1:23-1:43/ Nothing to do with the THIRD ACT topic, I just wanted to point out how the 2 greatest superhero films from my youth have a TWILIGHT ZONE connection! 1978's SUPERMAN was directed by Richard Donner (R.I.P.), who got his start in the early 60's directing episodes of the Rod Serling classic TV series. 11 years later, my introduction to the Batverse came courtesy of Tim Burton's landmark film. One of the actors was Pat Hingle, who played Commissioner Gordon. Guess which early 60's TV show he guest starred in? Yup, THE TWILIGHT ZONE!

This is why The Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises work so well for me! They leave you with a complete story and the third act has everything to do with what was set up prior.

The problem with super hero movie third acts: sky beams.

Think about if in the first act of Wonder Woman she was reluctant to being born essentially as nothing more than a “god killer” and saw her self no different from any other Amazon. Still with a strong sense of wanting to help the world though. Then in the third act she would have to fight and actual god to defend the world. That should tie 1st and 3rd pretty well and not as disconnected

I’m getting tired of how everything now is a universe/world ending threat. I wish there was more personal, one on one stuff

I think the reason so many of these films' third acts seem to shove aside their themes in the third act is that they lack a climactic decision for their protagonist(s) with multiple believable potential outcomes. It's not like Ant-Man is just gonna NOT risk his life to save his daughter. It's not like Tony Stark is just gonna let Whiplash murder a bunch of people. It's not like Cap is just gonna bail out of the plane and let New York get nuked. Something like Infinity War is a bit more effective, since we can believe that Wanda's decision to kill Vision or keep hoping she can save him could go either way, and same with Dr. Strange giving up the time stone or not, but Thor's plot is the weakest because the only choice he faces is whether he'll risk his own life. James Gunn's The Suicide Squad gets more points for making its protagonists the kind of people who might reasonably walk away from a battle they're not being ordered to fight. Better still though are films like The Dark Knight, where Bruce faces a rapid-fire series of choices forcing him to define exactly where and how he falls on the ideological spectrum laid out by the other characters' actions and moral arguments. Deadpool is a weird outlier, in that his REAL climactic decision is whether to show his girlfriend his scarred face, which is amusingly low-stakes but required them to throw in a mostly unrelated action sequence to compensate.

In my opinion it's them using the entire movie for buildup that the third act is pretty much rushed to get to the ending

All I have to say is watch No Way Home for a phenomenal third act that leaves the hero where we always wanted him to be.

I honestly feel as though No Way Home’s third act was solid NOT BECAUSE of the amazing action and interactions therein but the THEMES it drives home of the toll that it takes to be Spider-Man… or maybe that’s just me?

I like when a movie has the hero lose everyone now and then. It’s slightly humbling and usually unexpected.

Big CGI monster fights as endings have to stop.

Another thing that happens to the WW movie, as well as many more superhero stories, is that some narratives don't need a specific antagonist. It could've flowed way better if Diana just fought a bunch of Prussians or whatever in the final act and tie it back to the theme of "a girl discovers what the real world is like". But you gotta sell toys, I guess

Guess that’s why no way home feels refreshing, yea there were some “big cgi generic fight moments” we all hate towards the end but at least it felt like there was genuine growth for Holland’s Spider-Man at the end (marvel the smart ppl at marvel take note)

I always assumed third acts suck because the movies are big budgets and they feel the need to up the ante to keep people invested. The issue is when so many movies are "save the city/world/universe" it kinda gets stale especially if the big finale is just a CGI fest and not properly choreograph to make it stand out. Big action movies or romance are easier to sell but sometimes it's nice to have something that's low stakes but personal.

To me, superhero films with 3rd act as the BEST part were Endgame and The Dark Knight. Endgame was obvious because it's an endless pay off to 20+ films, and concluded the original Avenger's arc. While TDK third act got everything that made that version of Batman top-tier. Joker's final challenge in the boat scene where he tested Gotham citizens' morals, Fox questioned over Secuity vs. Privacy, and Harvey Dent tragic turned that came full circle as he "live long enough to see yourself become a villian". Best of all, it culminated in Gordon EPIC speech that sums up Batman as a silent protector who can be hated and tested, but will live on as a symbol to who bring fear to the criminals. So moving, poetic, and a little tragic all at once.

Minor spoiler:I feel like Spider Man:No way home set up the third act for a lot of characters really well, especially since some of them just didn't get the justice they had deserved before.

Honestly I don’t mind CGI driven 3rd acts as long as it makes sense with the story and it’s consistent with the rest of the movie. In something like the Avengers movies and ZSJL, it’s a teamup movie with 6 superheroes so it makes sense. Even in Aquaman it makes sense and even then the 3rd act still had a spear to spear fight on land as well as Man of Steel since you have two godlike beings against each other. In something like Black Widow, Shang Chi and Wonder Woman, it just doesn’t work because the first two acts were more grounded in terms of their action. I did like Shang Chi’s fight with his dad a lot in Shang Chi but the rest was just mostly CGI nonsense. Doctor Strange though honestly was one of my favorite 3rd acts in any superhero movie. It’s not CGI explosions but it instead uses this mechanic with the time stone set up in the 2nd act and it comes back again in such an ingenious and creative manner. Big CGI battles can work if they fit the tone of the story and still have genuine emotional moments with conclusion and character growth

I see Nerdstalgic, I click.

In the MCU, I might argue that No Way Home subverted this quite well-and I might even say each Spider-Man MCU solo movie has done a decent job of not falling quite so heavily into these issues, in part thanks to his exceptional and varied rogues gallery (and also not being explicitly beholden to only Kevin Feige’s vision). Of course outside the MCU there have been other successes at this such as Spider-Verse-but rarely are these movies able to balance their action with the themes of the movie.

I find it frustrating that you point to this fairly obvious problem and present no example of how to solve it... Or even just the tones it's been avoided. It's like you skipped the third act of your own script.

I think modern superhero third acts are a lot like 80s action movies third acts

The Dark Knight is perfect.

Shang Chi 3º act bored so much that I didn't bother to watch the Eternals

I'm on the fence as to the problem with superhero movies. I can agree that it's the third act, but to say that a superhero needs to die to complete their story is unimaginative. Just because you won the battles of the day doesn't mean your journey is over. What I think is the bigger problem that is more easily solved is the problem of killing the villain. Part of what makes Batman have such a compelling backlog of villains is that they have been fleshed out over numerous encounters, even within a single generation of the lore. That is, in part, because Batman doesn't kill his foes. This leaves a full livery of villains to choose from that you need not spend time developing the audience's attachment to them as they're already familiar. Thanks was one of the most interesting villains in modern cinematic history simply because you got to learn who he was and why he did those things before he was ultimately thwarted. What's more, he won, at least initially. That's almost unheard of in modern cinema, where villains must lose and heroes must come home via parade. It's the same reason Empire Strikes Back was, and still is, such a compelling story that sticks with the viewer long after watching.

Studios think audiences want big massive cgi climaxes

Spider-Man: No Way Home gets rid of everything you critiqued in this video, I think. I hope you enjoy it!

No Way Home nailed its third act for not just 1 but three movies. Creating a battle that made sense and was more than just, beat the people up. It's one of those kinds of battle I like in D&D, where the finale isn't just beat up peopel till they don't move, it's do something very difficult while in danger .

@Nerdstalgic do traditional Asian films like martial arts films ( pre 2010s) follow 3 act structure?

Spider-Man no way home had a quality 3rd act 🔥

To this day I wish Iron-Man didn't have the big fight with the two armors, it's sooo good before that and I feel like that third act kind of ruined it

Modern Superhero movies thirds acts that worked: Into the Spider-Verse, Shazam!, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, No Way Home, The Suicide Squad, Infinity War, Endgame, GotG Vol. 2

What about Spider-Man NWH? Now that was an impressive third act!

Glad to see someone finally talking about this, since its been on my mind for a while now. This has been a problem for superhero movies going all the way back to Superman 78's ridiculous time-reverse stuff. But it's not always about the CGI, though. Even movies that are considered the genre's best, like The Dark Knight and Logan, have 3rd acts that are arguably weaker than the rest of their movies, like Two-Face's shenanigans and the "Evil Wolverine" respectively. And these do have connections to the stories' overall themes, but for whatever reason these are the flattest parts

Good vid. I’ve always been generally more interested in 2nd acts over 3rd acts anyway but the obligatory big 3rd act battles in superhero movies have been getting increasingly generic. There are some good superhero 3rd acts though. The Dark Knight, Civil War & Logan are three that spring to mind

I’m glad you used Wonder Woman for the pic because that movie was perfect up until that terrible third act

The problem with superhero movies is there are toooooo many of them. And they’re pretty much all the same.

Avengers Age of Ultron has my favourite third act of any comic book movie mainly because it has more thematically relevant dialogue than most movies do.

That’s definitely what I felt about shang-chi. Overall, it was really good, but the final act felt like filler for the important parts (Shang-chi conflict with his dad and the friends growth to do something more with what she’s capable off). There’s nothing much wrong with the action here to be honest as it’s really fun and more unique for the mcu, and at least is one of the better final acts where it blends with the story written. I’m actually kinda annoyed by how the mcu makes the final act battle before hand for every film. I feel like it should be necessary for the BIG films where it’s more convenient.

funny enough. if they swap the order and made the fight with Ares first then Steves talk next. it would have made it better, even if ares was defeated. the war raged on. it cemented that it didnt matter who started it. just who finish it.

As you said, those films are set up to be serials, you can't make your protagonist achieve a character-changing milestone if they have to come back later to change again. If you always have to go further, either the character's journey ends quickly, or they never really change to leave room for more "change"...

what's the music at 6:02 plz???

No way home, Deadpool kinda, and Spiderverse all have Solid third acts.

The following post discussing Spiderman: No Way Home. I have tried to be generic enough to be completely spoiler-free. I will delete this comment if any reply says they consider what I said to be a spoiler. You bring up a great point about "knowing they have 14 more movies planned". I feel like that was one of the ways No Way Home's finale felt so engaging: the stakes were completely up in the air. This could easily be the last appearance of *any* of the characters, and every character on the "good side" was beloved enough that their deaths would be felt hard. Meanwhile in terms of narrative (unlike the all-too-common trope in so many Superhero movies), it wouldn't make sense for any of the "good guys" to kill any of the "bad guys", so you know that death could both happen, and would count as a loss if it did.

Nailed it. Then you add on the lack of any type of emotional growth or change which they obviously are in capable of because this is canon

Unbreakable is an exception to this. But it's also an exception in superhero movies full stop.

This was Amazing man

Disney: "ain't reading all that"

For me, civil war's third act is one, if not the best, superhero third act I had seen. No CGI monsters, just two superhero in a slugfest to fight for their principles and to fight on behalf of their love ones... It's theme had progressed in a way that I didn't see coming. No ultimate villain to defeat just a battle of inner demons within themselves that culminated in a blow by blow hits that really hurts me no matter who is in the receiving end. Civil war's third act is as memorable, engaging and thought provoking as it hits my emotions to the deepest roots from deep within.

Gal Guh-DOTT. I know it’s weird. I thought it was Guh-DOH too. Awesome video.

What I can't imagine is an empty big explosion battle at the end of a marvel movie....

“competing juggernauts” (mcu, dceu) ahahahahahahaha

I just wanna see one superhero movie where the heroes take a small super powerful team to storm the castle and take out the big bad guy (which you'd assume would make the rest of the bad guys stop fighting), and then it turns out the other bad guys don't know their leader has been taken out and they go on and just massacre the people the heroes were trying to protect in the first place.

I would have loved if you could give a example of a good superhero ending that follows your summary at the end. For me personally, The Dark Knight would be a movie that actually does that, and I believe that that is on of the reason that it is regarded in a different class as most other superhero movies. Great video though!

"when was the last time a super hero movie had a reasonably good third act?" Two days ago. No way home. Shang chi a few months ago. Endgame before the dark times. Like it's quite common.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2, Far From Home, Iron Man 3, Shang-Chi, and The Suicide Squad all had emotionally resonant 3rd acts that were in conversation with their first acts. I could go movie-by-movie, but I don't think I need to.

feels like the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies were good with their third act I feel.

Weird how the video frames the film Aquaman as not having a superb third act, when in that film the character did actually developed from being this perenial loner who doesn’t care about the politics of Atlantis to becoming the good emphatetic leader who seeks to use his ascension as king to bridge the barrier between land and sea. Basically it gave a complete coming of age sort of story of a man embracing his own past to create a better future

Everyone goes for as much CGI as possible and as the earth has to always be at risk. But the best climaxes have personal stakes. Nothing was on the line at the end of civil war accept friendship. And it was awesome.

ragnarok, civil war, infinity war and endgame are few that i can think of, that have a GREAT 3rd act

Dr. Strange had a decent finale. The first part of the Act 3 was the usual punch-fest. But the "bargaining" with Dormammu worked really well thematically. Shazam is still probably the best, though.

I was kinda hoping that you also propose some solutions to this issue at the end on the video. Maybe stuff for another video...

Nerdstalgic, I've come to bargain.

The third act of these movies are the main reason superhero movies makes so much at the box office.

Yep

I definitely hated how in WW, just by killing Ares, the war was over, it would have been better if Diana had that way of thinking, just for Ares to tell her that even if he dies, the conflicts would still be going, then she kills him, and sees that indeed, nothing changes, and that Ares and Steve where right about mankind, but she doesn't loses hope and decides to guide humanity for the better as years passes by, ending the wars along the way

This video could have been longer! Definitely agree with the perpetual second act these films go through. I stopped watching Marvel awhile back for that reason.

it occurred to me that as you was say, these superhero movies are in a perpetual second act and I thought Endgame was them finally getting around to the third act but then they just started it all over again Endgame finally gives closure to the original Avengers team then after Endgame they just decided to start it all over again

You put this out right when no way home has one of the best third acts

Nerdstalgic and The Royal Ocean Film Society are the only channels I know who give their analysis videos “flare.”

No Way Home had a brilliant Third Act! Great Stuff!

just one problem? what about these 90 other ones?

4:38 You can have characters in "real trouble" without lazily killing them off.

Hello Future Me sorta dovetails this topic when discussing the issue of power creep in fantasy fiction. That instead of seeking bigger challenges in serial fiction, rather incomparable challenges are preferable. So there is a more unique opportunity for growth, or permanent change that takes the hero past points of no return.

Are you saying climactic cgi end battles are boring because they don't relate to the theme of the movie or because those are now common? As for the "everything ends after one thing is defeated" trope, Joss Whedon wrote himself into a corner. He basically said in the dvd extras (perhaps commentary) that he needed a quick resolution and new it was cheap.

Studios think audiences want huge cgi battle royales for 3rd acts as a result of the MCU etc. Forgetting that the best superhero 3rd acts (Spider-Man 2, X-Men 2, Dark Knight, X-Men Days of Future Past etc) are the hero and villains's engaged in an ideological battle/reflecting each other. Peter bringing Otto back from the brink, the Joker and Batman being 2 sides of the same coin, Jean sacrificing herself to protect the X-Men not only from the imminent danger they're in but also the looming threat she feels growing inside her. Those are genuine 3rd acts and climaxes. The way it's supposed to be.

The Dark Knight third act is great. I think because is a batle of morality with flare.

I think super hero movies need to start diverging from the idea that they all need a big bad guy to fight antagonizing forces for a story can come in many shapes and forms

NWH - "Imma bout to end this whole videos career"

As someone who grew up in the 1990s-2010s, I'd actually say that the Superhero Genre replaced either the Raunchcom (Saving Silverman, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) or Historic Adventure genre (The Mummy, National Treasure, and Sahara which effectively killed off the genre in 2005). By 2008, when the first Iron Man came out, westerns had been dead for 14-ish years, with the big reappraisal happening in 2012.

Shazam, Doctor Strange and Aquaman all had great third acts :)

Woman Wonder literally caught a punt return, blew past the defense, then fumbled and downed it at the 5 yard line

Could you compare these movies to V for Vendetta. It is my fav super hero movie.

Cap and Iron man have had their thirds acts in Endgame, doubt their characters will ever return unless for a small cameo.