Imagine a rowdy classroom suddenly turning silent in nervous anticipation. Most days, this class is full of boisterous side chat as the professor tries their best to corral the students into listening to them. However, today is different. Today, your professor has unleashed their secret weapon. Off to the side on the whiteboard is written the words “In Avengers Endgame: Thor ______ Thanos”. Though you may or may not care, you know that some of your classmates are dreading the moment someone breaks the silence, inciting the teacher to fill in the final blank. The minute someone talks out of turn again, whether you like it or not, you’ll know what one of those two characters suffered at the hands of the other. This is the experience of reddit user u/Heroic0, whose teacher had started class by announcing that they would give one “Endgame” spoiler every time someone disrupted the lecture.
This phenomenon is not limited to just one classroom. Across the country, teachers are using this technique to rein in their students’ more exuberant impulses. News sources have lept on posts by Twitter users such as @tourdevssel, “victims” who have posted pictures of classroom whiteboards with partially written spoilers online. NYC teacher Rebecca Shamsian told INSIDER about her experiences, reporting that threatening a particularly disruptive student with spoilers silenced him effectively. “I said, ‘Okay great, so you don’t mind me saying that Thanos—’ and his hands FLEW to his ears,” she said. “Needless to say, the rest of the period was perfectly on task.”
Whether or not they care about the actual plot of the film, teachers know that “Avengers: Endgame” was one of the most highly anticipated, and most well-received films of this box-office season. They know that the directors of the film, Anthony and Joseph Russo, had instituted a “spoiler ban” on all media outlets until Monday, May 5th, and had begged audiences not to spill any secrets. These facts made it so that even those who might not care about the Marvel Cinematic Universe were intensely eager to experience the film for themselves, so that they too could be a part of the inner circle of secrets.
“Avengers: Endgame” was predicted to be incredibly successful at the box office. Ticket pre-sales smashed record after record as audiences clamored to get opening weekend tickets at any theater they could, with seats filling up so quickly that some theater locations had 24-hour screenings throughout opening weekend. It’s safe to say now that this film did not fail to live up to the hype. Soaring in at a 95 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, this movie is officially the second highest rated Marvel movie out so far, just behind last year’s “Black Panther,” which took home three of the seven Oscars it was nominated for this past year, takes the top spot at a margin of just 1 percent.
While “Endgame” has fared well critically, its commercial performance is truly something for the record books. The film smashed the record for highest-grossing opening weekend, taking in $1.2 billion worldwide — twice as much as the second-highest grossing film. It turned a billion dollar profit in five days — including Thursday preview showings and Monday sales — the fastest time in which any film has grossed that large a profit, ever. The film opened at a record number of theaters: 4,662 locations. In short, this was one of the biggest opening weekends for a film in history and it may have sparked one of the highest-grossing summer blockbuster seasons for Hollywood ever. Actress Zoe Saldana has joked that should the movie continue to break records, she should be inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records. I wouldn’t be surprised if they took her up on that.
The success of “Avengers: Endgame” could not come at a better time, as Disney increases advertisements for its new streaming service Disney+, set to be released on November 12, 2019. With several new Marvel TV shows set to be premiered on that service, such as “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier”, “WandaVision”, and “Loki”, fans who felt lukewarm at best about the titles now eagerly anticipate their debuts. I, for one, cannot wait to see how Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige plans to top this one as we move into Phase 4 of the cinematic universe with “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” slated for release in July. Now that we know what these producers are capable of, fans are going to settle for nothing but the best.
