Avengers: Infinity War

as far as "comics aren't for kids anymore" yeah i remember when Burton's Batman came out, that was a big part of it, the gothic dark look, the Prince sountrack, that aint new...

"pow zoom comics aren't just for kids anymore" was a very tired cliche by 1989

remember when marvel’s pitch from around the time they became marvel was talking about college kids who were into psychedelic images and surreal stories? me neither, because it was old by the time I was born

but you could still buy comics on a newsstand, at least

sucks that Black Widow doesn't have her red hair anymore

Tbh i can see this movie being a letdown so i plan to get reaaaaalllyyy high first

Marvel movies remind me of certain kinds of antidepressants I’ve been on. They maintain a status quo that is functional and agreeable but never allows true highs or lows.

that is a good way to boil down my distaste for these movies (I saw most of 'em up to the second Avengers; only the third Iron Man had a detectable flair and even then I barely remember anything about it)

the three most recent marvel movies (spider man, thor, black panther) were the best yet, but i don't really see the new one topping those. but if you stopped after the second avengers it might be a good idea to dip into the post civil war ones

sometimes I forget, then re-remember, that Justin Theroux has the sole writing credit on the worst of these (that I've seen)

I thought that one was fine but didn’t really lean into having a distinct voice, pretty much an echo of the first plot-wise

Dang who put a quarter in Old Lunch?

Interesting review of this movie that I’ll never see:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2018/04/avengers-infinity-war.html

What even ITT

Sorry, dudes. Work was insufficiently diverting today. What can I say.

Kinda just sunk in this evening while I was sipping an Infinity Gauntlet-themed cocktail in the theater bar (the gf needed to see the theatrical premiere of the new Cobra Kai show due to her enduring deep love of Karate Kid) that this is the informal adaptation of the thing that, twenty-seven summers ago, officially kicked off my lifelong love of comics. It's amusing to me (and, yes, probably only to me) to feign butthurt about the inevitable hateration, but I obviously do feel a lot of affection and protectiveness toward the franchise. I'm thrilled to be in the midst of this thing and will enjoy the ride until Feige inevitability retires to his private island and the entire enterprise slides into a slow motion turf-out from the lack of a strong guiding hand at the helm.

I agree completely. But also the comics themselves have been doing that for decades, and also it was nice when people-at-large didn't feel compelled to opine on a thing they never gave and still don't give a shit about.

― .38 Special K - 'Hold On Muesli' (Old Lunch), Wednesday, April 25, 2018

ah gotcha -- I misread that the first time around.

MCU is successful because it is all post-Star Wars prequels filmmaking with bluescreen and cgi and all that, the framework for doing all that visually intensive stuff and post production is already there.

prior to that there were still tons of comic movies out, they just didn't have the production quality...

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, April 25, 2018

lmao how can you possibly write this in a world where Justice League exists

Old Lunch it's cool, I was a video game journalist for 16 years I've had 13 year old say they hope my whole family gets cancer because I didn't like the PSP port of Jet Grind Radio that much

I thought the review was good in that it got at something I can never quite articulate about how all these films seem "good" when I watch them but then it's like I almost instantly forget them

What can't happen if the "Infinity Gauntlet" falls into the "right" hands, whether that be in this film or the next, is the elimination of struggle in this universe. The only end-game in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a continuation of struggle. You can't change struggle. Struggle is foundation. There can be no ultimate resolution. It's absurd, and nihilistic in the extreme, and that feeling of indifference one feels now through any manner of bombast or atrocity in these movies is exactly only as predicted, after all. Like Camus's Mersault shooting a man five times and only being bothered by the heat and the sunlight, it's impossible to engage emotionally; these films are always second acts--and the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is to make us the eagle eating the liver and the Titan chained to the Caucasus simultaneously. We are the tormentors because we want to watch our heroes suffer but not die. We are the tormented because we don't feel anything.

i like this, speaks to lots of thoughts i've had about soap operas and long-running tv dramas and franchise movies and such for a long time

well, as stan lee once said, superhero comics present 'the illusion of change' and the movies aren't any different in that respect

also real life is an eternal, unending, unresolved struggle and then we die iirc

don't get me wrong, i don't think it's a criticism in the way that the writer seems to, if anything it warms me to the idea of the movies or at least echoes my own feelings towards the things that are essentially the same as this nonsense but that i personally love and engage with

"struggle" and "life" i'm a bit less unsure about tho. struggle is a question of perspective, maaaaan

Tbh i can see this movie being a letdown so i plan to get reaaaaalllyyy high first

heh yes but it's so long you may be sober again for the final hour! maybe bring some edibles.

I think only the Iron Man movies are really susceptible to that criticism - people do change in most of the movies, not least because most of the movies are origin stories.

For example, I aged 20 years during Thor 2, but when I came out, my watch said only two hours had passed.

Tony Stark's arc (reactor) and growth become much more apparent when you watch the entire 515-film epic straight through.

Which is true across the board, really. My rewatch has definitely helped elucidate the way this all works as an actual storyline.

xxp the power of mew-mew

The possibility that Darcy is a casualty of the very necessary and justifiable action of writing Natalie Portman out of the franchise is frankly unconscionable imo.

You'd think with all these cosmic energy things in the movie they'd have Skarsgård but looks like no?

(I don't know that she's officially been written out but it's good to start the day on an optimistic footing, I find.)

I won't be too surprised by the exclusion of any non-costumed supporting cast members from this behemoth of a film.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Infinity War

portman's departure basically happened in one line of dialogue in ragnarok, and she's confirmed she's not interested in returning iirc

fair choice, imo

it was the worst of both worlds: a thankless supporting-girlfriend role which portman was not very good in

TBF, the job required her to act, which is not her strong suit.

Actually, I just had an inspired idea: swap her role with Kat Dennings. Maybe Thanos can use his magic glove to make that happen.

the "perpetual struggle" thing only really bothers me when the films teeter on the edge of using their fantastical fictions to posit some kind of truly other existence or revolutionary change, and then have to back away or put that change in the hands of bad guys who have to be stopped (as in black panther) for fear of breaking the universe. to stay more or less in genre: the first matrix movie ends with something really thrilling: the rules have been broken, the possibilities are endless, and as neo hangs up the phone, as the credits roll, and on the way home, you're imagining a radical liberation of millions. (obviously the sequels wreck this but anyway.) even kinda shitty versions of this idea, all those movies where we meet a "rebellion" consisting of two speaking actors and eight extras, and they prevail at the end, have a glimmer of this. for another cartoonish actioner: the hero's actions in the running man are more consequential, and more motivated by altruism, than anything in these otherwise much better-made films.

this bigger change is a narrative possibility the marvel movies have thus far reflexively closed themselves off from. the inventions of tony stark and shuri do not transform the fabric of human life or the distribution of power or equity. the experience of being invaded by aliens or nearly conquered by a supercomputer rattles tony personally, but does not shift the politics of the planet earth as it does in (to name a way shittier but momentarily more interesting movie) independence day: resurgence. as in the marvel comics, which i was weaned on and love, the world hangs together and change is at the micro-level of the characters and their relationships (but not TOO much change or it's time for clones or demonic bargains to hit the reset button) which is why people care and want the next issue.

it works perfectly well in comics which are serialized soap operas that you read for tens or hundreds of issues. i don't think it DOESN'T work in a string of tentpole blockbusters, but it works differently. there are only so many entries in the canon, they can only do so much, and the obligations on them to tell self-contained, satisfying stories, without disrupting the universe, sort of flatten out the stakes. we're going to get small, well-constructed but self-similar character arcs. people learn lessons, people learn to work together. iron man will remember to be a little less of an asshole, until next time. they're great spectacle and leagues more competent than most spectacle fare these days, but i think some of what i'm rambling about here is why it feels a bit flat overall, even though the last couple that i've seen (thor 3, BP) have been some of the most memorable and original of the line.

great post doc

another thing i've mulled over/bitched about forever: canonicity is the ultimate enemy of creativity and engagement

again not exactly a complaint because things are what they are, but yeah DC you're onto something about how serial fiction/canonical universes can never really pitch extreme emotions at you, never leave you shook or heartbroken. even when they try to pull that off you can't evade the thought that the myths will just get retold, it's a ritual rather than a revelation.

as in the marvel comics, which i was weaned on and love, the world hangs together and change is at the micro-level of the characters and their relationships (but not TOO much change or it's time for clones or demonic bargains to hit the reset button) which is why people care and want the next issue.

Someone was telling me about an Iron Man story that got pitched (but I don't think ever got made/published) involving blue-collar Detroit auto sector workers (or something) that Stark Industries disenfranchised banding together to take down Iron Man. Would watch that movie

sounds like a movie for.. spymaster

Dr. Who kind of faces the same problems, when every season involves universe-threatening monsters destroying all of time, yet you know the mains will always survive, somehow. fwiw the best episodes that do evoke hearbreak and genuine emotion are the more down-to-earth small scale bits ("Vincent and the Doctor")

Not a million miles away from Keaton's motivation in Spider-Man: Homecoming xpost

xp

the main reason i just lost interest i think. repeating the trick of "Girl in the Fireplace" got v annoying v quickly

another thing i've mulled over/bitched about forever: canonicity is the ultimate enemy of creativity and engagement

― the vomming of the snark (Noodle Vague), Thursday, April 26, 2018 9:01 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the tightrope that any decade-spanning, multi-authored narrative has to walk: to what extent do you attempt to maintain an internal consistency so that this thing still works as a semi-coherent story, and to what extent do you fudge the details in order to allow the thing to breathe a little without being slavishly beholden to story beats that took place a generation before?

People complain about the constraints of continuity and I geddit, but at the same time if the Marvel U was just a bunch of disconnected one-off stories with no throughline, my personal investment in that project would be pretty much nil.

This is the tightrope that any decade-spanning, multi-authored narrative has to walk

but comics are unusual in that category tho in that their characters are essentially immortal - soap operas might well have characters who have had outlandishly eventful lives but eventually the actor playing them will die or they'll be written out, while superman will always be superman no matter what, as long as there's an audience for stories about him

soap operas recast characters all the time! and some have characters come back from the dead

i think it's the conception of an ongoing narrative that i have issue with, rather than a kind of mythological retelling of archetypal stories