Avengers: Infinity War

I kept thinking abt all the sad little kids in the car on the ride home after the movie...and the ensuing “murky” conversations

“So...Black Panther is dead now?”
“No buddy, he’s just kinda...disappeared. Cap & Iron Man will find a way to get him back.”
“So... Does that mean you’ll find a way to make grandma come back?”
*parent quietly curses Marvel*

This kinda reminded me of the first act of the original animated Transformers movie.

this was great. i lol'd at Pratt doing Hemsworth. also Thor's line about being 1500 years old and Thanos being one in a long line of enemies was good.

My guess is Cap dies and Iron Man retires for good - there was too much set up about the wedding for that not to come through later on. Do we think Loki will come back? His death seemed a bit perfunctory given his fan favourite status.

They'll cheese it somehow. Like, Loki will come back but finally realize the error of his ways or something and will pledge to rebuild Asgard while Thor is galavanting about the universe. That gets him out of the way while leaving the possibility that he can cause trouble later.

Nothing new to add, but this was fun. It made me want to go back and fill in some of the Marvel films I've missed.

Spiderman getting ashed was the punch in the gut.

The strike against Stark retiring is that Stark has retired at the end of like half of the movies in which he's appeared.

Yeah, he's done for, if only because they've almost killed him a couple of times, he's been haunted by his NYC vision or whatever, Strange knows they need him to beat Thanos, and last because the actor is in the suit with a mask he could be anyone.

Prognosticating about who is definitely dead for really real seems thoroughly boring. The best outcome is guessing correctly and then being bored when it happens?

Notes:

* I can't believe I was worried that they wouldn't flesh out Thanos properly. I remember one of the Russo brothers mentioning this was a Thanos movie, and Brolin said as much in a couple of interviews, but I didn't know how they would fit that in since I assumed the whole movie would be leading up to one big fight with Thanos. Instead, there's only three scraps with Thanos, only one of which is actually a decent matchup, on Titan with the Guardians & the two nerds in power suits. I appreciated his Malthusian rationalization and that he extrapolates anecdata from his home planet's experience as if that's how it has to be for everyone, everywhere. Nicely reactionary & completely egotistical, a very good Thanos. You can tell Brolin really got into trying to play him as sympathetically as possible.

* I knew he was going to kill half of everybody. I think all of us knew how this movie had to end. Or was there really

* The whole forging-of-Stormbreaker side quest wasn't great for pacing and time, maybe, but I think it was necessary for the payoff when Thor finally shows up on Earth. My favorite part of the movie was when Banner shouted "oh, you guys are screwed now!" and I think my second favorite part of the movie was Groot deciding he needed to be the axe handle he wanted to see in the world.

* There's about sixty or seventy other bits in this movie tied for my third and fourth favorite things. Starlord yelling "boom" and flipping off Thanos while he falls backward through a portal, just about everything Peter Parker says, getting to see Wakanda and all the awesome Wakanda people so soon. I wish the women had more funny stuff, it seems like all the good jokes went to dudes.

* I can't believe Neanderthal hasn't boasted about being completely right about Loki eating it in the beginning of the film (although I guess "first 40 minutes" seems like hitting the side of a barn when you account for how quickly he actually gets murked)

arrgh - second bullet is supposed to say

"Or was there really a lot of uncertainty or just plain ignorance of what Thanos does with the Infinity Gauntlet once he has it? Or that he might not get to do it in this installment?"

There's a motif in this of the heroes repeatedly not really "getting" or empathizing with Thanos, saying he "cares about nothing"...Gamora most explicitly. They don't really know who/what they're dealing with because they just assume he's like the other more one-dimensional villains they've faced.

Not sure what to make of it but it's definitely something that's underlined multiple times. Alongside the theme of confronting the heroes with choosing between the greater good and their own personal attachments (with Quill failing most spectacularly) it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see how it's developed in the next one.

(I guess you could say they fail over and over to really take seriously the dilemma that he's confronting them with...)

Thanos's problem is that he cares too much!

Yeah! Or he cares about abstractions like "balance" in the absence of particular lives...like any ideologue perhaps.

Seems like a better plan for thanos would have been to just wipe out half of all of the different civilizations or species in the universe, rather than half of the members of each civilization. This way, every single civilization is now pissed at him, versus the survivors being mostly ignoant of what happened.

So many jokes were DOA and I still don't understand Chris Pratt as a movie star but, man, did I love this. That's three great comic book films in a row from Marvel.

Thanos based his ideals on the Black Plague fallout obv

"Wow this allowed for luxury crops!"

Lol Tombot i didnt remember that I posted that

Thanos’ real goal is to make life into a Veblen good

Oh and my wife’s favorite line by miles:

“What am I supposed to say? Jesus?”

I wonder whether thanos's wish as he snapped was "destroy 50% of everyone at random oh but except me, I want to stick around for that sunrise" or whether he really did just go with "50% of everyone, true random" and then he was just lucky to still be around afterwards.

The latter. Even with all the infinity stones, he still can’t see his own plot armor; and it would be completely against his whole ethos to leave himself out of the arbitrary lottery.

All that said, I have to imagine snapping your fingers while wearing a metal gauntlet is HAMFF - I mean, try it with isotoners on, shit’s practically impossible - wait, never mind, my real point is this: he waited to do it until after Thor had basically killed him because he knew he might get the wrong result in the coin toss. Might as well do it when you actually have nothing to lose.

It will be intersting if Thanos forces the heroes to confront the suffering they'll be ushering back into the universe by reversing his magical snap.

Did anybody else shout "ARACHNID!" at Thanos

No

There was still the marvel trademark bit on undercutting the emotion of a scene with a wisecrack that they’re doing too many times and I wish they’d figure out a proper balance for.

Also, not enough Benedict Wong in the film and I wish the women had far more to do.

If they give Captain Marvel full-Kirby/Starlin cosmic-level powers it should improve the balance in the followup. Do you think they’ll figure out a way to bring in Monica Rambeau in the next 12 months?

The only other iteration of Ms. Marvel I'd expect to see anytime soon is Kamala Khan. Still laying money on Captain Marvel 2: Carol & Kamala.

if marvel has any sense at all kamala khan will be making an appearance asap

just annoyed that she’s probably not gonna be hanging out with lockjaw since the inhumans tv show shit the bed

Finally saw it, had happily missed spoilers (and memes) and as I said near the start, that was a whole lotta avengin'.

Saw this, thought it was okay, but definitely not on the level of the best Marvel movies so far (Thor, GotG, Civil War). Here's some scattered thoughts:

WARNING!!! SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE!!!

* After the movie was over me and my spouse both talked how we felt exhausted by it. I think this was mostly because it was just an unending series of action scenes with few character moments in between. It definitely felt like some of these could've been shortened or cut altogether. For example, as cool as it was to see Peter Dinklage, Thor's little sidequest could've easily been shortened to 5 minutes instead of 20 to give more space for other stuff.

* I've heard some people react to the criticism that this was merely a huge slugfest by saying, "so was The Infinity Gauntlet!" Well yeah, but it's different with comics where we get too see our favourite characters every month, they can afford to do a full-action crossover every now and then. But with the movies, we haven't seen most of these character for a year or two, so it would've been nice to know what's happened to them in between instead of just dropping them on the field of battle.

* The aforementioned shortage of character moments hurt Scarlet Witch and Vision the most. In the comics their romance was developed over a long period of time, with Vision being uncertain whether a human could love an android or whether he's even capable of love. Here all of this happened offscreen, and we get one short, not particularly convincing romantic scene where they're already a couple. This really hurt the intended tragedy of the conclusion, where we're supposed to feel for the couple and the awful choice SW has to make, except that it doesn't really resonate the way the movie wanted to, because the love between the two had never properly been sold to us.

* There are many other similar character beats the movie missed; for example, the meeting between Bruce and Natasha should've been pretty painful due to the events of Age of Ultron, but now all of that was shrugged of in a scene that lasted two seconds. I get it that it's almost impossible to do proper character development with this many characters to juggle, but maybe the film-makers should've just considered a different approach? For example, they could've made only one or two of the heroes the clear protagonists while the others remain supporting players. This approach worked very well in Civil War with Cap and Iron Man, and as result that movie had plenty of room for personal drama on top of the action scenes.

* I did appreciate the fact that they made Thanos the biggest character in the movie, and the only one who got a proper character arc. Adapting a classic antagonist like Thanos is always gonna be hard, especially if you only have one movie to establish him as cool villain as well as multi-faceted character, but I think they succeeded in that as well as possible. I also thought it was a good idea to omit Mistress Death altogether and give Thanos's fingersnap the pure Malthusian motivation that Jim Starlin established (and subsequently forgot) in the Silfer Surfer issue where he brought him back from the dead. What may work in the comics may not work as well in the (relatively) more realistic MCU, so having Thanos be in love with the actual embodiment of Death could've come across as corny. Giving Thanos a personal reason to hate overpopulation (the devastation of his people) was also a nice touch, as that made him almost unrelatable, even if his solution to the problem would be idiotic and unworkable in real life.

There were so many tight closeups of Josh Brolin's stubble I spent most of the second half of the film wondering how he shaved his chin what with the folds in it and all.

Did anybody else shout "ARACHNID!" at Thanos

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Friday, May 4, 2018 9:20 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did say "Spiders aren't insects!"

I would not be surprised to hear that there was more shot between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, but that since it was acted between Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, the directors reckoned that the cutting room floor was the best place for it.

There were so many tight closeups of Josh Brolin's stubble I spent most of the second half of the film wondering how he shaved his chin what with the folds in it and all.

did we really need three instances of "u must save ur loved one for the greater good" tho

One minor bummer was the offscreen destruction of Xandar, which is such a central element to Annihilation (which I'd been hoping to see as a movie of its own at some point). Maybe it's just a setup for someone to gain sole access to the Nova Force somehow, but it feels more like a whole range of possible stories just got shut down. Guess we'll see what gets repaired in the next film.

err, sacrifice, not save, obv

Given how divergent the film and TV sides of the MCU have become, I was frankly shocked that last week's Agents of SHIELD made direct reference to the forces of Thanos invading earth (concurrent with a second and unrelated alien invasion on the show). So either half the team is going to disappear soon or they're gonna find some kind of loophole to escape that fate or Loeb is officially a grade-a turkey (the safe money is always on the latter, I find).

(Spoilers for the two people who watch AoS and aren't caught up or who even care a little bit any which way: the MCU's Graviton analogue has learned of Thanos's arrival and intends to crush him into pulp. I'm assuming he will encounter some obstacles toward achieving that goal.)

Yes, one per planet, to make it extra crappy feeling when they all turn out to be utterly futile.

xp to Daniel.

James Gunn was asked on Twitter what Groot's last line before disappearing in Infinity War was.

SPOILER...
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“Dad”

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 6, 2018

oof :(

i am dad

Yes, one per planet, to make it extra crappy feeling when they all turn out to be utterly futile.

We know they're futile going in, surely?

I don't know why it only just occurred to me this morning, but I'm assuming all of the dissolved people in the universe are inside the Soul Gem now.

most likely

jim starlin is a boss

“Space Rabbit Is Space Tree’s Dad” sounds like some James Kochalka material

Am reading "Infinity Gauntlet" atm - am on issue #3 - and quite frankly I keep thinking "This writing's pretty shit!".