Avengers: Infinity War

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!".

xp it's ok to feel your feels, tombot

Also lol comix xp

quite frankly I keep thinking "This writing's pretty shit!".

can't believe a 1990s Marvel crossover written by Jim Starlin etc etc

I think this was okay, but boring, and the cross-cutting belabored a couple of already-tired stories. Not a moment of surprise in it (and I’d managed to stay spoiler-free). Also all of the women were basically waiting on men.

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

it's great if you love stories where superheroes spend like three issues in a row hurling themselves one by one at thanos while he stands, largely unconcerned, under some roman columns in outer space iirc

expected 6.5 got an 8 thats a result

Didn't you hate Black Panther? Cannot get a read on what passes muster in the MCU for u and Shakey.

i thought it was bad yeah.

i mean its a different movie different movies can be bad or good within a 30 movie connected arc i dunno what to say rly

The only aspect in which I could see Infinity War competing with Black Panther is visually, and even there I think BP's aesthetic was fresher, pretty as the Cube-ing of sundry heroes was in IW.

Apart from that you've got a film that's basically entirely set-up, and a buncha deaths that only carry emotional weight if a) you've gotten affection towards the characters due to previous MCU films and b) you manage to make yourself forget that all of these characters will be back in the next one. And terrible banter.

having spoiled a 30-year-old issue of thor for darragh on another thread, i might as well pick up the question here: cap's gonna pick up thor's hammer and beat the shit out of thanos with it at some point in the second part (possibly giving up his life in the process) isn't he? they've got to pay off the hammer-lifting scene in age of ultron eventually and it would be a hell of a moment

Mjolnir is toast (see Ragnarok). They have yet to establish, though, whether mere mortals can wield Stormbreaker.

I guess I would like to see Steve Rogers chucking the shattered fragments of an uru hammer at Thanos, though.

good point

thor's right eye was toast at the end of ragnarok tho and they got around that pretty easily so i remain unconvinced that mjolnir won't show up again with time gem shenanigans or something

The hammer-lifting scene paid off inside of Age of Ultron, though.

well thats the thing, none of it has any emotional heft because there's no real version of events once the gems and time magic etc are involved so those scenes and appeals to emotion are.....eh.... optional. for me, the rest of the package should flow, look good, zing, satisfy. this did.

xps to daniel yeah look, black panther, for me,........didnt. not much point appealing to someone about why that is or isnt now is there? perhaps unwise of me to even go so far as to say most of the affection for it is....idealistic projection. the movie falls apart if you arent cheerleading it. i can cheerlead a movie with the best of em but thats not a pretence of objective excellence now is it.

oh yeah, i'd forgotten about that

mods pls delete my posts from today itt so i look like less of a dumbass, it's v embarrassing

Just from today?

(Sorry, bruv, the goalie was totally looking the other way on that one.)

damn ol dirty lunch protect ya neck

https://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/55/2016/07/ezgif-1-8615ce3a62.gif

to daniel yeah look, black panther, for me,........didnt. not much point appealing to someone about why that is or isnt now is there? perhaps unwise of me to even go so far as to say most of the affection for it is....idealistic projection. the movie falls apart if you arent cheerleading it. i can cheerlead a movie with the best of em but thats not a pretence of objective excellence now is it.

I mean if you're asking me if there's any real point to discussing the subjective value of movies then sure, there isn't really, but I'd assumed anyone posting about movies in a thread discussion would've been game for it anyway.

fwiw I went into Black Panther expecting to hate it (as I did hate Wonder Woman, the other big recent movie where you could call idealistic projection as a motivation). But it turned out to me to be a well told narrative with characters I could care about and much visual flair. And I suppose you can make the case that Infinity War is trying to do a different thing than BP did, that making sense or having good character development is all besides the point of a big cosmic x-over movie, fair enough. 8 out of 10 still feels crazy high tho.

im not arguing bp vs iw on those terms, you are

im saying that bp failed in plot, resonance, sense, pacing for me.

not that it was better at those things than iw, but that they dont matter to me: that it was worse at those things.

much, much worse.

bg, my biggest general takeaway from rewatching all of the movies prior to seeing IW was that I should probably get an MRI to see how big the holes in my Swiss cheese brain have become. I couldn't believe how many essential plot points I'd forgotten.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/You_Are_Not_Alone.jpg

fwiw i watched wonder woman expecting awful and was pleasantly surprised, and went into black panther expecting the best marvel yet

xp "essential"

I couldn't believe how many essential plot points I'd forgotten.

yeah i happened across a tv broadcast of iron man 2 recently and i'd completely forgotten that's where scarlett johansson first shows up, god knows what else i've quantum leaped away in my journey towards fanboy senescence

(cue someone telling me that actually she shows up somewhere else first)

Thanos acquires reality-shifting powers relatively early on, and yet he spends much of his time punching about, when he could basically eliminate anyone he would want to with the blink of an eye, incapacitate them at least.

As I griped about earlier, we have *three* occasions of someone getting the dilemma of sacrificing the one they lost for a greater good, and they don't even play out in ways that comment on each other. Bad writing.

There is not a second spent in trying to make the hero's deaths, temporary though they are, resonant from an emotional pov.

"No real version of events" doesn't make sense to me - there is a real version, consisting of what happens in that story and what will happen in the next movie. The fact that it needn't behave like our reality doesn't eliminate that; your "optional" assesment seems more to me like the movie allows you to mourn the heroes if you feel like your baggage w/ these characters outweighs what you know the story is going to be - which is its own kind of (non ideological) projection.

On the one hand, it's kinda nice to be able to rewatch things and enjoy them as much as if I'm seeing them for the first time, but on the other hand, having that shitty a memory is occasionally...um...

Hi, my name is Old Lunch, who are you?