Avengers: Infinity War

These movies cost untold jillions of dollars and they still mostly look like ass

^^this is what bothers me most about these movies. so generic & ugly

anyone seriously concerned about fat shaming in this movie can fuck right off. fat thor smites ass.

where was everyone last time out when Rocket was fat-shaming Quill?

These movies cost untold jillions of dollars and they still mostly look like ass

I actually watched Infinity War this morning and this jumped out at me too. these movies look like shit.

anyone seriously concerned about fat shaming in this movie can fuck right off. fat thor smites ass.

where was everyone last time out when Rocket was fat-shaming Quill?

having only seen Infinity War those jokes jumped out at me as being particularly hacky and lame, to a degree beyond the Whedonesque patter I'd forgotten about and find so wearing. Haven't seen/won't see the new one but I can understand ppl taking exception to Fat Thor jokes in conjunction with the evocation of PTSD - pick a lane, basically.

re: looking like shit, one thing that really bothered me was the weightlessness of the violence - whenever a character or nameless rando gets stabbed or impaled with a staff or whatever, there's no heft to the movement. the lack of tactility drains the violence of impact. which makes these better kids' movies but worse movies.

(tbc I'm not making the "adults can't/shouldn't enjoy these" argument I've seen ppl make in a rush to slam the MCU; that said, anyone who claims these movies aren't for kids due to their violence or psychological complexity - arguments I've also seen made - is full of shit. a good friend has a 6-year-old daughter who's an MCU fanatic and I'm sure has already seen the new one twice.)

The scene with ancient one Tilda was less complicated than I think people are making it — she’s not going to give up the rock, as she’s the protector. But the reveal that Strange gave it up, when he’s the best sorcerer supreme, indicates that there is a bigger plan at stake that Banner is acting out. So she’s handing it over with the knowledge that Strange knew what was doing, maybe even indicating she understands he’s acting on a plan that’s evaluated all possible futures. The reversal is just her realizing there’s a plan she’s not privy to, that was hatched by someone she’ll trust

Strange not revealing too much to Stark is emotional — the guy’s one stipulation on time travel is that his family remains intact. Not telling him that it hinges on his own life is a way to insure he makes the right choice when all the stakes were in play. If the play was “we’ll win, but you die” then maybe Iron Man just stays with his family instead of sacrificing for the greater good

feel like these plot beats were well telegraphed and i’m not sure what was missed, although I notably miss a lot on first viewings at times

These movies cost untold jillions of dollars and they still mostly look like ass

I think their set and visual design is bad/boring, but the Russos are really good at action blocking considering the sheer scale they're working with. You always know where the characters are in relation to one another, and what they're doing - which is hard to do with such a huge cast who are obvs not shooting these big setpieces at the same time.

I mean, I saw a Transformer movie recently and... yikes. Everything was shot way too close, also blue and teal everything which makes it hard to see what the hell is going on at any given moment. Overuse of colour grading also a problem I have with the recent DC movies.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/04/avengers-endgame-fat-thor-ptsd-jokes-controversy

I liked this piece which argues that Thor's new look is less about weight than about depression taking away the ability to take care of yourself. It's why it's important that Thor doesn't get trim again at the end, but he does stop drinking and cleans himself up.

It's a nice contrast to Captain America, who starts shaving again because he wants to move on, even when he knows he can't, or Banner embracing his Hulk side as he's gotten progressively less angry over time. These scenes that focus on characters' appearances and how they relate to their emotional state feels very contemporary I think - makes me wonder if the writers have been watching the new Queer Eye.

And then there's Captain Marvel, who gets a haircut likely just because it looks hot. And why not? I wish she had had it in the CM movie.

ugh typos galore in my previous post before that one: Transformers*, and "blue and orange" or "orange and teal". need more sleep.

no it’s fine, you only saw one Transformer movie

I think their set and visual design is bad/boring, but the Russos are really good at action blocking considering the sheer scale they're working with. You always know where the characters are in relation to one another, and what they're doing - which is hard to do with such a huge cast who are obvs not shooting these big setpieces at the same time.

Yeah that’s true, but most of the Marvel movies so far have been pretty good about the action not getting too cluttery or confusing, so the Russo’s adhering to that isn’t very impressive by itself. The “chaos cinema” trend in action blockbusters that reached its peak in the Bay Transformers movies has largely (though not entirely) died down anyway.

re: looking like shit, one thing that really bothered me was the weightlessness of the violence - whenever a character or nameless rando gets stabbed or impaled with a staff or whatever, there's no heft to the movement. the lack of tactility drains the violence of impact. which makes these better kids' movies but worse movies.

OTM. I think that’s why producers and studios love CGI so much. It makes everything less visceral and upsetting, guaranteeing that more people can watch it. Also easier to change things in post-production.

Man, I miss that great 80s CGI, that Rambo / Commando shit.

Another update from Deadline:

The mindblowing mushrooming of Avengers: Endgame‘s box office weekend continues with early AM estimates for the Disney/Marvel pic showing easily an estimated $111.4M record for the day, that’s 30% down from Friday’s record $158.3M. This puts the Anthony and Joe Russo directed film at an extraordinary $358.5M. This numbers could change in a few hours as late night money is counted.

Note, Saturday is technically higher than Friday, if you back out the record $60M Thursday night previews. That would put Friday at $98.3M, and Saturday’s ticket sales at a 14% surge.

Man, I miss that great 80s CGI, that Rambo / Commando shit.

yet somehow they still managed to deliver lightweight violence. it’s a real testament to practical craft.

Okay I give up on who is trolling who here

80s Avenger movie woulda been interesting

Dolph Lundgren is....Thor

Is it weird that Tony Stark throws out a Lebowski reference in a franchise where Jeff Bridges played an Iron Man villain?

no

that's just how everything is now

About as weird as they reference Hot Tub Time Machine, which featured Sebastian Stan.

I'm not I hope trolling, just reminding that Bourne-style 'realistic' violence is at best a parallel stream to the way it's been depicted for at least 30 years - to mention nothing of westerns.

The issue wasn’t “realism” it was the inherent difference in impact between action that is filmed in front of a camera and that which is animated or (or heavily augmented by digital animation).

Also Rambo and Commando were R-rated movies with tons of squibs and bone crunching and throat rips and all that shit. Bad examples to use to make your point!

You’re helping make the point, though. “Visceral and upsetting” gets you a different rating.

I want a more realistic looking decapitation of a purple Titanian.

Ok, I’m confused now.

This one had bloody throat slitting, that's pretty violent. But yeah, this would have been something else if the battle scenes were like those in Starship Troopers or something. MCU still mostly cartoon violence, lots of hitting and punching, a few bloody noses, but for all the occasional eye-gouging or stabbing or decapitation, very little blood let alone serious aftermath.

Oh man. I'm a massive Marvel comics geek and adored the MCU so far. Of course I have lesser favourites, but I still find Iron Man 2, which ranks at the bottom of my list, an enjoyable ride.
I would have so loved to have utterly loved Endgame and to have it as the highlight of the saga.

And for the most part, I did love it.

But the one thing I really didn't love... is unfortunately a very critical part of the plot: the needlessly messy and downright sad reset of the snap.

The fact that 50% of all life in the MCU now suddeny finds itself at a 5-year difference with the other half.

It is terrible to think of. Just picture yourself at either end of a sudden 5-year gap with half of everybody and everything you know.

People will have moved on, found new partners, survivors might have killed themselves over their loss or have died of natural causes.
The returned people may have missed 5 years of their children's lives, or surviving parents suddenly have to pick up the care for their kid again at a 5-year older age.
And what about employment? So you've been gone for 5 years, can you go back to your old job the next workday?
What about school? And yes, how will we see that reflected in Peter Parker's class?
Where will people re-appear? What about vanished people in weird places/positions such as the pilot of the helicopter we saw crashing in Infinity War's post-credits scene?

The more I think about it, the more confused and saddened I get. In the comics, the gauntlet is used a day after the snap to have everything be "exactly as it was" - I would have vastly preferred that outcome. They pressed the point that the timeline had to happen for the lead-up history to occur, but as the stones defined the rules of the galaxy, they could have simply made the gauntlet powerful enough to overrule the natural laws.
I find it a real big shame that they didn't.

I hope they will pick this up well in a future movie but I'm afraid the only ways I can see this go is either going in to the sad side of the sudden age differences, or laughing it off by having Spider-Man: Far From Home start with the kids in math class successfully having calculated their odds for all having vanished together and still being in the same year.

Just injured my brain imagining the snapped resenting the unsnapped and moaning about "unsnapped privilege"

Imagine millions and millions of people returning to massive memorials in their name that people have been mourning at for years. Imagine the trauma of feeling yourself slowly turn to dust then coming back is far as you can tell mere seconds later to a world in a state of epic devastation and disrepair.

fwiw I thought Buffy handled back from the dead Buffy really well.

christ what a fuckin mess this was huh

will read thread later but yknow that had to be said

nothing worked but it was some things happening one after another with celebrities so theres that

Dolph Lundgren is....Thor

the Ryan Reynolds of the ‘80s

aside from the plot, lookit

and the fights/battles that have no impact and look like blurry ass

and deaths and risks of death that dont matter because how could u care at this stage, these superbeings that can kill with a blow then cant and are invulnerable until they arent

and the timetravel not working and even if it did the limitations they placed upon what they could and couldnt do with it

and having no idea what to do with captain marvel

or the powerglove

and the choices of where the movie spent the time it didnt really have

aside from all that

tell me again how past thanos turned up with an army in the present

and remind me why hulk never called black widow once he sorted himself out

aside from that this was ok, needed a lift fight and removal of the look how many girls we have shot

best thing in it is starks kid she killed me

Imagine the trauma of feeling yourself slowly turn to dust then coming back is far as you can tell mere seconds later to a world in a state of epic devastation and disrepair.

Sunday Night Sad

Re: Black Widow, Captain America had to put all the cosmic cubes back where they got them, right? Which means giving it back to Dead Red Skull? Which can mean all sorts of stuff.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:51 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They’d return it to the planet, right? He didn’t possess it, he was just stuck as its sentry

― mh, Saturday, April 27, 2019 11:53 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that's just going to be glossed over tbh.

Considering that a) the ending of the movie sets up a 'Gamorra is missing' thread to be picked up in GOTG3 & b) said movie will introducing Adam Warlock, who in the comics traditionally wears the Soul Gem as a bindi, I think it's v possible that at least some of this will get picked back up

Uhh wow I messed up the formatting there :/

Anyways, this was ok

tell me again how past thanos turned up with an army in the present

I think he stole one of Ant Man's red battery things that let you enter the Quantum Realm, used it on his entire ship (which can house his entire army I guess) and locked onto Present Nebula's 'time signature' or just Avengers scent to come out where they were at.

oh just stole one of the things that lets one person at a time make just one journey oh that works

sike it doesnt work

name one other time in this twenty movie sprawl hulk takes the stairs from a skyscraper

Wait I think he sent just still evil Nebs to the future, which works, to then bring the ship through to the present, which may or may not work (for you).

howd she manage that!

i mean its one of about thirty "you want it to work or you dont" moments but

- ppl were paid to write this
- thirty is a fuckin lot

Just got back, really only have one thing to say: when you make a 3+ hour movie, having characters converse next to a loudly-burbling river at roughly the three hour mark is nothing but an exercise in abject cruelty. Won't somebody please think of all that root beer I drank.

xp She used her future self's knowledge of the equipment picked up from hanging out with Banner, Stark and co long enough perhaps - all in the shared memory between past and present Nebula. The bigger problem might be no-one realised Nebula was such a threat to the plan in the first place.

I didn't like that Stark pretty much solved time travel on his own (Cap Marvel could've been more involved in this - also was hoping for more jokes about her having time for a haircut).

ok so she built a better time machine in an hour than stark did in ten mins

that is at least consistent but cmon its still bad

cpt marvel left to go to all the other places that had a chance of restoring life to half the universe and had solved time travel

basically time travel was a terrible choice for this movie

Was watching the Red Letter Media review (they mostly liked it) and they brought up a really good point that in the last movie, Thanos already had most of the stones and a handful of the Avengers were still more or less able to best him on that planet. But the Thanos they fight at the end of this one ... has no stones. And yet the mightiest of the mightiest struggle with him.

yes, considerably more powerful cap, witch hazel or w/e, let alone cpt marvel

fighting thanos is always a p dumb choice for the writers

Some people itt are very bad at following time travel narratives. Which isn't a damning observation, mind (I'm very bad at financial management, for instance, and I'm still a valued member of my community), but true nonetheless.

I have problems with basically every fictional employment of time travel, but I was surprisingly okay with it here.

some ppl itt will want this to work that is a criticism if it leads to them having little digs at any criticisms of how lazy an effort it is

*twirls magic hammer that isnt worth a shite now apparently*

As the comic book movie to end all comic book movies, the plotting is entirely consistent with its native medium, in which all manner of inconsistencies and incoherences are permitted so long as the action is sufficiently epic.

The big battle was kind of murky and muddled, but I liked some of the touches, like the whole game of keep-away with the gauntlet.

If we’re going to quibble about anything, who decreed that it took a fingersnap to make the stones work? Why can’t you just put them on and think whatever you want and make it happen?

But whatever. It was a likable cast in a big dumb TV show with enough funny bits to keep things moving. If you want more than that you’re in the wrong place.

There was a part of me that wanted to see them cut from the two armies charging one another to the aftermath. Just skip all the beatemuppery, fade to white, funeral scene.