Avengers Infinity War: Spoiler Party!

By Shamus Posted Sunday May 13, 2018

Filed under: Movies 218 comments

On Friday I finally got to the theater and saw Avengers: THE BIG ONE. Like everyone else who’s seen it, I immediately had the urge to talk about all the most spoiler-y bits. So let’s do that. We’ll start with the ending…


In general, I like to divide the movie audience into three broad groups:

  1. The Insiders: This would include a lot (maybe even the majority?) of the people reading this site. We follow the news. We see the interviews. We watch all / most of the movies. We have direct or passing knowledge of the comics. We often know who the directors are, what the studio is doing, and we know the titles and general release windows for future movies. The point is, when we show up in the theater we know a lot more than what you see on the big screen.
  2. The General Audience: These folks might not follow the Marvel Universe closely, but they’re still old enough to have absorbed a bunch of genre fiction. They know how stories are supposed to end, they have a pretty good sense about which characters in a story can die, and they can usually tell a fake-out death from the real thing.
  3. The “Kids”: (This group may include people who are not actually kids.) They don’t know much about genre fiction. They might not be aware of the decades-long practice of bringing comic book heroes back from the dead. If you show this person a scene where Spider-Man dies in Tony Stark’s arms while crying that he isn’t ready to go, then as far as the viewer knows Peter Parker is dead for good.

I am really glad I didn’t see this movie when I was 12. I don’t think I could have handled it.

The distinction between these three types of viewer isn’t usually a big deal. Sure, I knew Tom Holland was signed to a multi-picture deal and I knew enough about comic books to realize that there was no way that Spider-Man would die in a fight with The Vulture in Spider-Man Homecoming. But that fight on the outside of the jet was a nailbiter anyway. If a story pulls you in then you can still feel the emotional beats, even if you know what will happen next. It’s why we can enjoy watching a movie a second time.

But Infinity War is an odd case because it’s half a movie. When those credits roll, I stop being immersed in the world and go back to being aware of all the stuff I know about what actors are leaving this series and which ones are signed for multi-picture deals. By its very nature, this two-parter gives us a whole year to think about the meta-narrative. We talk about stories that break your immersion because they’re full of jarring, confusing, or inconsistent elements, but what about the story that breaks your immersion because the storyteller stops telling the story? The movie takes me to a big emotional moment and then hits the pause button for a year. What else can we think about in the meantime, besides the meta-narrative?

It’s pretty crazy just how far they took the idea. If just they killed off Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, and the other Phase One veterans, then I might have left the theater thinking they were dead for good. But they left alive people I know have to die (Stark) and they killed people I know are already scheduled to appear in future movies. By doing things this way they really drove a wedge between our three different kinds of viewer. I know all of this has to be undone with a magic time-rewind. I’m almost sure I remember an interview with Guardians director James Gunn where he said that he was planning to make GotG 3 about Gamora, so even the deaths that happened before the climax are open for un-doing.

None of this is really a criticism. It’s just an interesting situation to find ourselves in. I’m glad I didn’t take anyone under 12 years old to see this movie. The kid might look back fondly on this when they hit adulthood and realize this was their first big emotional moment in the theater, but they’re still going to have a rough time of it here in 2018.

Other Things About The Movie

It was cool seeing all the mix-n-match hero teams.
It was cool seeing all the mix-n-match hero teams.

I’m surprised how closely they followed the comics. In the comics they pulled the same trick: Thanos kills all the supers and wipes out half in galaxy. In 1992 he did this because he was in romantic love with the personification of death itself. Here in the MCU, he did it because he was worried about overpopulation. In the comics, the character Adam Warlock was the mastermind orchestrating the opposition to Thanos. The writers teased us with him at the end of Guardians 2, but he’s not really part of the story yet. So the position of “strategist” fell to Dr. Strange. Or it did, until he snuffed it.

I’m honestly curious who will drive the plot in Part 2. Is it Stark? He seems to be the only one with any idea what’s going on. But he’s not a cosmic hero and this really is a cosmic problem. Captain Marvel comes out in March of next year, just two months before Avengers 4. She’s certainly one of the heavy-hitters and seems better suited to problems of this scale than Stark. On the other hand, it would feel strange to have a brand-new character come in and save the day after all our familiar characters died. She should be part of the story, but making her the key player would be wrong. Sure, in terms of power you can make the case that she should be able to do fantastic things, but a character needs to earn their place in the hearts of the audience. They might be able to win some of those hearts in Captain Marvel’s solo movie, but I think it would be a mistake to make that movie “required viewing” for part 2 of this story to work.

Who is even left alive at this point? There were so many supers in this movie I lost track of a lot of them and I’m not completely sure I’m remembering all the deaths. Stark is alive. Thor is alive. I’m pretty sure Rocket Raccoon is still around. Hawkeye wasn’t in the movie, but we can assume he’s still around. I mean, in-universe there’s a 1:2 chance he’s dead, but in a storytelling sense it would be awkward to kill a character off-screen. Who else is there? Did Banner make it?

Yes, it was too long. It was all good, but you can have too much of a good thing. I’m a huge Spider-Fan and I’m not so interested in Thor, so I’d love if his lengthy hammer-forging plot was cut down (particularly since it didn’t ultimately matter) and we got more time with Peter Parker. On the other hand my brother has always been crazy about Thor and never much cared for Spider-Man, so I’m sure he’d want to re-balance the movie in the other direction. With a cast this huge you really only have two choices:

  1. Short change everyone.
  2. Make it too long.

I’m glad they eased up on the jokes. Bright colors and one-liners are my favorite things about this universe, but I’m glad Marvel knows when to lay off the cowbell. I don’t need Star Lord quipping his way through the deaths of Spider-Man (my childhood hero) and Steve Rogers (my adult one).

Nobody’s ever done anything like this before so I can’t really say Marvel is doing it “wrong”. I didn’t leave the theater happy or excitedParticular since Spidey and Cap are the main reason I show up for these things, and they’re both very dead right now. but I did leave it wanting to see part 2. So I guess their plan is working.

EDIT: Cap lived? I really thought he evaporated with Falcon and Winter Soldier. Huh. In my defense, that was a lot of people snuffing it at once and it’s easy to lose track.

As other have pointed out in the comments, this means all the veterans are alive and all the young heroes are dead, so certainly the next movie will have the old guard sacrifice themselves to save the new. (And half the universe.)

 

Footnotes:

[1] Particular since Spidey and Cap are the main reason I show up for these things, and they’re both very dead right now.



From The Archives:
 

218 thoughts on “Avengers Infinity War: Spoiler Party!

  1. Zak McKracken says:

    Spelling: “hjits”

      1. sab says:

        Doesn’t look like any Dutch word I know.

  2. MichaelG says:

    “then hjits the pause” — hits

  3. Grimwear says:

    Just a quick note to start but Captain America didn’t die. Who was the one person I thought for sure was going to.

    As for the movie itself I enjoyed it but I also went in knowing it was originally supposed to be a two parter which then got retconned into not being one, but is still blatantly a two parter. Because of this I was expecting it to end on a down note but my sister who I saw it with didn’t know that and came away from the movie not liking it. Until I told her it was a two part movie and she saw it a second time and came around on it.

    Now for my gripes and spoilers ahead most once again deal with the Black Panther movie. But first. How did Corvus Glaive get through the Wakanda shield, past the Wakandands, and into the science lab to kill Vision?

    Also I wish they used Bruce Banner as more than just a joke character in the movie. Yes it works and I don’t hate it but he’s also a genius physicist. I wish they’d let him shine intellectually now and then too. Which leads to a minor gripe of I don’t like the fact that Shuri takes one look at Vision and immediately knows a better way to build him. I’m perfectly fine with the Wakandans having the amazing technology to fix him but I’m not ok with her doing a cursory scan and suddenly being smarter than both Bruce Banner and Tony Stark combined in how to make Vision.

    And now just to reinforce my hatred for Black Panther. They don’t know how to handle Wakanda on a global scale. The Black Panther movie dealt with them taking over the world with their crappy spears that do nothing but here we get to see them in action against a melee based army (since it has to be because their weapons are terrible and garbage). And they’re terrible. Their army trained in using the spears have terrible accuracy, they only activate their shield walls when they form a firing line and then turn them off when they go charge into close combat, and the only ones who end up being effective until Thor shows up are Bucky with his GUN and Warmachine who carpet bombs the crap out of Thanos’ army. And I’m forced to wonder. How were the Wakandans planning to take over the world in Black Panther? We see their shield is actually amazing but that only protects their country (which is perfect for them being isolationist but again taking over the world scale here). In fact the shield fails and we see that you can go underneath it and I mean humans have used sapping techniques for centuries.

    I hate Black Panther because it created a stupid premise to push its message which then falls flat when we’re forced to evaluate it on a more realistic scale. Superheroes fighting supervillains? I can be immersed and pretend that the military doesn’t exist or doesn’t want to intervene. But the second it went into a more real world situation of “send weapons to the downtrodden to rise up and kill all the oppressors and create a new world” I’m forced to go…so how will these untrained masses take over the world? How will they overthrow governments with access to a well trained army and large scale destructive weaponry. And ultimately they can’t. Which ruins the movie for me that I was so excited for.

    The Wakandans are supposed to be amazing and super cool but not only was Black Panther extremely underused in the film but the Wakandans themselves are a joke. Honestly I don’t hate Wakanda and its technology or any of that but I don’t get this sense of awe when I see them in action. I get the feeling of plot armor where no matter how outclassed they are there will always be more Wakandan soldiers there. Like they still used the border tribe even though they revolted against the crown (and still no mention of what happened to T’Challa’s best friend).

    1. Zaxares says:

      Corvus Glaive’s weapon appears to function on sonic energy of some kind, which as we saw in Black Panther, vibranium apparently has a weakness to. It’s how Corvus was able to disrupt Vision’s ability to phase in Infinity War, and presumably he used it to get through the shield somehow. I can only imagine that he slew all of the guards unfortunate enough to encounter him on his way to the lab.

      I do understand your gripes about Shuri, but I’ve been told in the comics that Shuri is like an order of magnitude smarter than either Tony Stark or Bruce Banner. Her major drawback is that she’s still a teenager, with all of the attention span and impulsive behaviour of one. So I’m guessing this scene was a nod to the comics.

      I do agree with you that Wakandan battle technology (at least for their ground forces. Their planes seem more than capable of matching modern conventional warfare) seems woefully inadequate for open-scale war. However, Killmonger’s plan was not to conquer the world with Wakandan forces. His idea was to instead ship Wakanda’s technologically advanced weapons to insurgencies and oppressed minorities across the world, encourage them to “rise up against their oppressors” (I believe he says that he wants the Wakandan spies embedded in nations across the world to lead them in training the groups in guerrilla warfare and such), and then just sit back and watch the fireworks. Maybe eventually he would have stepped in to conquer weakened nations directly, but his motivation was more about fomenting revolution and less about conquering everything.

      Would it have worked? Like you, I have my doubts. It would certainly cause a lot of death and destruction, and it might permanently sunder the social fabric of multi-ethnic nations, but actually being able to overthrow a ruling government (especially if they are willing to go to lengths like using their weapons of mass destruction on home soil) is quite an ask. Whether or not Killmonger actually believes his plan would work is an answer that died with him.

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        Corvus Glaive’s weapon appears to function on sonic energy of some kind, which as we saw in Black Panther, vibranium apparently has a weakness to. It’s how Corvus was able to disrupt Vision’s ability to phase in Infinity War, and presumably he used it to get through the shield somehow. I can only imagine that he slew all of the guards unfortunate enough to encounter him on his way to the lab.

        That might work as headcanon, but it’s not really explained in the film. Furthermore, are we supposed to believe that there aren’t any hidden alarms or sensors in the place? No matter how you slice it, the movie doesn’t show it, explain it or otherwise imply it, so it’s a plot hole. Any explanation you come up with is fanfiction.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Furthermore, are we supposed to believe that there aren’t any hidden alarms or sensors in the place?

          Hidden alarms are as much headcanon as what Zaxares proposes.Its not a plot hole if it does not contradict something already shown in the movie.If two things that are not shown in the movie contradict each other out,its not a plot hole,just an unexplained thing.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            Well, yeah, I was trying to mae the point that anything you can explain with headcanon can also be countered with it.

          2. Olivier FAURE says:

            You’d kind of expect the central palace of a technologically super-advanced kingdom that recently went through a civil war and just sort-of-opened-its-borders to be stuffed with cameras and guards, especially since they were forewarned of the invasion.

      2. Sartharina says:

        So, Killmonger was pretty much Che Guevara?

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      As for the movie itself I enjoyed it but I also went in knowing it was originally supposed to be a two parter which then got retconned into not being one, but is still blatantly a two parter.

      Yeah,that was such a blatant lie.Im sure they will next say “Well the next one is not named infinity war something,so from a certain point of view…”.I get it,its a marketing thing.Still is a blatant and very transparent lie.

    3. Daemian Lucifer says:

      The wakanda spears are not short ranged.They are showed to be both ranged AND melee in this movie,and the only reason they use them primarily in close combat is because they are so overwhelmed by the mass of the attackers.Also,there are their planes.

      As for shuri,we had 3 iron man movie,and a ton more movies with him,before he managed to make a single nanotech suit.Shuri made two practically at the beginning of the black panther movie,as a teen.Yeah,she is definitely more intelligent AND more tech savvy than both banner and tony stank.

      1. IGrimwear says:

        I never said they were short ranged. I know they can do both but it’s primary purpose (firing beams which can destroy tanks) is terrible and is shown to have terrible accuracy. And when it reaches melee well it acts like a spear since it is one. It’s just a super inefficient weapon when dealing with real weapons like guns which is why they were shown facing off against a melee only alien army. Also they go into close combat because they’re forced to charge in and my other problem is that again their energy shields are activated when they’re firing from range and are in no danger whatsoever but then when they charge into melee combat they turn them off. We know from Black Panther that guns are uncivilized which is I assume why the Wakandan army is forced to use shotels and garbage spears. Also ya seriously where were the planes? At least those things can shoot stuff. Maybe they could have had bombs too?

        As for Shuri great she’s a genius and has the best technology. But again Vision shows up. He’s the first of his kind created from the minds of two of the smartest people on Earth, as well as two sentient AI and a God stone. And she takes a glance and immediately understands it all and knows how to make Vision even better. I personally don’t buy that. Like if she knew how to do this why hasn’t she made a bunch of them herself? Where’s her army of Super Visions which I’m sure she could find a use for. Heck replace your terrible Wakandan army with them.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I think there were a few planes flying around with war machine,but I am not sure.

          As for,vision,she didnt take a quick glance,she took a quick scan,showing off her advanced tech.And they did not recreate vision because there is only a single mind gem that does the whole thing.What she is doing is moving the circuits from the gem into the body,not creating them from scratch.Its the difference between seeing a circuit and repairing damage to it and printing one from raw materials.

    4. Dreadjaws says:

      To be fair, the movie isn’t really trying to say Shuri is smarter than Tony and Bruce, just that she noticed something they didn’t, which is perfectly reasonable. Not being inmersed in the job of creating Vision like they were, she can think outside the box.

      1. Joshua says:

        I think in a lot of ways it’s easier to critique something and think of a better way to do it if you’re not the original designer and the example is right in front of you. Just like Tony would probably be able to look at what Shuri had done with some of her technology and think of possible ways to improve them.

        1. Guest says:

          Yeah, but this is like being in the position of reverse engineering something, so having to work out how it was put together and what the intention behind everything is, of something which is astoundingly complex and used literal magic and processes not understood by Stark and Banner and coming up with an answer as a cute moment.

          Like, it’s fine that she’s smarter, but it’s handled poorly. It’s the movie communicating that she’s smarter, but being really obvious about it.

          1. guy says:

            Vision does have a Vibranium body, and she has a lot more Vibranium experience than Vision’s designers.

            1. Paul says:

              The issue isn’t Shuri being smarter, it’s 1) her being vastly smarter than the established geniuses; and 2) her not having “earned” the narritive heft that status gives her.

              For the first, how does being vastly smarter than Stark work? I can imagine a super genius, they can do heaps of stuff I can barely dream of. But I can’t imagine a super super genius. That’s just someone who tells super genius off for being stupid. That’s not a compelling power.

              For the later, Stark (and to a lesser extent Banner) have a dozen movies where they’ve demonstrated their brains and their limits. They have an established power. Shuri was a supporting character in one movie – and I was really relieved that she was smart there but not “better than Stark in every way”. If they had more movies to build up her narrative weight then my position would change.

              If, in this movie, it ended with Stark saying “I’ll use my anti Thanks hun I invented last week” you’d roll to disbelieve, because that isn’t in line with the suspension of disbelief he’s earned. Shuri hasn’t earned affection the way he has so she is at much greater risk off being a mary sue – she’s just like an established character but better.

    5. Dragmire says:

      How did Corvus Glaive get through the Wakanda shield, past the Wakandands, and into the science lab to kill Vision?

      My headcannon is that he just dug a hole under the barrier. According to the wheely death machine things, that works.

    6. Blake says:

      Their terrible battle strategy actually pulled me right out of the movie.
      They should have made that hole in the shield for 5 seconds, let a bunch in, close it again for 5 seconds, rinse and repeat. Letting the enemy swarm over the top was a terrible idea.

      I get that they were trying to bait them through a known entrance rather than letting the shield fail elsewhere, but they could have done a much better job managing the numbers.

      1. IGrimwear says:

        I mean I was thinking the same thing and while a minor gripe I couldn’t help of thinking of doing even more. Like they can clearly control the shield so why wouldn’t they randomly shrink then expand it to hit more aliens at once.

      2. Guest says:

        Also, that a couple of our heroes go up to the barrier, have a bant, then jog back, like, what, 400m? To the frontline, then when the enemy attack, the original plan was “Wait until the whole shield fails, get surrounded, die”, which they then compensate for with “Let them through a narrow section, Thermopylae style, except also give them time to spread out because now you’re charging downhill at them, giving up the high ground and exhausting yourself, and like, two of you bothered to bring guns”. They could have made it work, but with the going back and forth between the shield and their forces, they drew attention to bad choreography.

        The prop design has the same problem as Black Panther did. Up until the finale, they sold me on the Wakandan tech, with spears that also shoot pulses and can stop cars like, ok, in a comic book movie, I can tolerate that and accept that that works and is useful. But in the final battle of both films, you have infantry charges with very little ranged fighting going on, which really undercuts things. A regular mechanized infantry division would be more useful in IW, and in BP, why does Kilmonger really think he can take over the world when the Wakandan military has some cool toys that they use abominably in a group setting.

    7. Steve C says:

      Shuri canonically is smarter than Stark or Banner and has access to better resources than both. Shuri is literally the smartest person on Earth. Black Panther is 8th most intelligent person in the Marvel Universe. She is significantly smarter than Black Panther and he knows it.

      I don’t think she has quite earned/demonstrated it in the films yet so it feels false. However Shuri should be able to take one look at Vision and immediately know a better way to build him.

    8. armagrodden says:

      While I am not a Shuri fan, I do in fairness have to point out that Banner and Stark didn’t build Vision, but rather transferred Jarvis’ consciousness into his pre-made body. As in the comics, Ultron built Vision; and Ultron’s other major engineering achievement in the MCU was spending days or even weeks turning a city into an asteroid in such a way that Tony Stark was able to figure out how to safely override the process after examining it for a few minutes. I don’t necessarily buy that Shuri is smarter than Stark or Banner, but I absolutely buy that she’s smarter than Ultron.

      As for Wakanda’s army, it seemed to be much more powerful in Black Panther than in Infinity War. I get that they needed to keep the fight as a contained melee in order to showcase all the Avengers, but they needed to give a reason why all Wakanda’s aircraft (at the very least) were absent from the battle.

  4. Zak McKracken says:

    Just reading this, I know the movie isn’t for me.
    I can’t even keep track of the “important” superheroes you’re naming, and given how casually you talk about them dying and reappearing, I’m thinking that if I had sat through the movie, all I’d remember was that there’s a lot of heroes and not-hearoes (and probably villains, too?), and then some guy runs around shouting stuff, and then some other people fight, and then the one guy dies, though I’m not sure why, and then the others do the thing with the mystical whatnot, and then the villain does some other thing, then there’s explosions and stuff, and then the dead guy is there again (or is he?), and then the movie ends.

    …so… the first Avengers movie had the same emotional impact on me as the beginning of ME2, and this sounds like that, but with even more stuff, more characters and fewer answers to the old “so what?” question, is what I imagine.

    Now, There’ll be plenty of you people around here who certainly think otherwise (and why am I even talking about a movie I haven’t even seen?), but what I’m trying to say is that I can’t imagine that this movie can be suitable for an “outsider” who doesn’t know or care about the many many protagonists too much before the movie begins. Which is fair enough because I guess there’re sufficient people who have already acquired the taste, and those people should get what they crave, too. But I think Shamus might be missing another category to his analysis, which is casual moviegoers who don’t have a relation to the protagonists (is there even a single protagonist, or just lots of supporting roles? Or lots of protagonists?) — my takeaway is that the movie is probably not for such people.

    (maybe except for the type of casual moviegoer who also enjoyed Transformers II? I have no problem accepting that all the Avengers movies are way better than that one in a lot of ways)

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      but what I’m trying to say is that I can’t imagine that this movie can be suitable for an “outsider” who doesn’t know or care about the many many protagonists too much before the movie begins.

      Its not.Its heavily geared towards the fans of mcu,and fans of marvel comics in general.

    2. wswordsmen says:

      Avengers 1 had the effect of the opening of ME2? I am trying to figure out how that works in my head and even assuming you didn’t see any of the previous movies and don’t like superheroes I am still not figuring out how that works. Can I ask you to elaborate?

      1. BlueHorus says:

        Replace ‘effect’ with ’emotional impact’, maybe?

        1. Zak McKracken says:

          Yes, that would be more accurate

          1. wswordsmen says:

            Thanks for elaborating and it does make a lot more sense that way.

      2. Zak McKracken says:

        okay, there was maybe a little exaggeration but this is how I perceived the first Avengers movie: Lots of “main” characters, little development, lots of stuff happening, much of which did not seem to have much consequence.
        I had a very hard time figuring out what anything truly meant in this universe. What’s the choice of actions a given character has at some point? Will they do any of the things I find make sense, or will they remember something I had no way of knowing about which allows them to do something that contradicts physics?

        Does anyone have a character arc? I’m not sure! Bruce Banner has this presumably meaningful moment where he says that the reason he’s not constantly turning into Hulk is that he’s angry all the time. Sounds interesting but I didn’t see anything in the movie to support or even rhyme with the notion. And if that’s how it works for him, then why does he still turn into the Hulk when he does get angry a bit later? Shouldn’t that have been prevented because he was already angry? Or did he let down his guard by accidentally relaxing beforehand? If yes, shouldn’t we have been shown that moment? Is that how it works?

        The wonky special FX physics did not do anything to help my immersion. Sorry, I’m an engineer, and whatever Hulks cage does while falling down is not what things to in free fall, not even with monsters inside, and the same goes for that ridiculous scene with the Iron man spinning the rotor on that aircraft-carrier-quadcopter thing, which is also a terrible way to design a flying aircraft carrier, even if you accept that flying aircraft carriers could exist.

        I think I could have been able to look past that but on top of all that I was not able to find any coherent messages/themes or really anything that tied the movie together.

        So … maybe I would have had to watch some other movies to get more background (what’s the deal with Loki and Thor?) but really, the whole thing just did not seem to make sense to me.

        Now, you might think I’m just having problems with not-quite realistic movie settings or something but I was totally fine with the old Christopher Reeves Superman movies, and with Hulk the TV show (as a child…), and a bunch of other stuff. I know about suspension of disbelief. But for the MCU movies I just cannot fathom what the rules of that universe are, so I’m not sure which part of what I’m seeing I need to just file under “movie logic”, and which part I should take serious in-universe. The only thing these movies seem to desperately take serious is something I don’t care about, and that’s continuity between all the movies. I haven’t seen most of them, so I’m not able to appreciate it anyway. I suspect that it dictates much of what’s going on, but it doesn’t seem to add much to an individual movie if you haven’t seen the others. In fact, I’m thinking that much of the stuff I’m not getting may make sense when you’ve seen all the movies. But that’s not an investment I’m willing to make. Maybe it’s all a bit like some soap opera where you just can’t keep up unless you’ve seen every single episode?

        The other way in which the first Avengers is a bit like the ME2 intro: I was told by the same person to stop overthinking it when I said that it didn’t really work for me. I’m fairly sure that the ME2 story falls apart as soon as you think of it, and I’ve been trying and failing to find a way of thinking about Avengers without it falling apart, too.

        Now, of course I can’t claim the movie didn’t make sense just because I didn’t find sense in it, but it’s definitely pretty hard to engage with it if you’re not already onboard.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          I’m thinking that much of the stuff I’m not getting may make sense when you’ve seen all the movies.

          Pretty much.Though some of them work as stand alone,usually the first ones(captain america,guardians 1,iron man 1).But the three avengers,nah.You have to know either the previous movies or the comics.At most you can watch them as random cool visual effects and unconnected jokes.

          1. Zak McKracken says:

            Thanks, that pretty much explains it, then. That’s mostly what the first Avengers felt to me.

            Several of the people I watched it with made it look like it’s my fault for not “getting” it, but this pretty much validates my impressions.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Well,from a certain point of view,it is your fault for not getting into all the other movies so you could get into the avengers :)

            2. Hector says:

              It’s not anyone’s fault – but look at it from this angle. There’s a *lot* that’s led up to this point, and it’s been up-front about being a a shared universe from the third movie (when they knew it could work). Watching the latest film and not getting into it is sort of like watching the second-to-last episode of Game of Thrones and not getting it: You obviously won’t understand everything that’s going on, and if it didn’t capture your interest enough to stay with it, well…

              1. Felblood says:

                In fairness to Game of Thrones:

                I skipped from hating the first book, to walking into the TV series at that scene where Naked Dany burns all those dudes to death. As a seemingly random series of barely connected SFX, action set pieces and naked people, it’s at the top of the game.

                It’s like Dragonball with less talking.

        2. Zak McKracken says:

          Case in point: A little further down in this comment section, people are debating which of the main characters died in the movie. So, if you don’t even remember that for sure (and need a spreadsheet to keep track?!), then life or death of the protagonists can’t be incredibly important to the movie or its audience, I guess? Fair enough, but then what is*?
          Like, seriously, what is it about these movies?

          This is a bit like ME2, too, innit? Shepard dies, is resurrected, everyone acts like nothing happened.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Like, seriously, what is it about these movies?

            Cant speak for others,but for me its cool visuals and emotions.Its not who lives or dies,but how do they live or die.Does their life make me joyous,sad,angry,ecstatic,…And does their death move me.Also,how do they portray these otherworldly images*.

            And its the same,whether the movie is down to earth like dark knight,or completely out there like this one.If the emotions and visuals are there,I like it.If not(like in the case of man of steel movies),I dont.

            *For example,one of the movies has a character who is a planet.Not just big as a planet,but IS a planet,with rocks,gases,life growing over it,everything.And they walk around on him while conversing with him.Its trippy,but cool.

          2. Felblood says:

            Kill one person and it’s a tragedy.

            Kill Quadrillions, including everyone you know, and it’s a statistic.

          3. Sartharina says:

            It’s more that at the end, half the cast die at once, and no follow-up to really see who survives. While a few deaths in Infinite War are spread out, the vast majority happen in an instant (The snap of a finger), without much clarity or focus on exactly who dies and who lives.

          4. guy says:

            Literally half the cast dies in a handful of minutes at the very end, and not in cohesive chunks.

        3. Guest says:

          The excess of characters is definitely a problem. It’s an “Event” film, like a comics event, for fans of the characters in their original settings coming together. Most have no real arc, and very little story. It’s more fanservice than character development. They sort of lent into that with the story structure, the villain is essentially the protagonist, as far as getting dramatic beats, but that makes the structure feel weird, and the villain’s plan is nonsense. It’s more interesting than “Rule the world” but makes less sense.

        4. Bloodsquirrel says:

          The first Avengers movie really did rely upon the novelty of “Hey, we’re bringing a bunch of characters from different movies together in one big movie!”. That, and I don’t think any movie before it had shown comic book action on quite the same level before. A big ol’ brawl in New York with multiple superheroes against aliens? I can’t really think of another movie that matched that.

          Other than that, it was fairly weak. The plot doesn’t make a ton of sense (What is Loki trying to accomplish on the Helicarrier, exactly?) , the character development is very cursory, and it’s full of Whedon’s “not nearly as clever as it thinks it is” dialog (like you point out with Bruce’s “I’m always angry” line).

          It was a great spectacle to see in the theater when it first came out, but now with more ambitious crossovers under the MCU’s belt it doesn’t hold up as much more than an acceptably well-done nostalgic rewatch.

          Age of Ultron was just plain bad.

          1. Shoeboxjeddy says:

            The purpose of Banner’s line is that he’s more in control of his transformation than before. He’s been practicing meditation and control of his emotions such that he’s always aware of his rage and it doesn’t surprise him all of a sudden and overwhelm him into a transformation. Instead, if he WANTS to transform, he can stoke that feeling up until he changes.

            And Loki’s purpose on the Helicarrier was to destroy his opposition by making them fight each other. It almost completely worked, as Hawkeye nearly kills Black Widow and Thor and Hulk nearly turn each other into a fine paste. He’s the God of Tricks after all.

    3. Bloodsquirrel says:

      The “Giant crossover after a bunch of movies built up to it” was sort of the entire point, so I don’t really think this could have ever been geared toward newcomers. It feels much more like a TV series finale. They’ve had plenty of movies to get people into the MCU, and now this is the payoff.

      So, yeah, you definitely need to know who all of these characters are. The movie has way too big a cast to waste time explaining it. But if you do, it works, and it’s fun to see Thor meet the Guardians and Stark bicker with Strange.

    4. Adam says:

      Funnily enough there was a reviewer who has seen none of the previous MCU films did a review of it: http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/the-avengers/feature/a856335/avengers-infinity-war-review-marvel-novice-mcu/

      He gave it a positive review so it might not be a terrible idea to watch it but YMMV.

  5. Matt Downie says:

    For those who lost track, there’s a full list of character deaths here:
    http://time.com/5252990/avengers-infinity-war-deaths/

    Steve Rogers survived. The possible future Captain Americas – Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson – died.

    My guess as to what will happen in the sequel: the original Avengers will team up to undo what happened, but will all have to sacrifice their lives to do so. The next generation will then take their place.

    1. Felblood says:

      Underscored by the fact that Strange’s prophecy says that they needed Tony to survive, but it was okay to sacrifice half the Galaxy.

      Out of all the original Avengers, he has the most common ground with Thanos, too.

      1. Bloodsquirrel says:

        They needed him to survive that moment. He can still die later doing something important.

        1. Felblood says:

          Yes, exactly.

  6. BRUNO MOREIRA TORRES says:

    Calling it now: Everybody who died in this movie will come back. The next movie’s deaths are the ones which will stick. Like everybody, I’m betting on either Cap or Iron will go. Maybe both.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Its not certain if theyll die,or just retire though.Cap might just retire.Tony is dead meat for sure.

    2. armagrodden says:

      My theory: All six original Avengers survived (assuming Hawkeye survived offscreen) and there are six Infinity Stones. So I think the Avengers will blast the Gauntlet from Thanos’ hand (or Nebula’s), and then each of the original six will grab a Stone, link up as in the original Guardians movie, and hit the Cosmic Reset Button on all Thanos’s works before the Stones wipe them from existence.

      Second prediction: They bring back everyone that was disintegrated at the end, but it’s Thanos who brings back Gamorra, brainwashed to be the perfect daughter he always wanted. And he hates her. And either Nebula has to find a way to bring her back before the Cosmic Reset, or the Guardians have to use Mantis and the power of love to do it afterwards.

  7. modus0 says:

    Uhh, Cap’s not dead…

    The list of (main character) survivors is thus: Iron Man, Nebula, M’baku (Leader of the tribe that aided T’challa in Black Panther), Okoye (Head of T’challa’s “guards”), War Machine, Rocket Racoon (the only GotG left), Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and Thor.

    I recall reading somewhere that they’ve said those characters who died are going to stay dead after Avengers 4, which pretty much means everyone who died before the finger snap isn’t coming back.

    Though I could see them undoing Gamora’s death, since that was tied to Thanos getting the Soul Gem.

    One question I have, is did the finger snap halve the populations that Thanos had already halved (Gamora’s people, the Asguardians, etc.), or were the spared from having their remaining populations reduced again?

    Overall, I have issue with Thanos’ goal (though, given that he’s the Mad Titan, it’s not a well reasoned out goal): If he’s worried about the death of the universe, then he’s SoL because it’s going to happen, eventually. And reducing the populations now doesn’t prevent the issue of overpopulation happening again (particularly since most of the life left would have no idea why half their populations disappeared), nor the issue of resources eventually running out. The only way to prevent that would be to kill of all living beings, and even then, the stars would eventually exhaust their fuels and go out, and the universe would still die.

    I did like that despite the somber ending, and the inevitable rewind, the villain actually completed his plan and accomplished his goal. I especially liked Thanos’ answer for “what about after you’ve accomplished your goal?” It turned Thanos from some galactic despot into a very real and serious immediate threat. Acquiring all the stones doesn’t set him on the path to his end goal, it is his end goal.

    1. Zaxares says:

      The MCU is one where you have alternate dimensions and beings of godlike power though. I think it’s entirely feasible that the heat death of the Universe is NOT inevitable in the MCU; as an example, The One Above All could simply will all the stars to burst into life again with but a thought.

    2. Felblood says:

      I’m not sure there are any Asgardians left, besides Thor.

      Certainly nobody else from Ragnarok survived the boarding operation.

    3. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      I forget who said this, but I saw one reviewer griping about Thanos’ plan, who pointed out that halving Earth’s population puts it back to… 1960.

      Congrats, we’re going to be right back here 60 years later. Barely a single lifetime.

      Terraforming Mars probably would have made more sense. I mean, you have the Infinity Gauntlet, surely that’s something you could do.

      Same reviewer’s theory is that the ending didn’t actually happen -that they managed to steal one of the stones (I think they said the reality stone) and fool Thanos.

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    In the comics they pulled the same trick: Thanos kills all the supers and wipes out half in galaxy.

    Doesnt he kill EVERYONE in the comics?Because he wants to bang death herself.

    1. Narkis says:

      No, not everyone. He snapped his fingers, and half of everyone died in a flash. Because Mistress Death gave him that impossible task to win her affections, and he went and cheated by making the Infinity Gauntlet and becoming god. She was not amused.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Also she is deadpools girl,so thanos had no chance from the beginning.

      2. Daimbert says:

        If I recall correctly, part of Death rejecting him for that was because he went and deliberately gained the power to be able to dominate and triumph over her, which she was not interested in at all.

        1. Narkis says:

          Yeah, I don’ think he had any chance from the beginning, as Daemian said, but his god powers and the way he used them turned her into an enemy.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    They might be able to win some of those hearts in Captain Marvel’s solo movie, but I think it would be a mistake to make that movie “required viewing” for part 2 of this story to work.

    Yeah,but avenger movies mostly do require you to have some knowledge of the previous movies in order to get into them seamlessly.The second one is the most stand alone,and even it requires you to be at least familiar with the first.

    And this is actually the reason why I do like the avenger movies.They are geared towards the fans of mcu first,not towards grabbing the new audiences,as is the case with other franchises(obligatory mass effect nod).

  10. Narkis says:

    I loved the movie. My one complaint was Vision, I wanted him to at least put up a fight before losing his gem.

    I was genuinely surprised by who got Snapped and who survived, but their plan seems obvious for us insiders: Give us a last hurrah of the old guard, and a bittersweet ending were they sacrifice themselves to save everyone else. And I, for one, look forward to it.

    And I’m also glad they dialed back the jokes. Ragnarok was too much of a comedy.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Vision really got the shaft both here and in civil war.But here he at least had a reason for it,seeing how he was crippled basically from his first scene.Which is a shame because I really liked him in ultron and wanted them to do more with him.

      Also,Im not that fond of him being the lover of wanda,because them being more like brother and sister wouldve fit better.But eh,the emotions work either way for this story.

      1. Narkis says:

        he was crippled basically from his first scene

        Yeah, that shouldn’t have happened imho. Vision should be kicking names and taking ass until Thanos comes himself to take the final gem.

        Him and Wanda being lovers is straight from the old comics and I’d be disappointed if they didn’t do it. I imagine I’m not the only one.

        1. Daimbert says:

          You’re not. And it helps that they actually did the burgeoning relationship really well.

      2. Boobah says:

        Also,Im not that fond of him being the lover of wanda,because them being more like brother and sister wouldve fit better.

        Aaaah! We don’t need another version of ‘Wanda screwing her brother.’

        Not your fault, really. I’ve just been reminded of that part of Ultimates this past week.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          It is my fault really.Ive already seen three shows where the woman humps her (adopted) brother,so I should have known better.

    2. Viktor says:

      Ragnarok was great and I say that as someone who dgaf about Thor. Yes, it was more of a comedy than the non-GotG movies. That’s a GOOD THING. Marvel needs to diversify and have different genres and tones for their movies. If every movie they make feels exactly the same, people will get burnt out eventually. Let different heroes attract different audiences, then bring them together for the crossovers.

      1. Daimbert says:

        I don’t think that Thor is a good vehicle for the same sort of comedy/action movie that they were already doing with Guardians and Ant-Man. The previous two movies were more serious — although they still had a lot of humour — and the character doesn’t really work as simply the butt of the jokes. Different genres and tones isn’t a bad thing, but you have to be careful how you do that. And Marvel was already diverse on that score anyway. It comes across less like trying for diverse genres and more like thinking that the tone of Guardians is what works the best, so let’s have every movie do it.

        1. RichardW says:

          You say the character doesn’t really work well as the butt of jokes, but that was pretty much exclusively his role for the first few films, being mister fish out of water and the “straight man” to the more zany avengers. I did kinda like that, but it was a bit one note, and the character Thor has grown into through Ragnarok and now Infinity War is a lot more interesting and likeable than the walking brick that rarely smiles.

          1. Daimbert says:

            There’s a difference, though, between being the straight man and being the butt of the jokes. Compare Darcy tazing Thor in the first movie, or Jane running him over twice, to the first scene in Ragnarok where Thor is in chains and talking to Surtur. In the former, he’s the straight man, where, sure, bad things happen to him but he’s not, himself, acting goofy or putting himself into those situations, whereas in the latter he pretty much put himself there, and the humour is ramped up BY that situation, and then he delivers the quip, the hammer is late, and he notes that. I could easily see Starlord or Ant Man in those situations with those lines, but I’d expect Thor to use either more bravado-laced humour, or more dry humour there.

          2. Guest says:

            Ragnarok is just leaning into what worked best about Thor, it’s easily the best Thor fil, and it’s a great soft reboot. The best thing is, they do it without making Thor a Gimli. He’s not the brightest, he is inherently funny, but he’s also a real person with real feelings and character that drive his story, and he’s one of the heaviest hitters in any given room.

            I’m glad that not every Marvel film is Ragnarok, but I’m glad they made Ragnarok, and I’m glad they leant into the things that make Thor more fun. He’s easily one of my favourites in IW, and I wouldn’t have thought that from his first couple of appearances in the MCU.

        2. Sartharina says:

          The previous two Thor movies were serious, and as a result, are about as terrible as an MCU movie can be. Ragnarok was amazing because it took Thor away from the direction that wasn’t really working toward one that did.

    3. eaglewingz says:

      Ragnarok was too much of a comedy.

      Not a sentence I thought I would ever hear read.

      1. Daimbert says:

        Having just watched it, I agree. Humour is one thing, but entire segments of it are built to be nothing more than comedy scenes, and they seem to go on too long that way (Strange and Thor in the Sanctum, for example).

        1. Bloodsquirrel says:

          My problem is that the humor wasn’t organic enough. It felt more like a movie that was written to be serious where the actors kept screwing around on set and they kept it in. Too much of the humor requires the movie to stop and indulge in it rather than letting it be part of the plot.

          And it really wasn’t funny enough to carry the movie. it wasn’t bad, per se, but “mildly amusing” wasn’t enough to make up for the movie lacking much of a dramatic backbone.

          Jeff Goldblum’s character was the only one who I really thought worked 100%.

          1. Blackbird71 says:

            That’s a good way to sum up how I felt about the movie. It felt like the most comedic moments came at the expense of the most dramatic moments, and many tense scenes were ruined for the sake of a joke. Doing this a couple of times in a movie makes for some good laughs, but doing it every single time the opportunity presented itself became tiresome and disappointing.

          2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

            The director is pretty much a comedy director. I would have to strongly disagree with the idea that he designed a straight laced film and then added comedy randomly.

    4. Felblood says:

      I would go so far as to say that Ragnarok needed to push the series’ existing Action/Rom-Com vibe to the next level, just to get away with the level of darkness in that movie.

      They play it for laughs, but Thor is getting a face full of the ugliest side of the MCU. e.g. the first act opens with him caged next to a skeleton, talking to himself in Norse Hell, then the second act opens with him literally being enslaved by a mad despot, who forces him to fight in a gladiatorial arena. The third act is just a constant onslaught of stuff that’s even worse than that, even though it looks totally awesome.

      The moral of the story is something like, “A king can’t afford to believe in heroes.”

      The after credit stinger foretells some of the most gut wrenching parts of Infinity War.

      Ragnarok is a rollicking good time, but if you tried to describe the plot to someone who hadn’t seen it, it would sound super depressing. It needs those jokes. There’s a couple that I might’ve cut on quality, but not because I felt there were too many.

    5. Guest says:

      Vision was such a chump.

      I don’t care if he got crippled, and yeah, comics wise the weapon that hurt him is a big deal, but he’s got an infinity stone in his head, which the film is all about hyping up. Thanos is a beast with even a limited number, yet one of his flunkies is able to take on a being who is able to wield an infinity stone (Canonically, in the film canon, something that is very hard to do, that simply touching them is a bad idea, and Vision wears it on his forehead), and kick his butt, and Scarlett Witch’s, before some non-superpowered buddies of theirs show up to help. The drama of needing to remove and destroy the stone could just as easily have served to remove Vision as a heavy hitter, they didn’t need to injure him and make the stakes less comprehensible.

  11. Sarfa says:

    The ending tease for this movie was very “Nick Fury is calling in Captain Marvel!” so I could see her being a major player in the follow up to this one.

    1. Somniorum says:

      Yeah – considering that ending, I was figuring she must be essential to fixing everything (… or as much as they can) in the next one.

      Or maybe they’ll just throw it all out the window and it’ll be Deadpool.

  12. Dreadjaws says:

    I liked the movie, seen it three times already, but every time I think back about it I find anything new to complain about. It’s the problem of Marvel maintaining their formula even when they make a fundamentally different movie like this one, you can’t help but notice these things.

    The main issue I have is, of course, related to Thanos. I think they did a good job with him as a character, but you have to entirely ignore (actually, this isn’t just about Thanos, but pretty much with everything regarding continuity) his previous appearances to believe his backstory and motivations. Up until this film, Thanos was portrayed as a straight villainous character, but now they turned him into Ra’s Al Ghul, someone with noble intentions (actually literally the same intentions) but villainous means.

    The problem with this is that his means run entirely counter to his motivations. In the comics, he wanted to kill half the universe to impress death. Understandable. Here, he wants to kill half the universe to… have the other half lead a better life. So… why not use your literally infinite power to modify bodies so they don’t need so many resources? Why not multiply resources a million-fold? Why not make people “better”, so they share more and don’t waste so much? Why not make the universe simply produce more resources from waste?

    He never takes even a moment to consider any other possible way, even though he has, again, infinite power and is (according to him, anyway) “cursed with wisdom”. Ra’s Al Ghul has no choice, but he doesn’t have infinite power.

    To be fair, this is a problem I have with every sci-fi story that tries to portray a being with infinite power. No one knows how to properly do that. I would prefer they had nerfed the infinity stones in the movies rather than follow the comics idea, because it’s silly to see someone with amazing power forgetting he has it. You see Thanos in one scene turning Drax and Mantis into useless junk and then when a bunch of other heroes attack him later and he has even more power than before now he suddenly resorts to basically punch them a lot.

    I HATE this. I wish everyone stopped doing it. Just make your guy “really powerful”, not “omnipotent”. Don’t oversell his power if you’re not going to let him use it.

    1. Narkis says:

      The problem with this is that his means run entirely counter to his motivations. In the comics, he wanted to kill half the universe to impress death. Understandable. Here, he wants to kill half the universe to… have the other half lead a better life. So… why not use your literally infinite power to modify bodies so they don’t need so many resources? Why not multiply resources a million-fold? Why not make people “better”, so they share more and don’t waste so much? Why not make the universe simply produce more resources from waste?

      He is called “the Mad Titan”. He’s not supposed to be rational.

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        I shouldn’t have to say this, but bringing comic book characterization to a movie is simply not an option.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          He still is pretty mad in the movie though.The scene with gamora,for example.A rational person would not even consider that that girl would feel for them anything but hatred after such an action.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            That’s not really being “mad”. That’s just ego.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              You can have a big ego without being completely delusional.Thanos is completely delusional,aka mad.

              1. Dreadjaws says:

                That seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of the word “mad”. Thanos doesn’t suffer from hallucinations or confusion, and is entirely capable of rational thought. He simply overestimates his own intelligence.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  You dont have to have hallucinations in order to be crazy.You just need to have delusions that run counter to reality.And thinking that halfing the population of the entire galaxy would somehow fix the problem of limited resources,thinking that people would feel anything other than fear and anger towards you for slaughtering their neighbors and family,those are some huge delusions.

          2. Viktor says:

            Thanos was basically portrayed as an abuser in all his scenes with Gamora and Nebula. There’s plenty of abusers IRL who absolutely believe their victims love them and don’t actually understand the difference between love and fear.

        2. Felblood says:

          I’m pretty sure he is referred to as “The Mad Titan” in the movie proper, so this entire argument would be invalid, even if Thanos wasn’t portrayed as a delusional, semi-omnicidal maniac.

    2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

      Couple of issues. Having better options and choosing a bad one is generally what makes the villain… the villain. The reason his ideas were dismissed out of hand on Titan is because they were insane and horrible. The solution to “a lot of people might die if we don’t solve this problem” is OBVIOUSLY not “well… let’s start killing people now then. Maybe in a while, the problem will fix itself!”

      It’s also unclear what the Infinity Stones can do, which is generally a good thing. Like, Thanos turns Mantis and Drax into trash with the Reality stone, but then they spring back into their original form when he leaves. Does that mean he has to focus CONSTANTLY to pull off a change, whereas destruction is permanent? That would make it sensible (if not acceptable or helpful) for him to go for destruction as his solution, since he doesn’t have the mental power to focus on permanent changes for the rest of eternity.

  13. Joshua says:

    I think they put themselves into a bit of an unwinnable situation regarding the deaths-

    1. Kill off a lot of the veterans: “Oh, amazing how the characters who died all had expiring contracts, (eyeroll) how predictable”

    2. Kill off a lot of the newer characters: “Oh, amazing how most of the characters who died all have upcoming movies, (eyeroll) like you would really make it stick.

    I’m normally a lot more critical of movies, but I gave this one some leeway when you realized that the directors had the Herculean task of “give 30 or so characters meaningful arcs”, which is why you have stuff like the Thor builds new hammer plot.

    One thing that surprised me was how Steve Rogers had very little to do in the movie. His appearance in the trailers seemed like he would have more of a major role, and he ended up with like 5 lines? He mostly just punched stuff.

    1. Guest says:

      Yeah, but it’s still a problem. It’d be a great, gut punch, downer ending setting themselves up for the restoration of a bunch of these heroes in the sequel. Especially the setting of that last moment, Thor’s plot has been clearly setting up this Axe and how important it is and he makes it in time and he smashes the heck out of Thanos, and then everything goes wrong anyway, it’s kind of great.

      But you know GoTG 3 is coming out (And because in Guardians, Peter and Gamorra aren’t together because Peter is too immature, so they’re definitely going to walk back some of their character to the 2nd one to get to a relationship as a culmination of an arc), you know Spiderman’s getting a sequel, and you know that Cap and Tony are probably leaving (Which makes Tony’s stabbing really unimpactful, he’s gonna die, oh, this is emotional, actually, Strange will give it all up for Tony who he hates, which is obviously because that’s a part of the future he saw where they win, which doesn’t fool anyone for a moment and feels cheap, and then Tony reveals that his nanites basically make massive trauma a non-issue and oof).

      You’re right, it is an awkward situation, they don’t wanna just kill off the big leads, Cap and Tony, and leave the last film without them, especially since that’ll probably kill off one or both of them, but maybe a bit of secrecy regarding the sequels, or maybe planning more movies in between dealing with the aftermath would make it feel more significant.

      1. armagrodden says:

        What they really needed to do was scythe through the supporting casts. Like, I can’t believe that they’d wipe out their entire new MCU hero line-up, but it would be much more believable for them to kill (say) Valkyrie or Shuri or Pepper Potts or Hawkeye’s family or Spider-Man’s classmates or people along that line. Their deaths would have emotional weight without creating the absolute necessity of a reset button (especially characters from franchises whose heroes are leaving).

  14. Dreadjaws says:

    Also, I don’t want to annoy people with all the gripes I have with the movie, but by God, what a stupid-ass piece of shit Star-Lord turned out to be. He caused the heroes’ defeat by being a complete idiot. Despite this, people defend him, usually stating something like:

    1) “It was all part of Strange’s plan”: Leaving aside that “Strange’s plan” is nothing but an unconfirmed fan theory (yes, the story seems to lead there, but it wouldn’t be the first red herring these movies give), how would that change things if it was the case? Sure, perhaps Strange’s plan hinged on the heroes losing, but Star-Lord didn’t know that. Whether he ended up fulfilling Strange’s prediction or not, he still acted like a complete idiot. You might argue that perhaps Strange did tell him what had to happen, but that would imply he knowing ahead of time about Gamora’s fate and somehow managing to keep a smile on his face even when Thanos wasn’t looking at him.
    “It’s in character!”: People claim that Star-Lord is supposed to be impulsive and led by his emotions, but while this is true at first, having him behave this way now ignores a lot of character development he’s had in the past two films. Hell, it ignores his previous behavior in this very film, when he tried to make sure Drax didn’t do the exact same thing and when he was previously willing to kill Gamora himself. If anything, he’s a hypocrite.

    Also, he had both Sherlock Holmes actors in front of him and he never even uttered a “No shit, Sherlock” retort. Screw that guy.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      when he tried to make sure Drax didn’t do the exact same thing

      Yes,because it was not HIM with the emotions back then.Its far easier to think rationally when its someone else who is feeling the emotions and not you.

      and when he was previously willing to kill Gamora himself.

      And how long did it take for him to pull the trigger there?It was at least a minute of him trying to force himself to act.Here,he had far less time to try and force himself NOT to act,which is again way more difficult.

      I get the complaint.But its a complaint coming from people NOT feeling the same emotion as he did at the time.If you ever had to subdue extreme grief of extreme rage,try and remember how much effort it took you to not* just burst out crying,or screaming,or anything like that.And no,it does not get easier the more of it gets piled onto you.If your mother dies and you are struck by immense grief and anger,it wont help you much in the moment when your spouse dies next.

      *Or how you failed,despite all your effort.

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        Here’s the problem with that line of thought: no one’s telling him NOT to harm Thanos, just to help them so they CAN harm him. They’re literally trying to make the guy vulnerable to harm and he knows it. If he really wanted to harm Thanos, he could have helped the others remove the glove or stabbed him in the arm, or something like that.

        No, I’m sorry, but this, just like Iron Man’s actions at the end of Civil War, cannot be excused as acting out of rage. Rage can make you act rash and stupidly, but it’s not a “justify your every action” free card. If you’re mad at your computer and you decide to “punish it” by kicking it and end up breaking it it’s understandable. But if you’re mad at your computer and you decide to “punish it” by sticking your dick in it then you’re a complete and utter idiot.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          The most important thing about irrational actions is that they are not rational.Yes,it is stupid.Because there is literally zero thought going into it.You act on impulses.And if,for whatever messed up reason,your impulses are telling you to slather ice cream all over your body and jump on a trampoline,thats what you are going to do.There have been plenty of occasions of people doing messed up shit due to emotions that they would never consciously think of.Lashing out and punching the person who harmed your loved one is one of the tamest things you can do in a fit of rage.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            It’s lazy writing, it’s what it is. They can justify any action by having it done by someone “in a fit of rage” as long as people keep accepting it.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Writing emotions in a way they work in the real world is lazy writing?

              1. modus0 says:

                Rage does not equal stupid though. Just because you’re pissed off at/about something does not mean you automatically decide to do the least intelligent thing you can regarding it.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  Depends on how clouded your conscious brain is.Same with fear,joy,lust,basically any emotion.It can overwhelm your mind completely,or just make you slightly irrational,depending on how strong it is,what kind of person you are,and a bunch of other factors.So while its not the rule that rage makes you do stupid things,its not uncommon for it to happen either.There is a reason why phrase “blinding rage” exists.

                  And starlord has already been shown to be bad at controlling his emotions.Even in this very movie.As Ive said before,it takes him a long time to overcome his feelings for gamora in order to just squeeze his finger.

              2. Dreadjaws says:

                No, writing themselves out of a corner by using “emotional rage” is lazy writing. They need the plot to advance, but rather than figure out a way for the villain to act clever, they decide to make the heroes act like idiots. Excuse it all you like, it’s lazy, particularly when they’ve shown already at least three people with entirely different personalities succumbing to the exact same emotional rage.

                Not everyone reacts the same, even when severely pushed emotionally. And, again while it might excuse irrational behavior it’s not a “get out of criticism” free card. Star Lord has a gun in his hand. If he’s furious against Thanos, the emotional reaction would have been to shoot him, not pistol-whipping him.

                Defend it all you like, it’s inexcusable.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  If he’s furious against Thanos, the emotional reaction would have been to shoot him, not pistol-whipping him.

                  You dont seem to understand the difference between impulsive behavior and higher thought.When overcome with emotions,you act on impulses alone.Yelling out and jumping up and down from joy,punching and kicking in anger,hugging and squeezing someone out of love,kissing out of lust,running away or freezing in fear,etc.Firing a gun,thats not an impulse human (yet) posses.It can be trained into someone(modern militaries do this),but its not a natural reaction.There have been numerous occasions where armed people simply tried to yell,punch or throw rocks at someone they were afraid of/angry at,never even considering to use their guns.

                  And since when is portraying and using emotions considered lazy writing?Every good movie is praised on how their actors portray emotions,yet writers are not allowed to do that?

              3. Kylroy says:

                “I just can’t buy that Hitler would attack Russia when he did. Germany’s still gearing up to invade England, and he breaks a non-aggression pact out of spite? No. Makes no sense. I don’t care how ‘crazy’ he’s supposed to be, he’s picking a fight with a nation twice his size, hundreds of miles away, for no good reason. Totally took me out of the story.”

        2. BlueHorus says:

          Understandable =/= justified.

          I’m with you – it’s hypocritical for Quinn to stop Drax doing something, then do it himself. And it’s a stupid thing to do. And…that’s what emotion does to someone. They do dumb things.

          Just like Tony Stark attacking Bucky in Civil War (which I also didn’t like*) even though he knows about mind-control was stupid – yet made sense.

          Bad writing? If you want. But if, so a lot of people in real-life are badly written.

          *Seriously, this guy’s just unreliable, and has proved it several times. TAKE AWAY HIS FLYING ROBOT SUIT YOU MORONS.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Seriously, this guy’s just unreliable, and has proved it several times. TAKE AWAY HIS FLYING ROBOT SUIT YOU MORONS.

            Yeah.And when even stephen strange calls him an asshole,you know that he is REALLY an asshole.When they made those accords,they did not need a whole book,they needed just one sentence “Prevent tony stank from doing anything ever”.

            1. Cubic says:

              “And yes, he is Tony Stank now.”

        3. Guest says:

          It’s not about justifying your action, these characters aren’t behaving rationally. Drax sees the man who killed his family, he tries to bumrush him. It’s established he’d do something dumb like that, in the first Guardians, he calls Ronan out of the same motivation.

          Peter is immature, he’s getting better, but he has a lot of trouble keeping control, and goes beserk when things come up that relate to his mother (Guardians 1, the walkman, which he risks their entire escape for, Guardians 2, when he learns what Ego did to his mother).

          Both of them are believably irrational. They’re also both being dumb as heck, and it does make it weird that this is the future Strange thinks they win in, does Strange not think warning Peter not to do that, and to help Spidey remove the Gauntlet would not also be a win? But that’s more a minor plot hole, and a poor bit of action, rather than an inconsistent character. Star Lord is exactly that stupid, so is Drax, they’re acting in line with their existing characters.

          And dude, if you’ve never been in a situation where the provocation is extreme enough for you to want to just put your fist through someone’s face, I reckon you ought to count yourself lucky. But from the anger in your posts, I’m pretty sure you know exactly how that feels.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            does Strange not think warning Peter not to do that, and to help Spidey remove the Gauntlet would not also be a win?

            Depends.What would happen next?Theyd have the glove,and one of them (most likely tony stank) would wear it.And becasue they did not witness what horrible power it has,they would soon become a tyrant of a different kind.Of course,this all hinges on what strange says in the next movie when he is brought back .

        4. Philadelphus says:

          . If you’re mad at your computer and you decide to “punish it” by kicking it and end up breaking it it’s understandable.

          I’m legitimately curious how “getting angry enough to physically assault your inanimate unfeeling computer” is understandable while “getting angry enough to assault the sentient being that just murdered the person you love” is not? Physically acting out due to irrational rage without considering the consequences is, well, one of the traits commonly associated with irrational rage.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            Did you stop reading at the first half of my comment? Is everyone doing that? My problem is not Star Lord getting angry, my problem is the way he chooses to express his rage.

            1. Philadelphus says:

              Considering that I quoted from the second half of your comment I thought it was obvious that I’d read it all. :)

              But thanks for the clarification. I think I understand better now based on this:

              my problem is the way he chooses to express his rage.

              The facts of the case are:
              1. Quill gets angry.
              2. Quill acts in a manner that is incommensurable with his own interests.

              You seem to be arguing (correct me if I’m misunderstanding) that he was in possession of his reasoning faculties and could have productively channeled that rage into actions that didn’t immediately sabotage what he was trying to accomplish, and thus that you don’t find his behavior believable. I’m arguing that he was not, in fact, capable of reacting rationally after just learning that the guy before him had murdered the love of his life, and that his actions were therefore purely instinctual, driven by homicidal rage, not thought out or chosen by any rational process. I believe history and modern life provide ample evidence of such emotionally-driven acts that are ultimately counterproductive occurring (physical and verbal abuse being common manifestations of rage) so I find it believable that a fictional character could act that way (especially one as impetuous and volatile but also deeply committed as Quill has been shown to be), but if you don’t allow for the possibility of someone acting entirely on emotion without any admixture of rational thought whatsoever then I suppose we’ll just have to agree to disagree. :)

    2. Dork Angel says:

      So I’m guessing you didn’t like Iron Man going after Bucky in Civil War then which was worse since Bucky didn’t even have a choice in his actions?

      I class Starlord’s actions as stupid but understandable. He loved Gamora but was forced to try and kill her because he promised her he would but had Thanos prevent him doing it (when he eventually summoned up the will to do it) and take her. Then when he has some hope she’s alive he finds out Thanos killed her himself anyway. If that doesn’t mess with your mind, I don’t know what does…

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        So I’m guessing you didn’t like Iron Man going after Bucky in Civil War then which was worse since Bucky didn’t even have a choice in his actions?

        No, I absolutely hated that. There hasn’t been born the person that can convince me Tony’s actions at the moment were justified. It’s the equivalent of finding out a guy shot your parents and deciding to kick the gun.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          People were known to not only kick the guns,but punch trees because someone close to them hung themselves.Is that stupid?Yes,for a clearly thinking person it certainly is.But when you are stricken by grief and rage,you are not a clearly thinking person.

        2. Guest says:

          Except people aren’t guns, and people aren’t rational. Like, come on, it’s a moment where you’re going “Please don’t Tony, you’re making a terrible mistake”, but they’ve spent two movies in particular, Civil War and Iron Man 2 establishing Tony’s father issues, and there, you see that he’s learned that his inability to resolve things with his father, the lack of his father’s presence in his life, was not just a result of Bucky’s actions, even if he couldn’t help it, but were covered up by Cap, who’s his friend, and knew, who he’s been fighting to try to resolve this recent friction between them. That he wasn’t trusted enough to be told this, and he’s so angry, he proves them right.

          You know it’s a mistake, everyone knows it’s a mistake, but it’s one that comes from character and makes perfect sense there, even if it is an awful “Oh no” moment. Everything just goes wrong at the wrong time. If Tony had been told earlier, under different circumstances, he might have been able to be brought around, but at that moment, that reaction totally makes sense. I am having a hard time believing you’ve never lost your temper.

          1. Dreadjaws says:

            You might have a point, but the movies never acknowledge this. The movies act like Tony was justified in acting that way. He never stops to think “Man, I made a huge mistake”. Steve never argues with him “Tony, you’re being irrational, think about this. You’re trying to punish an innocent man.”. Bucky never says “Please, dude, I was as much of a victim, I couldn’t control myself”. Not in Civil War, not in any sequel where Tony makes an appereance. And certainly not in Infinity War, when Star-Lord is doing the same thing Tony says “Don’t do this, I’ve been in the exact same place as you, you’re only going to make things worse”.

            That is the real problem. I know people lose their temper. I know people blame the wrong person in a fit of rage. But real people, once they calm down, acknowledge they acted wrong. Tony (or the entire MCU regarding this subject) never does such a thing.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              Tony never admits his mistakes(except to pepper,and only very rarely and in a roundabout way).And there are lots of people who do that.Admitting fault is not that easy,especially when you screw up as bad as tony.

            2. Sartharina says:

              In what fantasy world to you live in where people admit they are wrong?

            3. Shoeboxjeddy says:

              Tony admits he’s wrong AS HE’S DOING IT. Cap says “It wasn’t him, Tony!” (meaning, it was mind control, he could not help himself, he was not in his right mind) and Tony responds “It doesn’t matter, he KILLED MY MOM.” Tony isn’t going to kill Winter Soldier because it’s justice. He’s going to do it because he’s seeing red, he’s the angriest he’s ever been in his life and the man responsible is standing a few feet away from him.

      2. Daimbert says:

        I hated that the video of the attack set Iron Man off and started the last and pointless fight between the two. Stark had reason to react badly, but Cap should have been able to calm him down enough without having that entire last pointless fight when the actual issues were already resolved.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Pepper was not able to reign in tony stank ever,so steve really had no chance there.

          1. Daimbert says:

            Pepper was never ever to physically restrain him enough so that he had to stop and fight her before going after the target either.

        2. Guest says:

          If Bucky wasn’t within Tony’s reach, then he might have been able to.

          1. Daimbert says:

            Cap kept Bucky out of Tony’s reach for a while, at least to the extent that Tony had to fight him first before going on, and the movie implied that Tony was mad at Cap, too, for not telling him, which was also stupid.

            To me, it REALLY came across as a contrived fight in order to have the big climactic clash between Cap and Tony, not as something that really made sense in-universe.

            1. Shoeboxjeddy says:

              It seemed contrived to you that someone would want to murder the killer of their parents, seconds after finding out they were the culprit? Are you… a computer?

    3. Grampy_bone says:

      Undoing character development of prior films is what the MCU is all about!

      Besides, he was full of lurv for Gamora only to find she’s ded. That would make any man break.

    4. Joshua says:

      Well, I think the movie was more explicit that this was all part of Strange’s plan. However, I’m not a fan of that plot point:

      1. So, in a universe with this many powerful being and artifacts wandering around, there’s literally nothing else they could do that would stop Thanos? Killing or destroying Thanos in thousands of ways, destroying one or more of the stones? One problem with that rationale is that I find it very unlikely that the *one* way that the plan works (as devised by the screenwriters) will be airtight in the second film. “You mean doing X wouldn’t work, but doing Y does?!?”

      2. If Dr. Strange can take a minute and look into the future to see all possible solutions to a problem, then this should prevent any future stories with the guy. He literally can solve everything near instantaneously, and if he can’t, it can’t be solved. There’s a TV Trope for that too.

      As far as the issue with Star-Lord, I think it would have come across better if they handled it a bit differently, such as having him show up and interfering with a plan he didn’t already know about. It would also have helped if they writers hadn’t repeatedly showed him being a jackass the entire rest of the film (comparing himself to Thor, attacking the Avengers, insulting Tony’s plan, making a stupid comment about being from Missouri instead of Earth, not trying to kill Gamora when he had the chance, etc.) Understandable in some of those cases, but combined makes him do little more than screw up for most of his scenes.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Yes,there are plethora of ways that would stop thanos.But,what happens next?What if they took the glove from thanos,and then tony stank gets it and tries to play god again?That would most likely play out even worse.

        So I think strange was not looking only for ways to stop thanos,but to stop anyone from abusing the glove after thanos is stopped.But I have to wait for the next movie to see if he actually says that or not.

        1. Dreadjaws says:

          Strange is seen using magic to hide at least one stone. As soon as they get the glove off Thanos (which they would have done, notice how Spider-Man actually takes it off, but Thanos grabs it back at the last milisecond since he recovers his conscience), Strange can teleport him away and hide the gauntlet away for later disposal. It’s really not that hard to imagine. The writers simply didn’t bother to come up with a way to justify any other solutions not working besides “Because I said so”.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            How do you know that?Have you seen the second movie?Does strange ever explain his reasoning or what futures he saw?How do you know that the writers never thought of a reason to explain this?

            1. Olivier FAURE says:

              You’re really arguing in bad faith here. Yes, there is a chance the writers will have a great explanation in the second movie that will justify why Strange’s plan made perfect sense.

              More likely, the explanation will be stretching credulity and leave aside a dozen things Strange could have easily done to have a greater chance to accomplish his goals.

              I mean, it’s Marvel we’re talking about; they have good writers, but they’re not having massive plot holes in their movies.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                And once more,being unexplained is not a plot hole.A plot hole is when two(or more)things shown in the movie are contrary to each other.Things that are not shown are just things that are not shown.

              2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

                You not immediately understanding something or the movie not instantly showing you its math homework is not a plothole. Stop misusing that term.

          2. guy says:

            It’s entirely possible that in any future where they got the gauntlet off Thanos promptly killed them all anyways. He’s really tough; they were barely able to pin him and couldn’t inflict serious injury. He only gets seriously hurt when struck with the most powerful dwarven weapon ever wielded by Thor.

      2. Dork Angel says:

        1. Well no. By this time Thanos has most of the Infinity Stones and he’s about to get another one. He’s already too powerful to be stopped (he didn’t have that many when he easily beat Loki, Thor and Hulk). All Dr Strange actually does is gives him the Timestone to save Tony, so that action must be key and since he’s not around anymore all he could do to set the course of that timeline. Since no-one knows what else needs to happen it’s still pretty wide open.

        2. Fair point. Perhaps it will be nerved in some way after being used in the Infinity Gauntlet.

      3. Dreadjaws says:

        Indeed. #1 just pretty much craps in the butterfly effect. As soon as as Thanos leaves Titan, infinite possibilities happen, every one of them entirely out of Strange’s control. Even if the one future Strange saw in which they win starts that way, it’s still only one of infinite ones. That’s why I don’t believe that’s really Strange’s plan. Perhaps he managed to duplicate the time stone’s power or something like that.

        #2 is the thing that has always bothered me from the first Superman movie. If you can just use time travel to solve all your issues, then all tension is gone. At least the Flash TV series acknowledged this and showed that if you try to do that you might end up making things worse.

        1. Philadelphus says:

          I’m with you regarding time travel in works—I don’t think I’ve ever particularly enjoyed a work involving time travel, expect possibly H. G. Well’s The Time Machine.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Watch the twelve monkeys tv show.It may not have particularly realistic time travel*,but it sure has lots of fun time travel in it.

            *Though no time travel is really realistic.

          2. BlueHorus says:

            The Terminator?
            The time travel happened before the movie, had fairly strenuous rules (only one machine, made in the future, used once)…and it all resulted in a neat causality loop in which they didn’t, in fact, change anything. They just ensured that it still happened.

            The sequels ruined the time travel element (listening to Red Letter Media recapping the plot of Genysis just made me burst into derisive laughter) – but ruining the things that made the first film great is part of what sequels are for, right?

            Also, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, for the fact they know how silly time travel is.
            “Hey, after we’re done, let’s go back in time, steal the keys, and put them under this bush – hey look, the keys!”
            Genius.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              It may be a comedy,but thats far more realistic than what they do in some “serious” movies that involve time travel.

            2. Joshua says:

              I actually thought of this scene when I was watching Arrival back in 2016, which had a similar scene which caused story collapse for me (I had previously complained about that here). Thing is, leaving the keys for themselves to find made reasonable sense, because it could be done regardless of how their history presentation at school went (I think so anyway, it’s been nearly 30 years since that movie came out?). So, the solution would work regardless of whether there was a Success or Failure state beforehand.

              Arrival, on the other hand, had a major plot point where the protagonist resolves the international issue with the Chinese by giving the Chinese general information that he gave to her specifically after she was able to resolve that issue with him. So, the only way she can solve her current dilemma is by using information that she gains from the future having solved her current dilemma. That’s “I’ll invent a time machine and then go back in time to teach myself how to build it” logic there.

              Odd when Excellent Adventure had a more reasonable premise.

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                I like time loops.And I really dont get the problem many people have with them.You dont ask where is the starting point of a spatial circle,so why do you ask such a question for a temporal one?

                But I find the arrival thing to be an incredible asspull.Like they had no idea how to finish this great movie about language,so they went for the dumbest resolution they could find.Just because its sf does not mean anything sf fits.You dont resolve a war movie by having an unconnected bank robbery halfway around the earth simply because they are both happening on the same day.

      4. Philadelphus says:

        Well regarding #2, we know from this movie that Infinity Stones can be destroyed, so maybe they’ll go that route in the next movie?

      5. Blackbird71 says:

        I actually took the whole, “no, I’m from Missouri” bit as a test to see if Tony really was from Earth. If he wasn’t, then he wouldn’t be familiar with Missouri and so would assume Starlord was referring to another planet, by which Starlord would have known that Tony was lying.

    5. Guest says:

      It’s setup and payoff, it’s obvious, it’s as good as confirmed. You know the heroes win in the end, so you know that the future Strange saw is coming through. Maybe if it was Spidey Strange was sacrificing the stone to save, it’d be believable, he’s just a kid, but Strange hates Tony, and told them he’d sacrifice both of them if he had to, because half of the world, half of the universe, is at stake. You know he didn’t give up the stone, just so Thanos would let Tony live.

      It’s storytelling 101:

      Strange says he’d sacrifice them to save the world.
      Strange looks into the future, sees one possible way they win.
      Strange gives up the stone, which would seemingly guarantee their loss, which only makes sense if this is part of his scenario where they win in the end.

      It does feel like an asspull, because now there are so many less of them to fight Thanos, and it does rely on some dumb shit with Starlord, but it’s also really obvious what’s going on long term.

  15. N/A says:

    I was impressed with how much Infinity War accomplished of the task set in front of it. The sheer sprawl of characters it had to give fair billing to is a tremendous strain, and they pulled off more of it than I thought they could.

    That said, I can definitely see the stress lines cracking wider throughout it, with what it does to Thor and Ragnarok as probably the most high-profile example.

    Like, the whole thesis of Thor’s character arc in Ragnarok is summed up in that one line, “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people, and you are not Thor, God of Hammers; the power was inside you all along, and this gift of understanding you receive at the same price your father paid – one of your eyes.”

    … And then one movie (and in-universe a matter of days) later the Asgardians are dead (yes, yes, I know there’s one line that half of them are still alive; screw that, all the visual language has them as all being on the ship that Thanos blew up) and Thor needs to go fetch Mjolnir Mk2 now that he’s got a new cybereye.

    But more than that, Infinity War directly undoes the central theme of Thor: Ragnarok.

    Consider: Shift Thanos’ timeline back like, a day, and he would have been arrived on Asgard seeking the Space Stone in the middle of Hela’s rule.

    Hela who, narratively speaking, was unrestrained power that walked all over any opposition until the heroes acknowledged that she isn’t somebody who can be fought, and that the world must be sacrificed in order to escape her, because she is the evils of imperialism made flesh, and that cannot be truly defeated without uprooting the system that sustains her. While Thanos… wasn’t. He very much had his limits in a brawl.

    Which means the psychopath Queen of Colonialism out to revive the Nordic Empire In Spaaaaaace was a net good to the galaxy. The Asgardian Empire really was the bulwark of civilisation. If it, in its ruthless might, had still been standing, Thanos would never have destroyed half the universe, and in destroying it the heroes allowed an even greater evil to emerge.

    And that… that sucks, that’s a thematic betrayal I would really rather not have seen.

    1. Guest says:

      Yeah, that’s a pretty big gripe.

      The visual language of that scene is all wrong, the ship is venting into space and they run over Thor, and he’s the only one rescued. It’d be nice if they actually set up half the Asgardians surviving, because otherwise, that does hurt the ending of Ragnarok, which had potential. I thought the Asgardians were going to escape to earth before Thanos showed up hot on their heels.

      Ragnarok has great themes, and that’s really interesting, and it’s a shame they’re undercut with a film with the bullshit theme “We don’t trade people” and it’s like, Cap, you literally do, the evaluation that made you Cap was you jumping on a grenade, you traded your life at the end of that film, Vis calls you out on it, and your dick measuring contest with Tony was you telling him he wasn’t man enough to trade his life for others, which he then disproves at the end of that movie as one of the core themes of that one.

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        It’d be nice if they actually set up half the Asgardians surviving

        Thor actually confirms this in dialogue in the film, and the directors confirmed Valkyrie is still alive, so the assumption is that when we see Thanos’ attack on Thor and Loki, he’s already allowed half the people to escape.

  16. Viktor says:

    Yeah, fuck this movie. They just killed every character I’m interested in and every character with potential for interesting movies in the future. So now there’s two options.
    One: They stay dead. From a storytelling perspective, great. That’s narratively what should happen, and leads to all sorts of interesting moving on/rebuilding plots. But I won’t watch it, because I don’t care about any of the ones doing the rebuilding and we’ve already had like 10 movies starring Tony’s ego and Cap’s one-liners.
    Two. TO THE UNDO BUTTON. So every character that’s dead gets brought back, making this movie pointless and ignorable, while also dynamiting every one of their ongoing character arcs by throwing such a massive event into the middle of it. Great. I’m sure all these heroes dealing with the exact same personal crisis in their next movie won’t get boring at all. And once Marvel opens the door to resurrections, every director is going to go for cheap deaths for drama because “If we need this char later, someone can just bring her back.”

    So yeah, screw this movie. And what really bugs me is that Ragnarok and Black Panther were such a breath of fresh air following Ultron and Civil War. Marvel specifically destroyed Ragnarok, burning everything about it to the ground for this movie that has learned the worst lessons from comic books.

    1. Steve C says:

      Avenger’s Infinity War is my least favorite MCU movie by a large margin.

      Knowing that all the superheroes who died still have movie deals makes the ending have no weight. Which in turn makes the movie completely pointless. So it is just a bunch of stuff that happened. Except not! It’s a bunch of stuff that won’t be happening. It’s literally a waste of time.

      I still enjoyed it more than Justice League or any of the other DCU movies with Superman in them.

      1. BlueHorus says:

        In a sense, watching a movie is a waste of time…but if it’s fun, who cares?

        Anyway. YMMV, but I don’t look to a comic-book movie for and deep, meaningful plots, or character development. Do these characters really change much film-to-film? I know they say they do, but the MCU’s always seemed to have a bad case of The Status Quo Is God to me.

        Given all the rumors, Infinity War pt 2 will probably feature some actual changes – but crucially, that’s because of outside influences; actors getting bored, studio politics, etc.
        The film Logan was a send off to Hugh Jackman & Patrick Stewart in their roles, rather than anything to do with the characters; of course Wolverine & Professor X aren’t dead.
        That wheel will spin for as long as it makes money.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Do these characters really change much film-to-film?

          Not really.But they are comic book movies,and comics are also glacial in how they change.Oh sure,sometimes a new person inherits the costume,but then they keep it for a decade or so until their status quo changes.And thats only if it does not get reverted back(one more day).

    2. Dreadjaws says:

      So every character that’s dead gets brought back, making this movie pointless and ignorable

      Well, I have no doubt that the characters “killed” with the gauntlet snap will come back, particularly when many of them have sequels already planned, but that doesn’t mean every dead character will come back. Loki is surely a goner, for instance, as is Heimdall. Vision might be somehow repaired (being synthetic and all), but I doubt he’ll be the same. Also, this is still the first part of the movie, so there’s quite a bit of place for other heroes to die (at least one actor has confirmed that the next Avengers movie will be his last).

      That being said, it is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. A bit like the handling of Barbara Gordon’s death in Arkham Knight. If she dies for real, you’re unceremoniously killing a major character in what’s merely a way to advance the plot. This is disrespectful to such an important character. On the other hand, if she doesn’t really die then not only the story becomes cliched and predictable, but all tension is ruined.

  17. Grampy_bone says:

    I felt bad for Thor. Poor guy goes through hell trying to save the Asgardians and they all die in the first few minutes of the film. He had the toughest arc.

    Its definitely going to be Captain Marvel as the new lead. Her movie comes out next after Ant Man and the Wasp, so she’s going to rally the defeated heroes and save the day. Marvel made this decision a while ago to try to make her the new “Main hero” of the Marvel brand (it hasn’t worked out so well in the comics though).

    I’d also expect more of a reset button than just a straight revival. Like they all come back but some of the major events of the universe are changed/forgotten as well. Like Thor and the Asgardians revert to legends, Shield/Hydra go away (to be re created again later), etc.

  18. Jeremiah Frye says:

    Another thing to throw confusion in the mix. As far as I know the Captain Marvel movie takes place in the 90s, or at least mostly in the 90s, so it’s not clear yet how they’ll integrate that into the Avengers. Maybe a post-credit scene referencing Infinity War’s post-credit scene.

    Also I think I heard the next Spider-Man movie takes place between Homecoming and Infinity War so they’ll get to continue pretending he’s not coming back for at least one more movie.

    So as far as a Gamora-focused Guardians movie, it could also take place before Infinity War.

    1. Dreadjaws says:

      Nope, it’s been confirmed that Avengers 4 leads directly into Homecoming 2 (which will be released later), so there’s no need pretending. We all know Spidey is coming back.

      Not that we believed for a moment that they’d just kill one of the newest most popular additions to the MCU (I mean, Quicksilver was killed in his introduction film, but was he ever anyone’s favorite character?).

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Unless sony decided to get the character back and they keep him dead because of that.Which would suck.

      2. Vi says:

        We didn’t really get enough time to see if Quicksilver could have been someone’s favorite character. :'(

  19. Christopher says:

    Thor’s got a rough life. I want more stories about him, but it’s difficult since every movie just keeps offing his cast ever since Thor 1. His mom dies in 2. Then Ragnarok kills Odin, The Warriors 3 and most of Asgard’s entire population. Finally, in this movie, they kill Loki and Heimdall for sure and presumably Valkyrie and the rest of the new Ragnarok doofuses as well.

    What’s left for them to work with here? Sif and the supporting human cast from Thor 1 and 2? Magicking it all back might feel cheap, but if it’s a choice between that and Thor’s entire setting just disentegrating more and more every movie I’d rather they make a wish to the Dragonballs and get the asgardians back. Come on guys, at least give me the world serpent before we wrap up Thor. You wouldn’t just blow up new york and kill aunt may, mary jane and everyone else Spider-Man cares about in a theoretical Spider-Man 3. Extend the same courtesy to Thor and his cast.

    1. Dreadjaws says:

      Valkyrie is confirmed to be alive by the directors, and Thor mentions that Thanos only killed half of the Asgardians (as per his M.O.). Lady Sif is said to have been taken away by Thanos’ snap (again, by the directors), so while she’s currently gone she might return in the future.

      Curiously, the Russos were asked about Jane Foster (Thor’s love interest) and they said they couldn’t reveal her current fate because it’d be a spoiler, so clearly Marvel has plans for Thor in the future.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Or its another blatant lie on their part,and they simply did not seal the deal with Natalie Portman.

      2. Christopher says:

        I suppose this could be about that recent lady Thor thing? I believe Jane Foster became the new Thor somehow in a “recent”(it’s gotta be a couple years old at leaat at this point) initiative where the other big names got exchanged for protégés. If they do wanna kill off the old guard but still keep the names around, one way is to have Foster and Bucky/Falcon step into the Thor/Cap roles. Though I’m with Damien on this one, it just seems like Portman hated working on the Thor movies, and I don’t really think giving other characters the names of more popular ones is a better way to move the franchise forward than focusing on the newer heroes on the block like Spider-Man, Ant-Man and so on.

  20. Jabrwock says:

    I saw it with my kids, and my son who’s almost 7 was just yelling at the screen at the end (tears in his eyes) until he stopped, and then asked “did Doctor Strange say he saw the future? Did he do that [giving Thanos the time stone] because he knew it was the only way to win?” Complete and utter turnaround in his mood. He was suddenly ok with what happened, because he figured it would be all right in the end.

    Doctor Strange, instead of organizing the resistance, may instead have just made sure the pieces were in places so the resistance yet to be organized, will have the best chance of succeeding.

    1. guy says:

      It’s pretty obvious that giving up the time stone was somehow key. Dr. Strange doesn’t like Tony that much, and specifically said he’d do exactly the opposite of that trade prior to viewing the future.

  21. Jennifer Snow says:

    I quite enjoyed the movie, and I liked the departure in tone from the other ones in the series. This one was darker and more serious, and strongly established the stakes.

    Thanos’ stated motivation kind of does and doesn’t work for me. He certainly sold it very well, and you can buy it as a philosophical motivation, but if you have godlike powers why can’t you find some OTHER solution than killing half the population? The power he gets makes his “solution” unnecessary. So it’s clear that he’s really doing this out of spite, because people rejected his “great” solution.

    Which makes him a great villain. So, it really does work.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      To me,its more that he has been doing the whole “half the population” thing for so long that he no longer considers anything else as viable.

      1. Jennifer Snow says:

        Well, and nobody even really tries to argue with him, which means one of two things:

        1.) they accept his premise, but reject his methods (weak)
        2.) they just think he’s nuts and arguing is pointless (better)

        I tend toward the “nuts” end simply because it really makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, okay, you killed half the population, so now they have 50% of the ability to turn resources toward the products they need to live. So you’re STILL going to not have enough to go around. Anybody who actually makes stuff will tell you what happens if 50% of their workforce suddenly disappears. Every mouth to feed is two hands to produce.

        And, people reproduce, so in a few generations it’ll be like this never happened.

        1. Narkis says:

          The guy has massacred whole planets. His death toll is in the billions, or possibly trillions, even before the Snap. His evilness can be measured in kilohitlers, at the very least. You do not argue with him, you stop him as best you can.

          1. Jennifer Snow says:

            There’s still a difference between doing evil because of a mistaken idea, and being just plain mad dog evil.

            1. Doomcat says:

              To add to this; A basic understanding of ecology would point out how this really, REALLY wouldn’t work. You mentioned “A few generations” to get back to the population you had before, most species don’t need ‘a few generations’.

              Assuming most species shown reproduce like humans, you’d have a population boom immediately after killing half the population. A species at it’s carrying capacity (Like he was describing) Just means births = deaths. Cause alot of death and suddenly there’s extra resources to take advantage of, which lowers the death rate significantly…

              You’d have, MAYBE, one generation of better living, then right back to overpopulation as that generation enters maturity. Thanos’s plan isn’t just mad dog evil, it’s stupid and avoids the problem entirely by traumatizing one generation of living beings.

              1. Jennifer Snow says:

                Unless his idea was to kill most of the people who are young enough to reproduce.

                “I’m going to kill half of everyone to fix our resource problem!”
                “You’re nuts!”
                “No, watch!”
                *all women die*
                “See? Fixed!”

              2. Bloodsquirrel says:

                No, the population wouldn’t be back in a few years. What would actually happen is that you would have a massive global economic collapse as the planet’s infrastructure, which was built for 7 billion people, not 3.5 billion, can no longer be maintained with half the population. Human civilization would be set back thousands of years, and the overall population would probably fall to well under a billion, if not even less.

                Having half of your population randomly killed would create unfathomable problems with trying to reorganize you society, production, governments, etc. And you’d be losing massive amounts of technical, scientific, and operational knowledge because it turns out that there was only one person who knew how that thing worked, and now he’s dead. And this isn’t even getting into all of the things (like technological development) which require a fixed amount of resources but benefit everybody, meaning that they’re more productive with a larger population.

                And as things collapse, they get worse. The US is built around industrial farming. When that no longer becomes possible due to industrial failures, how are we going to grow food? You have to move back to manual labor, which is far less productive. We’ll lose our communications network, which will further hamper the ability to respond and reorder things. Our financial system will be so screwed up that it’ll have to be reset, and good luck running national enterprises with all of your banks suddenly gone.

                Thanos really, really needed somebody to sit down with him and explain some basic economics.

                1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                  Ok,but what if he killed all the poor?Would that work?

                  1. Jennifer Snow says:

                    Considering that “the poor” are very often just “the young”, and, depending on how you divide up the population this can also include THE most economically productive quintile . . . no.

                    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      What if we raised VAT and killed all the poor?

                2. Jennifer Snow says:

                  I think this doomsday scenario would require more like 80-90% of the population to die. There have been plagues and invasions bad enough to kill half the population in the past and it was usually followed by speedy economic recovery and even a boom.

                  1. Bloodsquirrel says:

                    That was back when economies were far more localized and where most of the population were manually-laboring farmers, though. Our current system is far more complex and far more reliant on specialization and international trade. We also have a lot more infrastructure that we rely on, and that still needs to be maintained.

                    I work at an electrical utility company, and I can tell you that there are all sorts of things about the electrical grid that a lot fewer people than you’d think have a good working knowledge of. There are people who retire, then get paid very good money to come back as contractors because working on our grid requires a lot of specialized knowledge, not just about the general theory of building an electrical grid, but of our specific grid and the mix of ancient and new equipment on it.

                    I can definitely tell you that we would not be able to continue to operate at anything like 50% capacity if we randomly lost half of our workforce. I’ve seen how much knowledge and efficiency is lost when just one person moves out of a position. Losing half would be an unrecoverable disaster.

                    We have vendors who are small enough to have one guy who is critical to the whole operation. You really don’t realize just how specialized our economy has become until you start dealing with non-mass market manufacturing.

        2. Felblood says:

          Yeah, Thanos is bananas.

          When people do try to talk him out of his stupid plan he’s just like, “No, no. You’ll see. You’ll all be grateful after I murder your families and countrymen. It’ll be great.”

          Even when he suggested his crazy plan on Titan, everybody was like, “Thanos, you’re a crazy person, and you are fired from the government.” (Apparently, this is the least realistic part of his story.)

          I mean, if he just wants to save his homeworld, all he needs is the Time Stone and the Reality Gem, and he can go back and fix everything. This crusade is all about Thanos and his feelings. The fact that he wants to feel like it’s about more than that is just a delusion.

          After his planet did fall to ruin, he took at as validation that his plan would have been best, even though being right about the nature of the problem doesn’t prove his idea of a solution would have worked. Titan was probably just screwed, if his plan was the best thing anybody came up with.

          He’s the worst kind of political extremist.

        3. Guest says:

          I sort of agree with Damien here, I think his position is that he’s been doing it for so long he can’t see not doing it. Maybe it was the solution for Titan, but there are clearly other options with the Infinity Gauntlet, he’s just stuck on that idea, and also, to some extent, mad.

          I think that does and doesn’t work. He’s a consistent villain with motivations that do guide his actions, which is good, and his motivation is different to just ruling the world, so that’s nice.

          Where it’s let down is in the storytelling of IW, because the framing sort of places Thanos in the position of pseudo-protagonist, he gets the arc, he experiences obstacles and adversity and makes a sacrifice, and is the most active character in the plot, where most of the others don’t get to be that. It’s a good way to frame a film with so many characters, but it puts too much scrutiny on his plan.

  22. MelTorefas says:

    Interesting stuff to read. I haven’t seen the movie and am not planning to any time soon (or necessarily ever). I despised Guardians of the Galaxy, couldn’t even make it through it once, and given how central it is to the Infinity War stuff… yeah. Honestly I’ve hit my limit for Superhero movies anyways, having never been that big a fan of the genre (or at least, the comic-book inspired/based version of the genre). Heck, I am not even that big a fan of *movies*; I prefer longer form stories.

    The only thing I am a bit sad about is that I feel more out of touch given how popular a lot of these films are, but oh well. I do enjoy reading about them in places like here, and then I at least have some general sense of them. :)

  23. Decius says:

    Speculation: Thanos created a duplicate universe and moved half the sentient beings into it. He plans on doing that everytime population pressure happens.

    Strange leads the effort to restore the two, from the one place that Thanos cannot affect.

    1. Reed says:

      Thanos can create this other universe, move half the population into it, but then can’t affect it afterward? Seems dubious.

      My thought was that either:

      1) Strange can astral project from the afterlife and Yoda-advise them into making things right, or:

      2) Before handing over the time stone, Strange used it to move into the one good future he’d seen, and direct things from there. From our perspective, in the next Avengers movie, he just appears out of nowhere, alive and intact, helps fix everything (including resurrecting himself), and then vanishes again into the past, to keep his appointment to turn over the time stone.

      This latter option fixes my one complaint of “Why the HELL didn’t Strange use the Time Stone to fix everything?”. He DID. We just haven’t seen it yet. :)

      1. Decius says:

        I’m disturbed that the number of futures that Strange listed isn’t a power of two.

        Because then I could say that he decided exactly how to hand over the time stone in order to manipulate the RNG and decide who dissolved and who didn’t.

    2. Blake says:

      I like this theory. I doubt it’s correct, but it’d be cool if it was.

  24. Cilvre says:

    I know Stark isn’t dead, but he isn’t really gonna make it the way they left him. He’s injured on a dead planet alone with no ship he knows how to fly and no communications. Also my gripe was showing Wong cut off a bad guys arm with his circle gate, and then Strange not doing the same thing to Thanos.

    1. Felblood says:

      Maybe Mordo will do it in part 2?

    2. Dreadjaws says:

      To be fair, Nebula is with Tony, and as far as I remember, the Guardians’ ship is intact. If anything, considering that this is Thanos’ home planet and Nebula has spent a lot of time here, she surely can drive any ship in the place.

      It is a bit convenient that the one person that can help Tony better than anyone didn’t get erased as well. Or maybe not. Perhaps it was intentional from Thanos part, either because he feels he owes Nebula a break or because he’s unwittingly working against himself (as he did in the comics).

      Yeah, the disintegration is supposed to be at random, but only because Thanos wishes it so. And isn’t it a coincidence that most of the Guardians got erased, considering they’re the ones that drove Gamora away from Thanos (at least in his mind)?

      Speculation is a bit pointless at this moment, but it’s not any less fun because of that.

    3. Jabrwock says:

      Dr Strange looked into the future, and saw 14-ish million ways it could end. One success, 14 million failures. Anything after that point I assume is him doing exactly what was needed to ensure that one success.

      When the credits rolled, and we started tallying the dust, everyone agreed that Wong wasn’t shown, so he might be ok, and will hold the fort for now.

    4. Shoeboxjeddy says:

      Nebula is there with the know how to pilot ships and to give him medical attention, if need be. He’ll make it.

  25. Steve C says:

    I am really glad I didn’t see this movie when I was 12.

    I met up with some friends to game last night. Their 7yr old was being taken to see this movie. Against his will too. He had previously agreed to go see it with his grandmother on Mother’s Day but then changed his mind. I just thought about how this decision was going to bite them in the ass and laughed.

  26. All y’all talking blabbin about Quill ‘n Wakanda and I’m just sitting here wondering why Bucky didn’t lose his shit upon seeing a Talking Racoon From Space.

    1. Bloodsquirrel says:

      Frankly, I think they were all out of shit to lose at that point.

    2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

      Being aware of Thor and the previous alien invasion of New York takes some of the sting out of “talking version of Earth animal” I would think.

  27. Daemian Lucifer says:

    How come no one talks about the oxymoron ?

  28. krellen says:

    I have literally zero interest in this film. I’m glad I got spoiled on who dies, because it’s ensured that I don’t have to give a rat’s behind about the MCU anymore.

    1. Warclam says:

      My “spoiler” on who dies is just reading this. I have no interest in this film franchise, and I’m glad for it. I hate. Hate. HATE. HATE. This trendy bullshit where you kill off characters just for drama. I have no emotional investment in the films or in any of these characters, and I’m aware that this is business as usual in comic books, and I’m still really angry just because this reminds me that there are people out there who like this garbage.

      By the way, if the above seems really rude? That’s actually the carefully crafted version with minimum vitriol.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Just because something trendy is usually done badly does not mean it can never be done well.Judging something as garbage(or masterpiece) simply because it has a trope in it,without knowing how the trope is implemented,thats silly.Being angry that someone likes things you dislike,thats even worse.

        1. Warclam says:

          “Judging something as garbage (or a masterpiece) simply because it has a trope in it, without knowing how the trope is implemented, that’s silly.”

          If you’re trying to judge it objectively, yes. If you’re trying to decide whether it’s worth the time and money to watch it, knowing what tropes you despise is a very useful tool.

          “Being angry that someone likes things you dislike, that’s even worse.”

          That was partly a mis-statement, with my having meant I resent how its overwhelming popularity means that startlingly little fiction is being made that I can tolerate, let alone enjoy.

          I was badly burned by the cartoon RWBY. From an objective standpoint, it’s pretty bad, but I enjoyed it anyway because it was fun. But then they decided to go full grimdark, starting by killing off my favourite character in a totally bullshit way. I resent the creators very much for taking something I enjoyed and corrupting it to be more like what’s popular, and with very little warning.

          …And that resentment has infected how I feel about people who enjoy that sort of thing. Which is unfair and stupid. I’ll work on fixing it.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            If you’re trying to decide whether it’s worth the time and money to watch it, knowing what tropes you despise is a very useful tool.

            And I never liked romcoms.But then Kevin Smith made chasing amy and I loved that one.It hasnt changed my general distaste for other romcoms though.But because of that movie,I find it preferable to listen to critics whose tastes are similar to mine on whether the movie(or a game,book,…) does the tropes well,or just repeats them in a bad fashion.

            From an objective standpoint, it’s pretty bad, but I enjoyed it anyway because it was fun. But then they decided to go full grimdark, starting by killing off my favourite character in a totally bullshit way. I resent the creators very much for taking something I enjoyed and corrupting it to be more like what’s popular, and with very little warning.

            A bad show tries to do dark and it does it badly.Its more the condemnation of the show than the trope.

            All tropes are just tools that can be used well or used poorly.For example,look at trek and compare picard being essentially killed by the borg,then brought back and sisko dying in a volcano,then being brought back as a ghost.Despite me liking sisko much more than picard and despite ds9 being my most favorite trek,I still have to admit that the picard thing is WAAAAAYYY superior to the bullshit way sisko was handled in the end.

          2. Shoeboxjeddy says:

            Killing a character isn’t “trendy” or a trope. It’s a narrative tool that serves a purpose and can be used for good or ill. You might as well be angry with the “trendy” idea of two characters starting a romantic relationship or a follow up work based on minor characters from a previous story.

  29. Armstrong says:

    I never thought I’d say it, but all the buzz over Infinity War makes me regret not following the MCU. From what I read online it sounds like an amazing once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience/extravaganza.
    I still don’t plan on watching a dozen films I don’t enjoy just for it (especially since I had the entire thing spoiled), but it makes me a bit envious of those who do.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      You could cherry pick just the good movies and watch only those.Or,as the article linked by Adam above says,you can just go into this movie blind.It can still be enjoyable if you have no idea of the preceding events,though youll feel a bit lost in the setup stage of the movie.But its a short stage and the action picks up soon.Besides,this is a movie about thanos,and he is the character that gets an arc.

  30. Redrock says:

    I know I’m late to the party, but still. Got a question: how exactly were Thanos and his henchmen tracking all the Stones? Didn’t he spend years looking for them? And now they can just track, say, Vision anywhere on Earth? Not to mention all the other Stones. I’m sure I must have missed something, otherwise this seems like a pretty big plot hole.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Seeing how he was seen planning this for years,chances are he prepared everything so he could gather all the stones as soon as possible,in order to not have people figure out what he was doing and have the time to prepare better.

      Also,unexplained things are not plot holes.If the presented stuff contradicts each other,thats a plot hole.Stuff that are not shown are just unexplained.

      1. Redrock says:

        Semantics. Fact is, his sudden unexplained ability to sniff out the precise location of each Stone (but not the Soul Stone), which is also shared by his lieutenants, seems like a pretty big thing to leave unexplained. It is more or less the driving force of a huge chunk of the plot. Hard to get into the movie if no one explains why the three idiots that in this case hold the keys to the destruction of half the universe (Gamora, Vision, Mister Doctor) don’t just frickin run and hide. Oh yeah, and Gamora is a special kind of stupid, but that’s not a plot hole, that’s just traditional wonky character motivation.

        1. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Its not sudden.He was planning this for years.He has plenty of agents at his disposal,and some are powerful magicians.And is shown by the movie that gamora was one of those agents sent long ago to sniff out one of the gems.

          Also,each one of them DO explain why they dont hide.Strange and stank have a conversation precisely about this on the ship,and decide that fighting is preferable.Vision is seriously wounded.And gamora shows obvious sympathy for the universe and wants to stop thanos.Not to mention that in her first movie when given the option to either run away from a problem and hide,she chose to fight the villain head on.

          1. Redrock says:

            No, no, none of that explains, how they can track Vision to Wakanda. Or how they find Strange. And why he just can’t teleport somewhere with the stone. As for Gamora, she is pretty willing to have Quill kill her, but doesn’t have the presence of mind to just stay the hell away from Thanos since she is the only one with the knowledge he needs to destroy half the universe. If she wanted to help, she could just tag along with Thor and thus help defeat Thanos without endangering half the universe.

            1. Daemian Lucifer says:

              They had a giant ass ship right above the earth when vision was flown,in a regular airplane,to wakanda.Even using just modern satellites instead of future space tech you could still track those guys.

              Strange was hunted by the most powerful mage employed by thanos.It would be a surprise if he did not find him.

              Gamora went to a place before knowing thanos was there to warn someone who actually had a stone to hide it.And she isnt WILLING to die,but she asks it as the last resort,in the case that she does get captured,which does not want to happen.

  31. Jordan says:

    I’m almost sure I remember an interview with Guardians director James Gunn where he said that he was planning to make GotG 3 about Gamora, so even the deaths that happened before the climax are open for un-doing.

    If she stays dead, the movie would definitely be about Gamora.

  32. Shoeboxjeddy says:

    To be clear, the living:
    -The entire original Avengers team from the movie (Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Banner/Hulk)
    -Rocket Raccoon
    -Nebula
    -War Machine
    -Captain Marvel
    -Shuri
    -W’kabi
    -Okoye

    Confirmed to be living outside of the movie’s information:
    -Valkyrie
    -Hawkeye

    The fallen:
    -The rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy (Star Lord, Groot, Gamora, Mantis, Drax)
    -Spider-Man
    -Winter Soldier
    -Dr. Strange
    -Falcon
    -Vision
    -Scarlet Witch
    -Black Panther
    -Nick Fury
    -Maria Hill
    -Loki
    -Heimdall

    Questionable:
    -Ant-Man (His next movie takes place before Infinity War, it is expected he’s in A4 though)
    -The Wasp (No information on what happens to her)

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to N/A Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.