#I keep mentioning the plot of GoG to my friends and they are ALWAYS in shock

[willowbirds]

can you imagine how old soren and gylfie are when they were owlets and when they grow their adult feathers in human years in the capture?

I know, it’s a horrible thought.

Owls typically take a few months to fully grow into their adult feathers. Given that Soren and Gylfie were still owlets, they were definitely stuck at St. Auggie’s for a few months at least, and they fled before they had fully grown into their feathers since they would have been attacked by vampire bats if they stayed any longer.

With human years, going from child to adult would mean that Soren and Gylfie would have been stuck at St. Auggie’s for AT LEAST a decade. (Say age of 10 to 20).

Could you imagine having to pretend that you were actually a mindless husk for 10 years, never being able to ask a question or else you would be tortured while everyone laughs at you?

It’s a horrible thought.

[zenosanalytic]

Doom-Broom Looms; Assumes Costumed Groom will Fume in Tomb-Gloom: The Tune-Presumed Consumes

Yes I did it; No I’m not sorry; Shutup it’s a Gr8 Headline; Mild Spoilers below cut:

So I really liked this one, I’d say it’s at least as good as the first Avengers and probably better, making it the best of the Avenger films so far. As per tradition, I will start with what I didn’t like first and, aside from the first two, they’re mostly Quibbles:

The Bads

So:

Labeling the cruelty of an abusive guardian -who murdered his child’s family, surgically altered and experimented on her without her consent, forced her to kill, forced her to fight and sometimes kill her siblings to protect her body and her life from that parent- as love is some Buuuullshit >:( I can easily accept that Thanos would think he loved her, abusers tell themselves all sort of garbage to justify what they do, but that some omnipotent universe-stone would judge that situation and those feelings sincere is, again, Buuuuuullsheeeeiiiit >:( >:( Attaching that execrable nonsense to the killing of Gamora makes it so much worse, and then connecting that to how Thanos “wins” through Quill’s anger, makes it even, even worse. 

Their choices on who to “kill” were fucked up and bad. Bucky dealing with a world without Steve is interesting. T’Challa traumatized by the loss of his closest friends and torn between healing/protecting his people and helping bring Thanos to justice and potentially undoing what he did is interesting(not to mention how loved the character is. Though I’m p sure we’ll see a BP Shuri as a result, which I’m very much looking forward to). Scarlet Witch given the chance to grow on her own, instead of being tethered to a guy, is Interesting. Groot dealing with the death of their “parent”/Confidant/translator is Interesting. Having Banner “die” so that only The Hulk is left would have been interesting. Going with what they did was stupid. Killing off Fury and Hill was Stupid. Wiping out, to a duo(!), the Guardians of the Galaxy was Stupid. Killing Drax and Mantis is some Galaxy-Brained Criminal Ignorance! Killing Heimdall I understand BUT(!!!), at the same time, Elba’s a great actor and Ragnarok’s the only film to make even decent use of him, so I’d have liked to see him live through this one and into the next one, at least, before he was killed. And, as others have said, the general race&gender balance of the killings was, charitably, Iffy.

These are some seriously flawed ethical/political choices they made for this film, and they didn’t have to make them. Totally could have handled all of this differently, and better, than they did. So on to the Quibbles!

Having Gamora and Peter’s relationship, which had, so well and realistically to two folks working through trauma and immaturity, been cooking low and slow over the two GoG movies, suddenly be physically and emotionally intimate and vulnerable, and having her saying things like “I love you more than anything” to him, when they live on a tiny ship with zero privacy with four(?) other people, and doing all of that purely for plot-convenience, was dumb and lazy and Lame. Character dev should serve the characters first and plot second; this complaint kinda dovetails with my issues with SW and Vision in the next para.  

There really should have been one more movie, and maybe two or three, before this one. The character writing was great and all, but Scarlet Witch and Vision just haven’t had the time to be developed enough as characters for their(rather central) place in the movie to be emotionally meaningful enough. A movie focusing on them, or maybe on Steve’s “unofficial” Avengers, would have really helped add some more depth and impact to Infinity War. The other movies I think would have helped are another Dr. Strange(I didn’t like the first one much at all and he didn’t really come off as all that capable to me in the first one and really seemed to just fall into the role of Sorcerer-Supreme by dint of being the last one standing), and Definitely another Black Panther. There are obvious scheduling reasons for not holding off for a second Black Panther(which are totally Marvisny’s fault, of course; for instance, if they’d just introduced the character earlier, so that CW would have been the 2nd BP movie and BP the 3rd), but Dr. Strange was 2016 and they could have totally gotten another one out, with some significant crew and writing changes, before this to flesh out, build up, and actually render interesting/likeable, the character. Though, I suppose maybe there were equally obvious financial reasons why not to roll the dice on that franchise again(though though, looking it up just now it topped Captain America: The First Avenger on box office, which is Insane).

Dispensing with Nova off-screen. I Mean: WTH. That should, at the least, have been an in-credit sequence(in GoG 2 or T:R). Something as simple as showing Thanos with the Power Gem, then panning out to show a devastated Nova Command or him taunting Nova Prime before killing her, would have been fine(though, the GoG movies gave me the impression the Nova Corps would have been a tough nut for Thanos to crack).

Probably my most niche opinion: they should have, FINALLY, done a movie crossover with the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast here, especially given the in-credit sequence. Marvel and Disney have been promising Chloe Bennet that AoS was going to be her vehicle into film work since the series started and this is, like, the third or fourth frigging times they’ve either reneged or passed on a chance to boost her up into the big leagues, and frankly it’s annoying. She’s a good actress, The Inhumans should have stayed a movie and been that vehicle(with the characters they made protags the villains S.H.I.E.L.D. was fighting), and, given the stakes and the nature of the conflict, it’d have been easy to ameliorate that mistake by bringing her, the rest of the AoS cast, and Fury in on this one as secondary characters. I mean, it’d have been better if they’d had two or three SHIELD movies spread out over the MCU by now, or always included them in the Avengers films to give also-rans like the show cast and Hawkeye places to shine, but barring that and given Disnal’s fuckup with Inhumans, they should have made a go of it here. Ming-Na Wen also deserves more time on the Big Screen and, while Johannson’s Fine in the films, Wen does her character-type Better u_u u_u u_u

Like I said, Quibbles, they don’t really detract from the movie. The main problems with Infinity War, to me, are it’s screwy plot-ethics.

The Goods

Not really much to say here other than “I liked it and had fun”. The character writing was good, the dialogue was funny, the fight choreography was, given the logistics of multicharacter combat, Fine, the fights were engaging, the camerawork was(mostly) clear, the costume design was great, the side characters(especially the Black Order) all got good beats of their own, the Heroes(except Black Panther and maybe SW, since she was restricted to just moving things and blasting things) all got opportunities to show off their abilities. IW really validated the “Comics=Wrestling” critical lens I was introduced to by @some-triangles, as it felt like a Wrestlemania or Battle Royale more than anything else to me. Related to that there were some really dumb moments, like when Scarlet Witch left the lab to enter the rin-, er, battlefield, but you basically knew that was going to happen the instant they told her to stay in the room because Tropes, and the Forms must be Honored u_u u_u The Russos are genuinely competent movie-makers, who seem to have that all-important skill of recruiting and keeping a talented crew around them, and they made a genuinely competent movie, despite the questionable plotting.

The Judgements

So that’s my opinion on the thing. Infinity War includes some highly fucked up ethical messages for the sake of plot convenience, and confirms the MCU’s refusal to make even basic use of some really top-notch acting talent, which just happens to be mostly non-white people, that they’re (presumably)paying fortunes to have access to; if you feel that sort of ish isn’t something you can sit-through or abide giving your money to, then don’t see the film. But it’s a technically competent film, 90% of the time the writing is wonderful, and overall it’s an engaging and entertaining film so, if you can tolerate that ish in some fashion, maybe you’ll enjoy it like I did.

Oh, and it’s really long(2h40m, and there were, like, 30mins of previews before it. Seriously >:| >:| >:| They played TWO[!!!!!!] flipping Jurassic World trailers, as if anyone wants to see that junk), so I’d rec you not get any drinks if you’re going to go see it(though it’s not a big deal as there are some nice-sized lulls, reasonably spaced, to take breaks in).