#Wanda deserves to be played by a Romani actress and not to be whitewashed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

samcarpnter · 6 years ago

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so if you are bitter bout mcu what are your unpopular opinions?

so a few people have actually asked me this since i said something vague about mcu yesterday haha so i figured i’ll just make a big long post under the cut and i am sorry if anyone takes this offensively, i just have to rant about some of this stuff so read at your own risk (spoiler i get mad and it is longgggg)

I do also want to say i love the mcu despite its many problems and i do my best to separate it from the comics because i understand a movie/tv show can’t develop characters the same way decades of comics can and different versions of their personalities/backstories are okay but still there is some corruption i can’t take

First off - the maximoffs. Like … no! I really am not a fan of the mcu versions. I could deal with their new personalities/upbringings if it wasn’t at the expense of their ethnicity. Like for those of you that don’t know, the maximoffs are jewish and romani, they are basically whitepassing pocs and they were very poor and are even children of holocaust survivors … so how the fuck and why the fuck did they volunteer to work for hydra ?!?! just completely corrupting everything that made them who they were is so disrespectful and to make them fucking work for A NAZI ORGANIZATION is not a small personality/backstory change, it goes against everything from the original characters.

Wanda maximoff also just walked into the avengers with barely any accountability for her actions, yes she had to deal with the pain of what she caused at the beginning of civil war but hardly anyone is bringing up the fact that she toyed with bruce/hulk in aou which caused so much damage and very likely resulted in a loss of many civilian lives, how is no one realizing it is her fault ?! she was pardoned for everything she did when tony was painted as villain WHY

Also in civil war i was more on tony’s side, i do think that cap was right in thinking that they shouldn’t be solely controlled by the government because sometimes there are fights they need to do that they wouldn’t necessarily be allowed to go to. B U T they do have to understand the effects of their often reckless actions. Yes they are saving the world but they could very well destroy it by not taking accountability for the damage they cause.

And okay civil war, like really? I just think it was forced and happened too fast, i know it can’t be like the comics always, but the civil war in the comics actually served a real purpose and in the mcu it was just like 12 people fighting in a parking lot ??

Also the villainization of tony is just … NO. like stop please. Tony makes mistakes, he does as everyone does and yes they are colossal ones too - i mean ultron for just one example. But he should not be seen as a villain for trying to protect the world. He saw infinity war coming a mile away and everybody was upset about it. Ultron was a disaster yes, but how is it that tony wasn’t pardoned when wanda and bucky were? I am not trying to say bucky shouldn’t be pardoned, because he was rightfully forgiven as he had no control over what hydra made him do, but wanda did … and she isn’t really apologizing or realizing the effects of some of her actions so … why is everyone pissed at tony??

And god okay i’m gonna be brief with mcu nat because ugh but just fuck scar jo and get her out of my sight, black widow deserves a solo movie with an actually talented actress who isn’t trying to steal minority roles alongside bucky barnes, i refuse to believe a black widow movie with no bucky could ever work

Guardians of the galaxy … jesus they did my babies dirty. Mcu peter quill … i don’t really like him and maybe it is because i’m not super fond of chris “i have a gun arsenal” pratt but tbh i just think they portray quill as a dick who can be misogynistic and a has a very delicate ego. His changed backstory was meh which i can live with but he is so fragile with his masculinity and it demeans gamora. I do like gamora and peter together but it would be so much better if he wasn’t always trying to be better than her or got offended anytime she was smarter or a better fighter than him (which is always sooo). Then mantis was done dirty she should not be some slave to a weird planet man ?? i think pom is a wonderful mantis but she was given crap to work with because mantis is a celestial being like an actual GODDESS so why is she working for a planet ??? and drax ugh he is not an idiot like mcu portrays him i’m so bitter about that

I understand why scott lang was chosen to be ant man over hank pym i mean if paul rudd was going to be scott it makes perfect sense. Hank is also just … i don’t quite know how to describe hank other than controversial i guess but that’s another story, and scott would come off waaaaay better to audiences as ant man, the thing i am just so mad about is the fact that janet was practically erased from the avengers. I mean please don’t get me wrong i love hope van dyne and a young janet shouldn’t be falling in love with scott, but i just wish they could have at least included the REAL janet, not michelle pfiefer (no offense to michelle either because she’s doing great with what she’s given) being an old knock off janet, and not even like her own movie (which would be fucking fantastic though) but like janet gave so much of her life to the avengers and was a founding member. A FOUNDING MEMBER. And her purpose in the mcu was basically just to give hank manpain like whyyyyyyyyyy

And CLINT! God clint barton was screwed over, comics clint is amazing and is 80% deaf (he has a frickin hearing aid!!) and loves dogs and coffee and pizza and i could even handle jeremy renner being this version of clint, i don’t really have a problem with jeremy but i hate that marvel just made him be loki’s slave for awhile then just randomly give him a family AHA PUH LEASE MARVEL clint barton is a hoe (okay not really a hoe but he has been romantically involved with many of the super ladies) he would not have some secret family also with someone not in the same business as him, and also clint is a survivor of abuse and represents someone with a disability and mcu took all of that away from him ughhh

Okay and spider-man … i think smhc was a great movie and tom is so cute and pure and an amazing peter parker but … why? Like why were we given a THIRD peter parker when we could have fucking had miles morales ?! for those of you who don’t know miles morlaes, he is black and is spiderman in a different universe (the ultimate universe) and so i mean marvel come on if you’re going to put in a new spiderman why couldn’t it be miles? And i mean this with no offense to tom but i just wish we could’ve had a poc lead sooner and now we get into the spiderverse as the introduction to miles which also don’t get me wrong, i am very excited about that movie but to me it just seems like we won’t have a great shot at getting miles in the mcu if they do a series of new animated films about the spiderverse

And doctor strange ugh the whitewashing just ugh and then stephen too like idk benedict cumberbatch is an amazing actor but stephen was made so arrogantly in mcu and he comes off as this hotshot doctor who did it for money and to show off how amazing he is but he actually became a doctor because he witnessed his sister’s death and then soon after his mother died

And then the whitewashing of the ancient one jesusssss the ancient one is not some eccentric white woman, the ancient one is an asian man … i could even understand making the character a woman as the only other female character would be rachel mcadams’s character (she was so unimportant i don’t even know her name whoops) but do not take away the asian identity !!

And iron fist man … it just sucked, there’s really not much more to say

Then elektra fucking natchios was done SO DIRTY elodie yung is the absolute best elektra, i can’t imagine anyone else playing her and she did so well for the shit she was given but they decided to take a route that made her a sociopath ?? i mean i am okay with the changed backstory but elektra just doesn’t go around killing people for the fun of it like she does it because she has been through a lot and wants to take bad people out of the world like the ones that killed her father and yes maybe she is a little misguided and lost but still she doesn’t think killing people is a fun thing to do on a saturday night like why marvel ?? and just the black sky thing was weird … never a thing in the comics but whatever

And also okay … i love peggy carter and i loved hayley atwell being peggy but sharon is ultimately cap’s main love interest and is the main woman in all of cap’s storylines. And sharon was set up SO well but because stucky fans are ruthless sharon doesn’t even exist anymore and i’m so bitter about that, emily vancamp was a great agent 13 and marvel actually did a great job of bringing her into the universe in catws but look what happened, everyone forgot about her and are obsessed with peggy instead … which as i said, i’m not trying to diss peggy or hayley because i loved agent carter and her in catfa, but everyone decided sharon was nothing compared to peggy and i just don’t see why we can’t have both ??

Another thing … why vision? Like why the heck was vision put into the mcu it really doesn’t make sense to me i mean i think paul bettany is great but he just .. why this weird robot? i’m guessing to bring more in about the infinity stones but still idk because that didn’t really happen ??

And rhodey … poor poor rhodey, the casting change was actually a pretty good idea because i think don cheadle is the perfect rhodey (with no offense to terrence howard’s version, i just think don cheadle should’ve been there from the start) but they didn’t really introduce him into becoming war machine at all, they just gave him a suit and were like boom you’re a superhero now go be an avenger ?? with barely any development to why ?? i demand a war machine solo movie please, we all damn well know don cheadle would be great and ryan coogler should direct it, we’ll have no tony (no offense to tony just no more white men) and we’ll get sam in there and they will be a fucking badass team

And i am so bitter that it took 10 FUCKING YEARS to not have a white male lead a movie … marvel you have so many amazing characters of so many different ethnicities and backgrounds and genders and sexualities like why is carol only coming in now and why did black panther just become a huge movie?! should’ve been there from the start ugh

In my eyes, the only flawless mcu pieces that i would never bash are thor: ragnarok, and black panther (and maybe runaways because we finally got our first canon lgbtq couple) and catws if scar jo wasn’t in it. Marvel needs to realize the success of these films, that taika waititi and ryan coogler are the best directors they have and should be directing more films *cough cough* GUARDIANS 3 *cough*

So wow … that’s a lot and it’s a lot of bashing marvel but i just … if you don’t know shit about the comics the mcu seems amazing like i was there once i didn’t start reading comics until a few years ago when i heard about the young avengers and i have loved the movies since iron man came out ten years ago, but the mcu is very corrupting of a lot of the best parts of these characters, and a lot of people don’t realize that

Thanks for letting me rant and as i have said i really don’t mean to offend anyone who is a fan of the mcu or (most of) the actors of the mcu because they’re just doing their job, so please realize a lot of this is my opinion, i’m just expressing how i feel about marvel and for the record, i do love the mcu i just don’t like a lot of what goes on behind the scenes.

#anon #answered #so yeah i know i kind of bashed a lot of peoples faves #but its more marvel's fault than the actual character/actor #sorry kinda not sorry

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airagorncharda · 7 years ago

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Surprising no one, I have some Fucking Thoughts about Infinity War:

(I don’t know if it actually is, but this FEELS like the longest post I’ve ever written. And that is impressive because I am a long winded motherfucker on a good day and because it’s literally ALL negative)

So first off, I Did Not Enjoy this movie. For my complete list of things I DID like, read this very short post instead. If you enjoyed the movie and don’t want to read somebody absolutely slamming it, you should probably leave now.

Secondly, if you don’t want spoilers I’m not sure why you clicked the readmore, but you’ve now been warned:

SPOILERS past this point!!!!!!!

I disliked this movie so much that I need to break down the varying ways I disliked it into fucking sections. So starting right off:

I find shock value character death to be cheap and lazy.

And boy did they go hard on the shock value character death. Boy, oh boy. BOY oh boy, did they ever. That was pretty much the entire movie.

If you can’t make the stakes feel high without death, you’re a bad writer. If death is the only card you know how to play, you’re a bad writer.

I was expecting the characters who’s actor’s contracts are up to get killed off as a cheap and lazy way of explaining why they’re leaving. I was instead handed a movie in which literally everyone ELSE died for even cheaper and lazier shock value reasons that are almost certainly going to get undone (and thus be made pointless) in the next film. I was not impressed.

The writers are painfully white, and refused to stop reminding us.

When the setting of the movie shifted to Wakanda, I wanted to be happy to see Wakanda. But I wasn’t, because the whole reason we went to Wakanda seemed to be so that the racist ass writers could jerk off while watching Wakanda (and Wakandans) get wrecked (and killed in horrific numbers), all so Wanda (who the MCU super duper whitewashed) didn’t have to kill her white robot boyfriend.

“If Wakanda falls, it will have been for a noble cause” said the racist white writer puppeting T’Challa.

Prioritizing the feelings of a white girl and the life of her white boyfriend over not just the hypothetical “half of the universe” Thanos thing, but also the very immediate and literal danger to the lives of ALL OF WAKANDA AND ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS was absolutely bewildering levels of antiblack racism and I was just sitting there shaking my head through it all. It was horrible. It is horrible. I cannot believe that line from T’Challa even made it into the movie. “A noble cause” my ass, that’s so violent, what the fuck.

The writers are painfully heterosexual, and refused to stop reminding us.

Again I scream at Wanda and Vision. Wanda and Vision, who I was hyped about being brought into the MCU because I liked them in the comics, but who have been a constant frustration and disappointment (whitewashed and underutilized as they have been) since their introductions.

Also Quill and Gamora.

Like, the writers couldn’t figure out a way to make the story interesting or have stakes without threatening hetero’s heterosexual feelings and heterosexual partners. They just.... couldn’t....................... do it............

Like, lets be real. If the lives of literally half the universe was at stake, everybody I know would be like “sure, I’ll die for that cause”. The conflict felt fake as fuck. People who are that selfish aren’t interesting, and half the characters they made that selfish didn’t used to BE that selfish.

Also, like, Gamora demanding Peter promise to kill her was weird on multiple levels.

She definitely could have been like “I know the location of an infinity stone, and I know he’ll be able to get it out of me if he gets me alone, so I need you to kill me if that happens” but instead she was just like “I can’t give you a single explanation or detail, just promise me you’ll murder me because you love me so much.” Bad writing.

And I feel like for Peter specifically, asking him to do that was really cruel. His whole issue with his parents was that his dad murdered his mom, like... asking him to kill her seems extra cruel? And she would know that. Doesn’t she have other friends? Couldn’t she have asked Peter to, like, not get mad at Rocket if Rocket kills her for the same reason? Or Drax? Why did it have to be Peter?? Why ask the person who’d be most emotionally traumatized by having to kill you to be the one to kill you if necessary? And why have her remind him of the death of his mom as a way to convince him to kill her? Bad writing.

Also Bruce and Nat were never interesting to begin with.

Also also Tony talking about wanting kids to a very obviously frustrated and uninterested Pepper was weird and uncomfortable. I feel like we’re supposed to be getting some sort of “they should have kids!” vibe but all I got was a “she doesn’t want to have kids and he’s not getting the memo” vibe. I also am very tired of “my partner wants me to stop being a superhero, guess I’ll feel conflicted but do it anyway but also not break up with them” narratives. Bad.

Thanos’ “random” selection of half of earth didn’t seem that random to me. Like, at all.

The shot of Wakandans dying wasn’t half of them dying, it was like 90% of them dying. And if you pay attention to who disintegrated, it’s....

T’Challa (black king of a powerful beautiful African nation, the most technologically advanced nation in the world)

Bucky (disabled and neuroatypical)

Sam (a black man)

I forgot to watch the end credits scene because I was so mad but apparently NICK FURY disintegrates in it, my blood is boiling with rage.

Apparently Maria Hill also disintegrates in it, so there goes a strong female character too.

Again I point to the, like, 90% of Wakanda who survived the combat turning to ash anyway.

Mantis (a woman, played by a Korean actress)

Wanda (a woman. Also whitewashed, but Jewish and Romani in the comics)

Groot (played by a man of color)

Peter Quill (played by one of the three white Chris’ in the movie, but dating a character played by a black woman, so of all the white men to die I find this suspect as fuck)

Drax (played by a Filipino actor).

And that’s not to mention Heimdall (a powerful black man), Loki (who is queercoded, and actually queer in the comics) and Gamora (played by a black woman) who Thanos also killed.

“Random.”

Right.

Except the movie was written by people who clearly have a bias and think it’s quality entertainment to watch PoC and marginalized people in general die. And/or they wanted most of those characters out of the way so Infinity War 2 could focus on the white dudes. Which brings me to my next hated point:

Infinity War 2.

Just.

Fuck that.

Fuck that cash grab bullshit of splitting major motion picture movies into multiple movies for no good reason. Fuck letting people go into a movie with a cliffhanger not knowing it’s going to have a cliffhanger. Fuck forcing people to commit to a years wait for closure on a plot without agreeing to.

People don’t go to superhero movies to watch the villain win, motherfuckers, we want to see HEROES win! It’s supposed to be a movie that feels GOOD to watch because you can pretend for 2 hours that good people triumph over bad people, and we fucking NEEDED that 2 hours of escapism right now! We did not need a movie about a megolomaniac who wins the election and ruins the lives of everyone we love! We didn’t pay for that shit!!!!

I mean, I didn’t pay for anything, I watched a bootleg version while curled up in bed, but if your movie hadn’t been a sack of cash grabbing propaganda horse shit I WOULD have paid to see it.

Also.

People are “SPECULATING” a bunch of stuff like “Dr. Strange did what he did to ensure the eventual defeat of Thanos!!” and “everybody who got disintegrated is going to be resurrected in the next movie!!” but like... it’s not speculation if it’s obvious as fuck, guys. Don’t give the writers more credit than they deserve (they deserve zero credit). Don’t act like it’s not obvious and predictable when it is.

1) Dr. Strange was not being subtle. “I’ve looked at all the potential outcomes and foreseen one in which we win” “We’re in the endgame now.” “It was the only way”. That’s blatant. That borders on heavy-handed.

2) Most of the characters who died have movies scheduled. They’re coming back. This is not unclear.

As a result... their deaths don’t even feel real, they just feel like racist shock value fodder deaths. I’m not sad about it, I’m furious at the writers. They just killed them off so they could watch them die, and/or so they could avoid utilizing them. And that’s... so gross.

Ending a movie with the genocidal villain winning is not edgy or whatever. It’s just dissatisfying and, especially in the current climate of the world, it feels violent.

Like, I’m mad that they split the movie, because it’s a cash grab, and then ending it on that note was just violent.

I guess the writers just really hated Ragnarok (and Black Panther).

Cuz like... they just completely wrote Ragnarok out of the MCU, made the whole movie pointless, and backpedaled on everything it accomplished.

Ragnarok: “Asgard is destroyed, but it’s okay because the people of Asgard survived, and can rebuild somewhere else. Thor lost his eye and his hammer, became a leader to his people, learned that he didn’t need a weapon to harness his powers, and Thor and Loki finally managed to be a team again. Heimdal is given the credit he deserves as a hugely important part of Thor’s life. Also here, have an AMAZING black female character! The story ends with hope for a ship full of refugees.”

Infinity War: “Thor immediately gets a new eye, all (or maybe half??? it was really unclear) of the other Asgardian refugees are slaughtered off screen (big middle finger to refugees and also hope) and then Thor goes off on his own so he’s not really a leader anymore, Loki and Heimdal are dead within 5 minutes of screentime, Valkyrie doesn’t exist, and Thor’s entire plot in the movie is about how he needs a new weapon because he can’t be useful without one :)”

Me, who enjoyed Ragnarok: “wow, fuck you”

Similarly, after watching all the characters from Wakanda in Black Panther be written as their own people, whose stories and lives didn’t revolved around white people... their white-prioritizing characterization in Infinity War, as well as the IMMEDIATE choice to fucking wreck Wakanda at the first available opportunity, was a real fucking let down and kind of a slap in the face.

Peter Dinklage played a literal (though giant?) dwarf??????????

I FEEL LIKE THIS IS FUCKING OFFENSIVE??? Honestly I’m just so so tired of this poor guy getting hired only for roles where his dwarfism is a character trait. He’s a really good actor and I wish he got hired to play characters other than “the dwarf” every fucking once in a while, like jfc.

(Side note apparently he’s been cast as “the dwarf” in a movie adaptation of the awful book “the dwarf” so that’s... happening........ i guess...................)

I FEEL like this role was particularly weird and maybe particularly offensive, but maybe I’m wrong, idk.

Also his actual visual design was bad. I looked up the character (Eitri) from the comics, and he looked pretty cool in the comics and animated show. He did not look cool in this movie.

Bendick Camdsfgbitch has too big of a role.

Literally I’ve never met anybody who cares about the Dr. Strange movie or MCU character. The only people who care seem to be Sherlock stans who cannot let go and still think Bean Cummerbund playing [an intolerable asshole who we’re told (but not shown) is smarter than us, who never lets the audience in on his genius] is compelling.

He’s boring, he’s an asshole, he’s playing an arguably whitewashed role (which is a pattern for him) and he’s not even playing it in an interesting way. Stop trying to make Dr. Strange or his actor happen. We don’t care.

And if the whole two movie plot is going to be about how he really did outsmart Thanos, the supposedly super smart supervillain, then I’m extra super bored as fuck. And so far that’s... super predictably what’s going to have happened.

It was just really poorly written??

Idk, like it wasn’t even... funny... or good. All the lines were either predictable or they didn’t make sense. And everybody felt slightly (or severely, depending on the character) out of character.

The plot is fucking garbage, AND THANOS IS TOO

The concept of the world being overpopulated (and that that’s why resources aren’t available for everyone) is an irl lie, my guys. It’s not true. It’s a lie perpetuated by racists and xenophobes and rich assholes who want to excuse letting people die of starvation rather than give up literally any of their giant Scrooge McDuck style piles of money to allow even the most minimally necessary distribution of resources.

We HAVE enough resources to feed and clothe and house and care for everyone on this planet, we just DON’T DO IT because of the bigotry and selfishness of the 1%.

Also, “Genocide will fix all the suffering in the world” is literally nazism.

AND LIKE!! If the POINT was that Thanos was a space nazi and needed to be killed as a result, because his views are fucked up and have no basis in reality, and nazism must be stopped at all costs-- that could have been okay??? EXCEPT THAT’S NOT HOW THEY HANDLED IT!! Instead of going “Oh, yeah, Thanos is super fucked up and no one should agree with him or his actions or his ideology” they showed him in this weird and uncomfortably reverent light, and gave him this weird and uncomfortable side arc about how much he wuvs Gamora (that’s why he abused her, you guys-- it was because he LOVES her so much). So we’re supposed to like, feel sad for him or something? Oh no, nobody understands him and his logic, he HAS to do this to SAVE everyone. Oh nooooooo.

But really, he’s a genocidal scrotum-faced piece of shit abuser, and his entire narrative felt like a nazi who abuses his kids just sucking his own dick on screen, and it was NOT enjoyable to watch, or compelling, or edgy. It was just gross, and violent.

ALSO there was NO REASON to give him that backstory. There was no reason to explain his desire to kill everybody. We already knew he wanted to kill everybody. That was already known, and we did not need an explanation about why. Like, they built toward this movie for ten years and they STILL dropped the ball by ignoring 90% of their own goddamn source material that built up to it in the first place.

Plus, Thanos’ plan was to kill half of everybody in order to save the other half, out of a warped sense of... mercy.... Except literally nobody wants him to do that, including (he said) himself. He doesn’t enjoy it. Neither does anybody else. Everybody is trying to stop him constantly. WHY CONTINUE IF LITERALLY NO ONE WANTS YOU TO, INCLUDING YOURSELF?? It just doesn’t hold up or make any sense as a plot once you think about it for ten fucking seconds...??? How did this ever get past the editing stage???

Additionally, Thanos’s visual design was way better in the end credits cameo he had like 10 years ago. This guy was not visually threatening to me, and did not read as powerful or ancient or anything. He didn’t even read like he was an alien, he was just an asshole, and it didn’t impress me like it was meant to.

If the only way to make your villain seem competent is to make your heroes suddenly incompetent, you’re a bad writer.

How did Loki, god of mischief, fight Thanos? KNIFE TO THE FACE!! FRONTAL ASSAULT!! Of... of course that failed? And furthermore, why did they make it a point to remind the audience repeatedly that Loki is a god, right before Thanos killed him by just, like, choking him/snapping his neck? Apparently that’s how you kill a god? Seems like it should be harder than that.

Why didn’t Dr. Strange do his “check all the different realities” thing when they first heard about Thanos? Why didn’t Dr. Strange chop off Thanos’ arm with a portal like his buddy did with one of Thanos’ underlings?

Why didn’t anybody just shoot Quill when he was obviously about to become a problem?

Why did Quill, who had been willing to kill Gamora himself earlier in the movie, suddenly go off the handle at the worst possible moment upon finding out she was already dead? And why was his response so minimal? Like I get that he’s grieving and stuff, but you need to be able to compartmentalize that shit at least a LITTLE bit, buddy-- and if you can’t, then you need to do something bigger than just like punching the guy. At least shoot out his eyes or something.

Why didn’t Thor aim for Thanos’ head? (and for that matter in all the bazillion timelines Dr. Strange looked at, why were there NONE where Thor aimed for Thanos’ head???)

Why did Wanda decide her boyfriend was more important than literally everybody else ever, especially when Thanos winning would mean Vision dying anyway, so like... I get that killing your bf would be traumatic, but suck it up? Why didn’t they consider breaking the stone and THEN reviving Vision? He’s not a human, he’s synthetic, so why would they assume he wouldn’t be able to be rebooted later with a different power source? And why did they gamble half the universe and actively throw away Wakandan lives for him?? I JUST???

The Hulk got his ass kicked by Thanos (a weird scene; why does Thanos know WWE wrestling moves??) so he just... stopped helping. Like, that could have been interesting, if it wasn’t a general theme throughout the movie that most of the characters conveniently stopped being good at what they’re good at so that the plot could progress with adequate Drama.

Basically I just wanted to scream “get it together!” at most of the cast of this movie throughout the whole film. Don’t nerf your cast to make your villain seem stronger than he is. If you can’t make him stronger on his own merits, you’re a bad writer.

I don’t understand the reality stone (or how Thanos used it).

It seemed to change whatever he wanted, but... only while he was focusing on it? Or only while he was nearby? As soon as he left, Drax and Mantis reverted back to their normal forms, so does he need to be in the vicinity for it to work? Or was it like an illusion? If so, that’s not changing reality.

And either way, the ways in which he DID change reality were bizarrely whimsical and made no sense for his character. Like, he kept turning everything to bubbles. If somebody bought him a bubble wand, would he have stopped murdering everyone? Is that his aesthetic? Bubbles and spiralized people?

Or was that the aesthetic of the stone itself? Because that’s weird too.

That scene where the ladies fought the lady villain.

On the one hand, I’m glad there was a lady villain and her design was cool, and I’m glad whenever there are scenes where there are no men and only ladies.

ON THE OTHER HAND I’m fucking tired of the trope where male heroes fight the male villains and female heroes fight the female villains because.... ??? Because they’re fighting someone in their own league? Or because men can’t hit women? Or something?? I find it very weird and suspect whenever a combat situation gets evenly split up between the genders.

Wanda's powers >:(

Wanda is more powerful (by a LOT) in the comics than she is in the MCU, which is sort of understandable because she’s pretty universe-breaking levels of OP in the comics (like, one time she literally broke the universe), but it’s also pretty frustrating as a fan of comic!Wanda just how MUCH they nerfed her for the MCU. HOWEVER! In this movie they implied that she IS more powerful than she’s seemed up until now.

And then they barely used her at all.

I, a fool, thought maybe they were going to do something interesting about her magic. With the repetition that her power mirrors that of the stone, I thought maybe she was going to kill Vision, and then Thanos would use HER instead of the stone because she’s got it’s power inside of her.

But no.

They couldn’t have done something interesting where a woman has a role beyond “she’s precious to a Man and therefore important”. Nope.

Every Single Scene was a foregone conclusion.

Honest to god, I don’t remember a single scene where I was like “gosh, what’s going to happen next??” Every single scene was just me thinking “I know exactly what is about to happen, and I don’t want it to” and then I was right, and disappointed.

Every part of this movie was predictable with certainty, except I suppose for the scenes where I thought “surely they wouldn’t do something so weird and/or boring as what it seems like they’re setting up here” but then they did anyway.

Why did Tony think Steve would know where Vision was when Tony didn’t? And why was he right?

They just never explained this and I found it utterly perplexing.

Tony was like “Probably Steve Rogers would know where Vision is” and my friends and I had to pause the movie to compare notes and be like “wait, why? Why would HE know?” and none of us could figure it out, and then the movie never explained it either.

Nebula was underutilized.

I was just really frustrated at how few scenes she was actually in and how little she was allowed to DO in a movie completely centered on trying to fight the guy who tortured and experimented on her for her whole life. Like, she was in it and she was relevant, but mostly only as a set piece, not a person. But I guess they couldn’t figure out how to make her Precious To A Man, so she didn’t really matter to the writers.

My only hope is that she’s vitally central to the next one, but like... I expect literally nothing good out of the next movie, so it’s not exactly a thriving hope.

The female characters were all underutilized.

The writers are misogynists and you could tell by how few lines any of the women had when they weren’t being shown as Precious To A Man. Which female characters got to be involved in whole entire conversations (rather than just one-off lines)?

Wanda (while being Precious to Vision)

Gamora (while being Precious to Quill, then to Thanos)

Pepper (while being Precious to Tony)

Honorable mentions for Mantis, Nebula, Shuri, Okoye, and Nat for having a handful of lines each in the entire movie that was HIGH KEY centered on white men.

The Thanos Fandom

I’ll leave off on people who actually LIKE Thanos right now, because I assume they’re mostly eugenicist nazis and aren’t worth my time.

No, I’m talking about people who like him AS A VILLAIN and think that the movie did a GOOD JOB of making him clearly and wholly and unequivocally a villain who the audience should clearly and wholly and unequivocally feel antagonistic towards.

It didn’t.

The movie portrayed him as someone trying to do “the right thing” who has to “make hard choices” because of his “tragic past” which is NOT an acceptable portrayal of a genocidal megalomaniac-- ESPECIALLY not in the current climate of the world.

If the audience is not explicitly told how to feel about a villain (by point-by-point countering and condemning them), the lowest common denominator of the audience (which is not a small percent of said audience) is going to interpret the villain’s tragic backstory as justification, their “hard choices” as being worthy of empathy, and their worldview as something worth considering. Especially if you write them as such, and ESPECIALLY if they WIN.

And yet all I keep seeing is people who want to justify enjoying the movie (unnecessary: you can enjoy it and admit it’s content is bad at the same time) by yelling “Of course Thanos’ is CRAZY-- that’s the point!! People complaining about it aren’t giving the audience enough credit!!”

Please read this relevant post talking about Fight Club (and Mad Max).

“Media designed to teach morals often backfires [because] just exposing [people] to bad behavior is enough to make them internalize that the behavior is [...] acceptable for people to do, [especially when a] movie only really devotes 5% of its screen time to explicitly denouncing [said bad] behavior, and that [...] only arrives at the very end of the film.”

--a summarized quote from the above, much longer, post.

This is extra EXTRA relevant if you have to WAIT A YEAR before you even GET to the “consequences” part of the morality story. “The typical adult audience member does not think critically enough about film media to process this moral” is a true statement even when the moral is in the last 10 minutes of a 90 minute film-- it’s WAY more true if the moral doesn’t come until A FUCKING YEAR LATER. Another relevant quote from that post is “The director has the responsibility to clearly spell out to the audience the difference between supporting a behavior by depicting it, and criticizing it by depicting it.” This movie half assed that at best.

Another relevant quote: “Every villain is the hero of their own story. And when the villain is the narrator, the audience is hearing the version of the story in which the villain is the hero, and the audience is moved by that perspective.”

Thanos was in charge of the narrative of the entire movie. He was functionally the central and thus main character on which the story turned, made clearest by the end screen “Thanos will return”, which up until now has been reserved for PROTAGONISTS. That’s what I’m talking about here.

He was the villain, but he was also functionally the main character, and the narrative did not put in the work to properly condemn him or his actions. They spent all their time and energy making him fake deep, and then threw a couple “You’re insane!!!” lines in there from heroes to cover their asses that really didn’t have any effect on Thanos whatsoever.

Also please consider that “He’s just CRAZY!! That’s why he’s violent and evil!!” is a tired and ableist trope used primarily to villainize real mentally ill people and to let white men (who are not mentally ill) off the hook for violent toxic masculinity. Mentally ill people in reality are disproportionately likely to be the VICTIMS of violence, not the perpetrators, no matter what media would have us believe.

Thanos isn’t crazy, he’s a self absorbed, entitled, genocidal megalomaniac, and calling him crazy is a cop out.

Assuming everyone understood that he’s purely and simply wrong is giving the audience WAY too much credit, especially when his motivation is based on a fabrication that the writers seemed to actually believe.

No one in the movie said “Thanos, our world isn’t overpopulated-- people in power are just greedy. If you’re going to kill anybody, kill those people. Don’t ‘randomly’ kill half the populous when some people are actually at fault." No one in the movie said “Your logic is based on fallacy” they just said “I don’t care about your logic because murder is always wrong (except when I do it).” Most or all of the protagonists in this series have killed people. I’m not saying they were wrong to, necessarily, but saying “You can’t just kill people” rings hollow from these characters in particular, especially when they’re actively trying to kill Thanos as they say it. Again, they’re right to do that, but IF they’re doing that, they need to be written to have a better argument than “Murder is wrong!”

Basically the writing of this movie, where the heroes clashed with the villain, was just countering a fallacy that major parts of the audience may actually believe with some fallacies that fall apart at 10 seconds of critical thinking. Therefore, plenty of people will walk away with the wrong message.

ESPECIALLY when you depict Thanos in a reverent light, and have an entire subplot about how much he Loves the daughter he abused and continues abusing and then murders on screen. ESPECIALLY when he faces no genuine threat throughout the entire movie and then wins at the end, and the consequences for his actions have to wait a YEAR to be seen.

Thor "needed a weapon" to survive after taking the full force of a star??? I dont?? Get that.

That’s it, I just don’t understand it.

Eitri the dwarf was like “BUT YOU’LL DIE!!!” and Thor did the thing anyway (predictably) and didn’t die (predictably) but was sort of dying for The Drama (predictably) and then Eitri was like “He needs the weapon!! to live!!!!!” and I still don’t understand what that meant or why.

Relatedly, I don’t understand why Groot’s arm is an adequate substance for Thor’s anti-infinity-stone-weapon, when Groot #1 was obliterated by an infinity stone. Am I remembering that right? I don’t understand this. It feels like somebody thought “Hey you know what would be cool?” and that was literally the only thought process behind it. Nobody thought very hard about this before writing it into the movie. Though to be fair, that tracks with pretty much everything else in this movie, so why not, I guess.

Also stars are way bigger than that, that was not a star. Just saying.

The Red Skull cameo made no sense.

I understand that the tesseract spat him out somewhere else in space, and I’m fine with that (like, that could have been interesting actually), but I don’t understand why he ended up as, like, a ghost doing the bidding of the soul stone or whatever??? Do the stones interact? Did the tesseract tell the soul stone to fuck that guy up cuz he’s an asshole? Was that just the effect of being transported too close to the soul stone? I don’t... understand that at all.

And, in line with the rest of the movie, he was very out of character.

“Thanos is sad because he LOVED Gamora”

Then he shouldn’t have fucking killed her.

Even the smallest violin in the universe playing “my heart bleeds for you” would be too much. Fuck that guy and his fake depth.

Look I’ve touched on this multiple times already, but I keep coming back to it because it’s absolutely one of the worst things about the movie.

If they wanted to make a point about Thanos' abuse not being mutually exclusive to the emotional experience of love on his part, they really should have hit it home instead of letting it just flounder. Abuse and love are not mutually exclusive, and we DO need more media that acknowledges that, but this is not how to portray that.

Gamora (or literally anyone) needed to actually SAY “I don’t care if you love/d me, you HURT me. You ruined my life. Your love is worthless and changes NOTHING.”

Gamora suffered under his abuse pretty much her WHOLE LIFE and then he KILLED her. And he did it BECAUSE he “loved” her? And it was done to give him some sort of fucked up complexity/depth? That’s fucking violent.

They didn't go hard enough on any of their character arcs/points

like... Steve was clearly shut down and depressed but that was never addressed.

What was that about Tony wanting to stop being a hero and settle down and have kids??? They spent like 5 whole entire minutes (which is a long time in a movie actually) setting that up as a plot point and then never addressed it again.

Bucky looked so tired when he saw the arm, like you could see on his face when he realized he was being sent back into war. Another assignment. Gotta kill more people. He looked so TIRED but then the next time we see him he’s smiling at Steve, and it never got addressed (AND THEN HE DIED SO???)

Bruce and Nat shared like one line, and then never spoke again (and while I’m not interested in them as a couple, that still felt weird).

Rhodey went against that hologram asshole’s instructions and then it never came up again.

Rocket talking to Thor, asking if he’s okay, and Thor saying basically “I have nothing left to lose so I’ll be very useful” never became relevant. Rocket saying “Well, I mean, I’ve got a lot to lose actually” also never became relevant.

Dr. Strange’s whole “duty” to protect the stone was supposed to be more important than anything, and yet it was not in practice more important than... like... anything, tbh. Nor did he have to deal with the consequences of failing his duty, even a little bit.

Vision was having headaches and then it turned out to be the stone, like, warning him about Thanos or something?? Never became important.

Bruce couldn’t get the Hulk to help out. That’s... that’s it, that’s the whole character arc, he just couldn’t get the Hulk to help out.

Peter Quill was asked by Gamora to kill her. When the time came, he was actually willing to, but was stopped by an outside force. This was never addressed again, and then they both died. Cool.

I understand that they might be trying to introduce all these plot points so they can address them in the second half, but.... like........... half these characters died already, and also that’s not a good way to write a two-movie story. Series’ need to have satisfying arcs within each independent installment. This movie did not.

((You may have noticed, also, that most of the characters the movie TRIED to give actual character arcs to, even if they failed, are white men. I noticed that too.))

Characters who have barely if ever been allowed to know happiness or contentment or safety, and then just die, are not enjoyable character arcs, fuck off.

Especially Bucky, but also somewhat true for Gamora, Mantis, Wanda (plus I’m still mad about Pietro). Don’t kill characters who’ve never really gotten to live well. Don’t make characters who only get to suffer and then die. Character arcs like that are almost always written by white male writers about marginalized characters, and it just feels violent.

Steve’s new shield was weird.

I was actually hyped about T’Challa being the one to get him a new shield, because then it’d still be made of vibranium!! And everything from Wakanda so far looks rad as hell. But, uh... I wasn’t a fan of the design. It doesn’t look throwable, or big enough, or particularly useful. It didn’t do anything cool that I noticed. I thought maybe it was going to have a force field like the shield capes W’Kabi and the other male warriors used in Black Panther, or something else technological. Instead it just, like, gets 4 inches wider if you... put it on... or something??? Mediocre. Not worthy of having been made in Wakanda.

I just wasn’t a fan of pretty much any of the new designs they added to this movie (except the new spider suit, and that one lady villain; but that was really it).

“All the stones together can alter reality!! Obviously the only solution is murder.”

I know everybody has said this, but why... didn’t Thanos just... create more resources. If the problem was too few resources, why didn’t he snap his fingers and make more??? If you have the ability to alter reality and remake the universe with a snap of your fingers, and your intentions are to improve the quality of life of all people’s throughout the universe, why the fuck is your only solution “murder half of everybody”??

And why would you murder a RANDOM half of everybody? Why wouldn’t you murder, like “the half of everybody who is the shittiest to other people, on a planet by planet basis” or something? Like, if your intentions are truly benevolent but you also truly can only use murder to improve the universe (which, like, is a very VERY bullshit “if” but I digress), why would you think the best use of murder would be “random”? That just seems like a privileged person trying desperately not to sound bigoted (while sounding bigoted nonetheless).

So it doesn’t matter if they’re a mass murdering dictator, or a serial killer, or a sexual predator, or a corrupt politician lobbying for a skewed distribution of resources based on bigotry? They’d still only have a 50/50 shot at dying, even though you claim to be doing this for the betterment of the remaining people’s quality of life?

What about communities that have already suffered genocide? They have to suffer that again, because you can’t get your head out of your ass long enough to comprehend the nuance of this bullshit situation you’ve created?

What about people who are studying genetically modified food to make resources more plentiful? People who spend their whole lives making hugely positive differences in the distribution of resources? People who are just good, and care about others, and take steps to improve the lives of others, people who aren’t going to fuck up the paradise you want to create? They also have that same 50/50 shot?

And if your goal is only the deaths of 50% of the people in the universe, what about bus drivers who are actively driving buses? What about surgeons who are in the middle of surgery? What about people driving cars on the highway? Killing half the population instantaneously would result in way more death than just half the population.

This plan falls apart more and more the more you think about it.

"The biggest cast of all time” and NOBODY is queer.

Like, there are two characters in the entire MCU who could conceivably be considered canonically queer:

Valkyrie, because she was supposed to have a scene indicating her canon bisexuality. And even though they cut it, it was IN THE SCRIPT so it’s halfway canon.

Loki, but only because he’s queer (genderfluid and pansexual) in the comics. So like, he’s NOT canonically queer in the movies, but he’s also not specified as NOT queer, so...? The writers definitely didn’t intend it, despite queercoding him, but we can pretend.

And in infinity war, Loki dies 5 seconds in, and Valkyrie straight up doesn’t exist. So????? It was boring and sucked.

They attempted to address the MCU Villain Problem, and failed.

The MCU villain problem, AKA the villains in most MCU movies are forgettable and boring because they and their schemes always came as an afterthought.

Recently, to address this, the formula (as seen with Killmonger and the Vulture) seems to be "a villain that needs to be stopped, but who is understandable and maybe even relatable and likeable". In both the case of Killmonger and the Vulture, this worked (not perfectly, but it did). They made the villains PEOPLE outside of their villainy. They made them complex, and it was compelling and therefore memorable and interesting.

They tried to apply this formula to Thanos... in the worst possible way.

As I’ve already talked about. They tried to make him complex to avoid their usual villain problem, except in the process they MADE HIM THE PROTAGONIST. There wasn’t a hero protagonist. There was only Thanos and a lot of heroes trying to stop him, and posing no real threat to him or his plot at any point.

And the heroes OPPOSED him, but they did not properly condemn him or his logic, and then he won.

Fatphobia and emasculation aimed at Quill for the lulz

They wanted Peter Quill to be threatened by Thor for some reason, and the way they chose to do that was to make Quill’s friends call him “one sandwich away from fat” and thus “not a man”.

Then he started vowing to commit to a better exercise routine or something, and tried to lower his voice to sound more like Thor. Bless Thor for not understanding what was going on and thinking Quill was mocking him (aka, not thinking of Quill as having anything he’d need to compensate for), but Quill being threatened by Thor, as well as his jealousy of Gamora’s attention to a “more attractive” man, honestly just felt like the writers scrambling for a reason to give the characters conflict, and settling on a toxic and offensive trope.

Especially because Chris Pratt is In Shape. He has like a six pack. He’s objectively NOT fat. If he were, and they mocked him for it, that would be fatphobic and shitty, but the fact that he’s NOT just makes it baffling on top of being fatphobic and shitty. It’s like those makeover movies where they put glasses and baggy clothes on a conventionally attractive woman and then claim she looks terrible.

Bad.

There were better options for Thanos' reasoning and the writers... really should have taken them.

I have HEARD that the comic version of Thanos’ motivation was “He’s in love with the embodiment/god of death, and wanted to kill half of everybody to impress her” and to be honest that would have been a better option.

(Side Note: Maybe the use of Hela as the Goddess of Death in Ragnarok is why the writers of Infinity War hated Ragnarok. Maybe they were mad they couldn’t use her for this movie, and that’s why they murdered and buried everything Ragnarok accomplished with such thorough dedication.)

Other better Thanos motivations just off the top of my head:

He wanted to take over/colonize/enslave other planets to house his own people who DID use up the resources on their own planet.

There’s actually something ELSE he wants to use the Infinity Stones for, but he needs to kill tons of people to get it, or to get the Infinity Stones.

He was cursed to be immortal and will not be allowed to die until he kills enough other people.

He needs to trade like 10 million souls to the embodiment of death to bring someone he loves back from the dead.

He plans to harvest people from a bunch of different planets to produce a youth serum for alien elites-- (no wait that’s the plot of jupiter ascending)

He just hates people and thinks people should die.

He literally eats people, and he’s enormous so he needs to eat a lot of people.

Just saying, all of these are better motivations than “I’ve just gotta murder people cuz if I don’t then people will run out of food, and then they’ll die. I don’t WANT to, nobody else wants me to either, but I’m going to anyway. I’m sad about it.”

"We don't trade lives"

This was a line from Steve about killing vs not killing Vision, and in the subsequent context of the movie, it’s violent as hell.

“We don’t trade lives” he says, to discourage Vision from consenting to death to save everyone. Then he/they take Vision to Wakanda where Wakandan soldiers lay down their lives by the dozens to hundreds to protect Vision. Vision, who was willing to die.

Steve Rogers is a soldier. He KNOWS that trading some lives for other (hopefully more) lives is how this is going to go. He knows. This was like the “Language” line from Avengers; it doesn’t make sense for the character.

But even beyond that, as I’ve said, they are absolutely going to-- and for that matter they were PLANNING to trade black Wakandan lives for Vision’s safety. And even if that weren’t a plot point, they’d be planning to potentially trade their OWN lives for those Thanos would kill if (when) they fail.

“We don’t trade lives.” Yes, you do. Of course you do. And the audience knows it because the audience has seen all your other fucking movies.

Why couldn’t the writers take a breath and stop trying so hard and just let the characters say what they mean. “I don’t want you to die.” “Please let us try to save you.”

Why couldn’t they have just, like, made up an actual reason why they couldn’t afford to lose Vision? Maybe Vision’s headaches could have been actually utilized as a warning system? Maybe Vision could have communicated telepathically with Tony’s AI all the way through space, so Vision was their only was to know what was going on with Tony and Co.? Maybe destroying the stone while it was inside Vision was massively dangerous (like, could have gone off like a bomb or something....? I mean he CAN use the stone like a laser, maybe trying to destroy it would make it detonate.).

THERE WERE OPTIONS. Instead they went with the absolute fallacy of “We don’t trade lives,” delivered by a character who would never have said that, and followed by the traded lives of MANY black people for one white man.

Bad.

The Soul Stone has really low standards for supposedly having high standards

Why require somebody to go through with a whole test of “give up the thing or person you love most” to acquire the Soul Stone? Like, the explanation “A soul for a soul” was kind of cool, but what does that have to do with love? It’s not the Love Stone, it’s the Soul Stone. Love doesn’t have anything to do with that, and even if it DID, Thanos’ version of love should have made the stone go “Um, I think the fuck NOT, you abusive motherfucker,” instead of “Sure! I’ll hand phenomenal cosmic power over to you because you just seem super legit. Nothing could go wrong here.”

Was the love thing even real, or was the Red Skull just bein’ his racist self, and wanted to watch Gamora get tossed off a cliff because he’s a nazi and bored as hell?

Furthermore, why did only one of the stones require a test? Is the Soul Stone just really needy? What is the deal with these stones??? Nothing was ever explained at ALL and it made NO SENSE.

Gamora deserved better, and so did every audience member who’s ever been abused.

I’m just gonna circle back to this point and address it head on.

Here’s a great article on this subject from somebody better equipped to address it than me.

But basically just... fuck the writers for showing us her power, and then making it pointless. Making her stab Thanos in the throat and then allowing him to wave it off like it didn’t happen or didn’t matter or like he was just testing her. Fuck the writers for letting her be murdered at the hand of the man who ruined her life, to further HIS goals, and to give HIM ‘depth’.

If she doesn’t get resurrected in the next movie and deliver the killing blow, I will be even more furious than I already am, and that is honestly already an impressive level of fury.

God I’m so fucking glad I didn’t pay to see this garbage fire of a movie.

#infinity war #infinity war review #spoilers #my thoughts #readmore #movie review #my rants

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