#as if I would deign to create a main character who isn’t as complex as a bag of corkscrews

[magpies-gold]

Just some doodles I did of this guy over the past month. It's getting pretty apparent that he's kind of a comfort character like Myrnak and Shanka are - wildly different personality from those two, though, which is neat. Partly testing things, partly I just really like drawing eyes, and partly just brain-on-standby stuff.

[thesffcorner]

Avengers: Infinity War Review

Avengers: Infinity War is the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest venture, directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. It takes place 2 years after the events of Avengers Civil War and follows Thanos on his quest to gather all the infinity stones and destroy half of the universe.

As this is a film that has been 10 years in the making, with elements and threads from nearly every MCU film, there is a lot to talk about and most of it consist some kind of spoiler. I will go over general impressions in the first half and get into most substantial, plot related spoilers in the latter, but if you don’t want to know anything about this movie before seeing it, I suggest you come back to this article after you’ve already done so. 

This is a difficult movie to talk about; it will definitely draw out a reaction but how positive or negative will hinge on how much you love event comics and Thanos as a character. I can’t say I liked it, but there wasn’t much that I thought was objectively wrong with it, in the way of say the Last Jedi. So let’s start first with the things I liked. 

Nearly every character that’s in this movie gets a moment to shine, be it an action beat, a scene, or just a good one liner. At no point in the film did it feel like a character was underutilized or unnecessary and the Russos do a great job at juggling all the different personalities and plot-lines. Despite the sheer amount of people the action is clear, the film rarely feels like it drags and more or less uses all its players to their fullest potential, with several having a lot more room to breathe and play.

The plot as I said is pretty pedestrian; it’s just “Thanos wants the stones so he can destroy the world and the heroes want to stop him” which works for this type of story. It’s nothing to write home about and the twists come from the individual character plot-lines and while I didn’t love it, it was pretty unobtrusive and allowed for more character interaction which is always a positive in my opinion.

The action is also for the most part excellent, with the Russos making sure everyone gets at least one scene where the kick ass, including the villains. They also get pretty creative with the different powers in the film, especially the infinity stones. There are several downright amazing scenes that showcase the time, reality and soul gems, and the two characters who get to show off the most in terms of power are definitely Thor and Strange.

Speaking of, another thing I liked was that the characters that carried the plot and got the most screen time weren’t the ones I expected would. Tony is the only one who I knew would get a lot of screen time and does, but I actually really liked his story-line; it was probably one of the best the MCU has done so far. The Russos really like and understand Tony’s character, and his emotional conflict having to do with the fear of losing Earth and all his friends, his guilt over the Avengers dissolving, him returning back to paranoia after the dissolution and creating the nano-tech suit were all excellent. The ending was also incredibly powerful for Tony specifically and there is one scene that was so emotionally visceral, it actually unsettled me.

Thor was another character that got a lot of screen time and I’m still somewhat conflicted over his character. I loved Ragnarok and I think Waititi’s Thor was the best and most accurate one we’ve gotten so far. So I was really worried when I read an interview with Hemsworth which talked about how he at first didn’t like the direction his character was going in.

And at first I agreed with him; the beginning of the film especially felt like Marvel just hates Thor and all of his supporting characters and in a way completely negates the ending and the message of Ragnarok, because it makes everything that happens in that movie irrelevant so we could get this one. What I did like was that at least (unlike Taika) the Russos gave Thor a moment to grieve and come to terms with the all the horror that happened to him in these two films and and just be human. There is a pretty touching scene between him and Rocket which I really appreciated and their pairing was very entertaining.

Strange was another character that got to shine and I liked his dynamic with Tony, especially Strange giving up the stone to save Tony’s life (even if he had ulterior motives), after plainly saying he would save the stone over everyone.

And now for some stuff I didn’t like. I’ll start with the more minor things and build up to the two major problems that I had with this movie. ACTUAL SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT FOLKS.

Firstly, this is an event comic in movie form with all the good and bad that comes with it. It’s all action and spectacle and contains surprisingly little humanity, other than in the form of jokey jokes and one liners. The tone is grim and though the film doesn’t take itself too seriously it still pauses for grandiose speeches which absolutely kill the momentum dead. Combined with the amount of characters this means that every character that isn’t plot relevant would get one line, or one scene or mostly one joke and then they are out of the movie.

People like Nat and Cap, who have been veterans of the MCU get completely lost in the shuffle. Sure they get fight scenes, but they don’t get any kind of emotional backstory. Bucky, Sam and Rhodey might as well not be here for all they do, even if they do get some funny lines here and there. Bruce fares a bit better, at least being present in most of the film, the entirety of the Black Panther cast gets like, a scene and a half and let’s not even get into people like Pepper, Loki and Wong who literally get ejected out of the film after one scene.

Gamora, Thor and Tony, are the only characters who get any emotional substance to them; the rest aren’t even deigned a subplot beyond the minimum necessary requirement to tie them into the main plot. An especially egregious example of this are both Wanda and Vision and Peter and Gamora’s romances.

Both of these romances were set up in previous films, but while they had time to slowly develop, here they need to be at Earth-shattering, I-need-you-to-kill-me-or-the-world-ends levels. This is less bad with Peter and Gamora because we’ve had more time with both characters and two whole movies to develop them, but Vision and Wanda only started really interacting in Civil War, and now they are at the stage where they are promised to each other? I also didn’t like that both romances had the same resolution; in case things go wrong Gamora and Vision ask to be killed, the only person who can do it is Peter or Wanda and we get a dramatic scene where exactly that happens only for Thanos to swoop in with one of the stones and change the outcome. Diminishing returns, is all I’m saying.

Wanda’s character had nothing to it beyond being worried and in love with Vision, but Peter… oh poor Peter.

First he gets into a stupid pissing contest with Thor about who is manlier which was just the most inane, stupid thing, then he does the exact same with Tony, and then (because the film needs him too) completely loses his mind about Gamora, and attacks Thanos, allowing him to steal the time gem and escape. Look, Peter was never the smartest person, and he does have an insecure, competitive, peacocking streak, but he was never an idiot like this film makes him out to be! Honestly all the Guardians are shafted; Mantis and Drax are barely in the film, Groot gets a single scene of cool, Rocket, while funny is relegated to being Thor’s sidekick/psychiatrist and Peter is turned into an idiot!

And now we get to Gamora. Poor Gamora, this movie did her dirty. Just a reminder, Gamora is one of the most skilled and bad-ass assassins in the galaxy, she is notorious and infamous in the Guardians films. Her entire plot in vol 2 was coming to terms not just with the abuse that Thanos inflicted on her as a child, but also the abuse she was complicit in with the other children, specifically Nebula who she was actually close to. The film ends with them starting to come to terms with this, and forgiving each other, but not Thanos who doesn’t deserve their forgiveness.

But then in this movie, she gets fooled into thinking she killed Thanos, gets kidnapped by Thanos, leads him to the soul stone and gets unceremoniously killed as Thanos’ sacrifice to get the stone. And all the time, she gets emotionally blackmailed and gas-lit by Thanos who keeps calling her his daughter, saying he wants to see her on Titan’s throne, how he sacrificed his crazy ass mission to save her once on her home-planet and choses her as the one thing in the universe he loves but has to trade to get the soul gem. WHAT?

Are we supposed to feel bad about Thanos? Thanos, the sociopathic, sadistic, torturous, unambiguous villain, who by that point in the film has killed the entirety of Asgard, including Loki and Heimdal, and the Grandmaster and the entirety of Knowhere? I absolutely hated the implication that I should feel sad because Gamora was wrong and he did love her. Not only does it badly undercut the message of vol 2 which is abuse is real and has lasting effects, but the movie wants us to on some level side with Thanos and think that Gamora really was ungrateful, since he obviously loved her and she betrayed him. They even give her this stupid speech about how the universe is punishing him by demanding he sacrificed something he loved since he doesn’t love anything, which was so over the top and drawn out and made Gamora sound like an idiot! It made me want to throw things at the screen.

I don’t need or want complexity and sympathetic traits given to a villain that has been nothing but a sheer force of evil and destruction thus far. It would have been so much better to just go the Galactus route with Thanos and make him just an unstoppable chaotic neutral force, rather than some deluded mad genius. I’m sorry, but am I supposed to sympathize with a villain literary referred to as the Mad Titan, whose grand master plan hinges on him believing the overpopulation and over-consumption myth so hard that he wants to destroy half the universe to remedy it? This is the better story than him trying to impress Death that Marvel came up with?

Even if overpopulation wasn’t a myth (which it is) what happens when living beings once again reach the status that they have now? He would have to snap his fingers every 10 000 years or so just to keep the status quo. It’s ridiculously stupid and infuriating and the film treats his plan like it actually has some merit and he’s somehow a mad genius who just goes about it the wrong way. I really didn’t need a 10 min scene of him mourning how he had to kill Gamora to get the stone that lets him DESTROY HALF THE UNIVERSE, complete with sad music and a flashback to baby Gamora asking him what kind of price he paid for his own insane plans. We could have spent that time giving Cap something to do, like maybe acknowledging that Tony, his best friend is lost in space and the world is ending.

The Russos love Thanos, he’s clearly their baby but I hated him. He took time away from the heroes that I wanted to watch and didn’t bring anything to the table but melodrama that was completely unfounded. It was also additionally frustrating because he a) is so much more powerful than any of the heroes combined and b) we know he gets all the infinity stones by the end of the film. So the question isn’t how the heroes will win, but how long will they last against him. The ending also undercuts itself, because the heroes don’t win; the glove self-destructs after Thanos uses it, meaning it would have done that regardless of if Thanos met any resistance while acquiring the stones, meaning this whole 2 and a half hour film was pointless!

The other part of the ending was shocking, but it’s not meaningful, because we know all those characters aren’t dead. We know we will get a Dr Strange 2, Black Panther 2 and Guardians 3, and we know Avengers Infinity part 2 comes out next summer so we know they are still somehow alive. My guess is they are all trapped inside the soul stone, since only the glove got destroyed at the end. Sidenote, aren’t Tony and Nebula still on Titan? So can’t they just like… sneak behind Thanos and stab him now that he’s wounded and can’t use the stones anymore?

This was a frustrating movie to watch and even more frustrating to talk about. There were things I liked, like some of the characters and humor, but for the most part I thought it was overblown, melodramatic and focused too much on the one character I cared least about. I am curious about part 2, but honestly? I feel the same about this movie as I do about event comics; who TF is Thanos and can he get out of my Guardians ongoing so I can return to reading about the characters I actually like and care about.