Many people have been name-checking Empire Strikes Back in their comments on Avengers: Infinity War. But as I left the theater this weekend, I found myself thinking about The Last Jedi, and… Frodo? I will talk about Infinity War a lot but I have to work through a couple of points about pop culture heroism in general first, so come along with me on a journey through multiple franchises, won’t you?
(SPOILERS for Avengers: Infinity War and The Last Jedi.)
The heart of the anti-Last Jedi backlash was the treatment of Luke Skywalker. Sure people complained about the (great, imo) decision to make Rey a Nobody from Nowhere, and yes, people were annoyed by the sidequest to free the Chocobos of Canto Bight. But the beating heart of people’s frustration with Last Jedi is the fact that everybody’s hero, good-hearted Luke Skywalker, orphaned son of a cursed family, turned out to be a grief-stricken, pathetic, terrified old man. He mocks Rey (and, implicitly, the audience itself) for wanting him to make it all better by facing down the First Order with his “laser sword.” Then he pretends to do exactly that in a mocking parody of a western stand off with his nephew, and kills himself in the effort. Unlike Obi-Wan sacrificing himself in battle to Vader while Luke watched, Luke isn’t fake-fighting Kylo to teach Rey anything. He’s simply acting as a distraction the resistance can escape to fight more intelligently another day.
I’ll say it again: he’s a distraction.
Luke Skywalker, hero to millions, dies alone meditating on a rock. And I loved it. I loved it because this was the Luke of Return of the Jedi, throwing his sword away. I love it because it acknowledged the realities of grief and time, and what tragedy on that scale would actually do to a fresh-faced farm boy who used to long for adventure. In the same way that The Force Awakens subverted Han Solo the Lovable Scoundrel, Last Jedi rejected the pop cultural narrative of Luke the Action Hero, and turned him into something more.
I understand that it felt like someone really did murder your childhood, not in the “the Prequels suck!” sense, but in the real, slow, collapse of your body under time type sense. That’s what it did to me, anyway. I went home and lay in bed for hours after that movie staring at the ceiling and feeling fucking old. And it was good for me, I think. What would it say about me if I felt the same as I did as a kid watching Empire, eyes widening in shock as Vader told Luke the truth? If I’d learned nothing and gained no wisdom from the decades in between? I am old enough to know that while my pop cultural heroes are important, my relationship to them is allowed to change as I get older. I am old enough to appreciate a good death, and that’s what Rian Johnson gave Luke Skywalker, and I love him for it.
Can I just tell you how happy I am that Infinity War went down the same path, in a slightly more meta way?
I’m not talking about the deaths themselves, though there are bouquets of them, and a couple of them genuinely hurt (whoever decided that Peter Parker should be the one character with a deathbed monologue should either be thrown off a cliff or given a raise, but more on that scene in a second) but still—we knew people were going to die. We also can safely assume that at least some of those deaths will be undone by the fourth Avengers movie, because we can all google “Marvel movie release schedule.” But what I’m trying to get at here is how Marvel used its latest big budget blockbuster popcorn toy-inspiring movie to critique the uses of pop culture heroism.
I loved the first Guardians of the Galaxy, because I loved all the pop culture gags and Spielberg references and Kevin Bacon appreciation. I liked that it was nostalgia created by people who were old enough to remember it, and that the film, intelligently I thought, used pop culture itself as a lifeline for Quill as he’s adrift and orphaned in space. While I had a lot of problems with Guardians 2 I still thought a lot of the pop culture moments worked there, too. The way Quill clings to his Walkman, and to his mother’s songs, filled in some emotional gaps and gave him more depth than he’d have otherwise. That all worked for me, because I am very much a person who uses pop culture and gags to fill in my own emotional gaps.
I was also excited that they used a pop culture riff to weave Spider-Man into Captain America: Civil War—his excited reference to Empire Strikes Back highlighted his youth, his enthusiasm, and was an astonishing act of corporate Disney corporate synergy.
(Plus it’s just a solid plan.)
In Infinity War, the first shot of the Guardians is as joyful as the first film’s “Come and Get Your Love” dance: the Guardians are (mostly) grooving along to “The Rubberband Man”; the adults are annoyed at Teen Groot for playing his retro arcade handheld game and cursing at them in Grootish; Gamora has discovered that she loves to sing. It’s a cute little intergalactic family road trip. And then they pick up Thor, and the whole vibe is instantly spiked through with the reality of Thanos, and the seriousness of Infinity War. From the moment he tells them his story, Gamora switches back into her old, serious self, the one who knows what’s at stake, and each of Star-Lord’s attempts to be silly fall increasingly flat. Drax’s humor seems increasingly out of place. Mantis more and more becomes the wide-eyed empath rather than the wide-eyed comic relief.
When we check in with Earth, Stark initially treats the latest crisis with his usual sarcasm, calling Maw “Squidward” and getting into a pissing match with Strange. But once he realizes how high the stakes are he sobers up, and even explicitly forbids Spider-Man’s reliance on pop culture riffs. This clues the audience in to the idea that it’s Time To Get Serious, and reinforces Tony as Peter Parker’s stern pseudo-dad. But then, when they need a plan to save Doctor Strange, Peter immediately mentions “that really old movie Aliens” because all Peter has is movie plots. He doesn’t have any life experience, he’s not military, he’s not a tactician—so Aliens it is. And again, just like in Civil War, his seemingly ridiculous pop culture idea actually works.
So the Star Wars and Aliens franchises both exist in the MCU, as does Spongebob Squarepants (and Lord of the Rings, given Stark’s “Clench up, Legolas” quip from the first Avengers film), and there are awesome superhero-themed Ben & Jerry’s flavors like ‘Hulka-Hulka-Burning Fudge.’ And so far, all of their jokiness has worked—the Marvel writers have used pop culture riffs to add to their worldbuilding and make the movies fun, while, in-universe, the characters can use the jokes to show their personalities and bond with their teammates. In Peter Parker’s case his riffs were both fun, and the plans were successful. Despite the giant overarching plot, the silliness and gags can have their moments, and even feed into the action.
Once they meet up with the Guardians, eternal man-baby Star-Lord and actual teen Spider-Man discover that they can blab references at each other, and we quickly get a Flash Gordon reference, a call-back to Quill’s dance-off with Ronan, and an argument about Footloose. It’s fun, exactly what we’d want from these two, yelling nonsense at each other while Strange and Stark roll their eyes in the background. It’s the scene the trailers promised us. And it encapsulates every single criticism of the usual Marvel tic of undercutting dramatic moments with humor. Which is why it’s so perfectly brutal when the rug is pulled out from under them, all of us, and they lose. Because this is the team, specifically, that loses. Peter has almost pulled the Gauntlet from Thanos’ hand when Quill freaks out and ruins the plan. Pop culture-spouting, jokey, ridiculous Quill is the reason they are forced into what Strange calls the “endgame,” whatever that’s going to be. It’s the reason half of them have to die.
Quill says nothing as he crumbles into dust, not Gamora’s name, or his mother’s, no quips or jokes or famous last words. He’s just gone. Strange tells Stark they’re in the endgame, then dust. Back on Earth Bucky manages to say Steve’s name, but T’Challa, Sam Wilson, and Wanda say nothing.
It’s left to Peter Parker to have real dialogue during his death. I’ve been wondering about that. Why is he the only one with a protracted death? The best theory I’ve seen is that his Spidey-sense gives him just enough pre-cognition that he realizes he’s dying faster than the others, which, fuck. But tonally, it makes sense that it’s Peter Parker who gets the monologue—because the youngest hero, the one who has called upon pop culture for his two biggest Avengers moments, has to face the fact that in the end, this doesn’t save him.
A lot of people have said that the deaths don’t matter, they’re going to be undone, rewound, etc., and on one level that’s true, but the writers made goddamn sure to make Peter’s death matter. They gave us a couple of fun, fluffy moments, and then made sure we felt it. There are no quips, no references, no jokes. No fun dance-off. Just the inevitable, implacable wall of death. In Thanos’ rewiring of the universe, death is random, unfair, does not care what movies you’ve seen or what plans you have or what witty quip is waiting in the back of your mouth. You don’t get to talk your way out of it.
Now we know that Captain Marvel is coming out next March, with Avengers 4 following next May, Spiderman 2 in July, and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 sometime the year after that. We can all probably piece an arc together that will set everything back to “normal” in time for Phase 4. In all the general cultural chatter around this movie, people keep saying that these deaths don’t mean anything. That they’re just going to rewind and use the Time Stone or time travel of some kind to undo everything they’ve done in the film. But I really hope that they don’t just rewind to back before everyone died, erasing the trauma in the process, because I want at least Peter Parker to go into Spider-Man 2 with the memory of his death. This seems cruel, probably, but in all this talk about the uses of death in our big pop mythologies, I keep coming back to three things: (1) Lord of the Rings is the definitive fantasy epic, it’s about war, has an enormous cast, and yet almost none of the main characters die. Boromir meets a complicated end in the first third of the story, and Gandalf dies knowing he’ll be resurrected as a more powerful wizard. Other than that, the main cast is joyfully reunited after the fall of Mordor. Where the story gains meaning is in how those characters have changed, not whether their lives have ended. (2) In The Last Jedi, the film gains its power (YMMV) in the acknowledgement that Luke can’t go back to being the optimistic farm-boy hero. (3) And to come back to the MCU, and the most important example: the reason Peter Parker’s mentor has grown into a mature father figure is precisely because of his own death. The Iron Man Trilogy tangled itself around the Battle For New York and dug into his ongoing PTSD. It allowed him to grow from film to film. Everything, all the mistakes he makes in Age of Ultron, Civil War, and Spider-Man: Homecoming are born in that fall from the wormhole, and his inability to let go of that day.
Which is why I really hope that they keep this in mind for the next round of films. Think of how well Spider-Man 2 could play with this, if they send Peter Parker back to high school knowing that he died in an event his classmates don’t remember. As much as I don’t want to see Gamora fridged (I really, really do not want that, Marvel) imagine how much more interesting the third Guardians film might be if Star-Lord doesn’t get to be the Rubber Band Man—if he finally has to grow the hell up. If Marvel wants all of this dust to add up to something, but also to bring their heroes back, they have to allow those heroes to change from their deaths, shed their old pop culture skins, and become mightier.
Leah Schnelbach went into Infinity War with a heart as cold as a Frost Giant’s, but that scene, man. That scene. Come weep with her on Twitter!
How much better would it have been if Peter Quill had grown up in this movie–which is set four years after the last Guardians movie? Quill getting the universe murdered in half because of poor impulse control isn’t clever or moving. If he had managed to keep his cool, even if through tears, that would have been a much more moving scene, and a bit of actual growth.
‘Manbaby’ is an okay place to start out at; I really hope that is not where he is still located in Guardians 3. It would make a lot more sense if he was now in ‘put-upon dad that no one listens to’ territory, rather than leaving it to Gamora to be the grown-up in the room.
The prevailing theory I’ve seen that I like about how they will all come back for Avengers 4 and beyond is that everyone that got dusted is currently trapped in the Soul Stone. Since Gamora was sacrificed on the altar of the Soul Stone in the first place, it’s also feasible that she can come back as well and not be “fridged” (a term I find slightly offensive since it’s never used to refer to deaths of male characters, like Loki and Heimdall, who deserved better). I do agree with you, and appear to be in the minority, that how Luke was handled in TLJ was a master stroke.
What is all boils down to is what do each of us want from entertainment. Those of us who want darkness and tears will love this kind of movie. Those of us who want lightness and a few chuckles won’t. As someone who has dealt with death, disease, and misery for most of her life, I always go for light over darkness. That’s why I didn’t go to this movie and will probably miss it when it goes to cable.
Luke in Last Jedi was one of the few things in the movie I liked at the time, and on reflection.
I had this exact thought last night driving home, with one step more – I think the writers and producers specifically had spent the last few film building that comic tic in JUST for this effect. We’ve gotten conditioned as an audience of Marvel films to expect that the humor will help the hero to win out and we expect it to undercut the serious, so when those moments hit in IW (and hit they do) it completely sends us reeling. We just aren’t expecting it and the hurt is almost tangible.
@1 Quill’s poor impulse control is more about Stark than Quill himself, he is seeing a retread of what he did at the end of Civil War when he let his rage towards Bucky take over his rational decision making. Stark sees his own mistake happening in front of him and is just as powerless to stop Quill as he is to changing what he himself did.
@2 Loki and Heimdall are both killed as a direct result of actions they choose to take, and in Loki’s case after several movies’ worth of character growth. So in my opinion neither would count as a fridging even if there was a long history of underdeveloped male characters with no agency being killed solely to serve the female character’s emotional journey.
No spoilers, but the upcoming “Undo” and how it happens was foreshadowed twice that I noticed.
For many diehard comic fans, Infinity War was what they were waiting for. As casual fan of the Marvel movies, it was really underwhelming. Deaths are casual and meaningless (save one), there’s no character progression for anyone, the action scenes are mostly brief flashes of body parts and movement, and the funny bits weren’t very funny and the dark bits weren’t dark or suspenseful.
To be fair to the creators, it was a massive undertaking, one which probably would have been better as a trilogy. Coming on the heels of Black Panther with its strong character development and complex hero, and the pitch perfect humor of Ragnarok… Infinity War just didn’t cut it for me.
For those reading the upcoming movies list:
Miles Morales was set up in Spider Man Homecoming. Peter Parker doesn’t need to make it back for another Spider Man movie to happen.
GOTG 3 could be Rocket and the Ravagers from the post credits scene. James Gunn stated the lineup of the Guardians would change after #2.
Marvel could be sneaky.
@8 Nicole, there was quite a lot of character progression: for Thanos. I think we need to come around to the idea that Thanos was the protagonist of this film. He drove the story; everyone else reacted to him. He had an arc; nobody else really did (none worth spending much time delving into, anyway). This first half of a two-part story, to be concluded next May, was all about Thanos. The Avengers and the Guardians were… also there.
You said this would have been better as a trilogy, but for all intents and purposes, it’s still a duology despite the “Part I” and “Part II” being stripped from the subtitles a while back.
The NYT said it better: you’re all being fed decent movies and you’re being herded to think they’re the greatest movies ever. And you’re all giving it way too much importance (and in “serious” sites like this!).
These are movies of invincible guys in capes that children can enjoy. You can enjoy them as an adult too, but sometime you’ll have to just stop.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/29/opinion/marvel-avengers-infinity-war.html
@@@@@ JasonD
IIRC, the term “fridged” came about after a hero’s girlfriend was killed and folded up in his refrigerator to find. She was a minor character who was killed by the writer to create a revenge story — for a character who only existed to give the hero some backstory. Claiming that you find the term offensive means little, since it refers specifically to a minor character being killed for a cheap plot gag instead of dramatic arc. And frankly, I don’t think anyone is calling Gamora a minor character.
Also, its genesis was specific to a female character being killed. In this case, it’s a little like saying your female boss is a misogynist (anti-female) when she derides male workers. (The correct term is misandrist.)
And finally, there is a long history of the hero having some dopey kid or barely-legal sidekick who bites it “saving his hero.” For that matter, every girl James T. Kirk ever seduced was fridged. I’m not saying it’s a good plot point, I’m just saying there’s a long history on both sides.
“and Gandalf dies knowing he’ll be resurrected as a more powerful wizard. “
Granted that I haven’t read the trilogy in a few years, but I don’t recall this.
I was surprised not by Luke but by the negative fan reaction to his character in TLJ. I just assumed from what we saw at the end of TFA he would be a cranky old hermit, or at least a reluctant hero. He obviously didn’t want to be found.
My issue with the usage of the term “fridged” is twofold in this case. One, no one can legitimately argue that Gamora was underdeveloped. Mantis dying to give Drax a push would have been more of an example. Two, the term seemed to be used as a source by a female writer on this particular website that recently has a particular problem. Of the four character deaths before the Finger Snap of Doom, only Loki had more development than Gamora, but Gamora was female, therefore it’s a “fridging” by default, because this is the internet in 2018. That’s like saying Jadzia Dax got “fridged” after six full seasons of DS9 simply because they decided to kill the character off due to the actress wanting out of her contract. Not all deaths, male or female, make the same impact.
I also liked the way Luke was handled in The Last Jedi. And Han and Leia in The Force Awakens for that manner. I would have felt cheated if we were just shown someone who had lived the whole “happily ever after” fantasy.
I get irritated when people, even after they realize what was happening in Infinity War when the people disappeared in a puff of smoke as a “death.” Those characters are not dead. At the very worst, they are “mostly dead.” The movie was playing with our emotions when it treated the departures like deaths, and doing it dishonestly. There were some comic book tropes that the MCU has avoided, and the “back from the dead and status quo ante bellum” restoration after a big event had been one of them. I always hated that in the comics, and I hate that it has entered the MCU.
Other than the very end, though, I thought Infinity Wars was an excellent move, and was amazed how much stuff they got into it without it feeling overstuffed.
And I agree that the characters should learn, and their future actions should be shaped, by what they faced in this movie.
Blowing a 1 m2 hole in the wall of a spaceship, by the way, does NOT create a stormwind that is impossible to resist for a human, much less for a powerful telekinetic. Nitpicking in this kind of movie I guess…
We know of course that deaths can and will be undone in this universe, thats why ONE or TWO deaths would have been meaningless, and trying to make emotional, drawn out scenes from them would just be cringeworthy. But having Thanos win again and again, and let the audience think this is simply the movie´s “darkest hour” moment before the miracle save in the end – and then that moment never comes and MOST OF THE CAST just dies, in mostly rapid takes and even with Spiderman just a few last words – that was still a huge shock. On its own it doesn´t make this a great movie no, but still a big surprise in this mostly heavily formula-using genre to see such an extremely unformulaic ending.
@15 As others have said, fridging is a specifically feminine term due to the history of it, and while not all female character deaths count as fridging, it is often used as a shorthand, especially if the permanency of the death–regardless of the woman’s character development or the death’s relevance and impact on the plot–ends up being used as a way to milk angst and bad decisions out of her male counterparts.
Gamora comes close to fridging because her death is only to serve Thanos’ storyarc (to prove he does really love and feel), and in a way Quill’s. It’s to give them angst and drives Quill to his ridiculous loss of control in the crucial moment. Heimdall and Loki’s deaths are not Thor’s sole motivation in wanting to see Thanos defeated (there’s probably a part of Thor hoping for another one of Loki’s tricks). Especially considering Infinity War picks up mere moments after Ragnarok ends, when Thor’s already in a pretty rough space.
I have also seen people complain that the Thanos and Gamora scenes fall flat because they DO think Gamora is underdeveloped, due to the size of the Guardians cast and the focus on Quill, keeping much of her thoughts and feelings internalized and her in love interest territory. I think that’s a bit of a disservice to the character and actress, as well as her and Nebula’s plotline in GotG 2.
Whether Gamora’s death counts as a full fridge situation will depend on if she 1) stays dead and 2) it’s used to make Quill even more of a reckless, angry manchild anguishing over his lost love.
(as an aside, I’m hoping Thor’s throwaway line about “half his people” means Valkyrie and Korg got out with some civilians while Thor, Heimdall, and Loki covered their escape.)
For me, Empire Strikes back is a better comparison to Infinity War because they both feel sincere to me. There will never be consensus on The Last Jedi, but its inclination to implicitly mock its audience unfortunately makes its glimpses of sincerity even more heartbreaking for the notion of what could have been. One walks a fine line when one plays the meta game, but the divide is stark (no pun intended).
Gamora’s story in GOTG2 is probably the best part of that movie–but in a lot of ways it says more about Nebula and why she is who she is than it does about Gamora. The key things we know about Gamora are that she is Thanos’s favorite daughter–and that she rejected him. What we don’t know is why; this movie was the time to tell us the answers to those questions. Understanding why Thanos actually loves her, and why she rejected him, would crystallize who she actually is besides the Serious Mom of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
I keep hearing this narrative from people that the deaths have no meaning because we know they’re coming back… and I don’t get it. That’s such a myopic view. It doesn’t matter that WE know they’re coming back, because WE know they aren’t real in the first place. It seems a strange litmus test to place on whether something in a fictional universe matters. What makes Peter Parker’s death matter is how it affects Tony, and because we empathize with Stark, we feel his pain. What makes Bucky’s death matter is what it’s going to do to Cap, because we know how much Bucky means to him, and we’ve shared in their relationship on some level.
Empathy is why these deaths matter. And having it is why these deaths either work or don’t work for viewers on an emotional level.
@9:
Some of us read casting lists as well and know how many movies the actors are signed up for.
RE: Luke in LJ.
Count me as someone that didn’t like the way Luke was portrayed in the LJ, but I actually loved the ending, and I didn’t mind cranky old hermit Luke at all. I just hated the way they presented him getting there. If Rian Johnson and whomever else had a hand in developing that script really wanted us to believe that Luke would ever think his teenage nephew was so far gone into the Dark Side that said nephew needed to be put down like a dog, they needed to give me a LOT more backstory than we got. Because the Luke at the end of ROTJ never even hesitated in his quest to save his father.
What, exactly, did Ben do that made Luke think he might be so much worse than Vader? So much more beyond redemption? To the point that he actually walked in to the boy’s room with a lightsaber ready to end his life? THAT’S the betrayal of character, not crabby-hermit-Luke. Thinking about ending your nephew’s life isn’t a solitary moment of weakness. It takes a lot of agonizing thought and decision making to come to that moment. I mean, assuming you’re not a sociopath.
I just felt there was a much better way to get to burned out, disillusioned Luke than that lazy narrative shortcut they took. And all the seeds were planted for it in TFA.
Film Crit Hulk’s take on Infinity War in the Observer explains a lot of the problems of Infinity War and why its deaths don’t matter and why its emotional moments barely register. His arguments ended up being close to my thoughts. Quoth the Hulk On Death:
“Because the truth is that within narrative, “death” is often cheap and easy. I mean, you’ve seen every other action movie. Murder is catharsis. Scores of bodies pile up and no one cares. Even dead family members are used as motivation so frequently there’s a tropey name for it called “fridge stuffing.” And even a lot of blockbuster movies will throw it around with recklessness that doesn’t seem to show much care or understanding for what “death” means in real life. I always think of that scene in Star Trek Into Darkness where Kahn murders Carol Marcus’s father right in front of her, literally crushing his head. It’s grisly! She screams! It’s horrific! The only problem is I literally know nothing about their father-daughter relationship at that moment, and then this murder 1) has no discernible effect on the characters and 2) is literally never referenced again. All these things are, essentially, tricks for “momentary affectation,” and it absolutely cheapens the notion of death itself.”
On Gamora and Thanos:
“Nowhere is this more evident than in his relationship with Gamora. I know that Thanos loves his daughter because he tells us so. I just genuinely have no idea why he does. And neither does Gamora. It comes as a complete surprise to her. But of course it’s a surprise. There’s no dramatically expressed reason for it. We’ve see them interact, but there are no real specifics to their relationship. No psychology between them. No story. Just expressed feelings about how he hoped for better from her and that she always hated him.”
@21 Well said! A simple character death isn’t enough to elicit tears from me. What consistently does cause tears in films, tv shows, plays, etc.is the reaction of characters who know they’re about to die and the reactions of the characters left behind. Sam’s death didn’t pull heart strings, it was that Rhodey just missed seeing him vanish. Groot and Peter were essentially both frightened children, their fear was witnessed and reacted to by their parental figures. That’s what’s supposed to get audience members. Maria Hill and Nick Fury’s deaths were played to be funny. Fury doesn’t mourn her in the second he has before he starts dissolving, and when he realizes he’s going too, he’s just annoyed. Audience members didn’t have a reason to be sad about them and were just annoyed on how little teaser we got for Captain Marvel ;
I’ll preface this with the almost-always unstated but always meant-to-be-assumed idea that declarative statements about what does or doesn’t work really means “does/doesn’t work for me.”
Clearly some don’t buy into these deaths because they’re not “real” (though, well,fiction). But it’s just as possible, and valid, for some to be inthe fictional moment so completely at the time that said deaths docarry “real” weight. For instance, I know what happens to the crew of Apollo 13, but I’m still tense in that movie. So yes, in the real world we all know not all these deaths are “real,” but rather than accuse the creators of being lazy, manipulative, cheap shills peddling false emotion to make a buck, I prefer to think of them as honestly optimistic believers in the power of story and the medium of film to transport people out of that real world, even if for a second or two. Mileage may vary on that view, but clearly, from the gasps and sniffles and even tears that people have referenced in the theaters, it worked for a number of people. I’m certainly not going to tell those folks they’re “wrong.”
But beyond the impact, however fleeting it may be, of the actual deaths, I fall into the camp of believing the emotional blows are felt more in the immediate response and the upcoming aftermath of those characters left behind—thatis what I find most moving. And in the narrative there is nothing manipulative or dishonest about that—the characters don’t know who has or hasn’t signed a contract.
As for comparing this movie to Generic Action Movie with Lots of Carnage (GAMLoC), where is the evidence that “no one cares” about these deaths? To believe that you have to ignore the moments of shock and grief literally in front of your eyes, and then in addition you have to make a big assumption that nobody will care in the second half of the story. Or that there will be no impact. And really there’s no reason to even make that assumption except to just have the argument. Maybe you can make that argument in a year; maybe you can’t. But now is an odd time to try. Like closing up a novel partway through and complaining the main character “never changes”. That first quote therefore seems a fine critique of GAMLoC and of the Trek film, but I don’t know how it’s supported by what we see in Infinity War(I buy the second quote much more)
And sure, there are a slew of creative works that explore death and its ensuing impact in more substantive, effective fashion than Marvel films. But TV shows from Monk to Six Feet Under to the Leftovers obviously have the luxury of time. And single movies that do it well usually don’t have to shoehorn action scenes, world building, and huge casts into their limited time. To complain Infinity War doesn’t fully mine the rich potential of human mortality and grief seems kind of like complaining about not catching a lot of fish with your lawnmower.
“There are no quips, no references, no jokes. No fun dance-off. Just the inevitable, implacable wall of death.”
To quibble a bit with this: yes, pop culture refs don’t save him, bit his dying words may be a pop reference in itself.
“I don’t wanna go” may refer to Tennant’s Doctor Who saying “I don’t want to go” under similar mortal circumstances.
If you’re so inclined, it may also open things to interpretation. A new Doctor regenerated. Peter will either come back, or be replaced by Miles Morales, a new incarnation.
There’s also the time travel element as a connection. I always thought Marvel was being a bit sly when giving Doctor Strange the Time Stone instead of the Soul one.
@11 Counterpoint to the NYT: No, I don’t have to stop. I can enjoy Marvel’s superhero movies indefinitely even if they don’t meet whatever criteria the NYT writer believes separates a decent movie from the greatest movie ever. One of the best things about being an adult is that I get to decide what’s worth my time.
@25
What you say works for you is unfortunately exactly what I am criticizing. Yes, the movie wants and expects us to be ‘shocked’ when a character dies. That shock is a visceral response; it doesn’t really have much to do with the characters. It has about as much weight as if Tom Holland got on a stage and pretended to die and got back up again–an interesting technical exercise, possibly shocking, but it’s not sad or moving because it is without context.
The thing about death is that once you’re dead, you’re gone–even in movies this is usually true. Death is the end of your story, so there is no more grief or suffering for the dead person. The meaning of death is its impact on the people who have to keep living. For it to be moving, you either have to have a sense of a real relationship that that person had with the people left, or you have to give the survivors enough time to process their grief–to show how their daily function is changed because someone who was a daily presence is gone.
There is simply no time and little context for that in this movie. No one has time to mourn or process grief, because people die and then the movie is over. Most of the characters who died have such thin connections to the characters who remain that there isn’t any sense of relationship lost. For example, what do we really know about Rocket’s relationship to Gamora, or Mantis? He might act ‘sad’ that they are gone, but there is no sense of a real connection their that he could grieve for. Do they try to manipulate us with Spider-man’s youth when they kill him off? Sure, but we don’t really know what Peter Parker means to Tony Stark, other than another thing to be guilty about.
The one major exception is Thor, who over the course of uh, five movies had a believable relationship with his brother Loki (and his father Odin), and who gives us an actual scene of grief: probably the best scene in the movie. Maybe the next movie will all be the Avengers in therapy, talking about all the people they lost for two hours. I kind of doubt it–I think we might spend a few minutes of people being sad, and then Doing Stuff, and then all this death will have been undone and still won’t have meant anything.
To use two wildly different examples of how to treat grief and death seriously: Farscape kills off its main characters and mutual love interests each once. Both times, it ‘cheats’; they come back, in a manner of speaking. They are still sad moments for me even when I know they are coming, because they are built on relationships because characters, and because those deaths involve choices that those characters have to make. After the character dies, people have time to grieve and consider what the deaths mean–and even after the death is ‘undone’, it still has consequences both for them and their relationship, and for other characters besides. Or consider It’s a Wonderful Life, where there is no shocking death at all–just a chance to look at George Bailey’s life and the people and community he has had an impact on. This is what it means to treat death seriously.
I encourage people to read that Film Crit Hulk article, it’s good!
Dude FCH speaks as if thisi is a book. Of course we wont gain additional scenes to understand why Thanos loves Gamora! Deeper introspection and exiplt lengthly details dont occur that much for the medium hes an expert on. Especially in an assemble live action film. Like Bill above said IW isnt just another story. Its a spefic type of story doing spefic type of things. Movie anayzlers give smaller thoguht out details storycrafters take their time doing way more importance than what happened on screen. A few mintues hear exploring raw emoition through again plot you normalize and socialize is always undercut by editing in the immedite epic threads and worldbuilding techniques. We will never have the equivalent of Fundamentals Of Caring in a live acton movie from any big studio. But to discount the effort the actors put into their chacaters’ pain and trmpuh? To discount a live audince flipping out? In comparison to the rest of iys gener in its medium IW holds up. We can talk about alatertives: Transformers,
War of the worlds skyline battle los angeles pacfic rim planet of the apes star wars last 2 harrypotters rampage this is the end etc. Basically aliens or something else end or attempt to end the currnentsetting. By default death trope is the norm because settings have a population. The comploaint about IW is the implactions of death. What does it mean for induvadals in a story where theres no MPOV
@28
Well, they’re all pretending at all times, so I suppose it’s a matter of degree. I don’t know if the fleeting nature means much–does it negate the original emotional response? The memory of it? If so, why? I guess I don’t accept that as a given. Again, that seems to me to be part of what fiction does. Am I moved when Frodo sails away and leaves Sam? Can I only be moved until I realize there is no Frodo and no Sam–that Tolkien was just “pretending?” How long do I have to wait to realize that before my emotional response is officially negated? Once it is, can I no call it up again? (and yes, I realize that’s a relationship built over over many pages–different mediums but same point). And what does it mean that I get sad every time I read it, even though I’ve read it dozens of times, and even though I know it isn’t “real” because when I pick it up next time he’ll be there and young and with Sam and and and. Fiction/art does funny things.
I’m not so personally sure the movie wants me “shocked.” At least in its dismissive implication. Is there any evidence of that beyond a built-in cynicism?
Why is there no “context” here? I’ve spent how many years with Tony Stark as a character in these films? Captain America? Falcon? That’s not a “context” within which to affected by their (fictional) loss? How many movies or hours or minutes are enough before I’m allowed to be moved? Is there a minimum? I get moved to tears by single films of under 90 minutes. Hell, I get lumps in my throat in 30-second commercials. Are those invalid responses? In any case, movies by their nature are shorthand, but given the years over which these have taken place, I’d argue there’s more context of character for some of these people, not less. Isn’t it just a matter of whether one has accepted the characters enough so as to feel personally moved? I take you at your word that you may not have felt those relationships, those characters as characters, but it seems presumptuous to leap from that to “it doesn’t work because there are no such relationships”
Maybe it’s a matter of patience and imagination. I can accept and react to the immediate pain of their loss (by being moved, not simply shocked), I can imagine the rest of it and thus remain moved or recall being moved, and I can wait for part two to get the rest of it. I’ll grant you, the processing isn’t there on the screen, but being it’s part of a fictional construct anyway, I’m OK with leaving me to carry my own emotional response away until next time.
As for the proffered examples, I don’t know that in fact I’m at all supposed to react particularly strongly to Rocket’s grief over Mantis or Gamora. Groot would seem the obvious choice there. Or Captain America and Bucky, or Black Panther and Okoye. To pick Rocket grieving over Mantis seems a bit of cherry-picking unsupported by the film itself. As for Tony Stark and Spider-Man, again, I don’t know that it’s as definitive as you make it out when you say “we” don’t know. You may not, some may not, but I certainly felt a bond between them, a sense of protectiveness, an awareness of youthful vulnerability and there but for the grace of god . . .etc. And what wasn’t laid out for me I’m able to imagine base on what I know of Stark’s character, and what I know of people, and what I know of how people react to younger people, etc. And of course, what I bring to the table from my own experience. And Yes, A Wonderful Life is a nice exploration of the idea. It’s also a very long movie focused on a single character in a setting that needs next to no introduction or explanation and that doesn’t have the audience expectations of action and spectacle. As for Farscape, it’s serial TV and thus has the luxury of a boatload of time. Seems to be apples and oranges and kiwis. (and to keep the “it’s all subjective” concept in mind, there are lots of people that will argue Wonderful Life is not “moving” but “cheaply, manipulatively sentimental”. I’m not one, but again, 30-second commercials . . .)
You may be right that there will be “two minutes” of sadness in part II, but that’s hardly an argument for things being “simply” this or “simply” that in this film. I’ll certainly be disappointed if that’s the case, and happily criticize away. But I’m not going to do so a year in advance or view this film through that prism. Until the story is done, I won’t judge if death is treated seriously by the story or not. I thought it was treated seriously in the confines of this film, of half the story, and that was fine for me.
If Rocket doesn’t care that Mantis or Drax is gone, then who does? They just blew away 5/6 of the Guardians of the Galaxy. There is no impact because literally no one who is still alive cares that these people are gone or had any relationship to most of them. And we know that they are all coming back because we are not idiots.
Context: Contra to @29, FCH addresses this movie as a movie, not a book. In the context of this movie… there is no context to anything. Relationships are summed up with a nod or a quip. If you walked into this movie cold it would be total nonsense in a way that The Empire Strikes Back or Harry Potter and The Goblet Of Fire would not be. Those films still tell a contained story and have characters with relationships that make sense. Infinity War is almost 100% reference and inference; you understand what is going on because hopefully you saw 18 other movies. (Even if we did see them though, nothing much that happened in them matters. What is the consequence of all the hubbub of Civil War? Nothing, basically; Tony Stark looks regretfully at a cell phone.)
Taken on its own terms, we have Thanos: a character who we really don’t know anything about before this movie. We learn about his motives because he tells us what they are, but not why. We know he loves Gamora, although we don’t know why–and neither does she! We know, even if we don’t believe that she is going to stay dead, that this is supposed to be sad, because Thanos sheds tears and he tells us that he is sad. I know nothing about their relationship (and again, apparently neither does Gamora!), so this has no impact on me. It might be sad for the other Guardians to know that Gamora is dead–if they had more than .5 seconds to digest that fact.
The movie is manipulative and empty because it knows it doesn’t have to do the hard work of telling a story-we’ll fill in the blanks. And just to emphasize the point again: this is not normal. It’s not normal for movies in general. It has not been true of the MCU–even the weakest MCU movies have generally told stories and functioned as movies. Even Age of Ultron.
@32: “What is the consequence of all the hubbub of Civil War? Nothing”
I couldn’t disagree more. What is the consequence? The consequence is that the Avengers were fractured and split at a time when they needed most to be together. The consequence is that the players were scattered all over the world, in pairs and small groups, when what the Earth needed was its Mightiest Heroes.
You mention people walking into this movie cold, never having seen any of the previous movies. Nobody, figuratively, is doing that. Too few people to care about. This is a movie that is the culmination of ten years and 18 movies and everyone knows it, even the people who haven’t seen all 18 movies. Anyone who walks in without taking the time to watch at least a couple of movies to get the gist of what’s going on… that’s their problem. This movie never pretends to be anything but what it is: part one of the end game. We get part two next May.
@6 Thanks for bringing up Civil War–I think this movie is that movie’s sequel in a very direct way, including that emotional note from Tony Stark on Titan.
@33, right on. Civil War is where the Avengers doomed themselves to defeat by Thanos. To paraphrase Dumbledore after Voldemort’s return, (and why not if we’ve already brought Star Wars and LotR into the discussion? :-) ), the Avengers are as strong as they are united, as weak as they are divided.
@33 I guarantee there are people who walk into this cold, or who have only seen a smattering of the movies; I know some of them. But that’s my point–they don’t matter, because this isn’t even a movie or a story really–it’s an event and an object. And yes, it absolutely does pretend to be something other than Part 1; Marvel has been trying to tell us that it is a standalone movie. They are lying, of course.
Also sorry, gimme a break about the Avengers being split up. It took all of two seconds to mend that gap; instead of Stark making the call, Banner does. Every Avenger but Iron Man (and Hawkeye lol) is there in Wakanda before Thanos shows up; it doesn’t matter, he wins anyway. Rhodey’s injury is a total non-entity; he’s walking and operational as War Machine again.
@10. Daniel
I agree that Thanos is the protagonist. We don’t see enough of him, but he’s the character driving the story and the one we learn the most about. Josh Brolin did an excellent job.
However I disagree he has any character progression. Since people are spoilering left and right anyway: he starts off as a ruthlessly wanting to kill half the universe regardless of cost. He ends the movie happy he has achieved his goal, watching the sunrise as he said he would. He doesn’t learn or change anywhere along the line.
I didn’t say Rocket doesn’t care. I said I didn’t think the creators expected me to choose that relationship to react to. Obviously in the fully fictional and lived in world where the talking raccoon guy has spent a pretty decent amount of time with the psychic antennae woman he’d care that the big Glove guy killed her and half the universe by snapping his fingers, and we’re supposed to assume that on an intellectual level. But Asking the creators to make me fully buy emotionally into every nook and cranny of a character’s fictional existence is a bit much it seems to me. I assume Rocket cares about Mantis, but I don’t feel it because movie time. It’s enough that I feel he mourns Groot. Just like I assume there are other people Steve Rogers might miss, but I don’t know who they are because I haven’t met them because, again, movie time. It’s enough I feel him grieving Bucky. All these characters have a limitless number of things that I can assume they care about that I don’t expect to feel fully. Their favorite TV show getting canceled for instance. I don’t need to feel that; it’s a selective medium
And yes “nobody cares they’re gone because there’s nobody alive who cares” is true with regard to the Guardians because by defintion the Guardians are the Guardians because they’re loners and misfits and trauma survivors. I’d assume Drax’s family would care if he were gone, but they’re not around. I’d imagine Star Lord would be mourned by Yondu, but he’s not around. That’s baked into those particular characters, so it’s cherry picking again. But Peter Parker will be mourned. T’Challa will be mourned. Etc.
And true, if you walked into this movie cold it would have less impact. But once again, that seems definitionally self-evident. If I pick up most any 5th or 6th or 17th book in a series, or walk into most middle films of a trilogy, what happens to already-established characters will have less impact. Do I care as much about what happens to the characters in Empire if I haven’t seen the first movie? No. Do the emotional beats of Goblet carry more weight if you’ve read the prior books? Of course they do. Not to mention this movie is the culmination of ten years and 17 films. A more apt comparison is therefore the last Harry Potter book. If you read that without having read the others–came to it cold–would it make sense or carry the same weight? Not even close. More importantly, why would you expect it to? Not to mention, we’re comparing a 600+ page book full of narration and dialog and interior monologue and action to a script that’s probably what, 200 pages max, including screen directions etc. More apples and kiwis. The same holds true for comparing it to prior Marvel films–a conglomeration/culmination isn’t the same thing. It has different needs, different expectations, different requirements. One can certainly argue whether or not it’s executed well as that culmination form, but one can’t stack it against a totally different type of film trying to do other things and judge it in relation.
I’m pretty sure we’ll see some grief in Part II. Maybe even more than five seconds. If not I’ll sign your on-line petition . . .
@32 I’ll agree that Thanos’s entire relationship with Gamora wasn’t earned (we’ll have to agree to disagree on the rest).
Telling instead of showing was fine for “how Thanos got the glove part of the gauntlet,” but doesn’t work for emotional bonds between characters. All the other characters had an entire movie or two to build those bonds. We already know that Steve loves Bucky (platonically or otherwise) enough to go to war for him. Tony’s been trying to protect Peter while still mentoring him super to super. All the guardians parent Groot and they make up their own derpy little family.
The single scene of Thanos “adopting” Gamora wasn’t enough to create a father-daughter relationship. I assumed Gamora was fake-crying when she “killed” Thanos in case he wasn’t actually dead, but then film wanted us to believe she was actually sad and had complicated feelings about her kidnapper/father figure? Thanos’s single tear when he was about to kill her actually took me out of the story a bit because it was so unbelievable. I wasn’t moved by Gamora’s death at all, despite Zoe Saldana doing her best with the lines given to her.
Oh well. It wasn’t a perfect movie but I still had a good time watching it and that’s all I was really looking for.
@35
I don’t know if Marvel’s usual discussion of this as a “stand alone” is in terms of being able to walk in cold and having the same reaction as someone who has seen the other films. Whenever I’ve seen them talking about this as a “standalone” it isn’t so much “it doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen the others” as “it has a beginning, middle, and end” so there is a sense of a sort of resolution at the end (which I think they’re right on; it’s only not resolved if one wants a happy ending). And they almost always make the point it’s a “culmination,” which would pretty strongly imply you’d get a lot more out of it if you saw the earlier ones.
Plus, to reuse your “we’re not idiots” line above, do any of us really expect a money-making studio to tell people “definitely don’t come see this movie unless you’ve seen at least half the others!”? You call it lying; I’d call it basic marketing. I actually think they’ve been pretty honest about it relative to the marketing.
And if you walk into a “culminating” film involving a slew of characters who have had 1-3 or 4 other films each prior to this one, and you expect to get all the jokes, all the emotional impact, all the background, rather than enjoying it on the most basic dumb fun movie full of spectacle, action, stuff blowing up, cool scenery, people fighting , etc., that’s a pretty unrealistic (to be charitable) expectation I’d say. Even if the “we’re here to make money” studio is telling you otherwise–which I don’t think they actually are. At least, not that hard. Not as hard as they could or should be from their accountants’ viewpoint (“Hey, shut up with the ‘culminating’ already; you’re killing us!)
@12 “For that matter, every girl James T. Kirk ever seduced was fridged. I’m not saying it’s a good plot point, I’m just saying there’s a long history on both sides.”
Did you even watch Star Trek? I can’t think of a single woman he seduced who was fridged, i.e. killed to give him motivation for the episode, let alone the show. In fact, all but two women he seduced (and I have to use that term loosely to find two) lived long and happy lives as far as we know. Sheesh and what about the movies and the mother of his son? Not a leg to stand on. You should have used Bond as an example.
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More specific to the point of this essay, a story doesn’t have to turn grim and real to be grown up. That is evidence, to my mind, of someone who feels guilty and childish for wanting something that is optimistic. Or someone who has to rationalize an unpopular decision by storytellers in a series she likes.
For most of human existence people didn’t consider enjoying fantasy tales of heroes and heroines who succeed to be childish. Why is that suddenly a thing? It’s to our detriment that it has become a wide-held belief, and is related to much of the cynicism and loss of hope I notice in our species. Hope and laughter in the face of death is often all we’ve got folks.
@35 “Also sorry, gimme a break about the Avengers being split up. It took all of two seconds to mend that gap;”
That gap never is mended. There are two major battles fought to stop Thanos, one in Wakanda, one on Titan. Both fall short. One has to wonder how it would have turned out on Titan if it was the fully unified Avengers (+ Guardians) attacking Thanos on his own turf, still down two Infinity stones. (I mean, the Stark/Parker/Strange/Quill/Mantis/Drax team almost succeeded as it was). This is the story of a fractured team of superheroes unprepared and unable to defend against the ultimate threat precisely because of their brokenness and the slapdash nature of their defense.
@10, @36 To the point about Thanos as “protagonist,” I was tickled by how the main “hero’s journey” of the movie (there were several, of course), very much belonged to Thanos.
I’m sorry, but I don’t think anything in the Infinity War movie backs up the contention that it is the story about a fractured group of heroes. Most of the characters in Civil War are peripheral to the story, so it certainly isn’t about them; nothing about the logic of the story suggests that if Civil War hadn’t happened, they would all be there on Titan either. I think that argument requires a lot of substantiation of things that actually happened in the movie before I can accept it.
Side note, I am a bit chagrined; I feel like I’ve been told that I shouldn’t criticize the movie on its own terms as a standalone story–but I also shouldn’t criticize it in comparison with any other movies, including its own companion movies in the MCU.
@colin R, IMO, the only “companion” movies it has in the MCU are the other Avengers movies. Compare it and criticize it comparison to the other “crossover event” movies, but it’s nonsensical to compare it to Guardians or Iron Man.
And as a standalone film, it FAR EXCEEDS Avengers and Age of Ultron in doing what it set out to do.
And as far as the Avengers are “mended” crap, it’s not what happens in this movie(a phone call) that people are referring to. It’s that in the years since Civil War, these people haven’t been coordinating their planned defense of Earth. Tony, instead of consolidating a defense, has spent the time trying to bolster the team roster, to poor effect, the one solid recruit he had turned his offer down.
I think Civil War (technically a Cap movie) is a “companion” movie to IW, and it was more successful in telling a complete story with real stakes and development for the characters.
@21 – Anthony Pero: Yes, exactly. Since we can care about fictional characters in the first place, we can care about their deaths even if we know they’re coming back. And expecting superhero comic book movies to not go there, being that they’re based on, well, superhero comic books, is like expecting them not to have powers, costumes, and codenames. If you don’t want superhero comic book elements, go watch other movies.
@27 – Zodda: Hear hear.
Much of the churn in this discussion is destined to remain unresolved till Avengers 4 comes out. As big as the movie is, it’s still basically just an introduction to Thanos. Aside from Loki, viewers have complained for years that Marvel doesn’t have good villains (oxymoron?).
Maybe look at it as the 3rd act in a 4 act play. All the discussion is incomplete till we see act 4 next year. This is just a comics event, or old-time movie serial (like Flash Gordon), writ large and with a gigantic budget and studio behind it. We simply don’t have the whole story yet.
Otherwise, it achieves what it set out to do. I doubt that there isn’t a good endgame set up. That would be the truly shocking thing.
If we’re to indulge in speculation, I don’t yet see how Captain Marvel fits in. If her film is set in the 90s and she fights a Skrull invasion, why haven’t the Avengers heard of her? They may bring back Fury and Coulson as younger selves, but no other familiar heroes will be around. Plus, as much as 20 years could pass for her character till Avengers 4. Does she stop aging or will they have to make Brie Larson look middle-aged?
The other loose end nagging at me is the destruction on Xandar. Still hoping Richard Rider, or an Earth-based Nova, eventually show sup.
@42 You’re right, it’s not about the heroes. It’s about Thanos. He’s the protagonist. He drives that narrative and everyone else just reacts to him. But I think you’re wrong about all of them ending up on Titan if Civil War hadn’t happened. If the team was whole and Earth was attacked by the Children of Thanos, and they had a way to get to Titan because they knew he would be there (circumstances would be vastly different to the way they played out in the movie, naturally), it does stand to reason that the entire team would make that journey.
Here’s a plausible scenario. The movie starts out the same way. We get up to the point where Strange is being taken, Stark and Parker are aboard the ship, and they’re headed to space. Thor and Banner just had Ragnarok and were attacked by Thanos – we start them from that point – and Banner has just crashed into Strange’s house. Thor, still in space. Saved by the Guardians. Instead of an immediate detour to get a new weapon, they all go straight to Earth. Thor and Gamora inform the Avengers who Thanos is, that he’s on Titan, and they figure that’s where Stark, Parker, and Strange are heading. At this point, the team is whole, no Civil War. They all get aboard the Guardians’ ship and head to Titan – part rescue mission, part assault.
There’s your entire team on Titan. Maybe on the way Thor and Rocket decide to go on the side quest and meet the team there.
On Titan, Thanos kicks their asses and uses the Space Stone, which he already has, to teleport them all back to Earth. That way we still get our big Wakanda battle.
Just off the top of my head. It’s not perfect. But I think it’s plausible.
@45: So if Yondu comes back in GotG3, that won’t cheapen his death in 2? I mean, we saw Quill and the Ravagers have feelings about it, and that’s what matters, right?
@44 jere7my
Except there is only one emotional arc for Civil War, Steve and Bucky’s reconciliation. Even Tony’s pathos is plot driven, it’s not really an “arc”. We don’t see his thought processes, he’s confronted with information, but what decisions he makes are off screen, and the rest of his role is defending his off screen actions. That’s not the case for an Avengers movie, where there are multiple arcs going on at once. The characters who don’t actually get “arcs” in this movie, are the ones who survive, Steve, Tony, Tasha, Thor and Banner.
@47, The explanation for Carol is how they are going to introduce the fact that powered people have been around since Steve, there wasn’t a 63 year gap of no supers. And I don’t know that we’re getting a Skrull invasion. The Comic Con footage shows one ship. And we know Carol will spend a portion of her movie in space meeting up with a younger Ronan and Korvath.
@49, Depends on how he was brought back. Buffy’s shown it can be done.
Only two people get arcs in IW, and one of them is a tree.
@47
Skrull invasion probably happened in secret. Captain Marvel probably spent the last 20 years taking part in a Skrull-Kree war. Roy Thomas likened the Skrull-Kree War to the Pacific War and Earth to a small island in the Pacific, like Tuvalu, caught in the middle. I could see Captain Marvel offering to serve in that war to avoid the interplanetary war involving Earth. So she could take a long while to answer Fury and to return to Earth, and maybe it’s better she doesn’t return, we don’t know the terms that made our planet neutral.
I mean, it’s just speculation, but I’d really like the Skrull-Kree war to appear, as well as maybe Secret Invasion in the future.
One thing I keep seeing is people referring to the next Infinity War movie as Avengers 4 but from everything I’ve read/seen it will be Avengers 3 part 2. Now this may have changed recently since I went to the Marvel web page and it has the movies listed as Avengers: Infinity War part 1 and Avengers: Infinity War part 2 with no #3 or #4 or anything. Anyways, my point is that from the very beginning Marvel has been treating these movies as one big story in two parts, just like the Harry Potter and Hunger Games franchises did with their last movies.
Also, jere7my @@@@@ 49, bringing Yondu back would be different from what happens in the next Infinity War movie in my opinion since Yondu’s death was at the end of the story while what happened in Infinity war is just part 1 of the story. We’re only at the middle of the story right now. A story which involves stones with power over both time and reality. So if time and reality can be changed in this story I don’t think using such to reverse death within this story is the same as bringing a character back in a later story just because you can. Again, that’s just my opinion.
Also also, Anthony Pero, I agree with everything you said about Luke in comment 22.
@53: As I said elsewhere, they stripped the “part 1” out of the title of Infinity War and tried to pass it off as a complete movie. You’re right, it’s not a complete movie, and I would find IW less manipulative if they’d been up front about that. (If we’re supposed to think it’s a complete story because Thanos has an arc, a) I don’t care about Thanos’ story, and b) he doesn’t.)
Supposedly, the subtitle to Avengers 4 will be spoilery, which is why it was withheld. What if it’s The Rise of Adam Warlock?
Saying it’s not the 4th in a series, even though it was originally IW Part2 is just arguing semantics. In the scheme of things it matters little. Anything with marketing hype is manipulative. You may as well never see another Hollywood film again if you object to emotional manipulation of that kind.
@54
It’s a complete movie in that you can walk out of it with the story resolved. It’s a bummer of a resolution, granted, but you can walk out with Thanos winning and hanging out on his planet and have it be the end. Everybody knows it’s a two – parter. They’ve never tried to hide that fact. They didn’t try to pretend they were filming only one movie while they were actually filming two. Just as they’ve never tried to keep it secret who was getting sequels so the audience might be kept on tenterhooks. Again, it seems people are ascribing a level of deviousness and underhandedness to the creators that just isn’t supported by what’s been said and what’s been widely (incredibly widely) reported. To not know that this was the first of a two-part movie that was the “culmination” of 10 years and over a dozen other films one would have to have been living on Gamora’s planet for the past half-decade
You’d think my postage bills would be higher, then, because while I was sitting in the theater I had no idea there was going to be an Avengers 4, or that IW used to be a part 1 and was switched up to be a “standalone”. All I’d heard was that it was supposed to be the culmination of ten years of storytelling, which does not scream “to be continued” to me. I knew there was another Spidey movie and another BP movie coming, but that’s about it. (I also never read the comics, so there was no context to what happened.)
I know it’s tempting to think “everybody knows” whatever pop culture news the sites you happen to read are focused on, but huge swathes of the audience don’t follow that stuff at all. I actively avoid those sites, because they play fast and loose with spoilers.
@57
The assumption isn’t based on awareness of pop culture sites. I don’t go there either; I have enough to do and read. It’s not simply been reported on pop culture website or specialist comic sites (I”m assuming since again, i don’t read those) but all over the basic news media. A quick search finds multiple articles in the NY Times ,Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal, CNN, etc. CNN even has reference to it in some of the the headlines “Chris Evans Done After Avengers 4” for instance). And some references occur in the business section, not the entertainment/culture section.
And of course people have been talking about it. It’s an assumption, granted, but it seems most interested in seeing the movie might have picked up the fact that there were two Avengers films scheduled through TV news (I don’t watch it but I assume it was covered), print or online news, or just osmosis from conversations at work, with friends, etc.. Maybe not someone who went to see the Emily Dickinson biopic (which I did so I’ll allow the two audiences aren’t mutually exclusive, but it is hard for me to imagine that “huge swathes” of the audience for IW (as opposed to the movie-going audience that isn’t going to see it) were unaware of that fact. The fact that you picked up, without going to those pop culture sites, that it was a “culmination” and that two of the character would have sequels seems to make it even less likely, since you had some of the “out there” info and somehow just missed another piece.
I guess until some data magically appears. we’ll have to live with our relative assumptions–me that you’re a minority and you that you’re part of a huge swathe
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the Russo Brothers decide to take “Part 1” off of Infinity War and rename Avengers 4 because they’re very different movies? I don’t think the next Avengers will be the action-fest that this one was, but will be more introspective and a slower paced movie, kind of like the difference between Kill Bill 1 and 2. Then again, I could be way off base. 365 and counting.
@52 From what I can tell that is the case. I’m just not seeing a Skrull invasion of Earth.
In re the “Two Part” discussion. The movie was initially revealed as a two part movie. Then the Russos said they would keep Infinity War it’s own movie. And they weren’t lying. The Infinity War is over. They also said that they couldn’t reveal the title of the next Avengers without spoiling Infinity War.
So while they IMPLIED that Avengers 3 & 4 would be a stand alone, it was also obvious that Avengers 4 would rely heavily on the events of Infinity War.
Please allow me to offer an outsider of sorts’ perspective.
I am living in Venezuela. I have no way out. For those who don’t know just how serious that is, please just do some Google search on Venezuela.
In less than one year, our whole lifestyle has crumbled down hopelessly. I have lost more than 20 kilos in just months, just like so many more here. I can’t pay the ticket for an Infinity War movie ticket anymore. The international community babbles and does nothing of any actual value for us while our regime’s leaders fatten their wallets with impunity and plot to perpetuate themselves in power for decades, to perpetuate this horror, with the aid of corrupted armed forces.
I don’t think anyone who lives in the United States, who doesn’t have to worry about their whole society crashing down around them, can truly understand the dread, the horror, the day to day angst of losing everything. Nobody is saying your own problems are nothing, but compared to ours, your society has grown so much used, over decades, to safety and comfort zones. Your average school or night club shootings that shock and rattle you for weeks or months, while horrifying on their own, are still, numbers and frequency wise, small fry compared to what other societies have to suffer through in a regular basis. Whenever I read these Internet spoilers (because I have to at least use the Internet while I still can) and then the First World’s reactions to them, I’m reminded how alien actual widespread suffering is for those societies, as it once was for us, I suppose. No matter how much you guys can empathize with what’s being shown on screen when a hero loses everything, families, whole society and lives included, and no matter how expertly the creators convey it, there will always be this distance, this separation between that fictionalized portrayal of misery and loss and what’s it like in real life, elsewhere, in Syria, Africa or here or wherever.
Please appreciate your lives, your chances for happiness and prosperity, the relative safety of knowing more likely than not you’ll still have freedom to pick whatever you want to eat and wear and buy, what movies to watch, next week and next month and the month after and so on. Please enjoy knowing you only have to see massive tragedies and widespread death in movie screens and not all around yourselves, but also please keep in mind those of us who do have to live through them.
@Overmaster: Thank you for sharing that. You are right, of course. These quibbles about marketing and expectations are very minor matters. Sometimes I wonder why people are getting hung up on them. We do have many more serious things to consider in the real world and problems that we shouldn’t let slide because we’re rather not face them.
Entertainment offers a brief respite from all that, but we sometimes let it loom too large in our conscious frameworks. Did you enjoy this movie? Yes. Ok, moving on. Did you not enjoy this movie? No. Ok, also move on.
Oh, certainly, everyone who has the possibility of accessing such entertainment has every right to enjoy it and even getting passionate about it, as long as one doesn’t lose the perspective of what’s the most important in life. I love all that stuff myself, I still do, and I wish I still could have more of it to make my life more bearable. I was just thinking, well, since the article was pretty much giving opinions on the meaning of utter defeat and heroic failure in current pop entertainment, I thought I’d give my two cents on what it feels when one is surrounded by everyday defeat and an ongoing crisis.
Concerning the new Star Wars trilogy, I can tell you it’s not very uplifting for someone living under an actual dictatorship having one of your childhood franchises basically tell you “You know, no matter what you do, or how many epic deeds you perform, even if you start young and hopeful you’ll still die crushed under a petty tyrant, old and miserable”. I mean, it happens, sadly all too often, but it’s still pretty heartbreaking. I’m not saying entertainment should have to shy away from such stories, but it’s still rather painful from here in a way maybe someone who’s never lived under such conditions could truly understand from personal experience.
Thanks for lending an ear.
That’s not what the new Star Wars Trilogy is saying. It’s saying “just because you defeat a tyrant, don’t stop being vigilant, or you will be governed by tyrants again”.
@leah: I know I’m late to the party. Just got to watch the movie yesterday.
Yet I found out Spider Man’s death was ad lib. So I bonus money goes to the actor.
https://screenrant.com/avengers-infinity-war-spider-man-death-scene/
I found a lot of the comments very interesting. I don’t particularly care whether it’s Avengers 3 or 4 or 3 parts 1 and 2. All the films are connected, and with the exception of the Hulk films, I think I’ve seen (and own) every one of them. And I’m old. I am ready to see Infinity War again. And maybe again, before buying it when it comes out. I have a pact with my niece and nephew that we go see the Marvel movies together – it’s worked for 10 years, and we just confirmed it again after seeing Infinity War.
But the reason I decided to post was Peter Parker’s death. I came out of the theater thinking that the reason he was able to hang on for as long as he did was the nanotech in the brand spanking new Spidersuit he got before leaving Earth. it was desperately trying to keep him together before the dust overwhelmed it. I didn’t see anyone else post that theory here, and I don’t know, because I don’t really do boards, but I thought I’d offer it up.
Have at it!
Peter probably was going to go in a puff just like the rest, but was spared (temporarily) by the power of the Ad Lib. This has led to retroactively having to explain the ad lib. They should give everyone doing so a No-prize.
What they did to Luke is just one part of whipping out all the Expanded Universe and all that us fans have experienced with our favorite characters, or in Disney’s terms – have not experienced. throwing that all away for another 3 movies and some merchandise is just cheap.
Back on subject – just wanted to add a thought that there is another kind of impact that death in certain movies is intented to have on us except the emotional one. And that is – that war is no drama meant stir my emotions. I mean until now all this villains vs heros had some wrestling match experience, you get to shout some funny lines, you wait for the fans to cheer you so you can pump yourself up while your oponent just lets you do that, you get the belt while your oponent will get another chance later on to try for the belt again. it is more a “show” of a war than actual merciless war. at time of war, real war, you don’t have the luxury to get up cought with your feelings, and sometimes even your values. Marvel maybe wanted to give our heroes a feel of how a threat can be so devastating, that even once you beat it you can’t feel like a winner. The mental outcome of real war is an overlooked casualty. feelings like “why didn’t I care seing him die back then” or “he sacrificed himself for me many times, while I only cared for my own survival when he needed me” or “when we send those soldiers to war we didn’t think they would actually start dying, not talking about the bodycount”… that being a superhero fighting vicious villains is not something young Peter Parker should look up to like a teenager adoring Pop icons. That taking the job means suffering inhumanly alot. after 18 movies of Hulk Hogan vs The Undertaker which was entertaining mind you, they maybe wanted to raise the stakes not only by killing some, but by having no time for oscarnominated emotional moments were all is still all fighting takes a break while we focus on his beloved friend taking his time saying proper goodbyes. that’s a good show, but not real war. It’s called infinity WAR, not Wrestlemania
I’ve just finished watching Infinity War and I can’t help feeling a little bit upset by our dear heroes’ easy deaths especially Vision and Scarlet Witch’s, who were really powerful characters, but there was nothing they could do to avoid being obliterated by Thanos. I also felt sad about Heimdall’s death.
While in Titan, the team almost got Thanos’s gauntlet out of his hand, but Quill’s childish reaction screwed everything up. How annoying!
I thought the moment the 6 Infinity Stones got together would be more spectacular (lights, thunderbolts, quakes, etc. almost like when Cell became a perfect being in Dragon Ball Z or Sailor Saturn was summoned by the outer Senshi in Sailor Moon Crystal, well… if you’ve seen those anime, of course).
I’ve got some questions though… Where was Antman? Will the X-Men ever join the fight? Will Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. be ever portrayed?
My favourite Avengers film up to now is the Age of Ultron.
@69. Tony: “I thought the moment the 6 Infinity Stones got together would be more spectacular…”
You mean, like turning into a giant blue furball?
praise Beebo!
@69 — There was a single line of dialogue that made it sound like both Ant-Man and Hawkeye had gone into (temporary?) post-Civil War retirement and hence were unavailable.
They said they were under house arrest to be with their families.
I’m way overdue here but I really enjoyed reading this article and all the comments – I digested them over several days. We saw the movie over Memorial Day weekend. I’d like to see it again, since we had kids with us and they were at times a little fidgety!
I love that this article brings up Luke Skywalker because I actually was thinking of Luke as well, although in a slightly different context. Regarding the first portion of discussion – this isn’t a Star Wars thread, so I’ll just sum up my feelings towards canon!Luke as this: I still have deeply mixed feelings towards TFA as a movie and the direction they took all of the legacy characters and the plot in general. However, the more I think about it, the more I enjoy TLJ and I do enjoy quite a bit what they did with Luke given the circumstances they were starting with (there are other directions I would have preferred as a starting point, but oh well).
But one of the things that stood out to me is how the heroes were generally insistent that they don’t ‘trade lives’ – and even when they try to bring themselves to (Quill attempting to kill Gamora, Scartlet Witch attempting to kill Vision, etc) it doesn’t actually pan out. This is not to say that there isn’t room for a person choosing to sacrifice themselves (which in a way Vision and Gamora were doing, as they did consent to what was going on) but I think that is one of the consistent traits of the heroes – wheras we see Thanos IS willing to sacrifice Gamora – someobdy he loves according to his own twisted way – for his ultimate goal (to say nothing of the other half of the universe).
Side note – I can’t help but think a a funny ending would have been if the Snapture had also claimed Thanos himself. Oops! Obviously one that gives the heroes little to no agency or part in his defeat, but a kind if ironic way of evil being its own undoing. Did the gauntlet have that safeguard, I wonder? How much of Thanos’s ‘will’ is in that snap? I know other articles have asked similar questions like, does it take the other planets he already visited into account, etc?
ANYWAY – similar to what the canon Star Wars movies explore with Luke’s character regarding heroism, legend, his feeling overly pressured by it, etc, there was an old EU book that also explored a lot of these concepts and one of my favorite parts was where (as told from another POV) Luke refuses to kill anybody, including a bunch of brainwashed servants attacking him, and the POV comes to the conclusion that one of the defining characteristics of Luke Skywalker’s heroism is that he will not sacrifice even one innocent life. It’s honestly one of my favorite characterizations of Luke Skywalker in any medium, and it’s what I kept thinking of during the scenes where ‘trading lives’ was discussed.
As for the rest of the movie, agreed that Quill basically screwed things up (although in an understandable way that is true to his character) and I’m not sure how I feel about the emotional impact of the Snapture, if I think it will be undone, or if that somehow cheapens it. I can understand that for the characters it’s real in that moment, but as a viewer it does feel a little manipulative (yes, I know movies basically exist to manipulate us – in a way, that’s why we see them – but there’s a line where it seems too obvious and can bring you out of the story). But I also recognize that it’s part of the medium these stories are adapted to. I have to admit I’m still holding out a bit of hope for Doctor Strange pulling some kind of trick with the time stone or the mirror dimension (we just rewatched Doctor Strange a few days ago and all the setup about the Mirror Dimension being used to contain threats does seem a bit foreshadow-y…but on the other hand, I don’t see how Maria Hill and Nick Fury could be part of the mirror dimension since that’s obviously a totally different POV).
Still, I can see ways for them to go forward with it, even with the Spider-Man, GoG and Black Panther sequels we may be getting – there are setups for other characters to take all those mantles.
It was actually Black Panther’s death that hit me the hardest, I think. I had managed to pretty much avoid spoilers for the movie (although I knew there was a ‘snap’ and something bad happened that involved death on a large scale, and given my limited comics knowledge I figured that something like the Snapture was going to happen), but on a completely unrelated site, I happened to read a spoiler that Black Panther died in this movie (I was fairly ticked as it was on an article about Black Panther, not Avengers, so :P ). So in a way it did lessen the impact of starting to see ‘main’ characters fade away, and as soon as Bucky faded I knew it was coming. And while Peter definitely got some heartbreaking lines, I actually thought T’Challa’s line (“this is no place to die”) was heartbreaking in its own way, especially as he was trying to help Okoye up and to safety.
But what really got me is that I feel like we JUST GOT this character and I loved him in Black Panther and so for him to already be taken away just seems needlessly cruel. In fact, my favorite MCU movies have been the more recent ones – Guardians 2, Thor Ragnarok, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man – and we lost pretty much all of the Guardians, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange as well. And the ending of Ragnarok was pretty much subverted as well (and we presumably lost Loki) so gaaaah.
(Speaking of, who else is left??? Did Korg/Valkaryie make it? What about Hawkeye’s kids and wife – or Hawkeye himself? Darcy? Jane Foster? Delmar? Ned? Shuri? The only official statements I’ve read about were that Betty Ross, Lady Sif, the fake Loki actor from Ragnarok and Galaga guy did get Snapped (or are otherwise dead), but Aunt May and Howard the Duck did not.)
At any rate, I’m ready for part 2 – I was a little put out when I realized that the next two movies are technically happening before Infinity Wars so won’t provide any hint of what happened in the aftermath! And I suppose there’s no guarantee of safety for Ant-Man/Wasp or any of those characters, unless the movie dovetails with the ending.
I will say that when I saw “Thanos will return’ in the end credits, I couldn’t help but laugh.
@69 – I don’t think the X-Men are part of the MCU continuity as a different studio owns the rights. My understanding is that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch even had the origins of their powers changed (experimentation with the stones) since they couldn’t be referred to as ‘mutants’.
That said, I just did some googling and apparently there was some kind of Disney/Fox deal so I guess theoretically it could be possible. But so far they seem to be their own sets of continuity. I’ve heard that Deadpool technically is in the X-Men continuity although obviously it’s a lot more meta/self referential.
For a number of reasons, I only got to see the movie late last night. Now I have scrolled through all the various comments and am ready to give my two cents’ worth:
1. IW is a stand-alone film in the same way that Empire Strikes Back is a stand-alone movie. There’s a story arc and a resolution to that story, but not to the big story overall. More importantly, it’s a happy ending for Thanos, exactly as portrayed in the movie. He got what he wanted. FIN.
2. There’s two ways to look at the deaths of so many characters. First, did we lose any we strongly identify with? The loss of Spider-Man and Black Panther in particular would seem to resonote with many. If a character you really like was part of the Crumbling (I claim the trademark), then it’s going to hurt you. The second way is more along this path: with all of these heroes assembled together, they still couldn’t defeat Thanos and they’ve now lost a lot of their strength. How the heck is this reduced and shocked bunch going to get up off the canvas and put things right? Sure, there will be the occasional ‘cheat’, such as introducing new characters, but generally that’s a shorter roster of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Round 2, if they can even manage to find Thanos and call him out.
3. Having lost my own father the weekend IW came out, I can identify with a relationship where two people do not really let one another how they feel about each other. Gamora’s feelings for/against Thanos come from a multitude of backgrounds: his treatment of her and the constant fights with Nebula; the kidnapping and abuse (but remember the Stockholm Syndrome – who else did Gamora have to identify with at a vulnerable time in her life?); but also being entrusted with important missions. Gamora was, in essence, groomed by Thonas into what he wanted her to be. In spite of her fierce opposition to Thanos he could still take pride in his little girl. Gamora’s tears were certainly not those of love, but there were a lot of emotions tied up in her that needed an outlet. Note the important differences in relationships, love, and sacrifice: when push came to shove, Gamora would kill Thanos and Thanos would kill Gamora, but Loki could not allow Thor to be killed, and Quill could not kill Gamora. Wanda could only bring herself to destroy Vision’s stone when no other option was available.
In a movie filled with a cast of thousands, the moment for me was the appearance by the Red Skull. Nice callback.