Avengers: Infinity War

Might as well get this rolling. Footage was shown at D23 -- nothing official released yet but here's a very spoiler-heavy discussion of said footage:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-first-footage-from-avengers-infinity-war-blows-awa-1796948476

Etc. etc.

Plus, Black Order characters now known

https://io9.gizmodo.com/thanos-black-order-and-infinity-gauntlet-have-been-reve-1796952158

Ahhhh, cool. I'd kinda been wondering if they'd incorporate some of Hickman's material into the next Avengers movies, as his run is readymade for big screen epic insanity.

Whole lotta Avengin'

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/k4umfbkielbit0zqgpyf.png

I'm becoming gravely concerned that Thanos is going to be horribly boring in these.

I miss the dissolve btw

https://thedissolve.com/news/2895-op-ed-thanos-hasnt-starred-in-a-movie-yet-and-im-a/

Assume the marvel brain trust will use infinity stone related cgi hijinx do the heavy lifting. Replacing thanos doing insane shit with character development

maybe if they bring back Blanchett's Hela to be his sweetheart like in the Ultimates or whatever, he can be a little bit more interesting than the "I deserve to be the ultimate galactic tyrant why because I said so" they've given him and almost every other MCU villain as a motivation

so you’re talking about this basically?

https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Marvel-May-Make-Major-Change-Thanos-Story-Infinity-War-107577.html

I welcome more Cate and less shitty cgi death person as love interest

Yes, that. Also, if we can get a Thanos-Hela DENIED meme out of it, that could also be culturally important

Trailer!...

...tomorrow.

But you can enjoy this now. It reveals nothing.

Thank you to the best fans in the universe! Marvel Studios' "Avengers: #InfinityWar" Trailer TOMORROW. pic.twitter.com/2F1E0A81Bt

— The Avengers (@Avengers) November 28, 2017

my ILM friend that's editing this trailer as we speak is um not fond of it

took me way longer than it should have to realise you weren’t talking about an I love music poster there

I've a feeling A:IW will be a bit of a turd. Serious, blowing up loads of shit Marvel has peaked, it's their quirkier films that are more artistically successful now.

I also feel that this movie I know nothing about will be bad like a piece of poop.

hey me too

Bet Marvel are quaking now!

Man, if the trailer editing guy isn't on board, this culmination of a nine-year, $5 billion franchise is doomed.

she is not a guy

and unsurprisingly she works on a lot of garbage she doesn't like, as you might expect

All people are guys, see US v The Electric Company (1973)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_iGaQglnKg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfuNTqbHE8

Okay, I guess?

Whole lotta' Avengin'

I'm exhausted just from the trailer.
that said, the latest Marvel I saw - I think it was Ultron or was it Civil War... or both ! - was already too much of fights/destruction/everything for me.

Definitely released a few sneaky endorphins TBH. I reaaly hate Spidey's shiny outfit though.

Is this still gonna be two parts?

Apparently the second one is currently untitled and no longer Infinity War Part 2. Make of that what you will.

that said, the latest Marvel I saw - I think it was Ultron or was it Civil War... or both ! - was already too much of fights/destruction/everything for me.

― AlXTC from Paris, Wednesday, November 29, 2017 8:15 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Keep going, dude. All three movies released this year had a ton of laughs and fun to offset the crazy action setpieces.

starlord has a moustache wtf

the other annoying thing for me is that IronMan, arguably my favourite avenger as a kid, spends most of his time in (ugly) clothes instead of his armor (with helmet on !) nowadays...

I do like Parker's Spidey-sense.

Although I know that, in the self-mocking way of these movies, it will probably be referred to exactly that way on screen by Downey: "What, you have some sort of 'spidey sense' or something?"

Thanos looks idiotic, although that's no change from the comics

Otherwise trailer seemed like a boring slugfest

Also: No Paul Rudd, and a whole two (2) women

I see Spider-Man, but... no Ned, no deal!

I counted 5 women (Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Okoye, Gamora, Mantis; no Wasp or Nebula)

I missed Gamora and Mantis but counted a whole 9 seconds featuring women in the trailer

as someone who loves to complain about the proliferation of superhero movies, this is an absurd complaint

also kind of silly to expect anything near equal representation considering every single one of their current toplining characters is male

that's an excuse, not a justification

I see Spider-Man, but... no Ned, no deal!

Quite right. Oh wait.

Ned is in the movie according to Wikipedia, as is Shuri. (Also lol that this trailer is basically a series of low-level spoilers for the Black Panter movie)

Like, I'm pretty sure everyone is expecting Black Panther to make it out of his own movie alive but it wasn't guaranteed that Okeye would until this trailer came out, plus Shuri is listed in the Wikipedia cast.

that's an excuse, not a justification

it's neither - just a reminder of their shitty state of affairs on this score

Speaking of which, where is Monica Rambeau?

it's neither - just a reminder of their shitty state of affairs on this score

so we agree, then - great!

i really enjoy the MCU movies, just this trailer seems to double down on everything i find least enjoyable about them (i.e. fight scenes, brooding, thanos cgi)

hopefully movie won't reflect trailer etc

I appreciate the one-two

.@JohnBoyega is all of us watching the #Avengers​ #InfinityWar trailer... 😂 pic.twitter.com/RguGFWM92s

— IGN (@IGN) November 29, 2017

Yall know I was watching star wars right? 👀👀👀👀😂😂😂 https://t.co/PojthPjDXA

— John Boyega (@JohnBoyega) November 29, 2017

A short new thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVxOVlm_lE8

One less week to wait before we all get to go infinitying.

Apparently two and a half hours long. (How else are they going to show everyone.)

And one last trailer, things go boom, there is snark, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwievZ1Tx-8

i lold at the gag

Yeah, Dr. Strange getting clowned over his name will always be funny.

oddly unpsyched for this tbh

apparently this thing is coming out on my birthday, so my expectations are lower? even a half-assed gift is a nice gesture and I appreciate the effort

xpost Eh, it's not that odd, really. The Avengers flicks have been among the more underwhelming MCU entries imo.

I think the dilemma's similar to the comics -- any single threat you're thinking, didn't Iron Man take out one of these guys on his own in the last story? So the team movie ends up with such an outsized threat that the stakes for any individual character drop, and there isn't enough time to give anyone a real plot arc.

well they dumped out the whole bucket of action figures but it does look appropriately epic and suspenseful, some crazy looking villains and heroes-in-distress moments, ie fighting faceless CGI monsters will only be a small part of this plot.

i don't think it helps that it's coming so hot on the heels of black panther, a bona-fide cultural sensation - another couple of months without a marvel movie would be fine by me, honestly

definitely a weird vibe, now it's more like "want to see more Black Panther plus these other characters you kind of liked? drop by the theater in a few weeks!"

hopefully there will be some actual stakes involved with this one!

kind of think that these two infinity war movies are gonna be the end of RDJ as Tony Stark

Wonder how much work it would take to rebrand this as Black Panther 2: Infinity War.

I'm unsure why the nerd websites are so intent analyzing "what Thanos wants" when the only subplot of this thing that'll be interesting is the characters discovering what angry space dude wants

tbh I think this trailer halfway spoiled that, it's the classic infinity war thing -- too many people alive right now compared to the history of the universe, gotta kill half of em

the macguffin in the story makes whoever holds it a god so I expect some reboots and reshuffles on various hero fronts using the gauntlet as way to wave it off

yeah, it def seems like this would be the most sensible place to rejig things for the next phase of the mcu - seems kinda telling that they're holding off on revealing the title of the second part of this one, presumably because it's gonna be avengers: teen tony unleashed or something similar spoilery

Avengers: Heroes Reborn surely. Or The Liefeldening perhaps?

Avengers: DJP's Triumph

Avengers: Deemsnarok

lol what if the main purpose of the infinity gauntlet is to recast the avengers

"I have rewritten reality and Iron Man has always been... played by Robert Pattinson"

the title of the 2 infinity war movie will probably spoil the most important point of the 1st film: the Electric Boogaloo

Avengers: Shakey's Complaint

"Nobody likes this multimillion dollar ridiculously successful and widely praised franchise at all!"

"By the hoary hosts of Hoggoth, such harsh words."

xpost 2 Aven 2 Gers

the movie ends when Thanos accidentally uses the infinity gauntlet to transform himself into Jonah Hex

and the whole MCU was merely prelude to the long-awaited Jonah Hex sequel

*movie ends, Deadpool appears*

"Did you buy it?"

which is set to be titled the league of extraordinary gentlemen 2: jonah hex vs catwoman

RIP Michael Fleisher

A tiny extra detail:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/peter-dinklage-is-definitely-in-avengers-infinity-war-1823832569

Speculation is he's voicing a Black Order member.

I'm suddenly fearful of the ill-advised introduction of Pip the Troll to the MCU.

Cap has been my favorite MCU character until BP came along. Now fresh off BP it's going to be almost painful to see a movie where Cap is the Team Leader when T'Challa is clearly his equal as a leader in every way.

RIB Michael Fleisher

Bringing the Guardians.. lot in for this. Fuck's that about?

For avenging.

So...got Thursday night opening tickets, come what may.

#BREAKING Avengers: Infinity War has been Rated R by the MPAA for Intense sequences of sci fi action, grisly imagery, some sexuality, nudity, strong language. This marks the first ever R rated MCU film pic.twitter.com/gD4Oggm2R9

— Unreel News (@Unreel__News) March 15, 2018

NUDE THANOS CONFIRMED

thought his face was wrinkly? we have news

xxxp Gamora and Nebula are Thanos's daughters, why would the GotG NOT be in this?

the fact that they're all in it is kind of the point...

The point I think is how many will be left when it's over. Marvel people have talked up their "next phase" ...

Guardian of the Galaxy

Avenger and a Half

the conclusion of these movies would be a swell time to introduce Dr. Doom.

He's part of the Fantastic Four deal so off limits iirc.

In fact, it seems Noah Hawley announced the other week he's making a Doom movie for Fox in the near-ish future.

GIVE ME DOOM

I thought the Disney/Fox deal gave them FF & X-Men finally

Doom is hands down the best villain in comics. It's criminal how badly he's been done. Also there would be something great about a Bad Wakanda all of a sudden popping up on the world stage.

Corporate mergers take a long time and they're not anywhere near even having it approved iirc?

fyi
Under the terms of the agreement, which is expected to close in late 2018 or early to mid 2019, pending regulatory approval

we're a long ways out, assuming it doesn't fall through

Ah well I guess we’ll see

being in the middle of a big merger/spin-off thing at my own workplace, the misunderstanding of timelines is very relatable

another couple years and we'll have this finished

so what is endgame for this universe? are our great grandkids going to have Avengers films?

they'll taper off, then fifteen years later someone will try to add a movie in the same chronology and it'll flop, after which they'll badly reboot it

Rise of the Starks

It just occurred to me yesterday that there's only been two major cast changes in the decade that the MCU has existed, and even those happened very early on. This thing has been surprisingly well planned out. I'm sure they have another decade roughly sketched out, although I'm somewhat at a loss in terms of guessing how that will play out.

My current prediction is that, if Skrulls are a big enough deal in the Captain Marvel movie, the unnamed Avengers movie might be a take on Secret Invasion. Which could make for another big shake-up of the status quo. I think we'll probably see an expansion of the cosmic and magic stuff, as well. Beyond that, who knows. She-Hulk, maybe? Ms. Marvel?

Who besides Rhodes?

Norton > Ruffalo

that Hulk was such a nothing of a movie

oh yeah. Ruffalo was a big improvement. Cheadle is kind of a non-entity in these. Too bad they didn't keep Howard.

I kinda like the Hulk flick. It's the MCU's b-movie. And it's better than Ang Lee's gamma-irradiated turkey.

(I'm trying to talk the gf into rewatching all seventeen(!!!) of the MCU movies that are on blu-ray with me before the new one drops next month. I can give a more up-to-date review when/if that actually happens.)

I’ve been calling this “Avengers: Infinity Fuck” in my head ever since it was first announced years ago, I just wanted to mention that

And it's better than Ang Lee's gamma-irradiated turkey.

this is incorrect

The Ang Lee one is very bad.

i like the Ang

Yeah me too

I liked Bana as Banner but that's as far as I would go. The split screen stuff was terrible.

I'm surprised that Lee's literary adaptations don't use flipping pages as scene transitions. You know, like a book!

the Hulk movies are so bad that it feels like there's been three or four of them, from a "shit I will avoid watching in favor of [sports / lawyer movies] if that's all that's on [cable / the airplane seatback]" perspective. One or the other seems like it keeps popping up and who can tell if it's Bana or Norton? Ultimately, who cares? There is no good 3-act arc in Bruce Banner's existence. It is an eternal violent struggle with rage and the absurd, unwillingly waged by one of the smartest men alive, and the latter always loses. Does not translate to popcorn movie. Does not need a archvillain.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be against Tim Blake Nelson returning to be one of the pillars of The Intelligencia in round 2 / phase 3 / whatever.

I feel like Victor Von won't get his proper due until there is a titular origin film about Doctor Doom (as implied, I think, in Sparkle Motion's "Bad Wakanda" comment above) and the other prerequisite being that some brilliant character design genius can translate his look onto the screen without looking like a nickel-plated luchadore mask or either throwing out the baby with the bathwater and just giving him a metal face.

Ironically the Corman production of FF was the most faithful to Doom’s costume out of the 4 attempts so far.

There is no good 3-act arc in Bruce Banner's existence. It is an eternal violent struggle with rage and the absurd, unwillingly waged by one of the smartest men alive, and the latter always loses.

not a fan of PAD's run?

(overall otm point tho)

By coincidence I watched the most recent Fantastic Four movie yesterday - in theory I liked the idea of Doom the Redditor, but iirc they pulled back on that, as befits a movie which is a collision of bad ideas and likable actors (and Miles Teller)

I caught the first 15 minutes of the Silver Surfer one not long ago and was kind of impressed how well they captured the tone of the FF- it was incredibly goofy but no less so than any mid-80s stretch of the comics.

Yeah no those are good.

Hm, dunno. Can't he just be a big bad guy?

https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-why-the-avengers-are-thanos-supporting-characters-1823921364

Thanos is the hero

If this is at all like the comic, then I assume the movie will be a lot of Thanos consolidating his galactic/cosmic power, there will be cuts to Strange or Thor or whomever mumbling about a disturbance in the force of something, and that it will end with the cliffhanger of everyone dead. I mean, there is so little the previous movies have done with Thanos that they have a lot of ground to make up. Then again, I always thought Ultron was a great villain, but they turned him into a boring one-off in the last Avengers movie, so who knows.

yeah assume the r rating has to do with the murder of half of the universe's population

I believe the R rating is only a rumor at this point and I would be surprised if Disney let that happen.

It won't be rated R. I mean, the first one was almost R, too, but there is no way this movie is hitting theaters as an R.

I mean, you've gotta let the kids in if you expect to sell them Thanos bedsheets.

Exactly. Plus, cosmic violence is bloodless.

I always thought Ultron was a great villain, but they turned him into a boring one-off in the last Avengers movie, so who knows.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, March 21, 2018 1:29 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mentioned this somewhere (maybe upthread?) but after I started to notice that the MCU has a really bad habit of killing off most of their villains, I started to wonder if that wasn't perhaps an intentional opening to have Thanos rectify the situation...

https://mindreels.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/eps59_abbottcostellofrankenstein.jpg

Coincidentally, in musing about where the MCU goes once the current phase is capped off, it seemed to me that delving into the monsterverse (Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing, the Blade reboot that's been floated) is one entirely possible route. Maybe we'll get the Tim & Eric Meet Manphibian film that our generation so richly deserves.

the R rating tweet upthread was a joke. is there anybody seriously rumoring it will be R?

MCU villains that it was a mistake to kill off:
Red Skull
Killmonger
Ultron

MCU villains that they haven't killed that I want to see again:
Dormammu

Villains that they haven't killed that I don't want to see again:
Loki

So far their burn rate seems pretty ok. I can't blame them for wanting to make the MCU as big as possible and keeping the baddies fresh is a decent way to do it.

Loki eats it in the first 40 minutes, callin' it

the R rating tweet upthread was a joke. is there anybody seriously rumoring it will be R?

i've set my mind on nude thanos now goddammit and i'm gonna be real ticked off if i don't see the purple-headed monster's purple-headed monster

I believe I read somewhere that he's going to discover the existence of a seventh 'virility' gem. But where to put it?!?

https://steemitimages.com/DQmdK9AuFKQxt79KzSKTYiHCHQJ4QgC2JuAWz2XQAvC32W3/infinity.jpg

Thanos is a boring character. Starlin's comics are good because they have all of Marvel's crazy cosmic beings in them.

And Ant-Man is the shittiest silver age Marvel comic hands down. This thing is not that thing.

I loved the hell out of some ant-man in marvel comics presents in the early 90s

he’s a guy who can shrink and talk to ants, obviously the premise writes itself

What do they talk about?

basketball

Like, "what would it be like to be tall enough to play basketball?" And then Antman is all "well, let me show you!" And then he grows back to normal size but accidentally squishes them and is all "ah, man, sorry little guys!" But he's afraid to shrink back down, because they might be mad at him.

he talks _to_ them, they obviously can't talk back. they're ants! sheesh

alternatively they make clicking noises with their mandibles

he talks to them about how much he likes walking around inside his wife's vagina

http://www.maragos.org/avengers71.jpg

let the record show I was referring to the Ant-Man of the early 90s MCP, Scott Lang

lol sic

Joe Russo has confirmed to the Radio Times that The Leftovers and Fargo star Carrie Coon will be playing Proxima Midnight, the spear-wielding female member of Thanos’ Black Order.

whaaaaaaaat

.....well, I'm glad she's getting that Marvel money. Sounds like it's a one-off (or close to it).

Intersting. I had forgotten that the Black Order was going to be in this and that they'd yet to announce who was cast in the roles. I have a feeling there's still more surprises to come (hoping for at least some token representation from the TV world).

FYI, it's now been almost four years since they announced all of the MCU films through 2019, and as of this moment we still don't know anything about the plans beyond next year aside from GotG 3 and a Black Widow film. Let alone the revised title/general plot of the next Avengers film. I kinda love how tight a lid they're keeping on this thing.

Scoop: there will be a Black Panther sequel.

Now that BP and Wonder Woman have put paid to notions about the marketability of superheroes who aren't white dudes, I'd bet good money on a Ms. Marvel flick.

that'd be a hell of a marketing nightmare after the Captain Marvel movie

;)

I wouldn't be surprised if they made it some kinda buddy pic pseudo sequel to Captain Marvel.

Review embargo lifted, seen 2 reviews so far. Sounds like a big overstuffed sandwich -- mostly good flavors but stuff keeps falling out and it's a mess to consume.

So there's a Flavortown in the MCU is what you're saying

Thanos bringing the donkey sauce.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/355/536/43b.jpg_large

hahahaha

some review tweet said that Thanos has moments of being a sympathetic character and I’m down for that

just want to dead half the universe for reasons

anybody check out the venom trailer? i thought it looked okay. i assume venom is the villain in the next spidey film?

No, confusingly enough, Venom (while Spidey-related) is wholly separate from the MCU.

Sony has several similarly-confusing related-but-unrelated movies in the pipeline so they can get maximum mileage out of their Spider-Man film rights.

I just had an idea based on the asgardians always coming back/reincarnating: the warriors three end up defeating thanos

I have basically zero predictions or specific wants from this thing beyond the weirdly specific desire for Nebula's role to be the same as in Infinity Gauntlet.

I think I'm going into blackout mode now. If I accidentally spoil shit for myself before I make it to the theater I'll be positively miffed.

I’m with you re: Nebula though. I want her to have that moment.

seeing this on friday - i suspect the ecstatic first impressions i've seen so far are overstated but still cautiously psyched, not least because it feels like marvel have managed to keep quite a bit about it under wraps

Because of my hearing damage, I can't see these movies at the cinema and have to wait till streaming. Avoiding spoilers gonna be hard.

Oof, that sucks.

Tickets for Saturday morning, which gives me just enough time to sneak in a viewing of Ragnarok and complete my month and a half long MCU rewatch (although I'll have to content myself with just memories of Wakanda).

these have started piling up to where the thing blocking me from going to new ones isn't so much "superhero fatigue" as feeling like i'm too behind. still haven't seen winter soldier or guardians of the galaxy, which everyone seems to rate, and netflix keeps trying to get me to watch the sequels to each and it's like uggghhh i'm so behind and that makes it feel like work.

I wasn't very enthused about another Avengers movie, but I've got the day off Friday and I've got to do something, right?

i dunno how you can be unenthused about a movie where star-lord has a moustache ffs

I feel you, Dr. C. I think we're reaching a point where the bigger event movies of the MCU are no longer going to be for casual fans (Civil War was the first one that definitely felt like that to me). Thankfully, you should still be able to enjoy the smaller scale films without feeling like you're working on your doctoral thesis on casinos.

i still suspect that this movie and its mysteriously-unnamed sequel are gonna be a reset-button of some sort for the mcu, where the subsequent films will be smaller or at least more self-contained for a while, because they're dragging a hell of a lot of backstory baggage along with them at this point

Neither Adam Warlock nor Mistress Death are in this, apparently? :/

Warlock will be along shortly. I assumed in the next GotG fillum (since his arrival was presaged in the last installment).

I was thinking that most of the recent movies had been pretty self-contained but then my gf recently watched Spider-Man (nb, she has now seen literally every MCU thing aside from Ragnarok) and was thrown by the Civil War flashbacks at the beginning. 'Wait, when does this movie take place? What were they all doing on that airstrip again?'

I'm still going with my theory that someone uses the gauntlet at the end of the movie and half the roles are recast and none of the characters seem to notice

and introducing: zack efron as teen tony

that seems more plausible than my "robert pattinson was always tony stark" theory

it's built into the premise of the movie that at least some of the cast are going to die, at least temporarily - if marvel are gonna recast the roles, as they inevitably will at some point, now's the time to do it

I think the great travesty is that this is all happening pre-merger so we don't get Doom

"The Gauntlet has the power to bring them back, but only in younger and more bankable form."

god it would be great if the final cliffhanger reveals the cast from josh trank's fantastic four making their triumphant entrance into the mcu

noooooo

unless there's a johnny storm <-> t'challa moment that's an echo of the spider-men pointing at each other comic

the comics seem to have unscarred Doom looking like a younger Vincent Cassel right now, not sure what we can do with that

we could have captain america and johnny storm pointing at each other if we got the cast from the peyton reed fantastic four showing up instead

I hope they just switch up the roles among the existing cast. Paul Rudd is the Hulk now! Scarlett Johansson is Spider-Man! Paul Bettany is Rocket Raccoon!

I'm assuming since the Black Order is in this that we're losing out on the possibility of someone taking up Mephisto's role as agent provocateur in Infinity Gauntlet. I was hoping for maybe like Red Skull following Thanos around and egging him towards his worst impulses.

cool thing about Doom is that when they finally get him right, he can declare all of the previous shitty ones to have been Doombots. walt simonson's great gift to the MCU.

And Galactus can claim that Galactus cloud from FF 2 was just one of his farts or something.

walt simonson's great gift to the MCU.

well, one of many

fuckin love that guy

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/movies/avengers-infinity-war-review.html

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, scrappy fraternal climbers up the 21st-century Hollywood ladder, “Infinity War” is a chunk of matter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a vast entity that long ago expanded beyond the usual boundaries of sequelization and brand extension. This synergistic expression of the corporate interests of Marvel Studios and the Walt Disney Company — which now include 19 feature films and much else besides — has come to be less a creative or commercial undertaking than an immutable fact of life, like sex or the weather or capitalism itself.

That makes the franchise hard to criticize. You can’t really be for or against Marvel (in spite of the conspiracy theories of some DC fans), and you can’t quite opt out of it either. They don’t call it a universe for nothing: Where else are we going to go? So we make our zigzagging ways, picking out our favorite planets and solar systems, accepting a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space that makes the brighter constellations seem disproportionately fresh and surprising. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was so funny and weird. Not like a superhero movie at all. Same with “Thor: Ragnarok.” Captain America is such a complicated guy. “Black Panther” gave audiences so much to root for and talk about.

'a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space', followed by raves for almost every Marvel movie from the past few years. Okay, guy.

Can't wait for all the haterade hot takes!

pour one out for the sensible reviewers getting their inboxes pummeled by Marvel fanboys rn

(jerking off motion)

yes, that is a v good impression of the latter group

I'm an unapologetic Zombie and love these movies but I don't think a one of them has reached (or strived to reach) the peak of Cinematic Excellence and welcome sensible criticism that actually reckon with the movie taking place on the screen. But let's be real: a lot of the criticism will be of the 'NOT another SUPERHERO movie, barf me out!' variety rather than a reasonable assessment of the film on its own terms.

(See: most of the anti-MCU criticism on this very borad.)

it seems like for most fans "on its own terms" means something very specific and restrictive

I've always argued in favor of judging art (or 'art' if you must) in terms of its success at doing what it appears to be trying to do. I'm not going to judge a four-hour Vietnamese drama about someone's dying cousin making pho for the last time on its lack of epic, city-leveling action scenes.

I bet you are, though

i would watch the shit out of that movie, honestly

(the one that combines the two, that is)

That makes the franchise hard to criticize. You can’t really be for or against Marvel

yeah, there's no way at all to be against the ongoing labour practices of a company whose entire history is based on enormously exploiting the creativity of freelancers without due recompense, and that is actively, destructively hostile to both of their core distribution systems & retail "partners"

(jerking off motion)

pvmsic

My eyes are open and I will consume only cage-free non-GMO superhero movies from here on.

Does anybody remember laughter?

Does anybody?

I've always argued in favor of judging art (or 'art' if you must) in terms of its success at doing what it appears to be trying to do

This is fine as long as it's something along the the lines of "I am judging this horror film as a horror film," but that's a very different statement from "it is only acceptable to judge MCU movies in terms of how they relate to other MCU movies, and also you have to think the MCU is a worthwhile project in order to pass acceptable judgment," which seems to be the baseline requirement for most of the MCU commentariat. (Not saying that applies to anyone here necessarily)

'a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space', followed by raves for almost every Marvel movie from the past few years. Okay, guy.

Raves? tbf, the NYT reviewer said, "accepting a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space that makes the brighter constellations seem disproportionately fresh and surprising." {italics added} Those raves were meta-raves, illustrating the disproportionate praise being cited in the prior sentence.

But then, who really cares? The films get watched and make a lot of money, regardless of whatever criticism is aimed at them. The Plain People think they are likeable enough.

I'd argue that there is an extent to which reasonable criticism of a single MCU movie does have to reckon with its existence in the broader MCU. I get it if that doesn't feel like a worthwhile pursuit, but for better or worse this is kind of a pioneering experiment into creating a broad web of interrelated films, so judging any one of them as a failure when separated from the larger context is, on the one hand, valid but, on the other hand, increasingly like focusing on how well a single television episode succeeds without actually seeing how well it fits into the season/series as a whole.

TBH, while I love the success of the MCU, I do kinda miss the days when the general public's engagement with superhero comics was limited to the biannual revelation that WHIZ! POP! COMICS AREN'T JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!

I'd argue that there is an extent to which reasonable criticism of a single MCU movie does have to reckon with its existence in the broader MCU

"reckon with," sure. "see inherent value in," nah

I get it if that doesn't feel like a worthwhile pursuit

yeah sorry again I'm thinking more of the passerby chuds I see on twitter and in comments sections

"it is only acceptable to judge MCU movies in terms of how they relate to other MCU movies, and also you have to think the MCU is a worthwhile project in order to pass acceptable judgment," which seems to be the baseline requirement for most of the MCU commentariat.

that's how I judge Adam Sandler movies

xpost IGI, my dude.

If somebody would have told me 10 years that they were going to make a series of 19 interconnected superhero movies and that I (and other people too, I guess) would still be interested in seeing them I would have thought that was very unlikely. So in that sense, the MCU has very much surpassed expectations, for me at least. I would never argue that these are masterpieces, but even that they are mostly pretty good seems like a huge accomplishment.

For sure. For those who are actually fans of the material, it's easy to forget that we suffered through decades of almost nothing but bullshit movie adaptations. I didn't even give the MCU a shot until Thor because I just assumed it would be more of the same garbage.

that they are mostly pretty good seems like a huge accomplishment.

$200+ million per movie can still buy you some decent talent, even these days.

and yet almost every $200m movie is horrible

Let's just admit this movie is terrible and get back to the fellatio

This movie is horrific garbage for which we, as a culture that didn't do everything in its power to prevent, should be deeply ashamed.

Now cram that thing in my mouth, brother.

removing bookmark from this thread because i need neither spoilers or haters

But wait, I wasn't done telling you how much better I am than the audience for this dumb movie I have no intention of seeing! No fair.

TBH, while I love the success of the MCU, I do kinda miss the days when the general public's engagement with superhero comics was limited to the biannual revelation that WHIZ! POP! COMICS AREN'T JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!

― .38 Special K - 'Hold On Muesli' (Old Lunch), Wednesday, April 25, 2018

fuck no

the genius of the MCU was to recognize that "comic book" was not a genre in itself defined by tropes like GOOFY and OOH PRIMARY COLORS and IT DOESN'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE.

what the MCU takes from comics is what has made it successful: serialized fiction capable of moving across genres from installment to installment

I agree completely. But also the comics themselves have been doing that for decades, and also it was nice when people-at-large didn't feel compelled to opine on a thing they never gave and still don't give a shit about.

I think the longing for having your interests being a little more obscure and "novel" to the masses is understandable. Because entertainment is sometimes an escape, and having it omnipresent kind of kills that.

It's reminiscent of the days when a much smaller portion of the population was involved in working in information technology and I could go to a bar, have some drinks, and have a next-to-zero chance that I'd hear anything that sounded like work. Now, I go nearly anywhere and there's about a fifty percent chance some dude is harping on about databases within earshot.

It's always the dumbest takes that you overhear, too.

MCU is successful because it is all post-Star Wars prequels filmmaking with bluescreen and cgi and all that, the framework for doing all that visually intensive stuff and post production is already there.

prior to that there were still tons of comic movies out, they just didn't have the production quality. imo this is the biggest difference, it's mostly the right place and the right time. the writing is decent too, which helps, but i don't think they are revolutionizing so much as synthesizing filmmaking & marketing trends.

which isn't a bad thing, in fact it's great, and a lot of the movies are hella fun. certainly more fun than most of the random comic movies of the 90s (though something like the og TMNT film is still a hallmark).

as far as "comics aren't for kids anymore" yeah i remember when Burton's Batman came out, that was a big part of it, the gothic dark look, the Prince sountrack, that aint new...

"pow zoom comics aren't just for kids anymore" was a very tired cliche by 1989

remember when marvel’s pitch from around the time they became marvel was talking about college kids who were into psychedelic images and surreal stories? me neither, because it was old by the time I was born

but you could still buy comics on a newsstand, at least

sucks that Black Widow doesn't have her red hair anymore

Tbh i can see this movie being a letdown so i plan to get reaaaaalllyyy high first

Marvel movies remind me of certain kinds of antidepressants I’ve been on. They maintain a status quo that is functional and agreeable but never allows true highs or lows.

that is a good way to boil down my distaste for these movies (I saw most of 'em up to the second Avengers; only the third Iron Man had a detectable flair and even then I barely remember anything about it)

the three most recent marvel movies (spider man, thor, black panther) were the best yet, but i don't really see the new one topping those. but if you stopped after the second avengers it might be a good idea to dip into the post civil war ones

sometimes I forget, then re-remember, that Justin Theroux has the sole writing credit on the worst of these (that I've seen)

I thought that one was fine but didn’t really lean into having a distinct voice, pretty much an echo of the first plot-wise

Dang who put a quarter in Old Lunch?

Interesting review of this movie that I’ll never see:

http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2018/04/avengers-infinity-war.html

What even ITT

Sorry, dudes. Work was insufficiently diverting today. What can I say.

Kinda just sunk in this evening while I was sipping an Infinity Gauntlet-themed cocktail in the theater bar (the gf needed to see the theatrical premiere of the new Cobra Kai show due to her enduring deep love of Karate Kid) that this is the informal adaptation of the thing that, twenty-seven summers ago, officially kicked off my lifelong love of comics. It's amusing to me (and, yes, probably only to me) to feign butthurt about the inevitable hateration, but I obviously do feel a lot of affection and protectiveness toward the franchise. I'm thrilled to be in the midst of this thing and will enjoy the ride until Feige inevitability retires to his private island and the entire enterprise slides into a slow motion turf-out from the lack of a strong guiding hand at the helm.

I agree completely. But also the comics themselves have been doing that for decades, and also it was nice when people-at-large didn't feel compelled to opine on a thing they never gave and still don't give a shit about.

― .38 Special K - 'Hold On Muesli' (Old Lunch), Wednesday, April 25, 2018

ah gotcha -- I misread that the first time around.

MCU is successful because it is all post-Star Wars prequels filmmaking with bluescreen and cgi and all that, the framework for doing all that visually intensive stuff and post production is already there.

prior to that there were still tons of comic movies out, they just didn't have the production quality...

― Hazy Maze Cave (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, April 25, 2018

lmao how can you possibly write this in a world where Justice League exists

Old Lunch it's cool, I was a video game journalist for 16 years I've had 13 year old say they hope my whole family gets cancer because I didn't like the PSP port of Jet Grind Radio that much

I thought the review was good in that it got at something I can never quite articulate about how all these films seem "good" when I watch them but then it's like I almost instantly forget them

What can't happen if the "Infinity Gauntlet" falls into the "right" hands, whether that be in this film or the next, is the elimination of struggle in this universe. The only end-game in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a continuation of struggle. You can't change struggle. Struggle is foundation. There can be no ultimate resolution. It's absurd, and nihilistic in the extreme, and that feeling of indifference one feels now through any manner of bombast or atrocity in these movies is exactly only as predicted, after all. Like Camus's Mersault shooting a man five times and only being bothered by the heat and the sunlight, it's impossible to engage emotionally; these films are always second acts--and the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is to make us the eagle eating the liver and the Titan chained to the Caucasus simultaneously. We are the tormentors because we want to watch our heroes suffer but not die. We are the tormented because we don't feel anything.

i like this, speaks to lots of thoughts i've had about soap operas and long-running tv dramas and franchise movies and such for a long time

well, as stan lee once said, superhero comics present 'the illusion of change' and the movies aren't any different in that respect

also real life is an eternal, unending, unresolved struggle and then we die iirc

don't get me wrong, i don't think it's a criticism in the way that the writer seems to, if anything it warms me to the idea of the movies or at least echoes my own feelings towards the things that are essentially the same as this nonsense but that i personally love and engage with

"struggle" and "life" i'm a bit less unsure about tho. struggle is a question of perspective, maaaaan

Tbh i can see this movie being a letdown so i plan to get reaaaaalllyyy high first

heh yes but it's so long you may be sober again for the final hour! maybe bring some edibles.

I think only the Iron Man movies are really susceptible to that criticism - people do change in most of the movies, not least because most of the movies are origin stories.

For example, I aged 20 years during Thor 2, but when I came out, my watch said only two hours had passed.

Tony Stark's arc (reactor) and growth become much more apparent when you watch the entire 515-film epic straight through.

Which is true across the board, really. My rewatch has definitely helped elucidate the way this all works as an actual storyline.

xxp the power of mew-mew

The possibility that Darcy is a casualty of the very necessary and justifiable action of writing Natalie Portman out of the franchise is frankly unconscionable imo.

You'd think with all these cosmic energy things in the movie they'd have Skarsgård but looks like no?

(I don't know that she's officially been written out but it's good to start the day on an optimistic footing, I find.)

I won't be too surprised by the exclusion of any non-costumed supporting cast members from this behemoth of a film.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Infinity War

portman's departure basically happened in one line of dialogue in ragnarok, and she's confirmed she's not interested in returning iirc

fair choice, imo

it was the worst of both worlds: a thankless supporting-girlfriend role which portman was not very good in

TBF, the job required her to act, which is not her strong suit.

Actually, I just had an inspired idea: swap her role with Kat Dennings. Maybe Thanos can use his magic glove to make that happen.

the "perpetual struggle" thing only really bothers me when the films teeter on the edge of using their fantastical fictions to posit some kind of truly other existence or revolutionary change, and then have to back away or put that change in the hands of bad guys who have to be stopped (as in black panther) for fear of breaking the universe. to stay more or less in genre: the first matrix movie ends with something really thrilling: the rules have been broken, the possibilities are endless, and as neo hangs up the phone, as the credits roll, and on the way home, you're imagining a radical liberation of millions. (obviously the sequels wreck this but anyway.) even kinda shitty versions of this idea, all those movies where we meet a "rebellion" consisting of two speaking actors and eight extras, and they prevail at the end, have a glimmer of this. for another cartoonish actioner: the hero's actions in the running man are more consequential, and more motivated by altruism, than anything in these otherwise much better-made films.

this bigger change is a narrative possibility the marvel movies have thus far reflexively closed themselves off from. the inventions of tony stark and shuri do not transform the fabric of human life or the distribution of power or equity. the experience of being invaded by aliens or nearly conquered by a supercomputer rattles tony personally, but does not shift the politics of the planet earth as it does in (to name a way shittier but momentarily more interesting movie) independence day: resurgence. as in the marvel comics, which i was weaned on and love, the world hangs together and change is at the micro-level of the characters and their relationships (but not TOO much change or it's time for clones or demonic bargains to hit the reset button) which is why people care and want the next issue.

it works perfectly well in comics which are serialized soap operas that you read for tens or hundreds of issues. i don't think it DOESN'T work in a string of tentpole blockbusters, but it works differently. there are only so many entries in the canon, they can only do so much, and the obligations on them to tell self-contained, satisfying stories, without disrupting the universe, sort of flatten out the stakes. we're going to get small, well-constructed but self-similar character arcs. people learn lessons, people learn to work together. iron man will remember to be a little less of an asshole, until next time. they're great spectacle and leagues more competent than most spectacle fare these days, but i think some of what i'm rambling about here is why it feels a bit flat overall, even though the last couple that i've seen (thor 3, BP) have been some of the most memorable and original of the line.

great post doc

another thing i've mulled over/bitched about forever: canonicity is the ultimate enemy of creativity and engagement

again not exactly a complaint because things are what they are, but yeah DC you're onto something about how serial fiction/canonical universes can never really pitch extreme emotions at you, never leave you shook or heartbroken. even when they try to pull that off you can't evade the thought that the myths will just get retold, it's a ritual rather than a revelation.

as in the marvel comics, which i was weaned on and love, the world hangs together and change is at the micro-level of the characters and their relationships (but not TOO much change or it's time for clones or demonic bargains to hit the reset button) which is why people care and want the next issue.

Someone was telling me about an Iron Man story that got pitched (but I don't think ever got made/published) involving blue-collar Detroit auto sector workers (or something) that Stark Industries disenfranchised banding together to take down Iron Man. Would watch that movie

sounds like a movie for.. spymaster

Dr. Who kind of faces the same problems, when every season involves universe-threatening monsters destroying all of time, yet you know the mains will always survive, somehow. fwiw the best episodes that do evoke hearbreak and genuine emotion are the more down-to-earth small scale bits ("Vincent and the Doctor")

Not a million miles away from Keaton's motivation in Spider-Man: Homecoming xpost

xp

the main reason i just lost interest i think. repeating the trick of "Girl in the Fireplace" got v annoying v quickly

another thing i've mulled over/bitched about forever: canonicity is the ultimate enemy of creativity and engagement

― the vomming of the snark (Noodle Vague), Thursday, April 26, 2018 9:01 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is the tightrope that any decade-spanning, multi-authored narrative has to walk: to what extent do you attempt to maintain an internal consistency so that this thing still works as a semi-coherent story, and to what extent do you fudge the details in order to allow the thing to breathe a little without being slavishly beholden to story beats that took place a generation before?

People complain about the constraints of continuity and I geddit, but at the same time if the Marvel U was just a bunch of disconnected one-off stories with no throughline, my personal investment in that project would be pretty much nil.

This is the tightrope that any decade-spanning, multi-authored narrative has to walk

but comics are unusual in that category tho in that their characters are essentially immortal - soap operas might well have characters who have had outlandishly eventful lives but eventually the actor playing them will die or they'll be written out, while superman will always be superman no matter what, as long as there's an audience for stories about him

soap operas recast characters all the time! and some have characters come back from the dead

i think it's the conception of an ongoing narrative that i have issue with, rather than a kind of mythological retelling of archetypal stories

well yeah but there's no soap opera character who has remained at age 35 for 80 years and could very well do the same for another 80 xp

soaps are generally terrible at portraying characters consistently beyond "villain", "matriarch" types. characters' attitudes and motivations and behaviours change all the time to suit the needs of the current storylines

bg, I am pretty sure they have done that by recasting roles with younger actors when they "return" after having not appeared for a while

and the time compression of comics has nothing on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera_rapid_aging_syndrome

and they lead such improbably eventful lives - like how many murders have happened in albert square in the last three decades ffs xp

i think that happens less with comics but i think comic characters on the whole are even more archetypal. it seems near impossible to me to think of Marvel since the 60s as a continuously elaborated narrative that isn't subject to the possibility of complete reinvention at any point. the MCU is different because it's more carefully crafted over a shorter span of time but i think the canonicity it aims at is a more modern fanboy invention than what comics have actually been thru their history

xp there were more murders in the Manhattan of the Law & Order tv series universe in one year than there was in actual Manhattan over several years

fiction is wild

this is all really just me elaborating why, as somebody who is totally into sentimental emo storytelling, these things never leave me feeling properly satisfied

NV otm, I think another thing that happens is that the events that become touchstones in later stories, like the X-Men stuff with the Phoenix saga, gets pared down and re-emphasized every time the story is retold

not that human history doesn't have new takes over time, but reinterpretation and expansion upon the context of particular events is still theoretically examining the facts of what actually happened and recasting them in a different context. on the other hand, historical fiction fucks with that by cementing assumptions about events in the public mind

it's hard to keep up with the emotional trauma of multiple dead spouses continually showing up in stories

it's interesting how these undeniably mythic characters like superman are inherently different from, say, the iliad or the odyssey or bible or whatever in that those stories are essentially closed while superman stories necessarily have to remain open because dc/warner brothers have shareholders

capitalism as a relentless driver for narrative, basically

watching Prisoner Cell Block H as a teen was when i first started thinking about this but that's a detour for a different thread

all this stuff is fascinating to me, maybe we should have a separate serialised-narrative thread?

Marvel, I think, has done a fairly good job at attempting to maintain an ever-progressing window (say like 15-20 years) of high-contrast continuity that gets a little fuzzier the further back you go. The old stuff informs the new stuff without insisting for instance that Cain Marko became the Juggernaut during the Korean War. The continuity has been fairly of a piece since about the time Bendis came onboard, but it feels like they're slowly moving away from that as the era which defines where they are now (both because of Bendis's departure and because so much of that material has been repurposed by the MCU).

I agree, bg. Serial narrative is almost like a medium unto itself and re: which we're still trying to figure out the rules (in part because our own self-mythology is, itself, an unwieldy and unbound serial narrative which we can never grasp the full scope of, etc.).

another limit case for shared universes might be something like grant morrison's new x-men, which reinvigorated the line like nothing in decades, but depended on enormous, universe-breaking ideas (there are now millions and millions of mutants, so you can write stories about them as a real minority, different mutant political strains and subcultures, mutant neighborhoods in major cities). practically, that only works if x-men was its own separate universe or if marvel was willing to embrace them and take the whole universe into strange new places. instead they largely ignored them for a short while and then brutally undid them with a magic spell that slashed the mutant population down to a couple hundred, leading to several years where the x-men concept felt more bounded and less interesting/relevant than ever before. they wouldn't even accept his contention that magneto was a psychotic terrorist, not an interesting ideological foil for the x-men, and therefore needing to be finally killed off. post-morrison stories revealed his magneto to not have been carefully infiltrating the x-men for three years under the masked identity of "xorn," but rather to have been a guy named xorn who posed as magneto posing as a guy named xorn. all to preserve what we are used to agreeing are the big interesting themes of x-men ("see, it's dr. king and malcolm x!") and the only themes it can really be about.

the other big restriction on the films, of course, is that they must all be tentpole blockbusters telling three-act stories more or less in the "action" genre. obvious maybe. but as with the star wars spinoffs where we were hyped a "war movie" and got a star wars movie where people wear camo, these things really undermine the idea that oh yeah it's this huge universe, you can tell all different kinds of stories! even in superhero comics, a real arc can be someone contemplating their own mortality or dealing with the death of a loved one. a whole issue can be a baseball game and people debating how far forgiveness extends. not to say these are all super sophisticated stories but in the movies you're just going to get a couple minutes of baseball as fanservice for those who remember the baseball issues, and probably some comic relief.

none of these are going to start with a daring night-time infiltration mission and then surprise you by evolving into a cancer drama or a couple struggling to work out whether they have a future after infidelity, or whether a person's terrible actions change how we think about their art, or how the memories of a lost loved one haunt a present relationship, or whatever. they won't even turn out to be other kinds of crowd-pleasers like rom-coms or disaster movies or buddy cop movies (though they may have flavorings of all these things, waiting for fans to declare that, shocker, i've realized this one IS REALLY A whatever type movie). they bring on "quirky indie directors" and often good ones - but ones known for coherent, talky, forward-moving narrative, and they manage them closely. from some of the blogosphere you'd think they were handing $200 million to alexander sokurov and crossing their fingers for box office gold.

again, i think individual action movies, made because the creators have a story they want to tell, have a little more flexibility here. fury road is about mutual redemption, the quest for liberation or at least a heterotopia for the oppressed, and the sufferers rediscovering their own humanity through caring about others. you can tell the filmmakers wanted to make a film about those things. the marvel movies start to feel like people with a room full of chess pieces of the characters and instructions to figure out something they could be made to do. oh we haven't put the hulk and thor together, who's a villain they could face... grandmaster! what's a comic we haven't adapted... "planet hulk" huh? hey this thing writes itself! (again i thought thor 3 was a total blast with a lot of creativity in it, so don't get me wrong.)

this is all obvious: no one would really WANT the films to be these other things, you can get them elsewhere... but i wish the more fannish reviews out there could recognize these facts, or at least give some sense that they have seen other kinds of movies and aren't just bamboozled by press releases declaring that this one is really dark, this one is really a comedy.

(sorry for the long block posts btw, side effect of subway commutes with interrupted service, might as well just keep typing since it won't go through yet anyhow)

i want to start this but i'm not going to now because i'll be away from ILX shortly and have nothing coherent to say right now

as far as this movie and the MCU is concerned i defer to you OL because you know this stuff and it's mainly fragmentary and hypothetical for me

doc c killing it itt, we need that serialised narrative thread imo

the marvel movies start to feel like people with a room full of chess pieces of the characters and instructions to figure out something they could be made to do.

yeah, for sure, and one of the things i think is most interesting about marvel movies on a meta-level is that they've evolved into this very sleek, very efficient machine for pumping out movies which are always at the very least diverting and that in itself is not actually an insignificant achievement - movies are hard to make! big tentpole action movies fail way more often than they succeed!

Theoretically DC are in a better position because they have a history of generational change, of heroes handing down the mantle to others - and then they'll hand the keys to someone who just wants his childhood heroes back, dammit.

Of course this is a long term problem, and so not really a problem for MCU at all - one of the meta things that I find interesting is just how they'll deal with rebooting a universe - Spiderman and X-Men can do so because they can just drop the series on the ground for five years or so.

agreed on the serial narrative thread, mostly so I can complain about the idea Odysseus wasn't in a bunch of spinoffs and fan fic

canonicity is such a weird idea. these are all made up stories, yet some are "more real" than others. it's a weird concept, something inherent in mass media from the days when it was primarily religious in nature. apocryphal works, fan works, etc., there has always been this struggle to define some kind of objective mythical reality

i went in

Canon fodder: serial fiction and how it works

Dr. Who kind of faces the same problems, when every season involves universe-threatening monsters destroying all of time, yet you know the mains will always survive, somehow.

Sara Kingdom and Katarina can't come to the phone right now

they won't even turn out to be other kinds of crowd-pleasers like rom-coms or disaster movies or buddy cop movies (though they may have flavorings of all these things, waiting for fans to declare that, shocker, i've realized this one IS REALLY A whatever type movie).

Kinda hope at a point that they just start spinning a wheel to figure out their approach to these things. She-Hulk as Méliès silent film. Moon Knight as non-diagetic Malickian meditation. Alpha Flight as '70s porno flick.

SASQUATCH GENDER SWAP GOES HERE

lol I meant to put “JOKE” in the middle of that but it works fine as the storyboard panel nobody was sure how to draw

The only review you need:

https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ

so so so many plot holes and conveniences but if you grew up reading comic books the special effects and fight scenes are totally worth it

here is my question: why does billionaire tech giant tony stark have a flip phone?

from the sound of things, this seems pretty cool. focuses mostly on galactic space monster? cool. fight scenes are just costumes superheros throwing colorful orbs of light at each other? im down for that.

i dont need every flick to move me on an emotional or intellectual level. usually Marvel has been pretty good at knowing what they are doing and being fine with that (DC in contrast is flailingly silly while screaming "Take us seriously!!!")

I'd guess Tony Stark thinks that flip phones are cool? Though if the first movie is set in 2008, maybe Stark hates that fucker Jobs and everything he brought in?

he's been a playboy CEO for twenty years and iron man for ten, guy is into his IDGAF old dude swag phase.

between that and nick fury's old school 'captain marvel paging' blackberry something seems a little tricky with the timeline(s)

A'ight, if the spoilers are starting in earnest I am outta here.

me too, i'll be back in eight hours or so once i've seen it

these aren't spoilers. micro-minor details that give zero away, promise

Really enjoyed the film and looking forward to the 2nd part.

There is one post credits scene, thought there was a habit of there being like 3 interspersed with titles.
Saw it in 3D which i haven't done in a while.
Think I might go and see it again.

But way out of step with the comics. Did this tie in with a comic arc that is 27 years old or something?

It was fun seeing lots of the team ups but possibly the darkest Marvel movie there's been.

Great that there was a real sense of all the previous MCU movies coming together to this point. (Although not really sure what was going on with Banner/Hulk but imagine that will be resolved in part 2).

Assuming Captain Marvel and the second Ant Man movie won't advance the plot any further so glad the next one's out in 12 months time.

xp yeah but the Marvel Cinematic Universe is different enough that only the broad strokes are the same

Capt. Marvel is set in the 90s, I believe Ant Man 2 will be set before IW

this movie was great btw, man i love this shit i cannot lie

There was a line somewhere about how Ant Man and the Wasp will be the movie most tied into Infinity War, but that might just be an attempt to drum up enthusiasm.

I believe Ant Man 2 will be set before IW

I wondered about this. I'm curious to what extent they're going to import the more audience-antagonizing elements of DC & Marvel's narrative/revenue-generation strategies. It's already amusing seeing explainers about the prerequisites for a massive tentpole movie--are they going to embrace confusing/multiple timelines or giant continuity resets?

very seldom do I see a scene, think “ah yes, perfect ending” and it actually ends up being the last

this movie breaks that trend

Yeah, end scene was great.

It was noticeable that Ant Man wasn't in this movie so assume his will be maybe standalone with some Infinity War stuff in the last 15 minutes or so.

Flip phone stood out to me too, but I figured there was some in universe reason for it I was forgetting

Loved this but it broke my heart

Steve Rogers didnt have a 555 number

It's already amusing seeing explainers about the prerequisites for a massive tentpole movie...

― rob, Friday, April 27, 2018

sure, but the explainers exist not because they're needed but because a massive tentpole release offers the opportunity to coattail-ride for cheap clicks

steve only accepts calls from specific burners

Really did not expect one of the six stones to be Dirk Diggler's cockring

this was fun - did as good a job as it could have in moving a hell of a lot of pieces around the board and there are some awesome moments - but def felt like half a movie

no idea where they go from here tho which is great - feels like the next one will be the more satisfying story

one massive problem with thanos’ motivation: if he wants to kill half the universe only to save limited resources, why not er just use the reality stone to make more resources?

half a movie my ass, my fave protagonist went through a lot of trials and great sacrifice to succeed despite everyone being against him

I support them just rolling with this as the new status quo

did as good a job as it could have in moving a hell of a lot of pieces around the board and there are some awesome moments - but def felt like half a movie

this is funny/sad to read since they made a big deal out of not calling this and the fourth one "Infinity War Pt. I and II"

already seeing the "this movie promotes the overpopulation myth" take which honestly seems fair

eh fuck off with that because, as the baiting the ridiculous stoned guy conversations went with some friends, humans could grow much much larger! we use our planet’s resources inefficiently, could harness the power of the sun in a dyson sphere, make things better and continue growing

thanos doesn’t believe these things at a galactic scale, and that’s a different thing and I support his non-discriminatory quest

it’s like asking how many people he could provide for by dispersing his army and deciding not to have war machines. huge galaxy, no real impact

flip phone was the burner cap posts tony at the end of civil war

tbc I do not support "the world is overpopulated" rhetoric at all

Couldn't see this last night as it was totally sold out near me.

world is overpopulated, QED

Ain't lookin' at a word y'all have posted until after I see this in a few hours. One last prediction: movie ends with the 'SNAP!' from the comics and a whole lotta people die in one fell swoop. And those who die in this one will be resurrected in part 4, which means anyone who survives this movie is fair game for a legitimate death in the next.

Back in a bit to see how wrong I was!

i think the thing i appreciated most about this is how well it captured the vibe of that rarest of comic-book events: a giant crossover story that makes sense and is fun to read

also, having suffered through justice league a while back, it’s remarkable how well josh brolin’s performance is captured in an all-cg character when poor ciaran hinds ended up as such a videogame-cutscene level steppenwolf

still not sure what I think about a certain character appearing during Thanos’s side trip to pick up a stone. unexpected but kind of intriguing

tied up a nice loose end, i thought, although his accent seemed less hilariously ott than it did in his first appearance

speaking of paying things off, i loved that rocket’s well-established fetish for stealing prosthetics got a practical resolution in this one

raccoon and a wolf, who’d have thought

i asked rufus how he liked this and he said: "it was great. i only fell asleep once."

which is high praise from him. #teens #needmoresleep

kinda aggravated that I missed about 7 key minutes during my first viewing (seen twice now) because nature called (as it often does for me) with about 45 minutes to go. Went to the first men's room - yellow tape indicating it is closed for cleaning. Second (and only other) men's room - same thing (with guy visibly cleaning it!).

went back to the first one and just crawled under the tape and pissed anyway. I missed a pretty key moment that I fortunately got to see the second time.

peed after I reached the urinal first obv

also loved the # of impalings in this movie

i was surprised by how gruesome the big strangling scene early on was - it was pretty graphic

anyone wanna give me odds on whether the post-credits scene of ant-man and the wasp will involve either scott or hope blinking out of existence

already seeing the "this movie promotes the overpopulation myth" take which honestly seems fair

― Simon H., Friday, April 27, 2018 6:01 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've discarded like a half dozen jokey responses to this in favor of simply saying 'this is a profoundly dumb take'.

Well, okay, maybe just one jokey response:

I'm strongly opposed to the pro-destroying Alderaan message of Star Wars. I'm not afraid to say that the Dark Side isn't cool no matter how hard Lucas pushes that agenda with this piece of shameless propaganda.

But on to other things!

Fucken epic, man. Dark, dark shit (relative to Marvel's usual offerings and particularly relative to Marvel's most recent offerings).

Random deets, wherein I will attempt to circumvent spoilers:

-Loved the moment where they recreated Silver Surfer's traumatic crash-landing on earth from the beginning of Infinity Gauntlet via that other character's traumatic crash-landing on earth. Through the same damn window and everything.
-From the second time I saw his 'death' scene in that other movie, I knew for sure that one dude was coming back at some point, and you will see upthread that I damn well called his reappearance this movie and I wish I had bet somebody some money, man.
-Also, can I just point out that my prediction from this morning was like totally otm and so clearly you should pay heed wrt my prediction for the next movie because I'm like a damn wizard ovah heah.

While I agree that it very pointedly felt like half a movie, I'm very happy with the way that it ended. It was as much fun as one could hope for from a story about hopeless annihilation.

Actually, upon reflection, it's kind of only half a movie in terms of particular events that need to be resolved or reversed for the sake of upcoming films which have already been announced. In terms of the film itself, it's just a movie where the heroes lose hard. And it's difficult to see it as the first half of a story when there's no clear process by which the events of this film can be rectified in the second half. I mean, clearly they will be to some extent, but the next chapter is likely to at least kick off with the survivors resigned to figuring out how to just move forward in a profoundly-altered world.

uh, i can’t believe nobody is talking about Future’s super weird rap from the end credits of AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR??? it doesn’t even spoil the movie... despite playing AFTER the movie!! managed to sneak a video and transcribe the lyrics– hope Disney doesn’t take this down!!! pic.twitter.com/n1bBlSZoEJ

— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) April 28, 2018

I was sold on the song by the end but the actors included in the credits were otm

also thank you, I hate to be the first one to post demi’s credits videos every time

I appreciate the extra effort demi put into this one

The video was great but the 200 identical 'it's real' responses to incredulous twitterers are killing me.

I'm not sure what my favorite inclusion in the credits is, but S. Epatha Merkerson is up there

Michael Stulbargh seems most destined to actually show up in the MCU at some point

I am not sure what about the Marvel movies has done this to me, but I want Iron Man to die and stay dead and I dislike the iron man

maybe it's because he's an old blowhard and I see his on-screen partner and I assume she's started the MCU version of goop

pepper potts has a website called "poop"

i keep forgetting what MCU stands for, then i remember and want to abolish acronyms.

so they all died in this huh

“And despite the hard-luck finish—something an obligatory post-credits sequence goes a long way toward neutering”

From Keith Uhlich’s review, imo a bizarre way to characterize the movie reminding us that non-super heroes/half the population are going to start seeing their loved ones turn to ash.

Get the feeling he may have stayed in the theater too long and accidentally saw a preview for Overboard or something.

this was great imo!

though walking out of the theater the crowd was def shook & suuuuuper quiet

the Threads of superhero films

.,..if you knew Threads 2: Still Threadin' was coming in 12 months to undo most of the radiation poisoning, sure.

Things I liked:

- that it spent time with the characters before throwing them into action, unlike the last Avengers ie Ultron which was like “lala party oh hey a new robot aaand GO”

- Gamora/Ultron story was v affecting imo. Not so much the Ultron part but Gamora’s. esp with the Nebula scene

- Spidey’s Prototype 17A spacesuit was p dope

- “Kick names. Take ass.”

Am on the fence about:

- the tone of the Guardians or maybe just Starlord in particular felt a little sleazy or something, it wasn’t quite right. Minor quibble tho.

Things I didn’t like:

[this space intentionally left blank]

P. sure my wife is suffering PTSD from this movie.

Nebula as a Damien Hirst installation was extremely O_O

I managed to make it til tonight more or less totally blind (aside from reading the original comics), so everything beyond what was in the trailer (and expectations from the original comics) came as total surprise to me. Ergo, I thought this was pretty great, more or less what I've been hoping for from a lot of these movies, which is something closer to what I remember as a kid reading this stories, crossover issues and limited series and melodrama and dramatic deaths and all. Faked out more than a few times, too. I know I wasn't the only one expecting Death only to get that other character.

I like how some characters have powers so limitless even they don't know their limits. Though there are still a couple characters in this MCU whose powers remain kind of vague to me.

here is my question: why does billionaire tech giant tony stark have a flip phone?

I thought this was pretty clearly an ironic billionaire tech giant has old flip phone joke? I mean, I chuckled.

it’s a burner, have you guys never seen a crime show

you buy a bunch, then program their numbers into each other. no one knows where or when you bought them and you use them one time, and only to call the other burners. you never turn it on before you use it, so no tracking

even with Stark’s tech it’d be hard to track, and he probably wouldn’t due to honor. the government/registration act types had none of them

yeah it’s like the least interesting thing in the movie! watch a Wire once in awhile :D

i didnt know before this that Bruce & Hulk talked to each other

imo hulk’s prob burned out from 24/7 hulking out on Planet Jeff Goldblum in Ragnarok. i get it buddy

Guys, Captain America mailed Stark the burner at the end of Civil War after they had their big rasslin' match. I'm really embarrassed that you can't remember a minor plot point from a two-year-old movie.

also this ^

(NB, I rewatched Civil War like a week ago, and I otherwise never would have remembered that plot point.)

Hulk performance anxiety were funny. Lots of jokes in this were funny.

needed more Carrie Coon

I love her, but I think we got enough of her.

v glad to see her getting that MCU $$$

They pulled so much stuff off with this movie that I don't put anything past them at this point, but ... are they planning to introduce Captain Marvel *and* Adam Warlock in the next movie? My only guess is that they will sort of combine Marvel and Warlock, for convenience sake, even though they've hinted at Warlock in previous MCU movies. The fact that they got rid (as expected) of some of the more abstract cosmic stuff (like Death, or Mephisto, or Infinity, et al.) shows they have no problem focusing the scope/scale a little tighter, and they've said outright that Captain Marvel will be the most powerful being introduced in the movies to date, which inflates her already considerable powers in the comics, right?

Warlock will happen but not until Guardians 3 (the only hint of his arrival/existence thus far was a shot of his cocoon and a mention of his name in the post-credits scene of GotG 2). There's only room enough for one superhero ex machina in the next Avengers film, so it'll have to be the one who has her own feature-length proof of concept on the way.

I know it feels wrong for Warlock to be MIA given how integral he (not to mention the equally-absent Silver Surfer) is to the comic version of the story, but I've learned to roll with the MCU's alternate take on things at this point. Besides, we're gonna need some folks to keep WATCH over those INFINITY gems once this is all over (wink wink), so I'm sure there will be a place for him.

It only occurred to me for the first time yesterday that, personality-wise, Rocket is kind of a Pip stand-in in the MCU (if those in the know feel like making predictions about what happens to all those magical glove Skittles).

Oh btw i really enjoyed Dinklage <3

most personal wtf moment in this was the scene with wanda and the vision in scotland cuz i bought the first issue of infinity war in 1991 at deadhead comics, just around the corner from where that scene was filmed in edinburgh

also lol at the visible 'we will deep-fry your kebab' notice in a shop window in one shot - truly a flavour of the real scotland right there

Oh btw i really enjoyed Dinklage <3

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 30 April 2018 05:03 (four hours ago)

that voice! im not sure if it was meant to be intentionally funny or not but i did chuckle a few times at it

dinklage and hemworth scenes did threaten to descend into battle of the unconvincing cod-english accents but yeah he was good value

i bet whoever thought to cast dinklage as a giant dwarf was very pleased with themselves when they came up with the idea

Yeah, that was actually genius. I thought he would be Pip.

Thanos should totally win the Nobel Peace Prize for reuniting the Avengers.

imo hulk’s prob burned out from 24/7 hulking out on Planet Jeff Goldblum in Ragnarok. i get it buddy

Plus he got his ass good and thoroughly kicked for the first time ever by Thanos and probably wasn't eager to try a second time.

yeah, the little whimper the hulk lets out after thanos cracks him in the jaw for the first time was surprisingly affecting!

speaking of the opening scene, are we to assume that valkyrie and korg and miek and the rest of the crew of thor's ship are all dead now after it blew up?

the tone of the Guardians or maybe just Starlord in particular felt a little sleazy or something, it wasn’t quite right. Minor quibble tho.

veg otm about this btw, something about chris pratt really rubbed me the wrong way in this one - maybe it's just his shtick is getting thin or maybe it's the moustache, but he was definitely more on the wrong end of the loveable rogue - cocky dipshit spectrum this time out

drax remains a delight, tho - dave bautista is such a great deadpan weirdo

I assume so, if Heimdahl is dead it seems the rest of them are as well. Which is one of the darkest things the MCU has done! That makes Thor literally the only surviving Asgardian.

Hulk in the last Thor movie is so Hulk he doesn't want to be Banner ever again. It takes work, but they finally convince Banner to come out again. Then when they need Hulk they need Banner to become Hulk, but there is the express concern that Hulk might be permanent. I forget whether the movie ends with Hulk Hulk or Banner, but clearly he is Banner again by this movie. Maybe Hulk is just sick of the constant indecision? Be Hulk! Don't be Hulk! No, be Hulk again! And Hulk is all, I'm getting too old for this shit.

holy shit xxxpost I don't remember hearing it but I read elsewhere that there was a line about Thanos killing half the people on the ship (as is his wont) so I'd wager that some of them managed to escape. Almost certain they wouldn't have killed the heroes from two movies ago offscreen.

One of my many predictions is that (at least some of) the Asgardians are going to be resurrected and New Asgard will be on earth where Odin died immediately after being all 'hey sons, check this place out, pretty sweet huh, hint hint'.

well, as someone else pointed out itt, any deaths in this one are likely to be wiped out next time around - it's the deaths in the sequel which are likely to stick

(That was me.)

new asgard seems real likely, yeah

my wife pointed out that doc strange's willingness to give up the time gem, and his justification that this was the way it had to be, must be because when he looked into the divergent timelines this is what happened in the only timeline where the heroes win

woulda been a lot less hassle for everyone if you'd just outright said that tho, doc, c'mon

you otm xp

Yeah, Doc Strange knows how this ends, but he's mum on spoilers.

There are a few deaths that seem permanent in this one. There are a few (like Loki) that get an asterisk because he's been "dead" before (like Red Skull). Gamora, she's clearly existing in soul world or whatever, so she can be freed.

I told me daughter after the movie that the comics have all been going on for so long that virtually every permutation has occurred. Everyone's dead! Everyone's back! Multiple people have been Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Spider-man, etc. Multiple universes! Multiple dimensions! That's what I sort of appreciate about the never ending stream of Marvel movies. Like, of course it's never ending! There have been thousands and thousands of issues and stories and sidelines and characters etc. It never ends!

peter parker's exit is still haunting me :(

It's pretty sad. Black Panther shocked several people near me. I mean, that movie is still in theaters!

Strange can't hip Thanos to his plan, man! He's gotta keep it to himself for now.

GOING ALL-IN ON SPOILERS HERE! LOOK AWAY! LOOOOK AWAAAAAY!
^
^
^
^
I think Heimdall is gone (if only because I believe Eldra has been a kinda begrudging participant in the MCU), but the Warriors Three were dispatched just way too easily in Ragnarok so they'll be back. Where the eff is Sif even at, come to think of it?

Gamora has taken up residence in the Soul Gem a la Warlock (and, tbf, a la Gamora in the comics). Vision gonna get fixed and turn white. Loki? Who knows. Probably back, but not for a while.

Cap and/or Stark are toast in the next one.

And as I hinted upthread, upon a second viewing of the first Captain America movie, it became clear that Red Skull didn't die. He was 'disintegrated' by the Tesseract but in a totally different way than the people who'd been obliterated by the Tesseract beforehand. I knew he was coming back eventually (and, given Weaving's vocal lack of interest in reprising the role, that he's be recast).

Re: Stark, they've been playing up his PTSD since the first Avengers, but I forget - did he see something specific that sort of bonded him with Thanos? Why does Thanos know who he but apparently no one else? I guess he knows of Thor and Loki already, right?

Also, friends and I have been guessing that the reason Marvel is mum on much past the next couple of movies is the at least distinct possibility that they will get the rights to Fantastic Four/Doom/Silver Surfer, X-Men, et al. Gotta leave some wiggle room.

Vision gonna get fixed and turn white

when he died i was convinced his corpse was gonna be white

when he does go full returned-gandalf they're not gonna need to use makeup on paul bettany's face and hands because he is the pastiest motherfucker who ever lived

cap is definitely a goner in the next one, i think, probably seconds after mending fences with tony. but who will be cap next - bucky or sam?

did he see something specific that sort of bonded him with Thanos? Why does Thanos know who he but apparently no one else?

tony has a weird dream / flash-forward during age of ultron where he sees all his teammates dead on a ruined planet out in space, which kinda foreshadows his first meeting with thanos in this one

presumably thanos knows him from when he singlehandedly shut down the chiaturi invasion at the end of avengers

One of my biggest personal disappointments (which I'm sure is disappointing to only me and maybe like three other people on the planet): I was really hoping for at least a cursory acknowledgment of the TV side of the MCU. I'd been hoping the schism was a long-term fake-out and everything would come together now. Like, spend a grand total of four seconds of time showing the small-screen dudes and dudettes TCB-ing it in the midst of chaos. But nah. And on Agents of SHIELD this week we got one passing mention from Jake Busey about crazy stuff going down in NYC (and I'm guessing half the team won't have mysteriously disappeared by next week's episode). Thanks, Loeb.

yeah, that was a bit of a bummer, although it did occur to me that the avengers still (iirc) think coulson's dead so i dunno if they could spare a few minutes of screen time to get everyone back up to speed

but clark gregg's gonna be in captain marvel tho right?

Is that official?! It makes sense that he might be but I hadn't heard anything about that.

Avengers 4 would be a good time for Coulson to go public again, right after half of the supposedly-dead population of the universe is resurrected. And just play it off like that's the reason he's alive again.

apparently so! clark gregg:

That was a fun call from my friends in the Cinematic Universe, who I normally see at these events, saying, 'You know, we think once again we have some work for you, but it takes place in the '90s. Can you go to the gym?' Yeah, I said, 'The '90s? I mean, there is no gym that can get me back to the '90s.' And they said, 'Well, don't worry. We've been working on that technology, and we think we can goose you back a few years.'

On-set photos of a de-aged Fury from the Captain Marvel set have been kinda hilarious.

Re: sleazy starloard - I couldn't see Thanos the same for the rest of the movie after his sick "testicle chin" burn early on.

One complaint about the movie that I keep seeing over and over is regarding the relative lack of stakes, given the fact that everyone knows that most of this death and destruction is going to be rolled back in the next film. But I think one key plot element to keep in mind is the repeated warnings in Doctor Strange that there's a price to making such huge and sweeping changes to the universe. Things are largely going to get fixed but I wager that it'll be a pyrrhic cure and that the cost will set the tone for the MCU going forward.

can't believe Fury's been carrying around a pager that contacts Captain Marvel all these years and finally decided to push the button

and that cost will be casting jai courtney as iron man xp

I think their decision to try to claim the fourth movie *isn't* a part two was kind of closing the door after the fox was in the henhouse, but I was still extremely skeptical they'd end the movie on the note they did. The stakes of leaving half the universe dead until another movie comes out is still a pretty heavy thing, imo

The reactions to the Guardians' 'sleaziness' is intersting inasmuch as I kinda figured there'd be some friction once they were tossed into the mix. Most of the earth-bound heroes have been trying to toe this very noble line of saving and sparing lives whenever possible, living according to a certain code, whereas the Guardians are basically mercenaries without much compunction for killing (or mass slaughter). Kinda makes sense that they'd seem a little more douchier and antiheroic in this context.

also one thing i don't think is explicitly laid out in this is that gotg vol 2 actually took place a couple of years before the 'now' of infinity war, right?

I just remembered my wife and I were talking yesterday after having seen the movie on Saturday and I said, "I can't believe we got from 'Hey, that dude from Friends and Swingers is making an Iron Man movie' to this, but here we are." It really is some kind of accomplishment that transcends liking/disliking/hating the genre or the individual films or the effect on the industry.

I keep reading stuff about GotG 2 taking place pretty much directly after GotG 1 but I don't remember many indications in the film itself of that being the case. I guess maybe the scene at the end with the teenaged Groot is a jump forward into the present?

been a while since i've seen it but iirc gotg2 starts with an 80s flashback with de-aged kurt russell then cuts to the guardians in space with a title card that says '2014'?

and presumably the only reason it's set out that way is so that groot isn't still a baby in infinity war

The sleaziness of GotG wasnt in contrast to the others, it felt more like putting them in the hands of someone other than Gunn meant that their heart & playfulness got kinda lost in translation

I thought the Starlord/Iron Man scenes were a little iffy, but Thor deciding most of them were clowns and that Rocket was surely their captain was great. If you're that old you can immediately spot competence, I guess.

All right, I saw the mention in the credits about an Arrested Development character but missed it in the film:

Arrested Development easter egg in the leaked Avengers: Infinity War clip. A reference to Tobias Fünke after he auditioned for the Blue Man Group. pic.twitter.com/lyVi3NJ9Oh

— GuruKid (@FunWithGuru) November 26, 2017

putting them in the hands of someone other than Gunn meant that their heart & playfulness got kinda lost in translation

yeah, this is otm i think

so there's a deleted scene with the destruction of Xandar, right?

it didn't get much in the movie other than a mention and an eyebrow raise

Tons of lols this time around particularly the line about Wanda when she came down to kick ass, but Rocket's "THIS is our plan? We hit him with a brick?" was the most i've laughed at a Marvel line since Rudd's Civil War mid-scrap pearl "Anyone got any orange slices?".

Anyone see it in 3D/Imax? I went 2D as that was the next available. Might go back for round 2 in 3D.

Also what are the odds you can use randomly install someone else's eyeball and still see through it?

Yeah, I always see these in 3D whenever possible. As usual, it was decent if not mind-blowing or entirely necessary (Doctor Strange was the only one where the 3D really kicked ass, and it was the first time a movie ever made me feel like I might need some Dramamine).

Dude, it was a space eyeball. They pretty much install themselves.

so uh, that old classic about shouting "fire" in a movie theater..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/04/30/after-avengers-screening-a-calif-man-started-yelling-about-god-moviegoers-panicked/

(this is horrible and would be a bad idea at any movie, but doing so immediately after the end of this one would have given me a guilty lol if people hadn't been injured)

I will admit that I was mildly alarmed when the lone dude in the front row of my showing (who I assumed must be a big fan because, y'know, front row) got up and walked out about five minutes before the movie ended. It was a little WTF.

maybe it was his second viewing and he had to go pick his kid up from school

one thing that bugged me about this was the battle in wakanda at the end, which is set on exactly the same hillside as the final battle in black panther and has basically the same tower-defence objective too - like, couldn't you have at least moved it to the other side of the hill or something?

as if they'd put their palace in a location that has two fronts for attack? pssh

maybe they ran short of budget or something i dunno

there's a joke to be had in here about filming locations and wakanda not being real but I don't want to let you down, bg

that ship has long since sailed, brother

pic.twitter.com/g7JnItTXAS

— Tremors was a documentary. (@turnageb) April 4, 2017

wakanda forever

that one hillside in wakanda forever

Maybe it's their favourite battle ground. So it made sense what the Black panther said to the security personnel.

i.e. it was actually chosen wasn't it?

Wanda to Dr Strange - bitch get that time stone back so i can save my bro

Btw I saw this again last night and there was an idiot in the theatre who kept loudly saying "uhhh what" or "I'm lost wtf" after every major event of the last half hour.

Esp the snap.

TBF, this is not intended for the casual viewer. And I don't think there's a new Paul Blart out yet so what the hell else they gonna watch?

The movie does an OK job fleshing out Thanos, but considering he's popped up in presence or name in several of the previous movies it would have been nice if they developed him a tad more to lay the groundwork for this one. Minus any of the cosmic entities it doesn't really do a good job of demonstrating hierarchies of power or balance or just general Things That Make the Universe Tick, which given the last Guardians introduced the Living Planet they might have been able to do. Maybe that will come into play the next movie.

quibbles:
1. After blowing [checks wiki] Maw out into space, Strange could have teleported IM, SpM and himself back to earth so the "oh no we're stuck on this ship, guess we're goin'a Titan now" moment rang a bit false.

2. You guys, quit fucking with the glove and just cut his arm off. (Oh wait, it's PG-13)

3. I thought of something else after seeing the movie Saturday night but can't think of it now.

I enjoyed it. 46 years since my 1st issue of the Avengers comic and I'm not tired of that particular team dynamic yet.

1. They weren't stuck on the ship. Tony specifically argued in favor of taking the fight to Thanos on Titan instead of returning to earth.

2. In all of the intense violence thrown his way, Thanos suffered one (1) solitary cut on his face. Feels like taking off the arm might've necessitated crushing it between two planets or something.

3. Can't really argue with that one.

2a. Sorry one cut to the face and one non-fatal split open torso via magical star-forged axe.

The only legit quibble I have encountered is that with The Infinity Gauntlet and all the stones, Thanos could have just created enough food for everyone, or bigger planets, or more resources in general, rather than just wiping out half the universe. But quips like that kind of miss the point. He wanted symbolic, blind balance.

Also, as noted by a character whose name already escapes me, Thanos is not a god. He is a flawed being whose pretense of neutrality is a delusion.

Yes. And his fatal flaw, as revealed by Warlock in the original comic, is that he himself recognizes that he's undeserving of such great power.

Darkseid rip-off though he may be, Starlin turned Thanos into a legitimately great and complex character.

I'd estimate that about 90% of the Thanos stories end where his defeat is contingent on confronting his inability to accept a win. You've got to let him win. The rest will figure itself out.

Seriously. What is he going to do now that he's 'fixed' the universe, just sit around sipping coladas all day?

Some part of the resolution to this mess is clearly going to revolve around Gamora mind-fucking him via the Soul Gem.

farming and a life of quiet seclusion, iirc

'Please, Avengers, leave me to my milking.'

http://s3.amazonaws.com/cdn-spm/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Thanos-Became-A-Farmer-After-Infinity-Gauntlet-1024x466.jpg

TBF, we didn't see him do much actual farming. I mean, kudos on the craftsmanship, but constructing a Scare-Thanos does not a farmer make.

that field didn't plant itself, man

There was no evidence that he didn't just cheat and use the Fecundity Gem.

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This is fair.

The Gauntlet is fried so any harnessing of most of em will require new containers

Infinity Tophat and Tails

Rearrangin' the universe with an elegant softshoe routine.

my only genuine quibble in the entire thing was the curious military decision to take on a massive infantry without air power and/or heavy cavalry (no, war machine and hulkbuster do not count)

I assume it's hard to have too much flying when you have an invisible laser dome over the arena.

Some legit nitpicks I saw: why do the people vanish costumes and clothes and fake arms and all? And how do we know Captain Marvel isn't gone, too? Maybe Adam Warlock is checking her messages.

Some other observations others have made: that drop of blood from Thanos (or on Thor's axe) may come in handy.

People's accoutrements vanish because the secret half of Thanos's plan is to eliminate half of the universe's wardrobe in the hopes of making his own more fabulous.

Call to Captain Marvel was a last ditch shot in the dark. I guess Fury didn't know for sure that it would work (and, in the moment he was turning to a fine ash, probably only half cared) but he had to make the attempt.

The bigger nitpick there might be that the now-omniscient Thanos should maybe have penciled in any potential legitimate threats on his 'to make nonexistent' list.

Like, hey guy, remember that guy who sunk an axe head in your thorax? Maybe don't leave him standing. Just a thought.

Thanos wanted to be neutral and random.

xpost Oh, for sure, esp. since he had no idea what was going on. But I still think they bring in Adam Warlock for 4. They made such a big deal of his pod in Guardians 2. iirc in the original story he does just sort of pop up as the deus ex. These Marvel movies seem to be doing a great job successfully introducing characters with long and complicated histories. Esp. considering a few of the A-listers, like (not) Scarlet Witch and Vision, I still don't know what they do or what their powers are.

Warlock was kind of a ringer in Infinity Gauntlet but he was a prior presence in the Marvel U and had been residing in the Soul Gem for fifteen years and he had been reintroduced and his reemergence had been foreshadowed in issues of Silver Surfer leading up to the crossover. In this particular context, him suddenly showing up from out of nowhere to save the day would be hugely narratively unsatisfying. I still assert that we don't see him until Guardians 3.

(It remains to be seen if the sudden appearance of Carol Danvers will have the impact they're clearly hoping for, but she does have a feature-length intro coming up before Avengers 4 whereas Warlock does not.)

I predict the CM movie will have an Infinity War framing sequence wrapped around her origin and 1st adventure.

Yeah, I figured that was a given. Unless at the end we zoom to the present day and she sees her communicator going off and disgustedly chucks it in a trash can. Good luck, suckers!

Why is Ant Man next up. Is he significant in some way.

He has been learning to access TEH QUANTUM REALM since the end of the first Ant Person movie so he perhaps has access to the fundamental building blocks of reality itself.

They can inject him into Thanos's boo-boo.

Edinburgh at night looked gorgeous.

into Thanos's poop?

Other than Wakanda, this was a pretty weirdly unpopulated movie. Lots of heroes standing in empty ships, or on empty planets, or in empty cities. Even the tag at the end ... I can only imagine the intergalactic chaos of half the population disappearing. Avengers 4 is at the very least going to start out on a very depressing note, with cities/civilization ruin.

I can't imagine it will be as fully fleshed out, but I read a chilling thought experiment article once about all of the passive destruction (unregulated nuclear plants, etc.) that would take place if humanity were to just suddenly perish or disappear in one fell swoop.

I'd wonder how long it would take. 36 hours?

he's used to living with aliens who are more efficient at replacing each other in infrastructure roles when half the planet dies

"sorry Humans, I guess this didn't work real well for your planet, but I can't snap my fingers and exclude you guys, it's a package deal. good luck, hope my snap got yr President"

Did Strange's cloak get dusted when he did?

I...think so?

My prediction is that at least but probably just Iron Man sacrifices himself to destroy Thanos in the sequel. Of the heroes, he's the one who won't be back (at least as played by RDJ). Don't think they'll kill Thor or Captain America, but don't know what else they can do with the latter as depicted by Evans. He (the character) would never retire on his own; maybe he will work the farm in Wakanda? Obv. Nebula will play a big(ger) role. She's left on Titan with Iron Man, and she plays a big role in the book. I also think post Thanos these movies will de-escalate the threats a bit to be less than world threatening. Unless they go full Free-Skrull, which ... maybe! I'm trying to think what other huge storylines they could mine, at least minus the Fantastic Four/Doom, who would actually be an idea Big Bad.

I read some stuff online last night about what might or might not happen in #4 and the casual “Yeah Cap’s prob done, iirc Thanos snapped his neck in one of the comics storyline” or “Oh Iron Man is for sure toast” and I’m like:
https://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/nooooooo_luke_skywalker.gif

It's possible Thanos will kill Cap and then Iron Man will sacrifice himself, but there has to be some mechanic that prevents them all from coming back. So my guess is that maybe one (or both) is given the choice to come back and decides, nah, I'm good, for maximum emotional impact. Like, Cap has had a long, lonely life, so maybe. But Iron Man, genius of computer automation, hidden in robot suit, seems like a no-brainer. As of right now, all we know is that Iron Man is particularly important, and he's already had sacrifice discussion with Strange.

The prob is, save Iron Man and Cap, there are not many characters they can kill for good that would have a real emotional impact. Like, Vision? Hawkeye? Who cares. But RDJs Iron Man, it's been pretty clear for a while that it's leading to something.

I'd've thought RDJ would be among those on their way out, but the fake-out near death he experienced in this one leads me to believe they won't follow through in the next. He's probably safe alongside everyone who took a powder (sorry, couldn't resist) at the end. Cap, though...

Looks like they may soon be addressing questions about where the next movie fits in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l7TOYJZBtI

i legit cried in Infinity War when RDJ got stabbed ;_;

Kinda love how everybody's just so super-casual about the fact that Tony has a suit comprised of nanobots now. Oh, and they can also apparently heal him after he gets impaled by a demigod, nbd.

The extent of anyone's injuries in these movies is always more than a tad nebulous.

This needs to be immortalized

Thanos: I’m so sorry, little one pic.twitter.com/fFqInRBntS

— Daniel wasn’t ready for Infinity War (@DDaniel_200) April 30, 2018

"there's an antman and a spiderman?!"

are thanos and cable (x-men/deadpool ii)related infinity stone or otherwise?

Not related at all cinematically, and I can't recall any real interaction between them in the comics. Come to think of it, I've never seen them in the same room together...

I'd wonder how long it would take. 36 hours?Took about three seasons on Last Man on Earth

Aaaaaand here come the memes!

"Superintendent, I don't feel so good." pic.twitter.com/3XeOXHctp5

— Ice (@IceSeason101) April 30, 2018

the arc of the meme universe is long, but it bends towards steamed hams

In the absence of justice, I will settle for hams.

Lots here, some pretty funny:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apos-don-apos-t-feel-204920584.html

http://i68.tinypic.com/nd7rs9.jpg

guilty lol

https://i.redditmedia.com/cMzLDa4wvrKIuE-kcgcKd7bFmlLON_CiRMkS1vDUYE4.jpg?w=785&s=1899523e816aa3268e6b4b5a7e098343

oh my fuck

Good

"once again I am being attacked for presenting new ideas" pic.twitter.com/iCoxTBjsSt

— Justin Yandell (@ShotgunZen) May 2, 2018

https://78.media.tumblr.com/d8b566a8764fad0e0a3a3d4838d6d765/tumblr_p84bicKNYf1qewacoo1_540.png

https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03138/Trivialpursuit-pie_3138286c.jpg

So ... close ...

just saw this and...

my wife pointed out that doc strange's willingness to give up the time gem, and his justification that this was the way it had to be, must be because when he looked into the divergent timelines this is what happened in the only timeline where the heroes win

I'd estimate that about 90% of the Thanos stories end where his defeat is contingent on confronting his inability to accept a win. You've got to let him win. The rest will figure itself out.

some combination of this seems otm

tho if the gauntlet is ruined, does he actually still have the unlimited power that he believes he doesn't deserve?

Remember that Rocket Rabbit almost certainly has a spare gauntlet in the trunk of his ship.

And the joke will likely be that he's had one there for years, and no one asked.

https://mashable.com/2018/04/29/new-yorker-avengers-infinity-war/

I thought Anthony Lane reviewed it? Anyway, RB is just one in a long line of weird pseudo contrarians who profess to know everything about movies except when they pretend they don't.

We loved this. It was amazing watching in the theater during Act V, when we all went from whoops and giggles to being a bunch of extended family sitting in around a hospital bed.

I’ll catch up on the thread this weekend so I can yell at everyone for being wrong and not paying attention.

I kept thinking abt all the sad little kids in the car on the ride home after the movie...and the ensuing “murky” conversations

“So...Black Panther is dead now?”
“No buddy, he’s just kinda...disappeared. Cap & Iron Man will find a way to get him back.”
“So... Does that mean you’ll find a way to make grandma come back?”
*parent quietly curses Marvel*

This kinda reminded me of the first act of the original animated Transformers movie.

this was great. i lol'd at Pratt doing Hemsworth. also Thor's line about being 1500 years old and Thanos being one in a long line of enemies was good.

My guess is Cap dies and Iron Man retires for good - there was too much set up about the wedding for that not to come through later on. Do we think Loki will come back? His death seemed a bit perfunctory given his fan favourite status.

They'll cheese it somehow. Like, Loki will come back but finally realize the error of his ways or something and will pledge to rebuild Asgard while Thor is galavanting about the universe. That gets him out of the way while leaving the possibility that he can cause trouble later.

Nothing new to add, but this was fun. It made me want to go back and fill in some of the Marvel films I've missed.

Spiderman getting ashed was the punch in the gut.

The strike against Stark retiring is that Stark has retired at the end of like half of the movies in which he's appeared.

Yeah, he's done for, if only because they've almost killed him a couple of times, he's been haunted by his NYC vision or whatever, Strange knows they need him to beat Thanos, and last because the actor is in the suit with a mask he could be anyone.

Prognosticating about who is definitely dead for really real seems thoroughly boring. The best outcome is guessing correctly and then being bored when it happens?

Notes:

* I can't believe I was worried that they wouldn't flesh out Thanos properly. I remember one of the Russo brothers mentioning this was a Thanos movie, and Brolin said as much in a couple of interviews, but I didn't know how they would fit that in since I assumed the whole movie would be leading up to one big fight with Thanos. Instead, there's only three scraps with Thanos, only one of which is actually a decent matchup, on Titan with the Guardians & the two nerds in power suits. I appreciated his Malthusian rationalization and that he extrapolates anecdata from his home planet's experience as if that's how it has to be for everyone, everywhere. Nicely reactionary & completely egotistical, a very good Thanos. You can tell Brolin really got into trying to play him as sympathetically as possible.

* I knew he was going to kill half of everybody. I think all of us knew how this movie had to end. Or was there really

* The whole forging-of-Stormbreaker side quest wasn't great for pacing and time, maybe, but I think it was necessary for the payoff when Thor finally shows up on Earth. My favorite part of the movie was when Banner shouted "oh, you guys are screwed now!" and I think my second favorite part of the movie was Groot deciding he needed to be the axe handle he wanted to see in the world.

* There's about sixty or seventy other bits in this movie tied for my third and fourth favorite things. Starlord yelling "boom" and flipping off Thanos while he falls backward through a portal, just about everything Peter Parker says, getting to see Wakanda and all the awesome Wakanda people so soon. I wish the women had more funny stuff, it seems like all the good jokes went to dudes.

* I can't believe Neanderthal hasn't boasted about being completely right about Loki eating it in the beginning of the film (although I guess "first 40 minutes" seems like hitting the side of a barn when you account for how quickly he actually gets murked)

arrgh - second bullet is supposed to say

"Or was there really a lot of uncertainty or just plain ignorance of what Thanos does with the Infinity Gauntlet once he has it? Or that he might not get to do it in this installment?"

There's a motif in this of the heroes repeatedly not really "getting" or empathizing with Thanos, saying he "cares about nothing"...Gamora most explicitly. They don't really know who/what they're dealing with because they just assume he's like the other more one-dimensional villains they've faced.

Not sure what to make of it but it's definitely something that's underlined multiple times. Alongside the theme of confronting the heroes with choosing between the greater good and their own personal attachments (with Quill failing most spectacularly) it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see how it's developed in the next one.

(I guess you could say they fail over and over to really take seriously the dilemma that he's confronting them with...)

Thanos's problem is that he cares too much!

Yeah! Or he cares about abstractions like "balance" in the absence of particular lives...like any ideologue perhaps.

Seems like a better plan for thanos would have been to just wipe out half of all of the different civilizations or species in the universe, rather than half of the members of each civilization. This way, every single civilization is now pissed at him, versus the survivors being mostly ignoant of what happened.

So many jokes were DOA and I still don't understand Chris Pratt as a movie star but, man, did I love this. That's three great comic book films in a row from Marvel.

Thanos based his ideals on the Black Plague fallout obv

"Wow this allowed for luxury crops!"

Lol Tombot i didnt remember that I posted that

Thanos’ real goal is to make life into a Veblen good

Oh and my wife’s favorite line by miles:

“What am I supposed to say? Jesus?”

I wonder whether thanos's wish as he snapped was "destroy 50% of everyone at random oh but except me, I want to stick around for that sunrise" or whether he really did just go with "50% of everyone, true random" and then he was just lucky to still be around afterwards.

The latter. Even with all the infinity stones, he still can’t see his own plot armor; and it would be completely against his whole ethos to leave himself out of the arbitrary lottery.

All that said, I have to imagine snapping your fingers while wearing a metal gauntlet is HAMFF - I mean, try it with isotoners on, shit’s practically impossible - wait, never mind, my real point is this: he waited to do it until after Thor had basically killed him because he knew he might get the wrong result in the coin toss. Might as well do it when you actually have nothing to lose.

It will be intersting if Thanos forces the heroes to confront the suffering they'll be ushering back into the universe by reversing his magical snap.

Did anybody else shout "ARACHNID!" at Thanos

No

There was still the marvel trademark bit on undercutting the emotion of a scene with a wisecrack that they’re doing too many times and I wish they’d figure out a proper balance for.

Also, not enough Benedict Wong in the film and I wish the women had far more to do.

If they give Captain Marvel full-Kirby/Starlin cosmic-level powers it should improve the balance in the followup. Do you think they’ll figure out a way to bring in Monica Rambeau in the next 12 months?

The only other iteration of Ms. Marvel I'd expect to see anytime soon is Kamala Khan. Still laying money on Captain Marvel 2: Carol & Kamala.

if marvel has any sense at all kamala khan will be making an appearance asap

just annoyed that she’s probably not gonna be hanging out with lockjaw since the inhumans tv show shit the bed

Finally saw it, had happily missed spoilers (and memes) and as I said near the start, that was a whole lotta avengin'.

Saw this, thought it was okay, but definitely not on the level of the best Marvel movies so far (Thor, GotG, Civil War). Here's some scattered thoughts:

WARNING!!! SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE MOVIE!!!

* After the movie was over me and my spouse both talked how we felt exhausted by it. I think this was mostly because it was just an unending series of action scenes with few character moments in between. It definitely felt like some of these could've been shortened or cut altogether. For example, as cool as it was to see Peter Dinklage, Thor's little sidequest could've easily been shortened to 5 minutes instead of 20 to give more space for other stuff.

* I've heard some people react to the criticism that this was merely a huge slugfest by saying, "so was The Infinity Gauntlet!" Well yeah, but it's different with comics where we get too see our favourite characters every month, they can afford to do a full-action crossover every now and then. But with the movies, we haven't seen most of these character for a year or two, so it would've been nice to know what's happened to them in between instead of just dropping them on the field of battle.

* The aforementioned shortage of character moments hurt Scarlet Witch and Vision the most. In the comics their romance was developed over a long period of time, with Vision being uncertain whether a human could love an android or whether he's even capable of love. Here all of this happened offscreen, and we get one short, not particularly convincing romantic scene where they're already a couple. This really hurt the intended tragedy of the conclusion, where we're supposed to feel for the couple and the awful choice SW has to make, except that it doesn't really resonate the way the movie wanted to, because the love between the two had never properly been sold to us.

* There are many other similar character beats the movie missed; for example, the meeting between Bruce and Natasha should've been pretty painful due to the events of Age of Ultron, but now all of that was shrugged of in a scene that lasted two seconds. I get it that it's almost impossible to do proper character development with this many characters to juggle, but maybe the film-makers should've just considered a different approach? For example, they could've made only one or two of the heroes the clear protagonists while the others remain supporting players. This approach worked very well in Civil War with Cap and Iron Man, and as result that movie had plenty of room for personal drama on top of the action scenes.

* I did appreciate the fact that they made Thanos the biggest character in the movie, and the only one who got a proper character arc. Adapting a classic antagonist like Thanos is always gonna be hard, especially if you only have one movie to establish him as cool villain as well as multi-faceted character, but I think they succeeded in that as well as possible. I also thought it was a good idea to omit Mistress Death altogether and give Thanos's fingersnap the pure Malthusian motivation that Jim Starlin established (and subsequently forgot) in the Silfer Surfer issue where he brought him back from the dead. What may work in the comics may not work as well in the (relatively) more realistic MCU, so having Thanos be in love with the actual embodiment of Death could've come across as corny. Giving Thanos a personal reason to hate overpopulation (the devastation of his people) was also a nice touch, as that made him almost unrelatable, even if his solution to the problem would be idiotic and unworkable in real life.

There were so many tight closeups of Josh Brolin's stubble I spent most of the second half of the film wondering how he shaved his chin what with the folds in it and all.

Did anybody else shout "ARACHNID!" at Thanos

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal), Friday, May 4, 2018 9:20 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I did say "Spiders aren't insects!"

I would not be surprised to hear that there was more shot between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, but that since it was acted between Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, the directors reckoned that the cutting room floor was the best place for it.

There were so many tight closeups of Josh Brolin's stubble I spent most of the second half of the film wondering how he shaved his chin what with the folds in it and all.

did we really need three instances of "u must save ur loved one for the greater good" tho

One minor bummer was the offscreen destruction of Xandar, which is such a central element to Annihilation (which I'd been hoping to see as a movie of its own at some point). Maybe it's just a setup for someone to gain sole access to the Nova Force somehow, but it feels more like a whole range of possible stories just got shut down. Guess we'll see what gets repaired in the next film.

err, sacrifice, not save, obv

Given how divergent the film and TV sides of the MCU have become, I was frankly shocked that last week's Agents of SHIELD made direct reference to the forces of Thanos invading earth (concurrent with a second and unrelated alien invasion on the show). So either half the team is going to disappear soon or they're gonna find some kind of loophole to escape that fate or Loeb is officially a grade-a turkey (the safe money is always on the latter, I find).

(Spoilers for the two people who watch AoS and aren't caught up or who even care a little bit any which way: the MCU's Graviton analogue has learned of Thanos's arrival and intends to crush him into pulp. I'm assuming he will encounter some obstacles toward achieving that goal.)

Yes, one per planet, to make it extra crappy feeling when they all turn out to be utterly futile.

xp to Daniel.

James Gunn was asked on Twitter what Groot's last line before disappearing in Infinity War was.

SPOILER...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
“Dad”

— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) May 6, 2018

oof :(

i am dad

Yes, one per planet, to make it extra crappy feeling when they all turn out to be utterly futile.

We know they're futile going in, surely?

I don't know why it only just occurred to me this morning, but I'm assuming all of the dissolved people in the universe are inside the Soul Gem now.

most likely

jim starlin is a boss

“Space Rabbit Is Space Tree’s Dad” sounds like some James Kochalka material

Am reading "Infinity Gauntlet" atm - am on issue #3 - and quite frankly I keep thinking "This writing's pretty shit!".

xp it's ok to feel your feels, tombot

Also lol comix xp

quite frankly I keep thinking "This writing's pretty shit!".

can't believe a 1990s Marvel crossover written by Jim Starlin etc etc

I think this was okay, but boring, and the cross-cutting belabored a couple of already-tired stories. Not a moment of surprise in it (and I’d managed to stay spoiler-free). Also all of the women were basically waiting on men.

Am reading "Infinity Gauntlet" atm - am on issue #3 - and quite frankly I keep thinking "This writing's pretty shit!".

it's great if you love stories where superheroes spend like three issues in a row hurling themselves one by one at thanos while he stands, largely unconcerned, under some roman columns in outer space iirc

expected 6.5 got an 8 thats a result

Didn't you hate Black Panther? Cannot get a read on what passes muster in the MCU for u and Shakey.

i thought it was bad yeah.

i mean its a different movie different movies can be bad or good within a 30 movie connected arc i dunno what to say rly

The only aspect in which I could see Infinity War competing with Black Panther is visually, and even there I think BP's aesthetic was fresher, pretty as the Cube-ing of sundry heroes was in IW.

Apart from that you've got a film that's basically entirely set-up, and a buncha deaths that only carry emotional weight if a) you've gotten affection towards the characters due to previous MCU films and b) you manage to make yourself forget that all of these characters will be back in the next one. And terrible banter.

having spoiled a 30-year-old issue of thor for darragh on another thread, i might as well pick up the question here: cap's gonna pick up thor's hammer and beat the shit out of thanos with it at some point in the second part (possibly giving up his life in the process) isn't he? they've got to pay off the hammer-lifting scene in age of ultron eventually and it would be a hell of a moment

Mjolnir is toast (see Ragnarok). They have yet to establish, though, whether mere mortals can wield Stormbreaker.

I guess I would like to see Steve Rogers chucking the shattered fragments of an uru hammer at Thanos, though.

good point

thor's right eye was toast at the end of ragnarok tho and they got around that pretty easily so i remain unconvinced that mjolnir won't show up again with time gem shenanigans or something

The hammer-lifting scene paid off inside of Age of Ultron, though.

well thats the thing, none of it has any emotional heft because there's no real version of events once the gems and time magic etc are involved so those scenes and appeals to emotion are.....eh.... optional. for me, the rest of the package should flow, look good, zing, satisfy. this did.

xps to daniel yeah look, black panther, for me,........didnt. not much point appealing to someone about why that is or isnt now is there? perhaps unwise of me to even go so far as to say most of the affection for it is....idealistic projection. the movie falls apart if you arent cheerleading it. i can cheerlead a movie with the best of em but thats not a pretence of objective excellence now is it.

oh yeah, i'd forgotten about that

mods pls delete my posts from today itt so i look like less of a dumbass, it's v embarrassing

Just from today?

(Sorry, bruv, the goalie was totally looking the other way on that one.)

damn ol dirty lunch protect ya neck

https://ksassets.timeincuk.net/wp/uploads/sites/55/2016/07/ezgif-1-8615ce3a62.gif

to daniel yeah look, black panther, for me,........didnt. not much point appealing to someone about why that is or isnt now is there? perhaps unwise of me to even go so far as to say most of the affection for it is....idealistic projection. the movie falls apart if you arent cheerleading it. i can cheerlead a movie with the best of em but thats not a pretence of objective excellence now is it.

I mean if you're asking me if there's any real point to discussing the subjective value of movies then sure, there isn't really, but I'd assumed anyone posting about movies in a thread discussion would've been game for it anyway.

fwiw I went into Black Panther expecting to hate it (as I did hate Wonder Woman, the other big recent movie where you could call idealistic projection as a motivation). But it turned out to me to be a well told narrative with characters I could care about and much visual flair. And I suppose you can make the case that Infinity War is trying to do a different thing than BP did, that making sense or having good character development is all besides the point of a big cosmic x-over movie, fair enough. 8 out of 10 still feels crazy high tho.

im not arguing bp vs iw on those terms, you are

im saying that bp failed in plot, resonance, sense, pacing for me.

not that it was better at those things than iw, but that they dont matter to me: that it was worse at those things.

much, much worse.

bg, my biggest general takeaway from rewatching all of the movies prior to seeing IW was that I should probably get an MRI to see how big the holes in my Swiss cheese brain have become. I couldn't believe how many essential plot points I'd forgotten.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1e/You_Are_Not_Alone.jpg

fwiw i watched wonder woman expecting awful and was pleasantly surprised, and went into black panther expecting the best marvel yet

xp "essential"

I couldn't believe how many essential plot points I'd forgotten.

yeah i happened across a tv broadcast of iron man 2 recently and i'd completely forgotten that's where scarlett johansson first shows up, god knows what else i've quantum leaped away in my journey towards fanboy senescence

(cue someone telling me that actually she shows up somewhere else first)

Thanos acquires reality-shifting powers relatively early on, and yet he spends much of his time punching about, when he could basically eliminate anyone he would want to with the blink of an eye, incapacitate them at least.

As I griped about earlier, we have *three* occasions of someone getting the dilemma of sacrificing the one they lost for a greater good, and they don't even play out in ways that comment on each other. Bad writing.

There is not a second spent in trying to make the hero's deaths, temporary though they are, resonant from an emotional pov.

"No real version of events" doesn't make sense to me - there is a real version, consisting of what happens in that story and what will happen in the next movie. The fact that it needn't behave like our reality doesn't eliminate that; your "optional" assesment seems more to me like the movie allows you to mourn the heroes if you feel like your baggage w/ these characters outweighs what you know the story is going to be - which is its own kind of (non ideological) projection.