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drwexI debated holding off this review in part because there will be a flood of words written about this movie (as there were about Black Panther) and in part because I'm still undecided how much of my reaction is textual versus meta-textual. This is a must-see if you are at all invested in the MCU and a horrible place to start if you are not. It really is an inflection point on a 10-year arc that you have to have some familiarity with.
I think it's a tribute to the script and the movie's hype that people are almost all talking about what happened. It's a very crowded movie, which makes it hard for any one character to get enough screen time to be memorable. I think Hemsworth and Downey do excellent jobs, worthy of their top billing. Each is riding the home stretch of an evolved character and I like the way the characters have gone.
The movie is in rough halves, with some mix-and-match. There's the terrestrial part, with Thanos's army and lieutenants attempting to get the stones that are on Earth. This gives the other Avengers a chance to show their stuff. Then there's the space part, dominated by Thor with some comic relief from the Guardians of the Galaxy. Iron Man, Dr Strange, and Spider Man get dragged along for this and while I like Spidey in this movie more than I liked him in his own movie I think he's still a bit lost.
What ties it all together, surprisingly, is Thanos. More than anything else, this movie is his story. Who he is and why he is and what happened in the past. Unfortunately, he's a moron with no concept of how constrained and unconstrained systems work. Apparently, he believes that if you remove half of the top of the food chain the other half won't expand to fill its place. I mean, really? He claims this plan worked, once, which is eyebrow-raising at best, and then he assumes everyone else will behave the same way and the same outcome will be repeated, which is just freakin' stupid. Thanos has had contact with dozens if not hundreds of races. He has to know that his plan going to fail. I realize this makes him a somewhat more likeable character than a near-god who is in love with Death and kills for the sake of killing, or to impress her, but this movie version just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Now let's talk about the meta-text. A lot turns on whether you think the characters in the movie are being truthful. I think they are, and I think the writers go to some lengths to make that obvious. For example, early on when Loki falsely swears fealty to Thanos just before trying to stab him, Loki self-identifies as the Prince of Mischief. Way to telegraph your moves.
Likewise, there's a debatable point about whether the Infinity Stones actually can be destroyed. Wanda appears to destroy one and we are supposed to believe that would've happened if Thanos hadn't pulled a time trick on it. I think it's true and it's a set-up for what's going to happen in the next movie. Early on, Loki tries to convince Thanos that the Tesseract was destroyed when Asgard blew up. Thanos doesn't say something like "That's impossible" or otherwise object to the notion of a stone being destroyed. So I buy that it can happen and I expect it will.
This all matters because if you think that characters in the movie tell the truth then you know that the mass death at the end isn't going to stand. Dr Strange has seen over a million possible futures and he knows the one that doesn't end in defeat. When he gives the stone to Thanos he says "It was the only way" and when Tony asks if they've now lost he says "We've entered the end game." I think that absolutely telegraphs what happens in the next movie - the only question remains how to pull it off.
It's also telling that characters we know have upcoming movies (GotG, Spider Man, Black Panther) appear to die in the mass extinction. There are ways around some of these problems - either by having new people in the titular roles (Miles Morales please?) - or setting the upcoming movies in the past. But both would be new directions for the MCU and I don't expect it.
Finally, it's not lost on me that the characters that survived are the original Avengers. This is their swan song and while it's good to have people in the wings waiting to move in, the originals need to go out on a high note, which gets easier with a cleaner stage. This argues for Loki coming back, the one pre-extinction death I'm not certain about. I think Vision is definitively gone and Gamora is alive, but trapped inside the soul stone. When it's destroyed I think she'll be freed, and I think she'll have a significant part to play in bringing Thanos down.
I think it's a tribute to the script and the movie's hype that people are almost all talking about what happened. It's a very crowded movie, which makes it hard for any one character to get enough screen time to be memorable. I think Hemsworth and Downey do excellent jobs, worthy of their top billing. Each is riding the home stretch of an evolved character and I like the way the characters have gone.
The movie is in rough halves, with some mix-and-match. There's the terrestrial part, with Thanos's army and lieutenants attempting to get the stones that are on Earth. This gives the other Avengers a chance to show their stuff. Then there's the space part, dominated by Thor with some comic relief from the Guardians of the Galaxy. Iron Man, Dr Strange, and Spider Man get dragged along for this and while I like Spidey in this movie more than I liked him in his own movie I think he's still a bit lost.
What ties it all together, surprisingly, is Thanos. More than anything else, this movie is his story. Who he is and why he is and what happened in the past. Unfortunately, he's a moron with no concept of how constrained and unconstrained systems work. Apparently, he believes that if you remove half of the top of the food chain the other half won't expand to fill its place. I mean, really? He claims this plan worked, once, which is eyebrow-raising at best, and then he assumes everyone else will behave the same way and the same outcome will be repeated, which is just freakin' stupid. Thanos has had contact with dozens if not hundreds of races. He has to know that his plan going to fail. I realize this makes him a somewhat more likeable character than a near-god who is in love with Death and kills for the sake of killing, or to impress her, but this movie version just doesn't pass the sniff test.
Now let's talk about the meta-text. A lot turns on whether you think the characters in the movie are being truthful. I think they are, and I think the writers go to some lengths to make that obvious. For example, early on when Loki falsely swears fealty to Thanos just before trying to stab him, Loki self-identifies as the Prince of Mischief. Way to telegraph your moves.
Likewise, there's a debatable point about whether the Infinity Stones actually can be destroyed. Wanda appears to destroy one and we are supposed to believe that would've happened if Thanos hadn't pulled a time trick on it. I think it's true and it's a set-up for what's going to happen in the next movie. Early on, Loki tries to convince Thanos that the Tesseract was destroyed when Asgard blew up. Thanos doesn't say something like "That's impossible" or otherwise object to the notion of a stone being destroyed. So I buy that it can happen and I expect it will.
This all matters because if you think that characters in the movie tell the truth then you know that the mass death at the end isn't going to stand. Dr Strange has seen over a million possible futures and he knows the one that doesn't end in defeat. When he gives the stone to Thanos he says "It was the only way" and when Tony asks if they've now lost he says "We've entered the end game." I think that absolutely telegraphs what happens in the next movie - the only question remains how to pull it off.
It's also telling that characters we know have upcoming movies (GotG, Spider Man, Black Panther) appear to die in the mass extinction. There are ways around some of these problems - either by having new people in the titular roles (Miles Morales please?) - or setting the upcoming movies in the past. But both would be new directions for the MCU and I don't expect it.
Finally, it's not lost on me that the characters that survived are the original Avengers. This is their swan song and while it's good to have people in the wings waiting to move in, the originals need to go out on a high note, which gets easier with a cleaner stage. This argues for Loki coming back, the one pre-extinction death I'm not certain about. I think Vision is definitively gone and Gamora is alive, but trapped inside the soul stone. When it's destroyed I think she'll be freed, and I think she'll have a significant part to play in bringing Thanos down.
