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(SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 1:32 am
by Friday
Hi, this is a spoiler thread.

I'm not going to be blacking out huge paragraphs and shit. Read on only if you've seen the movie(s) or don't give a shit about Marvel Spoilers.

You have been warned.

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Alrighty. Let's get it out of the way right now:

None of the dead people are actually dead. This is a comic book universe. Also, they're making Spider-Man 2, etc. I'm not going to cover all the possible ways that all the dead people can come back to life, because who gives a shit. They'll do something, and if it's just "Tony uses the Time Gem to undo everything" that's pretty direct and boring but like I said there are Infinity (War) ways to undo shit. This is a comic book.

However, that being said, that was a pretty big and bold way to end a fucking movie. I expected Thanos to win, but only in the typical "heroes are unable to stop phase 1, where phase 1 is collecting all the stones, but then in part 2 stop Thanos from snapping his fingers somehow."

Thanos actually snapped his fingers! Yay! Rocket is still alive and that's the only thing that matters Looks like it's OG Avengers time! Also featuring Nebula and War Machine.

(Are Valkyrie, Loki, and Heimdall really dead? I think the answer is probably yes, no, and yes. But I could be wrong.)

Anyway, it's a good film! Amazing that they managed to make a film starring Chrono Cross amounts of characters not a clusterfuck. A big part of that was how everyone got split up into smaller groups so you never just had like 20 people all in one place.

I liked how they just immediately got Thanos vs Hulk out of the way. I suspect Hulk won't come out now because he's scared because he finally lost a fight.

As my friend (and probably numerous others have pointed out) Marvel even managed to do dark better than fucking DC.

Oh yeah Thanos is rad as fuck! He's def the MC of the movie and I feel like that was a really good move. He's understandable if not relatable in his single minded quest to save the Universe by killing half if it. Unlike most BIG MONSTER FROM SPACE villains, he's not simply there to be big and evil. He's got emotions and motivations beyond "wants to punch heroes in face". Brolin did a great job acting the part with motion capture and though Thanos was, I believe, 100% CGI I never remembered that during the movie.

Oh, another thing: Thank god we finally got some effective and terrifying villains. All of Thanos' minions were competent (especially Ebony Maw) and Thanos himself was scary in a way that Loki, Ultron, Ronan, etc never have been. It was really nice to see that the supposed "meanest, toughest bad guy in the Universe" wasn't just a bag of hot wind as they so often turn out to be.

Red Skull is back! Why? Why the fuck not I assume it was to kind of show that things were coming to an end? When really old shit from forever ago that you thought you'd never see again comes back, that's usually a sign that an arc is about done.

Speaking of arcs, I assume the next film will end the OG Avengers. I know at least RDJ and Evans are going. But it's very possible that Thor, Widow, Hulk, and Hawkeye will bow out for good as well. The Stark death fake out was nice. The whole theater gasped when Thanos stabbed him. But in the end, he has to watch as the nightmare he's always feared, always had in the back of his mind, happens right in front of him. Despite everything Tony has done, Ultron, the Accords, ruining his relationship with Pepper, he couldn't stop his worst fear from coming true. I legit teared up when Peter died in his arms. (Despite knowing nothing that happens is permanent, still.)

We know that this is the only path that results in a "win", because Dr. Strange saw it and said it had to be done. I assume Tony not dying is the key, because

1. There was no way to stop Thanos from snapping his fingers in all 14 million futures viewed.
2. Tony has to survive because he's the one who manages to undo it.
3. And that's why Strange gave up the Time Stone to save him.

Is Ant-Man 2 going to be set post Halving? That'd be interesting. I hope it is and not just "this happened 6 months prior to Infinity War" the title card.

Uh, what else.

Rocket continues to be the best Avenger Rocket continues to be the best movie character

"Imma get that arm"

Strange vs Thanos best fight in movie. I get the impression that if he had actually been using the Time Gem, he could have actually put up a really decent fight. Strange is, after all, arguably the biggest gun they have.

Vision was really a fucking Load in this one. He's supposed to be mega-powerful but spends the whole film getting fucking bodied. Oh well.

A LANNISTER ALWAYS FORGES AN AXE

Seeing Banner get to do a bunch of cool shit was nice. I like Banner and more of him is always good.

Uh there's probably more but I'm forgetting

discuss

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 2:40 am
by Newbie
I have not seen this because I only watch like two movies a year these days, but I did read through the Metafilter FanFare thread on the subject during a slow bit at work. The theory I liked the best was that the people disintegrating were not simply dying—the universe was instead bifurcating. Reality A and Reality B. Our survivors are stuck in Reality A, and as it happens, this is the reality that is doomed. All the characters with upcoming movies get to have those happen in Reality B where the characters stranded in Reality A cannot participate, because it is ceasing to exist. But if this turns out to be accurate, then I agree that that's a pretty fucking harsh thing to do to Rocket Raccoon.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 11:24 am
by Friday
Hmm, that's an interesting theory and one I hadn't considered because Rocket must survive. I wonder if the upcoming Ant-Man movie will shed some light on things. If Scott is still around with everyone else who "died", then it'll pretty much confirm it.

I sort of doubt that's what happened, though. because Rocket must survive I think most likely Tony and co are going to do some Time Shenanigans to restore the timeline, and then all the OG peeps will bow out or die because they've already been in fifteen movies each. But I sort of like the other idea better as long as Rocket survives.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 7:47 pm
by Niku
I heard some ~rumors~ (in that I am uninterested in diving in to actually confirm if true or not because I do actually try to go into things as relatively unspoiled as possible) that there were some set photos from Avengers 3/4 filming that had Thor with his long hair and Captain America in his WWII duds -- which could mean that the next one really is the "victory lap" people have called this one as their time shenanigans literally take them back to the older films in some bits.

Love it or hate it (after several days of sitting on it, I'm pretty firmly in the love it camp), there has never been a movie that captured both the ups and downs of a Big Event Comic in the way this one does. This feels like "comic book literally splashed onto the screen" in a way nothing else ever has, no matter how many split cuts Ang Lee makes or how much CGI shadow there is on Mickey Rourke. The fight scenes are simultaneously exhausting and inventive in most respects, and watching this (and 60% of the prior films in the two days before seeing it) really makes you respect how much the casting department is the true triumph of Marvel Studios. Like, Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen are the only reasons I give any shit at all about Vision and Scarlet Witch, and they've got what -- 20 minutes of screen time total combined in the entire franchise? Infinity War basically asks most of their prime players to deal with that level of work for that amount of screen time, but there is still an emotional throughline that LANDS.

Yeah, obviously people are coming back. Obviously others are gonna sacrifice themselves or retire. But it still hurts by the time you get to the end and realize the movie's fucking over.

I still think the last ten years have had plenty of missteps and tons of missed opportunities, but there's no discounting just what a feat pulling this whole fucking thing off really was, even WITH having the backing of the biggest entertainment conglomerate there is behind them.



but coulson better get to fucking come back in infinity more if everyone else gets to

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 7:57 pm
by Friday
"we went back in time but were unable to save anyone except coulson and now agents of shield never happened"

"acceptable"

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 1:15 am
by Destynova
I believe Dr.Who said something that applies to Thanos,(adlib)

"These types always make exceptions like sparing someone so they can continue to convince themselves they are still good people."

It would be neat I believe to see a few of the failed solutions such as Strange using a Sling Ring to slice off Thanos' arm or Slinging Quill away to cool off.

Valkyrie was probably part of the 1/2 of the Asgardians that was allowed to live and flee.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 12:19 am
by Thad
Friday wrote:I liked how they just immediately got Thanos vs Hulk out of the way.

I didn't. "Bad guy shows up and immediately kicks the ass of the toughest superhero to show how much of a badass he is" is such a lazy cliche. And they had him beat up Hulk and Thor in the first five minutes.

It was fine. It did a better job juggling its cast than Avengers 2 did. Nonetheless, it spent quite a lot of time juggling that cast, and only told the first half of a story in two and a half hours. I'm interested in seeing what happens next, but I wouldn't put this in my top five Marvel movies.

Course, it also had the misfortune of following Ragnarok and Black Panther, which might be the best movies in the franchise to date.

I had more fun at Deadpool 2, but I wouldn't mind giving Avengers 3 another viewing sometime. It certainly was ambitious, and it mostly realized that ambition.

Niku wrote:but coulson better get to fucking come back in infinity more if everyone else gets to


He's going to be in Captain Marvel, anyway.

The next season of Agents of SHIELD isn't airing until after Avengers 4, so it could be that the delay is so he can shoot Captain Marvel and possibly Avengers 4, or it could just be that trying to plot an entire season of SHIELD in between Avengers 3 and 4 would be a logistical nightmare. (FWIW the latest season ends with Coulson retiring, so it's possible he's not even coming back.)

I know at one point there was talk of Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix Marvel characters showing up in Infinity War, but the TV and movie businesses are mostly separate at this point; while SHIELD season 1 had Sif and Fury guest star and was coupled tightly to Winter Soldier, subsequent seasons have been mostly siloed with little connection to the movies. (This season did have some background stuff about how the aliens who were invading were doing it because Thanos was coming and they thought the only way to stop him was to conquer the Earth, and the last few episodes had some lines about "Boy, what's going on in New York sure is crazy!" but that's about the extent of it.)

There's been almost no overlap between the ABC Marvel shows and the Netflix ones (I think Coulson may have mentioned the Punisher once), and I don't think Runaways has even hinted at any outside continuity.

On the whole, this was mostly for the best. The movie had too many heroes to juggle as it was; cutting back to the Defenders or whoever for a few minutes could have been fun but it would have been more of a distraction than something that really contributed to the story.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 4:44 am
by Friday
I didn't. "Bad guy shows up and immediately kicks the ass of the toughest superhero to show how much of a badass he is" is such a lazy cliche. And they had him beat up Hulk and Thor in the first five minutes.


It's funny, because you're right, it's a super lazy cliche/trope and I hate jobbing in general to make new villains seem powerful/threatening. And that's exactly what they did (and even had the gall to do Thor off-screen) and yet I actually liked it here.

I think because otherwise the whole audience would be waiting the whole movie for that inevitable Hulk vs Thanos throwdown, and since it can basically only end with the Hulk losing (if you want to keep the ending the same, anyway) I feel like getting it out of the way IMMEDIATELY is better than doing it late or not doing it all (which would just leave everyone mad it never happened).

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 3:18 pm
by Grath
Somebody had to be The Worf, and doing that to Hulk was convenient for them.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 3:20 pm
by Blossom
I mean, no, somebody didn't. They could have not done the shitty trope.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Mon May 21, 2018 5:42 pm
by Niku
Thad wrote:He's going to be in Captain Marvel, anyway.

The next season of Agents of SHIELD isn't airing until after Avengers 4, so it could be that the delay is so he can shoot Captain Marvel and possibly Avengers 4, or it could just be that trying to plot an entire season of SHIELD in between Avengers 3 and 4 would be a logistical nightmare. (FWIW the latest season ends with Coulson retiring, so it's possible he's not even coming back.)

I know at one point there was talk of Daredevil and the rest of the Netflix Marvel characters showing up in Infinity War, but the TV and movie businesses are mostly separate at this point; while SHIELD season 1 had Sif and Fury guest star and was coupled tightly to Winter Soldier, subsequent seasons have been mostly siloed with little connection to the movies. (This season did have some background stuff about how the aliens who were invading were doing it because Thanos was coming and they thought the only way to stop him was to conquer the Earth, and the last few episodes had some lines about "Boy, what's going on in New York sure is crazy!" but that's about the extent of it.)

There's been almost no overlap between the ABC Marvel shows and the Netflix ones (I think Coulson may have mentioned the Punisher once), and I don't think Runaways has even hinted at any outside continuity.

On the whole, this was mostly for the best. The movie had too many heroes to juggle as it was; cutting back to the Defenders or whoever for a few minutes could have been fun but it would have been more of a distraction than something that really contributed to the story.


On the one hand, I 100% agree it would have been a logistical nightmare if SHIELD season six happened this fall given that they do remain continuity-adjacent to the films. On the other, I fully anticipated that they were actually setting up for at least some of the team, Coulson included, getting dusted at the end of this episode. Then season six would have a tighter cast to go with those budget restrictions, etc etc, and Coulson could actually be resurrected in Avengers 4 if they wanted to go that route -- thus solving the "how do you bring him back into the movies without trying to catch movie audiences up on six seasons of television" since whatever retcon brings everyone else back just happens to bring Coulson back too! yay! etc!

I'm honestly pretty glad they went the way they did, though. I'm a big mark for Clark Gregg and felt the season finale of SHIELD did pretty alright by him, as rocky as season five has been overall.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Fri May 25, 2018 12:33 am
by Thad
I think I'm enjoying analysis of Infinity War more than I enjoyed the movie itself.

Here's one by somebody named PatrickG01: Into the Endgame: ‘Infinity War’ Analysis

Lots of good thematic analysis. Plus, the idea that the reason Cap, Thor, and Black Widow got makeovers is so that we'll be able to tell everybody apart when they travel back in time and team up with their past selves is compelling. (This raises the question of why Tony doesn't look different, though, which Patrick doesn't seem to have any theories about.)

Sims has a piece called 9 possible outcomes of Avengers 4, too. It's not as deep as Patrick's, but it's fun.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Fri May 25, 2018 7:56 am
by Grath
Thad wrote:(This raises the question of why Tony doesn't look different, though, which Patrick doesn't seem to have any theories about.)

Simple. Tony has the new nanotech suit which will distinguish him in the past.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Fri Feb 08, 2019 10:49 pm
by Mongrel
The Captain Marvel site is a thing of beauty:

https://www.marvel.com/captainmarvel

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2019 9:50 pm
by Bal
I just noticed we had a thread about this. Just wanted to say that Hulk didn't "job" to anyone. He got beat up by Thanos (Already a Hulk-ish level fighter) with the power gem in the Infinity Gauntlet. The audience needed to know there wasn't going to be a "puny god" solution to this problem, and that's a fair way to do it.

EDIT: Vision on the other hand...

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 12:20 am
by Thad
It...kinda sounds like you're trying to start an argument over something I said about a movie nine months ago?

There's a time I probably would have taken you up on that, but nah, c'mon, man.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 12:26 am
by Mothra
I can't find where it was but whoever brought up the theory that the snap split the universe in two, with each group existing in a universe A and a doomed universe B... I love that idea. It'll absolutely never happen, but man, that would be great.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 1:07 am
by Bal
I just happened to read the thread, Thad, and felt like commenting on the Hulk jobbing issue. I honestly didn't consider you personally for a moment when I made the post.

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2019 11:36 pm
by Thad
Captain Marvel was a perfectly decent Marvel movie. I was entertained and I thought the whole cast was great. I'm looking forward to more of Larson in particular -- though really the character I'm most looking forward to seeing again is Monica Rambeau, who appears as a little girl in this one and who we'll presumably be seeing again in a present-day Marvel movie at some point (Captain Marvel 2 seems like the safest guess, but obviously my vote is and always will be that we need a Nextwave movie).

Re: (SPOILERS) Infinity War and Beyond (Marvel Thread)

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:32 pm
by KingRoyal
Sam Raimi in talks to direct Doctor Strange sequel

This would instantly make Doctor Strange the Marvel film I'm most interested in seeing, up from its current status of "Eh"