Initial thoughts about “Avengers: Infinity War”

Spoilers under the cut, obviously. Click only if you’ve seen it or don’t care.

OK, first: I am FUCKING PISSED that Loki died before the fucking title card. And you know what? We called it months ago when Feige or someone said that we’d see in the first 5 minutes what a formidable enemy Thanos was. But then they FUCKING TRICKED US by having Hiddleston do all those press junkets in Singapore and Shanghai and what have you, which made me think he must have a significant role in the movie. And I bet that was deliberate. They wanted to lull us into a false sense of security so we’d be shocked and horrified when… what we’d initially predicted came to pass. We shouldn’t have second-guessed ourselves. My only consolation* is that, based on the photos that leaked from filming Avengers 4, Loki will be in the movie for at least a little while. What’s not clear is whether it’s just a flashback to the end of Avengers 1 or if the time-travel fix (which I’m assuming will happen) will take us as far back as 2012. (Which would have extremely interesting consequences for the movies that took place in the interim…)

Speaking of which… we were all right about the ending, too. Let’s hear it for Mark Ruffalo’s inability to keep his mouth shut. What I’m confused about is that Doctor Strange died without the Time Stone; I thought he was going to be the only survivor and use it at the end. So now I’m not sure how the time travel wizardry is going to happen. I’m also not completely clear on whether Thanos is dead or alive at the end. That scene of him smiling at the end seems to have been a dream or something, since the beautiful green Titan of his youth is no more… unless he was using the Reality Stone to make it nice for himself again. Though it’s not at all clear how the Reality Stone works…

Anyway, Thanos seems to have gone back to Titan with the Gauntlet, possibly to die. Tony is still alive on Titan… but would he be able to use the Time Stone? What happened to the casing that Doctor Strange had, which seemed to play some role in allowing him to control it? Would it have dissolved along with him? (Speaking of which, why did everybody’s clothing dissolve with them? If Thanos was destroying half of all life, why would non-living matter that happened to be adjacent go with it? Logic is not these movies’ strong suit…) Another possibility has to do with the little pager Fury used at the end of the tag scene. Someone in the theater recognized Captain Marvel’s insignia, so now I’ve been reading up on how she might help save the day. And apparently there’s some stuff involving the “quantum realm” that might enable Ant-Man, the Wasp, and/or Captain Marvel to do time travel even without the Time Stone. (Or bring people back from the dead? I think the time travel explanation fits better with other evidence.)

So, if we are going to fix it with time travel (somehow or other)… I kind of can’t help wondering why we went through all that violent, depressing bullshit in Infinity War. It feels like none of it matters because none of it is permanent. Will anyone remember what they went through? If it’s Ant-Man, the Wasp, Captain Marvel, and maybe Hawkeye doing the time travel rescue, it seems likely that the heroes of IW won’t remember anything that happened. It really feels like they put our emotions through the wringer (Peter in his father’s… er, Tony’s arms, saying he doesn’t want to die? Wanda destroying the Mind Stone with tears in her eyes? Bucky saying “Steve?” and then crumbling to dust? Okoye watching her king disintegrate even as he reaches to pull her up?) for no reason. Was this just a 2.5-hour-long demonstration of how formidable Thanos is? Was it making some point about the sacrifice required to defeat such a powerful enemy? Or a “sometimes the good guys lose” point? (Thanks, we know; we live in the real world.) Nothing they might have wanted to accomplish with this death-tragedy seems worth all the agony. They might prove me wrong; the precise way they fix it with time travel or quantum whatever in Avengers 4 might show how everything that happened in Infinity War was necessary, either for the emotional payoff or for the victory itself. But since it’s Markus & McFeely writing it (the brain trust that brought us all of the Captain America movies, none of which impressed me that much, and Thor: The Dark World, which was kind of a boring mess except for the scenes that Joss Whedon wrote), I seriously doubt it. And I’m also bracing myself for some truly egregious time-travel illogic… possibly even worse than that seen in Doctor Strange.

Ugh, I have more to say about the philosophical issues raised in the movie, but it’s almost 1 AM and I should really go to bed. I have a bunch of free time tomorrow, so expect discussion of at least some of the following issues:

1. Thanos’s Malthusian worldview and motivations, and how it compares with Ultron’s (which I’ve been meaning to discuss on here but have never gotten around to… no time like the morrow)
2. whether Thanos can be said to love Gamora
3. that “we don’t trade lives” chestnut (another theme that’s arisen before)

* My other “only” consolation is that, because they didn’t care enough about Loki to tell us anything about what happened between him and Thanos, my fic about that still hasn’t been made obsolete, or anyway canon-non-compliant. So I have at least another year to finish it, assuming the job market depression ever lifts enough for my creativity to return.