1. 90% of the movie was ruined by Loki’s death scene in the very beginning. I have talked multiple times about how stupid and full of plot holes that scene was, anyway, not to mention how pointless Loki’s death was in general. I’d link, but it’s 1am and I’m lazy, so you can take my word for it.
2. Speaking of Loki’s death, though, the Russos have gone back and forth on the reason for Loki’s death – first they say it’s sacrifice for Thor, then they say it’s his punishment for disobedience, then they say it’s the conclusion of his arc, to accept himself as Thor’s brother before he dies a hero, etc. They can’t seem to figure out why Loki really died, except that they didn’t know what to do with him and killing him is convenient.
3. Thanos’s motivation is stupid as fuck. For one thing, wiping out half of the population isn’t the logical solution to the problem. He could have used the Infinity Gauntlet to create more resources, or go back in time to before Titan died, or done any number of things that didn’t involve murdering half of the universe. He came to that particular solution because he likes murder and death and torment and torture (just look at what he did to Gamora and Nebula, whom he claimed as his children). The narrative ignores this and tries to paint Thanos as this sympathetic villain who “maybe has a point,” which is not only illogical but also kind of gross. Not to mention, the Russos said that the Snap got rid of half of the plants and animals, as well as people, anyway – meaning there is now exactly the same proportion of people to resources and Thanos accomplished absolutely nothing.
4. The movie is full of plot holes. Just to name a few: in Thor Ragnarok, Dr. Strange says he keeps a “watch list” of potential threats to Earth; in IW, he has no idea who Thanos is. Thanos tells Gamora that, by killing half of her planet, the remaining half of her people are now thriving, but the first GotG told us that Gamora was the last remaining member of her race. Where was the Hulk when Asgard was being slaughtered, and where did Loki disappear to for five whole minutes before he reappeared and died?
5. The narrative implies that Thanos truly loves Gamora, and that he was right to sacrifice her because it allowed him to get the Soul Stone and continue on his mission. Gamora says, “This isn’t love,” but the fact that Thanos does get the stone after killing her is the narrative saying that yes, this is love, the only way Thanos knows how but love, nonetheless. Which is … really not okay, but other people have gone into much better meta and analysis on this than I can at the moment.
6. The entire Wanda and Vision relationship was poorly developed and dragged out far too long. In a movie about all of the superheroes coming together and the culmination of all of the characters at their disposal, they chose to focus a good portion of the plot on a couple that was, I’m sorry, boring. I didn’t care if Vision died because their relationship wasn’t fleshed out or built up at all. We’re just supposed to accept it as true love and feel bad for them.
7. The ending would have had much more impact if they weren’t so obviously going to bring back all of those characters, anyway. Like, they are literally filming Spiderman 2 right now – of course Peter Parker will be back. Of course Dr. Strange, T’Challa, Bucky, etc, will be back. They made such a big deal about the “stakes being so high” in this movie, but all the stakes led us to was a gratuitously tragic ending that everyone knows will be undone, anyway, so the only deaths that will stick will be Loki’s, Gamora’s, and Vision’s – aka, the only characters not killed by the Snap, and two out of three of those characters were killed by their abusers and somehow that’s okay.
8. I will grant you, the cinematography was good and the music was nice. Also, there were some funny parts, mostly thanks to the Guardians still being in character because James Gunn was able to have a hand in portraying them.
But, yeah. Marvel fucked it up. The last ten years of movies could have culminated in the most epic of epic villains, if the Russos hadn’t gotten sidetracked by wanting to replicate Loki’s popularity (and Kilmonger’s, later) by making Thanos sympathetic, if they hadn’t ditched the “courting Death” motivation, if they hadn’t gotten rid of Joss Whedon, if they hadn’t tried to literally replicate Steve’s plotline with Thor (Steve lost everything and that worked out okay, so let’s have Thor lose everything, too!), or if they had hired some writers who knew what the fuck they were doing. Marvel fucked up Infinity War, and this is the hill I’ll die on, I’m not changing my mind.
You can always tell which viewers on Tumblr judge movies based on “Did it look cool? Was it witty?” and which viewers judge movies on “And did it make any fucking sense?” I really wish the average moviegoer had higher standards is what I’m saying, I guess.
And I want to address something because it’s a silly argument I’ve heard from some people in defense of bad fantasy/sci-fi in general: suspension of disbelief is for things like ‘this character is bulletproof’ or ‘this character can shoot lasers out of their eyes’. Shit like that. It’s not for justifying nonsensical character motivations or completely ignoring established canon. If that’s your argument–that superhero movies don’t have to make sense because they’re superhero movies–you’re just being lazy. At least find a better excuse for not caring.
ALL OF THIS!!!
Thanos was alot scarier when his motives were to court Death. Marvel spent all that time building him up as incredibly dark, ominous, and decidedly unsympathetic, and then all of a sudden try to turn him into this “psychopath with a heart of gold” crap? He may torture and murder, but he cares! So they can sell Thanos t-shirts and child-sized guantlets. And sending the message that yes, you can hurt, mutilate, and torture someone and still call that love. It’s sick.
I think they got really careless as to how to end Loki’s “arc”, because the last we heard, Loki was threatened with a fate worse than pain itself, but the confrontation between Thanos and Loki made it seem like they barely had any kind of prior association. Like they just slapped something together to wrap up Loki’s story and get him out of the way before the movie even officially starts. They have him say all these things that’s supposed to make us believe that he’s come “full circle” to the point where he has no story of his own left, and all that’s left for him to do is sacrifice himself for Thor, like a good little plot device, motivating Thor and his Manpain.
And sorry, but the ending was nothing like the beginning. The Avengers dissolved to dust. It’s not like we got an extremely brutal, extremely violent, up-close shot of their excruciating dying process. And people can be pretty much assured of their return. It’s not like Marvel went out of their way to tell us otherwise, like saying “no resurrections this time” or anything.
I remember back when I was young and innocent (aka, before April 2018) and expected this movie to be so amazing. I mean, there was a small part of me every once in a while that would say, don’t get your hopes up too much, they could fuck it up. But then I thought, nah, it’s Marvel, they won’t mess this one up, it’s too important of a film!
And here we are.
Same here. I thought; this is what it all comes down to after ten years. It’s bound to be epic!
And… it wasn’t.
For me the movie was epic and entertaining, just the beginning was fucked up for reasons already stated and the ending was just….left me feeling nothing. We know they’ll return so maybe that doesn’t make it so shocking? Dunno.
I believe that the main problem with IW is plot because the Russos suck at plot. They are great at action, somewhat good at pacing, good at characterization when they like the character, very bad at it when they don’t care, and AWFUL at plot. CACW is the glaring example of this. Does anyone remember Zemo’s motivations and plan? The Russos just decide which cool scenes they want to happen and then force coincidences and make characters do OOC or just plainly stupid things to make that happen.
Because AoU is a generally disliked movie, nobody seems to notice how different AoU!Vision is from CACW!Vision. CACW is a plot device, because the Russos didn’t care about him in the least.
Something similar happened with Thor and the Asgardians. They couldn’t care less for them, so they just pushed them out of the way. They killed Loki because he was the one who knew Thanos’ plan the best and therefore he could be useful in dealing with him, which would have produced a different outcome. The whole Nidavellir plot was a waste of time designed to keep Thor out of the fight for the length of time needed, and to split the Guardians. Thor didn’t need an axe and didn’t need an eye. One-eyed Thor is one of the little serious symbols Taika put in Ragnarok, because in a way Thor is the new allfather. But I digress.
The whole “kill Vision”/”don’t kill Vision” thing is another distraction. It was known since Thor The Dark World that the Infinity Stones are indestructible (Wanda shouldn’t be able to destroy one of them, it is not possible, but it isn’t politically correct to point out that and risk being called a misogynist). Killing or not killing Vision shouldn’t be relevant because the gem itself couldn’t be destroyed but PLOT REASONS.
We cannot have Tony call Steve, so Ebony Maw must show up EXACTLY when Tony is about to press the button.
We need a battle in Wakanda, because it would be really epic, so we make up something about Strange seeing possible futures and giving up the time stone for mysterious reasons (and risking several wrong outcomes) because “it was the only way” (That’s CHEAP).
When you watch a movie and every emotional or bad thing that happens comes to be because of plot conveniences, you feel cheated. And that makes of a movie a bad movie.
Reblogging for @thatvermilionflycatcher‘s A+ addition.
Sorry to keep harping on this, but the Russos weren’t the ones who *wrote* CACW and IW; they just *directed* them. The writers who are responsible for all those egregious plot holes and mischaracterizations designed to lead to a pointlessly ~edgy~ but ultimately stakes-free foreordained conclusion are Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. They also wrote most of Thor: The Dark World; they were responsible for the decision to fridge Frigga to bring her sons together, and they intended to kill Loki permanently before Feige decided to bring him back because a) test audiences thought it was a trick and b) Loki was really popular at the time.
Otherwise, @thatvermilionflycatcher is entirely correct. Thanks for making note of how CACW trashed Vision’s characterization. Whedon wrote him as an otherworldly, slightly uncanny inhuman intelligence; Markus & McFeely wrote “I am a robot meep meep moop.”
Loki is the Philosopher King 