the current situation of the marvel fandom and russo brothers about infinity war:
I’m going to continue to blame Markus and McFeely, the screenwriters, because they’re the ones who had the idea to make Thanos the “protagonist” of the film… though apparently it was Feige’s idea, not theirs, to end Infinity War with Thanos succeeding in his quest.
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE WHO CAN’T WRITE TRY TO WRITE LOKI
…or, alternatively, when Marvel wants an excuse to quickly, violently kill the queer-coded character to whom women are ~mysteriously~ attracted and make him seem unattractively incompetent while they’re at it.
We as a community need to recognize that as far as story writing goes, Infinity Wars was bad
Loki, trickster god, dying because his ‘sneaky machination’ was literally just a frontal stabbity assault on a guy with two Infinity Stones? Bad. Valkyrie just straight up not existing? Bad. Gamora being tortured and abused by Thanos her whole life, only to be killed at her abuser’s hands because he ‘really loved her’ in order to give her abuser “’complexity’”? EXCEEDINGLY BAD. Said ‘love’ and ‘grief’ being the reason the closest attempt at stopping him fails? Salt on the wound, super fucking bad. Wanda letting Wakandan soldiers give their lives to stall and risking the fate of Wakanda as a whole and trillions of other lives across the universe because she doesn’t want to POSSIBLY kill her Mark Hatsune boyfriend? HIGH TIER IMMERSION-BREAKING BAD. Thanos just, in general, having years to formulate a plot and deciding that killing off half the universe was what was going to save it instead of using infinite power to provide resources or stability that he was worrying about or just really doing anything else with THE POWER TO REMAKE THE UNIVERSE that wasn’t absolutely moronic because of different repopulation rates in species and the fact that a randomized 50% kill snap could end up destroying people who want to help maintain the universe and letting those who want to actually harm and harvest it flourish and just, like, it was so stupid there was absolutely no reason that his choice stands up to his under any amount of rational thought and it was just done to make their villain seem Deep and now has allowed reddit eugenicists to crawl out of the woodworks in support of this moronic choice? Really. Fucking. Bad.
Infinity Wars had some good humor but God damn the story writing was so fucking bad and we need to admit that
FUCKING THIS.
THANK YOU OP.
Couldn’t have said it better
This! It wasn’t just lazy; it was bad. You can’t cover up a poor story with flashy action and think people won’t notice.
I never expected any of my favorites getting much screen time but I thought the movie itself was going to be epic. It wasn’t.
Thanos idea of halving the population doesn’t hold water so he would either be delusional or plain stupid to think it would work but the movie doesn’t give an answer to which. It doesn’t explore his psychology at all, despite the claim that it’s “his” movie. And relatable? To whom? There is nothing there. Just the same, flat, old villain all over again.
Next time, try putting some thought into it.
Even if you ignore the content issues, this movie has glaring technical issues. The pacing is off, there are too many characters and too much time wasted on jokes that aren’t even fucking funny, it suffers from tonal whiplash, it plays out like a logic puzzle (”we need x character in y location because z, so let’s come up with a contrived reason they’re there”).
And the most obvious fault? This movie doesn’t have a plot. Summarize it! I challenge you to do so. It’s contrived battle after battle with no heart, energy, or thought put into it. A checklist of destruction, death, and lost potential.
You can’t summarize it. It’s nonsense covered up with bad CGI and noise.
To be fair (?), it sounded like Thanos crushed his windpipe and/or broke his neck, so it wasn’t just suffocation that killed him.
Crushing the trachea leads to death by suffocation. Breaking the spinal cord that high up also leads to death by suffocation since the muscles responsable for breathing are no longer activated by the brain. It’s suffocation all around, believe me.
I think we should assume that Asgardians will suffocate eventually if deprived of air, but I guess they can survive for longer in space than ordinary mortal beings. But I guess there’s no reason why Loki died instantly, other than (1) a prolonged death after that would have been even more gruesome; (2) are you sure breaking the neck doesn’t do anything else? ‘cause I know death by hanging is better if the drop is sharp enough to break your neck rather than slowly getting choked by the rope; and (3) they really, really wanted to kill Loki quickly and in a nasty way because they hate him and his fans.
Steve: One day more. Another day, another destiny. This never-ending road to calvary. These stones of mind and space and time will surely come a second time…one day more.
Vision: [to Wanda] I did not live until today. How can I live when we are parted?
Sam: One day more…
Wanda: [to Vision] Tomorrow, you’ll be worlds away, and yet with you, my world has started.
Loki: One more day all on my own.
Wanda and Vision: Will we ever meet again?
Loki: One more day with him not caring.
Wanda and Vision: I was born to be with you.
Loki: What a life I might have known.
Wanda and Vision: And I swear I will be true.
Loki: But he never saw me there…
Tony: One more day before the storm!
Peter P.: Do I follow where he goes?
Tony: At the barricades of freedom!
Peter P.: Shall I join the others there?
Tony: When our ranks begin to form…
Peter P.: Do I stay, and do I dare?
Tony: Will you take your place with me?
Stephen: The time is now, the day is here!
Natasha: One day more…
T’Challa: One day more to the invasion; we will nip it in the bud. We’ll be ready for this Thanos—he will wet himself with blood!
Bucky: One day more…
Rocket: Watch ‘em run amuck, catch ‘em as they fall. Never know your luck when there’s a free for all! Here a little dip, there a little touch—most of them are goners, so they won’t miss much!
Bruce: One day to a new beginning!
Rhodey: Raise the flag of freedom high!
Gamora: Every man will be a king!
Nebula: Every man will be a king!
Drax: There’s a new world for the winning!
Thor: There’s a new world to be won!
Okoye: Do you hear the people sing?
Shuri: My place is here, I fight with you!
Wong: One day more!
Peter Q.: We will join these people’s heroes, we will follow where they go! We will learn their battle plans, then we will share the things we know.
Groot: I am Groot!
Mantis: Tomorrow is the judgement day!
All: Tomorrow, we’ll discover what this Mad Titan has in store…one more dawn, one more day, one day more!
But they’ve already filmed A4, so this petition is kind of pointless.
At
the base, Loki was to die in Thor The Dark World and finally when they
saw the popularity he had in SDCC, they added that scene of him on the
throne. So nothing is said.
Avengers 4 is a year away. I’m convinced they have the power to change things. And so do we! Nothing has to be set in stone!
Let’s not forget that it was fans who brought Loki back after TDW. They have plenty of time to reconsider their strategy.
Marvel can definitely do reshoots; they have quite enough time for that. I signed the petition with the following message:
“I get the distinct sense that Marvel either does not care about or is deliberately trying to alienate any fans who aren’t cis men… but I would be delighted to be proven wrong. Believe it or not, Marvel, many of us are drawn to Loki because of his complexity as a character and not just because we have the hots for Hiddleston. Loki deserved better than the pathetic end he was given 5 minutes into ‘Infinity War.’”
Understandably, Markus and McFeely chose their words carefully when talking about Avengers 4. But listening to them talk about how Infinity War’s deaths — including the more, er, traditional deaths of Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Heimdall (Idris Elba), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), and Vision (Paul Bettany) — will affect Avengers 4, it seems pretty clear characters won’t be resurrected good as new like they are in the comic, or at least without some great cost.
“[Avengers 4] doesn’t do what you think it does,” said Markus. “It is a different movie than you think it is.” Then he paused. “Also…[the deaths are] real. I just want to tell you it’s real, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you will be able to move on to the next stage of grief.”
Well… OK.
Of course now the part of me that wants to remain in denial is telling me, “Real and permanent are two different things.”
Jon Snow was, after all, really (most sincerely) dead…
Ok, I get it, we’re all very sad in the Thorki fandom, but can we please start churning out fix-its? No more fics about Thor crying over Loki. Please, I beg you! JUST GIVE HIM LOKI BACK OH MY GOD!
I feel I have the right to say this since I wrote a thing where he gets Loki back.
Yeah… I don’t think I can write fix-it fic, at least not yet, because I’m pretty sure it’s not going to turn out any better than we’ve seen. The theories about why Loki is still alive and/or will be back are giving me some very tentative hope, but I’m still betting that Loki won’t be back, except maybe in flashbacks or some kind of B.A.R.F.-facilitated reenactment, because it seems pretty clear to me that Marvel doesn’t care about him or his fans and they’re tired of bringing him back from the dead. I have a hard time disregarding canon; even with Ragnarok, I have to find ways to reinterpret it rather than rewriting it to my satisfaction. I think that indulging in imagined versions of canon where Loki survives or comes back would interfere with my process of confronting the hard facts: that this is really the end that the creative team gave to a character I love, and this is really the low regard in which they hold me and others like me. Maybe it’s just that I’m firmly in the “anger” stage and I don’t want to move either backward into denial or forward into (fictional) bargaining…
I did consider writing a sad “Thor grieving” fic, but I guess I already did that once so I don’t need to do it again. If I get back into writing, anything I write (such as updates to my WIPs…) will be set before Infinity War happened so that I can ignore its events with a good conscience.
Loki is the Philosopher King 