When I say we need to talk about it, I mean I need to talk about it.
See, sometimes I like to take big-ass pop culture event movies and then dissect them at least a little on the autopsy table — from a storyteller’s perspective, I like to root through the narrative guts and splash around in the blood that pumps a particular story’s heart. I’ve done it with The Last Jedi, and Mad Max: Fury Road and Prometheus and so forth.
What choices did they make? Why did they make them? How am I feeling? How did the story make me feel that way? Where are my pants? WHY DID THE MOVIE TAKE MY PANTS
I don’t think I’ve done that yet with a Marvel movie.
And maybe it’s time.
I don’t want to get too deep with Infinity War, but I do want to talk about a few things, and that means — well, it means SPOILERS ARE COMING.
And I hate spoilers.
It’s because I’d hate to spoil you if you don’t want to be spoiled. Spoilers foisted upon you rob you of your agency as a reader, as a viewer, as audience for a story. And spoilers too obviate the storyteller’s construction — we put a lot of work into a lot of things, one of those things being the orchestration of revelation in narrative, and spoilers undercut our articulation of the things we want known, and when we want them to be known.
So, with that said, I’m going to put a WHOLE LOT OF SPOILER SPACE here.
In fact, I’m going to just cut and paste a passage from James Joyce’s nonsense book, Finnegan’s Wake, just so you have an absurd buffer between this part of the post and the part of the post where, basically, I tell you the ending of the movie.
Here, have some James Joyce:
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-
core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy
isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor
had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper
all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a
kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in
vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a
peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory
end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later
on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the
offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan,
erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends
an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes:
and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park
where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-
linsfirst loved livvy.
What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-
gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu
Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still
out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-
pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie
Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear!
Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-
killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired
and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-
solvers! What true feeling for their’s hayair with what strawng
voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the
duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and
body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of
soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks
of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if
you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the
pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish.
Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand, freemen’s mau-
rer, lived in the broadest way immarginable in his rushlit toofar-
back for messuages before joshuan judges had given us numbers
or Helviticus committed deuteronomy (one yeastyday he sternely
struxk his tete in a tub for to watsch the future of his fates but ere
he swiftly stook it out again, by the might of moses, the very wat-
er was eviparated and all the guenneses had met their exodus so
that ought to show you what a pentschanjeuchy chap he was!)
and during mighty odd years this man of hod, cement and edi-
fices in Toper’s Thorp piled buildung supra buildung pon the
banks for the livers by the Soangso. He addle liddle phifie Annie
ugged the little craythur. Wither hayre in honds tuck up your part
inher. Oftwhile balbulous, mithre ahead, with goodly trowel in
grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like
Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicab-
les the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the
liquor wheretwin ’twas born, his roundhead staple of other days
to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth
of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly,
We’re good now, right?
GOOD BECAUSE HERE THERE BE SPOILERS
Also, boy, Finnegan’s Wake is fucking nonsense, isn’t it?
Moving on.
I, like the rest of the civilized world, saw Avengers: Infinity War this past weekend.
And I have thoughts.
It’s worth first describing the overall theater experience — I don’t mean this to be emblematic of every theater experience, but it was at the one I went to, 10:30AM on Friday. For most of the movie, the crowd was fucking excited. Lots of applause. Gasps in the right places. Lots of cheers. (So many cheers and laughs actually that it ended up stepping on subsequent jokes or dialogue.) There was this shared energy going on, a pop culture electricity buzzing like bees between us.
And then —
*Thanos fingersnap*
— the movie ended.
Credits rolled.
Post-credits scene played.
And walking out of that theater…
Shit, I’ve been to noisier funerals.
People just… wandered out, like from a disaster, a plane crash or a collapsed building. Shell-shocked. Jaws dragging behind them like carry-on luggage. A look of bewilderment and worry passed between us all. There were some breaks to this: a few guys behind me were like, “Yo, what the fuck just happened.” Next to me, a woman explained to her boyfriend who Captain Marvel was, and what the post-credits scene probably meant. On the way to the parking lot, two late-20s dudes were explaining to a pair of young boys (maybe 10?) that everything would be all right, it’s a comic book movie, they’ll all be okay.
I went to my car.
I sat in the driver’s seat.
I kinda just stared at it for a while?
And then I went home.
And I kinda felt really shitty? Like, inside. Inside my body. Inside my heart. I felt shitty. (Real-talk, I felt a fraction of what I felt during the 2016 election, which is actually apropos when you think about it: big pastel-colored asshole walks away with an unexpected victory, sits and regards his ruination with weary glee, credits roll, good luck, motherfuckers.)
That’s worth picking apart. That movie made me feel something hard. Whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s damn sure a powerful thing, to affect emotions like that, to kick you around like an empty soup can. I went through an array of emotions in the wake of feeling shell-shocked: I felt mad at the movie. Then I felt sad. Then I felt disappointed? Then I was reassuring myself the same way you reassure yourself after any loss, after any failure — “Well, it’ll be fine, Captain Marvel is probably kicking it in outer space, and of course in the comics Adam Warlock just undoes the whole fucking thing anyway, right?” — and then you go through a new wave of disappointment when you realize it is a comic book movie, like that dude said, and everything will probably just be okay. Certainly half the people that turned to void-ash have movies planned anyway — it’s not like Black Panther 2 or Doctor Strange 2 are going to be about piles of dirt blowing around the cosmos for two-and-a-half hours.
Here people will say, and have said, this is the Empire Strikes Back of the Avengers. Or, if you prefer more recent, The Last Jedi. And yet, neither of those movies kicked me in the teeth as hard. My kid loves those movies and doesn’t view them as a one way trip to Bummertown — we think of movies like ESB and TLJ as having down endings, but they really don’t. They take us to the bottom, to the nadir, but then we get sight of the ramp. We see the lift, the upward-angle right at the end. In Empire, we’re granted the scene with the rebel fleet — Luke gets a new hand, Lando goes off with Chewie to find Han, Leia and Luke regard the galaxy as the music swells. In Last Jedi, we not only get a Pyrrhic Victory moment with Luke versus Kylo, but we see Rey take the mantle of the last Jedi truly as she moves some rocks, reunites with friends, and they zip off in the Falcon — not to mention we’re granted the coda with Broomboy and the Stable Gang (my favorite Genesis cover band, by the way).
Infinity War has no such scene.
And that’s why it hurts so hard.
This comes down to a discussion about story structure. I know. Yawn. Snore. Boo. But for us storytellers it’s an important thing to talk about — we know how stories are structured, and that structure is (usually) deliberate. Changing a piece of it, or removing a piece, can have dramatic impacts — impacts you may intend, or impacts that you may not.
Infinity War has no denouement.
(Pronounced with a haughty French accent: DAY-NOOO-MOOHHHH)
Most stories give us an ejaculatory story climax — OH MY GOD SHIT IS HAPPENING, IT’S ALL HAPPENING, NNNGH BOOM — and then we are given narrative time to deal with that. The action ‘falls’ and moves past the climactic resolution and into a glimpse of the fallout of that resolution.
Usually, the more exciting and intense the movie, the shorter the falling action / denouement. The more epic it is, the longer that becomes.
Jurassic Park goes from their climactic escape to a moment of peace onboard the helicopter out — and then the credits roll. We don’t have much there, maybe just two minutes max of that, but it’s not really essential. The kids glom onto Alan Grant, completing the circuit for Sam Neill’s character, and hey, Holdo smiles, birds are dinosaurs, it’s a new day.
Empire Strikes Back has about… five, six minutes of falling action and denouement. The escape from Cloud City, Luke has one last chat with New Dad, and then it’s time for a new hand and talk of a rendezvous on Tatooine to go save Han.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King has 37 hours of denouement.
Infinity War has mostly none. Okay, you get a denouement of Thanos sitting in like, a fucking meadow and being all proud of himself — and that works if you assume he’s the protagonist of the movie. (Spoiler: he might be, though whether that’s intentional or not, I dunno.) We don’t need much denouement if we’re to believe the Avengers are actually the Bad Guys. In that case, Thanos gazing out on his glorious success is not that different from Alan Grant looking out of the helicopter as they flee Jurassic Park. Job done. High-five. Music swells.
(One could also argue that the post-credits scene is a denouement, but I’d rather avoid that as a declaration. Given that it’s set in the middle of people turning to void-ash, and given that it lends us no time to decompress or understand what just happened, I’d argue it’s just an additional moment stapled to the climax of the film.)
If you assume the Avengers are the protagonists, then… the denouement isn’t much of one, is it? We aren’t given any moments with the heroes to deal with what just happened. We don’t have a scene of them dealing with it. No funerals. No conversation. No Cap and Tony entering a room and giving each other a hug. There’s no resolution. Further, we’re given literally no optimism — we’ve spent two-and-a-half hours with our plane in freefall, and you kind of half-expect that right at the end we’d be given a hint that the engine’s gonna start, that we’re about to pull out of this dive before we hit.
But nope.
We just crash.
Snap.
Thanos wins.
It’s kind of brilliant.
It’s also kind of awful?
Because here’s the thing — denouement is, as noted, French. And it’s French for “unknotting.” Meaning, you’ve just spent all this time tying some knots, and now it’s time to loosen them, if even a little. And those knots aren’t just plotty-knots. They’re the knots of our emotions. Infinity War spends a great deal of time tightening those knots, and then no time undoing them.
Brilliant? Maybe. Difficult to deal with? Nnnyeah, kinda, for me, anyway. Maybe not for you! I’m not telling you how you should feel. But I felt like I was kicked in the gut after leaving it — and it’s maybe why I can’t take my kid to this, at least until the next chapter is out — *winces* — a whole year from now.
At the end, Infinity War ends up being a truly astonishing comic book movie through-and-through. It is the realization of Marvel’s dreams, and of my dreams as a comic book reader. It is the perfect example of a brawny, bang-up comic-book crossover translated to the screen.
But perfect example also means that it carries with it the best and the worst of those comic book crossovers. The action is high! The heroes meet! They quip at each other! It’s funny and intense and unrelenting. It also doesn’t give them a lot of time to talk or be their characters beyond their most trope-iest of traits. It also requires you to have seen… most of the MCU movies, which in terms of the movies means you’ve spent a buttload of time and money to get here. It also means that, like with comic books, we’re treated to a real cliffhanger ending. But the problem there is, a cliffhanger in comics means you have to wait 2-4 weeks to pick up the next one. Here it means we have two more movies over the next year to help us pick up the teeth that this one knocked out of our open mouths.
There are other problems with the movie, maybe — the powers are inconsistent and sometimes the movie seems to be willfully plotty even when it betrays characters or logic. The Infinity Stones seem to do specific things until they don’t? Thanos’ master plan is somehow both genuinely sympathetic and really dumb — there are better ways to achieve what he wants to achieve, unless you assume he is just a narcissistic genocidal maniac who is lying to himself about that (and by the way that works for me, I buy that). But those problems are small in the face of what is a movie that gets so much right about the big, bursting bad-assery of a comic-book cross-over event.
But I miss that denouement. That’s where it gets me. That’s where the movie hurt me. For 95% of it, I was in love. For that last 5%, I felt sad and upset and mostly still feel that way now. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. If it was — then, hey, here’s my applause. I don’t like feeling that way but I also appreciate a film that wants me to feel that way and achieves it. But a part of me worries that it’s really just down to marketing — they didn’t want to tell us it was Part One of Two, meaning, the reason we get no denouement is less a willful narrative choice and more because it’s really one half of a movie and they just didn’t wanna tell us. Which means maybe this bit, from this article, wasn’t entirely true:
Two months ago, the Russo brothers told the Uproxx site that the third and fourth Avengers were being retitled in part to clarify that the films would be two separate films rather than one large film split in half.
I loved the movie. I hated the movie. Which is the sign of something interesting, I think. It is a remarkable achievement, if a troubled one, and needless to say I am gnashing my teeth for the next one to find out how our Heroic Resistance undoes the horrors of Purple Space Trump.
NOW GIVE ME BACK MY PANTS, THANOS
terribleminds says:
FYI, I don’t necessarily guarantee there won’t be spoilers here in the comments —
TREAD CAREFULLY or if you wanna be extra-cautious, use rot13.com to encode spoilers.
April 30, 2018 — 10:35 AM
Arduinna says:
Since I woke up the next morning (dreaming Hulk and Thor stuff) I have Washington’s farewell song from ‘Hamilton’ playing in my head.
“Like the scripture says:
‘Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid.’
They’ll be safe in the nation we’ve made
I wanna sit under my own vine and fig tree
A moment alone in the shade
At home in this nation we’ve made
One last time”
And it’s not nice, paternal, Washington-of-color sitting in the shade and enjoying his wisdom and his deeds, it’s fucking purple Thanos and I will never be not furious about this smug look of accomplished work on his face under this fucking Wakandan vine and fig tree!!!!!
April 30, 2018 — 10:48 AM
sylviashults says:
The fact that I knew going into the movie that it was basically the first of two parts is the only thing that kept me from throwing myself to the soda-covered floor of the theater and kicking and screaming and throwing a striped-ass fit at the movie’s end. (That being said, I did spend the entire final fifteen minutes of the movie huddled in my husband’s arms bawling my eyes out and sobbing so hard I was shaking. He’d seen it the night before, so he knew when to put his arm around me and tug me closer. A lot closer.)
The part that really screwed with my brain is that I could SEE how Thanos really honestly believed he was doing the right thing. The movie rocked my world in so many ways — it made me cry so hard I shook, and it made me feel empathy for the Bad Guy. I enjoyed Thor: Ragnarok much more, but I did love Avengers: Infinity War, even though. (sigh) Even though.
April 30, 2018 — 10:49 AM
terribleminds says:
I didn’t realize it was the first of two parts! I remember them saying NOPE IT’S ACTUALLY JUST ONE MOVIE NOW that Part Four was going to be a Totally Different Thing, and now I’m thinking that’s not really true.
I definitely enjoyed THOR: RAGNAROK and BLACK PANTHER more — both of those movies are like, just amazing in what they accomplish. So. Much. Fun.
April 30, 2018 — 10:52 AM
Cory says:
I wish I’d known it was two parts. I warned my teens about it being part 1 and that definitely mitigated their reaction. I believe Marvel deliberately kept the fact it was part 1 quiet to get exactly the reaction they’re getting. For me, I agree with everything Chuck posted except the fact they started disappearing characters we KNOW are coming back totally tossed me out of the narrative. The ending basically reminded me of everything I hate about big event comic crossovers because nothing ever really changes and the reset button will be pushed.
Because part 2? They’d put themselves in a narrative box. They have to hit the reset button. Peter and T’Challa and Bucky and Wanda and, well, Loki and probably all the Asgardians will be back. Probably due to the sacrifice of an original Avenger–Cap, Stark.
Note: Also, if Thanos can alter reality, why not just make more planets for all the extra people? Or more resources? He is omnipotent, after all.
April 30, 2018 — 2:19 PM
Jeremy K (Kap) says:
This is why they should not have left Thanos’ crush on death out of it. So many options for Thanos if he can control all aspects of reality. But having him kill half the Galaxy to court Death? Much more sinister and selfish. As soon as I saw Peter and T’Challa poof I knew it would be fixed in avengers 4. That definitely took me out of the narrative as well.
May 1, 2018 — 3:17 AM
Nina says:
I read an interesting blog post (forgot where) that there are 2 kinds of death in Infinity War. That everyone dusted by the use of the soul stone is either on a different plane, like an alternative world, or stuck (alive) inside the soul stone. The comics show it that way. So until Movie 2 shows me otherwise, I will assume that the characters “dusted” off will be resurrected, maybe at the cost of losing the characters that everyone expected to die in this movie: Capt America, Iron Man … BUT that the characters that were killed by regular means will stay dead, like Loki, Gamora … I would hate that (I cried my eyes out when Loki died, first time I shouted in a cinema 😉 but on the other hand, it would make IW 1 more interesting from a narrative standpoint. If they retcon the whole thing, movie 1 is meaningless.
May 1, 2018 — 6:54 AM
magicant2000 says:
I think there’s an interesting dynamic with people who DO read comics – I wasn’t surprised at all at how the ending happened, but actually was surprised at how much more emotion I felt than I would in a similar comic book storyline.
That’s one of the things I actually appreciated, though. It did break some of the rules for this kind of film-making. Clearly not something everyone enjoyed, but it worked for me.
April 30, 2018 — 10:49 AM
ManKorn says:
For the past few days, I’ve been sifting through the rubble to figure out why this movie had such an impact. I agree, I feel like I’ve been kicked in the teeth. The acknowledgment that there is no denouement–as fancy and French as that may be–was illuminating. It makes a lot of sense given the range of reactions I’ve seen.
My experience wasn’t too dissimilar to your own, except it was the pair of 12-year-olds in the row ahead explaining (to anyone willing to listen) that this was all going to be okay in a year.
I did want to share a thought my friend had during the post-viewing review. If you think of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the world’s most expensive (and oddly paced) television series, it starts to make a little more sense. Infinity War is the mid-season finale, complete with an appropriately dire cliffhanger. We know the series is still going on, so things will somehow get back to normal. At the end of the next film, we may not be “reset to one,” but we will have more than 50% of the universe with which to work.
April 30, 2018 — 10:50 AM
harryjconnolly says:
Personally, I experienced the deaths of Black Panther, Dr. Strange, and Spider-man as a sigh of relief. Yeah, beloved characters were killed (“Tom Hiddleston must be sick of playing Loki, maybe” “How are they going to do GotG3 without Gamora?”) but once those three bought it, I felt reassured that all or most would be undone. Comic book movie imitates comic books.
Which meant that the impact of the ending was blunted by my understanding of Disney’s upcoming releases. Usually, I try to ignore that sort of meta interference in the story, but this time it was welcome.
April 30, 2018 — 10:54 AM
terribleminds says:
That meta interference is a complicated thing — on the one hand, I felt the same. WHEW. On the other, I was like, ok, fine, right, it’s comic books where nothing matters, and the stakes are illusory, and fine. So it’s somehow both reassuring and disappointing in equal measure?
April 30, 2018 — 10:59 AM
harryjconnolly says:
Years ago I was reading a review of an early X-men movie, and the reviewer said their spouse was worried about Wolverine throughout the film. The reviewer suggested the studios would kill off God before they’d kill off a cash cow like Wolverine.
Then I saw Logan, and I knew there would be more Wolverine movies no matter how that one ended. But I still felt the punch of that ending.
Tom Holland really sold his last moment. Seeing the horror and loss of the survivors was powerful enough to make me feel it, even if I knew there would be a scene of triumphant return. I’m not sure if that makes sense. On that scale, grief I know to be temporary but that the characters don’t was about as far as I’m willing to go.
Luke Skywalker will be back, too. Someone at some point is going to reboot A New Hope (and I have notes…)
April 30, 2018 — 11:20 AM
Yelle Hughes says:
All I can say… I enjoyed it. I laughed, got pissed then laughed again. Was a little disappointed on how little time was spent on some characters (I get it, there were a lot of characters). That ending though, it was like everything and everyone around me just stopped. I was euphoric that this was it, the good guys won, then the ashes started trickling into the air, my heart stopped, I couldn’t comprehend that this was happening. The ones I thought were safe, were not safe. Steve, Okoye, and Tony’s reactions brought me to tears (I’m tearing up now rehashing what I saw) I had to take several moments and drink lots of ice water to get myself together. I’m going to go see it a second time to see if it pulls the guts out of me again. I seem to love torturing myself. Your review is spot on, thank you for talking about it.
April 30, 2018 — 10:55 AM
peridotlines says:
I made the same 95/5% comment to the people I went with when we were sort of decompressing afterward. And I went into this certain it was going to be part 1 because I apparently missed that Variety article. I’m still a bit wrecked, but I haven’t passed the 24 hour mark since I saw it. I was thinking that might improve with time, but I just keep thinking about all that void-ash and wondering what will happen next.
April 30, 2018 — 10:55 AM
Brandon Carbaugh says:
For me, Infinity War clicked, structurally, when I realized what its overall structure actually is:
It’s a Tragedy. Like, in the “tragedy as a genre” sense. All of the characters are placed on a trajectory toward that ending from the very beginning. Wanda has to leave Vision, just like they said at the beginning. Peter is in way over his head, just like he said at the beginning. Tony saw utter ruination come to pass, exactly like he’s been fearing since he went through that portal in Avengers 1. Wakanda opens itself to the world, immediately pays for it. Almost every important character ends up fulfilling on a particular tragic end promised to them at the beginning of the film. They all succumb to choices and flaws baked into their characters from the outset.
The climax is the fight with Thanos on Titan. The denouement is everything that comes after, most notably Thanos’s unstoppable slow-walk toward Vision.
I think the reason it feels so gutting is the same reason that battle between Cap and Tony in Civil War is so painful: watching heroes we love go through a Tragedy arc is really painful.
The more I think about it, the more glad I am that they DIDN’T tack on some scene of, like, all the characters picking themselves up in the woods and going “We’ll figure this out together and win the day!” It’s exciting and different to see the writers really commit to ending a big mainstream blockbuster on all the heroes being utterly and (seemingly) irreperably devastated. I dig it.
April 30, 2018 — 11:08 AM
Jennifer Donahue says:
Yes! You zoomed in on my visceral reaction when Dr. Strange gives his stone for Tony’s life. That moment, for me, was when I knew Thanos was going to succeed. In retrospect, I allowed myself, as a viewer, to be sucked into the possibility that Thanos wouldn’t win when Wanda destroys Vision. The truth was the one hero I felt, “the story,” had told me, “the reader,” would stop Thanos at any cost (because he gets ‘it’ and value the many lives over the one (and therefore is the last citadel for the stones) was Dr. Strange. Captain America (here’s my soft spot, folks), who protects the one perhaps at the cost of the many, will give his soul for the one. Cap is all heart. Dr. Strange is the citadel of wisdom.
Once I stepped back from the half-dusted universe trauma, and it is still with me in good measure, I can see there was climax and wind down the writers wrote in but but baited me to ignore — which, of course, I did.
It is Tragedy. It is commercial marketing. It still works.
If writers contend that tricking readers/viewers out of denouement after the stone was handed over on Titan is not good story-writing, structurally, I would argue that it is one of the best crafted pieces for the very said reason. I let the writers/directors woo me back to the normal hackneyed resolution of neatness. Were they lying that Part II is Part II for commercial or artistic reasons? I don’t really care. It works. I will see this in the theater a second time to confirm my thoughts as a writer. It was incredibly well done.
Keep in mind, I quibble with Doestoevsky over his Christian sanitizing of his conclusions, so I like to go there. I love a dark ending. That said, unlike Deathly Hallows Part 1 and 2, I don’t feel a dissatisfaction with having to wait because the possibilities of the way this is resolved make my mind soar. I love the place we were left because we get to think about our heroes more. We get to think about the meaning. We know what might happen to Stark, Cap, and Banner (losing Stark and Rodgers but not the heroes are going to kill me), but we also know the characters will rise again like comic book heroes must.
They surprised me with the deft employment of structure we all have as consumers lulling me out of the denouement I felt on Titan. Bravo! I love how seriously they took this and how well they worked the material.
Bonus points if: Dr. Strange saw the one scenario they won required the playing out of Thanos’ victory. Thanos will need that stone to willfully alter reality and time to return things to whatever altered semblance of normalcy we get in Part II.
My two cents (four actually).
April 30, 2018 — 12:37 PM
DanInKansas says:
Yeah Strange made it clear that he would gladly sacrifice Stark to protect the Time Stone, so……… Strange clearly has a plan here that is not about pleading for the life of one man.
April 30, 2018 — 1:23 PM
Jennifer Donahue says:
I also apologize for my typos and subject-verb singular vs. plural errors above. I cut and pasted too much in my excitement. I am sorry.
April 30, 2018 — 12:47 PM
terribleminds says:
I don’t quite buy that it’s tragedy in the true, narrative sense — Big T tragedy is characters orchestrating their own end. It’s not simply falling prey to pitfalls or failing — it’s literally being the architect of your downfall. Our characters don’t really have hamartia — no fatal flaws that lead to Thanos’ win. Wakanda opening itself up is utterly unrelated to all of this — they still would’ve been affected the same way. Tony’s tragedy and hamartia come into play with Ultron and Civil War, but not here. Peter being in over his head isn’t a fatal flaw — he’s just a goofy dude. So, I don’t think it quite passes the smell test that it’s a tragedy?
And by a literal definition of climax, the entire Thanos run from Titan to Wakanda would count — it’s the climactic result, the final turning point. Given that this stuff isn’t math, I guess you could stretch and say it is instead “falling action,” but that usually doesn’t bring with it the fundamental pivotal shift, that’s usually reserved for climax. So, given that the scene in Wakanda includes Wanda, Vision, Thanos, the undoing of time, the snap of the fingers — I’d argue that’s still Climax.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy that this all works for you! I just don’t quite agree with your assertions here in the context of defining narrative elements.
April 30, 2018 — 12:50 PM
Brandon Carbaugh says:
Amicably disagreeing with one more post, and then I’ll shut up 😛
I think it’s all pretty broadly sketched (because the movie has ten jillion characters, so an “arc” might consist of one line of dialogue and then another that mirrors it later), but I actually DO think each character gets their own little slice of hamartia in the context of the film. Not so much “flaws” as things that indelibly lead them to the ending.
Tony’s first scene with Pepper Potts: He’s hanging on to being a superhero because he’s got this fear rooted in a messiah complex. You get the sense he’d knowingly throw himself into a buzzsaw to stop Thanos if that’s what it takes, and fittingly, the movie climaxes in Tony’s aborted heroic sacrifice, which is all the more gutting because it fails and he doesn’t even get to die a martyr. He just loses.
Wanda: Could have ended the movie by killing Vision in the first act. Couldn’t bring herself to do it. Wound up being forced to do it and failing because she waited too long, and now he’s dead anyway.
Cap: Could have saved everyone by sacrificing one life. Refused to sacrifice one life; therefore lost countless lives.
Starlord: Insecure hothead who can’t keep his cool; team that doesn’t respect him as a leader. Both wind up leading to doom for the universe.
Dr. Strange: Arrogant wizard above it all; proclaims matter-of-factly that he’ll sacrifice two petty peons’ lives, if that’s what it takes to save the universe. Then he glimpses the future, sees that he’ll in fact have to sacrifice COUNTLESS lives, including his own, and trust in the peons to save the day. And he does it, just like he said he would, but it’s gutting for him.
Etc.
Almost every major character had some opportunity to solve the plot on their own (or at least not actively obstruct its solution) during the course of the film, but opted not to for reasons fundamentally rooted in character-based decisions.
And yet, each of these things are also the the right, good, pure, heroic decisions that (I hope) will be proven correct in part 2. Wanda and Cap were RIGHT not to sacrifice Vision. Starlord NEEDED to call Thanos an asshole to his face and force him to confront his own grief. Dr. Strange was CORRECT to make the hard choice. Etcetera.
And, fascinatingly, this would both affirm and invert, in the grandest possible fashion, something others like Film Crit Hulk have called the biggest problem with the Marvel flicks: that characters’ flaws always wind up being reaffirmed as essential and, as a result, no one ever really arcs; they just kinda double down and become themselves HARDER.
Infinity War is THAT, writ large. For good or for ill.
I’m not saying it’s 100% effective or maps perfectly, but if I look at the movie through the lens of a tragedy–albeit one drawn in very broad strokes–and work backwards from there, it makes a lot more of the pieces snap into place.
Just my two cents! 🙂
April 30, 2018 — 1:27 PM
DanInKansas says:
As far as “tragedy” goes: There was a Confederate General, who after the War, would be asked why the South lost at Gettysburg. He would respond, “I would assume the Union Army had something to do with it. ”
I don’t know if you can call this “tragedy” because Thanos won. Thanos was (in this movie) the superior force — he had superior force, a clearer sense of his victory conditions, and better equipment. This was the super-hero equivalent of a PT Boat going up against the Yamato.
April 30, 2018 — 2:03 PM
DanInKansas says:
Sorry, that was poorly worded. He was the superior FOE because he had a force greater in numbers as well as possessing superior armament.
April 30, 2018 — 2:04 PM
Jennifer Donahue says:
If not hubris, they do bring their own fate upon themselves as individuals (in their willingness to sacrifice themselves to defeat Thanos). Banner didn’t die, but he was begging Hulk to surface. That is setting something up for Part II that is tragedy, I think. Same with what I think will happen between Steve Rodgers and Tony Stark.
Black Panther dying just as he opens up to the world to share their goodness. Loki? Check. Vision? Check. As for Dr. Strange, he states he will not give the stone up for Spidey or Ironman, yet he does. The bringing of one’s own demise is there although not from hubris or flaws for most (I agree). But one’s own undoing is surely there. That is why they are heroes. Guardians of the Galaxy characters are the hardest to actually reconcile (especially Gamora) and figure into the next tale(s). I hope she (and the Guardians Gang) isn’t lost to us permanently.
I like that they are playing with our preconceived expectations of when resolution happens. Does it make folks uncomfortable? I think we should be pleased that money makers are willing to do so. I don’t delude myself that they aren’t absolutely certain they have people hooked for Part II. They didn’t make a risky bet, but they did dare to jar people. They succeeded. We love our characters. They will reward our investment in their stories with worthy ends, and the shock of this movie was refreshing if bitterly and deftly executed (for me).
I do believe they have to blow up the Avengers to be able to make profitable reboots. They can’t sustain size, budget, scope of this magnitude, and we hope for good stories to come out of the reboots on a smaller scale.
I am with everyone’s trauma. I just applaud the craftsmanship.
April 30, 2018 — 1:39 PM
SMertz74 says:
See, I went into this movie going, it’s part 1 of 2 (they can call it what they want), the good guys can’t win in part 1 or there would be no need for the part 2. So I went in with the expectation, they’re going to get their asses kicked. I didn’t get that feeling you did of being kicked in the teeth, I was waiting for it. I also know that given how much money they made with Black Panther, there is no way in hell they would kill that guy off permanently after only the one movie. So I also knew, they’ll find a way to bring the characters back.
Maybe that just makes me too cynical in my old age??
April 30, 2018 — 11:12 AM
DanInKansas says:
Same. As much as the Russo Brothers want to call this a stand alone film, they filmed the sequel at the same time as they were filming Infinity War, so…. I mean, I GUESS the studio heads might be good with passing up a Doctor Strange 2, a Black Panther 2, AND a Spider Man 2 for the sake of compelling story-telling, but a miraculous resurrection using a reclaimed Time Stone and a Captain Marvel kicking Thanos’ ass all over the place seems more likely.
April 30, 2018 — 1:30 PM
DanInKansas says:
Oh AND a Guardians 3 that has no Star Lord, Gamorah, or Drax, or Groot.
April 30, 2018 — 2:05 PM
Jeffrey Howe (@mercilessidioms) says:
Structurally this is a whole story, and Thanos is the protagonist. He wants something, overcomes obstacles, pays a price, achieves his goal, and gets his quiet moment at the end. His POV dominates. He just happens to be the bad guy too. Villain protagonists are a thing.
But depending on how the next one plays out, and who is presented as its protagonist, the end of this may also serve as the midpoint of the larger two-parter. So it could end up as two separate stories that ALSO work as a two-part story, which would be a pretty rare (and cool) accomplishment.
April 30, 2018 — 11:19 AM
Marshall Ryan Maresca says:
Structurally this is a whole story, and Thanos is the protagonist.
Not only that, the “Thanos as protagonist” is supported by the final image on the screen: “Thanos will Return”. Every time that’s been used in the Marvel movies, it’s been about the protagonist.
April 30, 2018 — 1:04 PM
Comic Book Goddess says:
The Russos had even said in interview, before the release, that this movie WAS Thanos’s story. As I sat there in the aftermath, this occurred to me. And I felt the movie was a complete story as I walked out.
No, I don’t have any problems with it, and it is because of that. His was the real arc – but I think it took a while of development before they realized it, and allowed themselves to go with it, and really give it that ending it deserved.
What helps to wrap up the hero side of the story? Doctor Strange gave it to us, right before it happened. He assured Tony that this was the only way it could have gone, if they were to win. And that was the spark of hope I needed. Nebula didn’t really knock their plan off the tracks. Stephen knew, and he only told the others the parts that he could – all those futures he saw would have included telling the others different things.
In any case, I am excited to see what they will do next, and if Ant-Man and the Wasp happens before, concurrently, or after…
April 30, 2018 — 3:59 PM
Amy Houser (@amylikestodraw) says:
So, I love your summary, and I couldn’t disagree more (respectfully and with joy). So like… being as my top three “oh gods oh gods please don’t kill my guys” are Thor, Dr. Strange and Bucky, welp… two outta three will make for some ugly crying. And in the same ten minute carnage-montage. (They may as well have played “so long and thanks for all the fish” music over the void-ash montage, with all the careless brutality by which they tore our beloved heroes from us.)
Anyway. Back to the point. We’ve watched, what, ten years of Marvel films where, within two hours per segment, our plucky heroes (yes, I’ll call them plucky) always manage to make it out okay, manage a buttkicker-comeback scene where Tony delivers pithy snark with lazer-like succinct accuracy. Where Cap gets to be the heart-beloved genuine American Hero we love him for. Where Black Widow gets to slip in and make the satisfying kill of kills. Where T’Challa comes into his own like we all had so much satisfaction seeing.
It’s been so easy for us. So neat, so low-risk. We know they’re going to be okay. There’s been low emotional cost, and therefore these movies have been light and satisfying. Good, intense, cheer-filled and beautiful. But lightweight. They’re comicbooks with amazing production values. We wait for the next week’s book, and know things will be fine.
I am THRILLED that this movie had no denouement, no recovery time, and left us gasping, holding one another, terrified. Things Are. Not. Okay. We lost. The great two-hour-heroes lost one. They lost it all, and paid in universal blood. We’ve never gotten to see that, and it was time we did. We have become numb to the idea that our heroes will always win, and always deliver a righteous one-liner to make it sting, to make us clap and laugh.
I’m so, so satisfied by NOT being satisfied. How do we really, truly value the story until all truly feels lost? This movie.
I don’t want my comment to be like ten miles long, but I have so many feelings on how well Thanos was delivered, his intellect and efficiency, his brutal work-a-day will. His will was greater, and he’s the guy that got it done. You can see him suffer too, and it’s not with delivered corny one-lines of doom. He loses too, he loses everything.
Everyone has to sacrifice their comfort zone to get the true epic and high level of heroism we need in the end of this franchise or story arc. Everything is different now. And that’s maybe not a bad thing. Until a year from now, we can all hug and think… “what comes next? I really don’t know.”
And maybe that too is a very productive thing.
April 30, 2018 — 11:21 AM
terribleminds says:
But they mostly don’t win in those movies! THOR: RAGNAROK, they lose. They lose a whole kingdom. There’s a victory there, but it’s reaaaaal bitter. BLACK PANTHER’s victory is hard-fought and requires a rough sacrifice that comes with questions of identity both personal and national. The latter two CAPTAIN AMERICA movies are movies that end in failure — explicitly and implicitly. In ULTRON they lose a whole town and the effects of that cascade. So, the heroes get out okay, but they’re changed and shit’s gone real, real wrong. And that’s okay! I like that. I like the Pyrrhic Victory component — this just… ended. And that felt to me like driving top speed into a wall. Especially since like, real-talk, we know Doctor Strange is fine — he’s got a movie coming up. Bucky, c’mon, they didn’t just erase him. So those sacrifices both feel cruel and also like they’re not gonna stick? I could be wrong! Maybe somehow they’re really gone, but we won’t know for a year, which is… a little long? For me, anyway.
April 30, 2018 — 11:52 AM
Dave Shramek says:
The marketing from the Russo Brothers also claimed that this movie was a heist movie, which makes me think they have literally never seen a heist movie?
April 30, 2018 — 11:22 AM
Kim says:
As a writer, I recently read somewhere that if you want to increase the stakes, you need to make the issue more personal. This just felt “too big” to get me overly invested – how am I supposed to care about the fate of half the world when none of the characters seemed to care about their friends or family? I prefer my superheroes to show their emotions, and none of them (except Peter Parker) did.
April 30, 2018 — 11:22 AM
Julie R says:
Completely agree. I ranted more about that on the way home than anything else. I wanted anger and pain from those characters who have recently been through a traumatic divorce of sorts. The end of Civil War was the best of the worst, where was that emotional frailty? Make me suffer with you!
April 30, 2018 — 12:49 PM
erikscottdebie says:
Really good post, Chuck. I’m gonna boost this to my peeps. 🙂
SPOILERY COMMENT, YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.
You know what struck me? I felt about this movie almost exactly the way I felt about Rogue One. And in a way, it’s a similar sort of movie. Overwhelming evil that cannot be defeated. Scrappy heroes come together despite their differences to oppose it. They fight and fight and fight and they know they’re right, but most of them still die. Seeing Thanos was like watching the Death Star appear. You know death is coming, and it cannot be avoided. And whatever message that is that badass MFer Nick Fury sent is our little ray of hope, just like Leia getting away with the plans is our little ray of hope.
And yes, the victory in Rogue One is more obvious, but only because we *already know what happens next.* We already had the original Star Wars movies–we already know the bad guys get what’s coming to them. And we kind of know what happens here, because we have the comics, but the MCU is retelling and reinventing the story. So we are faced with hope but crushing uncertainty–it’s a kind of cosmic mystery, hope in the face of despair.
I hope I’m ok sitting with my uncertainty for a year. 🙂
One last note: The metaphor of the 2016 election is very apt. We have a vague hope that it will get better–that we will somehow overcome the insane monster in the white house and his army of cronies–but it hasn’t happened yet. But at least in this case, we don’t have to wait a year for our heroes to save us. We can fight for ourselves. We *must.*
April 30, 2018 — 11:29 AM
terribleminds says:
But Rogue One also gives us a victory within its own margins — they all die, but the plans beam out, the rebels get cut up getting it to the blockade runner, CGI LEIAFACE says something about hope, and off we go. It is a complete narrative, and one where the victory is earned through sacrifice.
April 30, 2018 — 11:48 AM
thegneech says:
I love this analogy! 🙂
April 30, 2018 — 5:29 PM
Charlotte Stormborn (@cavaticat) says:
Hi, it’s me, your fellow bag of spiders.
I agree with you. Something about the ending felt… lazy. Rushed. DISINGENUOUS. There we go.
Here’s the ending:
“AND THEN THEY ALL DIED.”
Which is bad enough. But then you follow that up with:
“……….OR DID THEY????”
And it’s like. Guys. Come on. You had so much other good stuff happening there. Go ahead and kill your darlings, but don’t do prestidigitation and call it sorcery. At the very least, LEAVE us with something. What was meant to be our takeaway? “Sometimes, the good guys lose”? “The bad guy never believes he’s the bad guy”? “British actors do American accents way better than the other way around”?
I dunno.
I enjoyed the film! I’ll see the next one! But it felt… pointless. Adrift. Adrift like a giant head in space.
April 30, 2018 — 11:36 AM
terribleminds says:
ROCKS FALL
SPACE TRUMP WINS
April 30, 2018 — 11:47 AM
Rachel says:
Gah! Took my kid to this movie and had to deal with the fallout at the end. I totally made stuff up and my explanation made sense to her and she was like, “yeah, okay!” But I hate that. To her, the good guys always win. When Snoke had Rey in his force-grasp, she freaked out a little then took a deep breath and whispered, “Rey is gonna kick his butt.” And with great satisfaction, Rey did exactly that. Good conquered evil. All was right in the world. But this Marvel movie! Sheesh! As of now, my daughter thinks that Spiderman went to a different universe and somebody will go get him in the next movie.
(If tickets weren’t so damn expensive, I could preview these movies. But alas…)
April 30, 2018 — 11:41 AM
Michelle H. says:
I’ve been debating people all weekend on whether the ending of this movie is so colossally bad that it ruins the quality of the movie as a whole. I argue that it does. Other people are saying I’m being too sensitive and Marvel will reverse it all anyway, so quit my whining. And that’s the problem – something you mentioned above, Chuck – it’s not like we have a month or so to wait. We have a goddamned YEAR. A year in which things already haven’t been going too swimmingly in this country or the world, so I didn’t need all my favorite characters dead on top of it. (Because I got the short end of the stick, all my favorites are dead (save one), while people who like the Phase One Marvel characters best got to keep all theirs.)
People use these characters as inspiration. We fucking LOVE our superheros. You don’t kill them and then just leave us hanging. It was in bad taste. Children see these movies. It’s like if during the Great Depression Disney had killed Snow White and all the dwarfs.
Here’s what would have made it ok, like you said, a denouement: show the characters who were poofed to dust chilling in a little pocket dimension somewhere, would have made a great after-credits scene. Give the viewers something so that we don’t go home and cry in the shower (not that I did…ahem.) I’m actually glad I don’t have kids, because if they were anything like me we’d be forming a suicide pact right now and husband would have to talk us all off a ledge.
April 30, 2018 — 11:59 AM
Dave Shramek says:
They claim this movie is not Part 1 of 2, but a movie on it’s own, so nobody gets to have the “They’ll undo it later” excuse. The movie, according to the filmmakers, stands on its own as a document, and on its own, as a document, it’s a shark sandwich. A lot of fun superhero battles that end up being a story about how genocides happen because the “good guys” are unwilling to make the hard sacrifices. “And that’s why the genocidal Space Hitlers win, kids. Buy our Avengers bedsheets for your room. And don’t forget to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp, where fun hijinks ensue in a world devastated by an apocalyptic tragedy. And look out for Captain Marvel, now in production!”
I would have been happy if we saw Captain America and the surviving Avengers gathered like “What do we do, Cap” And he says, “We take that glove off of Thanos and we put the world back.” And the remaining Avengers face the devastation with grim, heroic determination. I’m betting they have that scene shot, they just felt like they wanted the emotional impact of the gut punch.
April 30, 2018 — 5:40 PM
Tina H says:
The more I think about it (and that’s a kudo to the writers that days afterward I’m still mulling this Movie around in my brain), I’ve decided the void-ashed Avengers end up in an alternate reality and fight their way back to our reality. Until I know what happens next, I remain hopeful –especially since Dr Strange could play a good role in thus type of scenario…his character is one of my favorites
May 1, 2018 — 11:52 AM
Lindsay Smith says:
I keep coming back to the ESB comparison because that’s one of my all-time favorite movies that I rewatch the HELL out of, while I can’t see myself watching IW again maybe more than once or twice (mainly to catch the jokes I laughed over). And you’re totally right, it’s about the denouement. But also, Empire gave us so much more CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. We get to see Luke’s transformation! And Han’s! And Leia’s! Oh my goodness, so much character development. And then, IN that denouement, we get time to grieve–with Luke for his loss of a hand and his realization of his parentage as he clings to the bottom of Cloud City; with Leia as you can already see her formulating a plan to bring Han back. IW keeps the characters in the same point of their arcs that the previous 18 movies put them at, and instead of any emotional journey with them, it’s just a series of things that happen in rapidfire succession for a butt-numbing 2 1/2 hours.
I think that’s what it’s about. I’ve sobbed my eyes out at Marvel deaths (and “deaths”) plenty of times but shed no tears at IW even though I felt miserable at the end. And I think it’s because we didn’t get any time to grieve with Steve or anyone else. A lot of people have said the point of IW was to prove that deaths are meaningful in Marvel movies. But I don’t think that worked at all. All those deaths and “deaths” in the other movies meant something, because I felt those deaths WITH the survivors. Steve crying in a bombed-out pub, thinking of all the ways he failed Bucky, and unable to even get properly drunk. Peggy holding back her tears as she talks to Steve over the radio, enjoying a fictional future date with him till the last. Quill giving his “daddy” a worthy Ravager send-off and in the process righting all the wrongs between Yondu and the Ravagers. T’Challa holding his father’s body in the crumbling building, this man we just saw him embracing, sharing such wonderful mutual love and respect and admiration with.
Those are deaths. The end of IW was just statistics.
And also, yep, sorry, not the message of hope I need in this hellscape of 2018.
April 30, 2018 — 12:37 PM
Julie R says:
*spoilers*
All of this, and more. Yes. I was angry. And, unlike many others, I wasn’t sad about the ash-folk because everything was crammed in so fast I never had time to attach. The transitions were long and clunky, and the music tepid (esp after the glory of Ragnarok and BP soundtracks!), and..and I’m so irritated by the whole experience! Thank you for giving me a safe space to vent. Ugh. What does it mean when my favorite character and writing are from the supposed bad guy? I cared more about Thanos and his emotional state than the heroes!
Also, this goes toward how I felt at the end of the WW movie. If the stakes aren’t real – well, they’ll just put everything back as easily as he sundered it all – then, how can I care as a witness?
April 30, 2018 — 12:38 PM
Morgan Lockhart (@missdoomcookie) says:
I’ve gone back and forth on the ending deaths a lot; whether or not the assurance of undoing completely in the next Avengers undermines it and whether or not that means there are no/not enough stakes. But I had a similar emotional reaction to you. Stunned, at first, and then the tears started with Groot and didn’t stop, intensifying the hardest with Tony catching Spidey. Whether or not it’s going to be undone, the ending was well-done and affecting, because for the characters, it felt very real. Whether or not our comic reader trained brains or Marvel-release-dates-aware-of brains knew it was going to be okay, they didn’t, and that came through in those scenes and made them resonate hard. In that way, I think it’s fair to criticize the lack of denouement for those characters in the story structure. It didn’t even necessarily need to be hopeful, but yeah, even a “processing of grief” scene would have been nice. Or a very, very hinty scene. Tony staring at something and wondering why he had to survive, what Strange saw in the future that meant he was critical to it all, some sign of the wheels turning.
April 30, 2018 — 12:48 PM
Tina H says:
I loved and hated the ending…since I’m 90% sure Marvel will reverse what happened (there’s too much money to be made for Panther2, Guardians3, and DrStrange2 for them to kill those characters off. I took heart with Dr. Strange’s scene in which he saves Tony– I think he saw another, final reality. I’m sad at the ending, but hopeful Dr Strange knew something the others don’t and Tony was saved for a related reason. I’m sad, yet hopeful.
April 30, 2018 — 12:52 PM
Brendan Gibbs says:
* Spoiler warning below *
Chuck, I am so thankful you posted this note. I had much the same thoughts as you when I left the Infinity War screening I saw on Saturday. I was MESSED UP, and literally couldn’t decide if I liked the movie. I felt so conflicted, because so much of it (95% as you said) was pure awesomeness, but the ending left me feeling hollow. I’m a creature of habit and love my happy endings. (no double entendre intended) I am going to see the movie against next Saturday because I’m feeling a second viewing is mandatory to sort thru all these feels now.
But I had an extra thought which you specifically addressed here: “this seems like a messed up story structure – I need a story guru to explain wtf I just saw”. I suspect people will be talking about this bold structural choice for a long time to come; not just Marvel fans, but story monkeys too. So THANK YOU!
Upon reflection, I started thinking that the movie only has an Act 1 and 2, no Act 3. It left the heroes in the worst imaginable situation, but it left the resolution to those problems and any heroic victory to Avengers 4.
Additionally, I felt a bit misled by 2 comments made by the Directors and Kevin Feige prior to seeing the movie:
1) “This is a standalone movie, not part 1 of 2”. You addressed this. It seems patently false now, in retrospect. I’m not sure why they felt so compelled to make that statement?
2) “Don’t expect everyone to survive.” I kept expecting to see the original Avengers die! And when they didn’t, but newer guys did that have already-announced movies coming out soon, I felt somewhat cheated. Not because I want any of them to die, but rather, I’m left thinking those that disappeared will be returned to us, and those that remain alive are still fodder for perma-death in Avengers 4. The pre-release commentary actually messed with my head more due to expectations set for impactful deaths, than if they’d said nothing. The deaths we did see had the impact lessened as a result, in my mind.
April 30, 2018 — 1:06 PM
Marshall Ryan Maresca says:
I’m with you that the movie left me hungry for that denouement, but I feel that was by design, and done out of confidence. They know it’s back next year, we’ll be coming back next year, so they’re OK with leaving the audience feeling uncomfortable for this one.
(I mean, yes, I expected that mid-credit sequence where Clint shows up and is all, “I got a plan, and it’s a longshot, but that’s what I do best” or corny inspiring words to that effect.)
What I find most fascinating is, frankly, this ending is essentially what I was expecting– you don’t hang a kill-half-the-universe-with-a-snap-glove on the wall in Act I if you aren’t going to snap the glove in Act III– but at the same time I wasn’t prepared for it. They took what you expected and said, “But we’re still going to make it hurt.” And it really did.
April 30, 2018 — 1:11 PM
handstocatch says:
I haven’t seen it and I don’t really want to as my reaction to every description of that ending the movie reflects my feelings a world stripped any sense of stability, global, national or personal.
A depressing cliffhanger that won’t be resolve until a year from now brings up how even if things are less bleak in general, for some people, this is going to be THE ending. Perhaps not because they are dead, but because they will have lost the means to see such entertainments, or the ability to find them entertaining because the mass shooting number x was in their area.
And Thanos is an echo of Dark Enlightenment types, wealthy nihilists and well paid pragmatists who are increasingly open about the idea killing off most of us is an acceptable next step for society. And part of me is disturbed by live action entertainments which involve such concepts at all, let alone ones in which the villain is presented as having a “rational” motive* even if it is explicitly condemned. Because I’ve seen explicit depictions of torture on film that started mostly with explicit condemnation, but didn’t stay that way and pop culture clearly helped normalize the reality.
Part of me knows the ending intentionally avoided the usual denouement to counter the unavoidable awareness that it’s part one and some of those deaths are clearly fakeouts. The shock isn’t art but trying to sustain interest in the inevitable 2 to 3 hour happy ending. But it also points to the bleak subtext of such material and raises the dispiriting issue of how one of the most dominant corporate media narratives that people are willingly subjecting themselves to involves such a bleak concept.
April 30, 2018 — 1:14 PM
DanInKansas says:
HOLY SHIT MOTHER OF GOD SPOILER HERE NO REALLY
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We are given just enough of a glimpse of the Infinity Gauntlet to know it’s toast. Thanos can no longer stop the Avengers by wishing them in and out of reality.
April 30, 2018 — 1:25 PM
K. Eason says:
I felt bruised afterwards, even with the balancing meta-knowledge (Dr. Strange and T’Challa will be back because Disney economics). But I also felt kinda bruised throughout. We’d just rewatched Thor: Ragnarok the night before and yeah, ugly battle, Asgard in Surtery flames, but still–a victory, the people saved, all is well-ish. And then that gets undone in the first ten minutes of this film. All of it. For making me feel things, go Infinity War, well done, but I wasn’t prepared for Marvel Grimdark.
April 30, 2018 — 1:25 PM
Cassandra S. says:
The Last Jedi was so, so, SO much worse and a far bigger kick in the teeth, especially if, like me, you were just barely old enough to see A New Hope in a movie theater.
The Last Jedi basically said, “Your heroes are impotent failures. Your heroes will lead sad, lonely lives without love or even close family relationships. Everything your heroes fought for will turn to literal rubble. Oh, and now they are dead so ha ha ha.”
That movie SUCKED. That movie was November 8, 2016 in IMAX Sony4D with Dolby Atmos SurroundSound. That movie said, “Oh, did we call one of our films A New Hope and another one Return of the Jedi? We fucking lied.”
That denouement? Oh, gee, it’s so swell to know an orphan kid commanded to do chores has the Force. Like, y’know, an orphan kid commanded to do chores on Tatooine had the Force. And look how that turned out. Yeah, that’s super hopeful. Can’t wait to see that story play out again – oh, right, I can.
This movie?
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Did no one notice Dr. Strange running through all 14 million plus possible scenarios and seeing the one where they win? Did no one hear Dr. Strange emphasize he swore an oath to protect the Time Stone and would never let go of it, even to save Tony and Peter – and then he did precisely that?
Did no one notice one of the stones IS a Time Stone? And we saw the Time Stone’s power demonstrated?
Did no one notice the Red Skull’s warning about the Soul Stone? And how the stone didn’t appear until after the sacrifice of Gamora? And how apparently Gamora’s soul is still around – and talking to Thanos – and her soul didn’t seem all that anguished that he “snapped?” Like she and/or the Soul Stone knows something?
There are lots of hopeful clues in the narrative.
I loved this movie. Yes, half the universe turns to ash. Yes, the Big Bad wins. But we are left with the Original Avengers still standing: Hulk, Widow, Cap and Thor are together. Iron Man is with Thanos’s daughter Nebula, who knows her father better than anyone not currently existing as a soul. Presumably, Hawkeye is out there as well. This isn’t killing off Luke Skywalker in a cliched deus ex machina appearance at the last possible minute, making Luke a pathetic cowardly ostrich until then. This film ends with the Original Heroes Still Here, Still Mostly Together, Still Not Wholly Beaten, Able to Regroup.
If you believe in heroes, then how can you not believe they will come back from this? Yes, things look very dark: but at least the Original Avengers didn’t chuckle and dissolve into a sunset. Just sayin’.
I also love this as a repudiation of those who claim comic books and other heroic fantasy series are too “safe,” too “sanitized,” they need D E A T H to be considered art. Good guys don’t always win, these people sniff with their noses in the air.
Well, here you go. Oh, wait, you mean you don’t like wholesale death in your heroic fantasies after all? Huh. Go figure.
And for those who don’t mind meta:
It’s not like Marvel is subtle about the origin material. Go find the Infinity Gauntlet comic series. Enjoy. It all turns out okay.
And it’s not like Marvel hasn’t announced its upcoming slate. Do people really expect Spider-Man 2 to star a pile of ash? Guardians of the Galaxy 3 to be two hours plus of Rocket weeping? Avengers 4 to open with Justin Theroux playing a sheriff in a small town?
April 30, 2018 — 1:31 PM
terribleminds says:
um
okay
April 30, 2018 — 1:41 PM
woodstockdc says:
I don’t recall inviting you inside my head, Cassandra, and yet, you’ve spewed out most of what I think about this movie, save that the movie was basically over the minute Peter Quill prioritized his grief about Gamora’s “death” over getting the gauntlet away from Thanos. At that moment, Thanos became unbeatable, which for me sucked all of the tension out of the story.
I knew it was going to end badly, it was just a question of how badly.
April 30, 2018 — 2:38 PM
Tribi says:
I’m in the Thanos was the protagonist camp, especially since the words at the end said “Thanos will return.” I don’t see the parallel between Thanos and Trump though because Thanos was compassionate in his own way and sacrificed what he loved best. At the end he sits there thinking, not tweeting about how wonderful he was or #MUGA.
April 30, 2018 — 1:32 PM
handstocatch says:
*So in the comics, Thanos does this in an attempt to win over Death who is a beautiful lady that in most of the narrative won’t even look at him. My first reaction to this was that’s silly and creepy, but then I realized Thanos is an operatic character and the glove is so silly and a standard mythical motive not only fits but serves as a check against the too grim aspects of a genocidal maniac being at the center. Also, as many have pointed out, a guy who decides to destroy the universe because a woman won’t talk to him is not as implausible as it may seem and would have made a better political subtext than “Well his solution is wrong, but he makes sense in being concerned about overpopulation”.
April 30, 2018 — 1:35 PM
Deanna Gilbert says:
Back when Infinity War was announced, and it was in two parts, said that I really, really hoped that the first movie would end with a ‘snap’ and half the heroes dead. Even though they said, “Nope, it’s two different movies!” I didn’t really believe them.
I think they were trying to fool those like me into thinking that I was wrong, but I wasn’t having any of it. It was JUST TOO PERFECT IMO of a midpoint for one big story.
I enjoyed the hell out of this movie, even though I felt a kick in the shins from the heroes fading away (especially Peter!). But I suspect I got a bit of a kick of euphoria because I was right.
I mean, I really don’t know how they’re going to get themselves out of this one, unless it somehow involves the Time Stone.
But man, I LOVE how they did Thanos. I mean…he didn’t come across as a typical megamaniacal. I mean, he was scary as hell (that was one hell of an opening scene) but he was…restrained in a way. He only killed Loki because Loki tried to fake him out (and my horror kept rising as I realized, “Shit, they’re going to kill Loki. For reals.”).
And at that point I was _scared_ for the heroes. And then they kept going back to how someone wouldn’t sacrifice another to stop Thanos…over, and over… and especially Gamora’s surrender of the location of the Soul Stone to…for the first time, protect her sister…which was a payoff of GotG 2.
And the FEELS for Gamora when she realized that Thanos actually LOVED her…and then realizing that just as she was killed… It felt like watching a train wreck as I realized the sacrifice Thanos would have to make…and he did it.
Then as the 3rd act kept going I started thinking, “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they WILL stop him…right until “You should have gone for the hand”.
So yeah, I loved this movie. LOVED IT.
But my experience was a bit different. I was pretty sure how it was going to end…but even then I wasn’t ready for the gut punch. My wife was all WTF!!!!! My son was okay because I explained immediately that most, if not all, of the heroes who died at the end would be back.
But there’s a thing called the Peak-End effect, where the remembered experience of something is mostly the ‘peak’ of that experience, and what it was like right at the end. That ending can’t help but affect how people feel about the movie right now.
I don’t know if we’ll ever see a movie like that again. DC _could_ have done it, if they’d done their universe the patient way rather than rush it. Maybe Star Wars could in the future.
We still have to see how Avengers 4 finishes it off, but to have a string of over a dozen movies all start getting payoffs in one big movie that they’ve been teasing for ten freaking years? And then get a villain who actually lives up (if not massively exceeds) expectations?
P.S. At least we only have one year to wait. Empire we had to wait THREE FREAKING YEARS…
April 30, 2018 — 1:45 PM
malakim2099 says:
This is like if Empire Strikes Back ended on Luke falling into the shaft at Cloud City, then you see Vader strutting to his shuttle. And that’s it. Boom. Done. Wait for Return of the Jedi.
Is it a good idea? I’m holding out for Part 2 which wasn’t supposed to be Part 2 but we all know it’s really Part 2.
April 30, 2018 — 1:46 PM
terribleminds says:
That’s about right, yeah — Luke falls, Vader walks away, Solo is taken, credits roll. It’d be a baller ending, but more for the stunt of it rather than for the story of it?
April 30, 2018 — 1:52 PM
cherwolf (@Cherithe) says:
Honest to goodness, as much of a gut-punch the ending was I didn’t feel bad about it leaving the theater. When Doctor Strange tells us that he’s seen all the endings of this battle with Thanos and still hands over the Time Stone and tells Tony “there was no other way”, I trust that it’s true. I feel like a lot of people have glossed over that part in their disappointment and sadness about the ending. Yet it’s that above all else, even about the meta that “they wouldn’t just kill off x character forever, for funsies”. Although then I still fall back on the comic book-ness of it, if we lose someone it’s going to mean something. Losing half on the snap of a finger, well that’s not something that sticks. The death of the two Asgardians were physical moments, so maybe the stick.
April 30, 2018 — 1:49 PM
Dave Shramek says:
No. I absolutely caught that. I also caught that it was meant to be a fake out when he says “There was no other way.” Like we’re supposed to think that Strange is just like all the other heroes and giving a stone up to Thanos because they can’t stand to see other people suffer in the moment. But I’m not sure other people caught that. And I was watching this movie through their eyes. The mother next to me at the theater who let out a disbelieving guffaw when the credits rolled like “That’s it?” And the dead silence afterward speaks of people who may know on some level “There’s no way this is what they’re doing” but it doesn’t matter. The text says that’s all that happens. The movie stands on its own, and it does not do that well in my opinion.
April 30, 2018 — 5:56 PM
Tina H says:
I’m hoping Dr Strange saved Tony for a specific reason, and the void is an alternate reality they can fight their way out of…I remain hopeful.
May 1, 2018 — 12:06 PM
Steve Fey says:
Only movie I’ve ever attended where virtually everyone in the theater simply sat silently waiting for the end of the credits. Maybe waiting for that French thing? Odd movie, in that regard. Also, I thought, slow in the middle, but maybe that’s just me. (We saw it in Dublin, so maybe the crowd was different.)
April 30, 2018 — 2:26 PM
Patrick says:
But isn’t the point of a good story to make you feel emotions toward the character? Did we not all feel emotional, good/bad/both simultaneously walking out of there? I was contemplating how this may be the best movie I’ve ever seen because it is an emotional roller coaster the entire time. It made me laugh, as a father it made me tear up, my heart was racing from all the battles, I felt anxious with the decisions that were made. I felt shock as I sang “Dust in the Wind” at the ending.
How could this movie have been more perfect? Was it not spectacular storytelling? I agree that the year wait sucks but it will keep me looking for that release date.
April 30, 2018 — 2:29 PM
terribleminds says:
The emotions are a good metric, the question is, are those emotions earnest and earned — or is it a cheat? I mean, if the end of THE LAST JEDI is the Knights of Ren tracking Luke down at his island hovel and literally kicking him to death, I will feel very strongly about that. It will trigger considerable emotion but the question is, how that was achieved, and does it make sense, and is it a cheat? And I’m not saying this is — but making audiences upset isn’t exactly difficult; now it’s more about what they do with that going forward in the second half of this split-in-half movie.
April 30, 2018 — 2:35 PM
Dave Perry says:
[Spoilery, because, I mean, obviously]
I don’t know what you could have even done right at the end that would have served as a satisfying denouement. If you’re even a little bit invested in this universe, you’re probably just sitting there gut punched. I know the people in my theater were. So we cut to the credits, complete with somber music. No mid-credits scene, which is unusual for a Marvel movie. At this point I don’t know if people are still sitting there because Marvel has trained them to wait until the very end or because they just can’t. Nobody talked. There was none of the usual fidgety, get-to-the-extra-thing energy. When Nick Fury and Maria Hill appear on the screen, it’s almost a disruption, but I think we’re just about ready for … something. And it’s kind of more of the same horror, but there’s just a little bit of light poking through when he sends that distress call. Hell, most people probably won’t even know who the hell he’s calling, but the logo looks bright and colorful and the music kind of sounded … not miserable … for the first time in 10 minutes OR MAYBE AN HOUR OR A YEAR and … yeah, that’s about when we were ready for it. And to breathe a little. Because we were sort of holding it, I think.
April 30, 2018 — 2:55 PM
Dave Shramek says:
Easy. I want a scene where Captain America addresses the surviving Avengers (and possibly the world): “We’re going to track Thanos down and we’re going to take that glove off of him and undo this.” Pan up to a space ship in Wakanda and cue music. Easy. It’s just like Empire Strikes Back. It ends on a message of hope, while not undoing any of the grief of the gut punch ending. Plus, we get to let Captain America do some goddamn Captain America stuff, which this movie was a little light on for my taste.
April 30, 2018 — 6:02 PM
wynn says:
That would’ve been fine, inspiring even, but it also makes me wonder…why do we need that for this film? The shot of the entire team looking shaken and terrified was brilliant. This is an evil unlike anything that they have ever faced (except Dr. Strange, I guess.) It’s evil on a cosmic scale. The odds are stacked so innumerably against them that I almost appreciate that the filmmakers decided that the audience should feel that, too. Isn’t the complaint about these films so often that they’re formulaic and lacking in real stakes? And you get what you’re hoping for with the after credits sequence anyway: a secret signal sent to a mysterious destination; someone that Nick Fury turns to when things look as bleak as they are.
April 30, 2018 — 6:31 PM
Dave Shramek says:
No. I get a scene of bleak despair from my heroes who have watched everyone they fought with dissolve into ash, a genocidal madman given a happy paradise, and a theme that states: “Heroes inability to choose the lesser of two evils is why we have genocides.” Like that’s the movie. Sorry, kids. Captain America isn’t good enough to prevent genocide (again). And now Spider-Man is dead. Forever. Go home and buy more merch.”
The after credits scene you’re talking about is “Oh, good. Here’s the point where they give us some hope. Nope. They’re just killing of another person of color and woman while the world burns around them. But we have a blinking light that literally means nothing to most of the millions of people watching it.”
And you can tell me that you and I know that Spider-Man isn’t dead because they have a slate of Spider-Man films and they’re already filming Avengers 4, but that is not what all the kids leaving that theater felt. I love despair in a horror movie. I thought The Mist, which pulls basically the same cheap shot was great because of it. I don’t think it belongs in a superhero movie. I watched that movie through the eyes of the parents and kids around me, heard their derisive, disbelieving chuckles that said “That’s it? What the hell?” They didn’t read the Starlin books. They don’t read the comic book movie blogs to see all the rumors about things coming up. They’re kids. Or they’re parents who have to explain to their devastated kids why Spider-Man isn’t really dead forever, assuming they even know that.
That’s my point. Try to watch this movie through the eyes of someone who hasn’t read the comics. Who isn’t at the theater with a date who can explain what these bits are to them. Who hasn’t seen all of the movies. Who’s there with their kid who’s in the same boat, but loves Iron Man and has Iron Man sheets on her bed. And you tell me that the kick in the teeth at the end is what they spent their money on. And that they’re going to thank Marvel for that and be eager for the next Avengers movie whenever they start even talking about it, let alone whenever it comes out in a year or two.
This isn’t a cliffhanger, it’s just a story of failure. The heroes failed. Billions are dead. There is no hope. Only despair. Not even a scene of the grieving heroes picking up the pieces, just satisfied villain happy in his work. Sorry you have to hear it from Captain America and Tony Stark, kids, but bad things happen and now Trump is president and the universe sucks.
May 1, 2018 — 11:26 AM
terribleminds says:
“This isn’t a cliffhanger, it’s just a story of failure. The heroes failed. Billions are dead. There is no hope. Only despair. Not even a scene of the grieving heroes picking up the pieces, just satisfied villain happy in his work. Sorry you have to hear it from Captain America and Tony Stark, kids, but bad things happen and now Trump is president and the universe sucks.”
Well, it almost literally is a cliffhanger.
And also, this paragraph you typed, it just isn’t any fun. Comic book movies are supposed to be fun. INFINITY WAR is mostly fun, until this point, and then it’s not fun anymore.
— c.
May 1, 2018 — 1:36 PM
Sam says:
Respectfully disagree – a scene like that tacked on at the end would have ruined it for me. I guess I’m in the camp that knew the moment Peter Quill kept Strange and Spider-Man from getting the gauntlet off on Titan was the beginning of the end, though, so pretty much the rest of the movie felt like denouement to me.
April 30, 2018 — 7:50 PM
B Edwards (@usuallybedwards) says:
This was my five year old’s first superhero movie. We weren’t originally going to let him see it, but somehow he was told he could see it and the fallout from that would have been far worse, emotionally, than what the movie could do–OR SO I THOUGHT. A dragged-out Spidey death scene later and I don’t know if the kid will ever get over it.
BUT–this movie DOES tell a complete story. It tells THANOS’ story. He is the protagonist. He is never NOT the protagonist. It begins with him enacting (or continuing) his plans, it continues with other characters trying their best to thwart his plan, and it ends with him succeeding with his plan. He has an arc–he learns that his goal is costlier than he imagined–and he is a different person at the end, though a satisfied one.
It’s not a cliffhanger for him. He’s done. The Avengers, however, have something to say about vengeance, I’d wager…
April 30, 2018 — 5:01 PM
Nina says:
We have decided against taking our 11 year old son to see the movie because of the torture scenes without plot-necessity that seem to creep up in so many US movies and TV series now. And because of the Spidey-death scene. Everyone else just fades and looks astonished or cusses – he gets to beg and die in a heart-wrenching way. If you’ve ever seen people die irl or witnessed someone’s suffering, it really grates to see those moments abused for dramatic effect without any plot purpose. 🙁 Having said that, maybe Nebula’s torture was necessary because Gamora wouldn’t give up the soul stone’s location without intense pressure on her.
May 1, 2018 — 7:05 AM
Emily Leverett says:
This puts into words what I had been feeling! I felt … odd when I left the film. Now that I’ve read this, I can see I wasn’t feeling catharsis. I was still all bunched up inside and that sort of thing. That feeling stayed with me for a while–it lingers still now (saw it on Friday). It comes back in moments. Like you, I don’t know if that’s great or awful or both (I suspect, like you do, I think, that it is both). I do agree with other viewers (okay, with my husband) that the “deaths” of Peter Parker and Spiderman confirm that this “death” isn’t going to be 100% real. If they hadn’t booted them (and, okay, the guardians), then it could have been real. They could have been burning it all down to start something new.
Anyway, thanks for this. It puts in words a lot of the feels I have about it. (And it was great meeting you at RavenCon, though it was far too brief!)
April 30, 2018 — 5:33 PM
thegneech says:
1) Dr. Strange’s line “There wasn’t any other way” -is- the uplift moment, but it’s in disguise.
2) Sucks for the Asgardians, man. They JUST escaped Ragnarok, and bam. I just want the ghost of Loki to shout at Thanos forever, “What happened to only killing HALF, scrotumchin???”
April 30, 2018 — 5:36 PM
malakim2099 says:
IIRC, later in the movie Thor implies that half the Asgardians did get away, so I’m presuming that’s where Valkyrie, Korg, and the rest of them were.
Because nothing is going to keep Valkyrie from Strange’s Never Ending Beer Mug.
NOTHING.
May 1, 2018 — 9:23 AM
Jim Ryan says:
I believe early on when they were in the planning stages the Russos did say they considered Thanos the protagonist for this movie. For me, the ending was kind of like the ending of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or some of the more seriously-toned Coen Brothers movies. I still need to see it again to confirm my feelings on it, but right now I’m imagining it as kind of like a tragedy in which the main character succeeds but has to give up everything in the process, which was an idea brought to the forefront for us when we saw Thanos talking to the vision of the young Gamora at the end.
April 30, 2018 — 5:52 PM
wynn says:
Thanos is the protagonist of this film. He sacrifices for his cause. He fights against overwhelming odds, loses his closest comrades, sacrifices the person whom he loves most, and then…he succeeds. His reward for what he has lost and fought against is the accomplishment of his task. Were his plan just, well, then him getting his rest and watching over the fulfillment of his deeds would be the denouement you were searching for. It’s not the film you expected, but if you chart the journey as belonging to Thanos…well, it’s complete. You could theoretically just not watch the next one, or any other MCU film, and the story ends on: “Thanos completed his mission. Life will have to go on from there. The remaining heroes are left to fight another day.”
And yet?
“Thanos will Return.”
Because he’s not the hero of the MCU.
He just believes that himself to be.
The ending was a bold, inspired choice. The audience has to sit with this for a year, or forever. But it’s also a smart one from a logistical point-of-view. I pared down the large cast to the core Avengers thereby setting the stage for their characters’ denouement. It’s a choice that shows Marvel’s confidence in the story that they’re trying to tell, and that audiences are so invested in their universe that they’ll return to another film in an uncertain future. Fine, we know that certain characters are pre-destined to return from a meta-textual level, but what about the ones that are left? What will they have to give up, like Thanos did, to earn their “smiling as they watch the sun rise over their new dawn” moment?
You can add to that reading one that allows for the heroes’ naïveté–their mistakes in strategy, the selfish choices they make throughout, the belief that their might can overcome anything–to be part of the reason why they lost this battle. The ones that are left will likely have to make even larger sacrifices.
In short, it works. The hope that I needed are the heroes that are left.
April 30, 2018 — 6:26 PM
Michael Desing says:
yadda yadda SPOILERS yadda yadda
It seems to me that Thanos is the protagonist. It’s his quest; he’s the acting force moving the action forward, and everyone else around him is reacting. He completes his quest. This story is over. He goes on a quest and he finishes it.
I keep thinking about Macbeth. He completes his quest, too, but it doesn’t give him any of the warm fuzzies he expected. That last scene is, to me, the tell. Thanos is sitting there enjoying his hard-earned victory. But it doesn’t give him the gratification he expected. Something is missing. We get denouement; it’s that scene with precocious Gamora where she asks him what it cost him.
In my Macbeth overlay, Gamora is Banquo (sacrificed after meeting the voice of fate and all), and Captain Marvel is going to get her Macduff on (doesn’t show up until Act 4, but still delivers the killing blow).
Marvel has shown me two things so far: 1) They don’t do what I think they are going to do, and 2) they always keep moving forward. If you expect that anything or any character returns to what he or she was before, I think that’s mistaken. They may come ‘back’, but they aren’t going back to what they were.
I can see Gamora coming back, but as a phantom that haunts Thanos, and she stays a ghost. Her love for Peter Quill becomes eternally tragic: he’s in love with a ghost, so that’s always going to be a problem. Dr. Strange pulls a Galdalf the White… “oh yeah, I think I heard of the former me. He sounds like kind of a jerk.”
And there’s going to be a major cost to this all. For the whole thing to be justified, there’s got to be some major trades made. Tony is going to be part of it for sure, and probably Cap and maybe even Thor. In fact, I could see the entire initial lineup for the Avengers ‘taking one for the team’ in order to reset the cosmic order or some such. I won’t be surprised if Thanos, who lead this quest, leads the next one.
Follow me for a second. He has had time to think about it, and realizes that this was really really stupid. He wants to make amends. So he gathers the remaining Avengers and they go on a quest together to take on Death herself and bargain for the fate of all who he destroyed. She eventually relents, but demands an equal sacrifice. Thanos has to go of course, but the original Avengers lineup is the final payment. Cue cosmic reset.
And that line about “I hope that they remember you” is some major foreshadowing. The reset is so complete that they don’t. Captain America never lived; Iron Man died in a desert cave; Bruce Banner died in a gamma radiation accident. Only those who are reborn remember them, and they go on fighting for heroes that rest of world never knew. Roll credits.
April 30, 2018 — 8:58 PM
Traylantha says:
I went with my BFF and her post viewing comment was: This was a mean spirited movie.
Me, I hated it. You can’t do grimdark if you don’t leave us a spark of hope. Thats why Empire and Jedi work. We still have the spark to hang onto.
Infinity leaves us with a handful of gross.
April 30, 2018 — 10:22 PM
SSbard says:
This was my take as well Traylantha, tho Chuck nailed the more academic underpinnings of why.
There is such a HUGE difference between setting your audience/readers up for a shocking cliffhanger or emotional gut punch that excites and creates tension and anticipation for the next installment,… vs.- just being a dick to your audience because you can.
The lack of a proper denouement forces the entirety of the emotional labor, the entirety of the processing of the failures and deaths within the film onto the audiences’ shoulders. Both without our consent, and without warning.
If I, as a tabletop GM, presented /that/ ending to my players & then rolled up my stuff & told them “we’ll just continue from there in a year, Byeeee!”,…no one would ever wanna play at my table again. As a GM, as a story teller, it’s your job to wrench your audiences’ emotions, BUT, there has to be a trust there for anything to work.
Trust is built either by consistently providing that emotional bridge, that denouement, OR providing warning ahead of time that the game rules are about to change, maybe don’t bring young kids to this one.
IW flipped a middle finger at our trust.
Not to mention, (on a more personal opinion from a female nerd note,) they specifically eliminated all of the more emotionally approachable/ sympathetic characters (minus Cap), shafted any true character development for their best POC and female warriors beyond using them as action props and fridging Gamora for both Thanos & Starlord’s man-pain.
And forecast yet another movie to be fronted largely by the old (mostly white dude) guard. That choice, just, @##@@@##.
And it is just plain bull that NOW, of all now’s, is when they’ll finally insert a female-led IP to clean up all this mess. Literally. It utterly undermines any of Captain Marvel’s personal agency in advance, because we know she’s gonna be stuck sidekick to Tony’s two ton ego the minute the next group film begins. He is confirmed essential for Thanos’s defeat.
As a female fan, I feel kinda just a smidge betrayed. In advance. For something I previously had hope for.
Academic ponderings of story structure and personal feeling aside, Marvel and Disney as brands have prided themselves on being family friendly, and this movie… my twitter stream is full of parents with tear-struck kids. There is something deeply off with that.
None of the previews nor interviews warned us to prepare for that. Not even knowing the comic backing for Thanos prepared audiences for that.
This is the first Marvel film I’ve ever seen that ended with an utterly silent room, no cheering at all, on an opening weekend.
More power to those who can enjoy it.
I prefer movies that don’t leave me angry & more depressed than when I entered the theater.
May 1, 2018 — 6:11 AM
TooManyJens says:
He is confirmed essential for Thanos’s defeat.
FWIW, I didn’t read Strange’s line about “it was the only way” to mean that Tony, specifically, had to live. I think it meant that, in the only timeline that Strange saw in which “Thanos doesn’t win” (and I suspect it was phrased that particular way for a reason), Thanos first got all of the stones and used the gauntlet. So sure, they took a chance on the glove-removal plan because why not; 14 million isn’t anywhere near all the possible outcomes, after all, so it might have worked. But when it didn’t, the only way forward Strange knows about is to give up the stone. Because first Thanos does this, then he or somebody else (presumably) undoes it.
May 1, 2018 — 6:07 PM
Thomas Diehl says:
Welp, that’ll teach me to ignore spoiler warnings. Holy shit!
But, weary as I am of constant happy endings catering to an audience presumably only ever wanting to be vapidly happy as opposed to engaged on the whole spectrum of emotions, I couldn’t be happier. I felt this way ever since I am Legend changed its really good ending to the really terrible one we got because it made people less depressed.
May 1, 2018 — 3:03 AM
Mandy Perry says:
This is it, exactly. I have been looking for the words for days, but in all seriousness, this is it exactly. This is why i felt so bad, and a few days ago I literally /wrote and posted a fanfic/ which was ‘Steve Rogers goes to a synagogue in his old neighborhood to observe Wanda’s death because there are no relatives left to sit shiva for her, also there are references to Wakandan funerary rites, and how the world is dealing with this level of loss.’ Because *I* needed to deal with the loss.
In reflection, having read this, I literally sat down and wrote a denouement for myself, and knowing that, my English major self feels much better about NEEDING to write fanfic to feel better. Hooray, it’s all about story structure!
Also I’m a nerd. That too.
May 1, 2018 — 6:05 AM
Nina says:
I was shocked during the movie, but I enjoyed it from an author’s perspective. My theory is that this is the Midpoint of a story that rolls across 2 movies. Narratively speaking, the midpoint is the reversal, the point where the previous story gets put on its head. Thanos wins and characters we love just disappear – we didn’t expect that, or not with this much force. Next up in a story would be: the “last secrets revealed” to the heroes, their realization how they must alter their approach, they rally for the big fight but they are (almost) crushed (that will be the Midpoint of the next movie), more losses and sacrifices, but the survivors rally again and enter the real showdown. What intrigues me is what their new approach will be – it’s easy to think they will steal the time stone and retcon the whole thing – but how, without Dr Strange? My husband and I were convinced throughout the movie that Dr Strange would survive. We are all pretty sure that the guys with movie contracts will be brought back. But what about the hard losses like … I can’t even bring myself to say it, it feels like such a major spoiler. So: one of the first deaths. That can’t have been it for that character, right? Right? I think we can only assess after Infinity War Part 2 how courageous the script for this one has been. <3
May 1, 2018 — 6:47 AM
Tina H says:
I’m hoping the void is an alternate reality, and Dr Strange being there means the characters can fight their way back.
May 1, 2018 — 11:57 AM
TooManyJens says:
Somebody had a theory that there was an alternate reality where the ones who survived in this reality were the ones who got dusted. I doubt that’s what they’re doing, but it’s a fun idea.
May 1, 2018 — 6:09 PM
Jp Behrens says:
Remember, Dr. Strange looked into the future and saw one way out of 14 million to win. Just before he ashed out he said, “This was the only way.”
Keep the faith. I thought the ending was brilliant, challenging, and necessary when people complain that there are never consequences in the Marvel movies. Critics should be careful what they wish for.
May 1, 2018 — 9:17 AM
brittanyconstable says:
See, I walked out of the movie delighted and excited. I actually threw up my arms and cheered. Because there is indeed a moment of uplift, but it is tiny and in the stinger and you have to be a nerd to understand it.
Captain Marvel is coming.
Hell, I think even if you didn’t recognize the insignia like I did immediately (even my fellow nerds had to see the colors pop up before it clicked), you can probably figure out that Nick Fury was calling for help and the message went through.
It might have been better to have that as part of the movie proper, perhaps with a little more explanation so more than the hardcore fans would understand. But I think they really wanted to commit to that bleak ending. They wanted you to sit with it, with the plain credits and somber music, feeling the same “Holy shit now what” that the heroes do as it sinks in that yes, that really happened. I have the feeling (the hope, really) that they’ll undo the plot consequences but not the character ones–that is, that the deaths will be reversed but the memories and emotions will remain. Tipping their hand too quickly risks undermining that.
May 1, 2018 — 3:47 PM
Lynne Connolly says:
Dr Strange is the key. He saw the one way that Thanos would be defeated, and that’s why he gave up the stone. Do you remember in Star Trek 4, when Kirk pawns his spectacles, the ones Bones gave him, knowing he would get them back in the future? It’s like that. In order for everything to work out, Strange has to give away his stone. Maybe together they have a power nobody has foreseen. But that’s the key and everybody except the ones that were physically mutilated in the last part will come back, My guess is they were pushed into a parallel universe. And the next movie will be about finding their way back. And how Strange guides the ones at his end making it possible, thus moving him closer to the Avengers,
If all the characters who “died” come back in the last ten minutes of the last movie just magically pop back in during the last ten minutes of the second movie, that will leave it unbalanced. So it’s going to be a dual thing, and a quest or journey to return.
May 1, 2018 — 10:41 PM
Brook Miller says:
I went and saw the movie (Comic Nerd Superbowl?) on Thursday and then went again on Friday. I’m thinking I will end up going to see it again next week. Chuck was right; it was such a comic book movie! It gave me good memories of feverishly collecting all of the new issues in a Crossover Event so I could get to the end of the story line. I bought so many comic books that I did not usually read and spent so much money of my teenage budget that I could not really afford. The ending of this movie could have been taken right out of comic book panels. It’s crappy that we have to wait a year or more for closure, but I am ok with that. The last ten years of watching my heroes come to life, and learning to love the ones I had foolishly dismissed as boring (Thor and Hulk, for example) has been so much fun and affirming, I guess. I was not alone in my comic book love weirdness! Movies take a long time to make. ‘S all good.
My theory why there was no gathering of the remaining heroes is this: the Russos wanted you to know that the Avengers were as stunned at losing as you were. Thanos did it. They were struggling to comprehend it as much as you were, especially when it seemed that they were so close to stopping Thanos.
Had Cap sat there on the ground with the Wakanda wind ruffling his heroic hair and mumbled, “Dude. What the fuck?” it would’ve been cool. But they were as speechless as the audience in the theater.
The Russo brothers did a great job. I hope they do a “Director’s Cut,” of the movie, but that might be too much to ask. I’d totally sit through three hours of movie, no problem. Lord of the Rings has me trained.
Avengers 4: Fifty Shades of Fan Rage, 2019!! Woo!
May 2, 2018 — 2:20 AM