Monday, April 30, 2018

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your STOOOORYYY: Infinity War Wrap Up



DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS

WHY ARE YOU READING THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS

SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY

DUH SPOILERS

LIKE SERIOUSLY COME ON NOW

AT THIS POINT YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELF TO BLAME

I AM DOING THE BEST I CAN DAMMIT





Ok, hello there.  If you are here, then you have either already seen Infinity War or you don't care about spoilers.  I don't know why you are here if you haven't seen the movie, but ya know what?  I won't judge your life decisions.  In my last post, I predicted the following characters would/ could possibly die in Infinity War:

Black Widow
Captain America
Gamora
Nebula
Drax
Iron Man
Loki
Vision


So who actually died?

Heimdall - I had completely forgotten to mention Heimdall in my last post, but I actually figured he might die on the ship.  I did predict that Valkyrie would show up in a brief appearance guiding at least some of the Asgardians to safety, but that did not happen.  I still think that Valkyrie and possibly Korg are still alive until proven otherwise

Loki - Yep, I figured this would happen and he died pretty much as I assumed he would.  Rest in peace you beautiful, horrible jerk. 

Gamora - Did not die as I expected her to, and actually in a much more dramatic and emotional way than I expected her to, but I did expect that her ties to Thanos made her a target.  I was genuinely surprised that Nebula did not also die in this film.  

Vision - As I predicted, Vision died when Thanos took his stone, despite Scarlet Witch's attempts to save him.  Will he remain dead is a question for the next movie.  I believe Shuri imaged his brain before he died so that she could resurrect him in some capacity.  If anybody could it is her.  She is the smartest person in the MCU.


That's it.  The other characters who "died" in the film are: Spider-Man, Black Panther, Bucky, Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Scarlet Witch, Star Lord, Groot, Drax, and Mantis (and Maria Hill and Nick Fury in the stinger at the end).  I put "died" in quotation marks because it is pretty clear that Thanos' snap which killed half the universe's population in one swoop is going to be undone.  


A lot of people were very emotional at the end of the movie because of so much loss, but for me... I dunno.  As soon as they killed Spider-Man who is headlining his own sequel in a year I knew that these deaths weren't permanent.  This is a common trope in comics, but didn't work quite so well for me in a movie. It was impactful but not in the way, say, a death like Tony Stark's would have been.  In fact, when Tony got stabbed and nearly died my audience reacted much more strongly then the deaths of everybody all at once at the end, which left many people walking by me on the way out just saying "what the fuck?"  I'm not saying it wasn't necessary to the storytelling or will make the next movie really interesting, but, as an example, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 spent 10 minutes on Yondu's funeral only to have literally all the Guardians except Nebula and Rocket just die in a poof?  That just kind of hurt.  

The rest of the movie was absolutely spectacular.  I LOVED all the pairings of the characters, in particular Thor+Peter and Thor+Rocket.  I loved the Tony/ Strange/ Spider-Man dynamic too.  The movie even made me like Scarlet Witch and Black Widow which I thought would be impossible.  Pairing Natasha with Okoye was a good idea.  The writing was really fantastic and pulled together a lot of different threads very well.  There were 5 different plots/ locations at times and I didn't feel lost or that they were doing too much.  It definitely counted on you remembering certain details from previous movies, particularly Guardians, Thor, and Doctor Strange, but that is to be expected.  What was definitely NOT expected was how little Captain America was in this movie.  Really interesting how somebody like Rocket ended up with more lines in the movie than some of the original Avengers. It was WAY more of a space movie than the trailers let on.  I think that was for the best.  It brought the humor and tone of Ragnarok and Guardians to the rest of the Avengers and everybody benefited.  So many hilarious lines. 

I absolutely can't wait for the next movie and I can only hope that it retains at least some of the humor, though with everybody "dead" I know it probably won't be as much of a laugh riot as this one was.  

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