that movie

[psocoptera]

Absolutely everything behind a cut. [Except that I'm talking about Infinity War, if that wasn't clear.]

So, bleah.

Infinity War wasn't anything I personally wanted, but I suppose there's an audience for everything, and I've really loved recent movies like Last Jedi or Wrinkle In Time that had a lot of haters, so, I guess I'm vaguely glad that whoever was the audience for this movie got the movie they really wanted? Especially if that turns out to be, like, "comic book fans", not so much if it's "white men", but whatever.

I personally feel like I was served a bowl of suck with whipped cream and sprinkles, like, the actual meat of plot events was mostly bad but they did keep sprinkling it with enough banter and cute character moments to keep it watchable, so, you know, it could have been worse, it could have been Justice League.

But, like, a short recap of choices they made:

- opened the movie with the genocide of the Asgardian refugees, which completely destroys the triumph of Thor: Ragnarok, a movie I actually liked. I had found the whole "Asgard is the people, not the place" ending really meaningful and hopeful, and that was a shitty opening, to immediately knock it over. (But, I guess, an effective introduction of the destruction of meaning/victory of meaninglessness that would go on to characterize the rest of the movie, so, I guess it was effective in a literary sense. But why do we want this?)

- weird uncomfortable conversation between Pepper and Tony in which Pepper gets to reprise her role as a nag who's in denial about living in a comic book universe

- for me, Nebula and Gamora's prior arc with Thanos is the only emotional investment I had in Thanos as a villain, and the way that played out in this movie was totally devoid of anything awesome or satisfying. Gamora tries to be badass with the sacrifice play, but has it taken away from her, and then she breaks under Nebula's torture and gets fridged for it, and Nebula flails at Thanos a bit but doesn't really accomplish anything.

- on the topic of which I haven't read a lot of reviews yet but I've read a couple that talk about how Thanos got "humanized" and "powerful emotional scenes" and "sympathetic" and "oddly likeable" and, like, whaaat movie were these people watching?? Maybe it was a mistake to have *just* watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (I was studying up!) but Ego is *so* much more genuinely chilling and holy-shit badass as a villain, and Killmonger was all over the sympathetic, emotionally powerful villain niche, but purple Joss Whedon is just so... dumb? Like, okay, sure, the script has given him the power of being the most powerful person in the universe, I guess, but it never feels earned or interesting, there's no grandeur to it. Basically he decided back in Titan college he wanted to kill trillions of people because of *overpopulation*, like a slightly-more-ambitious Paul Ryan, and instead of ever thinking about alternatives or applying his *literal unlimited cosmic power* to a more interesting solution, he's just chugging forward, and it's so dumb and pathetic. The fact that he succeeds, when every single more-sophisticated more-motivated villain in previous movies gets defeated, felt like one more triumph of meaninglessness, one more slap in the face to the idea of anything being narratively earned.

- there's probably somebody who cares about Vision, but it's sure not me, so for a huge amount of the plot to revolve around the decision to try to save the life of this character I don't give a shit about who's perfectly willing to sacrifice himself, was not compelling. (And for this decision to be made by Steve "sacrifice play" Rogers who once told Tony he *had* to, basically, made no character sense to me. I could maybe have seen a thing where *Tony* is like "no we can't make Vision sacrifice himself", because he still cares about the JARVIS part of them, but these movies have always been a letdown on that whole possibly character dynamic.)

- and then, you know, the end - everything is futile, everyone you were prepared to have die somehow lives, everyone you were counting on to live gets erased by the random autoerase button, whatever, roll credits. I mean, this was *so completely the case* that I can only assume they're planning some big switcheroo in the next movie... I can't actually see them being willing to toss billion-dollar Chadwick Boseman just for the satisfaction of getting to say "haha, you didn't think we would do that, but we did, haha", and I would have thought there was a little more Spider-cash to be squeezed out of Tom Holland too, so presumably they're going to pull some sort of thing where the people who were "supposed" to die (Steve and Tony) swap themselves for a few younger franchise stars, but I just don't... care? Like, sure, they could do that! But then what was the point of the movie I just watched? What was I supposed to leave the theater with, other than "well that was dumb and depressing and I guess I hope they magically undo it later"? (Although, let's be real, Tony might sacrifice himself to save Peter Parker, but nobody's going to sacrifice themselves to save Maria Hill, and we all know which of his boyfriends Steve is going to pick.)

I feel like they wanted this to be their Empire Strikes Back, the darker movie that lots of people like best, but it definitely didn't work that way for me. Maybe they needed a big revelation, or just some really epic choreography. (Luke's lightsaber fight in Empire is one of my favorite fight scenes in any movie.) Maybe they should have really played it as a tragedy instead of just, like, whoops, the heroes rolled low and the GM rolled high... I guess you could say that Peter Quill's tragic flaw was having no self-control at a critical moment, but it's so disproportionate! Half the universe dies because Starlord kind of sucks? I guess, sure, whatever?

I should say here that I didn't really expect to like this movie, but I guess I thought I would be disliking it in some different way, that they were going to take all of the force and power of 18 movies of long spear and throw it *in some direction* rather than just sort of chopping off the head. I haven't particularly liked any of the recent big-cast movies (Ultron and Civil War) although, interestingly enough, my initial review of Civil War was much more enthusiastic than I've come to remember it (I've never had any desire to watch it again, which tells you something), and my review of Ultron was at least enthusiastic about some of the action moments.

For my future self looking back at this review, here's what I really liked: Tony's line that the bad guys have showed up to steal a necklace from a wizard, like, he knows perfectly well that he's living in a comic book world and that world is sometimes kind of ridiculous. Tony dubbing Peter a Avenger in space and Peter's little face (and his terror at dissolving at the end was so fucking heartbreaking). Thor making a badass entrance with Rocket and Groot, which I found hilarious for reasons I'm not entirely sure I can even explain now, possibly just that it was like midnight at that point. (But that was the most successful long-spear moment for me, the amount of backstory that makes that scene make any sense.) Also, Groot using his arm to build Thor's axe, which was a neat moment in an otherwise kind of tedious sequence, although I do hope Peter Dinklage had fun getting to play a really *large* dwarf. Bruce figuring out how to fight as himself instead of as the Hulk was a nice character arc, and had the only action bit I particularly remember, when he puts the Hulkbuster gauntlet on his bad guy and blasts him into the dome.

But what I really wanted, a la the kid on the bike in The Incredibles, was something amazing, something totally wicked. I wanted my ticket to buy me some excitement and badassery and escapism, a better world than the real world, where the good guys win and they do it by being strong and clever and *good*, etc, and I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to look for in a superhero movie. And, you know, maybe this was just a long setup for that kind of payoff in a future movie, and maybe if we were living in the kind of world where we weren't *actually* living through a catastrophic loss that might lead any day to unimaginable death tolls, I would have more patience with "let's tell a story where the first half is a parade of futility and then the second half finds a worthwhile story in that". If the world manages to last another year maybe I'll even think the second half was worth it, who knows. In the meantime I guess evil triumphs because the inner desire to see the bomb go off got hold of the narrative reins? I mean, I get it, at some level once they show you the six holes in the glove for the elements of harmony Six Signs magic rocks, the story isn't ever going to feel complete without seeing the magic rocks go in the holes. But maybe they should have figured out a way for that to feel to the audience like something other than "hahaha fuck you, suckers".