Sunday, May 06, 2018

Avengers: Infinity War (spoilers)

Here there be Spoilers. So don't read if you haven't see the movie...
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Last Chance
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There's a key moment for me in Avengers: Infinity War. And it's not one that's been particularly focused on when I read a lot of the commentary about the movie.

It's the scene at Knowhere, the wonderful (and hopefully rebuilt) mining colony inside a dead Celestial skull. Thanos is trying to wring the location of the Reality Stone out of the Collector when Gamora attacks and kills Thanos, before breaking down weeping. This is when Thanos pulls back the curtain to reveal that he is still alive and already has the stone. After a brief and terrifying fight, he takes her away.

Two things occurred to me at that moment.

1. Marvel are clever, devious, lying bastards. In all the promo material it ever only showed Thanos with two of the stones. This scene shows him with three. That means Marvel had spent a solid year deceiving people. The movie wasn't going to be about Thanos trying to get the stones to form the Gauntlet and the Avengers trying to stop him. 

No, the movie was going to be about him actually using the Gauntlet to wipe out half the universe.

I honestly felt like clapping at that moment. I'm not mad at Marvel. Good for them. Fans are insane. Every inch of footage and still pics were examined in a way that would make the CIA want to start recruiting analysts at Comic Cons. If lying meant that people got a surprising cinematic experience, I'm happy for them. But this leads to....

2. The only way you could know this was coming is if you were a comic book reader. Liking Marvel movies and reading the comics are hardly mutually exclusive. Marvel and DC go quietly insane over movies that can make $1 billion at the international box office but the comics they take the material from are lucky to sell 100,000 copies a month.

I have no way of proving it for sure, but I'd be surprised if 10% of the audience at Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War had read one of those comics in the last 6 months.

So for me an other comic book readers, we'd probably figured out what was coming, had an hour to brace for it, wonder how it was going to play out and how they're going to reverse it the next movie. Because they will, because there are no pearly gates in super hero afterlife, merely a revolving door.

But for everyone else, including Cathy, the last five minutes or so were an absolute gut punch. They didn't see it coming. The heroes lost and half the universe gets wiped out. Characters they love died. And as one clever critic I read mentioned, you were not given a glimpse of hope at the end of this.

The Empire Strikes Back is considered a massive downer of a movie, but it still ends up an upbeat note. Luke is back with the Rebellion, he has a new hand, and there's a plan underway to rescue Han. They got their ass kicked, but there's still hope.

There is not a glimpse of hope in that ending. Not a whiff of it. It is an astonishing final act to drop on audiences. Maybe later you go "Well there's no way they're killing Black Panther and Spider-Man - they have movies coming out." But at that time, it's an audience not familiar with comics and its tropes, who might not read all the fan sites, watching characters they love get wiped out is devastating. I've read reports of all kinds of reactions to that scene. Dead silence. Crying. Gasps. Apparently people have fainted, but that's unconfirmed.

It's as ballsy a thing you'll see in a franchise movie in quite some time.

Now, does that make it a good movie? Well, allow me to quote Warren Ellis, who has written a whack of these characters, for a moment....

"It is not a movie. It is a brand manifestation that wants to have prolonged, eager and reasonably skilled cultural sex with you. It wants your experience with its content™ to be satisfying and it hopes you are pleased enough to return for further interaction with the Brand.  This is a very 21C thing.  I like it for that alone, to be honest."

It is as weird a movie as I've ever seen. Completely non-sensical if you haven't watched the 18 previous movies. And yet if you have, it pays off in dozens of different ways throughout if you have. Funny, yet massively heartbreaking. It's the second-to-last episode in the most expensive season of TV you've ever seen. It's a remarkable achievement that might never be duplicated again. 

Seriously. Marvel's skill is in making this look flawless and easy. So easy others crash on the rocks trying to duplicate it.

I need to see Infinity War again before I can properly assess and place where it falls in the grand scheme of things in the Marvel series. Probably Top 5, but I've thought that about others and they don't hold up to repeat viewings. And with a movie with this many easter eggs, twists and everything else, it'll be interesting to see how it holds up to repeat viewings. 

Still, all those involved deserve a round of applause. And probably lots of booze. Ten years ago, after walking out of Iron Man, if you had asked me if a movie like this could exist I would have laughed. And here it is. Remarkable.

Top 5
1. You are what you love - Jenny Lewis
2. Let the lord shine a light on me - Noel Gallagher and the High Flying Birds
3. Sweetest goodbye - Maroon 5
4. Beautiful - Blue Rodeo
5. DOA - Foo Fighters

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