The Avengers: Infinity War Spoiler Thread

[malkav11]

@tomchick

If you’re going to apply that criteria, you’re going to have to infer that almost all dialogue in movies, books, and TV is lies. That should make for some, uh, interesting plots.

Why would you have to do that? I’m saying that characters have their own perspectives and they’re not always correct. Not only should that not be a controversial statement, but there are a ton of books, movies and TV that wouldn’t work if we could always trust that a character’s perceptions and beliefs were correct.

In the case of Thanos, if his methods were making paradises, surely the movie would have shown us some. Thanos is exclusively shown surrounded by corpses and destruction, and anywhere we see that he’s already left is a ruin. And in particular, if Gamora’s planet were actually a paradise (one wonders how Thanos would even know - he’s not exactly portrayed as someone who runs administrations or goes on tours of previous slaughters), surely he could have shown her that - at least in video. It would be far more convincing than him simply asserting it.

None of which is to say that Thanos’ solution isn’t effective, for some value of effective. If the problem is a shortage of nonrenewable resources, killing half of all life will absolutely help with that because there will be less demand. What I’m suggesting is that Thanos has either not bothered to consider (or written off) the knock-on consequences of that solution, the problems with a completely arbitrary halving, and so on and that a whole lot more people would naturally die as a result, in some places probably the entire civilization. That’s not the problem he’s set out to solve.

[SadleyBradley]

@malkav11

In the case of Thanos, if his methods were making paradises, surely the movie would have shown us some.

My (possibly incorrect) reading of the final scene was that Thanos had returned to Gamora’s planet, and that it was a paradise.

[ChristienMurawski]

@tomchick

Am I forgetting some part of the movie when Thanos lies to someone?

I think you may have a point here. At first when I read this I was thinking of a character saying he’d made a deal with Thanos to save his people, “…but he killed them anyway.” However, what I’m thinking of is Eitri forging the gauntlet and thinking or hoping this would save his people, not that Thanos said he would.

Thanos killed them all anyway and spared Eitri, except for his hands, which he claimed for himself.

So I guess there’s not an instance of Thanos going back on his word. He’s pretty straightforward in his intent and carry-through.

-xtien

“We have blood to spare.”

[malkav11]

It’s possible? I’m not sure that planet at the end was ever identified. Or inhabited. But again, it’s been almost a week and I’m getting fuzzy on the finer details.

@ChristienMurawski

At first when I read this I was thinking of a character saying he’d made a deal with Thanos to save his people, “…but he killed them anyway.” However, what I’m thinking of is Eitri forging the gauntlet and thinking or hoping this would save his people, not that Thanos said he would.

Yeah, I wanted to bring this up and then I was like “wait…he didn’t say Thanos had promised that, did he? Just that he hoped.” I dunno. I still feel like he lies to someone at some point (deliberately, I mean). But there’s nothing I can reference at the moment to back me up on that so maybe I’m imagining things.

[Grifman]

I could be wrong but I believe that Thanos did lie about promising to spare the dwarves if the gauntlet was forged.

[tomchick]

@ChristienMurawski

So I guess there’s not an instance of Thanos going back on his word. He’s pretty straightforward in his intent and carry-through.

You could argue that his gambit with the reality gem when he captures Gamora is a lie. But, really, it’s an illusion to test one of the characters (I wonder if Thanos somehow gleans from this test that Peter Quill will later be the weak link that will foils the Avenger’s plans…).

But as I said, the movie is a thought experiment and if you don’t accept the premise of the experiment, you’ve reduced the script to a bunch of good guys punching a bunch of bad guys. AND THEN LOSING! Ha ha!

@malkav11

I still feel like he lies to someone at some point (deliberately, I mean). But there’s nothing I can reference at the moment to back me up on that so maybe I’m imagining things.

I think you’re also missing the point of the movie. Thanos’ approach does what he claims it does, but at a terrible cost. That’s the central question bouncing around the entirety of Infinity Wars, for almost all of the characters. If Thanos is just a liar wreaking havoc because he suffers from your garden variety megalomania, two hours and forty minutes of character development have been undermined. You’re depriving the script of one of the few things that it really nails: a unique villain.

-Tom

[DaveLong]

Tom is right here. The thing that makes Thanos a great villain is his true belief in the end result despite the terrible cost, which even affects him as he genuinely in his own way loves his adopted daughter that he must kill to get one of the stones.

He is single minded in his goal and they do want you to get a twinge of doubt about the fact that he is wrong.

[ChristienMurawski]

@tomchick

You could argue that his gambit with the reality gem when he captures Gamora is a lie. But, really, it’s an illusion to test one of the characters (I wonder if Thanos somehow gleans from this test that Peter Quill will later be the weak link that will foils the Avenger’s plans…).

So what he told her was true…from a certain point of view.

-xtien

[malkav11]

@tomchick

I think you’re also missing the point of the movie. Thanos’ approach does what he claims it does, but at a terrible cost. That’s the central question bouncing around the entirety of Infinity Wars, for almost all of the characters. If Thanos is just a liar wreaking havoc because he suffers from your garden variety megalomania, two hours and forty minutes of character development have been undermined. You’re depriving the script of one of the few things that it really nails: a unique villain.

And I think you’re missing the point of what I wrote. But since I’ve laid it all out, at length, and you’re still dismissing my argument as one I’ve never made, I’ll bow out here.

[tomchick]

Well, I didn’t mean to run you off, and I’m happy to read your thoughts on the matter. I just don’t think there’s any internal support for what you’re suggesting. That’s not really “dismissing your argument” so much as disagreeing with your theory.

By the way, let me guess: Team Cap? :)

-Tom

[CraigM]

Not just his daughter, even. He takes other losses as well. Which is something else that makes him interesting. He believes so strongly that he willingly pays a great personal cost. His favored daughter, his loyal leiutenants, even to some degree his ability to claim being the good guy. I think that he probably realizes he will never be considered a hero, a good guy, to the universe. But he believes in his cause, for itself.

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

Tonight’s Agents of Shield definitely ties in the movie. The Thanos attack is simultaneously occurring offstage.

So, in the Agents of Shield’s season finale (which may be a series finale),do half the agents crumble into dust?

[HumanTon]

@LMN8R

Or, like, snap to double the resources?

@garin

The real problem is that his motivations were reverse-engineered from the desired action. How do we justify him wanting to wipe out half the universe, if we can’t invoke Death? It’s not a perfect fit.

My biggest problem of the movie (other than the fact that it faithfully captures the structure and tropes of sprawling cosmic comics crossovers, which I’m not fond of … but that’s a whole other rant) is that movie Thanos wasn’t Thanos - or at least my Thanos, the one from the 70s Starlin runs. He’s not terrible, mind you, and certainly better than the average MCU villain. But he’s not 70s Thanos.

Movie Thanos is basically an efficient administrator. He commissioned a cost-benefit analysis, and now is the tough-but-fair branch manager carrying out its recommendation of downsizing. There are a couple of problems with that. First, he’s kinda boring. Doubtless an Alan Moore or a Grant Morrison could make cost-benefit Thanos truly awesome (and indeed both Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan are two views of that kind of character), but Infinity War isn’t up to that level.

Second, as LMN8R points out, his approach makes no sense in the context of the Infinity Stones - which are not, please note, the Limited Resources Mean Tough Choices Stones. The premise is that they allow him to do anything. If Thanos has total control over reality and still chooses to destroy half of all life, it’s not because he’s tough-but-fair. It’s because he’s a jerk.

And 70s comics Thanos was a jerk - an emo, self-involved, delusional, drama queen jerk. If the cost-benefit analysis came back saying he could easily reconfigure the universe so that nobody died and each life-form just used half the resources instead, he’d say “Screw that, I’m killing 'em anyway!” Then he’d give a monologue about how that was the sort of decision only someone as awesome as him could have made.

His reason for killing trillions was trying to prove what a deep, profound badass he was to someone completely out of his league and who would never give him the time of day. If that sounds like a horrifically petty, adolescent motivation for committing atrocities, well, that was the point.

It would be way easier to swallow the iffy “Thanos really does love Gamora, but …” scene if it had been emo Thanos instead of cost-benefit Thanos. Emo Thanos could love Gamora profoundly - but simultaneously love pushing her off the cliff even more. Think of how impressed Death would be with his sacrifice! Think of the emo monologues about his tragic awesomeness he could give!

[Lloyd_Heilbrunn]

For football and Avengers fans:

The QB Avengers: Which Marvel character is your favorite passer?

Some are good, and some not so…

[SlyFrog]

Saw this on Wednesday. I liked it well enough. But I’m a bit frightened - I can’t tell if these movies are just getting more and more frenetic, leaping from action scene to action scene such that when I leave the theater I can barely reconstruct the plot/what happened, or if I’m just getting old and losing my memory/mind. I mean, I can give the overall plot, but with so many movies lately, it just feels like, “And then they went here and had a big fight, then these guys went there and had a big fight, then these guys went there and had a big fight, then they broke this guy out of there, then they all went and separated and had three simultaneous fights.”

Likewise, I was having a major problem remembering some of the callbacks from earlier movies (like why the hell Red Skull was floating around on Soul Stone world). I knew it must have something to do with the earlier Captain America movie, but I guess it has been years since I’ve seen it, so I just do not remember how he somehow got turned into the Soul Stone guardian.

Like seriously, I can’t remember the details of movie plots like I used to. I wonder if I saw Star Wars for the first time today if I’d have similar difficulties.

Another thought - the cast is really starting to show its age. Mark Ruffalo in particular looks road hard and put away wet, and almost sounds like he has some type of speech impediment now. While he seemed the worst, you can definitely see with the others as well (Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth) that they’re getting into middle age. To same nothing of Robert Downey Jr. Just a lot more veins and wrinkles that the camera doesn’t fully hide.

I thought it was pretty obvious that they did something to Vision that will become important in the follow up movie. You just don’t go through that much storyline working on his brain/crystal, with the particular quick tapping of connections at the end, only to have it mean nothing.

[tomchick]

@HumanTon

his approach makes no sense in the context of the Infinity Stones - which are not, please note, the Limited Resources Mean Tough Choices Stones. The premise is that they allow him to do anything. If Thanos has total control over reality and still chooses to destroy half of all life, it’s not because he’s tough-but-fair. It’s because he’s a jerk.

Some of you guys really don’t want to accept the premise! :) It’s a classic lifeboat dilemma. Do you let all the people in the boat live for fewer days, or do you let fewer people live for more days? It’s that simple. The nonsense about jewelry and spaceships and kickstarting a neutron star to make a magic glove is all in the service of the premise. If you start poking around too much, you’re going to put a hole in the plot and everything is going to sink.

Really, the whole capital M message is a bit specious. The issue on a larger scale is never available resources, but distribution of resources. People in the Third World don’t starve because there isn’t enough food; they starve because they’re in the Third World.

Okay, look, am I going to have to do this? Because I totally will. Here goes:

-Tom #TeamThanos

[Nesrie]

#TeamWeDon’tTradeLives

Actually they’ll probably do just that but still!

[Mike_Cathcart]

Thanos did nothing wrong.

[Andy_Bates]

@tomchick

Really, the whole capital M message is a bit specious. The issue on a larger scale is never available resources, but distribution of resources. People in the Third World don’t starve because there isn’t enough food; they starve because they’re in the Third World.

I’m going to add one more thing: If there were a world, say, ravaged by war and conflict and different cultures, and that world suddenly had half of their population wiped out…don’t you think they would band together and put aside their differences, and maybe it would become a better place?

Mind you, I don’t think any of this was stated (or even implied) by the movies; I just think it’s a logical extrapolation of what might happen in that situation. Or maybe I’m just thinking of Watchmen. Or Babylon 5.

[Djscman]

My (possibly incorrect) reading of the final scene was that Thanos had returned to Gamora’s planet, and that it was a paradise.

I’m not a hundred percent on this, because there may have been more than one moon in the sky. But as Thanos surveyed his retirement cabin and lakefront property, the sound effects editors dropped in the unmistakable cry of the common loon. Therefore, I think there’s a good chance Thanos was in fact taking his ease in a paradise: northern Minnesota. Possibly Wisconsin.