digitalsidhe

One of the first things I said to feyandstrange when we walked out of the theater was, "I am upset that we helped increase that movie's opening-weekend box-office take." I wish they couldn't count our dollars as part of their financial success, and think that this is a good way to make movies.

The rest of this assumes you have already seen the movie. The whole thing is one long, MASSIVE spoiler. It starts off by talking about the very end of the movie. It gives away the ending, and particularly the surprising bit about that ending, in the very first sentence. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The short version is: this is a superhero movie where the heroes don't win. They fail to stop the villain. The supervillain's evil plot succeeds. And then we get to see the effects of that, too.

There is a place for the message, "Sometimes evil triumphs over good. Sometimes the good guys don't win." It's valid, it's a true thing, and it's something that perhaps more of our stories and movies should say, that perhaps we should really look at and confront some more, and maybe even teach our children about.

But that is not what people are looking for when we walk into a superhero movie, goddammit!

If we wanted the adult, mature (depressing!) exploration of the fact that sometimes evil wins, we wouldn't be going to the theater to see a superhero movie. We could just pick up the goddamn newspaper for that.

That's my real, main beef with this. But I also have some smaller ones.

Why the hell do we never even get any explanation for why Doctor Strange decides to give the time stone to Thanos? Earlier, he swore he wouldn't. And he said he wouldn't do it to save Tony Stark or Peter Parker. So why the fuck did he do it?

That choice becomes critical later on, when Wanda has gone all-out to destroy the mind stone... and then Thanos just reverses time and gets it back, and (re!)-kills Vision in the process!

I'd like to take a moment here to acknowledge how extremely badly Wanda got shafted, here. First, she gets pushed to the point of having to do something terrible and soul-wrenching: she destroyed the mind stone while it was still in Vision's head. She forced herself to kill the man she loved — while holding Thanos at bay with her other hand, by the way! And then... Thanos time-reversed it, got the gem back, and left Vision dead anyway.

(All those people who are saying how much it made Thanos a more sensitive or deeper character when he sacrificed Gamora to get the soul stone? If you're not giving at least as much attention to Wanda's sacrifice, then: 1) why not? And 2) fuck you. I have no desire to raise up a villain who sacrificed someone he loved to gain power over someone who sacrificed someone she loved in order to stop a genocide.)

From the very beginning, when Thanos out-punches the Hulk, it was clear that this was like one of those high-school RPGs where the GM just decides that the PCs won't be able to overcome the villain(s), regardless of what the dice or rules say. While there were some wonderful character interactions (frex, "I'm Doctor Strange" — "Oh, we're using our made-up names here? Okay, I'm Spider-Man!"), overall there was just this growing sense of "Thanos is going to win because the writers want him to." It was tedious.

And don't get me started on the weird ludicrosity of Thor getting those rings spinning again.

...

Okay, I may have given the impression I hated this movie. Like I said earlier, there were lots of good bits. Hell, loads of the details were right, and were fun. Teenaged Groot. Far too many of the special effects for me to even start listing. "Wait, there's an Ant Man and a Spider-Man?" The Guardians/Avengers meeting/shootout on Titan, and the hilarious way it gets de-escalated. It's mostly a good movie.

I just hated the ending.

And then there's the obvious implication to deal with: look, they are not leaving all those characters dead. This article (which is as spoileriffic as this post) has some reasons why.

So yeah, this gets into the reason why I don't bother reading actual comics by Marvel or DC anymore: too goddamn many retcons. No event that occurs is ever stable or reliable. Which means it doesn't matter. Whatever happens, whatever story they tell? Don't get too invested in it, because they'll just undo it later on.

Well, okay. I'm not invested in any of their stories. To the point that I won't invest my money in buying their comics anymore, or my time in reading them. Indies, maybe (I should try to find some that excite me). But not the Big Two.

When any death can be undone by resurrection, danger has no meaning. And when all events can be undone, even the heroes' actions have no meaning.

And I thought the Cinematic Universe would tell me stories that would stay stable, that would have meaning. But I guess maybe not, anymore. We'll have to see if they can resurrect half their universe in a way that doesn't drive me away in disgust. It's a tall order, but it could be done.

Note that this post is public; feel free to link to it from anywhere.