Avengers: Infinity War Part 2

***Going forward MAJOR SPOILERS on Avengers Infinity War and other Marvel movies.  Ready, then lets charge right into it***

This movie picks up right after the post credit scene of Thor: Ragnarök with the evacuees of Asgard running into Thanos’s ship.  We open to what seems to be the death of everyone aboard the evacuation ship from Asgard.  Thanos, didn’t mess around.  He’s already gotten the power stone off of Xandar, he makes short work of the Hulk, kills Heimdall and Loki, but at least they all go out with heroic actions.  Heimdall sending Hulk/Bruce Banner to warn others of Thanos’s plan on Earth via Bifrost and Loki taking a stab at Thanos.  Thanos never had any real screen time yet, had established himself as the toughest villain in the MCU yet, before he had all of the Infinity stones. Even The Hulk is scared of Thanos.  Bruce Banner can’t become the Hulk or bring him out as Thanos beats the Hulk in a matter of seconds, scaring the mightiest of the Avengers into submission.  Side note, it was a nice change to see Bruce Banner try to fight the villains of the movie as Bruce Banner.  The Hulk who was thought to be the most powerful fighter, was scared and even anger couldn’t bring him out and Bruce stepped up to the challenge.  Thanos tasks “The Children of Thanos” aka Black Order to go and get the other Infinity Stones on Earth while he gathers the rest around the Galactic universe.  It was one of the best openings a MCU film that I’ve ever seen. 

I’ve never read too many comics, only what I get from video games, cartoons and the internet about a lot of these characters.  I was worried when I heard from co workers that Thanos would be a sympathetic villain.  Similar to what we got from Killmonger in Black Panther and Adrian Toomes in Spiderman: Homecoming.  I always believed Thanos to by a ruthless tyrant.  In this movie, he is and isn’t.  His motive was to bring balance to the universe by killing half of it’s inhabitance at random.  This does make for a mad titan. Yet, he sympathizes when he takes Gamora as an adoptive daughter.  Cares for her, but still wants to carry out his plan.  He goes to Vormir to get the soul stone, but has to sacrifice her to get it.  Then he feels remorse carrying out his actions.  I barely understood their relationship or what Thanos was thinking.  Was it remorse for killing Gamora, even thought he wanted to kill half of the Universe?  Then I kind of don’t get why he went through with getting all of the stones, even one costing his adoptive daughter her life.  Even with the whole balance scene he teaches her with her knife, I just wondered why he took her in and acted like dad to her.  This could have used more time to describe the relationship with her.  Maybe the next movie will elaborate more.  It worked for the most part and Josh Brolin did a good job with Thanos.

I did like all of the crossovers.  Thor literally running or getting ran over/hit into The Guardians of the Galaxy.  It was great to see Captain America meet Groot.  Dr. Strange, Iron Man, and Spidrman fight half of the Guardians (Drax, Starlord and Mantis) and then work together to try to take down Thanos.  Rocket, Groot, and Thor going to forge Stormbreaker, an enchanted ax powerful enough to kill Thanos.  But, a lot of the major actors had what felt like bit parts, but it was understandable when you had so many heroes, stories, and 2 hours and 40 minutes to tell them.  But stopry felt unbalanced.  Despite being major characters some didn’t have a lot of time for being major Avenger characters. Captain America, Winter Solider, Falcon, and Black Widow all had very short screen time.  Even Vision, Black Panther, and Scarlett witch didn’t have much.  Their story was to protect vision from Thanos and destroy the mind stone and Vision if it comes down to it.  It felt a bit short. Most of the focus seemed to be on protecting the Time Stone and forging the weapon Stormbreaker.  I kind of wish I had more time with these characters.  It felt a lot of screen time when to Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron man, Thor, Spiderman, and Dr. Strange.  Even though directed by the Russo brothers, I noticed that Jon Faverau and James Gunn had an executive producer role listed in the credits after the movie.  I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it.  I also liked Captain America’s “nomad” look.  There were other producers that worked on the movie, which brings me to another point I’d like to make.

All the individual characters can cross over together and back to solo story and flow.   Anyone of these people who worked to create these movies seemed like they worked on or could work on other films in the future with these characters and we couldn’t tell the difference.  Other attempts at making a “cinematic universe”,  thinking about Justice League, you can tell were created by different people and treated characters differently.  Watch Wonder Woman, then watch Justice League and you should understand.  The shots on Wonder Woman and how she is treated look very different between both films.  At least in the MCU, if the next Captain America would be directed by, Ryan Coogler for example, it could work and you might still believe the Russo Brothers directed it.  A lot of quality checks go into these movies and it shows.

I’d also like to address something I’ve a problem with in all of these movies and other Marvel films.  I’ll will admit that I’m at times harsh with Stan Lee cameos.  They were fine at first and I enjoyed them.  But after the umpteenth time he shows up, I just wish they were left on the cutting room floor.  I mean that as they only seem to serve a “Where’s Waldo” purpose to each movie.  Meaning when you watch these movies and he shows up, everyone in the crowd seems to want to point and comment saying “oh look it’s Stan Lee”.  Yes, he is responsible for creating the Marvel Universe, but ask yourself, What does a cameo appearance actually add to the movie that I’m watching?  I’m just as harsh at times with John Ratzenberger in the Pixar movies.  I’ll say that his role as the Bus Driver that Peter Parker is on, wasn’t that distracting and at the beginning of the movie.  Stan Lee is great and I wish I can personally thank him for what he has done over the years, but please stop appearing in the movies.

The end of the movie, which the heroes lose and Thanos wipes out half of the universe and Avengers.  While a downer ending, it was great.  Randomly deaths were happening as characters disintegrated from existence, it was a bit odd to have the original Avengers (Examples Captain America, Thor, Bruce Banner, Iron Man, Black Widow) survive, while the other minor Avengers and most of the Guardians of the Galaxy disintegrated (Examples: Black Panther, Falcon, Drax, Peter Quill, Scarlet Witch, Mantis, Groot).  I really liked when Peter Parker was chosen to die.  It also kept with the “father-son” relationship had with him and Tony Stark in prior films. He is one of the more powerful heroes in the movie series and it felt like he knew deep down.  As he was disintegrating, he was scared and came to the realization of not being invincible and was mortal.  And Stark, who would look out for Peter in this movie and in Spiderman Homecoming, could not protect or help him anymore.  The scene also makes Stark feel like he failed everyone and his nightmare from Avengers: Age of Ultron come true and become emotionally powerful.  This was the biggest failure the Avengers had faced.  The end credit scene was entertaining and cheer worthy with Nick Fury and Maria Hill disintergrated, but Nick Fury sending out a distress call in time showing a red, blue and star on the pager screen.  Which set up for Captain Marvel.

The fight scenes were great.  Every hero seemed to go down fighting.  The story was great.  However, There were some plot holes that I didn’t understand.  Why didn’t Dr. Strange just trap Thanos in a time loop like he did with Dormammu?  What does and how long does Thanos go before he wipes out half the universe?  Why not under half since all beings can reproduce right away, pushing the population to over half after he executes his plan?  What happened to Valkyrie and Korg, who were also on the ship with the Asguardians at the end of Thor Ragnarok?  Was I too assume that they were killed as well?  It could be mentioned in a prequel comic or movie, but I’m not sure it exists or why this detail was left out.  It can be too open for interpretation.  If Nick Fury had Captain Marvel on standby, why not use her to begin with to fight Thanos.

Till next year for Avengers: Infinity plus one war (little joke there, I’ll see myself out).  What are your thoughts on Infinity War.  Thanks for reading.