Infinity War is a big, fast-paced mess of a movie. I’m super into it and all the films that came before it. Spoilers ahead.
Okay, I’m not super into all the movies that make up the MCU. In fact, I skipped most of them until 2016. I’d watched the first Iron Man (still good!) and Hulk (draaaag), then the first couple of Avengers movies. They were alright as parts of a series. Then I watched Civil War in 2016, with its big teamups and dramatic in-fighting, and it all sort of clicked. This was building to something. So I went back to rewatch the movies I’d already seen and the many others I’d skipped, discovering what a lot of people have discovered: this is some event shit right here. This is Star Wars and Harry Potter and whatever other big pop culture thing that captures the imagination. Simple at times, but with enough to get people speculating as to the nature of it. What does it mean? Where’s it headed?
(And I say simple, but man, there are so many people involved in these things. The post-credits scenes ensure that you stick around to find that out.)
So now we’re at the big one that’s meant to be a culmination of all the experiences in the previous films. And I dig it, because the heroes fail. That happens. Every effort to be good and helpful and save people can lead to failure and this is the film where it finally happens. Can you contemplate what it means to fail to save half the population of the planet, let alone the universe?
I’ve been thinking about it, mostly about the ways in which the characters who have survived will deal with it. I’d love for there to be a story between this and triumph of the next Avengers in 2019. Just some exploration of the weight of that tragedy, time to let things sink in. Imagine if they live with this kind of loss for a year.
T’Chaka is gone, and Okoye was there to see it. She and Shuri are the best warrior and technological experts, respectively, and the chaos of a post-Thanos world could see them throw themselves into using Wakanda’s resources to try and stabilize the unrest that the world will experience. But who’s to say that Wakanda doesn’t need those resources, now that roughly half their population is gone? I really, really want to see Shuri take on the mantle of Black Panther. If not through the use of a heart-shaped herb, then perhaps with her own high-tech suit of armor à la Iron Man, but far superior. Iron Panther? And make a suit for M’Baku as well while you’re at it. For that matter, Banner is impotent now and got into using that Juggernaut-looking Iron suit. He and War Machine could join her to develop some new suit tech or create (another) legion of Iron defenders. This is all until he and Hulk come to terms, of course. If this doesn’t bring Banner and Black Widow together again, I don’t know, man. They deserve a win in the midst of all this.
Tony got paired up with Nebula as the only survivors of their group’s attempt to stop Thanos. It’s a natural pair. She’s mostly robotic and out for revenge, and now Tony has suffered the most heartbreaking failure of his arc. His whole thing since The Avengers has been to carry the weight of safeguarding everyone from every bad thing through technology. The worst thing has happened and I can only imagine he takes full advantage of all the new space technology at his disposal to build new and crazy weapons that he can use to murder Thanos real bad. As he tells Loki, “Because if we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damned well sure we’ll avenge it.” So it’s Tony and Nebula out in space for a while, hunting down some bad motherfuckers.
Oh, and let’s find out that Pepper still has the Extremis in her system and joins up with Wakanda and the remaining Earth Avengers as a badass fire warrior/heir to the Stark empire. It is not acceptable for her to also die as ash in the wind, particularly if it’s used as motivation for Tony.
Man, I don’t know what to tell you about Cap. He didn’t get to flex his character much in the new movie and I’m not sure how he’d take the hit. Does the guy who never gives up finally call it quits while his remaining Avenger friends get to work on helping the planet? He can’t hit the bottle because it won’t affect him in any way, but maybe he just gives up like Old Man Logan. He could join Thor and Rocket on their murder quest because, come on, those guys are gonna be out in space looking to murder up some Thanos, just like Tony and Nebula.
I like Hawkeye. I mean, sure he’s that Whedonesque average white guy who swoops in to save the day, but he’s not as terrible to me as he seems to be to a lot of folks. He has skillz and it’s cool to see him do stupid stuff with arrows. So I hope he’s not dead and returns in some support capacity, but don’t make him the hero of the thing. The “guy without powers turns out to be the strongest one of all” is well-represented.
Losing Dr. Strange was a bummer. Like, he’s a sorcerer in the middle of a sci-fi series. That mixes things up, don’t it? I’m hopeful that Wong gets in on some of the reality-bending exploration of different realms that we’ll see from the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp. Maybe call on some of that dark magic to fix things and bring Thanos out of retirement? That’ll annoy Mordo I’m sure and set him up for later villainy.
And really, beyond the key characters, I wanna see a planet deal with this kind of cataclysm. I can easily imagine massive cults of Left Behinders shaping a new and even more horrible society, or forming obstructions to the heroes’ attempts to stabilize the world. The fear would be overwhelming, and it is my hope that the filmmakers won’t simply gloss over these aspects of the story.
