Avengers: Infinity War

seeing this on friday - i suspect the ecstatic first impressions i've seen so far are overstated but still cautiously psyched, not least because it feels like marvel have managed to keep quite a bit about it under wraps

Because of my hearing damage, I can't see these movies at the cinema and have to wait till streaming. Avoiding spoilers gonna be hard.

Oof, that sucks.

Tickets for Saturday morning, which gives me just enough time to sneak in a viewing of Ragnarok and complete my month and a half long MCU rewatch (although I'll have to content myself with just memories of Wakanda).

these have started piling up to where the thing blocking me from going to new ones isn't so much "superhero fatigue" as feeling like i'm too behind. still haven't seen winter soldier or guardians of the galaxy, which everyone seems to rate, and netflix keeps trying to get me to watch the sequels to each and it's like uggghhh i'm so behind and that makes it feel like work.

I wasn't very enthused about another Avengers movie, but I've got the day off Friday and I've got to do something, right?

i dunno how you can be unenthused about a movie where star-lord has a moustache ffs

I feel you, Dr. C. I think we're reaching a point where the bigger event movies of the MCU are no longer going to be for casual fans (Civil War was the first one that definitely felt like that to me). Thankfully, you should still be able to enjoy the smaller scale films without feeling like you're working on your doctoral thesis on casinos.

i still suspect that this movie and its mysteriously-unnamed sequel are gonna be a reset-button of some sort for the mcu, where the subsequent films will be smaller or at least more self-contained for a while, because they're dragging a hell of a lot of backstory baggage along with them at this point

Neither Adam Warlock nor Mistress Death are in this, apparently? :/

Warlock will be along shortly. I assumed in the next GotG fillum (since his arrival was presaged in the last installment).

I was thinking that most of the recent movies had been pretty self-contained but then my gf recently watched Spider-Man (nb, she has now seen literally every MCU thing aside from Ragnarok) and was thrown by the Civil War flashbacks at the beginning. 'Wait, when does this movie take place? What were they all doing on that airstrip again?'

I'm still going with my theory that someone uses the gauntlet at the end of the movie and half the roles are recast and none of the characters seem to notice

and introducing: zack efron as teen tony

that seems more plausible than my "robert pattinson was always tony stark" theory

it's built into the premise of the movie that at least some of the cast are going to die, at least temporarily - if marvel are gonna recast the roles, as they inevitably will at some point, now's the time to do it

I think the great travesty is that this is all happening pre-merger so we don't get Doom

"The Gauntlet has the power to bring them back, but only in younger and more bankable form."

god it would be great if the final cliffhanger reveals the cast from josh trank's fantastic four making their triumphant entrance into the mcu

noooooo

unless there's a johnny storm <-> t'challa moment that's an echo of the spider-men pointing at each other comic

the comics seem to have unscarred Doom looking like a younger Vincent Cassel right now, not sure what we can do with that

we could have captain america and johnny storm pointing at each other if we got the cast from the peyton reed fantastic four showing up instead

I hope they just switch up the roles among the existing cast. Paul Rudd is the Hulk now! Scarlett Johansson is Spider-Man! Paul Bettany is Rocket Raccoon!

I'm assuming since the Black Order is in this that we're losing out on the possibility of someone taking up Mephisto's role as agent provocateur in Infinity Gauntlet. I was hoping for maybe like Red Skull following Thanos around and egging him towards his worst impulses.

cool thing about Doom is that when they finally get him right, he can declare all of the previous shitty ones to have been Doombots. walt simonson's great gift to the MCU.

And Galactus can claim that Galactus cloud from FF 2 was just one of his farts or something.

walt simonson's great gift to the MCU.

well, one of many

fuckin love that guy

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/movies/avengers-infinity-war-review.html

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, scrappy fraternal climbers up the 21st-century Hollywood ladder, “Infinity War” is a chunk of matter in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a vast entity that long ago expanded beyond the usual boundaries of sequelization and brand extension. This synergistic expression of the corporate interests of Marvel Studios and the Walt Disney Company — which now include 19 feature films and much else besides — has come to be less a creative or commercial undertaking than an immutable fact of life, like sex or the weather or capitalism itself.

That makes the franchise hard to criticize. You can’t really be for or against Marvel (in spite of the conspiracy theories of some DC fans), and you can’t quite opt out of it either. They don’t call it a universe for nothing: Where else are we going to go? So we make our zigzagging ways, picking out our favorite planets and solar systems, accepting a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space that makes the brighter constellations seem disproportionately fresh and surprising. “Guardians of the Galaxy” was so funny and weird. Not like a superhero movie at all. Same with “Thor: Ragnarok.” Captain America is such a complicated guy. “Black Panther” gave audiences so much to root for and talk about.

'a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space', followed by raves for almost every Marvel movie from the past few years. Okay, guy.

Can't wait for all the haterade hot takes!

pour one out for the sensible reviewers getting their inboxes pummeled by Marvel fanboys rn

(jerking off motion)

yes, that is a v good impression of the latter group

I'm an unapologetic Zombie and love these movies but I don't think a one of them has reached (or strived to reach) the peak of Cinematic Excellence and welcome sensible criticism that actually reckon with the movie taking place on the screen. But let's be real: a lot of the criticism will be of the 'NOT another SUPERHERO movie, barf me out!' variety rather than a reasonable assessment of the film on its own terms.

(See: most of the anti-MCU criticism on this very borad.)

it seems like for most fans "on its own terms" means something very specific and restrictive

I've always argued in favor of judging art (or 'art' if you must) in terms of its success at doing what it appears to be trying to do. I'm not going to judge a four-hour Vietnamese drama about someone's dying cousin making pho for the last time on its lack of epic, city-leveling action scenes.

I bet you are, though

i would watch the shit out of that movie, honestly

(the one that combines the two, that is)

That makes the franchise hard to criticize. You can’t really be for or against Marvel

yeah, there's no way at all to be against the ongoing labour practices of a company whose entire history is based on enormously exploiting the creativity of freelancers without due recompense, and that is actively, destructively hostile to both of their core distribution systems & retail "partners"

(jerking off motion)

pvmsic

My eyes are open and I will consume only cage-free non-GMO superhero movies from here on.

Does anybody remember laughter?

Does anybody?

I've always argued in favor of judging art (or 'art' if you must) in terms of its success at doing what it appears to be trying to do

This is fine as long as it's something along the the lines of "I am judging this horror film as a horror film," but that's a very different statement from "it is only acceptable to judge MCU movies in terms of how they relate to other MCU movies, and also you have to think the MCU is a worthwhile project in order to pass acceptable judgment," which seems to be the baseline requirement for most of the MCU commentariat. (Not saying that applies to anyone here necessarily)

'a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space', followed by raves for almost every Marvel movie from the past few years. Okay, guy.

Raves? tbf, the NYT reviewer said, "accepting a baseline of tedious, standardized dead space that makes the brighter constellations seem disproportionately fresh and surprising." {italics added} Those raves were meta-raves, illustrating the disproportionate praise being cited in the prior sentence.

But then, who really cares? The films get watched and make a lot of money, regardless of whatever criticism is aimed at them. The Plain People think they are likeable enough.

I'd argue that there is an extent to which reasonable criticism of a single MCU movie does have to reckon with its existence in the broader MCU. I get it if that doesn't feel like a worthwhile pursuit, but for better or worse this is kind of a pioneering experiment into creating a broad web of interrelated films, so judging any one of them as a failure when separated from the larger context is, on the one hand, valid but, on the other hand, increasingly like focusing on how well a single television episode succeeds without actually seeing how well it fits into the season/series as a whole.

TBH, while I love the success of the MCU, I do kinda miss the days when the general public's engagement with superhero comics was limited to the biannual revelation that WHIZ! POP! COMICS AREN'T JUST FOR KIDS ANYMORE!

I'd argue that there is an extent to which reasonable criticism of a single MCU movie does have to reckon with its existence in the broader MCU

"reckon with," sure. "see inherent value in," nah

I get it if that doesn't feel like a worthwhile pursuit

yeah sorry again I'm thinking more of the passerby chuds I see on twitter and in comments sections