Magic Rainbow Wish Glove: The Movie

So yesterday, Avengers: Infinity War made sixteen million dollars bringing its total gross to over five hundred million dollars which, according to Variety magazine, is the second fastest a movie has made it to half billion dollars. Star Wars: The Force Awakens being the first. I suppose this is good news if you happen to have been in this movie or own stock in Disney or something, but terrible news if you would like movies to not be terrible.

"Good? Bad? Whatever..."

-People who see movies, evidently

"And why do characters in movies
these days have to swear so much?"

-My grim future

Look, I know it's been out for a couple weeks, but I was sick of trying to avoid spoilers so I finally went and saw it and found it, you know, disappointing. This was kind of weird because I didn't think I had terribly high expectations for it going in. I expected big, dumb explosions and boring battle scenes featuring wave after wave of CGI monsters, and characters quipping at wildly inappropriate moments and it had all that. But that was it. I didn't go in expecting Shakespeare here, but I did go in expecting a story. Maybe some kind of dramatic conflict? Oh, and how about some compelling characters? Something. Anything.

Wait, hang on, I should also mention that in the course of this totally one-sided discussion, I'm probably going to spoil the shit out of it, so if you're one of the six or seven people in America that haven't seen it, just bail out now. Still there? Super. So like half the characters die at the end. Only not really. But I'll explain.

"Marvel using impermanent character deaths as a cheap narrative ploy
to give false weight to thin story lines? I'm shocked. Shocked I say."

-Jean Grey

Who among us hasn't wished they could
cull the population of the planet? I mean,
the availability of parking spaces alone...

Here, let me sum up the plot first. Thanos, who is Josh Brolin somewhere under a lot of CGI chin, has some Malthusian scheme to wipe out half of all life in the universe because the environment. Which, great. A villain who's motivations aren't based on revenge or just being evil. Cool, I'm on board. Thanos believes that people are selfish and wasteful and that having fewer of us around would stretch our galaxy's resources. Ok. Evil, but not necessarily wrong. We are, and I mean this constructively, the worst.

The Infinity Gauntlet: one
of sci-fi's gayest MacGuffin's.

Instead of building a death star or something, he's going around collecting the six rainbow-colored infinity stones which when joined together in a magic gauntlet will allow him to vanish half of the universe's life forms away. Because comic book logic. Anyway, the story is loosely, ok, very loosely, adapted from a comic arc from the early nineties. It was one of Marvel's big crossover events which, like this movie, was just a thinly veiled attempt to get fans of one comic series to buy other ones by continuing the storyline in different books. And like these crossover comics, this movie didn't really tell a complete story either. You'll have to wait for part 2 to see how it ends. Also, if you didn't see the previous movies, you probably won't get why Loki biting it five minutes in is a big deal or get why Tony Stark has an Iron Spider suit in Tom Holland's size just lying around.

Which is to say not at all stand-alone.

It may have sounded like director Joe Russo was insisting in interviews that the movie stood on its own, but here's what he actually said:

"In the way that all Marvel Movies sit as a stand alone, this one's a stand alone."

-Joe Russo, really

clearing that up for us

It's as stand alone as any of the other totally-not-stand-alone movies in the series. I see. And you know, that's fine, I think I saw them all and I guess it's really not the writer's responsibility to write for someone who didn't...is it?

Of course not. Besides, all fans have to do is study this flow chart outlining the
complicated narrative relationship of these nineteen movies. And yes, there will be a quiz.

In Thanos's defense, Ewoks
don't separate their recycling.

But whatever, most of the movie is Thanos closing in on one stone or another and some Avengers (or whomever) trying to stop him and ultimately failing. Yeah, he assembles the pride glove and disintegrates half the universe. The End. Whether or not 'half of all life in the universe' refers to intelligent life or all life, like plants and fish or whatever, isn't really addressed. Nor is he super clear on whether or not some primitive planet with a small population of stone-age aliens gets the same treatment as some polluted, overcrowded mess of a planet like ours. But who cares? Really we're only interested in Earth.

Oh, and I know it's like super nitpick-y to even ask, but if the Infinity Gauntlet can do anything-and we are led to believe it can, can't Thanos just make more resources? Like, his beef is that there's just too many people in the world-or universe-and that we're a drain on resources. Yet with this glove, couldn't he just zip around the galaxy like a lantern-jawed Santa Claus making food and bauxite appear in front of grateful aliens? Seems like kind of a plot hole to me.

"Eh...sounds like a lot of work..."

-Thanos, Marvel's laziest super-villain 

Above The Bureau of Printing and
Engraving busily printing more money
for us to buy more tickets to Black Panther

Anyway, the stakes here were the destruction of half of all living things in the universe, so first of all, good luck topping that in the next one. But the problem is that the cliffhanger is immediately undermined. Thanos gets the glove and blamo, half the characters sort of vaporize. Holy shit, shocking twist, right? No, not at all. because like the first or second Avenger to go all dust in the wind is Black Panther. A character whose movie is still in theaters and has made all the money ever printed. Since Disney isn't idiots, it's a safe bet that Black Panther will miraculously return to life in Infinity War 2.

It seems like maybe if they'd just disintegrated characters like Hawkeye whom no one cares about (and isn't even in this movie), or Captain America (Chris Evans says he's done playing him anyway), the outcome would have at least seemed in doubt. Anyway, this should have been Marvel's The Best of Both Worlds part I. Instead it was two and a half hours of under-servicing a cast of twenty-five characters while building up to a tension-free cliffhanger we can predict a year out.

What's Best of Both Worlds? Really? Here, click on this
and I'll pretend we never had this conversation. 

Post Blog Bonus Scene! 

Someone get on that...

Oh, and I'd also like to mention that one of the many crimes committed by this movie is the fact that it ends with the Avengers mourning their totally-not-permanently-dead comrades instead of showing us the global panic and confusion over the sudden disappearance of three point five billion people. We do however get a post credit scene with Nick Fury driving around New York mid-Thanos rapture. People are vanishing, helicopters are falling out of the sky. The scene was eerie and terrifying and should have been the ending of the movie. I imagine that it's the closest we'll ever get to a Left Behind remake starring Samuel L. Jackson. Which, goddamn, I would watch that, wouldn't you?