Comic Book Movies

[Avaitor]

Glad to know! It looks like Infinity War is living up to the hype so far.

Anyway, here's the cumulative top 10 MCU films. The host also took from the internet besides from regulars.

10- Captain America: The First Avenger
9- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
8- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
7- Iron Man
6- Spider-Man: Homecoming
5- Captain America: Civil War
4- Thor: Ragnarok
3- Black Panther
2- Avengers
1- Guardians of the Galaxy

So for this category, we had to guess how many of these would rank, and we got 9/10. I put Ultron instead of the First Avenger, but I was glad to get that wrong. It's nice to see the first Cap get a spot. It's a pretty solid list, all in all. It says a lot that Phase 3 is the most represented thus far. I would not be surprised to see Infinity War make it in soon enough.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

I don't like her in the comics at all, so I don't know what to feel about Carol saving the day in the next film.

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Anyway, some parts I really liked. I loved the fight scenes. Thought Brolin was great as Thanos. I liked Thanos having his own evil team, with Maw being Strange's counterpart, Proxima being a "what if Gamora stayed evil"-like character, and so on. And getting to see guys like Bucky and Rocket interact was nice. I was annoyed by the portrayal of the Guardians though. Something felt a little off. They were too gaggy, even for their own standards.

Spoiler

And how it was ultimately Quill fucking up that allowed Thanos to get all the Stones. I know he did it because of Gamora, but when they were only seconds away from pulling the gauntlet off, and Quill goes berserk and ruins everything, it was hard not to get annoyed by him. I was also a little peeved by Thor Ragnarok's bittersweet but hopeful ending getting overwritten, and how Thor gets a new hammer along with a new eye.

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[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Spoiler

I don't like her in the comics at all, so I don't know what to feel about Carol saving the day in the next film.

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Spoiler

I know next to nothing about the character in question, but the MCU has a track record of improving on some of the less than stellar elements of the comic books which inspire it's movies, Civil War being a prime example. At any rate, I don't think that the next Avengers movie will be centered around Danvers, but just that she will play a key part along with other Avengers in the next movie.

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Anyway, some parts I really liked. I loved the fight scenes. Thought Brolin was great as Thanos. I liked Thanos having his own evil team, with Maw being Strange's counterpart, Proxima being a "what if Gamora stayed evil"-like character, and so on. And getting to see guys like Bucky and Rocket interact was nice. I was annoyed by the portrayal of the Guardians though. Something felt a little off. They were too gaggy, even for their own standards.

Spoiler

And how it was ultimately Quill fucking up that allowed Thanos to get all the Stones. I know he did it because of Gamora, but when they were only seconds away from pulling the gauntlet off, and Quill goes berserk and ruins everything, it was hard not to get annoyed by him. I was also a little peeved by Thor Ragnarok's bittersweet but hopeful ending getting overwritten, and how Thor gets a new hammer along with a new eye.

[close]

Supposedly James Gunn had a lot of say in how The Guardians were portrayed in this movie, and honestly it kind of falls in line with their portrayal in Vol. 2 and my problems with that movie as well. I feel as though Gunn doubled-down on the comedic personality traits of the characters with the Russo brothers just following through, but in the process they lose some of the nuance from the first movie, with the exception of Gamora and Nebula, both of whom I feel have gotten pretty strong treatment in this movie.

Spoiler

As for Quill I do agree with his fuck-up going a bit too far, but I'm actually less bothered by that and more bothered by how Doctor Strange didn't take any measures to prevent it since he clearly knew that it would happen when he looked into the future. Even if he was knocked out at the time he still could have done something beforehand to prepare Quill for the surprise or at least keep him incapacitated as well for the central conflict. I mean, I get what they're trying to go for, in that Strange clearly has Adam Warlock's role of allowing Thanos to get all of the Infinity Stones and believe that he has won only to have his hubris be his own undoing. But, considering how close they were to getting the gauntlet off of Thanos in this scenario, it'd seem an awful lot easier to just tweak the strategy a bit more to make that ploy successful and then use the power of the Gauntlet to kill him than to go for this insanely risky longplay.

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Of course, there are other issues besides this. The movie isn't perfect by any stretch. But, as easy as it is to be cynical about these sorts of things, to me that's the nature of event comics and event comic book movies like this. The same issues are present in both Avengers films and Civil War, but what makes those movies, as well as this one, work for me is what they represent on a larger scale, which is why I came out of this one loving a lot of stuff about it. None of the big crossover films are my favorites in the MCU, but each one does still hold a special place for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I actually went and saw the movie a second time today. I noticed a couple more flaws, namely that the pacing could struggle in some places (I was too hyped up the first time to really notice that), but likewise I also noticed a lot of well-placed details that I missed the first time around.

At any rate, my opinion still stands the same as before, and I consider it to be a really great crossover event. It's not my favorite MCU movie, since I prefer solo superhero stories at heart, but it's probably my favorite Avengers movie.

[Avaitor]

Spoiler

So my initial theory was that everyone who evaporated will survive, and the characters who weren't will die come part two, but I'm not so sure about the latter part. It was definitely deliberate that most of the survivors were the OGs, and we might get something similar to the end of Cadmus in JLU with the next film. Not sure about Rocket's place, though. Although personally, I do think that people were getting a little annoying with attempting to estimate how trigger happy this was going to be. Especially since it feels like some forget that this is a two-parter.

As for Quill screwing up the plan, I can't help but wonder if Strange was aware of this the entire time, and this was him recognizing that this is the only possible scenario.

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I did think that the pacing wasn't perfect, but you have to give them credit, they fit a lot of character in. There have been memes about this being the most ambitious crossover in history, but there's more than twice as many characters and a lot more galaxy trotting than the first Avengers. It's really cool to see where we've come since then.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The fact that this movie is as coherent and easy to follow as what we got is a testament to the Russo Bothers' skills as directors along with Stephen McFeely and  Christopher Markus as writers (who also wrote all three Captain America movies). While the movie itself is clearly a spectacle film without a whole lot of depth or nuance, being able to balance everything that it does while telling a story that is both fun and intense is no easy feat, and to me what we got was well worth ten-years of build-up (at least assuming that they don't seriously fuck up the follow-up film). It really is quite amazing how far we've come since Iron Man.

Also, I'm curious what each of you guys considered to be your favorite moments. In particular, I know Avaitor has always been a huge fan of Thor, who I myself felt got rather underutilized in previous Avengers movies despite having some pretty cool scenes. That said, I'd say that he tied with Thanos as my favorite character in Infinity War (second favorite for me would he a toss-up between Gamora and Doctor Strange), and one scene in particular got the biggest cheers and applause from the audience which I saw my first screening of the movie with (you'll know which scene I'm referring to if you've seen the film). This may be the first time where I really felt Thor's bad-assery lived up to the status of being a genuine God.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

So my initial theory was that everyone who evaporated will survive, and the characters who weren't will die come part two, but I'm not so sure about the latter part.

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Spoiler

I know Disney's Star Wars movies have been surprisingly bloodthirsty by killing off Han, Luke, and every main character in Rogue One. But I can't imagine Marvel doing that. I can picture them killing off either Cap or Tony, but not the entire roster from the first film.

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[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Infinity War officially just dethroned The Force Awakens to having the biggest opening weekend ever (and just barely at that): http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/29/media/avengers-infinity-war-box-office-opening/index.html

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The furry passes his judgement on Infinity War: https://youtu.be/5HwvcV4UFbQ

The thing of it is that his opinion on the movie is perfectly valid (he thought it was alright, BTW), but what irks me is his condescending attitude towards the audience that enjoyed things that he didn't. Like, I get not finding the humor in this movie to be any good (I myself felt that they relied a bit too heavily on meaningless pop culture references), but does that really warrant making the audience seem inferior simply because they clearly had a different sense of humor than him?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

After watching it twice and letting it stew for a bit, here's my updated MCU rankings with Infinity War included:

Excellent:
1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
2. Captain America: The First Avenger
3. Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Thor: Ragnarok
5. Avengers: Infinity War

Very Good:
6. Black Panther
7. Spider-Man: Homecoming
8. The Avengers
9. Iron Man
10. Captain America: Civil War

Decent:
11. Avengers: Age of Ultron
12. Doctor Strange
13. Ant-Man
14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
15. Thor
16. Iron Man 3

Meh:
17. Thor: The Dark World
18. Iron Man 2
19. The Incredible Hulk

[Dr. Insomniac]

As someone who's handled a few Marvel events himself, Warren Ellis liked it.

So.  INFINITY WAR, then.  No spoilers.

It is perhaps best understood as an unprecedented brand power move.  It is not "a film" as that term is commonly understood.  It is a sequence of connections.  It's a statement from a bizarre place of popular-culture ownership.  It's a statement that they have done ten years of film storytelling, often with very conventional story templates, so that everyone in the world will show up for what is often an extraordinarily unconventional story-like event with one extremely unexpected tonal shift.

It, by design, makes no sense unless you've watched most if not all of the other Marvel films. There cannot be a casual viewer of this emanation.  Only a committed one.  It is likely to be the largest worldwide opening of all time, as I write this, even though it's not opening in China or Russia this weekend.

The production values are near-perfect.  The days of the slightly janky AVENGERS special effects are long gone, and every pixel is painted with jewelled, exquisite skill. As a visual experience, it is peak Marvel.  The mocap on Josh Brolin makes Thanos a far more effective "CGI villain" than the waste of Ciaran Hinds on JUSTICE LEAGUE, which had all the performance nuance of a level boss in DOOM II.

Per the trailer, I think it was a brave choice to have the evil spaceship apparently designed by James Dyson.

The writers and the directors worked very, very hard to make something that did not feel beholden to rules.  They'll stop the thing dead for sixty seconds to do a gag. There are a lot of gags. I mean, no possible joke goes unjoked. Nothing I say here should be taken to denigrate the work of those people. They have achieved a remarkable thing.

(Special nod to whoever designed the sonics for the next-to-final scene.)

It is not a movie. It is a brand manifestation that wants to have prolonged, eager and reasonably skilled cultural sex with you. It wants your experience with its content™ to be satisfying and it hopes you are pleased enough to return for further interaction with the Brand.  This is a very 21C thing.  I like it for that alone, to be honest.

AVENGERS 4 happens next year, of course, and I will be interested to see how they stick the landing. But, in terms of cultural power plays, this one is the pinnacle.

[Daikun]

Colin Furze made a functional Hulkbuster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AshvBTw5Z84

[Dr. Insomniac]

Good old Zac Bertschy thinks Thanos being sympathetic was a ploy meant for the audience to identify and agree with him. That's such a ludicrous claim to suggest the movie wants people to see themselves in Thanos and do the things he would do. That's like saying Downfall was pro-Nazi because of Hitler's portrayal. If you think the movie telling you the man killing trillions of lives is a good person, then maybe that's on you for thinking that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

He's either going to feel really dumb in about a year or find a way to spin the follow-up movie into something even nuttier.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I remember in one of those ANN anime previews, he thought a high school anime about military survival clubs was perpetuating school shooter culture, as if that was what was going on in the creators' minds. That habit of putting words in the author's mouth and bending over backwards to come up with some excuse as to how a form of media is somehow morally corrupt is the kind of failing I expect from a low-tier anime blogger, not an editor of a major anime news site.