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Infinity War
Having seen it twice, I think my thoughts are coalescing on the subject. I enjoyed it, though it certainly doesn't match the astonishing excellence of Ragnarok and Black Panther. It's a bit of an academic exercise: can you make a movie with several dozen superheroes, while managing to keep the story lines distinct and the threat credible? Yes, it turns out! Technically, it's a stupendous accomplishment. As a movie on its own it works, but not spectacularly. Call it a solid B+.
While there is a lot to be said about the ending, I can't help but be impressed that they really did kill off half the universe. It's obvious that this will be fixed with some mcguffin in the next Avengers movie, presumably this is just the first part of the one good outcome that Dr. Strange saw. But still, it's a gutsy move after spending 10 years building the largest and most valuable cinematic series in history. I do kind of wish that they had fully committed by making this the first MCU movie to not have a post-credit scene, though. That would have been deliciously jarring.
The thought that bugs me more the more I think about it, though, is that no one in the movie provides a nuanced, comprehensive rebuttal of Thanos' horrifically stupid plan. They make clear that it is evil, sure, but not that it is also asinine, ridiculous, counterfactual and counterproductive. Thanos gets plenty of time to explain his reasoning, and while I get the urge to make him believable as a villain, this is not a point in history where genocidal nonsense should go unchallenged. Hell, when he says that his solution is impartial, not influenced by rich or poor, no one even asks if he actually chose planets at random when genociding manually. Or did he maybe prefer to attack planets with weaker defenses? And maybe were those planets less economically advanced? Just maybe?
At least on Earth, at least for humans, the best way to prevent the Malthusian trap that he describes turns out to be education and basic economic powers. And that's something that not nearly enough people understand, so opportunities to reiterate it should always be taken. For advanced civilizations, killing half the population could easily result in a serious collapse, resulting in the death and misery of far more in the long run. And even then, so what? The population will just grow right back. The Earth had half as many people as it does today within living memory, sometime in the 1960s. So this isn't a one-time course correction, it's a permanent, inescapable terror spread across the entire universe. Every 50 years, some self-righteous asshole is going to snap his fingers again, so why bother reducing infant mortality? Given these facts, plus infinite powers, why doesn't Thanos actually try to fix the problem? He can't even spend a couple millennia of subjective time trying to undo entropy? What a lazy fuck!
This isn't just an ethical objection -- the movie missed out on some really good moments by not addressing these issues. Imagine if, during the big fight scene on Titan, that Mr. Technopositivist Tony Stark was relentlessly mocking Thanos' tired Malthusian arguments and limited imagination. Make it clear that Thanos is so caught up in the self-serving faux-nobility of being the only one brave enough to think terrible thoughts that he can't see just how needless and stupid his "solution" is. I totally get trying to give him motivations and depth, but being tragically obsessed with a bad idea still counts as that. Show how he can't accept clear proof his ideas are wrong, because to do so would be to admit that he had already killed millions in vain. That would have given the sequence real drama appropriate to the scope of the movie. Instead, no, they fridged Gamora to give Quill a reason to get all ragey. Blah.
I'm also disappointed that, for a comic book movie dealing with impossibly huge concepts, they sure didn't spend much time trying to convey the scope of the horror of Thanos' action. Even when he finally does it, all we see are its effects on main characters in just 3 locations on 2 planets. It all felt rather... small. And petty. Like it was only aimed at our heroes, instead of them just getting in the way. Why wouldn't you show the panic and horror sweeping the globe as people melt away, then the same thing with more and more alien creatures across the universe, flashing by faster and faster until it is just a blur of terror and loss? What a waste. What a misunderstanding of the core conceit of the entire movie.
While there is a lot to be said about the ending, I can't help but be impressed that they really did kill off half the universe. It's obvious that this will be fixed with some mcguffin in the next Avengers movie, presumably this is just the first part of the one good outcome that Dr. Strange saw. But still, it's a gutsy move after spending 10 years building the largest and most valuable cinematic series in history. I do kind of wish that they had fully committed by making this the first MCU movie to not have a post-credit scene, though. That would have been deliciously jarring.
The thought that bugs me more the more I think about it, though, is that no one in the movie provides a nuanced, comprehensive rebuttal of Thanos' horrifically stupid plan. They make clear that it is evil, sure, but not that it is also asinine, ridiculous, counterfactual and counterproductive. Thanos gets plenty of time to explain his reasoning, and while I get the urge to make him believable as a villain, this is not a point in history where genocidal nonsense should go unchallenged. Hell, when he says that his solution is impartial, not influenced by rich or poor, no one even asks if he actually chose planets at random when genociding manually. Or did he maybe prefer to attack planets with weaker defenses? And maybe were those planets less economically advanced? Just maybe?
At least on Earth, at least for humans, the best way to prevent the Malthusian trap that he describes turns out to be education and basic economic powers. And that's something that not nearly enough people understand, so opportunities to reiterate it should always be taken. For advanced civilizations, killing half the population could easily result in a serious collapse, resulting in the death and misery of far more in the long run. And even then, so what? The population will just grow right back. The Earth had half as many people as it does today within living memory, sometime in the 1960s. So this isn't a one-time course correction, it's a permanent, inescapable terror spread across the entire universe. Every 50 years, some self-righteous asshole is going to snap his fingers again, so why bother reducing infant mortality? Given these facts, plus infinite powers, why doesn't Thanos actually try to fix the problem? He can't even spend a couple millennia of subjective time trying to undo entropy? What a lazy fuck!
This isn't just an ethical objection -- the movie missed out on some really good moments by not addressing these issues. Imagine if, during the big fight scene on Titan, that Mr. Technopositivist Tony Stark was relentlessly mocking Thanos' tired Malthusian arguments and limited imagination. Make it clear that Thanos is so caught up in the self-serving faux-nobility of being the only one brave enough to think terrible thoughts that he can't see just how needless and stupid his "solution" is. I totally get trying to give him motivations and depth, but being tragically obsessed with a bad idea still counts as that. Show how he can't accept clear proof his ideas are wrong, because to do so would be to admit that he had already killed millions in vain. That would have given the sequence real drama appropriate to the scope of the movie. Instead, no, they fridged Gamora to give Quill a reason to get all ragey. Blah.
I'm also disappointed that, for a comic book movie dealing with impossibly huge concepts, they sure didn't spend much time trying to convey the scope of the horror of Thanos' action. Even when he finally does it, all we see are its effects on main characters in just 3 locations on 2 planets. It all felt rather... small. And petty. Like it was only aimed at our heroes, instead of them just getting in the way. Why wouldn't you show the panic and horror sweeping the globe as people melt away, then the same thing with more and more alien creatures across the universe, flashing by faster and faster until it is just a blur of terror and loss? What a waste. What a misunderstanding of the core conceit of the entire movie.