Infinity War really irritated me as a story, mostly because it was poorly written imo and completely unnecessary as a film. Seriously the entire plot of this movie could have been condensed into the first 10 minutes of the next film and we would lose nothing. 

This is what happens when you have plot guiding a story and not characters. And using the term “plot” is being generous. The characters just randomly appeared to do what the narrative needed them to do, without any sort of character development to get there. Not to mention several of them acted against their previously established characters. Loki would not be so stupid. Dr. Strange saving Tony–I imagine it has to do with the future he saw but like, huh? Black Panther risking his entire kingdom like that, aka being an irresponsible king just to save Vision? Did his entire movie not like happen at all? Not to mention not one character changed at all from beginning to end of the film. No one had an arc. If you’re writing a tragedy, you have to explore why the heroes need to be taught a lesson in failure. Except… they kind of gave us no reason for that. It was just failure because failure=more money later. 

“We don’t bargain in lives” was a cool potential theme, but, like, you have to actually explore the themes you introduce, and they didn’t. Like at all. That was I think a huge issue of the film: it had the potential to be a complex, morally challenging tragedy. It just completely failed. 

Not to mention this film negated the messages of Thor: Ragnarok (a film I didn’t even like!), Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. Like what’s the point to those films since their endings were wiped out anyways? Asgard is more powerful as a people except oh wait no nvm let’s offscreen kill Valkyrie and Korg? 

I also found it weird how they killed Loki and Gamora, two characters scrounging for redemption right when they finally found love (Loki with his brother, Gamora with Starlord). What’s the message, that redemption is pointless? Not to mention the notion of redemptive death–Loki’s death was literally everything I hate about redemptive death as a trope. It did not have to happen. You keep Loki alive (which made more character sense, how would a 1500 year old sorcerer be that stupid?), have him team up with Thor for the film and show up to help in Wakanda and you lose… what exactly? You gain a lot of potential character development and lose nothing. The redemptive death was shot for the sake of redemptive death. It offered neither Loki nor Thor anything as a character. Gamora’s death, as distasteful as it was, at least moved the plot forward (Once Upon a Time, that trash show, did the whole “sacrifice what you love most!” thing better years ago, just saying. It was so cliche I rolled my eyes.)

But back to Thor’s plot. The whole “I shall get a new weapon!”… did we not just have an entire film about how Thor is Thor without needing a weapon? But the whole struggling with the star thing was pointless because it cost him nothing, as my friend who saw it with me pointed out, and we knew it would cost him nothing. It also offered him no growth as a character, despite being shot like a triumphant, emotional moment. It fell flat because there were no stakes and it was just… moving the plot along? I guess? 

So the notion of how the film was shot–let’s talk that more. All the deaths–literally from beginning to end–were shot the exact same way. Crying, begging, struggling, with like the same camera angles too. Loki, the Collector, Gamora, all the ash people. That’s just really poor directing and again plays into the whole idea that they had no idea of who these characters were–they were just vague badasses with varying degrees of snark.  

The whole issue of repetition was so present in the film. Over and over again we were hammered with the notion of Thanos’s motivations and his desire to get the stones blah blah blah but they never really explored those themes, nor did they challenge them. And sure, there’s another film, but you gotta introduce the challenge right away or it’s too late. And it’s too late to save this film.

Now to discuss the villain. Marvel has a villain problem, and they still have a problem with Thanos, because they seem to think backstory=good villain. It doesn’t. A good villain, like Loki to Thor or Killmonger to Black Panther, shows the protagonist what they need to grow away from. They act as a mirror for the protagonist and challenge the protagonist’s own development and character. Thanos had a backstory but like, none of that, because again, none of the characters had arcs. Not to mention there is some serious issues with asking the audience to sympathize with an abuser rather than empathize. They weren’t asking the audience to critically look at themselves and see whether they could see themselves in Thanos. They were asking us to feel sorry for an abusive monster just because uwu poor man lost his homeworld and had to kill his daughter. It was so uncomfortable. The framing of Thanos throughout the entire film was really, really disturbing. 

And here’s more stuff I found icky. Almost everyone who died at the end was of color, a woman, or disabled (except Peter Parker & Peter Quill). Which has the potential to explore what Thanos’s horrifically awful genocide ideal would actually look like in real life–except it didn’t explore it, like at all, and so just winds up looking awful on Marvel. Also, Captain America leading the charge in Wakanda? How did no one see this and go, mmm maybe we have a problem here?