That said, I probably loved it. I definitely think critics are underrating it, possibly because "Black Panther" made them raise their standards. Meh, critics also didn't much like "Doctor Strange", and that's easily in my Top 5.
...Oh, did I forget to review "Black Panther"? Crap. Well, it was amazing. And comparing it to this movie makes about as much sense as comparing a meal prepared by a 4-star chef to a "Ziggy Pig". They serve different purposes, is what I'm saying.
Anyway, though I'm not ready to review "Infinity War", I did have a bunch of spoiler-y nitpicks I wanted to run through because I need to get it out of my brain. Also, because I imagine some people will find it entertaining. Also, because it should be possible to love a thing and still be able to nitpick at it.
SPOILERS ahead.
- Really guys? Did you REALLY have to kill the black guy first? Heimdall couldn't have sent Hulk to Earth AFTER Loki died?
- I'm annoyed that we just have to take it for granted that Thanos was able to take on the entire Nova Corps and steal the Power Stone without the Guardians of the Galaxy even hearing about it. I get that the scene with Hulk, Thor, and Loki establishes just how badass Thanos is, but this is still Thanos WITH the Power Stone. We never get a sense of what Thanos is capable of without any Infinity Stones, and the missing Xandar scene would have been the perfect way to demonstrate that. It also makes you wonder why Thanos ever bothered using Ronan in the first place if he had Ebony Maw on standby.
- Where's Valkyrie? Are we just supposed to assume that Valkyrie, Korg, Miek, and everyone else just died off-screen?
- Where's Kraglin? I saw in the credits that Sean Gunn was still doing the mo-cap work for Rocket, so why not also have him play Kraglin?
- Where's Lady Sif?
- I prefer Thor with the eye-patch (though I love that he gets the prosthetic eye from Rocket).
- No offense guys, but we're never going to care about Scarlet Witch and Vision. It's not really anyone's fault.
- Also, why can't Vision use the Mind Stone's mind-control powers? Probably would have been useful in a number of these fights. Do you need the Scepter for that? Or is it using all of its mojo to keep Vision conscious?
- Also, where did Wanda's accent go? I mean, I'm glad they stopped trying, but it is pretty weird that it's just... gone.
- How did Thanos know the Collector had the Reality Stone? Or that Doctor Strange had the Time Stone? Or that Vision was in Scotland? As far as we're aware, the only people who knew the location of the Reality Stone were Thor, Loki, Sif, Volstagg, and the Collector himself. And no one outside of Kamar-Taj's inner circle should know the Time Stone is even on Earth. And the only person who should know Vision's in Scotland is Wanda. Even so, Thanos was not only able to locate the Reality Stone before Thor could get to it, he also sent Ebony Maw to New York, where the Time Stone happened to be, and Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight not only find Vision, they manage to ambush him. They seem to have a way of locating the Infinity Stones, but it's never even mentioned, and it's never explained why they can't use it to find the Soul Stone. Hell, if they just shuffled the plot around a bit, they could have made the Soul Stone be the first Infinity Stone he got, and then they could just say he used that to locate the other 5.
- On that note, if it was so easy for Thanos to find, why, exactly, did Loki think that the Reality Stone would be safe with the Collector?
- And on that note, what exactly was Loki's arrangement with Thanos? We never really learned what exactly happened to Loki between "Thor" and "Avengers". We just know that Thanos trusted him with the Mind Stone to go get the Space Stone for some reason. But why use Loki at all and not, say, Ebony Maw? It just feels like Thanos' efforts to get the Infinity Stones were pretty half-hearted until now, when suddenly he just sort of casually collects them all without much apparent effort. I mean, what was Thanos even doing all these years? Was he just waiting for Asgard to blow up? But does that mean he grabbed the Power Stone AFTER Asgard blew up? I imagine it would have had to happen pretty recently given that the Guardians didn't hear about it, so if it was that easy, would Asgard really have posed much of a threat?
- No, I'm not letting the Thanos thing go. This is basically what Thanos did: We know he was doing his genocide routine at least since Gamora was a kid (let's say 20 years in the past). At some point, he started targeting the Infinity Stones. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that he didn't have the Black Order yet. He sent Gamora to find the Soul Stone, she found it, but lied about it. At some point, he got the Mind Stone. He then stumbled upon Loki, who I guess found out about the Space Stone while tumbling through the multiverse after falling off the Bifrost. Loki presumably gets Thanos to lend him an army in exchange for retrieving the Space Stone, promising that the Earthlings would be easily dominated. By using the Mind Stone, he was able to create a bridge through the Space Stone and come to Earth. Loki opens the portal, army shows up, Avengers beat him, take the Mind Stone, and send the Space Stone to Asgard. Thanos decides Earth is too tough to beat so easily, so he sits on his hands for three years, then sends Gamora and Ronan to get the Power Stone when he finds out where that is. They fail, Gamora and Nebula betray him, and then he grabs an Infinity Guantlet and says "I'll do it myself". Except he apparently had to commission the Infinity Gauntlet from the dwarves, and when they finished, he killed everyone but Eitri and shut Nidavellir down. So he's got a gauntlet, he knows where the Power Stone is (and apparently it's not hard for him to get), he knows where the Space Stone is, he knows the Mind Stone is on Earth, and he suspects that Gamora knows where the Soul Stone is. The Reality Stone and Time Stone were apparently pretty easy to find since the movie never explains how he learned their locations. So he grabs his Infinity Gauntlet and... waits another two years. Why? I have no clue. If anything, wouldn't he want to be in a bit of a hurry? I mean, it's clear the Nine Realms were going to crap under Loki's rule, but it's pretty ballsy to assume that he wouldn't notice Nidavellir was shut down for TWO YEARS. It just makes no sense.
- OK, I'll say it. It's officially weird how the movie and TV/Netflix universes aren't on speaking terms. The movies keep acting like S.H.I.E.L.D. is defunct and that whatever remnants are left are led by Nick Fury and Maria Hill, but that's completely incongruous with the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." TV show where neither character has had any presence in the organization for a REALLY long time. At first, they seemed to at least try to make sure they didn't step on each other's toes, but this really feels like passive aggressive spite at this point. Can someone just put Ike Perlmutter in a nursing home already?
- I'm fine with Stormbreaker being created to replace Mjolnir, and I'm even fine with it being an ax instead of a hammer, but I would still like to see Beta Ray Bill at some point.
- We did not need, like, five separate scenes that all boiled down to, "End my life for the greater good!" "No!" "Do it!" "No!" "Do it!" "OK! Oops, it didn't matter anyway." Gamora did it, Vision did it, Cap did it, Thor kinda did it... I mean, I get it, sacrifice and loss and cost are big themes in this movie, but it's already a cliche. You might have gotten away with doing it once or twice, but not THIS much.
- As much as I loved the ending, I kind of wish I believed that they'd actually make good use of it. We all know that the dusted characters are going to be fine eventually (though I imagine the other dead characters will stay dead). It would be rad as hell if they took their time bringing them back, made the next "Spider-Man" movie about Miles Morales instead of Peter Parker and made the next "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie about the classic team they teased at the end of "Vol. 2", but I don't think anybody actually expects that to happen. They're probably going to act like it COULD happen for the next year until "Untitled Avengers" comes out, but I doubt it will.
- That said, if Marvel's big surprise is that they're actually going to stick to this in some capacity and they really do have a "Spider-Man" movie without Peter and a "Guardians" movie without Gamora, Star-Lord, Drax, Groot, or Mantis, and a "Black Panther 2" where either Shuri or M'Baku wear the mantle, then well-played, Marvel. Well-played. For now, though, I'm going to keep wearing my "skepticals".
- Also, I'm guessing they'll reveal the title for "Untitled Avengers" at the end of "Ant-Man and the Wasp" with "Ant-Man Will Return In *INSERT TITLE HERE*" at the end of the credits.
