you have seen 4 and half minutes of random low quality clips from a three hour movie. The Russo's are 3 for 3, and all test audiences have been raving about what they've seen from Endgame. You need to calm down until you actually see the film lol.
guess you missed that part huh friend
(also one of my tags literally read ‘plush rants’, that doesn’t necessarily mean calm and collected response. this is a post i made to vent about possible outcomes for Endgame based off of my own concerns and opinions about what came out in the Clips. literally a ‘Dead Dove Do Not Eat’ kind of post)
On the Russo’s being 3 for 3, I’m gonna have to disagree there friend just bc... lord knows there are a LOT of issues with poor writing, plot contrivances, and plot holes with both Civil War and Infinity War that came directly out of their creative choices and views on the characters they are responsible for portraying.
For example, in Civil War:
When Ross was grilling the Avengers over what happened with New York, how is it that no one mentioned that the government outright TRIED TO NUKE NEW YORK CITY? There was a portion of the movie with Tony Stark flying the nuclear missile sent to destroy everything and everyone in one fell swoop - literal millions of innocent civilians - into the alien wormhole. How is it that no one tries to argue this on Team Cap’s team?
Who the heck hired Crossbones in Civil War to fcuk up the shit in Lagos? Was he still working for some fragment of HYDRA? What was his purpose there, what was his plan? He wanted revenge on Cap, but what was his plan to achieve that? Did Zemo hire him?
How is it that the Winter Soldier found the one place on an abandoned road where there was a convenient security camera showing him killing Tony’s parents in a way that there was no doubt those were the two people he was killing in the 80s/90s? did HYDRA put it there to watch it like a sports game, and if so, how did they tell Bucky that so he knew where to pull over, and how did they know the Starks’ travel plans to the point they could predict exactly where to run them off the road to that specific camera?
What was the point about the Five Winter Soldiers subplot, except to get Steve, Tony, and Bucky in one room together to watch the video tape of the Starks’ brutal murder? If the whole point was to turn the Avengers on each other, why not first split them apart, frame Steve as protecting a man who blew up the UN (even if it wasn’t him, the gen public still thinks this), then publicly release/show the video verifying that yes, this is a dangerous criminal and Cap is protecting him?
Does Zemo have a Crystal Ball to tell him everything that’s happening, in order to predict how everything fell perfectly into place? He orchestrated the UN bombing to frame Bucky, but how on earth did he account for the Lagos incident with Scarlet Witch, or the Sokovia Accords’ creation, or Black Panther’s involvement? How did he perfectly predict the fall of the Avengers and the stressors needed to force a split, to where Tony, Steve, and Bucky would be in place for him to bring them to the Tape of Dismay?
What was the point of including Ant-Man apart from the fight scene? Scott Lang’s entry into the MCU focused entirely on him trying to prove that he’s not a criminal and wants to do the best possible by his family and the world around him... only to throw it all away to break the law, fight with Captain America, and immediately get thrown in jail for it.
Maybe he didn’t fully understand what he was getting into, but what about Hawkeye, who has a wife and three kids? At the end of AOU, he was hoping to retire and live a peaceful life with his family, which was the whole reason Quicksilver died. Now his kids have no dad bc... why, exactly? He got bored? He wasn’t involved in anything leading up to the Accords like the Lagos explosion, why would he come back now? He knew full well what he was getting into when he joined Steve, and got arrested for it.What was the point except to flatten out the roster?
Why did Howard Stark decide to transport the Super Soldier Serum without any form of bodyguards nearby, ESPECIALLY with his wife in the car? Was the plan to transport it as quietly as possible while a heavily armored decoy distracted whoever was after it? If so, 1.) what danger/risk was there that required this method? 2.) did no one think to put a tracker on the Starks’ personal car while they were doing this, to ensure no bumps or hiccups? 3.) if there was a suspected leak at SHIELD, why would Howard endanger his wife needlessly under the guise of a normal drive out? (short answer: he’s a dick, but I digress) 4.) Who the heck were they trying to fool by driving around on back roads in the middle of nowhere? Where was their destination? (This branch of questioning I do recognize as not having enough time to flesh out, but the whole scenario raises a shitton of questions in general).
During all of this, where was Maria Hill? She was a higher up with SHIELD, and she was still free and alive. Fury was still presumed dead at large, I’m assuming, but wouldn’t she have tried to speak up, or was she keeping her head down?
And now, for Infinity War:
Why is it that when Thanos showed up, Loki didn’t use the Tesseract to open up a Portal to help all of the Asgardian refugees escape directly to Midgard, or even a nearby planet? Thor and Loki used it to transport back to Asgard at the end of Avengers: Assemble, and Thanos used it to teleport between planets effortlessly; while it cannot open massive wormholes on its own, it could still be used to transport people in between space, which Loki is known to excel at.
Why is it that, as Thanos was leaving the ship with Thor still alive, that Loki decided to call out to him, calling attention back to himself when they could have reconvened and sought out the Avengers to make a plan, all to try to stab him with a tiny knife?
Why didn’t Hulk show up before when Thanos was destroying/slaughtering the entire ship of Asgardian Refugees until Thor was captured and Heimdall was killed - why did he wait?
How did Bruce know to warn about Thanos, when he’s never shown any sign of being able to recall knowledge he learned as Hulk or memories during his time as the Hulk before now?
What the heck happened to Nova when Thanos went to retrieve the Power Stone? Wouldn’t the Guardians have been alerted when Nova attacked, given both their experience with the Stone and Gamora’s past with Thanos? How about the fact that StarLord can actually wield the stone somewhat? Wouldn’t they be a strong contender to stop Thanos, based on power and knowledge of him?
How about Rhodey suddenly deciding to turn his back on everything he fought for in Civil War without any sort of precursor than ‘he looks annoyed at Ross’ when Cap walks in?
What the heck are the logistics of Red Skull being the Ghost of Infinity Stone Past protecting an Infinity Stone he never encountered? Did the Tesseract transport him there as a protector, and if so, why doesn’t Thanos use the Tesseract to travel instantly to where the other stones are located? Why did the Tesseract transport the spirit of Red Skull to protect/conveniently explain the terms & conditions of the Soul Stone to anyone who came looking for it?
What was the point of killing half of all life to “preserve resources” or bc there weren’t “enough resources” for the populations when you kill half of all plants and animals in the universe as well? Did none of this occur to him as he was making the plan?
Doctor Strange said in Thor 3 that he keeps a watchlist on potential threats to Earth, which is how he knows about Loki - so why doesn’t he know about the Mad Titan with massive armies seeking the Infinity Stones at the beginning of IW?
For that matter, why didn’t Doctor Strange trap Thanos in a time loop like he did with Dormammu? Without the Time Stone, Thanos couldn’t escape, so why didn’t that come into play?
Also, what about Doctor Strange’s portal creating sling rings? If he had an issue with Tony Stark or Peter Parker being on the space ship, why not sling them back to Earth (or do they only work on Earth)?
For that matter, why not cut off Thanos’ hand with the Gauntlet USING these portals once they have him pinned? Could Thanos control his hand even as it was severed from his body?
Where the fcuk did the whole Wanda/Vision relationship bloom from, when they were on very opposite sides in Civil War, and Vision contributed to keeping her under house arrest? Where did romance even pop up there?
The Infinity Stones are supposed to be indestructible, as outlined in both GOTG and Thor TDW - how is it then that Wanda can destroy one now? Was it weakened by Shuri’s removal process (which was never aimed at destroying the Stone, only separating it from Vision without killing him)?
Vision was willing to sacrifice himself to destroy the Stone in his head and keep Thanos from winning, yet Steve goes ‘We don’t trade lives’, even when that wouldn’t be his decision to make - it’s Vision’s and he’s willing. Then they go to Wakanda to have the stone removed, and potentially hundreds of soldiers die bc that’s where Thanos’ armies landed down. They all knew that Thanos could track Vision (given that Steve and Natasha come to rescue him from the Black Hand at that subway station), so why risk the lives of thousands in Wakanda on the chance that he survives having it removed, only to have to destroy him anyways AFTER gods know how many have already died?
How was the Black Hand powerful enough to kill/maim/capture a host of Asgardians (who have been proven to have much higher durablity in regards to injuries in general) along with Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Hulk, and presumably Valkyrie, all of whom (save Hulk), have literal CENTURIES of fighting experience under their belts - and yet struggle and lose to mildly superpowered humans with far less durability to injuries than Asgardians (who live on average for 5000 years at a time, and have accelerated healing, as seen in both Avengers Assemble and the Agents of SHIELD tv series, which does share a level of canon to the main MCU)?
How could Thor withstand the full blast of a DYING STAR and be up again by holding his axe summoning the Bifrost’s power to heal him (????), yet not be capable of breaking out of Ebony Maw’s iron bars holding him in place in the first ten minutes of the movie?
How did Thor know exactly where to beam in via his Bifrost-wielding axe to Wakanda? Did the axe come with a GPS on finding ‘big ass battles’ to join in, or can it track Infinity Stones? If he stopped somewhere else to find out where to go, where did he go to and who told him? The Avengers didn’t exactly publicize the Infinity Stones or Thanos’ arrival, or leave too many people behind that Thor could easily touch base with.
For that matter, Thor arrived on Midgard before Thanos - with his Bifrost-powered axe, why not go to Titan where the rest of the Guardians are? He’s already with Rocket and Groot, so being able to track them down should be relatively simple to do on their end - why not meet up with them again? Why go to Midgard when he could have gone to face off against Thanos BEFORE HE GOT ALL 6 STONES?!? In fact, wouldn’t it make MORE sense to meet up with the rest of the Guardians than Midgard? They know about Thanos, they planned AFTER MEETING THOR to retrieve the Reality Stone - why wouldn’t Thor go back to them on this one?
And that’s just off the top of my head. Go looking in any Infinity War Critical tag, and you will find a thousand more.
If you mean 3 for 3 in terms of profit, definitely. Their upcoming movie outright crashed ticket ordering webpages for hours on end, to the point that to order tickets online, you had to wait your turn. As far as strong writing though? I would argue against that, based off of everything listed above and then some.
Fans on all sides have issues with pretty much every character’s portrayals, actions, and reactions, along with how the plot ultimately progressed. Steve Stans, Tony Stans, Thor Stans, Loki Stans, T’Challa Stans, Scarlet Witch Stans, Guardian Stans, Spider-Stans, Strange Stans, Hulk Stans - a lot of people looked at this film and found it lacking for all of these characters and their arcs, portrayals, their inconsistent capabilities after literally 20 films showing us everything they can do.
So while the Russos have done well financially for the MCU (and admittedly, made Civil War much less of a mess than it ever was in the comics - which is saying something about how absolutely fucked up the comics were), in terms of delivering satisfying conclusions for these characters, they’ve been found lacking again and again. Their idea of groundbreaking character work is to destroy or take away everything they love in absolutes, or to kill off characters to fuel Emotional Pain.
Thor didn’t have to lose everything to have an arc - neither did the Guardians. And while death will inevitably be a part of any Infinity War story, it’s extremely telling that the only deaths that left an impact are two of three that were NOT a result of being dusted - the ones we Know can’t be reversed so easily: Gamora and Loki. Characters that have suffered endlessly and received no happy ending with the people they cherish, after having lost so much already. The only characters dusted that people feel viscerally upset about that I’ve seen was Groot and Shuri, and the latter was only revealed recently in the Twitter campaign posters (and is also complete bullshit to pull on the audience - "randomly” kill off half the world, my ass, you killed off how many people in Wakanda and then some?!? No).
No one else’s death has left as much an impact in a story where half the world dies - and when the primary ending of your tragedy, having been built up to over a goddamn decade of films, leaves mostly a ‘meh’ feeling? You have failed to make people care, and failed as storytellers.
