Don’t read this post if you don’t want to know what happens in Avengers: Infinity War (2018)!
With that out of the way, I think it’s time I formally introduce you to the 2017 created film review thumb: (created before for at least three other films that haven’t made it from notes in my notebooks to completed blog posts (more so just half-written ones) put up online, so, basically, this has been a long time coming)
Okay, so technically, I have already eaten dinner, taken my night meds and filled my brain with thoughts external to the movie I just witnessed a few hours ago. With that being said, I’d like to return to the magic and the visual improbabilities of this wonderful, wonderful film. This will be part 1 of my film review of this movie as I think it will take me a little while (and multiple re-captured seeings of this film) to get out everything I want to say, and trust me, it’s quite a lot.
Defined by Google (the almighty god of all things we have to search and scour the Internet for!) is:
There is a LOT of sacrificing interwoven into the multiple character’s lives in Avengers: Infinity War (part 1 may I add; part 2 will appear as early as May 2019, so guess who is gonna have to avoid the rogue buses in the future to stay alive and see THAT movie).
Again, this information and film review is as much to put my thoughts onto metaphorical paper (and even then, probably actual paper, too) as to work through everything that I just learned and everything I still hope for and cherish in all these characters–all these films of the last ten years (although I watched a few of the Iron Man films before, 2014 is really when I entered into these multiple universes) and everything that’s been working up to this very point in time.
There is SO much loss in this one film. All the rescued Asgardians that we saw through Thor: Ragnarok, (which I actually plan to film review next) my utmost favorite and inspiring character (although, probably not for the same reasons you’re thinking of) Loki who, after the Asgardian civilians, is the first (I think, if I’m remembering correctly) to die in this film–to the ashy disappearances of several of Earth’s (or should I say Midgard’s?) mightiest heroes.
Gosh, the visual effects in this film are just phenomenal. I really felt rooted in place, I wanted the narrative to continue unraveling before the credits rolled and the theater turned to brightness. I was invested! I AM invested. I want to know what happens next. Where did so many of the ashy disappearances go? Are they all somewhere together in the afterlife? Will Loki come back, somehow? (I know, probably a stretch but hey, a girl can hope!) Where is Tony Stark going to find food on that alien planet? Is he still going to get married to Pepper? How long or soon after did Nick Fury and Agent Hill disappear after Thanos collected all six of the infinity stones? Where is Tony Stark going to take a shit on that planet? Can he shit in his suit? Or would that just be too messy?
Where is everyone? Will they come back? Can I hope for a return of my fellow characters?
Why is 2019 so far away? Will we reminisce with our favorite heroes in the afterlife?
Does Thanos have the capacity to feel human emotions? What is he, really? How did he become who he is as we know him? Are his emotions and love for his “daughter” Gamora real or is it faked and manipulated, acted and a play to get to the audience’s feelings? ‘Cause I gotta say, I definitely was feeling for him! I could understand his perspective, he wanted, inherently, what was for the best for everyone in all the realms involved yet he went about it in a very, very genocidal way (which I cannot begin to condone!).
It appeared that he was capable of loving those who unwillingly chose to be in his presence and in his life (like Gamora) and he also had such a ruthlessness about him that he could simply wipe out several millions, if not billions, of people in his pursuit for absolute power.
Is power his true play? Or is he trying to fill the void within himself?
Was it worth it?
Child Gamora, in a vision that I took as being more for the audience’s understanding than what was happening in reality of the Marvel cinematic universe, asked Thanos, point blank, something along the lines of “What did you have to lose?”
And Thanos said, “Everything.”
And at the end of the day, sacrifices were made time and time again. Suicide was even brought up as a topic (of which I can only applaud the writer’s for to be bold enough to actually say the word and not shy away from saying it after implying it loads of times visually and through dialogue).
The biggest weight of the word and the world fell upon choosing to have the strength to sacrifice.
It came when Loki couldn’t stand to watch Thor be tortured by Thanos. It came when he seemed, at first, to be betraying Thor again with revealing the Tesseract only to stall Hulk’s arrival into Thanos as a punching bag. It came when Loki appeared to win over Thanos’ side and join forces with him, all while creating a knife behind his arm that he tried to kill Thanos with (maybe even a little naively and foolishly) before he was so cruelly and unfortunately strangled to death by Thanos’ mighty large purple hand.
Watching the blossoms of love between Tony and Pepper, Wanda Maximoff and Vision and the funny quips laden throughout the movie inspired hope and humanity within all the tragedy and questioning of the meaning of life and what everything meant if those you love couldn’t be around to live it and enjoy it WITH you, together.
The Asgardians, Loki, Heimdall (after he managed to summon enough magic to send Hulk back to Midgard to warn the others), Gamora (sacrificed for the soul stone by Thanos), Vision (a consequence of Doctor Strange giving up/sacrificing the lives of thousands for Tony Stark’s life–in essence, trading one life for the time infinity stone).
And then those who disappeared like ash: Nick Fury, Agent Hill, Black Panther, Bucky, Star Lord, Peter Parker, Groot, Drax, Doctor Strange, Wanda… Maybe Nebula (can’t quite remember though).
And Thanos, the center of them all, watching his sunset/sunrise maybe one last time in a peaceful land (which he can now manipulate reality with that infinity stone so it’s questionable if he’s actually there or if it’s just in his mind/for our visual purposes)… alone.
Was it worth it? All that loss. All that pain. Was it worth it?
Thanos tortured (Loki, first of all, and I think Bruce Banner realizes that when he reports to Doctor Strange, his magician assistant whose name I don’t remember, and Tony Stark that Thanos, the same guy who did the alien invasion in New York, was coming for Midgard to seal the fate of billions by collecting all six of the infinity stones) Nebula in order to get to Gamora (who knew where the soul stone was and requested to be executed by Star Lord (another blossoming love) before she would give up the answer to Thanos), Doctor Strange (in which Tony Stark and Peter Parker save by attacking Squidward so that he freezes in space after they blow a hole in the side of the spaceship (which, if Tony Stark and these other people like Thor and shit die in space like that (like Squidward did), why don’t they die and freeze on planets like Titan and others? Seems like a plot hole, to be honest. Double standards, even.)))
Thanos created all this death and destruction, to save the rest while sacrificing the few who stood in his way–but at the end of the day when he was alone, the question really remains: was it worth it? If you have no one to spend the day with, watching the sun rise or set and having all the power in the world to destroy and kill anyone you ever want whenever you want, is it worth it if you’re all alone?
That sounds like such a lonely endeavor, a worthless task.
And that drives the question–do our heroes get the final word? The final action? Will the second part of this movie end in triumph, happiness, love, life, moving on? Will there be light amidst all that darkness? Will there be worth within all that meaninglessness?
Will Thanos realize and decide for himself, the wielder of all those stones, that giving up and losing EVERYTHING really wasn’t worth any of it if he is to just perish as we all will, alone?
Thanos wanted the power of all beings, the control and the strength that that all meant, yet maybe he isn’t so strong–even when the prophecy states that he IS all powerful with all those stones–maybe, just maybe, he’s not. He cannot escape death. His time will come.
And if that means the end of all experiences, will he go out slowly or will he decide that living life alone even with all the power in the world won’t make him happy?
He likes Tony Stark. He appreciates him, in a way that is endearing, almost, and yet all the same totally in character with himself. He spares Tony’s life when Doctor Strange sacrifices the innocent lives of millions to trade Tony’s life for the time stone (something he was SO set against giving up before in the countless arguments he held with Tony). Tony was dying, sword stuffed in his side, spitting up blood, really not in good shape kind of dying, and it’s him who gets left behind when so sadly and tragically Peter disappears as ash into the wind, his last words being pleas to stay alive, wishes to BE someone, become something, torn away far too soon… In the rubble of planet Titan, Tony Stark sits, the light shining behind him as he thinks, thinks of plans, of solutions, of ways out, alone.
Is it as Doctor Strange imagined? He said he saw 14 million alternate universes with his magic–did he see that one? Did he see the one that played out on screen and did he know that that ONE that would have saved everyone was just a lie, a sham to get the others on the team to believe that they could be powerful enough to stop Thanos and his rule or did he lie that there was one universe where they succeeded in stopping Thanos to spare the thoughts and feelings of the others? Did he see himself disappearing? Was it painful? Do they meet each other again, in the afterlife? Devise some kind of plan to return to living, to fight further?
There was so much fighting. So much struggling, trying to stay alive, to live to see the next day–but to what end? For what purpose? To live to die? Isn’t that what we’re all just doing? Is this a larger metaphor of all of our most inane fears within us as humans (and how incredible we are as a species to create these magical, fictional worlds) that we may be forgotten one day, that all our work may turn to rubble and STILL despite KNOWING that one day we will all vanish we create, we make, we breed and we spread ourselves so far and wide so that SOMEONE out there knows who we are, who we were and what we had time to become because if we don’t, if we’re just forgotten, then what’s the POINT? Do we spread our names out into the world through text, video, photos–or do we hide in shame and fear inside our homes because the world out there really is that kind of scary? Because there do exist versions of Thanos in the world, our world, our true reality. And maybe, maybe there are actual aliens out there, far crueler and damaging than we could possibly imagine, maybe stronger and more sinister than Thanos (although, maybe not by much) and here we are, lost in our own struggles and problems on a revolving planet around the sun in a solar system we have yet to imagine could possibly exist.
Do we find light in the darkness because we just have to believe that the light will overcome the dark? Or can there be life where both exist?
So much of our lives involve darkness, pain, in some ways (and in some lives) torture. AND there also exists love, happiness, hope, light, beacons, inspiration. Beauty and ugly all wrapped into one experience. Laughter at the hurt and laughter at the joy. A balance, like the little knife filled with rubies that Thanos shows child Gamora to distract her from the slaughtering of her people as he shields her from that trauma (although she can still hear their screams).
Over and over, lives were sacrificed, loves were lost. Wanda had to kill Vision because there wasn’t enough time between (them as a couple honestly) and when Thanos arrived on Midgard to rewind time and kill Vision by taking the mind stone from his skull. I don’t think Vision suffered when Wanda was destroying the mind stone. It was hard to watch her get hit by Thanos when he rewinded time to steal the stone. And I liked and appreciated the irony and symbolism with the fact that Vision lost all color when he died and how his own vision (his eyes) was clouded completely, as though he had witnessed the cruelty of the world and been jaded by it (like Ultron had been). Natasha and Bruce shared an awkward moment. Pepper and Tony planned a maybe wedding. The Accords were referred back to. The team came together for a cause, for a mission. Iron Man and Bruce fought against Squidward and his other child spawn from Thanos. Gamora sacrificed innocent lives for Nebula to no longer be tortured. Loki gave his life to try and thwart Thanos’ path. Thor and the others had to witness such loss, so much death… Death upon death upon death rolled in like waves.
And all for the power to control everything. Yet is it possible that in controlling
everything you really control nothing? Having all six infinity stones meant that Thanos could simply snap his fingers and billions would be killed without him really having to do much of the work.
Loki, as he died, said that “You will never be a god” to Thanos. Thanos was no stranger to killing, he likely relished in a lot of it, but he did it with a purpose (however skewed that purpose was). He wanted people to be free–free from suffering, free from starvation, free from freedom itself (I just loved the references back to other films and doesn’t this sound like Loki in Avengers Assemble?) and he recognized that to help the majority you would have to sacrifice the minority. And so he boldly took those chances. He chose again and again to destroy and create chaos and havoc, to cause irreparable damage to billions of people (and even on the planet where Thor, Rocket and Groot made Thor’s new weapon the axe by Stormbreaker the dwarf who helped him said that Thanos had told him he would spare the lives of his dwarves if he handed over the gauntlet only to go back on his word and kill everyone except this one dwarf) with little regard and little care yet he can feel pain and loss from those who he chooses to aid? (Think Gamora, think Tony Stark).
Maybe there is light in the dark, and maybe we can learn to live with both polarizing extremes. I don’t know, it’s up to the viewer, I suppose. I hope that you enjoyed this if you’ve made it this far. I hope I didn’t spoil anything and you heeded my previous starting words in case you DID want to read about the movie yourself and come to terms with everything. The film ended in a very open-ended way, something I wanted the story to continue plowing through and unraveling in the next two hours (but didn’t happen, sadly–until next year that is!) and I feel I have far, far more closure on now. I feel almost rejuvenated, even though it’s nearly 9:30p and I’ve been writing this post for 2.5 hours straight through and about twenty minutes before that around 6p. I have a lot to worth with now, and I think I will take some explorations and inspirations from this film into my next few stories, fanfic in general and blog posts/articles–in all my art, really.
Any who, THANK YOU FOR READING THROUGH ALL THESE NEARLY 3,600 WORDS. Seriously, you’re awesome. I hope my musings have triggered your own musings and we can muse together in the comments. Long awaited and long time coming film review. 😉 Stay safe, peeps and try not to get too anxious out there. ❤ ❤ ❤
PS I put this into my ‘artwork’ category to help myself when I get into fanfic stuff again soon to pull through and sort out concepts and shit. You get what I mean! Also, BACKGROUND song that I listened to on loop throughout this 2.5 hour writing: (which will be featured in May) “In my blood” by Shawn Mendes. That is all.
RecoverytoWellness 