Marvel Phase III Movie Discussion Thread

[J.T.]

21 hours ago, Matt D said:

One weighted criticism:

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Quill being willing to kill Gamora
Wanda being willing to kill Vision
Thanos killing Gamora
Strange saying he would let Tony/Peter die and then going against that
Gamora not allowing Nebula to suffer. 
Loki not letting Thor die

It's a lot of going to the same well for one movie, even if the two in bold were key moments that were somewhat bolstered by the rest.

 

What are you finding fault with?  The points you are criticizing all have logical support within the framework of the movie(s).

Spoiler

1. Quill promised Gamora he'd kill her to stop Thanos and he loved her enough to keep his promise to her.  That superseded Irrational Transaction / We Don't Trade Lives.

2. Wanda was the only one who had the power to shatter the Mind Stone and she loved Vision enough to do what he asked her to do in order to prevent universal mass murder.  Again, that superseded Irrational Transaction.  If she did not destroy the Mind Stone along with the Vision, Thanos would complete the Infinity Gauntlet. 

Of course, Thanos did that anyway thanks to the powers of the Time Stone.

3. Thanos cannot gain access to the Soul Gem without killing Gamora.  He genuinely loved Gamora, but his goal of universal balance through genocide outweighed his feelings for his adopted daughter.  As we saw at the end of the movie, Thanos was willing to sacrifice everything to succeed.

Thanos is also batshit crazy.

4. Dr. Strange drops enough hints to us when he talks to Tony about endgame and that  "it was the only way" stuff for us to conclude that the one future out of some odd million timelines where Thanos is defeated that Dr. Strange saw while scanning alternate realities with the Eye Of Agamotto cannot happen if Stark dies.

If they resist and Thanos kills everyone in the process of claiming the Time Stone by force, it's all over.

Note that Stark did not disappear after the Snap, so the seeds of Thanos's defeat have been sown. 

Thanos could not be beaten if he did not succeed in completing the Gauntlet and Stark did not live to fight another day..

5. & 6  The siblings reconciled in previous movies.  They're not enemies anymore.

 

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, Dog said:

Going along with that, my biggest criticism is

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Trying to save Vision because "we don't trade lives," but allowing all those Wakandans to die in his defense. Seems especially stomach-turny considering this is probably the exact reason they never opened themselves to the world before.

 

Spoiler

1. Vision is out of commission for most of the battle, so he's not around to put himself at risk for their sake.

2. When he does come around and realizes what's going on, his first act is to convince Wanda to destroy the Mind Stone and him with it.  He tries to sacrifice himself to protect everyone the same way other people sacrificed themselves to protect him.

Sadly, the Time Stone made his selfless act worthless and the poor bastard dies twice in the same moment.

 

[J.T.]

3 hours ago, Craig H said:

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I thought I remembered the Milano getting trashed, but maybe that's because everything else on Titan is junk.

Also, one last complaint and this is super nitpicky, but it's annoying how all of these alien races can speak perfect English. I'm sure they know that not everyone wants to read subtitles and all of these dudes speak English in the comics, but damn, everyone sounds like they're from the midwest or the UK. There's no in between.

Spoiler

Comic book 101:  All language is translated into English for the benefit of the reader..  We can't follow the story if we can't understand what people are saying.

It also does not help that Thanos's origins really aren't clarified in the movie. 

Technically he's a Deviant and not an alien, so he has more in common with humans than his adopted extraterrestrial offspring. 

The Eternals & Deviants are long lived and have always observed human culture as it has advanced, so it is not unreasonable for them to be able to speak and communicate in English.

My main nitpick is that they referred to Titan as a planet and made you think it was an alien world, when its supposed to be Saturn's largest moon.

 

[Contentious C]

Yeah, there are tiny things like, "Hey, isn't that sunlight?" and "Hey look, everyone's breathing normally without any sort of apparatus" or "Doesn't anyone feel a mite chilly?" that could be counted as a little off, if you *really* wanted to be that primadonna picker of nits. But there's little value to that. And within the context of what they've shown, 

Spoiler

you could easily surmise that, despite its relative destruction, some M-class planet aspects of Titan still survive, i.e., a modicum of life support within the region where the fight occurred. And Tony's reconnection back to Earth will come one of three ways:

1. Nebula has a ship, 

2. Thor has some way of tracking where Thanos has traveled (which could be nifty as all Hell, if, say, he ends up with Cap on Vormir for a little reunion), or 

3. Tony jury-rigs some crap he finds on Titan and does the shortest-lived Robinson Crusoe on Mars ever by signaling Thor or someone in Wakanda.

 

[John Austin]

I don't mind how it deviated from the book but didn't Thano's motivation for getting the stones remind anyone of Ras Al Ghoul?

[Andrew POE!]

I saw the movie today and it was great but a bit dumb and underwhelming. It sorta has me hoping for the following:

After the Snap, I hope Marvel Films figures out a way to bring back the Mjorlnir and get reassembled and offer as much money as possible to Natalie Portman just to be Jane Foster and be the new Thor.

Miles Morales appears and becomes Spider-Man.

Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and X-Men join the MCU.

The rumor I heard about the next Avengers movie is it's going to involve time travel.

[Matt D]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

What are you finding fault with?  The points you are criticizing all have logical support within the framework of the movie(s).

  Reveal hidden contents

1. Quill promised Gamora he'd kill her to stop Thanos and he loved her enough to keep his promise to her.  That superseded Irrational Transaction.

2. Wanda was the only one who had the power to shatter the Mind Stone and she loved Vision enough to do what he asked her to do in order to prevent universal mass murder.  Again, that superseded Irrational Transaction.  If she did not destroy the Mind Stone along with the Vision, Thanos would complete the Infinity Gauntlet. 

Of course, Thanos did that anyway thanks to the powers of the Time Stone.

3. Thanos cannot gain access to the Soul Gem without killing Gamora.  He genuinely loved Gamora, but his goal of universal balance through genocide outweighed his feelings for his adopted daughter.  As we saw at the end of the movie, Thanos was willing to sacrifice everything to succeed.

Thanos is also batshit crazy.

4. Dr. Strange drops enough hints to us when he talks to Tony about endgame and that  "it was the only way" stuff for us to conclude that the one future out of some odd million timelines where Thanos is defeated that Dr. Strange saw while scanning alternate realities with the Eye Of Agamotto cannot happen if Stark dies.

If they resist and Thanos kills everyone in the process of claiming the Time Stone by force, it's all over.

Note that Stark did not disappear after the Snap, so the seeds of Thanos's defeat have been sown. 

Thanos could not be beaten if he did not succeed in completing the Gauntlet without Tony Stark being killed..

5. & 6  The siblings reconciled in previous movies.  They're not enemies anymore.

 

You work six big superkick spots in one match. All of them are logical but the sum of the whole means that you end up having a few too many superkick spots in the match?

[odessasteps]

Having read everything before seeing it, I was waiting to see if certain people were missing or just not discussed, including

Spoiler

Starfox and the Nova Corps

I also didn't realize before how you closely you can map the Black Order to Darkseids Elite Guard. Not perfect but close.

[Raziel]

Spoiler

Well, given that Thanos starts the movie with the Power Stone and they mention Thanos' had already been to Xandar, we can pretty much assume there's not a whole lot of Nova Corps left if any, and Xandar was down 50% of the population BEFORE The Snap.

 

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Andrew POE! said:

 

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After the Snap, I hope Marvel Films figures out a way to bring back the Mjorlnir and get reassembled and offer as much money as possible to Natalie Portman just to be Jane Foster and be the new Thor.

 

Can't say I want to see that at all.

Spoiler

Portman's Jane has done little for me.

 

[Craig H]

16 minutes ago, Eivion said:

Can't say I want to see that at all.

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Portman's Jane has done little for me.

 

Spoiler

Yeah, that's one of the odder takes I've seen. Calling the movie dumb is pretty out there, but then the rest of those suggestions aren't anywhere close to realistic or good. Natalie Portman doesn't give a shit about being in Thor movies and Thor Ragnarok was fucking awesome, but let's now go in a new direction with a character who hasn't brought any life to the series?

Miles as Spider-Man in a non-animated movie isn't happening, at least any time soon. Tom Holland is ridiculously good as Peter Parker and Spider-Man. I wanted Miles as Spidey back when they announced web head was going to be in the MCU, but Civil War, Homecoming, and IW show that Holland is so good in this role.

And as previously mentioned, if a deal does get done for those Fox Marvel properties, it isn't happening until after the next Avengers movie , if at all. 

 

[Andrew POE!]

Well fine recast Portman and get someone else to be Jane Foster. They did that with War Machine after all. At least if they got Captain Marvel on the big screen, they could get someone to be Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. Or Amadeus Cho/Totally Awesome Hulk. Or Riri Williams/Ironheart. Or something.

[Brian Fowler]

The Gamora/Thanos stuff was perfect

[(BP)]

I just saw it, and I've been avoiding the thread and still need to wade back through it. All I'll say in general is that I liked it, it's better than the other two Avengers movies by a wide margin, but it still suffers from the problem I had with the others. It never feels like a complete film because of all of the narrative masters it has to serve. Again, it's probably as good as it could be given all of the moving parts involved. They handled the dozens of characters well, but it's still a lot like a multi-man ladder match where there's a lot of laying around while other participants do their spots, and you notice when a character's not on screen for awhile.

Also if I hadn't been conditioned to wait for stingers I wouldn't know that the post production supervisor was named Adam Cole.

Spoiler

Babay

 

[odessasteps]

I thought it felt more like a Silver Age JLA or GOlden Age JSA story where the team breaks into groups on a quest or stop bad guys at multiple places. 

[(BP)]

42 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I thought it felt more like a Silver Age JLA or GOlden Age JSA story where the team breaks into groups on a quest or stop bad guys at multiple places. 

That's definitely what they aimed for, but once the GOTG are introduced and then split up as well, a few major threads are dropped for what felt like a long time to focus mostly on them. They got where they needed to go though, to be fair.

Some other stray thoughts:

I was really impressed by the way they managed to interject so much humor without losing sight of the stakes and gravity of the situation. 

It has some of the best performances of any of the MCU films, even from actors who could be on autopilot after spending this much time with their characters. I never expected the realest scene I've watched this year to be between Thor and Rocket Racoon.

Ebony Maw was a delightful creep.

As far as the ending:

Spoiler

I think they presumed that since everyone knows the deaths won't stick, their best bet was to go with the least expected losses. A lot of people had this booked in their heads as the OG Avengers dying here to transition to the newbies. Instead, the core original members all survived and they lost a good chunk of the universe that has expanded around them.

Nearly all of the Guardians going was a genuine surprise, but I figure everyone's back by the end of the next Avengers, except for Gamora, who somehow gets Search For Spocked in GOGT 3. 

 

[odessasteps]

I'm sad we will have to part 2 to maybe see 

Spoiler

Pip the troll.

 

[Brian Fowler]

I'm impressed they structured it so

Steve and Tony never saw each other. If Tony would've just made the fucking phone call things might've gone better.

[Niners Fan in CT]

We saw it again earlier this evening and it was just as good as the first time.  I think Ruffalo was the only one on autopilot.  Maybe Scar Jo too though she didn't have much to work with.  I felt Chris Evans, RDJ, Chris Hemsworth,  Chris Pratt, etc.  were all fantastic.  

Also, after seeing it for the second time..  

 

The battle on Titan is the best action sequence since Winter Soldier and possibly the best in any comic book film. Everyone looked awesome and the various mini fights between characters and Thanos were crazy.

 

It's breathtaking.  It really is.  

[TheVileOne]

I just hope Howard the Duck is OK.

[odessasteps]

36 minutes ago, TheVileOne said:

 

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I just hope Howard the Duck is OK.

 

Spoiler

I wondered about him and Cosmo. 

 

[Brian Fowler]

About the "it's half a movie" thing

It is in reality, since we all know things are going to be reversed and what not. But it's actually a complete narrative as it stands as long as you accept the idea that it's a movie about Thanos. He had a quest and a goal, he faced great adversity, he persevered, finished his quest, defeated the army amassed against him, and achieved his goal.

[Niners Fan in CT]

[The Natural]

7 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

The Gamora/Thanos stuff was perfect

Hope they don't undo Gamora's death for that reason. Her's needs to stick with Loki's.

[The Natural]

3 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

We saw it again earlier this evening and it was just as good as the first time.  I think Ruffalo was the only one on autopilot.  Maybe Scar Jo too though she didn't have much to work with.  I felt Chris Evans, RDJ, Chris Hemsworth,  Chris Pratt, etc.  were all fantastic.  

Also, after seeing it for the second time..  

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The battle on Titan is the best action sequence since Winter Soldier and possibly the best in any comic book film. Everyone looked awesome and the various mini fights between characters and Thanos were crazy.

 

It's breathtaking.  It really is.  

I'd still give that accolade(c) Rusev Day to the Airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, then the two Captain America vs. Winter Solider battles from Captain America: The Winter Soldier with the personal nature between them. Then the Titan fight.