Never mind that Thor spends the majority of his screen time trying to get a new hammer after learning in the last film he never needed a hammer in the first place, the problem with the film is that it has so many pieces to put into place for the next movie that it never feels like a film so much as a collection of "things that need to happen." Gamora's death scene goes on for like five minutes and there is only one thing that can happen in this sequence: Gamora has to die for Thanos to get the thing he wants. We know that by the end of the film he'll succeed because that's where the whole thing is going, so the only interesting thing about it is the return of Red Skull because you're surprised they still remembered that character was part of this universe. But there are way too many sequences in the film where what is about to happen has no variables. Of course Peter Quill fucks it up because the heroes can't win at this moment, and it feels like they could have done something with that because he's fighting alongside a DUDE WHO WENT INTO THE FUTURE AND KNOWS WHAT QUILL WILL DO. It's a more interesting movie if they did win at that moment but then still lose. The problem is that in situations like this I don't bemoan the character making a dumb decision, because it feels more like a character being forced to do that because the writers painted themselves into a corner.
Another big problem is that they've established a number of these characters are essentially Gods - if not literally - and so to make it a fair fight, the film hopes we forget that. Vision suddenly can't do shit for no apparent reason other than if he behaved as he has in other movies, the film would end. Hulk usually only gets angrier the more he fights, and it seems the only way to stop him is to make him return to being Banner or possibly choking him out. But here he just loses and it's meant to be a game changer, but it feels like they've made him weaker without justifying the why of it. This continues the trend of the last couple Hulk appearances where they keep trying to make the act of transforming back and forth more volatile for the character, but the problem is that he's Hulk. We came to see him Hulk. And unless this is some meta commentary, "are you not entertained?" shit, Hulk smash. Just as I wouldn't go to a Right Said Fred concert and wonder if they're going to play "I'm Too Sexy," trying to make dramatic hay over if Banner will be able to transform back into the Hulk is a waste of everyone's time.
But that ties into another of big problems with the movie: It's not a movie, it's a half movie. And so Banner doesn't Hulk out in the big fight at the end of this movie, because he's going to have to Hulk out at the end of the next movie (which is actually the end of this movie), and maybe in the next one he'll have learned an important lesson, like that he's always angry. Or maybe they'll kill him. But probably not because - as the film underlines when Thor muses about how Loki's been dead before - it's hard to say that anything that happened in this film counts, and Marvel seems deathly scared of icing off anyone. Removing half the cast is the same as not removing any of them, even if it makes scheduling easier for the next film. It's not just that Black Panther is coming off the most successful Marvel film ever made (at least domestically), it's that you might believe and be emotionally charged by the death of Tony Stark or Winston Duke's M'Baku, but you know when they "kill off" Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Falcon, The Winter Soldier, Dr. Strange, Groot, The Scarlet Witch, etc. that it's just a narrative ruse. Which then opens the door to all the deaths in the film being reversible, which makes the Gamora scene all that more intolerable because it too will likely not count. And to this the marketing and buzz kind of fucked the movie because they said "stakes" and we though "oh, they're finally going to kill either Tony or Steve" but then they didn't in this film and so when they do it for real in the next one, and I have zero doubt we're going to get at least one if not multiple "my contract is over, time to die a hero" moments in the next film, it's going to sting a little because it should have already happened.
This also sets up what will likely be the biggest problem with the next Avengers movie: it's going to spend the whole movie reversing the events of this film. It's going to be a two hour plus movie of getting the survivors and Captain Marvel together in some way to take on Thanos and reverse what he did to save everyone else, and they'll succeed but at a price. There is no way I'm wrong about this. The way this film ends, that's the only movie they can make as a follow up. And it makes Infinity War useless because nothing that happens in it really matters other than locations. The film functions as a trailer for the next movie, as we've seen in these poorly bifurcated narratives.
The funny thing is that Marvel usually avoids these sort of narrative pitfalls, even if their early movies suffered from similar lunkheaded obvious plotting (see for instance: the first Thor, or don't, it's bad). While watching Infinity War this time I thought about how much more entertaining it would be to see the Avengers throw a house party. That would be a better Marvel movie because it would be more in the spirit of what had come before. This was almost like an attempt at a DC movie. And sadly, I would rather watch Justice League. Let me explain...
TO BE CONTINUED
