He meant ‘friendship’
7 Likes
FRIENDSHIP FRIENDSHIP AGAIN?
1 Like
I’ve been thinking about Thanos’s messiah-complex. I mean, the fact that he steadfastly believes in his own justice, that he alone can save the universe, et cetera, has been well-discussed elsewhere. What I thought was more interesting was that his master plan was very eschatological: have a lot of people miraculously die and somehow utopia.
Thanos claims that his idea of killing people at random is equitable, but really it strikes me as being part of the amoral-techno-capitalist mindset that steadfastly refuses to exercise any discernment between good and evil. In contrast, most traditional Judeo-Christian eschatological frameworks are inherently moral – attempted solutions to the problem of evil. They promise a day when the engines of social injustice will be conclusively destroyed, the rich eaten, the oppressed liberated, etc. While there’s still a terrible catastrophe at work in both cases, Thanos has no meaningful vision for a better universe that wouldn’t just repeat the same old mistakes.
Really, I read Thanos the character as a criticism of folks that pray for a cataclysmic end of the world to come soon, but are entirely uninterested in solving the underlying systemic causes to the problem(s) that they claim justifies said cataclysm.
(what i’m really saying is that i was really glad when that gaunt preacher-like fella died. screw that guy.)
7 Likes
I always get weirded out when people talk about Captain Marvel and after a beat I realize they don’t mean the Fawcett one.
yeah thanos really should have snapped his fingers and ended reproduction #antinatalismwar
2 Likes
Everyone he erased were actually Skrulls.
4 Likes
And frankly I keep expecting John Steed, then realize people are talking about fucking Thor.
1 Like
this was fairly watchable compared to age of Ultron, but I guess civil war was too and that still wasn’t a great movie or even an interesting way to tell this story. There’s way too many moving parts, the whole thing is just painfully incremental plot progression, like watching the fifth season of a once-decent prestige TV show that’s degenerated into neatly paced arcs.
it’s kind of a busted approach to filmmaking?
The action choreography was good and they got everyone to where they needed to be but even with that I don’t see how they can make something as decent as the first couple Captain America movies or Thor Ragnarok or guardians 1 with this much going on. Like, I’d be amazed if the new ant man isn’t basically better than this.
I agree with everyone pointing out what a baffling grab bag of characters they decided to kill
well, it’s being said that A4 will definitely be a more compact story focusing on the OG cast, who didn’t have a whole lot to do in this movie ('cept Tony) because of all the moving parts. so hopefully it will be a rousing and more character-based affair, even though I loved IW’s maximalism
1 Like
Malthusian supervillains are neat enough though the Gamora arc didn’t seem necessary or earned, I could’ve done with more Thanos being Thanos
It is great that they’ve made Thor such a fun character after starting out with that terrible Natalie Portman Kenneth Branagh thing
1 Like
also wasn’t there like an Android 17 equivalent sibling to scarlet witch? What happened to that guy?
fuck what they did to the Asgardians though, that better be some “we can put it all back with the dragon balls” shit for how much it cheapens the end of Ragnarok
I guess I am annoyed by the extent to which all of the actually worthwhile movies in this chronology which stand on their own are meant to align into these big crossover events which more often than not hurt the characters overall
3 Likes
I’m sure this has been posited by why wouldn’t he just use the megaglove to make more resources
5 Likes
God help me, I am about to go see this movie.
The next post in this thread will probably see me in some kind of projected self hatred spiral.
Brace yourselves.
I am kind of vaguely interested in seeing this, but I don’t really have the time or energy to watch all 18 other movies first. I also don’t really want to see it without doing so first, since I am pretty sure I will simply not care about any of what is happening, just like when I went to see Serenity without having seen any of Firefly.
I have only seen like 10 of the preceding movies and it didn’t have the slightest impact on this.
2 Likes
Hey, not bad.
No political imagination.
yeah the end of ragnarok being old mate losing his eye and his hammer and realizing that’s ok he’s the fkn god of thunder was rad and having the first thing he does in this one be to get another weapon and an eye feels trite
i did enjoy how Loki betrayed his nature and was punished for it though. but also awwww no
i wish there’d been more Bucky screentime but that haunted ‘where’s the fight?’ line was great and the fact he was the first to dissolve meant that there was a little bit of impact to it
1 Like
Gamora’s whole thing is that she’s a paternal abuse survivor. One of the central conflicts of being abused by a caregiver is being confused about whether they love you or what love is or if love matters, because the main person in your life who’s supposed to love you might not show it or show it in weird ways or it’s abundantly clear that love or no they only know how to hurt you.
So as a resolution to that sort of relationship, I actually found it pretty clever, and thought it was easily the best part of the movie (which you hated anyway, but yeah).
Gamora thinks she’s tricking Thanos, because he has nothing in the universe to sacrifice, but it turns out that he genuinely does love her. The execution of it was a little weak, since the fact that he actually does adore her was tipped pretty hard by, like, every preceding scene. But it’s a cool concept on an outline/scripting level, and they at least pulled it off as dramatic irony (we learn that Gamora truly doesn’t know what we knew all along, and that becomes her tragedy).
You could only do something like that with a Guardians character, since they’re the only cast that have emotional arcs that don’t boil down to “has a girlfriend” or “cares about justice, but too much?” I definitely think it was good that they were able to use that cast to lend Thanos a deeper arc than his basic bitch backstory.
3 Likes