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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
I mean, that would be like saying that Optimus death in Transformers the movie loses all its impact knowing that he comes back later.
...or you know, saying that Infinity War has no impact if you know what happens in the comics it's inspired from and can make a guess of what will happen on the next movie, which, many post when the movie came out of tropers which already read the comic can tell, it didn't lose any impact at all.
For what it's worth, I have seen someone say that a good metric for a plot twist's quality is rewatch value. For example, on a rewatch, there should be considerable dramatic irony and tension created by that fact. Knowing it's going to happen doesn't necessarily diminish what's happening, it just creates a different type of enjoyment.
I would argue a good plot twist is also one that seems obvious in hindsight. Your response to a good plot twist should generally be "Oh my God, why didn't I see that coming?" and upon a rewatch, you should notice a lot of foreshadowing you didn't realize earlier.
Leviticus 19:34My problem is with the movie hyperfocusing on the twist. Thanos coming to Earth is the main threat, yes, but so much effort is put into the "not letting him get the stones" bit that it takes away from the overall movie.
Drax, for instance, is mostly reduced to comic relief, and his wanting to get revenge on Thanos for his wife and daughter is mostly glossed over. I think the only time he mentions them is when he goes Leeroy Jenkins on Knowhere.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrThat's all the Guardians, though. It comes off more as the Russos specifically wanting Gamora and Nebula for their connection to Thanos, and having no idea what to do with the rest of them.
So they all are nigh entirely played for comic relief, are generally portrayed as even more idiotic than in their own series most just for the sake of filling time with jokes, and none of them get much dramatic resolution when Endgame comes around (unless you count the blink and you'll miss it split second of Rocket and Groot hugging in the midst of everyone else getting blown up).
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But by that metric Thanos winning isn't a twist. We know since the beggining that the movie can end two ways, Thanos getting all the stones a si the snap, or the heroes stop him.
Just because until then the heroes always won doesn't make Thanos snap a twist.
Thanos converting half the universe in food or resources instead of dust would kind of be, as we didn't see it coming but it makes sense with his motives.
Honestly they should just ended his revenge arc with Ronan. His beef with Thanos just felt tacked on to cater the comics fans.
As for the jokes, well you can't blame all of them as it's just the characters being them most of the time. But I agree some of the jokes are pushing the comic relief to far in a character.
Edited by eligram on Aug 15th 2020 at 8:53:24 AM
Guardians 1 Drax was a pretty different character from Guardians 2 and on Drax, also.
Guardians 1 Drax is effectively a Blood Knight who is driven by revenge but is clearly unsatisfied with the vengeance he's already gotten, and continues to find new targets because he doesn't know what else to do with himself.
This is not followed up on, even in the sequel.
Sequel Drax is more of a Blood Knight-lite. Loves to fight, but isn't motivated by revenge any more. He comes off more as a guy who found people who finally let him enjoy life, and who is more or less at peace despite his painful memories. More "boisterous Viking" than "vengeful warrior."
Which transparently pushes the narrative stuff about him out of the way in order to focus on the funny.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 15th 2020 at 5:54:24 AM
More or less. His thing now is having no filter and just saying blatantly whatever he thinks.
I can kind of understand that, though. Writing a character around being literal in every conversation is probably one of those character choices that was dropped more because it was hard to keep up.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Aug 15th 2020 at 6:21:24 AM
I think the general approach to both Infinity War and Endgame was mostly just group as many characters as possible into as few storylines as possible, all while maximizing the visibility of each character. It would be near impossible to give everyone a character arc, extremely difficult to let everyone have an opinion on the situation based on their unique personality, but relatively easy to let everyone get a one-liner. By that account it worked to give everyone's favorite character a moment, but was certainly not tonally consistent and you tended to have a lot of frantic rambling at each other rather than actual talking and communication.
Hulk definitely felt wasted. I'd probably blame not being able to make independent movies for him. Still, it's a bummer they basically just killed off the Hulk side of his personality without even a proper sendoff. Especially given he'd been getting some development with Ragnarok and Infinity War.
Edited by FGHIK on Aug 16th 2020 at 4:11:35 AM
Trying to rewatch Infinity War when it was on Netflix did make me realize "man, these scenes went on longer than I thought."
And while Hulk can feel wasted, it worked to establish how big a deal Thanos was and how sometimes having a Hulk just isn't enough.
And oh my god, that ending. I knew some people were going to go down, but apparently I underestimated how hard were they going to hit. Turns out they were aiming to hit HARD. Seeing all those heroes (especially Spider-Man!) turning to dust is never not going to haunt me.
Yeah, them killing off Present Day Thanos so quickly and replace him with a far less engaging version who has little to no connection to the cast is one of the biggest reason on why I prefer Infinity War to Endgame.
Edited by Forenperser on Aug 16th 2020 at 9:21:20 PM
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Yeah.
Speaking of the stakes being higher, once you know what happens in Endgame, Infinity War loses pretty much all of its impact. It feels like the producers were banking on the Downer Ending as the big impactful thing in the movie, but that removes all its rewatch value once you know the twist, because that was one of the only things given a lot of focus.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my Tumblr