Fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe generally know what to expect when they go to catch
the latest Marvel movie: a whole lot of entertainment and fun.
But with all that fun has come a share of sadness and tragedy.
These are just some of the darkest Marvel movie moments.
We all knew that Avengers: Infinity War was going to mess with our emotions.
Thanos was going to get center stage, he was on a mission to wipe out half of all life
in the universe, and there would be blood.
We were all prepared for the most straightforwardly grim experience the MCU had offered us thus
far.
What no one could have prepared for, at all, was the film's brutal opening scene.
As the survivors of the destruction of Asgard were cruising through space on their way to
their new home on Earth, the trip is interrupted by Thanos and his cronies, who had an inkling
that the Space Stone just might be aboard.
He's right; it is, of course, in the possession of Loki.
After Thanos makes it clear he's not screwing around by impaling Heimdall Loki attempts
to pull some of his signature trickery by offering up the stone - and then attempting
to stab Thanos in the throat.
It doesn't work.
The Big Purple Bad then seizes the beloved trickster god, who had endeared himself to
audiences for the last seven years, and straight up snaps his neck like a twig.
"NO!"
Now, that's cold blooded.
One of the more intense moments in Captain America: Civil War comes after Tony Stark's
MIT presentation.
Stark is cornered while waiting for an elevator by a woman named Miriam, the mother of a young
man who was killed during the Avengers' battle with Ultron in Sokovia.
Stark briefly misreads the conversation as an assassination attempt - and later, after
the Avengers are presented the Sokovia Accords by "Thunderbolt" Ross, we see that it stuck
with him in a major way.
As team members debate their response to the accords, Steve Rogers notes that Stark's uncharacteristic
silence likely means he had already made up his mind - and boy, is he right.
After cracking a few uneasy jokes while calling up a photo of a young man, Stark explains:
"He decided to spend his summer building sustainable housing for the poor.
Guess where?
Sokovia.
He wanted to make a difference, I suppose.
I mean, we won't know because we dropped a building on him while we were kicking ass."
These last two words were delivered with an immovable contempt that would soon collide
with Cap's unstoppable ideals, and Stark's jaw-dropping speech convinced half the team
in that one moment.
Its gotta suck to find out that the father of your date for the big dance is a supervillain
who sells alien weapons to the highest, slimiest bidder.
It's gotta suck even more when said date casually blabs key details of your activities that
clue dear old Dad in to the fact that you're the web-slinging hero who has been a huge
pain in his rear for the last couple weeks.
When Adrian Toomes sends his daughter, Liz, on in to the dance so he could give Peter
Parker the "dad talk" in Spider-Man: Homecoming, we have an idea what's coming, but it's still
brutal.
He starts off by acknowledging that Peter had saved his daughter's life, which is why
he decided to give Peter "one chance."
What a generous guy!
Then, displaying his understanding of just how important family really is, Toomes went
for the throat, threatening to kill Peter and everyone he loves if he got in the way.
"I'll kill you dead.
That's what I'll do to protect my family, Pete.
Do you understand?”
He then forces the skinny teen to thank him for saving his life, which probably gave a
whole legion of unbalanced dads new material for prom night.
Considering that it's a film that features the near-annihilation of the human race at
the steely hands of a killer artificial intelligence, it's a bit odd that the darkest moment in
Avengers: Age of Ultron comes before we've even seen the opening title card.
During the team's successful raid of a HYDRA compound where Loki's scepter - and the Mind
Stone within it - are being kept, the Avengers get a sneaky surprise from Pietro and Wanda,
AKA Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
As Pietro knocks around Hawkeye and Cap, Wanda discovers Tony Stark, who had infiltrated
the conquered compound, had eyes on the scepter.
She uses her power to show him a really disturbing vision.
Stark sees the Earth decimated, the Hulk struggling for life - and Thor and Black Widow dead as
doorknobs.
Captain America's shield lays busted in half with Cap unconscious nearby, and as Stark
goes to check his pulse, he awakens and utters words that would haunt Stark for the rest
of his life:
"You could have saved us."
Then, he dies, but his voice continues to implore, asking, quote, "Why didn't you do
more?"
Stark soon snaps out of it and seizes the scepter - but years later, this incident would
doubtlessly inform all of his future decisions, including his sacrifice at the climax of Endgame.
The very first MCU flick, Iron Man, pulls a neat trick in the slow reveal of its true
villain.
It's established early on that Howard Stark is no longer around, Tony's having kind of
a tough time shouldering his legacy, and that Obadiah Stane had sort of stepped into the
role of mentor and father figure for Tony.
Plus, he's played by Jeff Bridges!
The Dude, for crying out loud!
"You've got the wrong guy!
I'm The Dude, man!"
How could the Dude turn out to be the evil one in a movie where terrorists were forcing
people to build weapons of mass destruction under threat of death and attempting the wanton
slaughter of civilians?
But oh, Stane was indeed an evil Dude - enough so that even the lead terrorist, Raza, paid
with his life for trusting the guy.
On a fact-finding mission to the Middle East, Raza presents Stane with the remains of Stark's
Mark I armor, hoping he would be repaid with, quote, "a gift of iron soldiers."
Perhaps their common baldness lulled Raza into a false sense of security because he
totally fails to see the double-cross coming.
Stane incapacitates him before having his men snatch the armor and kill everybody - our
first indication that not only were his intentions less than noble, they were downright dastardly.
Erik "Killmonger" Stevens is among the MCU's greatest villains due to his interesting and
complex motivations and host of relatable qualities.
"How do you think your ancestors got these?
You think they paid a fair price?
Or did they take it, like they took everything else?"
Mercy, however, is not one of those qualities.
In Black Panther, when he challenges his cousin T'Challa for the throne and the title, we
were expecting a knock-down, drag-out brawl; we just weren't expecting "chuck-to-certain-doom-over-cliff"
to be added to that descriptor.
Although T'Challa proves formidable even stripped of the powers afforded him by the Heart-Shaped
Herb, it seems like Killmonger simply wanted it more.
After beating the ever-loving snot out of his relative, the man upon whom the notoriously
badass Navy SEALS bestowed the nickname "Killmonger" shows us all why he deserved that title.
He hoists T'Challa over his shoulders, and - in front of the king's friends, family,
countrymen, and presumably the spirits of his ancestors - flings him over the edge of
a cliff to the rocky riverbed below.
Although he survives - barely - we'll never be able to unsee the look on poor Shuri's
face when her beloved brother gets the ultimate heave-ho.
"No!"
"We have to go now!"
"No!"
"Queen Mother, let's go!"
Some said that a weird, comedic space opera featuring a super-ripped Chris Pratt, a talking
raccoon, and a living tree could never work.
They said that Marvel had finally bitten off more than it could chew, and that Guardians
of the Galaxy was destined to be the studio's first flop.
Instead, the 2014 film became another huge hit - and, more than any previous MCU effort,
a heaping helping of fun, with some genuinely emotional moments tossed in for good measure.
Of course, one of those emotions is wrenching anguish because Guardians is the happiest,
goofiest film to ever begin with a woman painfully dying of cancer right in front of her young
son.
"Peter…"
"Pete, come on."
"Take my hand."
The flick's opening goes a long way toward establishing the deep sadness underneath the
cocky, wisecracking exterior of Peter Quill, and it also went a long way toward making
us wonder if we had wandered into the wrong theater.
It was certainly a bold narrative choice, and it paid off in the film's climax, when
Quill has a vision of his dying Mom while grasping the Power Stone - a scene which jerked
all of the tears.
But after the absolutely brutal opening, it's kind of a wonder that anyone stuck around
for all the fun.
When it comes to family, Peter Quill just cannot catch a break.
His surrogate father figure, Yondu, spent most of his appearances in Guardians reminding
Quill that, after scooping him up from Earth the night of his mother's death, he had been
this close to literally feeding the young boy to his buddies.
"I saved your life."
"Oh. would you shut up about that?
God!
Twenty years, you've been throwing that in my face - like it's some great thing not eating
me!"
In the flick's 2017 sequel Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, it looked like Quill might
finally find true family by way of Ego, the Celestial and "Living Planet" who had come
down to Terra to have a fling with Quill's mother.
But as his Dad was in the middle of infusing him with the power of the Celestials, he casually
dropped a ridiculous hurt-bomb: specifically, the fact that he'd loved her - but he'd loved
his mission more.
And, because of that, he needed to be rid of her.
"It broke my heart to put that tumor in her head."
"What?"
Of course, this sent Quill into a blind rage, and with the help of the Guardians, he defeats
the cancer-causing planet.
His heart is then healed a bit by Yondu, who turns out to have been a big ol' softie when
he rescued Quill from certain death and delivered the iconic line …
"He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn't your Daddy!"
Then Yondu was promptly killed.
Seriously, this dude just can't catch a break.
So, uhh… let's just skip the whole "love-interest-killed-by-her-big-evil-purple-father" thing.
That's just way too much to handle right now.
If ever in the future there is a darker MCU moment than the Decimation and its aftermath,
probably no one wants to see it.
It's burned into the brains of every Marvel fan: the look on Thor's face when he realized
he'd blown it.
Steve Rogers kneeling over the pile of ashes that used to be his best friend.
Okoye watching her brave and noble king turning to dust.
Young Peter Parker, falling into the arms of Tony Stark and... okay, just no.
Sure, everyone was revived by Bruce Banner in Endgame, and we still don't want to think
about that.
"...I'm sorry."
But the real darkest part, literally and figuratively, is when Thanos basks in his victory on that
farm planet, and then... cut to black.
That's all, folks, movie over.
No Marvel fan will ever forget that sick, sinking feeling upon realizing that, yes,
this is how this movie ends.
It would be an entire freaking year before we got catharsis, before all those beloved
heroes would be brought back and our fanboy and fangirl hearts could be healed.
It was the single most traumatizing thing Marvel Studios ever did to us, but as long
as they keep the awesome movies coming, perhaps we can learn to forgive in time.
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