[Tell me his name again.]
[Thanos.]
Avengers: Infinity War ended on a mind-bending cliffhanger
that left fans stunned in their seats.
This is the first movie of a two-part conclusion
to the MCU’s first decade.
And instead of giving us any resolution,
Infinity War leaves a big mes to be resolved in the 2019 Avengers movie.
So what can we make of what happens at the end of Infinity War?
And what’s the deeper meaning of it all?
[If he gets his hands on all six stones, Tony --]
[He can destroy life on a scale hitherto undreamt of.]
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Supervillain Thanos sets out to capture all six Infinity Stones,
and despite the best efforts of all of the MCU’s heroes,
Thanos succeeds, one stone at a time.
[This...heh heh heh... does put a smile on my face.]
He’s stolen the Power Stone before the movie starts.
In the opening scene, Loki gives him the Tesseract/Space Stone,
to save his brother Thor.
Next Thanos gets the Reality Stone from the Collector at Knowhere,
and he captures his adopted daughter Gamora by tricking her with a fake reality.
After Thanos threatens to kill her sister Nebula,
Gamora leads him to the Soul Stone.
That’s when things start getting tricky for Thanos,
because the Soul stone requires you to sacrifice someone you love --
so he kills his favorite daughter.
Up to this point, Dr. Strange, Tony Stark and Peter Parker
have just about managed to keep the Time Stone
out of Thanos’ gauntlet.
[I'm Peter by the way.]
[Dr. Strange.]
[Oh, we're using our made up names.
Then I'm Spider-Man.]
and they’ve brought the fight to Thanos’ homeworld of Titan.
Strange uses the Time Stone to watch millions of possible outcomes for their situation
--
he reports there’s only one outcome where their team wins.
[Let's talk about this plan of yours.
I think it's good except it sucks.
so let me do the plan and that way it might be really good.]
After their plan to steal the Infinity Gauntlet fails
when Peter Quill flies into a rage over Gamora’s murder,
Thanos almost kills Tony.
Then Strange gives Thanos the Time Stone in exchange for Tony’s life.
This is an extremely significant moment because Strange made such a big deal
of saying he wouldn’t do this --
earlier in the movie, he announced that he would let Tony and Peter die
before he went against his oath to protect the Time Stone.
[If Thanos needs all six, why don't we just stick this one
down the garbage disposal?]
[No can do.]
[We sworn an oath to protect the Time Stone with our lives.]
So the reversal suggests that Strange has something up his sleeve.
He must have seen in his vision that, in the only possible winning outcome,
Tony has to be alive, and Thanos needs to get the Time Stone.
The final stone left that Thanos needs is the Mind Stone,
which is embedded in Vision’s forehead.
Shuri tries to extract the Mind Stone while keeping Vision alive,
but she runs out of time with the accelerating attack on Wakanda
by Thanos’ army.
So the Scarlet Witch has to resign herself to destroying the Mind Stone and Vision with
it.
After she does, it seems Thanos’ mission
has failed --
but then, Thanos uses the Time Stone to rewind,
bringing Vision back to life to rip the Mind Stone from his forehead.
With all six stones in his gauntlet, Thanos snaps his fingers,
and many of our heroes start to disintegrate into thin air,
including Black Panther, Peter Parker, Doctor Strange, the Winter Soldier
and the remaining Guardians except for Rocket.
In the post-credits scene, we see Nick Fury, Maria Hill
and civilians disappearing as well.
So it appears that Thanos’ stated goal of wiping out half the universe
is coming to pass.
A big part of the shock of this ending is that the wrong characters disappear.
The characters many expected to die
who are played by actors whose contracts are about to end
stayed intact --
Tony Stark, Captain America, all of the original Avengers.
Meanwhile, newer characters with planned sequels disappeared.
There’s no way those sequels aren’t happening --
especially now that Black Panther is one of the highest-grossing films of all
time --
so this fact alone tells us that the disappearing we saw won’t stick.
We get the sense there’s going to be a way to undo what’s just happened.
We even saw Thanos use the Time Stone to undo the destruction of the Mind Stone.
So clearly the outcome Dr. Strange saw includes some time-travel
or alternate situation-hopping.
In the Infinity Gauntlet comic, Thanos’ finger snap happens as well,
but it’s far from the end of the story.
Nebula gets the Infinity Gauntlet back from Thanos and rewinds time.
The last three stones Thanos obtains are the Soul Stone, Time Stone
and finally the Mind Stone --
so there’s a suggestion that these three are the most crucial and symbolic.
The Soul Stone we know is sentient, so may have its own agenda
that could be crucial to any future reversal of events.
It’s little obvious and easy to just get the Time Stone
to rewind and undo what we saw,
so maybe the Soul Stone will really be the key
to bringing back the disintegrated characters --
and given that the Soul Stone requires a sacrifice,
we can even imagine a scenario where the original Avengers
have to sacrifice themselves for the younger characters.
The Time Stone is used to save Tony,
the very first protagonist of the MCU --
Tony gets more time and more life,
while many of the people he cares about
get their time snatched away,
and it’s very clear that's not what he wants.
But the idea that Tony needs to be alive for the plan to succeed
is a way of honoring the character's place in the MCU,
as he made it what it is today.
The importance placed on the Mind Stone symbolizes that our minds
are truly our most powerful tools, the crucial core of who we are --
mind here seems to mean more than simple intellectual power.
Perhaps, similar to how Vision’s identity is described in the movie,
our minds, too, are made up of multiple layers shaped by our experiences
and by the people who’ve made us into what we’ve become.
And there’s a message here that we need to put our minds together
to solve the greatest threats to humankind.
[How do we do this?]
[As a team.]
Thanos' name comes from the Greek word for death, thánatos.
In Greek mythology, Thanatos is the personification of death,
so it’s as if the Avengers and co.
are fighting death itself.
In the comics, Thanos is in love with the female manifestation of death
and his quest for the Infinity Stones is all about impressing her.
Jim Starlin, who created the character of Thanos,
said he was inspired by Freud’s theory that humans have two conflicting drives,
Eros and Thanatos.
Eros is the life instinct, including the sex drive
and the desire to survive, both as individuals and as a species.
Thanatos is the death instinct, which includes our destructive impulses.
Freud believed Eros and Thanatos, or the life and death instincts
were constantly struggling against each other,
and each needed the other to exist.
This is a big theme we see in Infinity War, too.
We see Thanos teaching young Gamora about the importance of balance in the universe.
And the movie is exploring this question of what happens
if either the life impulse, i.e. population,
or the death impulse, i.e.
Thanos,
gets too powerful.
Incidentally, in the comics, Thanos even has a brother called Eros.
Thanos' philosophy is that the universe is overcrowded
and the only way to ensure sustainable life is genocide --
but he advocates random genocide that affects all,
rich and poor, equally.
[When I'm done, half of humanity will still exist.]
Thanos ideas sound like an extreme version of the writings of Thomas Malthus.
In 1798, Malthus warned of the dangers of population growth outstripping food supply,
and he discussed means of population control.
His ideas caused great controversy, but Malthusianism influenced many later thinkers
including the likes of Charles Darwin and economist John Maynard Keynes.
Thanos’ ideas also echo Utilitarianism, the ethical theory that the right action
is the one that produces the most good for the majority --
in Utilitarianism, an action is good or bad entirely based on its consequences.
The heroes of Infinity War staunchly reject Thanos' utilitarian mindset.
What matters to them is not just the consequences
but doing the right thing in itself, in the moment.
They repeatedly tell each other that they don't "trade lives" --
that’s why they try everything possible to save Vision
when it would be safer to kill him and destroy the Mind Stone earlier.
It's also why when heroes are forced to choose between giving up a stone or a person they
love,
they give up the stone --
even though that’s an illogical decision which will probably lead to more deaths.
There are two exceptions to this, when good characters do try to kill
the person they love --
the Scarlet Witch destroying Vision,
and Peter Quill fulfilling his promise to kill Gamora if Thanos captures her,
even though Thanos doesn’t let that actually happen.
Both Scarlet Witch and Peter are making this sacrifice
on the urging of their loved one, as a show of love,
in stark contrast to Thanos’ sacrifice of the unwilling Gamora.
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has said that Thanos is, quote,
“the main character” of Infinity War.
So the villain of this movie is also the protagonist --
we follow his quest, and we come to understand
he truly believes he's doing something selfless for the good of the universe.
He makes sacrifices for his cause.
After the finger snap, he sees the child Gamora --
perhaps in the place where her soul is now --
and she asks him what his quest cost.
He responds, “Everything.”
Then Thanos is transported to a beautiful, peaceful setting.
This fits into what happens in the Infinity Gauntlet comic,
where Thanos eventually becomes a farmer.
So even though he’s been on this destructive quest,
What Thanos actually wants is to live in peace and quiet --
his ultimate goal was really to minimize chaos, and to create order and balance.
[What I like about Thanos is, he's this, you know, guy who
is presented in one way, and then the reality of him, I think,
is a lot deeper what people are expecting.]
Thanos reminds us a little of the villain of Black Panther,
Erik Killmonger.
Both are scarred by their pasts --
Killmonger, by the racism and injustice of his Oakland childhood;
And Thanos, by overpopulation wreaking havoc on his home.
We can pity them both for what they experienced,
and we can go along with some of the logic in their thinking.
But both are so damaged that they’ve become dehumanized and unable to see
that their missions are wrong, with terrible consequences.
[The world took everything away from me!
But I'ma make sure we're even.]
It’s as if these villains are the complex aftermaths
of our past and our intrinsic struggles as a species coming after us.
Infinity War co-director Joe Russo explained that he wanted Thanos to be, quote,
“a Darth Vader for a new generation.”
In Star Wars, Vader represented the older generation
trying to kill the younger --
but Vader ultimately realizes that he’s at odds with nature,
and sacrifices himself for his son.
[I'll not leave you here.
I've got to save you.]
[You already have.]
Through Thanos, the MCU is grappling with Star Wars-esque thematic questions
of old and new,
and death giving way to new life --
that’s a self-reflective process, as the studio looks back
at the larger-than-life heroes it’s built over the last ten years.
But even though Thanos says that his genocide is random,
the results we see at the end are not --
it’s a clever switch by the Russo brothers
to erase the characters we expected were safe
because they’re the future of the MCU,
while keeping around characters we thought were done for.
The switch inspires one possible, more out-there way to read the ending --
what if the people who didn’t disintegrate are the ones who really died?
What if we’re in some strange alternate reality
in which we’re seeing the dead ones?
More likely, the people who survived are alive for now
and they're going to play a crucial role to fix things in the next movie --
but those still living are mostly the ones who are marked
for death or retirement in the final chapter.
Tony Stark, if he makes it out alive, may be ready to start a family with Pepper.
At the beginning of this movie, he said dreamt about having a kid
and felt it was already true --
so that could be a prophecy if it's not a reflection
of his existing relationship with Peter Parker.
And Chris Evans has been open about being ready to move on.
When Thanos stabs Tony, we think Tony is going to die --
instead we end up watching his surrogate son Peter Parker disintegrate in his arms.
So the movie shows us what it would feel like to lose Tony,
[I hope they remember you.]
then shows us how much more wrong it feels
to see a younger hero go down in Tony’s place.
As much as fans may dread the deaths of the beloved original MCU heroes,
it’s natural and inevitable for them to step aside.
The horror of the disintegration scene is the unnaturalness of seeing the young erased
to preserve the old.
The subtext of these two Avengers movies
is that the old heroes need to make room for the new.
After watching the wrong heroes get taken out,
we may be more ready to accept
that in the next movie, older MCU characters will die,
or retire from the main stage, and that’s how it should be.
It’s also symbolic here that the older generation is preventing the future for the younger --
the older have quite literally messed up the world.
Thanos, with his mission that comes out of the pain he experienced on Titan,
is imposing the baggage of his past onto the next generation --
he literally takes the future from his daughter.
So now -- for one more movie -- it’s up to the elders to fix their mess
and make it sll right.
Nick Fury’s distress call to Captain Marvel in the post-credits scene
also hints that the next Avengers movie will be about passing the torch
to the next generation.
Feige has said that Captain Marvel will be, quote,
“by far the most powerful character we've ever introduced in the movie.”
And in Infinity War, we also saw Tony officially making Peter Parker an Avenger,
[Alright, kid, you're an Avenger now.]
a son to carry on his father’s legacy.
And that brings us to another major message in the movie --
the significance of family -- either the one you’re born into
or the one that you form.
There’s a lot to speculate about,
but it’s safe to say the characters who faded into dust
will most likely be coming back --
in the comics, the Soul Stone houses an alternate “pocket universe”
where the souls are trapped --
so it’s possible all the people who disintegrated are there now
or in some kind of alternate universe.
Even the style of their supposed deaths -- fading into dust --
is so un-heroic it really feels like something other than true death here.
One possibility is we've entered an alternate reality
where these people have been erased and have never existed at all.
Still, we did see some permanent sacrifices --
the characters who died by other means like Loki and Heimdall seem to be really gone.
Gamora and Vision may be permanently gone, too,
but it’s not certain,
especially since Zoe Saldana hinted she’s in the next movie.
For all the shock of Infinity War’s roller-coaster ending,
it’s really a hypothetical.
When we finally do get confirmed deaths of major players in the final installment,
this will be a rare experience in today’s sequel-driven blockbuster environment.
We’re unused to seeing studios kill off money-making characters --
Rogue One is one of the few examples in recent years where main characters,
who weren’t reaching old age, died.
So it will be an especially powerful moment when we get a final end for beloved characters
and truly close the door on the first chapter
of the greater MCU mythology.
[This is it.
What's our timeline?]
[No telling.]
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