Avengers: Infinity War
Wow, what a film.
Honestly, the more time I've spent with it the more I love it.
It's probably gonna go down as my favorite movie of this year.
And considering Paddington 2 also came out this year, that's high praise.
Seriously, Patrick H. Willems is, right watch Paddington 2, it's terrific.
But Infinity War - it threaded the needle.
Took an impossible amount of characters and adapted an impossibly complicated story,
and made something pretty great.
And one of, if not the, most difficult feat the Russos managed to pull off
was making Thanos not only a threat worthy of this many heroes,
but a complicated character.
And I don't think there were any glaring issues with his characterization,
but I do think Thanos hinted at something in his conversation with Doctor Strange
that I wish he had followed up on.
A point that I think is worth making about Thanos' motivation and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So, if I could make one incredibly small change to Infinity War
(aside from the Thor one I made another video on while ago)
it would be this: Thanos should have made one more point to justify his actions.
Instead of telling you what I mean, I'll show you.
Here's the exact same scene with my new lines of dialogue added in.
It's not that many, just two or three.
I'm dubbing over all of the lines, excuse my impressions.
And it's worth noting that this could all come up in a future movie,
or there could be a good reason why Thanos doesn't make this point that will be revealed later on.
But based on everything we know now, I think it would have been worth mentioning in Infinity War.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) So, Titan was like most planets.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) Too many mouths, not enough to go around.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) And when we faced extinction, I offered a solution:
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange:) Genocide.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) But random, dispassionate fair to rich and poor alike.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) They called me a madman and what I predicted came to pass.
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange :) Congratulations your prophet.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) I'm a survivor.
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange:) And a murderer.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) At least I offer a solution.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) What's yours?
(Nando-as-Thanos:) Earth has technology. Great wealth. Your magic
(Nando-as-Thanos:) How many on your planets starve?
(Nando-as-Thanos:) What have you done about it?
(Nando-as-Thanos:) The Infinity stones are the greatest power in the universe,
(Nando-as-Thanos:) and up until today that power - the power to act -
(Nando-as-Thanos:) rested in the hands of the comfortable.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) The collector, Nova Prime, Odin, you.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) Your world will get worse, like Titan did. More will starve, die.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) But you won't, so nothing will change.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) When things get so dire that you decide to take real action,
(Nando-as-Thanos:) it'll be too late.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) Trust me. I've seen it before.
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange:) Your solution is to kill trillions.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) With all six stones, I could simply snap my fingers and they would call cease to exist.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) I call that mercy.
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange:) Why does it always have to come back to murder?
(Nando-as-Thanos:) Even with this and the stones I can only alter reality for a second,
(Nando-as-Thanos:) after that anything I create will disappear.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) I'm not a god, but anything I destroy will stay gone.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) This is the only way.
(Nando-as-Doctor Strange:) Then what?
(Nando-as-Thanos:) I finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful universe.
(Nando-as-Thanos:) The hardest choices require the strongest will.
(Nando-as-Nando:) So that's it.
Two new lines, but I think they do a lot.
First, they answer that nagging question I heard a lot of film Youtubers ask.
And, trust me, I love a good nitpick as much as the next guy, as evidenced by my podcast Mostly Nitpicking -
but I think the people nitpicking Thanos' plan kind of missed the point
when they asked why he doesn't create infinite resources?
First, in a conversation with Gamora, Thanos mentions that he believes the universe is finite,
so we can't just create stuff.
And second, whenever Thanos uses the reality stone to alter reality,
whatever he changes reverts back eventually.
It would stand to reason that if Thanos created more food, it wouldn't last.
So I think having Thanos make that point would be a good way to explain why he is so dead set on the snap.
He believes it's the only way to solve this problem.
But, more importantly, my other addition,
I wish Thanos had made the case, not just for his solution, but any solution.
Very briefly, Thanos touches on an idea in his original conversation with Strange.
Thanos says that his genocide is fair, because it's dispassionate and affects the rich and poor alike.
Which suggests that Thanos has opinions about class.
Probably informed by the way the lower class suffered more than the upper class during Titan's destruction.
And when you think about it, class and privilege in the Marvel Cinematic Universe are rarely explored,
but they are usually present.
Think about our Avengers:
Tony Stark is a billionaire, always has been.
Thor and T'Challa are royalty.
Strange was a rich surgeon.
Yeah, they've all struggled and each has suffered some personal tragedy.
But Thanos watched his entire planet die.
And so did Thor, but Thanos' took a lot longer.
Must have been decades of watching people around him die.
And because Thanos has experienced this different kind of struggle, his convictions are much stronger.
But that's not really new information.
What is new is how I believe Thanos would view the Avengers.
I believe privilege is a theme worth exploring in this movie,
because it helps to explain why the Avengers are wrong.
Of course Thanos is also wrong.
But I don't think Infinity War ever made the case against the Avengers?
And I think it should have.
For example, according to the official MCU timeline, Infinity War takes place in 2017,
seven years after the first Iron Man movie, which is supposed to have taken place in 2010.
Which means in 2010, Tony Stark created a small safe and incredibly powerful battery in his miniaturized arc reactor.
He is also able to use his repulsor technology to fly.
And he's also created a super advanced AI in Jarvis.
And yet seven years later, it doesn't seem like Tony has done anything with that technology.
Sure, Tony created more advanced Iron Man suits that he uses to fight evil aliens and super bots,
but that seems to be it.
We never see a train that uses repulsor technology or a hospital run by a Jarvis-style AI.
We only ever get two instances of anything similar to this.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Nick Fury tells Cap that the super mega death helicarriers
were designed using Stark repulsor technology.
And, in Avengers 1, Tony mentions that Stark Tower is going to be completely powered by his arc reactor.
But that's Tony's tower- the only person that benefits from Tony's technology is Tony.
And, yeah, Tony usually makes the argument that his technology would get into the wrong hands,
but that doesn't mean Tony destroys it.
He keeps it all for himself.
In Infinity War, Tony has apparently invented nanotechnology
that he can spray into a huge stab wound and completely heal himself,
but Tony doesn't seem interested in figuring out how to share that technology safely with the world.
There needs to be some middle ground between "everyone gets it" and "no one does".
And the Infinity Stones are the most extreme example of this disparity between the haves and the have-nots
of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Before Infinity War begins, the Infinity Stones - the most powerful objects in the universe -
sit in collections, in treasure rooms, in vaults, in jewelry, in super bots.
No one is proactively using them for anything useful.
The best that anyone can do with them is to use them reactively to solve problems.
But no one is using that power to make the world a better place.
And you could easily make the argument that, say,
using the Power Stone to power the entire planet of Xander would put everyone on the planet in danger,
that makes plenty of sense.
But let's say you're someone who is starving on Xander,
and you need that power to live.
Without it, you and your family will die.
You would look at the Nova Corps refusing to use the stone and say,
"You don't want to use the Infinity Stones to solve the problems of the people who have nothing,
because it will threaten what you have and that's not right.
You want to maintain the status quo, but the status quo isn't working for everyone."
A system like that is going to be disrupted eventually.
In this case, that disruption comes in the form of a Titan who wants to balance the universe.
Having Thanos explain this belief takes him from "I deserve the Infinity Stones" to
"I deserve the Infinity Stones and you don't."
And that personal connection makes him even more interesting.
I'm just saying having Thanos point out the Avengers inaction, not only strengthens Thanos' motivation,
but it explains why the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a Thanos in the first place.
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Couple people asked me, "Hey, where's the Incredibles 2 video?
It's coming. I'd say I'm about 90% done writing it.
But I've been doing a lot of traveling, just got back from almost 2 weeks in India.
So, I haven't been able to get that last 10% down.
So that's gonna come out soon.
But I figured in the meantime, I'd put out a video that I wrote a while ago, but never actually made.
As always, gotta plug my podcast, Mostly Nitpicking.
Me and my co-host DJ pick apart a pop culture thing every week by looking exclusively at the details.
This week we did the Robin Hood movie that is...amazing.
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