It's weird to see you ridicule shows like TWD and GoT as overly-reliant on main character deaths to drive the plot, and then say that the MCU does and/or should do the same thing, rather than be glad that it actually doesn't.

well, my problems with TWD and GoT are plentiful and go well-beyond just how they execute their deaths, but i never said the MCU should treat death just like either of those shows, because that would be going from one extreme (no one ever dies EVER) over to the opposite extreme (people die constantly for no reason), when what i'm asking for is a middle ground

"good guys survive, bad guys die" has been THE formula for the past 10 years since the beginning of the MCU, and the problem with formulaic superhero movies is that all tension is lost when you realize that they all end tend to end the exact same way, because it starts to feel like they aren't even CAPABLE of being killed off for cynical corporate reasons which reside outside of the film's narrative

which is why it's so incredibly refreshing for infinity war to do something different, because suddenly, there's a character who's actually powerful enough to take on these seemingly invincible people and introduce real, palpable consequence to the story

the problem i see with TWD and GoT is that they don't seem to have any discernible method for who and how they kill their characters--it feels random and arbitrary, like a soap opera, which, sure, adds tension in the laziest and most superficial way, but it's unearned and there's no lesson, message, or anything to take way from that death other than "oh no, my favorite character died for basically no reason, hopefully he actually lived somehow"

or my favorite, "hahaha finally that stupid bitch is dead, i'm so glad they finally killed her off she was so annoying"

whereas gamora's death feels a lot more earned imo because there was a lot of foreshadowing and emotional build-up towards it, so that when it finally happened, it may not have been what you wanted see, but since it rhymes with the last phrase in the quatrain, it feels more like poetry than it does drama for the sake of drama

i'm not saying the deaths in this movie were the most poetic things in history, but at least with gamora's death alone, there was a lot more going on than what is usual for marvel, because to know that thanos is willing to kill his own daughter, the only person in the universe he's been shown to give a fuck about, let's the audience know just how far he's willing to sink morally to achieve his ends, and yeah, that's some heavy shit

it's certainly heavier than WOOOOAH THAT WAS SO UNEXPECTED, THIS SHOW IS SOOOO CRAZY

loki's death at the beginning too served the same general purpose, but it happens at the beginning, which is obviously the movie's way of saying, "yeah, he's actually going to start fucking up some shit now, so be afraid"

the ones who died during thanos's purge felt more random, except for the fact that they let all the original avengers live, which is why i found these deaths a lot less emotionally satisfying, because the only thing to take away from the ordeal is "wow, thanos wasn't bullshitting" yet at the same time, by killing spider-man AND all the guardians of the galaxy, they're telegraphing their punches, and you can kinda see the corporate strings being pulled unfortunately

you don't have to keep track of marvel's itinerary to know that ALL these dudes are getting resurrected anyway, and like maverick said, if they didn't kill off the most popular and biggest moneymakers in the entire franchise, it would've been much more subtle and believable, especially when all of those characters still have arcs to finish

what they should've done is kill iron man the MOMENT thanos stabbed him, which is what everybody thought was gonna happen anyway, and it felt super earned with the music abruptly stopping the moment it happened, with tony looking defeated as fuck and everything

they also could've killed cap, because his story arc is over anyway, and even if he's still capable of fighting, he's a shell of his former self, which is kinda sad to watch (in a good way, but still in a way that tells me you don't need to keep this character alive anymore if we're going to start wiping names off the board)

so however they end up resurrecting these guys, i hope they go about it in an artistically tasteful way, because that would be totally awesome, but i'm not holding my breath

but yeah, that's what i mean by stakes i guess--there's no stakes in TWD or GoT because there comes a point (in my mind, at least) where you start realizing what the show is all about, and you stop giving a fuck as a result, because why would you emotionally invest yourself in these characters if they're just going to die a pointless and random death

i'm sure there are some deaths in those shows that are actually earned and do have some genuine poetry to them, for lack of a better term, but there's simply not enough of those moments for me to take those shows seriously

TL;DR
though i do believe that the threat of permanent character death is, for me, the primary emotional pivot of the MCU at this time, it's also important to me that the deaths don't feel arbitrary and serve some kind of narrative purpose

the last thing i want is for the MCU to start over-compensating for the lack of death, because my problem with the franchise has never been "why don't people die," per se; it's been "why don't people EVER die"

the next movie could have 0 deaths and i'll be completely okay with that, because at this point, i can only think about how they're going to handle the inevitable resurrections, which i'm not wholly against as a concept in this universe; i'm just hoping they play it smart

the ones who did see it seemed to have all thought it was a joke or an act and forgot about it by the time they saw the movie, though, so that's good i guess

LMAO

Mark Ruffalo is so fucking stupid holy shit

...un fucking believable

it was stupid enough when he said "like every other marvel movie it doesn't end well" and i thought that was gonna be the end of the video

how any one of us avoided seeing that for the year long this has been uploaded is pretty incredible though--good guy youtube algorithm?

But it's gotten to the point where he will literally overanalyze an irrelevant movie mistake or some trivial character flaw for twenty minutes and then totally forget to actually, you know, review the film. He's virtually incapable of suspending his disbelief over such frivolous details at this point.

Take his latest two YMS reviews for example. A Quiet Place and RPO. I haven't seen RPO, but his Quiet Place review was a fucking joke. He spent at least a good 50% of the review picking apart character decisions he thought were flawed, when in fact, were quite easily explained throughout the film had he been paying attention. Then he had the fucking gaul to use the "you're just not using ur brain ugh ugh plebs" card.

Nothing of structure was mentioned. Nothing about character development nor overall entertainment value were examined. I think he briefly touched upon acting for a couple seconds and then immediately went into his autistic nitpicking frenzy.

It's fine to point out plot holes or details you found were a little hammy, but if it literally consumes your entire experience of the film then I'm sorry to say, the issues lie with you, not the movie.

i don't really have a dog in the AQP fight because i haven't seen that movie, but he did just upload an addendum to that review where he reclarifies himself, and admits he was wrong about a few things, so there's that

having seen RPO, however, i thought he gave it a pretty fair review (even if it kinda just boiled down to him calling the movie "dumb" a lot, because it was)

it's not that i don't understand where you're coming from, though, because i tend to feel the same way you do about his babadook review, where he spent several minutes harping on a couple of scenes that had shoddy, less-than-perfect cuts and acted like it was the most distracting and unforgivable thing ever, and never even bothered to discuss any of the film's themes, which was pretty obnoxious

but at the same time i think it's okay for people to have their personal tendencies when it comes to art critiques--not everyone cares or is even capable of giving an all-encompassing look at the movies they see, which i think is great, because it means i'm not always going to hear the same exact opinions regurgitated over and over again, and i can always trust adam to bring something new to the table even if we disagree

Adam from YMS is the exact same, and it's obnoxious as fuck.

i would agree in general, but not so much in re adam

he tends to revile "critics" like cinemasins for doing that sort of thing and making it their gimmick, because it's poisonous for film criticism

when adam nitpicks, he's pretty good at finding ways to justify why it matters to him, and it often boils down to 1.) what the director was intending to do, and 2.) what the film itself is trying to accomplish, and sometimes, it's the little minute details (like having the foresight to tell actors to shout during a scene that will have loud music added later in post, a la The Social Network club scene) that show just how much, or how little, a director cared to go that extra mile

and yeah, sometimes, those minute details can definitely undermine the director's vision, and the lack of foresight or general laziness of it is certainly worthy of criticism

for him, it's about good artistry, and he's never really gotten terribly annoying with that imo

but when cinemasins does it, it's just autism for the sake of autism, and you can tell there's no real rhyme or reason for it

i wasn't even thinking about the advantages, i just think it's generally more fun that way

there are only two reasons people seem to hate fortnite

bullet spread is too random and the playerbase has more children

neither of which are valid reasons to dismiss the game entirely

I feel like the Walking Dead and Game of Thrones mindset has really affected how people judge comic movies. Why do characters have to die for there to be stakes? It's not like the characters have remained static throughout the films.

because that's what the movies are all about--it's good vs. evil, and there's no better way to introduce stakes than to just kill someone off, because it takes another piece off the chessboard, and that kinda inherently makes the game more interesting

there's just something dramatically pleasing about the finality of a character's death in ways that simply wounding them or taking away their weapons can't replicate

this character you've seen triumph in the past several times is now gone, so you're left wondering how the heroes are going to carry on without them

the avengers "splintering off" in civil war doesn't have nearly the same effect, because surprise surprise, they all just wound up teaming back up again anyways, and nobody was expecting (or wanting to see) anything else happen

cap and thor losing their signature weapons didn't matter because they just got new biggerer and bettererer ones anyway

killing heroes is the only real way to have stakes in a story as ultimately simple as a comic book story, because it's the easiest, most classic/tried-and-true, and most dramatically satisfying way to demonstrate that these godlike figures we call superheroes (whom we've been following for 10 years) aren't unstoppable, because the norm up until now has been that it doesn't matter how badly someone gets beat up in these movies--they will ALWAYS pull a rabbit out of their hat somehow

Quote from: Shhhhhh on May 01, 2018, 01:09:33 PM

Quote from: challengerX on May 01, 2018, 12:20:09 PM

Quote from: Shhhhhh on May 01, 2018, 11:43:10 AM

Quote from: Mordo on May 01, 2018, 11:38:17 AM

Quote from: Shhhhhh on May 01, 2018, 10:10:11 AM

Quote from: Eli on April 28, 2018, 02:56:25 PM

I don't understand how the ending was "gutsy."

you're pretty much alone on that

Erm, not really.

Probably about 90% of the characters that died have confirmed sequels in the pipeline. The original Avengers remained untouched. You can pretty much see the Deus Ex Machina coming from a mile away.

So it's a legitimate opinion to have, and I too share it.

i choose to evaluate every film i see in a vacuum

YouTube

That's the type of person who shares your opinion

pedophile

Quote from: Shhhhhh on May 01, 2018, 10:10:11 AM

Quote from: Eli on April 28, 2018, 02:56:25 PM

I don't understand how the ending was "gutsy."

you're pretty much alone on that

Erm, not really.

Probably about 90% of the characters that died have confirmed sequels in the pipeline. The original Avengers remained untouched. You can pretty much see the Deus Ex Machina coming from a mile away.

So it's a legitimate opinion to have, and I too share it.

i choose to evaluate every film i see in a vacuum

my audience was relatively respectful, except for this one dude behind me who kept whisper-shouting "YESSS" every single time a familiar face debuted

a couple of you guys brought up steve not getting much screen time

i completely disagree, i think he received all the screen time he needed, and his story is pretty much over at this point anyway

i feel more sorry for black panther fans, because we didn't really get to see him do much black panthering (and he looks ridiculous running around in that suit in broad daylight, which is the only time you ever saw it in this movie)

not to mention, my personal favorite avenger was not present at all, but i'm not gonna complain about that, given the film's already congested roster

Spoiler

>Why didn't Thanos just use the gauntlet to create infinite resources?
like charlie said, he almost destroyed the gauntlet just by doing what he chose to do, so it seems reasonable enough to assume that creating an infinitude of something (let alone multiple things) would be asking far too much, even for the stones' power

>Why didn't the heroes just try to cut off his arm?
how
with what
even if it were possible, why would that be anyone's first thought when the dude's arms were fucking enormous, and they had a much easier time incapacitating him (relatively speaking) and slipping the gauntlet off anyway

>Why didn't War Machine just fly outside the shield and carpet bomb most of the aliens?
i don't know, he was just playing it safe i guess, he's fighting a bunch of crazy powerful aliens he's never seen before and doesn't know what they're capable of, and i feel like the shield was doing a decent enough job at keeping them at bay to where such tactics weren't 100% necessary, but i'm no tactician, especially when it comes to silly gumbo marvel movie alien war logic

>What was Captain Marvel doing this whole time?
good question, maybe they'll tell us in a sequel

>Why did Nick Fury wait so long to call her?
good question, maybe they'll tell us in a sequel

>Why didn't Thor keep attacking Thanos with his weapon before he snapped his fingers?
do you know how fast people can snap their fingers
the time it would've taken for thor to pull the axe out and wind up another swing would've been ample time for thanos to poof away in ANY scenario

>Why didn't Thanos just kill off all the heroes just to be sure he would be successful?
i mean, it's not like he doesn't have that in mind, there's still the second half of the story to watch and all

>Why didn't they just choose to destroy the time stone?
perhaps doing so would break the fabric of the universe or something, i don't know
did you see how much power and effort it took for wanda to destroy the other one
who's to say you're even capable of destroying it

>If Spiderman was close to getting the gauntlet off by himself why didn't Tony pin Quill down sooner?
from what i recall, it was a pretty hectic scene, and hindsight is 20/20, it's easy to talk about what characters should or should not have done when you're sitting there watching it all play out, when in reality, people have lapses in judgment all the time because they aren't robots

>Why didn't they just kill Thanos right there?
because he's still a powerful motherfucker even without the stones, it's not like it was the source of ALL his power
how were they supposed to go about killing him if that was the correct decision
not to mention, quill and co. clearly still had business to conduct with him

>Why would Thanos let a single dwarf live that can build weapons that can kill him?
he either didn't know he survived or didn't know he was capable of creating such weapons
or he had a really good hiding place or something, who knows

>Why didn't Thor use his lightning powers sooner?
meh

>What the fuck does Red Skull do in his free time?
meh

>Why didn't Thanos just pull the whole moon down on Titan and teleport away?
any questions involving thanos's decision making are kind of moot for me because he literally controls time (and everything else) now, so any less-than-optimal decisions he made can easily be corrected if he deems it necessary

>Why did he wait so long sitting on his ass to collect the rest of the stones?
meh

you could be asking some better questions tbh

Quote from: MyNameIsCharlie on April 27, 2018, 04:53:03 PM

>He wanted to avoid extinction 
>That kinda makes Verb Thanos

Verb wants extinction

Nah, I actually see where he's coming from with that comparison. I'm not 100% on board with Thanos, of course, but I'm able to find his motivation sympathetic in a lot of ways.

there are a lot of words i overuse which i'm very self-conscious about

"that" is my least favorite subordinating conjunction
"just" is my least favorite useless filler word

it's annoying to hear myself use these things so much, at least