And that leaves Avengers: Infinity Wars. Well. It was a well-done movie, but I can’t say I necessarily enjoyed it. Spoilers for Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity Wars.

With all the characters they had to juggle, they did introduce them on-screen in a smart way. They basically went backwards through the Phase Three movies, so that newer watchers saw the characters they were already familiar with before characters who hadn’t done much recently appeared. (Although it just occurred to me that Black Panther got saved until last, but that’s probably unavoidable when the final showdown was being saved for Wakanda.)

Since they apparently felt some weird need to wipe out all of Asgard between this movie and Thor: Ragnarok, we end up losing Loki and Heimdall right at the start. They were both really cool and popular characters, so I don’t understand why we have to lose them. I am glad that they at least allowed Loki to demonstrate for once and all that he was truly allied to his brother. I don’t entirely understand how Heimdall was able to activate the rainbow bridge magic now that the bridge has been destroyed, but I’m not arguing with Bruce Banner getting rescued, so.

I was worried that the Guardians of the Galaxy wouldn’t fit in well with the rest of the cast, with their stupid potty humor and constant jokes. Fortunately, the potty humor was left out (so far as I remember), and while they still used a lot of humor, they were notably serioused up compared to their own titles. Their introduction was flawless, with the “Space” title card and the funky music. The theater filled with laughter at that point, as we all knew what characters were about to show up.

Basically all the fight scenes were great. Every character got at least a little to do. The alien wolf things in the end didn’t really pose much threat, but the four creepy alien generals who served under Thanos all felt very dangerous, and their defeats were very rewarding. One weak point was that the Power Stone and Reality Stone felt really weakened compared to their portrayals in Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: The Dark World. They had seemed to have potentially deadly powers in those movies, but in this one, Thanos mostly just uses them to knock people backwards. Maybe he’s just not focused on them closely enough because he’s usually fighting too many combatants at a time, but it feels weird for the two most physically powerful stones to do so little.

It was cool seeing the Red Skull again. The MCU has killed off way too many of its villains, so it was nice to see one is still hanging around somewhere, even if he seems beyond the capacity to become a threat again, and might be a little repentant of his past? It would be interesting for him to interact with Captain America again, though I can’t see any way of that happening. Actually, I rather hope his spirit has been released to death now that he no longer needs to guard the Soul Stone. Regardless of his actions during World War II, he’s clearly suffering now, and keeping him around as a wraith can’t seem to serve any narrative purpose. (Plus, it looks like we’re not getting Hugo Weaving back at all, so.)

And, here’s the section that really matters. The ending. Since seeing the movie, I’ve had Boarders and real life friends alike explain that the characters who disappeared are likely to be resurrected in the next Avengers title. And uh. Well. THEY’D BETTER. I was furious watching that ending sequence play out. The entire theater was silent when the credits started to roll. Just seeing so many characters dropped off the face of the Earth setting with no fanfare, no real goodbye, was just disappointing and frustrating, and certainly not enjoyable. It doesn’t help that two of my favorite characters, Bucky Barnes and Maria Hill, are gone. And even worse, I now have to slowly continue watching the tie-in TV shows, knowing that once they reach the same point in the timeline as A:IW, that I have to watch a bunch of the Defenders and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents vanish as well.

So yeah. I don’t like seeing the bad guys win. I’m perfectly happy with the standard good guy ending. I don’t like thinking that so many characters I love are just gone right now, and I really want to “read ahead” to get them back, plzkthx.

—doctorlit, Infinitely Warring with his feelings for this movie

“You aren’t the only one cursed with spoilers, Stark.” “You aren’t the only one cursed with spoilers, Stark.” “You aren’t the only one cursed with spoilers, Stark.”

This is the second of the Marvel films I watched with my brother this weekend. Once again working off of notes I took during the movie. Spoiler warning for Thor: Ragnarok.

This kind of feels like they decided to throw Thor into the Guardians of the Galaxy setting/tone, and I don't much like it. The past Thor movies felt more like a high fantasy sort of tone, especially during the scenes set in Asgard. Raganarok barely spends any time there, and instead throws Thor more into comic relief sorts of settings and situations, with a lot of aliens with rather silly accents that don't really fit. They did do a good job of conveying that change, especially with the opening pop song, but it feels like a pretty lifeless way to send Asgard out of these movies for good.

I did like that opening scene, as the Ragnarok demon guy (Serta?) with his hordes of generic monsters almost felt like Marvel self-parodying a lot of their previous bad guys. It's funny that such a boring and ultimately unthreatening villain is treated so flippantly by the soundtrack, and pushed into a mostly meaningless intro scene. Of course, the fact that this character actually turns out to be a MacGuffin of sorts to defeat another villain later makes this even funnier. I liked him using Mjolnir to hold the dragon still as well. Even though we technically saw him do the same to Loki in the first Thor, it's somehow even better with a dragon. And of course, it's one of Mjolnir's final acts of combat . . .

The Actor Who Plays Odin and Whose Name I Should Probably Have Learned By Now Because He's Really Famous and Really Good looked like he had a really fun time playing Loki! It does seem kind of weird that when Thor starts overtly threatening "Odin," no one tries to stop him or even protests. Then again, Loki was hardly trying to keep up the Odin act at that point, so maybe a lot of Asgardians had figured him out by then, but knew they couldn't risk going up against Loki?

I have mixed feelings about Hela. I find her criticisms of Odin and Asgardian culture to be interesting (I love the stained glass falling away from the ceiling to reveal Odin's older history—gosh, Phase Three really liked tearing down father figures, didn't it?), and I really love that her motif is blades, even including her crown. Her constant barrage of limitless blades is a really cool and threatening fighting style. But at the same time, she's set up to be so unstoppably powerful that it's her combat threat that makes her boring, rather than her personality. She destroys Mjolnir seconds after appearing on screen, takes out two of the Warriors Three with basically no fanfare, and kills the third after just a tiny amount of fighting him. I'm glad Lady Sif's actor was busy filming something else, or we probably would have lost her, too. I did enjoy seeing Thor and Loki standing together to fight her without any real discussion, after everything Thor had to go through to get Loki to cooperate in Thor: The Dark World.

I love that Loki finally got his for-real redemption moment at the end, even though he had been ready to betray Thor one last time in the ship dock. He still made the right decision in the end, and wound up saving his entire people as a result.

Minor stuff:
-When Doctor Strange showed up so early in the beginning, I thought he was going to have a larger role in the movie, but it turned out to be a fairly short sequence. Oh well.
-The Valkyrie's theme music was really cool.
-Despite not liking the more whimsical tone of the film, I was very amused by the Grandmaster having what amounts to a theme park ride to introduce new combatants to his planet, complete with the hilariously out-of-place instrumental cover of "World of Pure Imagination."

—doctorlit didn't take any notes about the Hulk, it seems

"Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?" "Why are you handing me the spoiler stick?"

So my brother made me binge the remaining Phase 3 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe yesterday and today, so that we could see in theaters today, since he's home from college for the week. I am even more woefully far behind on the connected tv series, which annoys me, but whatever. Since I had to watch three movies in a row without time for a review in between, I have pulled a Tomash and taken notes on the two I watched at my parents house. First up is Spider-Man, or as my brother's phone autocorrected it while we were texting about movie plans yesterday, "spooderman."

Spoiler warnings for Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming.

I think I'll start with the villain. Firstly, I love that they even used the Vulture for this film, as he really isn't one of the better-known Spider-Man villains outside of the comics. He made a good, down-to-earth villain to match Peter Parker's inexperience, and the generally more mundane setting and tone of the film. I love that his rise to villainy is fueled by the events of existing films: The Battle of New York, the Triskellion, Ultron in Sokovia. The physical clean-up efforts are something that tends to get glossed over in superhero films, but this film turns it all into a plot point. I love the eight-year time jump in the early scenes of the film, because I literally didn't realize immediately that we were supposed to be looking at the same lab. Goes to show how so much alien technology can teach a team of construction workers in a manner of years, and how far they can advance that tech themselves. The line, "They keep making messes, we keep getting rich" ties in with the concept behind the Sokovia Accords in Civil War really well. You really feel a lot of sympathy for Vulture by the end, too, seeing not only how much he cares for his family (not unusual for villains nowadays), but also the fact that he comes to respect Peter well enough when he learns his identity to not only give him an out, but even to protect his identity after he gets imprisoned. It shows that villainy was never his goal or focus, and with nothing to be gained from getting revenge on Peter, he just doesn't.

I love the opening, and how it leads us from the information we already know about Spider-Man from CA:CW into the more present time period. First, I loved the light orchestration of the theme song from the old cartoon. The little flashbacks to the airport showdown in CA:CW, and seeing Happy again after being absent since Iron Man 3, were really cute. The cell phone, showing how many messages Peter has sent with no response, show not only the passage of time since the airport battle, but also how frustrated he must be feeling by now. I also liked the montage of simple, straightforward heroics Peter gets up to in Queens, showing his inexperience, and how different the conflicts he encounters are from the things the Avengers deal with.

I love the fact that after the point where Iron Man takes Peter's suit away, the tone of the movie completely changes for a while into a more typical teen movie. It also leads to such a hilarious way for the villain to discover the hero's identity, overhearing his daughter's conversation on the drive to prom.

All throughout the movie, I kept thinking to myself that the quiet girl was absolutely the best character in the movie. She's way smart and funny, and very ready to be critical of the world around her. I didn't understand why the movie was pairing Peter with Daughter Toombs, but of course the reveal that Best Character is actually "MJ," though not Mary Jane, explained why they set her up to be so important and likable.

String of random little things I liked:
-All the background characters in the school I felt were very realistic for a high school setting, though the tendency towards negligence in the teaching staff got a little over-the-top at times.
-Peter saved the deli owner's pet cat in addition to the owner himself.
-After crawling through his bedroom window onto the ceiling, Peter closed the window behind him with his foot.
-The corny Captain America PSAs, and how the teacher acknowledges he's a wanted criminal at that point. At least we know he was doing something besides exercising in between being thawed out and the beginning of The Avengers! (Still his original WWII era costume.)
-Iron Man's comment about the "churro lady" shows that he actually has been paying attention to all of Peter's communications, just not responding. I don't think Peter himself caught this, though.

And now presenting, some criticism from my brother! First, this gem: "It's too bad people don't look up in this movie." And he's right. There are an awful lot of scenes where, yeah, Peter's on a rooftop, but it's still very brightly lit, and it seems like other characters really should be able to see him from where they are, but they just . . . don't.

Also, some airplane criticism! (My brother is taking flight training courses in college to become a commercial pilot when he graduates.) First, the scene where Peter grabs the front of a turbine, and the turbine slips backwards and hangs out the back of the cowling (the tube containing the turbine). My brother said this doesn't work, because there should be a metal shaft straight up in the middle of the turbine that connects it to the cowling, and should have blocked it from coming out in one solid chunk like that. He also said the scene where Peter steers a plane by attaching webbing to the rudder and pulling on it is wrong. It's the ailerons attached to the back of the tail that cause horizontal turns. Turning the rudder would instead have made the plane start to plummet downwards, albeit at a steep angle.

—doctorlit does whatever a spooderman can

"I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers." "I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers." "I thought you said you didn't have any spoilers."

Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers!
Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers! Do not say I didn't warn you about spoilers!

Was that excessive? I would have used the gif, but I couldn't figure out how to paste it in, so... ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway! Thoughts! I have lots of thoughts about this movie, hence why this won't be a proper review and more of a ramble.

First off, Thanos is the best Marvel villain ever. Period, end of story. I would have given Loki that title, but he dies a good guy, so it doesn't really count. About Loki dying, by the way, I really hope it is for good, because it was the perfect end for the character. It had him doing what he always did best: being a trickster, and even though it didn't work out, it wholly redeemed him (at least, that's what I think).

I love how the designated dwarf was actually really big.

Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Ebony Maw was the absolute standout of this movie. I loved every single scene he was in. He was just so deliciously sneering and condescending without ever being over the top. The opening of the movie, when it's basically just him delivering a monologue, was the absolute best opening it could have. It perfectly set the Wagnerian, and (dare I say) poetic tone of the movie. Also, that Wilhelm scream when he dies made me snicker.

Gamora's death was a total wtf moment. I think I might have actually said just that in the theater when it happened. :P I... kind of hope she stays dead, honestly. I mean, I love Gamora as much as anybody, but after the emotion of that scene it would just be cheap to bring her back.

Speaking of wtf moments: Red Skull's return. That was completely unexpected. I mean, to be fair, when I first watched Captain America: The First Avenger I knew he'd be back eventually, considering that he was just transported across space by the Tesseract, but I just... didn't expect it here, I don't know why. Anyway, that was cool.

The actress for young Gamora was amazing and looked eerily like Zoe Saldana as a small child.

I have mixed feelings about the Iron Spider suit in this movie. It's really cool, but it also makes Spider-Man less Spider-Man and more smol!Iron Man.

I wish Hawkeye had been in this movie. I have no idea where he'd have fit in, but I just really love Hawkeye.

Shuri did not get half the screen time she deserved. This is a fact.

I absolutely loved this movie, even though it may not seem like it!

Not trading lives for victory (a.k.a. the opposite of the many before the few) is an amazing theme, in my opinion, and one that's all too sorely lacking these days. The means matter just as much as the end goal, and Captain America's refusal to sacrifice Vision (and the ultimate pointlessness of it when Scarlet Witch actually does it) embodies that perfectly.

On a much more shallow topic: so many hot guys in the movie, like... testosterone, my God.

The title dissolving at the end really hit me in the feelnuts. After everything else, it was just too much, but in the very best way. The entire ending sequence was incredible. I did not expect it, I was not prepared, it was devastating, I loved every bit of it while sobbing my eyes out. My immediate reaction after the last scene was "what did I just watch? What was that?" And I'm pretty sure that's exactly how it's supposed to feel. Did anyone else get serious Deathly Hallows Part 1 vibes at the end?

Do any of you suppose it's on purpose that 'Thanos' sounds similar to 'Thanatos,' the Ancient Greek word for death?

Last thought, only tangentially related: we hear that Xandar was devastated by Thanos while he was getting the Power Stone. The destruction of the Nova Corps is the origin story for arguably my favorite superhero of all time: Nova. Does this mean that he'll make an appearance in the upcoming GotG Vol. 3? I really, really hope so. Plus, the Nova Corps member who recruited him from Earth, Rhomann Dey, is actually part of the MCU, as played by John C. Reilly in GotG. I think there's a very high chance of Nova appearing soon, and I am ridiculously excited for it.

Right, that's it (for now)! Just... go watch this movie, all ye mortals who haven't. You will not regret it.