The End of an Era, Infinity War and Endgame Part one:

By Thomas Diefenbach

The Marvel cinematic universe is a big topic to cover these days, from its humble beginning in 2008 with the release of the first Iron Man and the introduction of Robert Downey Jr. as our hero, to the climactic finale of the saga with Endgame in 2019 and the defeat of the Dark Titan Thanos. But I’m not here to talk about the massively successful franchise and the billions of dollars its put in the pockets of Mickey Mouse, I want to talk about what a cop-out its ending is, and the dis service they did to the some of the great stories to get to this point with an ending filled with plot holes.

So, lets start with one of the most glaring issues I have… Thanos.. the Mad Titan, the eternal who decimated Xandar, the first being to control all 6 infinity stones… and the guy who seemingly.. is the biggest threat to his own success? Lets think about it for a second, the infinity stones are the most powerful artifacts in existence. And he has two of them, the space and power stones by the end of Infinity War’s prologue. With those alone he should have been able to crush the avengers, but instead, seems to delight in toying with our hero’s, case in point, when he turned Peter Quill’s laser into a bubble gun, and literally turned Mantis to ribbons! Or, there’s the time he literally tore apart a moon and made it rain down on his opponents… Now, for a guy who’s being portrayed as having this deep self-imposed mission, that only he can understand yadda yadda, he kind of seems like he enjoys the drama…

Now lets talk about the hypocrisy that is Vision and Wakanda. One of the core emotional theme’s is that “Avenger’s don’t trade lives” when talking about destroying the mind stone so that Thanos cant accomplish his goals, and yet its fine to trade thousands of Wakandan lives to save Vision? And on a side note, why was Wakanda’s army so pitiful in Infinity War compared to Endgame? So because these so called “Heroes”, I’m looking at you cap, couldn’t man up, and make the tough decision, now half the universe is gone… and the other half is left to suffer their loss.. real heroic guys.

Now, these are a couple of major discrepancies.. but lets talk about a smaller one.. but one that still bugs me none the less. The first image we get of Thanos putting on the infinity gauntlet is at the end of Age of Ultron… so.. why is it in Infinity War when Thor goes to Nidavellir to forge Stormbreaker they find only one living dwarf, Eitri, who explains that Thanos destroyed the forge and killed the Dwarves after making them build the Infinity Gauntlet, even stating “Asgard was supposed to have protect us” to which Thor replies “Asgard is destroyed” now, I don’t mean to split hairs here, actually I do… I really, really do, But how was this fact not picked up by the all-seeing Heimdall? I mean, we know at least two years have passed since Age of Ultron, did Heimdall just for get to tell anyone that the place that the most powerful weapons in the universe was destroyed? But that’s enough of that, I could go on and on breaking down little plot holes that drive me mad about these movies, lets not talk about the fact that Fury had a pager to call Captain Marvel in his pocket this whole time… I suppose whats’ important is… is Infinity war a ‘good movie’?

The short of it is.. No.. its not a good movie, its plot is filled with holes that drive an avid fan up the wall… But the long of it is, well, Yes, when you take the build up into consideration, Infinity War, and Endgame for that matter, never needed to be ‘good’ it needed to fulfill one purpose, it needed to set up the final kiss goodbye to a series of 23 movies that have lead us to this point, movies not all of which have been masterpieces, but they have given us characters we have spent the last 12 years laughing and crying with. Moments that have had us screaming at our screens on the edge of our seats or shaking with anticipation to see what happens next… So no, Infinity War is not a good movie.. but its exactly what it needed to be.. and I loved every second of it.