Avengers Infinity War with spoilers

[Lord Liaden]

I firmly believe most Presidents are more than 50% Ego. When you think you deserve to make decisions affecting billions, you pretty much have to be. ?

 

Mind you, for some Presidents the percentage is clearly far higher.

[Vondy]

16 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I firmly believe most Presidents are more than 50% Id.

 

There, I fixed that for you. ?

[zslane]

7 hours ago, Armory said:

 

IOW, it's not reasonable to consider Quill a human being.  He shouldn't be a human being, because he's a hero.  Pffft.

 

Correct. Biologically Quill may be 50% human, but meta-textually he is 100% Hero with a capital H. A dire failure (of character) like his comes with consequences, one of which is being judged/criticized on a level not applied to all the ordinary humans who inhabit the MCU as mere background NPCs. Maybe it isn't fair to blame a character for the rotten way he is written, but whether you want to blame the character or the writer is immaterial to me since one is essentially just an avatar for the other.

[Armory]

"Meta-textually"?!?  Whatever.  He's human, thus fallible.  That is all.

[Lord Liaden]

In the extenuating circumstances department, only a short time before that confrontation Gamora begged Starlord to kill her rather than let Thanos take her. And for love he tried to, and failed, and Thanos took her anyway. That has to add a lot of emotional stress.

[zslane]

15 hours ago, Armory said:

"Meta-textually"?!?  Whatever.  He's human, thus fallible.  That is all.

 

Yeah, and by that I mean that from the writer's perspective, Quill is a Hero who is every bit as much on a Hero's Journey as any character from myth or literature. The fact that he shares that spotlight with other Heroes doesn't change the storytelling template he fits into. Fallibility is a useful trait in a Hero (it makes him more relatable), but it must be used with great care by any writer, and it can't be used to justify a poor writing decision, which is what is going on here in my view. In this particular case, Quill "losing it" did not feel like the plausible reaction of a Hero (who knew the full scope of the stakes involved) in a moment of stress, but rather it felt like a highly contrived reaction forced on the Hero (by the writer) in order to propel the plot to the next required point in the narrative.

[BoloOfEarth]

23 hours ago, zslane said:

Correct. Biologically Quill may be 50% human, but meta-textually he is 100% Hero with a capital H.

 

Are we talking about the same Quill?  The same guy from the first two GOTG movies?  Sure, he does the right thing... eventually.  But he's hardly a paragon of pure heart and true purpose.

 

I mean, I'd consider someone like Cap 100% Hero with a capital H.  Quill is maybe like 90% hero, with a small h.  Possibly even hero with an asterisk.

[zslane]

40 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Are we talking about the same Quill?  The same guy from the first two GOTG movies?  Sure, he does the right thing... eventually.  But he's hardly a paragon of pure heart and true purpose.

 

I don't mean to use the term Hero as a synonym for Paragon. I am only using it in its capacity to describe the literary template for the hero of a story.

[Pattern Ghost]

I thought the movie was essentially Thanos's Hero's Journey.

 

That doesn't make Quill screwing up any more correct -- Thanos should have been able to solve the problem himself to move his story forward in a satisfactory way.

 

[RDU Neil]

8 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Thanos should have been able to solve the problem himself to move his story forward in a satisfactory way. 

 

 

Exactly.

[Lord Liaden]

Heroes in fiction benefit from ridiculous luck all the time, as though the universe (i.e. the writer) is in their favor.   If this is Thanos's journey, I don't see why he shouldn't get the same treatment.

 

I found Thanos as written by his creator, Jim Starlin, to have grown increasingly boring over the years, because Starlin made him a Mary Sue, without flaw or weakness, always a step ahead of the heroes. His presentation in Infinity War feels more balanced to me. YMMV.

[Armory]

5 hours ago, zslane said:

 

In this particular case, Quill "losing it" did not feel like the plausible reaction of a Hero (who knew the full scope of the stakes involved) in a moment of stress, but rather it felt like a highly contrived reaction forced on the Hero (by the writer) in order to propel the plot to the next required point in the narrative.

 

I get that.  I disagree, but I get it.  It did feel authentic to me.  What bothered me about it was that his Celestial powers were nowhere to be found.

[zslane]

His Celestial powers died when Ego died. GotG2 made it clear that without Ego, Peter would not have the powers of a Celestial anymore.

[Ranxerox]

I think Ego was exaggerating the loss in hopes of changing Peter's mind about blowing him up.  With Ego dead Peter doesn't have access to god like power, but I think the potential is still there.  For instance I suspect that he could still hold an infinity stone and not die. 

[zslane]

I think that just from a writing perspective, it was necessary to remove the Celestial-level power from Peter. Otherwise every dilemma he faced would raise the uncomfortable question of why he didn't use his Celestial powers to solve it.

[Pattern Ghost]

3 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Heroes in fiction benefit from ridiculous luck all the time, as though the universe (i.e. the writer) is in their favor.

 

This is true, but by modern storytelling standards it's considered bad form.

[Old Man]

6 hours ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Are we talking about the same Quill?  The same guy from the first two GOTG movies?  Sure, he does the right thing... eventually.  But he's hardly a paragon of pure heart and true purpose.

 

I mean, I'd consider someone like Cap 100% Hero with a capital H.  Quill is maybe like 90% hero, with a small h.  Possibly even hero with an asterisk.

 

Quill is an antihero. He’s a thief and a womanizer with no respect for authority figures. For GotG1 he was working on a big score behind Yondu’s back, closely followed by hitting on Gamora. His heroic conversion to stopping Ronan for free was reluctant at best. 

[mattingly]

I like this one.

 

https://screenrant.com/infinity-stones-odin-hela-mcu-theory/

[Old Man]

That actually makes a lot of sense. 

[Doc Shadow]

Yes it does.

[Vondy]

11 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

This is true, but by modern storytelling standards it's considered bad form.

 

Considering how far modern standards have fallen, is this a reason not to do it?

[Pattern Ghost]

5 hours ago, Vondy said:

Considering how far modern standards have fallen, is this a reason not to do it?

 

Sure is. And those danged kids can get off my lawn while they're at it.

[Bazza]

22 hours ago, mattingly said:

I like this one.

 

https://screenrant.com/infinity-stones-odin-hela-mcu-theory/

 

I disagree with it. Well, not convinced by it. I also think Hela is lying, or seeing the truth from her perspective. We also have Odin's perspective on it as well, which contradicts Hela's account. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah the bulk of her argument is a painting on a roof, which is not particularly compelling since she just said that the previous painting was all lies

[zslane]

You mean you think there's another painting behind the painting that was behind the painting? What story does that one tell?

 

I'm inclined to believe Hela, mostly because the drama inherent in the "hidden truth" of Odin's time before Thor is more interesting from a storytelling perspective, and now that it has been revealed, it would be a terrible thing to just throw away because the revelation came from a villain. It is not unlike the revelation that Darth Vader was Luke's father; just because the revelation came from the villain didn't make it a lie. If anything it made it a more compelling truth.