Defending the Ending (Of Avengers: Infinity War)

Recently someone on the Huffington Post insisted that Disney money ruined the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. He was referring to the characters who turned to dust at the end. Several have contracts for future films so he knows they will be restored. To him this ruined the movie.

I have news for this guy, I always knew that the deaths at the end of the movie would be reversed. It's not just because several of the vanished characters have upcoming movies. It's because it wasn't just them who died. It was half of everyone, everywhere. That's over three and a half billion people, just on earth - dead and gone at the snap of Thanos's fingers.

This is a comic book movie. At the end of Avengers: Civil War, Thanos won. He'd killed half of everyone, everywhere and retired to watch the sun rise.

But the bag guys don't win in comic book movies. And they certainly don't win when they've done something so monstrous. There may be some collateral damage along the way. The Ancient One or Doctor Erskine or Uncle Ben might die but the villain's plot will be foiled in the end.

That wasn't an ending, it was a cliffhanger. We know it will be reversed, Han won't stay frozen in carbonite, Jack Sparrow will be rescued from Davy Jones's Locker and half the population of the universe won't stay dead. The question is how will it be reversed and who will stay dead when it's all over?

For the record, I think that the Asgardians who were killed (plus Loki) and the people of Xandor will stay dead. There's an excellent chance that Gamora will be brought back to life because her death was so intimately tied to the Soul Gem. And there's a good chance that several more Avengers will die in the second movie and stay dead.

Starlin's Thanos - Infinity Wars

Great comic book characters seldom stay dead for long. Thanos was dead for most of a decade before returning to the realm of the living.

Unlike most resurrections, Thanos's was easily explained - Death herself sent him back. She had become concerned that the scales were out of balance and too many people were alive (there was possibly-true factoid going around at the time that half of everyone who ever lived was alive). Thanos was dispatched to correct that imbalance by killing half of everyone in the universe.

It started in the Silver Surfer. The Surfer fell asleep on a desolate world and dreamed about Death's servants releasing Thanos. When he awoke, Thanos was there, waiting for him. Thanos explained his goal and even made the Surfer complicit in killing off half the population of one world. The Surfer then collected as much background information as he could gather on Thanos. Then he went to face him. And won, surprisingly easily, leaving Thanos a smoking skeleton.

It was all a ruse. Death had warned Thanos that the Surfer could be a threat so Thanos faked his death and moved on to his real goal - the Infinity Gems.

While dead, Thanos had discovered the power the gems possessed. He convinced Death that without the gems it would take him a century to kill half the population of the universe. He then defeated a half dozen powerful beings in order to assemble the gems into the Infinity Gauntlet. This gave him total control over everything.

The only problem was that he was now Death's superior and she didn't like that one bit. Thanos spent some time trying to impress her by torturing relatives, spelling his name out with planets and removing half the population of the universe with the snap of his fingers. Death remained unimpressed.

All of this gave time for Adam Warlock to return to life along with Gamora and Pip the Troll (although Gamora had the bad luck to be in the half of the universe that was removed). Warlock assembled the remaining heroes of Earth along with the cosmic beings in a complicated plan to defeat Thanos.

The heroes were totally outmatched but Thanos thought that Death might look favorably on him if he gave them a chance so he cut off his extra senses. This almost worked. While fighting Captain America, Thanos raised his hand to strike and the Surfer grabbed for the Infinity Gauntlet. And missed.

Next the various cosmic entities tried and failed. At the end, Thanos defeated the entity known as Infinity - the personification of the universe itself - and took it's place. This left his body unguarded and Nebula, one of the relatives Thanos had been torturing, seized the Gauntlet and reversed all of Thanos's actions. That meant that she had to fight the cosmic entities all over again. While she was distracted, Warlock slipped back into the Soul Gem and used it to break the connection between the stones for a moment and rip the gauntlet from her hand. Warlock the emerged with the gauntlet and sent everyone home.

The cosmic entities complained that Warlock was too unstable to control the universe and he agreed to divide the gems up, giving them to protectors. These turned out to be Starlin's various creations - Adam himself, Gamora, Drax, Moon Dragon and Pip. The sixth gem went to someone secret (hint, Thanos). Together they formed the Infinity Watch to protect the universe from threats.

Unfortunately, the first two threats came from Warlock. While he possessed the gauntlet he exorcised himself of his good and evil parts. They proved to be as dangerous as Thanos.

Along the way, Thanos was redefined. Rejected by Death, he became a pragmatic survivor. He was similar to Magneto in the X-Men movies - someone who is very handy to have on your side but who might turn on you when your goals diverge.

Eventually Thanos gained ultimate power once more. This time he inspected the universe and discovered a cancerous hole in it. Too many people were coming back from the dead. He recreated the universe, fully expecting to perish in the attempt but managed to survive, back at his usual power level.

Starlin's exit from the character involved Thanos helping Galactus, the world-eater who had become infected. Thanos cured him, then warned him to be more careful in the future.

Considering that Galactus is at the top of the cosmic entities, that gives you an idea of Thanos's self-worth.

From there other writers took over Thanos and he was no longer just Jim Starlin's vision.

Infinity War - the mistake that isn't

One "mistake" that I've seen pointed out about Avengers: Infinity War is the scene near the end where Captain America seems to stop Thanos's hand. (note, that was in the trailer so it's not a spoiler. Everything from here on contains spoilers.)

The "problem" is that Thanos already punched out the Hulk. In fact, he beat the Hulk so bad that he refused to come out for the rest of the movie. There's no way that Cap is as strong as the Hulk so what gives?

The answer has two parts.

First, Cap has super strength in the MCU. We've seen lots of examples of it starting with him running down the Nazi spy in Captain America: First Avenger. In The Avengers he holds his own against Loki. He beats several armored aliens with nothing but a shield. By Captain America: The Winter Soldier he's jumping out of airplanes without a parachute and running rings around Sam. In Captain America: Civil War he holds back a helicopter with his bare hands then he and Bucky (who has been similarly enhanced) beat Iron Man. Clearly Cap is superhuman. He may not be as strong as Iron Man but he's able to do things that would cripple a strong man.

The second part is Thanos. We actually have no idea how strong he is naturally. He already has the power gem before Infinity War begins. The Hulk blindsides him, overpowering Thanos but then Thanos draws on the power gem and beats the Hulk up. This is consistent with the comic books where Drax and Thor were able to increase their already considerable strength by drawing on the power gem.

All during the movie we see that Thanos only uses the gems consciously. That's probably the main function of the Infinity Gauntlet - to insulate Thanos from the stones and let him exert conscious control over them. Ronan did the same thing with the power gem in Guardians of the Galaxy The gem might have been able to destroy a planet but he only used a tiny fraction of its power.

We also saw this during the battle between Thanos, Iron Man, Spider-Man, etc. They nearly overpowered Thanos and got the gauntlet. They could never have done that it he was drawing power from the gauntlet. They managed to keep him off-balance enough that he was depending on his own considerable strength rather than the gauntlet.

This also explains why the effects of the reality gem were only temporary. He wasn't actually changing reality, he was overlaying it with a different one. When he stopped, the original reality returned. The people he sliced into pieces were back together, Star Lord's gun shot energy blasts instead of bubbles, etc.

So, Cap, who has super strength, was able to hold off Thanos who was not drawing power from his gauntlet - but only for a moment.

All of this changed during the battle when Thanos had a vision of Gamora as a child. That's when he finally integrated the gems into a single force and evaporated half of everyone, everywhere.

Avengers: Infinity War and the Hard Choices

Spoilers ahead.

If there's a unifying theme in Infinity War, it's hard choices. Characters are constantly being asked to make difficult choices.

The first one is when Thanos threatens to crush Thor's head unless Loki gives him one of the Infinity Stones. At first Loki refuses but then he changes his mind. But, being Loki, he tries to have it both ways. First he sics the Hulk on Thanos then tries to stab him, resulting in Loki's own death.

The Vision and the Scarlet Witch face a couple of hard choices. They want to stay together but need to separate. More on this pair later.

Gamora asks Peter Quill to kill her if she's captured. Later she has to choose to kill Thanos, even though he raised her and she still cares for him.

Both of these characters go through with the hard choices only to have them come to nothing. By this point Thanos controls the reality stone and their actions are rendered useless.

Later Gamora is asked to choose between her sister's life and giving Thanos the Soul Gem. She fails the choice, leading him to the 5th of five stones.

Doctor Strange warns Iron Man and Spider-Man that if he has to choose between their death and giving Thanos his stone, he will let them die. When the time comes, he seems to fail this test and gives up the stone in exchange for Iron Man's life. But he has seen 14 million possible futures and only one led to victory. So it's likely that Strange didn't actually make a choice.

In the final act, the assembled heroes are trying to keep from making a hard choice - destroying the Mind Stone and killing the Vision in the process. They fail and the Scarlet Witch makes the decision to destroy the stone and kill the Vision. Unfortunately, Thanos is able to use the Time Gem to undo this sacrifice.

Several heroes engage in self-sacrifice. Iron Man and Spider-Man stow away on a space ship, knowing it's likely to be a one-way voyage. Thor goes through a lot of punishment in order to get an new hammer. When Thanos's army threatens to flank the warriors, the Black Panther orders a force field opened to let the army in, knowing they will be attacked.

Let's not forget Thanos himself. He already made the hard choice - that half of the universe's population has to die. But he also has to kill the only thing he loves to get the Soul Gem.