The baggage beasts have many stories, all of them painted upon their fractal hides, each worth a couple few million dollars. Any one of these majestic beasts could easily kill mcu, despite his imposing size. Their pen was uncomfortably small. The fence was bulging out, struggling to keep these great beasts at bay. A stern look on his face, mcu calls to his farm hands to bring more, more baggage. But why, mcu, can’t you see your herd is starting to suffer? Mcu ignored their cries, and planned the dates in 2019 that again he would call his farm hands to action.
Spoiler free: Infinity War was a delight. If you’ve done your homework and are all caught up on your Marvel Cinematic Universe movies then watch it. If you’re almost caught up then finish your homework and watch this one, it’s worth it. If you are more than a few movies behind then don’t bother, this movie has a whole lot of baggage with it. I’ma be callous with spoilers from here out so watch out.
It bugs me when different media forms fall into similar traps. For example, the awkward position that Game of Thrones is at now that it’s passed the source material. We already learned about how this gets clunky from Full Metal Alchemist. There exist two FMA series: one that caught up to the source material’s releases and made up an ending, the other that stays true to the sacred texts but rushes through the early storylines. Both adaptations are good for different reasons, but both lack something the other one has, so there doesn’t exist an optimal adaptation. Will this too be the fate of Westeros?
I’m nervous about how inevitable the baggage singularity is for the MCU because of its source material. It’s not uncommon for a comic to collapse in on itself and need to be rebooted. DC made a huge effort to ditch the baggage with their New 52 reboot because man was it sloppy. One of my boys got me all the files of the Civil War arc from comic form and it came with a messy list of every issue that had some relevance to the overall arc. #128 of this guy, #81-83 of that team, it felt like homework trying to seek out this story. Disney even just pulled a baggage burn when they cast aside the vast seas of the Star Wars expanded universe cuz hoo baby that was a thing. Baggage can be great, baggage is one of the reasons why i loved Infinity War. I knew all the characters and it was a delight to see them bounce off each other. Too much baggage weighs a story down and turns people away.
Hey look at that i have another example, this one is from the world of video games and it’s about oversaturation. For a while last decade, all the big studios were convinced that WW2 shooters were the best money pots and the market was filled with Nazis and Normandys. Up until the market got sick of it and the interest switched to modern shooters all gritty and just like CoD4. Up until the market got sick of it and you get the idea. If you don’t then you can look at the whole rhythm games market and how volatile that bubble is. Even just after Age of Ultron i heard people start to lose interest in keeping up with all the superhero movies. Especially after Thor Ragnarok i heard that. We’ve been in a wave of superhero movies that has been crashing relentlessly since Iron Man. We need a break please.
After the ending of Infinity War i don’t really want to watch the new Ant Man. I was super on board with the original Ant Man, i thought it was a blast. But half the galaxy just disappeared, is this really the time for a silly heist romp? No, i wanna see Avengers 4: Okay Can We Talk About What The Hell Just Happened? At the end of that movie when Rocket gets the infinity gauntlet and brings everyone back and also creates infinite habitable planets with infinite bounty (infinite possibilities and thanos goes straight to death and sometimes bubbles) and makes himself giant and also Coulson is there high fives, then what? Do you have more compelling stories for us now that our humble heroes saved half the universe and also warped reality? How long will the actors hang around after that crazy feat?
I don’t want the MCU to sputter out and die because it stopped being profitable. I don’t want it to collapse under its baggage. The conclusion of the infinity stones arc would be a perfect time to close out this crazy adaptation experiment called the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s been a fantastic story lads, but in order for a story to be cemented as fantastic it’s gotta have an ending. Then they come back in a few years with fresh eyes and a fresh universe just waiting to be filled with extra thirsty box office records. Universe 2 can build up to some other huge plot thread, and maybe more gradually than Thanos now that they know they can do a franchise like this.
mmmm i think that’s enough. infinity war was a fantastic movie. it’s been ten years since iron man and its crazy that you guys pulled this off. marvel studios take a bow because you earned this one. but please know when to take a break
big oof, eh? at least endgame was fun even though the story falls apart quickly under scrutiny
big shoutouts to all the disney+ products being thrown out there for these consumers to consume and get excited for the next product. you’ve truly done it lads.
man i dunno 