The Press Box - Emergency ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Breakdown I The Big Picture (Ep. 461)

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

The Ringer’s Sean Fennessey and David Shoemaker take an exhaustive trip through the galaxy to break down the plot twists, character deaths, and paths forward for the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the action-packed, plot-heavy ‘Avengers: Infinity War.’ SPOILER ALERT: The second half of this episode contains serious spoilers for the movie. Be warned! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by the Dave Chang Show, brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. That's right. We have a new podcast with the great chef Dave Chang. He is just opened a restaurant in Los Angeles called Major Domo. That is wonderful. The first episode of this podcast is Dynamite. It's Dave and Bill Simmons talking a bit about some of the anxieties,

frustrations, and excitement that goes into opening a restaurant. So please check out that podcast. That's the Dave Chang Show on the Ringer Podcast Network. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Not just that the MCU movies, obviously separate from the X-Men franchise have been better than everything that came before, but also that they, I don't know if Marvel got lucky or what, but these were the right characters to make successful movies into 21st century with.

I'm Sean Fennessey, editor-in-chief of the Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show with some of the smartest grown adults who love comic book movies. I'm joined today by one such adult. His name is David Shoemaker. He is the art director, a writer, and the host of three different podcasts on the your podcast network, they'd include the mass man show, the press box, and Westworld the recapables. David Chewaker, we're here on an emergency podcast to talk about Avengers Infinity War.

Thank you for joining me. I just woke up in the podcast studio. I don't know how much of an emergency this is for me, but I'm glad to be here. It was a hell of a movie. Hell of a movie. It was a two hour and 40-minute film that we have just emerged from on a Thursday night. And I want to let's get some immediate reactions. coming out of this movie, which is quite long and full of many characters and many

storylines. Did you like it? I did. I liked it a lot. I mean, I think it was very, very long. This is the first movie that I can remember where my butt was hurting before it was over from just sitting in a chair. Yes. It is a tactile experience. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was exhausting, and I think we'll get into the details later. I'm not quite sure if it was emotionally exhausting, which I think would have been, Is it like a little bit more, a little bit, if I had said that, I'd be praising it a little bit more. But that it was, it started in the middle of a scene, in the middle of, you know, in the middle of things. In media res, they call it.

Yeah, I was going to say that, but I knew I was going to butcher it. And did not let up for a second for the entire, I mean, for the next two hour, two and a half plus hours. Yeah, it's hard to know whether you can actually say I enjoyed something like this because there's so much processing that goes on. Yeah. So let's set it up a little bit for people. So we're going to talk specifically about the plot of this movie. There's been a lot of conversation about some of the characters that die. But we'll talk a little bit in more vague terms at the top of the conversation.

And then maybe 20 minutes in, we'll throw up a warning sign. It'll be a spoiler zone. And then you may not want to listen anymore if you haven't seen it. But go see the movie, and then you can come back and listen to the back half. David, what really happens? Like, where are we in the Marvel universe when this movie picks up? We are at some period fairly shortly after. Thor Ragnarok, at least so close as the spacetime continuum allows.

Thanos is in search of the infinity stones to stick into his infinity gauntlet so that he can have unlimited cosmic power and can sort of wreak his population control concepts on the entire universe as opposed to one planet at a time. Is that fair? Is that more or less the... I think you nailed it. I think you nailed it. There's only one group of people that can go about defeating the men. The Mad Titan, the Madman of Titan, and that's The Avengers.

So every single Damn Avengers in this movie. And Guardians of the Galaxy. And the Guardians of the Galaxy, who are honorary. Yeah, and some sort of tertiary. Sure, Spider-Man. You may have heard of Spider-Man. A few other characters. Let's talk a little bit about the framing of this movie.

This has been a long time coming. Sure. We saw Thanos for the first time, I believe, at the Stinger in the first Avengers film. He was not yet Josh Brolin, as I recall. He was just a CGI purple goatee figure. I don't remember if he was rolling or not, but yes, that was when he first popped up. He had no speaking lines. And there's been a lot of build towards this.

This is 19 films in the making. Did it pay off? Did this actual storyline that we were going towards make sense? Yeah, I mean, I think I hadn't read a bunch of reviews before seeing the movie. I wanted to go in relatively fresh. But we talked about the Tony Scott, the A.O. Scott review in the New York Times. I don't fully agree with all of his entire take, but I do agree, I guess, with the premise that this is not a movie

as we can conventionally describe a movie. There's just too much backstory. There's too many balls in the air. There's too much just craziness. But all that said, as a culmination of all the movies that came before, it's hard to imagine anything that would have been more successful than this. Yeah, it feels like this was a very high bar to clear just to make it make sense. You know, there's so many different figures that you needed to account for.

so many balls that you need is to raise into the air and bring to the ground. It's funny that you bring up Tony Scott's review. I found it to be an interesting existential reflection on how to deal with these movies culturally. You know, this is obviously probably the 10th or 12th movie of this kind that he's reviewed. And I think he started wondering, like, why? Why have we thrust ourselves into this comic book universe so headlong? I had a little bit of that feeling myself, even though I think I probably liked it more than Tony Scott did.

because there is a, there's no finality. You know, there's no clarity, there's no truth, there's no stakes, because when you are dealing with something like the Infinity Stones, which are the McGuffin of this movie. I'm glad you said it first because I've been overusing that phrase on the Westworld podcast. Yeah, I mean, the Infinity Stones, the Infinity Gauntlet, which is even more, it's an even easier punchline because it's a big glove. Like it fits like the most traditional definition of McGuffin, right? Yes, truly.

And that's what motivates the entire plot. And then without giving anything away, I mean, these Infinity Stones are part of Marvel canon for decades or whatever. One of them is the time stone, right? And like without, I mean, again, without giving too much away, like it can go back and forth in time. So at that point, the stakes are, and this is honestly not the ending of the movie. I'm really not spoiling anything. But what are the stakes? There's like one that's life, there's one that's time.

There's one, you know, like... There's one that's literally called reality stone. Yeah, exactly. And you can just change reality. Exactly. So what are we dealing with? It's just, yeah, they're all, they all could conceivably be like devices of retconning everything that happened in the previous scene. That's exactly right.

I wish it was a little more like a Jersey Shore reality stone. You know, like that would be maybe make an interesting movie. But it's true and it's funny because you have to do the thing that you have to do the thing that you have to do with a lot of movies like this, not just comic book movies, but science fiction, fantasy, movies that have deep mythology that really require buy-in. If you don't buy into the Infinity Stone shtick, this movie's going to seem really dumb because it's all built around this one character's quest to do it. I agree with you on an intellectual level.

I think one of the great achievements of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and we might have talked about this the last time I was on your podcast, is that the stakes are generally pretty clear as opposed to some of the other movies in this genre broadly defined. Like, you can watch or I could watch a Michael Bay Transformers movie and literally not know what it happened. Who's the bad guy? Yeah. But people love those movies.

People still line up to see the sequel. So on some level, just like two and a half hours of CGI superheroes punching each other, whatever could be considered some level of success, right? Yes. Yes. But yeah, you do have to buy in. You do have to buy in a little bit. And they, and, you know, stop me if I'm getting too far ahead, but, but, you know, Thanos in a lot of ways is an incredibly successful big bad, especially given the sort of narrative handicap that he is functionally a god from outer space.

Correct. They make him mortal pretty early on, or they give evidence of, or potential evidence of his mortality pretty early on. You know, throughout the movie, he engages in fist fights more than. than he does in like zapping people with magic rays and that sort of stuff. So there's a certain tangibility to it even without the stones. I know that the stones gave him this great power,

but he was like all powerful at the beginning and seemed fairly, you know, he was fairly susceptible to certain forms of assault early on too. Does he bleed? Is that like a philosophical question? I don't know. I mean, that's the thing, so one of the things that's interesting to me

about that character, and I guess, I actually think it's weirdly, and this may sound dumb to say, but a good Josh Brolin performance. Yeah. Even though he's not on screen and he's stuck with this kind of cartoonish character who very quickly became a meme on the internet when this trailer hit, I think Brolin is pretty good and imbues him with some genuine humanity.

And one of the reasons that the character works when it does work is he's kind of vulnerable. And he's kind of got a code that you believe in. I feel like most comic book movie villains, there's a kind of illogical evil at play that we, can't really cope with. Or the, I mean, you talked to some about Lord of the Rings on our walk back from the movie theater, but the sort of Lord of the Rings, like, the evil consumes you. That's the motivator, right?

And certainly that's not, at least that's not the entire case here. He has an argument for the one thing you look for in a villain. The main thing is that they don't believe that they're a villain. Right. That's the only way to make them compelling and human. And that, I think, feel like they got that across pretty well. I think so, too. I wonder if it's...

And you're right about Brolin, by the way. I'm sorry to cut you off, but it's hard to act through 20 layers of CGI. I thought they made a really good choice because he has the voice, he has the gravelly voice to pull off of Thanos, but he didn't go, he didn't like go deep into it

in the way that he wasn't trying to be Venn Diesel. He wasn't trying to just like fill out this deep, you know, whatever. He wasn't trying to play an alien. He was actually like, he had more Lilton his voice than he did in Sicario. There was definitely a performance, performance there in a place in a role that didn't necessarily require one.

Yeah. Or you wouldn't have expected one. And there's like a real sadness in the character. Again, I think it feels a little stupid to be positioning this mad genocide proffering alien as somehow sympathetic or interesting. But he has this kind of philosophy about balance in the universe and the reason that he, you know, is essentially trying to kill half of the population of the universe. is because he believes that people should be thriving and that there's limited resources in the world. And so he's, you know,

he's hoping to kill many, many, many people to save many, many, many people. And there's this idea of sacrifice for salvation, which is, you know, a fairly weighty concept. And I kind of, I kind of identified. Now, I don't identify with genocide. That's not what I'm saying. But as somebody who's, like, seeking balance in all things,

it's weird to make a character like this, like, thoughtful. And he is thoughtful. This isn't Blowfelt, you know what I mean? Yeah, no, absolutely. There's a lot of depth. I mean, I don't know if there's a lot of depth. There is enough depth to carry you through the movie.

Some, and that's actually been an interesting, I think an interesting evolution in a lot of the Marvel movies. You know, I went back and watched the first two Avengers films, and there's not really any kind of clarity or sense around the Chitari and Loki attacking New York City. And there's not really a ton of sense around Ultron, this AI that then comes to try to rule the world. Like, there's no depth to any of those characters. No, and you did, I mean, the other thing you get into, in a lot in those movies, but superhero movies in particular, is the sort of the Batman problem, which is that the superheroes are probably the cause of the supervillains and are, and never, except in rare cases, never really wrestle with that. So, and this is, but this was one where it was like, oh, this terrible thing is happening. Thank God the Avengers are here. Yes, truly.

Let's talk about the Avengers a little bit. Do you have an Avenger you care about? Is there a character in these movies? As a childhood comic fan, I was never an Avengers guy. I was an X-Men guy. I was as well. But I, you know, I really appreciate the, not just that the MCU movies, obviously, separate from the X-Men franchise, have been better than everything that came before. But also that they, I don't know if Marvel got lucky or what, but these were the right characters to make successful movies in the 21st century with.

They did get really lucky, honestly. I mean, we can talk a little bit about that because this wasn't, it was supposed to be X-Men and Spider-Man and Spider-Man's in this movie, but there's this whole long history. You can actually read about it in the journalist Ben Fritz's great book, The Big Picture, also called The Big Picture. But he kind of unpacks how Marvel ended up positioning Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk

and Captain America as their big for some, which in the minds of guys like us who grew up when we did, it was Wolverine and Spider-Man. I think we're kind of the Alpha and the Omega. Sure, yeah. I mean, and the character is, I mean, in the 90s, I mean, there's a list of characters that aren't even in comic books barely anymore

or they're making comebacks now, but the sort of supplemental X-Men characters like Cable and, you know, Bishop and Gambit. Like, those were bigger stars than Captain America back then. Side note, we will see Cable in a movie in three weeks. Also played by Josh Roll. Also played by Josh Rowland.

Big 2018 for Josh Rowling. Incredible. It's fascinating choice to double up in the Marvel universe because now Fox is owned by Disney and so inevitably at some point down the line will probably have a Deadpool Avengers crossover and what will they do with Brolin? I thought about that a few times

when he was on the screen the night. I think you can do Brolin versus Brolin. I don't think it'll come to that, but I think that he's sufficiently disguised in this one. That's interesting. But given the characters that we have here, I know that you're a big Guardians of the Galaxy fan. There's a lot of Guardians of the Galaxy in this movie.

Are there other people? Do you care about the Chris Evans Captain America? Watching the movie tonight, I was taken, this is not an original idea probably, but I was taken with how Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth, just based on when they were cast in the Marvel universe, like they, Marvel really lucked out with how capable they are at being actors. And Hemsworth in a certain way has it,

I mean, he was a revelation in Ragnarok, but he still sort of has an easier path. He's playing a, he's very much playing a role. Chris Evans is like, I don't know that the Marvel universe exists, exists without Chris Evans secretly being just like a five-star actor. Like he's very, very good at being a compelling Captain America. When the movie reveals him, it's a pretty fun reveal and it's an inevitable fight scene. There was a, and you know, this is an opening night crowd, but there was a palpable like, oh shit, yes, Captain America is back.

Which that is a thought that never crossed my mind when I was 12 years old, like reading a comic book. I was never like, yes, Captain America. And it's because of what you're saying, I think Evans and the way they positioned the character, they made him a little bit more of a, a little bit more of a badass. You know, he's such a boy soldier that it's difficult to give him any edge. There's a joke in Ultron where he says, like, watch your language

in the opening segment. So they've always been pretty keen about that. But yeah, I think Evans has done a great job. Hemsworth, to me, is in many ways the heart of the movie. The movie opens on him. He's a huge part of the conclusion. And I totally agree.

It's funny to think about because those are the two actors, along with Robert Downey Jr., who have been most rumored to be leaving the MCU at some point in the future. You know, I don't want to say what happens in this movie yet. And I don't mean to downplay RDJ. It's just that we knew who he was when he got signed up.

And even if you were unsure if he could pull off a superhero movie, you knew that the first movie was Iron Man. You knew immediately that what we were getting and it was fantastic. I will say that if anything, he's been a little bit neutered by the fact that, like, everybody is quippy. Yes. It was funny to watch him go toe to toe with Chris Pratt. particularly, because Chris Pratt is kind of feasting off some of the RDJ fumes in general.

Starlord kind of gets to do some of that stuff. Yeah, I mean, there's a little bit of a different tone to that. To me, the weirdest one was Dr. Strange, because Dr. Strange is, I don't think, not a humorless character in the comic books, but he's certainly not, like, qui in the same way. He's not the one that Dr. Strange I grew up with. He has a little bit of sass from what I remember, but he's very spiritual. I mean, he's a dick. Like, that's the thing, is he's like a deeply spiritual, but he's also, like, the flip side of that

is that he's, you know, not a kind person. A second doctor. Yeah. This is really only the second time we've seen Cumberbatch in one of these movies. Yeah. You think he works? You think he fits him with some of those guys who've been around for 18 films? Yeah, I think that I liked him more in his own. I mean, if only, I mean, and that can be said about a lot of the people in this.

But I think just to make a really nerdy qualm, it's just that like, as far as suspension of disbelief goes, everything works. Like, magic sort of needs to be in its own, in its own vertical, sort of. Yeah. I'd love for The Ringer to have a magic vertical. Oh, yeah. You think we should launch that? So many people will. love that.

I would really like that. One of my favorite things about the MCU is that they've normalized some of the otherworldly powers. I mean, basically they've made Norse mythology into just a planet where some powered people live. Pretty smart. It's like, yeah, it's like alien tech is basically like the entirety of this like race of gods, right?

Which makes sense in a universe where like that is the definition of Thanos or whatever. But yeah, but the magic is still a little bit like that. there were several moments in the movie where you were just where of all of the ridiculous stuff going on I had a moment of pause where I was just like that seems a little bit too much for magic right now or like if he could just do that

why doesn't he do a thing right now? You know like... Well he's not doing coin tricks. I mean he's got these... No, he's got lots of stuff. But then when he would do his most impressive stuff I would just do that five times and I feel like the movie's over.

It's a good point. So one of the things that the movie constantly reminds you of is what's the best version of this hero? You know, the hero gets to have their moment and there is a Dr. Strange moment in particular where he goes full, Sorcerer Supreme and it gets like very psychedelic

for a minute. And there was a part of me that was just like, I wish this was just, it just became this movie where it was just the psychedelic Dr. Strange movie for like 25 minutes and it only happens for like a minute. And it's actually one of the flaws I think of the movie is because it has to serve so many masters. You don't really get

a Black Panther moment even though there's a lot of Black Panther in the movie and there's a lot of Wakanda in the movie and those characters that we just came to fall in love with two and a half months ago, it's almost, it's like a trick. You know, you get like 11 minutes with them. They got one line. I don't know, you know, when this was filmed in relationship to Black Panther or, you know, how much they knew of the success of the movie.

It did feel like the success of Black Panther, the movie, sort of muted Black Panther the character because Wakanda is what got all the time. That's right. And it was the cast of the six most significant. Five most significant characters from the movie. Yeah. A lot of looks for Winston Duke. Yeah.

Chadwick Bozeman got, you know, only as much as everybody else, pretty much. Yeah, I felt like I almost couldn't even hear what he was saying when he first came on the screen. I was like, they're kind of like hustling him along there to get more of the Dora Milage. Yeah, he had that, but, I mean, he literally has a, his voice is, it's a different scale than most of the other male voices in the movie. And it worked really well in Black Panther because he had this off, this like, off-putting. sort of, you know, tenor to his voice, but in this, it just seemed, you're right,

like your ears weren't accustomed to it when it came on the screen. It was strange. I'm going to go out of my way to stand for one character. Go for it, man. I'd love to hear what it is. I really think that they nailed Spider-Man with Holland. Yeah. Like, I can't-

In this movie or in general. I loved Homecoming. I thought it was great, but this actually, he felt like in this movie what Spider-Man would be doing in a comic book. And I was like, I've kind of been waiting for that.

I've been waiting for the jokey kid who is a teenager who can hang with real heroes, but you never forget that he's the youngest kid there. All of that stuff fits together so well. They did such a brilliant job of making him inextricable to Iron Man, and they really pulled that thread through in this movie really well. I don't know, Holland is just really, really winning. It's really like, oh, man, they could just build all these movies around this kid in the future if they want it to. Yeah.

I totally agree. I think he was, he's definitely the best Spider-Man. Yes. Of the various Spider-Men, all due respect to those who came before him. Yes. But you're right. I mean, and I think that there's also a degree to which it's, I know that Spider-Man is not neatly part of the MCU. But certainly the success of the MCU has allowed Spider-Man to be, let Spider-Man be Spider-Man again, I guess, whatever.

I mean, you don't, the Sam Rami movies are favorites of mine. But even Toby McGuire, there's a little bit where you're casting him and you're sort of plotting out the future to him being the biggest action star in America. Like, you got to cast somebody based on, like, you can't let them be a scrawny 15-year-old forever. Tom Holland could keep doing that for five more movies. I think he's going to look like that for a while. Yeah, it's very true. And, you know, it may, it's a lot, it just, it fits in perfectly.

Like you said, standing next to Spider-Man. I mean, next to Iron Man. I was really impressed with, I mean, you could almost feel like a reality to that relationship that, like, Robert Downey Jr. is just like, like, he had to sign off on, at some level, he had to sign off on spending that much time on screen with Tom Holland as opposed to the various other people that were around. In addition to his massive profit participation and huge salary, do you think he had casting approval of Tom Holland? I don't, maybe, maybe not the casting of Tom Holland, but there's, I'm sure there's a degree to which, like, he had to, like, he had to. He was just like, had to sign off on who he was spending two months of set time with because it was a pretty small crew. Absolutely. Is there anybody you want to ride for before we talk about maybe what didn't work?

Yeah, I mean, I thought that they did a good job of giving everybody either the pro wrestling. The pro wrestling, I have to say this, of course. The pro wrestling phrase is get your stuff in. Even if you're going to lose or if you're, even if you're not the main point of the match, you get, you know, you get three minutes in the middle of the match to, like, do your big move and do your flex to the crowd. Yeah. They let everybody get their stuff in. And I thought I found, I was surprised with how I didn't feel like anybody, with the exception of Black Panther, I mean, of Chadwick Boseman. There was nobody who I desperately wanted to see more of coming out of the movie.

Everybody sort of got their part. It was a really small part, but I thought, I mean, every part in this was relatively small. I thought the way they did, what they did with the Hulk was, it's really weird that they've done more with. the Hulk sort of in Ragnarok and now Infinity War, then they didn't all the time leap prior to that. Yeah, when he had two movies. Yeah, they've somehow made him a more interesting character. Yeah,

it's funny. I thought for sure that what they were going to do after Ragnarok was pivot towards like that Planet Hulk storyline that is very famous and that may still happen, but this kind of, this changes some of the dynamics of that. And yeah, he's one, Ruffalo's great. And he's

a more sensible Hulk because he makes banner like such kind of a simp and that's really effective and yeah the way that they manage to show us and then not show us that character is really cool um it's funny you're making the wrestling analogy and there was literally a moment when i was watching infinity war where i thought this is kind of like a RVD saboo match in the late 90s where like they got to hit all their spots you know and everything had to have their spots then like somehow you didn't get your money's worth yeah and i don't know how you want to pivot into this thing this stuff we're not as high on in the movie but the uh But there was definitely the pro wrestling vibe of, like, why has that guy been lying prone outside the ring for exactly the right amount of time?

It took for him to come in and make the save. Yeah, I don't want to spoil it too much, but there's a character during a very important showdown with Thanos, who has a sincere relationship to Thanos, who shows up and then, like, just disappears, and then we just never see again. Yeah. And, you know, that's the problem when you have to serve 25 characters. It's like, you can just lose a thread. Things seem very convenient. How did they get to the places they're going? Yeah.

If you try to do any logical storytelling math, you're going to lose your breath pretty quickly. Sure. What else? What else? There was no Bueno for you. You want to shit on Don Cheadle for 10 minutes? No, he was fine. Yeah.

No, I mean, I'll say one thing, one more positive thing before we get to the bad stuff. And it's not about Cheetle. I love Don Cheadle for the record. This is sort of my borderline, but I was going through all of the moments I remember, and there were so many moments, like we said. It was a churn.

I mean, it was nonstop. weirdly the most, if I had to sum up the whole movie in one scene, and this is not spoilery, there's a scene where Rocket Raccoon, or where, let's say, those are words you said out loud. Yeah. There's a, there's a scene where Thor and Rocket Raccoon are trying to pull off the, basically trying to turn on a star, right? Yep. And normal stuff. Yeah, and for Thor, Thor's part of it is literally, like, a,

godly feet of strength. And then he's like, and Rocket Raccoon is like piloting a spacecraft and Thor is just like, give it more rocket or whatever. And there's a scene where, I mean,

just in a quick cut, the CGI Raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper is doing this very movie thing where he's pushing the throttle, like the video game controllers as hard as he can in hopes of

making the Jets go faster as if this is a thing. Now, if anyone listening to this has tried to make their cargo faster by stomping as hard as they can, they understand that this is not a real thing that happens, but it's a very movie thing. It's not specific to this. But that was the,

that was symbolic of the whole movie for better and worse. And that the entire thing was this contrivance of trying to make like this crazy impractical space shit tangible.

You know, and I mean, it's the idea that if we push a little bit harder, it'll make it seem more real and it'll make it matter more, you know? I think that's one of the struggles with the movie in general is there is,

there's an enormous amount of this in space. There's a lot of planet hopping. We go to places that we've never heard of and we're meant to believe that there's something very important there, and they have to go there and acquire something in Vormier. I think when they put up titles, location titles on the bottom third of the screen, they should be obligated to let you know whether or not you've been here before and where. Yes, previously seen on.

Yeah, previously in like Thor the Dark World. Just let me know. Like maybe I can draw that, you know, make that connection. Yeah, I was reminded of the movie Thor colon the Dark World when Thor is explaining to Rocket Raccoon that his mother was killed by a dark elf. Yeah. I think some of us had worked hard to forget Thor of the Dark World. My favorite parts of the Thor mythology are when he's just sort of irreverent but full of centuries of backstory. And I think that that was passable for me just as, you know, in that mode.

What do you think about Vision and Scarlet Witch? That's exactly where I was hoping you would go. I think that, I mean, I said this to you before we started recording. As a comic book fan growing up, I was never a Vision and the Scarlet Witch fan, probably because that was like the closest thing to a romance arc that Marvel had in those years. And that wasn't really my cup of tea. but also wasn't a big Avengers guy and they weren't even the most interesting of the Avengers and you know Scarlet Witch

did have some kind of eccentricity duer power set but again is this sort of like slightly too all-powerful to be deeply interesting to me and Vision sort of was just seems sort of like a Justice League character that was shoehorned into the Marvel universe and all that said I really enjoy both the performances

in this movie of Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettney but it was but it was asking too much for the emotional core of the movie to revolve around their relationship, which I guess is a slight spoiler to say that it did, because there just wasn't enough there wasn't enough there.

Yeah, we got a little bit of it basically in the final 20 minutes of Age of Ultron, and that's really all, or maybe it's Civil War, I can't recall, which one were they focus on that, but there's not a lot of... They're part of Ultron, right? And then they were together in Civil War, but yeah, it's all a blur now. And maybe that's part of the issue is you're trying to remember like how all these stories, storylines fit together.

But, you know, Paul Bettney for most of these movies was merely Jarvis, the voice from the Iron Man films. And Elizabeth Olson came in fairly late to the game. And we just haven't spent a lot of time with them. And, you know, Vision has an Infinity Stone in his head. That's how he gets to exist.

And so he's a very important character. And Thanos is in pursuit of him. And, yeah, there's just, there's enough time spent there. And there's enough pivoting around those two characters that just inevitably makes it feel less propulsive, I guess, because I just don't really want to be with them. I'm like, take me back to Spider-Man. I don't want to be with them, and there's no, like I said,

no knock on those characters. Elizabeth Olson, I thought, was much better than I was expecting. Not that I thought she was going to be bad. She's actually very good in the movie. She made incredible use out of the limited screen time she was given. She does. I mean, this is just fantasy booking or whatever, but when they laid out the plans for the MCU to get to,

Infinity War eight years ago or whatever it was it would have been great if they had had the foresight just to cast they knew how little

they were going to how little screen time they were going to give these two they should have just cast a couple like just cast Eva Mendez and Ryan Gosling

Oh I love it because then when they like talking about how much they love each other you think that they do that is there could be some more there is some stunt casting

in this movie that I want to talk about okay I'm gonna this is a little spoilery so if you're a little allergic to this, avoid it. But Peter Dinklage is in this movie.

One of the mini, I told you before, I haven't gone to a lot of, like, first, like the very first screening of a giant movie in a long time. Thankfully in Los Angeles they have, like, like, a screening every five minutes for the first three hours. So, you know, the seven o'clock

screening, which is when it starts on the West Coast, is sold out or close to it. But like, 715, you can get like the exact seat that you want. So I skip like, the line, I skipped the, but I also missed the big moment. This was one of, this was my first experience in a long time of seeing

well, any movie with like massive amounts of applause for character appearances, but the first time I can remember applause in a Marvel movie, and again this is just my experience since I think Spider-Man too, like Sam Ramey Spider-Man. And and yeah, Dinklage was a huge, was a huge

applause, got a bunch of applause. A laugh and an applause. A laugh. A laugh. And it was only hampered by the fact that it was unexpected. And the reveal was a little bit, I mean, he was in, he was in darkness. It was sort of came over the crowd in a wave because it wasn't really, no one, they didn't all immediately register him. Yeah, he plays, I think, Aitri, Eitri, the dwarf king. I don't, I'm, I'm sure I'm getting that wrong. And I apologize to anybody who is voraciously consuming canon.

He's not a dwarf. I mean, he is a dwarf. He's a dwarf king and he, obviously Peter Dink, which is a dwarf, but he is a giant figure. He is five, ten times the same. size of Thor. Yeah. And so there's something, and he also has had his hands removed.

Which is just brilliant. So it's a very funny, and he's a king of this star, and he also is a weapons maker. And he plays a huge, a very important role in the movie. But there's something very unnerving about it. Also, a former star of the X-Men movies. And if we want to keep going back to the actors who were double-dipping here, you know, he was once upon a time. Was he toad?

A Bolivar Trask, I think he played. Oh, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I would say that. It was funny to see Dinklage, but I was kind of like, this is a lot. Like, I'm still trying to remember who Mantis is, and you're going to make me look at Tyrion, Lanester as well. Okay, well, is there anything else that you were bummed out by? I think overall, the integration of all the different IPs went really well.

I was a little bit underwhelmed by the Guardians of the Galaxy, especially by Peter Quill. I'm sure this will pivot into a Chris Wars podcast in the third segment, but he was definitely like the loser in the Chris Wars tonight for me. I think that there is something to be said about what that means for him in the future, but we'll get into some more spoilery where is this series going stuff in the next segment. But before that, let's take a break to hear a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by the Google Assistant.

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to see the best collection of thrillers, suspense, and horror available to stream anywhere. We are back on the Big Picture with David Shoemaker, My Dwarf King. And we're going to spoil the shit out of the movie a little bit. I'm not totally sure that this movie is spoilable, and that's part of the problem. As we mentioned in the first segment is all powerful. Yeah. As you might imagine, he gets his hands on all them infinity stones. Yeah.

There are six openings in the infinity gauntlet. That's right. Each meant to hold a specific stone. Yes. There, you know, that is a Chekhov's gun for every knuckle and one on the back of the hand. He's gonna get all the stones. I think that's safe to assume. Truly.

So he acquires the stones. And when he does, there's some all-out mayhem. In the meantime, you know, there's a lot of battle scenes. There's a lot of fighting. There's a lot of opportunities for people to get what they want. The movie, interestingly, opens with a couple of notable deaths. And I thought when these deaths happened, that we were going to get like a truly superhero genocidal movie. And we sort of do, but not really.

Well, I mean, they did it. We're just saying things now, right? Let's just say stuff. This is the spoiler. I've thrown up so many warnings that the people of Earth needs to chill. So Loki dies in the first like five minutes of the movie. Yes. The great Tom Hiddleston, who is really wonderful in all these movies.

Yeah. So pour out a little bit for him. Thought it was a really smart move because of all of the rumors that people were going to die. At least at like five minutes in, you're like, well, maybe that's all the deaths we're talking about. You know, like maybe that's it. Heimdahl as well. Idris Elba kicks the bucket right off the bat. Yeah.

Which sucks only because like of all of the franchises, I mean, Thor's got the biggest variance from like Florida ceiling. But it was trending up though Yeah but yeah and I would watch I mean I could watch a You know A tin movie series of just like The goings on in Asgard If it's well done

Very very much so And it could have they could have gone a lot I mean they could have been like the Like the downed abbey Just set in Asgard or something like that Like and it would have been totally watchable There's so many good actors that they threw in there That's true although so many of them are dead now

Renee Rousseau is dead Yeah yeah Anthony Hopkins is dead Kate Blanchett is dead And now and then you know In the Avengers universe everybody's dead now too. So not everybody.

I guess we'll get to that. We'll get to that. I sort of wish that they had killed more people in Act 1. Yes. I thought so too. I wish that Nebula, Karen Gillen, had died. She's a good example who I actually really love her as an actor, but she's like, she's one of those characters that like Marvel seems to be insisting upon

in a way that, and probably because she's got the Thanos connection, but all up until now, I'm just like, why, why is she coming back? Like, why, like, I don't understand. Let's unpack Nebula and Gomorra and a little bit of the Thanos stuff. So they are both the adopted daughters essentially of Thanos. Yeah, and Nebula, we was introduced as one of his sort of Harbinger, Super Soldier, Four Horseman characters, right? Of which there are many in this movie, too, which I think to try to explain who all those characters are would be very confusing and difficult. But, yes, and Nebula and Gomorrah have been bound in the two Guardians movies, and they both hate Thanos and resent and are angered by the way they were raised by him.

Remind me when Nebula, like, again, to go rest, like turned baby face. Like it was fairly recently, right? Was it... I think it was in the back half of Guardians 2. Okay, yeah, that sounds right. But there was always that latent

kind of I love you even though we're mortal enemies even in the first Guardians film. Between Nebula and, yeah, and Gamora, sure. But it was just sort of like, I don't, I didn't need her. I didn't need her

on the side of the angels. Like, it was... I agree. It's just one more thing where there's, I completely agree about Karen Gillen too. It's like maybe make Karen Gillen just like a human being in this movie.

She's like a beautiful, great actress. and do you have her covered in like robot skin? But, yeah, so essentially, Gamora is aware of where one of the stones is and she has to pay for that. And Nebula you think is going to pay for it and then Gamora pays for it. And that's really, Gamora is forced to be,

it's sacrificed. And that's the only other significant death through the first two plus hours of the movie. I think that's right. And that's very strange. There's also no... But I wish that we had just, like, given, I mean, we'll get to the ending, I guess.

But given that, like, many people were going to die theoretically, I think they could have just streamlined the movie down to, like, the 10 people you cared about and just mowed down all the rest. I think that there's this sort of, I talk about expectations on all of my podcasts a lot, but there's the sort of, your mind is sort of rolling with, like, the expectations that you have as a comic book movie consumer, but also what you know about like the movie industry and all the articles about the Marvel MCU

and the future of it and stuff like that that I would have forgiven them the sort of contrivance of like all of the actors who are out of contract just get shot or just get destroyed in one scene almost. Right. Yes. They could have cut out a lot of the forced exchanges that we're talking about.

Though there's essentially two major storylines happening at once. There's one in Wakanda in the third act of the film. And then there's one, I believe, on tight. Titan, which is Thanos' Ravaged Home. Yes. And, you know, so Spider-Man and Iron Man and Dr. Stranger on Titan, and almost every other character

is in Wakanda. And, I don't know, I mean, let's just like say what happens and then talk about what that means. Thanos gets the sixth stone. He defeats the people who are on Titan after, actually, I think, one of the more thrilling battle

scenes that Marvel's put together where the five Avengers are sort of teamed up to try to remove the gauntlet from his hand. There's a lot of clever comic book stuff going on there where all the characters get to use their powers against this giant purple goate. Sure, that was really, really well done, really well choreographed. And when Star Lord takes a bow for the game plan, I felt like that was an appropriate time to sort of salute the direction. I'm sure you deal with this all the time. One of the sort of subtle like mind fucks of the whole thing is like, I don't know who I should be applauding along the line. And it could just be like,

you know, a 25-year-old sitting at like, you know, industrial lights and magic or whoever's doing this stuff now that just did all of the heavy lifting? I don't know. It feels like it. I'm always trying to unpack what's real and what's CGI and what's pre-vis and what was created on the spot. That sequence, I think, is effective

because it feels like a comic book and it's right to feel like a comic book. You don't always want that feeling. There are a handful of evil villain characters who are completely CGI who kind of look bad in the movie as they often are in these movies. but in that case it works anyhow. Thanos gets off a Titan, he goes to Wakanda,

boom, boom. He essentially wins. And in winning, that indicates that half of the population of every planet in the universe will be instantaneously eradicated because he wills it so in an effort to create that balance

that we talked about in the first segment. Yeah. And so literal characters just start evaporating into dust. They're almost like the figures in Back to the Future disappearing from the photo as if they never existed

and they take it pretty far a lot of characters go more than half I counted and I couldn't help but think it happens to Bucky Barnes first and I was like okay maybe Bucky's dying for some reason that I don't quite understand and then when you realize that Thanos's plan

is going through I was like this doesn't matter these stakes aren't real these characters are coming back you know what talking about that by the way Total interjection here, apropos of nothing.

Proxima Midnight was the female whatever, SWAT team member for Thanos, whatever. We were trying to figure out who voiced her. It was Carrie Coon, who did the voice. I swear to God, when the movie ended, I walked out of the theater, and I turned to David and I said, was that Tavi Gevinson?

The founder of... It's great that it was the... It was the, basically the mascot of the ringer.com, was actually the answer of that. My apologies to Miles Surrey, who stands so hard for Carrie Coon. Carrie Coon voices a CGI baddie. And that character dies along with many others.

Yes. I will say just to get my one complaint, my formal complaint out of the way, a lot of people were expecting Spider-Man to die. Yep. My argument from the first rumors about people dying in this movie was that if Spider-Man dies, then I call bullshit on all of it.

because Kevin Feige does not have control over Spider-Man to kill him. Yeah, but I mean, Spider-Man does, he goes. Yeah. So, like, yeah, along with half of the people. And to be fair, even if this is one half of the story

and that there will be some people returning to life, they did a very compelling job of deciding who to kill or who to, you know, off. Did they, though? See, I'll take issue with that. Every time that there were, like, two people that were, like, running to embrace and one of them fell to pieces,

disappeared into ash. I was sort of surprised by the one who ended up going, or oftentimes I was, and sometimes it was both of them, and that was interesting too. Kind of messed with your expectations there a little bit. But it immediately felt like,

similar to your Spider-Man thought, there's a moment where Black Panther vanishes. And I was like, what the fuck? Like, there's just no way, show me the time stone now so we can go back to the past and undo all of this instant. My mind went there immediately.

Yes. And that's not great. I did spend a minute while other people were dying. I was not paying real attention because I was wondering. I was trying to scroll through my memory to see if they had already scheduled a Black Panther 2. And like how many pictures Chadwick Bozeman had signed on for? Because how, like, what a amazing flex that would have been to like, I mean, just for the MCU in general to like do Black Panther, throw them in this movie for, you know, 10 minutes and then just be like, we're done. Hell of a negotiating tactic.

Yeah, the finest. No, I mean, I think separate, I agree with you, obviously. You were throwing my own point against me. But I mean as a prompt, as a setup for whatever comes next, presumably only the surviving Avengers, et cetera, are going to be the characters in the next movie. And, you know, it's an interesting potpourri of, you know, leftovers that we have now. Let me see if you can help me answer a question.

Okay. I have a 14-year-old sister. She's really getting into the MCU. Right? She's right at that age where Chris Evan seems interesting to her, as he's interesting to you and I. She's been sending me text messages,

and here's what she wants. Sean, have you seen Avengers Infinity War yet? She's asked me this three times. Every time I've said, no. She asked me today, I said, I'm seeing it tonight. She said, you're so lucky, but remember to do what I asked you to do, which is don't tell me who dies,

but tell me how many people die. This is legitimately what she asked me. Is she in like a bedding pool? That was my guess. I was like, I did not realize you were a high-stakes gambler. Or maybe she's just setting up her own, just like preparing herself, stealing herself for the level of trauma she's going to enjoy it. I should have known when she moved to Macau on her own at 14 that she had a lot of money riding on whether Downey makes it to the next movie. So I actually don't know coming out of this movie what I'm supposed to tell her because like 25 characters just disappear.

Yeah. What do I do? Just tell her a lot and ask her how much she really wants to know. You have to go in on her. But by the way, this is hilarious, though, because, like, you have a 14-year-old sister. I do. So, for, this is one of these great things that we all experience in life when we reach a certain age where, like, the young people that we know our relatives or whatever just really couldn't give a shit about what we do. Like, like, your parents are much more impressed with what you do than your sister.

And then finally, finally, after hearing all, like. hearing your parents gloat about your career for years and years, your sister is finally like, wait, Sean gets to see all these movies a week early. Finally, here is a thing that affects that I care about. I don't think she thinks I'm cool, but she knows that I have information. The best part is that you didn't see the movie a week early, and you can't really answer her question. It's true. In the past, I had seen some of these films early, and I think she got excited.

I saw Black Panther a couple weeks early, and she thought I was like the president. She was like, you have the most power of any man that could live. Sure. And in this case, that's not true. I'm not sure where we're going to go from here. I worry that my prediction is too true. That everybody's going to come back. Then I'll just come back and then we'll go back in time.

Here's how this works in comic books. If I can just really overly simplify all of my memories from all of the cataclysmic storylines where mutants lose them. their powers and the, you know, the government arrests all of the superpowered individuals. And even more broadly, when just, you know, Marvel and DC decide to just retcon and reboot and start over with eight superheroes or whatever. Generally, it's like everybody gets taken away or everybody gets killed or everybody gets disappeared in some sense.

And then they bring back like all but eight eventually. Over the span of the next year, we kind of get back to where we were, at least in terms of headliners. Right? And there'll be some just functional people that don't come back or they're saving them for something down the road or whatever. I think that this is going to be both like meaningless in the sense that, I mean, did you run through all of the names of people of the headliners that didn't make it out of the movie? It was, I mean, literally half of the people that you care about are gone. Yes. Which is, we'll never hold.

Right. Under any circumstances. But it's interesting who they chose because there were a lot of people, like I said, like we've talked. about Spider-Man and Black Panther were, it was bullshit. They are bullshitting. They are the future of the MCU, so they're not going anywhere. But then there are people like Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. who are rumored to be interested in doing other things with their time who are still there.

Fascinating. Wait, is Robert Downey Jr. did he die? I don't even remember now. I can't recall. This is the problem with doing this, with doing an ending like this. And also, you know, we should say that the movie basically ends there. It is very much a Hunger Games part one. one interruption where the movie essentially ends with Thanos sitting at peace with a small smirk on his face.

And then there's a stinger, which we can talk about. There's only one stinger. They make us sit through the whole end credits. To finish where I was saying earlier, I think that, because I talked myself out of that statement, I mean, away from it. But I think that it's clear that all of these people are going to come back or many of them are going to come back. But they'll use this contrivance to keep a couple of them dead. I agree with you. I do agree with you.

Or it'll just be a misdirection where it'll be like, everybody. he's back, but then Captain America's dead. Who were you most willing to sacrifice? Give me two people. Weirdly, like, the two people who presumably are actually dead, Loki and Gomorrah are two people who I don't want to say goodbye to in the MCU. I know. They bring a lot to their movies.

With pretty limited, like, I don't feel like Hiddleston can't fit this into his schedule. I agree. He's done a lot of work. He's been in a lot of these movies, but he's not a movie star per se. No. He's perfect for this role. And judging only from, like, still photos on, on, you know, on comic book blogs.

He seems to have the most fun at Comic-Con compared to everybody else. I saw him on Kimmel the other night, and he was lapping it up. He was there with five other cast members, and he was in all his splendor. Who can I say goodbye to? I mean, of the people who pseudo-died at the end of the movie,

or just in general? Just in general. Let's say we get, because we're going to get Avengers 4 next summer, and people actually are going to die in that one because contracts are up. and who are you ready to say goodbye to? I'll go through the top listing and just say yes or no.

Robert Downey Jr. I could do without Robert Downey Jr. But I think it's unnecessary to do without Robert Downey Jr. I'm sure I've said this you before in private conversations. It is just for the stability of the MCU, it's worth paying him $50 million a year to be filmed on his iPhone, on his couch at home and CGI that into the armor and it's worth it.

You have said that to me before, and it's something I agree with. I think he actually makes scenes in this movie work, even though what you said earlier is very true as well, which is that everybody's got jokes, so his jokes aren't as good anymore. Yeah. But he's still, there is something central to what he's doing.

We got through the first part of the podcast without mentioning his track suit, which I think we should, I don't know. His sort of camo hoodie. It was a camo hoodie, like futuristic, but weirdly bell-bottomed track suit. You think that was his choice? You think he got to make that call?

I spent a lot of the movie thinking about it every time he was on the screen. It's really something. It's honestly rich guy elite. You know, that's rich guy dressing like however he wants. If that was a choice by R.D.J., we can never be without him. Shout out to him. Tom Holland, we need to keep. Chadwick Boseman, we need to keep.

I could do without Scarjo. That said, because of the amount of screen time she's gotten over the years and because of my, the fact that I like her as an actor, she can do more with limited screen time than just about anybody else. Yes, she makes this character work. They never build anything around her, though, which is too bad.

I mean, there's been a long conversation about whether there should be a Black Widow movie. It's funny that we've now had Atomic Blonde and Red Sparrow basically be the Black Widow movie a couple of times. It's kind of sucked out some of the juice from that. But, and Scarlet Johansson has made genre films, certainly not like Spy Thrill, but has made, or she has, but has made enough genre films that you don't feel like you need this in the way that you did when she was cast.

If you want to see that movie, you can see Lucy. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to save Chris Evans for the end. I can do without Cumberbatch, at least in the Avengers, at least in, you know, I could watch more of those movies, but like I said, do without him in the movie. I like Anthony Mackey, but you can obviously do without Falcon. Yep. I like Mark Ruffalo, but I can do without Thor. I mean, without Hulk, I cannot do without Thor.

I worry that we're going to be without Thor next summer. That might be true. There was one scene in the movie between him and Rocket where he kind of said goodbye. Yeah. The single biggest achievement of this series, and you alluded to this earlier, is they just made Thor work. And they took them three Thor movies and three Avengers movies and a lot of crossovers, but they just really made that character interesting.

Yeah, you got to find the right level of sort of self-awareness and irreverence for all of these movies to work, and that was the most surprising one that they found the tune. Gamora we said goodbye to although that makes me sad Nebula I can do without I love Guardians of the Galaxy but this but tonight's Peter Quill I could live without but I wanted them to keep making those movies so he'll be another one keep him alive

I could never wish death on Dave Batista so Jack stays you know my feelings on Loki like I said Paul Bettney and Elizabeth Olson were given they were you know Auvoir see you guys later I can do without them Now, Chris Evans is the interesting one Because I'd sort of made my piece with him being done

You know? He ain't done at the end of this movie He's not done at the end And not just that But I get why he had kind of long hair and a beard But it was interesting to go for like a bit For like the new look I mean he's been sporting this for a while

But it's interesting to have like This kind of late model Captain America And then pulling the plug To then pull the plug Like I see every He did very little in this movie except, well, in a lot of always be Captain America. He just sort of like was a walking symbol, you know, or icon.

In this movie, he does not wear the stars and stripes. He does not have his shield. He's a black star on his chest. Yeah. He's just not, he's not the classical version of that. No, and the whole thing, and he did, and he was the one character that left me wanting more. Like, I was like, I could see, I want to see Falcon and Black Widow and Captain America as like a black ops just squad taking down. I believe they're in the Middle East or whatever.

They open in Scotland and it's like, what are these guys doing in Scotland? Yeah, I mean, so that I don't want to say goodbye to him, but he's the one person that I convince myself that it's just like, I just don't think Chris Evans, like I like Chris Evans enough at this point that I wish him well in whatever he wants to do with his life. And if that means not playing Captain America, then I guess that's fine. If you live in New York, go see Lobby Hero, he's wonderful in that play I saw a couple of weeks ago.

Okay. I mean, is there anybody that you, is there anybody that you are just ready to get rid of? Can't do without Pepper Pots. No. It's funny because that's one of those comic book things that you see that like you never, like every time they've put Spider-Man and Mary Jane, every time they've actually gotten married, they've had to retcon it and get rid of it because they lose their storytelling.

Like the opening, one of the early scenes was Tony Stark and Pepper Pots, like coming back from a jog at embracing and talking about starting a family. And I was like, I could not care less about any of this. Me too. I was also kind of like, what are the odds that Tony Stark and Pepper Pots are just taking to jog around Central Park. Really? Tony Stark with like his chest

with his chest piece in like full view of everybody? It's just ridiculous. This guy's a billionaire arms dealer who is also a superhero. He's not for morning jog with his girlfriend. Nonsense. Anyhow, I think there's a couple more people

we wouldn't want to do without. Probably not a coyet, sherry, some of the key characters from the Black Panther universe. Yeah, I think the second tier characters are in some ways almost more less expendable than some of the headliners.

Because you can, like, build a story around Tony Stark dies, but someone else takes over the job or whatever. But you want these kind of peripherals to stick around and entertain us. And especially with how close we are to Black Panther. Like, I don't want any of them to leave. No, me neither. Let's wrap this up by talking a little bit about the Stinger and kind of what's to come. The movie has a very long credit sequence, which everyone comfortably sat through. There was not even, like, no one got up.

No one got up. I mean, even when you see these movies other times, I mean, the other Marvel movies, there's always going to be like 15 people who are like, I either need to pee, or it's like, you know, my friend made me come and I don't care, so I'm leaving now or whatever.

I mean, nobody moved. Two hours and 39 minutes of Avengers, and people were like, I need more. So they all stayed because we've trained the culture to stay. And that is routinely fascinating to me. And this stinger was Nick Fury and Maria Hill, Kobe Smolders and Sam Jackson, driving in a car essentially at the moment

when Thanos' plan comes into action so a car kind of spins out of the left side of the left lane. I don't even remember where we are with Nick Fury at this point. I guess he's alive? I don't know. He's alive and he's dead.

But he's still running shield? Or is he, are they just doing like some sort of back in like black ops thing? I'll be perfectly honest with you. I don't know. Yeah. And so we see Fury and we see Maria Hill and then they are almost in a car accident

and then we start seeing people disappearing in New York City and then they disappear but before they do, Fury reaches into the backseat of his car and he pulls out some sort of transponder and he sends a signal of some kind and just as the signal goes through he vanishes the signal hits the ground the camera pans

down to the transponder and we see the iconography of Captain Marvel which is a movie that is coming out next year starring Bree Larson that is set in the 90s and so that actually had my brain church

a little bit. I believe Captain Marvel comes before the fourth Avengers film. I'm looking at the list right now. It's Infinity War, which is a movie we're discussing. And then Ant Man in the Wasp is later this year. Captain Marvel is, I think, early next year and the next summer is Untitled Avengers film,

which was once referred to as Infinity War Part 2. Okay, so that is coming after Captain Marvel. Yes. So then inevitably, Captain Marvel will be a significant, if not the most significant character in combating Thanos because Captain Marvel is also a space story of the sort.

The next year for Marvel for the MCU is, I mean this is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled is making you think you give a shit about Captain Marvel and sorry, all due respect to Carol Danvers or Captain Marvel to give a shit about Ant Man

a year is being tent pulled by by Infinity War on two ends and then being kept aloft by Captain Marvel and Ant-Man. It's incredible. You talk about, like, how crazy it was that Iron Man and Captain America and, you know, Thor became the figureheads of the Marvel universe on screen.

But, like, man, Captain Marvel and Ant-Man, who, like, literally neither of them had comic books for the first, like, six years of the MCU. It's the power of what they've built over the last 10 years. It was notable in the opening credits when they showed the Marvel Studios insignia. The I.O. in studios became a 10. I don't know if you picked up on that. Yeah, I did. And, you know, we are at this decade moment where these movies are in the fabric of our lives.

And even if it's Captain Marvel and Ant Man, they are a huge part of movie-going culture. Yeah, the crowd erupted into cheers when the Captain Marvel tease came on the screen. And again, at that point, you're just punching and you're cheering or whatever. They're talking about a new movie. I was excited, too. But, I mean, are we excited about it? about Captain Marvel, the character? Are we excited about Brie Larson?

Are we excited about, you know, a top flight female superhero? Maybe they were just like, it's over. I'm excited. That's totally true. It was, I mean, I'm excited for all of those reasons, but none of them, like, overwhelmingly so. I hope it'll be a really good movie. I hope that all of the Marvel movies have been so consistently pretty good. Lately, they've been better than that.

And, you know, you hope that, I'm sure it'll be a fun movie to watch one way or the other. I'm kind of excited post-Ragnarok, post-Black Panther, even post-Infinity War, that they will, you know, that the stakes are high here. Not just, yeah, I mean, the run of movies that were on, but also really making a female superhero work. If they fail, you know, after D.C.'s had success with Wonder Woman, you know, that's going to be pretty ostentatious. And it's not even just that. They have to make it work because if this doesn't work, then we don't give a shit

about the next Avengers movie. It's very true. It's unique what they've been able to accomplish there. And even though I think that this is sort of a step back as far as the quality of the films from the last two Marvel movies goes, Infinity War was a step back compared to Black Panther and Ragnar.

I think so. Well, I mean, listen, the first movie, oh, you're in the middle of a sentence. No, no, my point is just, I enjoyed the movie. I continue to be invested in going to see all these other movies, which is basically the most important thing for Marvel. Yeah.

But, you know, I think Ragnarok and particularly Black Panther opened our eyes as cultural critics and thinkers and people who are sort of like, I can have the chocolate and the peanut butter here. Like something can be for the most part a great film and also just kind of an involving, ongoing serialized story that I've just agreed as part of my life to be invested in. Yeah. And this is not so much that. Yes.

I agree with that. I think that all of the first phase of the MCU were kind of graded on a curve in the same way that basically every superhero movie that came before was graded on a curve. I mean, people had very fond memories of like the early singer X-Men movies that were all trash. And I say, I said, I love them so much. But they were able to pull it off, right? there were certainly more like eye-opening examples the first Superman, you know, Tim Burton, Batman, even the early Sam Ramie Spider-Man movies were just like mind-blowing

because they didn't pull it off. They did something really successfully. But the first Avengers movie was graded on a curve. And I think that it was a fantastic movie. But even now, when you look back on it and praise it, a lot of your criteria is they pulled it off, right? Ultron was just a little bit of a mess. and you said you told me you watched it recently

and it was better than you remembered. But it was, you know, it didn't get the benefit of being the first time out. You heard it here first, guys. They pulled it off. Yeah. David Shoemaker of the ringer. This, I mean, this movie was they pulled it off

in such a mind-blowingly entertaining, but also like high-wire way. I mean, the fact that I was engaged with this movie in every scene. And at no point was I just like, what's happening now? Or like, what's this guy doing? Or who is this person?

I mean, it was crazy how well, how difficult this was and how kind of seamlessly they pulled it off. And that's like the greatest praise you could possibly give it. I think that that's a great place to wrap up. This movie is uniquely coherent for something that makes no sense. Yeah. David, thank you so much for coming and breaking this down with me at 11 p.m.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. This is a blast. Excelsior. Thanks again for listening to this week's episode of The Big Picture. Thank you to David Shoemaker. If you want more Avengers, trust me when you go to Theringer.com, you will find more, including a piece that I'm writing about,

whatever happens at the stakes in these superhero movies, along with myriad other things by Andrew Godadarro, Miles Surrey, Kate Hallowell, and a whole bunch of ringer staffers. Come back next week where we'll have another episode. Thanks again. Today's episode of The Big Picture has been brought to you by Shutter. Brought to you by AMC Network's Shudder is not only a premium streaming video service, but an experience unlike any other.

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