Avengers: Endgame

Not aiming for the right body part and totally losing your cool because of a loss are not the same level of mistake.

Spoiler: Spoilers for Thor 1, 2, and 3

After having "witnessed" Loki's "death" four or five times, and losing other loved ones for realsies Thor learned to power through loss.

Spoiler: Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and 2 spoilers

After losing his mom, his biological dad, his surrogate dad and a life time living as a dangerous mercenary, Peter Quinn should have better been able to compartmentalize loss and focus on his job.

 

A case can be made that LOTS of Avengers did not act as intelligently as they could. I'm okay putting Starlord and Thor on the same page.

Also, lots of characters refused to sacrifice one person to save the world. They worked really really hard to try to keep Visionary alive and he still died along with three and half billion people and a trillions of sapient aliens. Oops.

World War II was filled with emotionally difficult choices for the greater good. Tony Stark personalizes the greater good. In this case Iron Man and Captain America should have both been on board to sacrifice Visionary or any other single person to save 3.5 billion. Iron Man and Captain America are the two leaders, or should be. If they both said the same thing, every other hero would probably follow accept Starlord who is inherently selfish and Captain Marvel who would never ever submit to a patriarchal authority figure.

 

I checked out reviews of Captain Marvel, even the most positive reviews were not very appealing so I sat out. The MCU built up enough good will with me that I plan to watch End Game without checking even a light spoiler review, but that's where I end it. Since Brie Larson is the new face of the MCU post Thanos I believe this truly will be the MCU's End Game. Which is fine because DC finally figured out how to make good movies consistently. The timing couldn't be better. I eagerly await the next Wonder Woman movie.

 

It was the previous movie that made me think about that. I don't know if I was actually there if I would sacrifice a loved one for ten strangers but I certainly would for a 100 strangers. I would feel like a horrible person if I didn't do that. The hundred deaths would haunt me forever. I wondered where other people would draw the line and found that for most people the answer for how many strangers they would sacrifice is practically infinite.

It made me feel like a cold hearted freak that I stood out so much but here is how I came to that the idea that I would sacrifice a loved one to save 100 strangers. It would really hurt for me to lose a loved one. I've lost loved ones before and I probably will again but I'm not special.

If I died tommorow my mom would be very sad. My aunt and cousins and friends would be sad. Some of my virtual friends on Lustria-Online would be sad. Everyone is hurt by loss and everyone has people they care about.

Why spare my family and friends being sad about a loss when everyone has loved ones. My extended family is pretty small, we don't produce a lot of kids. If one of my loved ones died, five or six people would be very sad. A dozen to two dozen people would be saddened to a lesser extended. Multiple that by a hundred, who I am to put that much pain on thousands of people to spare my family. That's tribalism at it's worst.

Some people said they would basically save their loved ones against a virtually infinite number of strangers.

Just for the sake of argument, here is what "infinity" looks like. Me and the twenty people I love most get to live long lives with plenty of food and medicine in a bunker somewhere but every other human dies. Twenty people cannot produce enough genetic diversity to repopulate the human race I have driven humanity extinct to save my loved ones. I bet they are going to have survivors guilt. I bet they are going to be unhappy humanity is doomed, and I bet they are going to blame me for selfishily choosing to spare myself personal pain in such a way. Especially since the twenty people I love most will have probably lost most of the twenty people they loved most.

The next extreme is we leave humanity with about a hundred thousands people. That's enough for the human race to rebound. Humanity rebounded from less than that in the past. So we spare those I love most, and the people they love most. We still aren't close to a hundred thousand, so I will next start inviting Lustria-Online members onto my proverbial arc with their loved on until we reach a hundred thousand. The survivors are still going to have survivor's guilt. They are still going to be people who lost loved ones and people are still going to blame me.

Maybe my morality is too cold and alien. Individual versus the many is a big thing on Star Trek. It's very common in Star Trek that the Enterprise, Voyager, or whatever the ship happens to be will risk the safety of everyone on the ship to save one or two lost crew members. That's fine. The ship is like a family and family shouldn't leave family behind but they will still leave people behind to save strangers when the numbers are really big. Not one character in Infinity War was utilitarian enough to try to defend 4 billion people it was barely discussed. At the very least, they should have a heated argument with the utilitarians being outvoted and relucantly conceding.

Black Panther is a head of state. I want heads of state to think big picture. Visionary is a logical machine. Captain America is a hardened soldier. Starlord was raised by pirates but everyone was willing to hang humanity out to dry for their love interest or their bestie. I'm not saying the Marvel team should have acted differently (it'd be a lousy movie if everyone behaved like I would), but they should have at the very least the characters should have doubted what they were doing. Everyone was 100% postive that they were acting heroically without inner turmoil, doubt or pain. It's okay for Captain Marvel to have no weaknesses, doubt, or pain but I'm used to the other characters being actually human (even when they are a tree, robot, Asgardian, or trash panda).

I guess that's all I wanted was a five to ten minute scene where they at least debated the pros and cons of a utilitarian versus an emotional approach.

"My brain says we should sacrifice visionary, but my heart doesn't want to."
"We got this far following our hearts, lets not stop now."

I have a feeling Dr. Strange might have thought like I did. That's why the "one solution" involved him sacrificing himself and being okay with it. A precogniscient he saw all the pain the characters would endure and saw that it was necessary. And yes, time travel will fix everything or MOST everything. My prediction is that time travel will reverse Thanos' finger snap (because Marvel is very good at undoing death) but two or three beloved characters will die for realsies.

Perhaps I shouldn't expect a superhero movie to get into ethical debates but superhero movies cover difficult philosphical issues all the time. Captain America: Civil War actually got fairly deep into philosophy and ethics and that didn't turn off fans. Civil War was about weighing freedom against responsibility. That may be the most important ethnical quandrary of modern times. We the movie going public are not grunting trogladytes, we can handle difficult stuff. Why drop the ball with Infinity War?



On a related topic, you mentioned Starlord wasn't chosen much. I noticed Bucky wasn't chosen at all. Does anyone like Bucky? In my opinion, the Marvel handlers did not spend enough screen time developing the bond between Bucky and Steve Rogers. I guess I'm a cold hearted sociopath that would sacrifice loved ones for the greater good but Bucky really gave Captain America a lot of grief.

I do value loyalty greatly. Were I in Captain America's best shoes, and my best friend was brainwashed into being a cyborg killing machine, I would not split up the rest of my friends fighting like that. I would negotiate and let them put Bucky in prison, but you know a nice prison with lots of visiting hours and amenities, a place where he can get rehab for all his brainwashing and whatnot.

 

Great analysis, @Scalenex

yeah, the main point is that they all are heroes and leaders, the kind of people that take hard decisions for the Greater good of the ones that relies on them.

The debate between the 2 choices could have been developed in more depth, instead of focusing on combats for a great portion of the movie.

 

I hope so.
cause to my personal tastes, Infinity War was kinda disappointing