Ignore the Sneering - Infinity War's Ending is as Mind Blowing as You Think it is

(WARNING: As you probably guessed, this post contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War)

I cried.

Not as much as some folks, to be sure. But I definitely cried during the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, an ending which saw Thanos acquire the final Infinity Stones, best the Avengers, snap his fingers and wipe out half the life in the universe. As part of that unprecedented loss of life, many of our beloved heroes died, fading away in a cloud of dust, including Star Lord, Groot, Drax, Mantis, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Falcon, Bucky Barnes and Black Panther (who was probably a bit bitter about the ingrates killing him off three months after he made Marvel a billion goddamned dollars).

It was Spider-Man who broke me, if you're curious. Tom Holland's (apparently improvised) "I don't wanna go, Mr. Stark," while collapsing in Tony Stark's arms was as heartbreaking as it was shocking, and showed just how well Holland is able to inhabit his character's youth and vulnerability.

Maybe it was Scarlet Witch's look of forlorn acceptance that did it for you. Maybe it was Groot reaching out to Rocket as he faded away. Or maybe it was the loss of Black Panther. There were plenty of choices. Regardless, audiences across the country made clear that they were experiencing a genuine emotional reaction to a devastating ending they never saw coming.

To which critics have overwhelmingly responded: you're wrong.

Yes, the weeks since Infinity War's release have witnessed the creation of an entirely new thinkpiece sub-genre: the "here's why Infinity War's ending is no big deal" explainer. Here's Slate. Here's Vox. Here's The AV Club. Here's The Ringer (a publication that basically turned into The Marvel Post for a week or two after the movie debuted).

I could go on, of course, but that would simply belabor the point. Google is available if you want to find more of these pieces. There are a lot of them, but they basically make the same argument: what appears to be a shocking ending in which beloved characters fade from existence in front of our eyes is actually meaningless.

Let's face it, the critics argue: these characters are coming back. There's a Time Stone, after all - Thanos uses it to essentially rewind the movie, resurrect Vision and pluck the Mind Stone from his head (and if you saw a big Avengers movie taking a plot point from Michael Haneke's Funny Games, well, you're quite the prophet). The surviving heroes can do the same thing in Avengers 4 to reverse Thanos' success.

We know a lot of the actors playing these dead characters have lengthy contracts with Marvel. And we know Marvel has plans for may of the dusted characters - a Black Panther sequel has already been announced (Marvel having decided it really likes money), Spider-Man has just returned to the MCU fold and Sony is definitely not going to let its co-producing partner kill off the iconic hero, James Gunn has been talking about Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and so on. As a result, the critics say, there are no stakes here. This is all just temporary.

Here's the thing: they're (likely) correct. And here's the more important thing: it doesn't matter.

Look, are the dead characters coming back in Avengers 4? Almost certainly, yes. Some might not (Loki is likely dead, dead, dead), but the big name heroes...yes, they're probably due for some resurrections. That could be done well or it could be done poorly, though I think Marvel has earned enough audience goodwill to bet on the former.

But the idea that any of this is a surprise, or that it qualifies as insight, is absurd. Marvel obsessives have a better understanding of Robert Downey Jr's contract than they do their own mortgages. The fans providing Infinity War with the largest opening weekend ever understand Marvel's future plans better than most critics do.

The fact that audiences, in the stunning final moments of Infinity War, just don't care about any of that is a reflection of the movie's power, not a flaw. A movie is not merely a receptacle for world-weary analysis - it is an emotional experience. Art can spark a nuanced conversation or a critical insight, yes, and I would never suggest that those are illegitimate. But art can also speak to us on a more visceral, emotional level. It can bypass our objections, our preconceptions, our cynicism. It can move us and inspire us in spite of our understanding of modern franchise conventions.

And that's what Infinity War achieved with its ending, with the stunningly quiet desolation of those last few minutes, when the surviving heroes are faced with the loss of their friends and the enormity of their failure. It made the audience feel those things as well, and the emotional reaction Infinity War is able to elicit counts, regardless of what happens in the sequel.

Avengers 4 will not erase that emotional resonance, even if it literally erases what happens at the end of Infinity War. That moment in time - those stunned, tear-stained audiences - will always exist and will always be legitimate.

Take The Last Jedi, which Jesse Hassenger contrasts with Infinity War in the Slate piece I linked above. I don't necessarily agree with Hassenger's contention that The Last Jedi represents a movie that's uniquely challenging to its franchise's fans - Luke Skywalker still gets to save the day (if in an unexpected fashion), he still gets the movie's big, bad-ass moment, the movie bends over backward to save beloved characters and the purportedly "tragic" tone of The Last Jedi is entirely in line with The Empire Strikes Back and The Revenge of the Sith. 

But setting that aside (and a reminder: I liked The Last Jedi!), all of The Last Jedi's subversive virtues exist in spite of the fact that we know they're likely to be set aside in Episode IX. Does anyone seriously doubt that the good guys will come out victorious in the last movie? Does anyone really believe that the Dark Side will win and that The First Order will take over the galaxy?

Of course not. We all know that Episode IX will end as all Star Wars stories canonically end - with the Light Side the winning side. Whatever subversion The Last Jedi can boast, history will almost certainly view its as the temporary setback in the inevitably triumphant story cycle of this particular Star Wars trilogy.

And that's fine! That doesn't take anything away from The Last Jedi at all. Everything there is to admire in that movie will still exist after Episode IX. And the same is true of Infinity War.

For that matter, it shortchanges Infinity War to reduce the power of its ending to the death of so many of its heroes. Audiences were not just moved by the loss of these characters. Yes, it was stunning to see so many Avengers fade into non-existence, but it was also stunning to see Thanos flick away so many Avengers like so many flies. It was stunning to see Earth's mightiest heroes fling themselves at Thanos in desperation and then see them fail - utterly, completely, comprehensively fail, after a decade spent representing indomitable will and unstoppable virtue.

The most stirring, inspirational moment in Infinity War is the sudden appearance of Thor in Wakanda, wielding his new axe, forged by the heat of a dying star, turning the tide of battle as Alan Silvestri's wonderful "Avengers" theme kicks in. It's the quintessential "Big Damn Heroes" moment, all punctuated by Mark Ruffalo's hilarious, "Oh, you guys are screwed now!" (The movie's biggest laugh line in my theater)

And the movie brutally undercuts it minutes later.

And it was stunning to see so much of this from Thanos' perspective. What's striking about the last 10-15 minutes of Infinity War is the extent to which they represent Thanos getting his big act three Marvel movie heroic triumph. He has the huge army in Wakanda, of course, but in so many ways Thanos is the underdog here, the lone warrior battling the imposing forces arrayed against him.

The fight on Titan is a single man struggling against a super genius in a technologically advanced metal suit, a master of the mystic arts, a half-man/half-living planet, a bruising Kree warrior, a genetic mutant with the agility of a spider and his own super suit and an alien with telepathic powers.

And he beats them.

Thanos shows up in Wakanda and has to fight off the likes of Black Panther, Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner in the Hulk Buster suit and the entire Wakandan royal guard.

And he beats them.

Infinity War's ending forces the audience to realize they're rooting for the doomed legions fighting against the unstoppable hero. And after the fight, after Thanos beats his seemingly unbeatable foes, we're forced to watch the aftermath, when the triumphant hero can finally lay down his burdens and enjoy his long-sought-after moment of rest.

Even more than the dusting of the heroes, it's the movie's last shot that sticks in the mind and refuses to leave. Thanos, having found peace and victory in the fulfillment of his destiny, but at a terrible cost, limps outside, sits down and watches the sun rise.

That's it. No swelling orchestral score, no moment of inspiration, no heroes crouching on a roof, watching over their city - just a quiet moment of triumphant contemplation for the genocidal villain. And in that peace is such extraordinary tragedy.

It is, of course, not the critic's job to merely parrot the views of a movie's audience. Donald Trump is President of the United States - the American public can make mistakes, you know? Critics have every right to dislike a movie that audiences like. Popularity does not equal quality.

But the inability of so many Infinity War critics to understand why the movie's ending hits fans so hard in spite of the inevitable Avengers 4 narrative fix represents another failure to grasp the emotional connection audiences have with these characters.

It's real, and it explains why this ending overcomes the genre savvy fans have built up over the year. And it's that connection that enables Marvel to pull off a gutsy, breathtaking, devastating and entirely unexpected ending to one of the most eagerly anticipated movies in recent memory.

Actually, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Good

Marvel Studios' Black Panther is set to earn approximately every single dollar currently in circulation in the American economy - and rightfully so! It's a damn fine movie - you should see it!

And on the occasion of this cultural phenomenon, it's time once again for another round of every movie fan's favorite dance: the Marvel Two Step. 

That particular dance goes like this:

1. Critics praise the specific Marvel movie in question and admit it's pretty darn good, then

2. Lament the loathsome Lovecraftian leviathan that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is almost single-handedly responsible for the death of all that is good and decent in Cinema.

The discussion around Black Panther has featured a fairly common variant on the second step, which is to argue that the movie in question represents a unique entry in the MCU, something utterly unlike all the other films Marvel Studios has released over the last decade.

For example, Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's review at The AV Club, which is titled "The entertaining and ambitious Black Panther breaks from the Marvel formula," starts with, "It’s taken a decade and 18 films, but the Marvel Cinematic Universe has finally produced a superhero movie that feels like it was ripped from the pages of a comic book....Ditching the MCU’s familiar roster of heroes (they don’t get as much as a mention) along with many of the basics of the Marvel film formula, Ryan Coogler has turned Black Panther into a highly personal crowd-pleaser..."

David Edelstein's review at New York Magazine, titled "Black Panther Is Unusually Gripping And Grounded for a Superhero Film," includes such lines as "That Black Panther has a richer palette than its Marvel precursors is no surprise, since its roots are equally in pop culture and African folklore" and "For one thing, Coogler hasn’t explicitly connected him to the tiring Marvel superhero stable" and "Black Panther’s team is so wonderful that I hate to think of it being dulled by the mostly white-bread Avengers."

We could go on and find other reviews in this vein, but you get the point: Black Panther = Good, Marvel Cinematic Universe = Bad.

But allow me to defend the following position: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is good. It's good because Marvel Studios makes good movies, and the existence of the MCU means audiences get more good Marvel movies than they otherwise would.

What's odd about that proposition is that the conclusion is controversial, but the supporting argument - that Marvel Studios movies are usually good - isn't. Rotten Tomatoes has its flaws, obviously, but as a quick and dirty gauge of critical reaction it's useful. 

Black Panther is at 97% "fresh." Thor: Ragnarok is 92% fresh. Spider-Man: Homecoming, also 92%. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is at 83%. Doctor Strange, 90%. Captain America: Civil War, 91%.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear. There are some (relative) duds here: The Incredible Hulk is just 67% fresh, while Thor: The Dark World brings up the rear at 66%. But taken as a whole, the MCU boasts a truly remarkable consistency, providing audiences with reliably outstanding movies every year for more than a decade. And that's something critics agree with.

So why, then, have so many critics responded to the MCU with what can fairly be labelled existential angst? Why do so many MCU reviews give the reader whiplash, bouncing from praise for the specific movie to over-wrought concerns about what Marvel Studios is doing to the world of quality cinema?

Crowding Out...What, Exactly?

Within economics, there's a concept known as "crowding out." To vastly over-simplify (because I only understand the idea on a vastly over-simplified level), it's a phenomenon in which government increases public investment by X amount, but this has the effect of decreasing private investment by roughly X amount, meaning there's no net increase in the amount of investment in society.

Much of the criticism of the MCU is essentially a crowding out theory: the Marvel Cinematic Universe is such a massive enterprise, a factory churning out multiple high-budget movies every year, that it sucks in an overwhelming share of Hollywood's talent and financial resources. Any individual Marvel movie might be fine, but the MCU, taken as a whole, has a negative effect because it prevents the production of other, smaller movies.

To be sure, it is literally true that a writer, director, actor or other member of the creative team can't be on two sets at once. If Scarlett Johansson is filming Avengers: Infinity War, that means, by definition, that she can't be filming some other movie.

We've seen specific examples of this. To cross over into the jumbled and poorly lit world of the DC Extended Universe for a minute, Ben Affleck had to give up a number of projects - including a long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand - when he agreed to play Batman. 

But that was only unfortunate because the DC movies Affleck has participated in since that decision have been utter crap. If, instead, DC and Warner Brothers had made good movies featuring Batman, it would be difficult for me to get all haughty about the loss of an adaptation of a Stephen King novel set in a post-apocalyptic America, even if The Stand is one of my favorite books in the world.

In general, however, the crowding out theory is melodramatic. Marvel's movies dominate at the box office and generate intense fan discussion, but for those who aren't fans of superhero movies, there's no lack of smaller, more intimate movies that recognize the only true drama is the clinking of silverware on plates at a tense family dinner. And these movies continue to attract critical attention and awards recognition.

The Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 2016 was a small budget picture about a young African-American man's budding sexuality - the runner-up (presumably) was a throwback Hollywood musical. The 2015 winner was a true story examination of child abuse in the Catholic Church. The 2014 winner was a technically innovative comic drama about theater and the artistic process. The 2013 winner was a brutal adaptation of a kidnapped black man's time in slavery.

Nary a superhero movie in sight! In fact, superhero movies have notoriously struggled to gain traction at the Oscars and other prestigious film awards. The fact is that while Marvel movies rake in the bucks, there's plenty of oxygen left for films that better fit the critical taste.

And while there are a lot of MCU movies out there, they haven't exactly prevented those involved from doing other things. Johansson, for example, first appeared in the MCU in 2010's Iron Man 2. Since then, she's released We Bought a Zoo (2011), Don Jon (2013), Under the Skin (2013), Her (2013), Hail, Caesar! (2016), Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Rough Night (2017), among many other credits. 

In other words, since signing on to the all-consuming MCU monster, Scarlett Johansson has been able to make:

• A really stupid feel-good comedy (We Bought A Zoo)
• A surprisingly thoughtful romantic comedy (Don Jon)
• An expectedly thoughtful sci-fi exploration of intimacy and consciousness (Her)
• A Coen Brothers movie (Hail, Caesar!)
• A mis-begotten adaptation of an anime classic (Ghost in the Shell)
• A standard raunchy studio comedy (Rough Night)
• The world's most effective abstinence-only education film (Under the Skin)

All of which raises two points: first, the MCU has obviously not stopped Scarlett Johansson from making a whole bunch of non-superhero movies (and again, that's not a comprehensive list). And second, while there's some great stuff on that list (Her, Under the Skin, Don Jon), there's also some real nonsense. 

(And not for nothing, but take a look at the list of recent Best Picture nominees. Mahershala Ali won an Oscar for his role in Moonlight, and he played the villain in an MCU series on Netflix. Arrival was nominated in 2016, and its two leads play prominent roles in both the MCU and the DCEU. And on and on and on.)

Which illustrates the core problem with the crowding out theory: its foundation is the disdain for genre fiction that still defines much of our critical discourse. To treat it as a given that it's a bad thing for society that a superhero movie has "crowded out" other, non-superhero movies is to treat it as a given that those other genres are inherently superior. It assumes that losing out on a family drama so an actor or director can make a Marvel movie is a net loss for the movie-going public, because it treats the former genre as more legitimate than the latter.

As a personal preference, that's unobjectionable. As a supposedly indisputable value system that should define how we all look at the movie landscape, it's intensely flawed. 

And it ignores the fact that, in a hypothetical world where the MCU doesn't exist, we lose a bevvy of genuinely outstanding movies, and we shouldn't take it for granted, as many critics do, that the replacement films rushing in to fill the gaps would be superior. There's no reason to assume that, freed from their obligations to Marvel, the creatives in question would make movies that were closer in quality to Her or Under the Skin than they were to We Bought a Zoo or Ghost in the Shell. Should I be weeping at the thought that I've missed out on the chance to see the next Rough Night?

After all, how many more biopics do you want Chadwick Boseman to make? And how many more Hobbit movies do you want to subject Martin Freeman to?

All Marvel Movies Are the Same, Except the Ones That Aren't

The other prominent criticism of the MCU as a whole is that it's intensely formulaic - any individual Marvel movie is good, but the series of movies, taken as a whole, is too same-y, and so audiences are really just watching the same superhero punch-up over and over again.

And, to be sure, there's some truth to this. Marvel's movies share a basic three-act structure which showcases a big action setpiece at the end of each act and a big, climactic battle at the end of the movie. There's certainly a tonal consistency to the MCU. And, broadly speaking, Marvel's movies look pretty similar.

But to focus exclusively on the undeniable consistency in the MCU is to ignore - often deliberately - the extent to which individual Marvel movies break from the "formula" and find new ground. Black Panther is a bright, colorful film that explores difficult ideas with depth and subtlety. Thor: Ragnarok is similarly exuberant with its color palette. Both Guardians of the Galaxy movies are beautiful to look at, and, you know, feature a talking raccoon and a sentient tree. Doctor Strange, while a lesser MCU film, is quite visually inventive. Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Civil War both play more like political thrillers than traditional superhero movies. Ant-Man is a small scale heist movie that largely eschews huge stakes or battle scenes. Even Iron Man 3, while not visually or narratively unique, is a genuinely weird movie - often, though not always, to positive effect.

When attempting to define a set of things as "just X," it's not unreasonable to pick out one or two exceptions with the set to the general rule. But at a certain point the exceptions hit a critical mass that undermines the point being made.

It's fair to observe there's a blueprint to the films in the MCU. But there's plenty of room within that broader structure for directors, writers, actors and others to do unique, interesting, even weird things with their little corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And it's neither fair nor intellectually honest to act as though those efforts don't exist.

Punching Bad Guys on the Battlefield of Ideas

The defining assumption behind both of these objections, which comes through in the (justly) positive reviews for Black Panther, is the sense that superhero movies in general, and the MCU specifically, do not grapple with big ideas. Your Marvel movie might be a perfectly fine bit of popcorn entertainment, critics say, but it's not really "serious - " it doesn't engage with meaningful themes and ideas.

Hence the praise for Black Panther, which openly muses on difficult questions related to revenge, racial oppression and the potential necessity of violent revolution. Jamelle Bouie's piece at Slate is a characteristically excellent examination of the film and its ideas.

But again, to treat Black Panther as unique in this respect within the MCU is to ignore so much of what has made Marvel's movies so compelling. Winter Soldier and Civil War are both examinations of loyalty and patriotism, with the former a genuinely thoughtful look at drone warfare and the surveillance state. Both Guardians of the Galaxy movies ask big questions about the nature of family and friendship - and Volume 2, as Siddhant Adlakha brilliantly observed, is a "movie about the varying ways in which child abuse and neglect manifest...."

And on top of all of this, you have the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, which is a meditation on power, how it should be used, who should wield it and how we grow to be worthy of it.

But even if all of this wasn't true, even if Black Panther was the only Marvel movie to seriously grapple with big, difficult ideas, it would remain true that Black Panther exists. Put another way, a cinematic universe that can accommodate a movie where the (black) villain's last words are, "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships, 'cause they knew death was better than bondage," cannot, by definition, be the rote, simplistic, unchallenging franchise its critics say it is.

Marvel Studios has built an empire out of Iron Man, Thor, Black Panther and the freaking Guardians of the Galaxy. Its movies have succeeded commercially and artistically because they exist in a shared cinematic universe, not in spite of that fact. The films have succeeded in building audience loyalty because they have succeeded in forging a connection between their characters and their audiences, a connection that is only possible because we've grown to know them over the course of a decade and multiple films.

If you just don't like Marvel's movies, if you don't think they're any good - that's fine. It's fair and reasonable to simply dislike a given movie or movies.

But if you grant that most of these individual movies are quality films while wondering why so many of us got emotional just watching the trailer to Infinity War, if it seems preposterous to you that grown men and women could have an emotional connection with comic book superheroes, it's because you don't understand what Marvel has achieved through the MCU. And if you think the MCU has lethally poisoned our cinematic universe, that says far more about your genre pre-conceptions than it does Marvel.

Yes, Game of Thrones is a great TV show - still

Game of Thrones aired its super-size season finale Sunday. I liked it - zombie ice dragon! Other people were less enthusiastic, which is fine - my pop culture opinions have not yet acquired the force of law. 

In and of itself, that's not really notable. I haven't been a journalist for about a thousand years, but I don't think "People Disagree On Merits of Television Episode" is much of a headline. But the reaction to Game of Thrones' finale and its 7th season - as well as the usual end-of-season "state of the show" think pieces - illustrates a really fascinating set of dynamics that define the critical conversation around HBO's smash hit.

It's fair, I think, to say that critics have turned on Game of Thrones. One need not rely on childish fanboy whining about people "hating" the show to make that observation - it's more or less objectively the case that most prominent TV critics are less fond of the show than they used to be.

A pretty representative articulation of that can be found at Vox's listing of the 18 best TV shows airing right now, curated by the great Todd VanDerWerff. Here's part of the Game of Thrones entry:

"Sure, Game of Thrones can be a little same-y and unbearable at times, but goodness, at least it's not you who's getting stabbed in the head. And it's still TV's most opulent drama, produced within an inch of its life and gorgeous to look at. The show might never be the all-time classic TV series it was once poised to become, but it’s still essential, if only to know what everybody else is talking about."

That's about as backhanded as compliments get. "Still essential, if only to know what everybody else is talking about?" But setting that aside, the most revealing - and typical - part of that passage is the implication that Game of Thrones is a show in decline - or, at the very least, a show that has fallen from its previous heights and has become something noticeably less than it once was.

VanDerWerff is hardly unusual in this diagnosis. You can find any number of pieces making that same argument. You can even find Adult Swim bumps to that effect.

There's no critical hive mind, of course, and every Game of Thrones skeptic came to that position at a different point in the show's run. But for most, the cut-off point was somewhere around the season four finale. For some, that point came a season earlier or later.

Regardless, the show's "decline" essentially comes down to a simple turning point: when Game of Thrones gained the resources it needed to really indulge in spectacle and grandeur. 

Or, phrased another way, critics mostly loved Game of Thrones when they could plausibly portray it as anything other than an epic fantasy series. It was a political thriller! It was a workplace drama! It was a road trip movie! It was a mis-matched buddy comedy! 

But, as Matt Zoller Seitz observed in a thoughtful and nuanced piece, Game of Thrones "isn't what it once was." And if it once was possible to downplay the show's epic fantasy elements, that time is past. Game of Thrones is epic fantasy, a fact it now has the money and manpower to show off more or less every week. It's not a coincidence that the critical consensus soured on the show once it fully embraced a soaring, sweeping ethos.

Allow me, then, to submit the following proposition: Game of Thrones remains a great show on track for all-time classic status. The show's current critical reputation has less to do with a significant decline in quality and more to do with a built-in disdain for genre fiction and a strong critical bias for small-scale, grounded, relatable drama.

It's not wrong to say that Game of Thrones has changed over the years. It is a bigger show now, more inclined to shoot for the Big Moment and the extraordinary setpiece. It's a show defined by spectacle and grandeur in a way that it never was before. 

And there's no denying that in the process of becoming spectacular, the show has lost some of its subtlety and nuance. There's less room for the smaller, character-driven moments that defined much of the show's earlier days. Quiet, candle-lit conversations between two characters have been replaced by dragon attacks on loot trains and zombie dragons spewing blue fire to bring down The Wall. 

It's possible to take this observation too far. Game of Thrones is still eminently capable of creating those intimate, small-scale, character-driven moments. The Sansa-Arya feud from this past season is an excellent example - the relationship between the two sisters is a fascinating examination of the way trauma sticks to even the best-intentioned of individuals, of how it can poison and subvert our closest relationships and most promising futures. The reunion of these two women was a triumphant moment, but it did not wipe away all they had experienced.

Instead, their pasts colored their views of each other and made them vulnerable to Littlefinger's machinations and manipulations. After all, Sansa had spent the most recent years of her life either living in a den of homicidal lions in King's Landing or married to a monstrous Ramsey Bolton. Arya had spent hers moving through a series of horrifying situations and environments in which any slip-up could have proven lethal. Neither Stark sister was in a position to trust, and into that environment Littlefinger slipped quite easily, taking advantage of Sansa through the classic abuser's trick of isolating her from friends and family and building a world in which she could rely only on him.

And for all that, the resolution - the discovery and unmasking of Littlefinger's plot, and the death of this long-running character - was both satisfying and earned. It was ironic and yet fitting that Littlefinger - the ultimate schemer, the man so profoundly in love with his own cleverness - would doom himself by giving the woman he loved the tools she needed to see through his scheming.

Still, storylines like these are more the exception than the rule in the Game of Thrones of 2017, and the opposite was true in the show's critical salad days. But here's the thing: the idea that subtlety is superior to spectacle, that small is better than large, that Big Moments are easy and the best drama occurs during quiet moments, is just an artistic value system. A perfectly legitimate one, to be sure, but also one that possesses no special claim to objective truth.

Game of Thrones is different than it used to be, but it is not worse. The show possesses an unparalleled ability to induce awe and wonder in its audience. The spectacle that critics invariably preface with the deprecatory adjective "empty" is, in fact, an extraordinary accomplishment, as worthy of critical appreciation as any quiet moment of depression from an intricately drawn anti-hero. At a time when our standards for Games of Thrones' big, effects-driven battle scenes should be un-meetable, the show continues to exceed all expectations for these moments.

Consider, for instance, the fall of The Wall in Sunday's season finale. As a plot point, this wasn't the least bit surprising - we all knew it was coming, going back to the end of season six. But though the moment was more than a year in the making, it surpassed expectations because no one saw a zombie ice dragon coming.

There's nothing subtle about a zombie ice dragon, of course, and there's nothing about it that's going to appeal to observers who consider quiet character work the foundation of great drama. But it's one of the clearest examples yet of a show that's more capable of accomplishing the extraordinary than anything else on television.

Whether in the wight-driven massacre of "Hardhome" or the record-breaking pyrotechnics of "The Spoils of War," Game of Thrones has showcased a once-in-a-lifetime mastery of spectacle and of the emotions its audience experiences while witnessing it. That ability to entrance viewers with moments they cannot find anywhere else on television is not a minor attribute to be acknowledged and quickly dismissed in a parenthetical nested inside a harsh critique - it is a staggering force and a dynamic worthy of genuine respect.

It is also why Game of Thrones remains a great TV show. And why it will be remembered as one of the greatest series in the history of the medium.