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.

Avengers: Infinity War is a marvel

Movie: Avengers: Infinity War
Grade: A-

There's a bit of downtime near the end of Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War during which superhero/wizard/Captain Cumberbatch Dr. Strange uses his power over space and time to travel through the more than 14 million timelines in which he, Iron Man, Spider-Man and a couple Guardians of the Galaxy fight the genocidal villain Thanos on Thanos' devastated home world of Titan. Using these mystical Monte Carlo simulations, Dr. Strange can see that, in 14 million attempts, the good guys win...once.

He could just as easily be talking about Infinity War, which could have failed so easily and in so many ways. It is every metaphor you can imagine: a juggling act, a high wire act, running through a minefield, etc. The odds against getting it right might not have been exactly 14 million to one, but they were certainly long.

Infinity War might not be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's best movie. But it is surely Marvel Studios' greatest accomplishment, a beautiful, breathtaking adventure that pays off a decade of work with both epic scale spectacle and moments of quiet, introspective tenderness.

There was a great deal of snark when Infinity War's two hour, forty-minute runtime was announced. But what's striking about Infinity War is just how well and how thoroughly the movie uses that time. Infinity War never feels as long as it is - the story is pushed along not so much by constant action (though there is plenty of that) but by a propulsive narrative momentum that sees all the heroes of the MCU (save Ant-Man and poor, neglected Hawkeye) split into different groups with different goals and scattered across the galaxy.

Infinity War creaks a little in its beginning under the weight of the necessary exposition. We get another classroom lecture on the Infinity Stones - six chunks of rock created by the Big Bang and flung across the universe, all with the power to control the six crucial aspects of existence (Space, Mind, Reality, Time, Soul and Power, if you're curious). Thanos, who has acquired two of the Stones by the time the opening credits roll, needs to collect the remaining four to fulfill his longstanding dream: the death of half the beings in the universe.

But once the groundwork is laid, Infinity War takes off. The movie's greatest accomplishment is its ability to so well serve so many characters, including its villain. Infinity War needs every one of its 160 minutes to tell its story and explore its characters. It does this in part by putting all of them under extraordinary stress and pushing them to the breaking point. But it also does it by gleefully playing out the dynamics that result from bringing together these characters from such different corners of the Marvel universe - Thor and Rocket, Tony Stark and Dr. Strange (who's basically Stark with an all-powerful wizard's sense of self-importance), Bruce Banner and Princess Shuri of Wakanda.

Infinity War isn't perfect on this front. A few characters - Black Panther, Black Widow and even, to an extent, Captain America - are given a handful of moments that basically serve as a greatest hits album for their personalities (Steve Rogers is noble and brave, Black Widow is a badass, etc). But then, that's the strength of the MCU - a decade with these characters means Infinity War's decisions don't feel like cheats or shortcuts. Captain America has earned those brief moments of nobility. T'Challa has earned his gravitas and determination.

The movie is even able to find extraordinary heart and heartbreak in the relationship between Vision and Scarlet Witch, two relatively under-the-radar members of the MCU's hero roster, to the extent that it defines the climax of the film.

But Infinity War's best character work is reserved for Thanos, who, along with Black Panther's Killmonger, Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2's Ego and Spider-Man: Homecoming's Vulture, appears to have finally solved Marvel's famous villain problem.

The CGI in Marvel's movies hasn't always been as convincing as one might expect from a studio with essentially unlimited funds - the computer-assisted action sequences in Black Panther were that great movie's biggest weaknesses. But Thanos is a CGI revelation (helped by Josh Brolin's able performance), a figure of hulking size and strength whose face is capable of truly remarkable variation and subtlety. Marvel's CGI team succeeds in making every nuance of emotion play across Thanos' impressively expressive face.

But more impressive than the technical achievement is the emotional one. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (who got promoted to the big franchise after helming the exceptional Captain America installments Winter Soldier and Civil War) and credited screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are able to turn the genocidal "Mad Titan" into an impressively sympathetic figure. Thanos gets his own twisted hero's journey in Infinity War: an origin story and call to action, a comprehensible goal and motivation, seemingly impossible-to-overcome obstacles and, in one of the movie's most emotionally resonant scenes, a heartbreaking sacrifice that results in extraordinary pain.

There's a surprising lack of cruelty to Thanos, this genocidal villain who willingly murders and tortures to get what he wants. There's not even the kind of matter-of-fact apathy to his actions that you see from the usual businesslike, cold-blooded professional bad guy in other movies. Thanos believes so deeply in his cause and speaks of it with such genuine emotion that the bloody steps he takes to further it seem (in the character's eyes, at least) believably necessary.

And all of the time spent investing in Thanos' motivations pays off with a final shot that is simultaneously jaw dropping and gently peaceful.

In every moment of Infinity War there is a sense of extraordinarily talented people doing their job well and with great seriousness, both behind the camera and in front of it. Chris Hemsworth deserves special praise for his work here - he could very easily have settled into the expected bland blond brick groove after the original Thor, but instead developed into a reliable comedic talent, and indeed carries much of Infinity War with both his comedic timing and his emotional range. Hemsworth manages to mine genuine hilarity from his scenes while still conveying the weariness and melancholy of someone who has lost everyone he has ever cared about.

There are so many other great performances: Robert Downey Jr provides his usual dynamite work as a more evolved, weary and wary Tony Stark, Tom Holland believably sells Spider-Man's enthusiasm and, especially in one heartbreaking scene, frightened youth, Zoe Saldana persuasively conveys Gamora's conflicted emotions as the adopted daughter of Thanos and so on and so on. The Marvel chain has no weak links.

That consistent excellence and care is what stands out about Infinity War and, indeed, the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole. Infinity War isn't without its flaws - Thanos' cadre of spooky henchmen is mostly under-developed, and none of the action sequences in the movie reach true greatness. But it is striking just how deeply everyone involved with Infinity War cared about getting it right. No one is here just to cash a check, though the checks are staggeringly large. In a genre that's still fighting for respectability, even while dominating the box office, none of these stars is just marking time in a silly superhero movie until a "serious" role comes along.

Getting Infinity War wrong would have been so easy, and getting it right must have been incredibly hard. The fact that the Russo brothers and everyone involved did get it so right is a reflection of the great talent of the creative team, yes. But it's also a reflection of how seriously they took the task, how hard they were willing to work at it and how profoundly they respected their audience.

Avengers: Infinity War is more than just a great movie, then: it's an admirable one.

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.

The Last Jedi and The Limits of Subversion

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a good movie. I'm pretty sure of that.

The rest of my thoughts on the movie are pretty jumbled, but that's not a bad thing. I'm still thinking about the movie about a week after seeing it, which is usually a good sign and more than I can say for any of the other Star Wars films (most of which I liked, to be clear).

But the movie gives us a lot to think about, and thoughtful people are going to disagree from time to time. What's most interesting about the discussion surrounding the movie is, instead, where reviewers seem to agree.

Here's The AV Club with "The Last Jedi's Best Moment is a 'Fuck You' to George Lucas and J.J. Abrams."

Here's Albert Burneko with "A List of Some Of The Times The Last Jedi Told The Older Star Wars Movies To Eat Shit."

Here's i09 with "The Last Jedi Killed My Childhood, And That's Exactly Why It's Great."

And on and on it goes. The gist of these pieces is basically the same: The Last Jedi excelled because it subverted our expectations of what a Star Wars movie should be. It rejected the old, well-worn tropes of the franchise and found a new path forward.

These takes aren't wrong - this isn't another "disagreeing with critics" post, though there's probably a different piece to be written about what it says that critics are all so gleeful about a Star Wars movie not being a Star Wars movie. The moments these pieces are built around definitely do represent attempts to subvert audience expectations - whether it's the deliberately anti-climactic reveal of Rey's mundane parentage, Kylo Ren's rejection of redemption or even Luke's initial discarding of his father's old lightsaber, there's no doubt Rian Johnson was able to elicit genuine surprise at any number of points in the movie.

 But it's in this ambition that The Last Jedi's biggest disappointment - and biggest missed opportunity - lies. You might be aware that there's a big wall surrounding your seemingly idyllic home, but you never really know its true extent until you walk right up to it and encounter it head on. And that's The Last Jedi's curse: in pushing the boundaries of what a Star Wars movie can be, it showed just how strong those boundaries really are.

Or, to put all my cards out there right now: Rey totally should have taken Kylo Ren's hand and accepted his offer.

It was in that moment after the assassination of Snoke, with Ren's hand out-stretched, with the possibility of the two young powers joining forces to eradicate the Jedi, the Sith, the Resistance and the First Order, to "kill the past" and forge a new future free from the shackles of this famous history, with all that in the offing, that a truly new, exciting and, yes, subversive Star Wars was possible.

Think of the dramatic possibilities that existed in that one moment - the possibility of seeing a likable, charismatic, powerful hero turning on all the audience held dear and embracing evil (put your hand down, Hayden). Or, perhaps, causing us to re-examine how we've always looked at morality in the Star Wars universe - Rey and Kylo, together, might not have been part of the Dark Side. They explicitly wouldn't have been Sith. They would have been something new, something unique, two wounded but powerful individuals driven by their own resentments, tired of chafing against the legacies of those who came before.

And we would have been forced to ask: are they right? Was the universe that came about as the result of the eternal conflict between the Jedi and the Sith really the best possible universe? How much had been destroyed in those interminable wars? Would things be better if all traces of the Jedi and Sith were wiped from the universe? Could a better world be built from these ashes?

We could spend the final movie of this new trilogy watching Rey and Kylo march across the universe, wiping out the Resistance and the New Order alike, building new institutions to replace what they had destroyed. Would Rey be capable of killing Finn? Of killing Leia? How would Kylo Ren react when he finally had the opportunity to destroy Luke Skywalker? We'd finally see the foundations of this well-worn universe thoroughly subverted.

This wouldn't have to end in a dark place. It wouldn't have to end in tragedy. There could still be redemption and light when the final credits of Episode IX rolled. But it would be something different - something truly unique.

But, of course, The Last Jedi didn't choose this route. Rey didn't take Kylo's hand, and she spurned his offer.

And it's in that decision that we see just how unforgiving the wall around Star Wars really is. Because Rey never really had a choice, did she? The Dark Side, a Ren-Rey team-up, the true destruction of the Star Wars legacy - the structure of the franchise ensures those sorts of stories aren't possible.

Oh, there's room for disappointment, for danger, even for the occasional tragedy - but only if they're temporary (or, in the case of the prequels, pre-ordained). Something truly transformative is off the table, at least in this particular story.

There was nothing in The Force Awakens that was as disappointing as Rey's decision to spurn Kylo Ren's offer. That's a reflection of the first movie's lack of ambition, of course, and the fact that The Last Jedi could elicit such an emotion is a testament to Johnson's skill.

But The Force Awakens was a palate cleanser, an attempt to erase the bad taste of the prequels and remind us why we liked Star Wars in the first place. It did that job well enough.

The Last Jedi was something different. It's a better movie, to be sure, and infinitely more interesting. Still, the great paradox of The Last Jedi - and perhaps its defining legacy - is that its ambition illustrates the futility of itself.

The Last Jedi proudly and self-consciously rejected many of the tropes that have defined Star Wars for decades. But for as many expectations as the movie subverted, the core of the franchise proved as predictable and untouchable as we always believed it to be.