AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I doubt anyone will take heed, but The Last Jedi is better after a second viewing.

Infinity War:

I teared up when Gamora died. I gasped when T'challa died. I cried when Spiderman died.
Spiderman has another film in 2019, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 in 2020, and T'challa fucking prints cheddar. And the cast list for Avengers 4 lists Tom Hiddleston. There are no consequences.

That’s why the ‘books are better. They’re willing to kill off oh wait

I had a few thoughts while watching Infinity War but the most pressing issue I've got is why Dr. Strange bothered to fight on Titan if he knew the outcome would be Thanos' success anyway. He said this is the only way they would defeat Thanos (which means eventually, not this fight right now, I know) which means that something is going to have to happen in the next movie or whatever that WOULDN'T have happened if they had simply turned over the Time Stone as soon as he appeared.

The only difference I can fathom is that Strange didn't see a future where he turned over the stone at the outset and then didn't get interference from the rest of the heroes, but I find that incredibly difficult to believe.

Another nitpick is the underuse of the Reality Stone. That is a win button. I completely expected Thanos to re-create Gamora as soon as he woke up.

That reminds me, Red Skull's reappearance was a great surprise.

It's also difficult to care at all about everyone dying at the end when there's no way it's going to stick.

I did really enjoy Thanos as a villain though. This was absolutely his movie. He got so much more characterization than Ultron and was a million times more intimidating and self-assured than Loki. And I suppose he can't be called a totally heartless monster after what happened to Gamora. Or he could. That's a little vexing, actually.

Well, there were 14.6 million possible ways for the Thanos fight to play out. As time passes, the number of possibilities shrinks and shrinks as decisions are made and potential futures cease to be possible. It would take well into a long fight scene after various tactics have been tried and failed before someone with knowledge of possible futures could even hope to nail down the best possible one, and what steps they had to take to get to it.

Then again, it's a film about wizards, scientists, and aliens fighting against a purple space ork with a ridged nutsack chin, so logic may be a bit of a stretch.

This is vaguely relevant to movies.

Two Scoops of Fruit: My mother almost tricked herself into watching Ready Player One instead of Avengers
Two Scoops of Fruit: I asked if she wanted to go see a movie, she told me to guess which one she wanted to see, I jokingly suggested RPO, she said wow that's right good guess
Two Scoops of Fruit: So I was settled all day for the disappointment of having to watch Willy Wonka and the Internet Factory before I tried to hammer out details
Two Scoops of Fruit: And she finally said, AFTER I figured out showtimes and everything, "we're not actually watching Ready Player One right? You're taking me to see Avengers, right?"

More IW spoiler talk whee

I think there's the whole factor of Thanos confronting Tony, coming to respect him, and choosing to spare him from the snap of hemiomnicide, and Tony's involvement afterwards will be a major factor in securing victory.

Also I'd say there's probably still going to be consequences for what's happened; Yeah, people will be brought back, but that doesn't mean all of them, or that nothing has changed by them being gone for a while, and so on. If they DID pull some sort of total "undo all of the bad stuff with no consequences whatsoever", that I'd cry foul at, but I really don't think that'll be the case. This is too perfect of a scenario to adjust the status quo of things, let some people go who want to move on from their roles, etc.

I mean. I thought Thanos said something along the lines of sparing him with regards to "when I wipe out half of the universe", not that it matters; Something something predestination something something timetravel. As long a Thanos chose to spare him long enough for the snap, he would survive it, because he had to, because Strange is playing with timelines to ensure eventual victory here.

I watched two movies today, which I think is as many movies as I had watched in the previous 5 years or so.

First one was Monty Python's Life Of Brian. It was nice, more cohesive and satisfying than Holy Grail but less memorable I think. I probably would have enjoyed it more had I been able to make out more than half of the dialogue. The combination of bad audio quality, people talking over each other while pulling shrill voices or funny accents and my own lack of experience with fast spoken English and especially British English didn't help. It had more full frontal nudity than I expected.

Second one was The Room. I expected to laugh more. The scenes without Tommy Wiseau were repetitive and dragged forever but the ending was worth it.