So here it
is! I did not want to write a rebuttal or anything combative to your
review. As stated, I thought your opinion was very well stated and
well supported. With this missive I am merely expressing my opinion
on Avengers: Infinity War the best I can.
To preface my Infinity War thoughts I’d like to go back to May, 2004 and
the third season finale of Smallville entitled Covenant. I adored that
episode when it aired as I felt Smallville season 3 was the strongest season
yet (I think I would still say it is the best season but this means something
very different now) and that this finale had finished the year off in grand
fashion.
Several months later season 4 began and so also began 7 long years of me
trying my best to convince myself that the show was still good. All this
talk about Allison Mack’s cult made me nostalgic for The ‘Ville as I called it
back in the day so I broke out my old DVD sets (I have the entire bloody
series) and have watched some scattered episodes in the past couple weeks including
Covenant. I’m sure we’ll have time to delve deep into Smallville in the
coming months (years?) for as long as we know each other but that particular
finale applies to Infinity War, the Marvel cinematic universe and many comic
book movies of today (and just many blockbusters in general).
There it was: Clark was really going to begin his training with Jor-El!
The Lana drama is over because she’s leaving for Paris! Clark and Lex are no
longer friends after Clark discovered that secret shrine room Lex has for him!
Chloe is killed when her new house explodes! Lionel is in prison and more
dangerous than ever, orchestrating all this zaniness! Finally, these characters
are coming into their own! I look back somewhat fondly on this naïve
(idiotic?) Ricardo but I mostly pity the poor soul because of course,
Smallville season 4 began the great stalling tactic which eventually consumed
the entire show: Clark is not beginning his training; he’s under Jor-El’s
control for 1 episode and can fly for the season 4 premiere to nab those
ratings and then he forgets it right afterward! This Jor-El crud
would go on until the very last season where Jor-El finally appears as Julian
Sands and I think it’s said that his AI was malfunctioning for that whole
decade or something! Lana is possessed by a witch’s tattoo while in Paris (what
the bleep?!) and that drama is not over but will in fact TRIPLE down as it
introduces Jason Teague and then eventually Lex falls for her as well! This
will be run into the ground until season 7 when she FINALLY leaves though she
returns in season 8 or 9, now with superpowers and Clark is STILL hung up on
her! Clark and Lex are kind of no longer friends but sometimes are
friends and Clark will ask him for a favor in every episode and then berate him
when he does things like – gasp! – have consensual sex with multiple women
(which Clark himself will do later on) or accidentally kill some fish with some
kind of water based military weapon! Lex will limp along back and forth, kinda
good, sometimes evil without reason until he’s written out! Chloe was not
killed because Lex was actually there to rescue her and whisk her away to an
underground trapdoor tunnel or something right as the house exploded! Lionel is
quickly released from prison, cleared of chargers, is sometimes rich, sometimes
poor, goes wherever he wants, knows everything about Clark sometimes, forgets
it sometimes, starts dating Martha Kent (I think) and is never given a
consistent motivation again before Lex finally kills him in season 7
(though he comes back in the last season)!
So essentially that finale changed nothing, meant nothing and the show
continued to hit the same beats over and over again to increasingly diminished
returns (creatively and in the ratings). I’ve said before that this show
helped me break up with TV. So many shows do this exact same thing.
It’s all about stalling, milking as much as you can out of it. No one
grows. There are no arcs with any substance. The stories don’t
actually mean anything. Whatever happens can and will simply be undone
and Clark will stay an oblivious blundering fool until the very last episode
where he learns to fly and kills a few villains (his body count across that
whole series was MASSIVE). Anyway, I convinced myself I loved it while it
was on but at some point the blinders thankfully came off and I made a vow to
never allow myself to be fooled again. NEVER AGAIN!!! Though on a
side note I’d probably still recommend the first 3 seasons and some scattered
Lois centric episodes afterward but I could never recommend the entire series
to anyone.
Flash forward to summer 2013 where a trifecta of blockbusters – Iron Man
3, Man of Steel, and Star Trek Into Darkness all leave me with some form of
disappointment and then the following year where I can barely finish Guardians
of the Galaxy and I realize that these big movies have become Smallville or
rather, have adopted TV’s worst habits as they morph into a giant corporate
factory churning out good looking and hollow films.
I’m actually going to start with cons if you’ll permit me and there is one
giant flaw (for me) from which all others are spawned:
Infinity War is by design an incomplete thing that cannot exist without
all the stuff (18 movies) that came before it and presumably without next
year’s conclusion. I hope I don’t receive too much pushback in
saying that just taken by itself independent of the previous entries there is
almost nothing in Infinity War to be moved by or analyze aside from special
effects. So I am forced to analyze this as piece of a much larger
commercial whole as I would one of those season finales (which this definitely
plays like). And that is the first and biggest problem and one that
is impossible for me to get over just as it seems to be what fans love most
about this entire endeavor.
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