Does Infinity War even need a plot?

[SPOILERS for the Infinity War trailer if you were hoping to go in completely spoiler free.]

Okay, okay, okay, I know this is going to be the big pay off to the whole Infinity Stone business that has been underpinning the Marvel Cinematic Universe for years now. The thing is a friend and I were talking about how Marvel are going to cram in so many characters and still be able to have a solid plot to the whole thing.

And I think we need to be prepared for the fact they might not be able to and that it might even be the right decision.

Love it as I do, Avengers Assemble did not have much of a plot. They get brought together, they fall apart, they get back together again and then there's a big long fight that's just set piece after set piece for most of the rest of the film. The joy of the first Avengers movie is seeing how all these characters you'd been looking forward to bumping into each other play off one another.

And that was totally the right way to go.

Now Age Of Ultron is not a film I am not even half as fond of. Mostly that's because it just tries to do the same plot as the first film with robots instead of aliens. There are scenes that I adored, mainly the ones during and after the big party in Stark Tower but the main plot left me rather cold.

With Infinity War, of course, there are all these new characters meeting for the first time or at least for the first extended period outside the fight scene in Civil War. Case in point: the clip from the most recent trailer with Starlord being a condescending prick to Stark or Peter Parker thinking Doctor Strange's name is made up.

I'm not going to lie, that is much more the sort of thing I'm going to this movie to see than the exact mechanics of if and how purple Stone Cold manages to collect all the McGuffins. Obviously there has to be a plot but I wonder if it should be kept to a minimum and have the actors' interactions carry the film in character scene after character scene until the big old fight.

Sort of like The Five Doctors, actually, a story where the author happily admits that he just gave up on plot in the face of a laundry list of characters, monsters and callbacks he was expected to weave into it.

"He's a friend from work!"

Tiny little spoilers for the Thor: Ragnarok teaser trailer. Tiny ones, this post is mainly me having some fun with a single line of dialogue.

Behinds the scenes footage before composite CG gets added.

If you haven't seen the trailer, please watch it, its great. There's a whole lot of good stuff in there, not least of which Cate Blanchett looking all kinds of amazing as Hela and Idris Elba rocking dreads and a chuffing huge sword as Heimdall. Of course, the part that really grabbed me (and was meant to, yes) is when Thor sees the Hulk in the gladiatorial arena and yells:

“We know each other! He's a friend from work!”

I love that not only does Thor see the Hulk as a friend, he thinks of the Avengers as his workplace. Saving the world is his idea of a day job and he thinks of the other Avengers as co-workers. There's something incredibly sweet about that, about the emotional connection it speaks of. I love that in the movies there's a pretty clear link between Thor's being worthy and forming emotional connections with humans.

He's just so pleased to see his friend. Yes, they're in an arena where they're presumably meant to fight to the death but friend! The guy really is just a giant puppy with a hammer. I think, of all the founding Avengers who are stepping away after Inifnity War, Chris Hemsworth's Thor is the one I'll miss the most and its because of moments like these where he has so mich damn fun being who he is. I can hardly claim he's an angst free zone (not with his family) but I think he's definitely the least angsty of the Avengers.

And in a world where DC movies exist, this genre needs as little additional angst as possible. 

Why Logan works and Batman v. Superman didn't

(NO SPOILERS HERE. I'll probably put up a review at the end of the week but this is just a short, general terms discussion of things that are absolutely clear from the trailers and advertising).

Logan is a good film. Actually, its a bloody excellent film but the problem is that what makes it work is basically impossible to copy. Its not the 18 rating (in the US, over here it passed as a 15), though it certainly helps that Wolverine can finally use his claws on people as well as props.

No, what makes this film work is that Hugh Jackman and Patrick Stewart have been playing these characters for nearly twenty years. Watching these two living in a Mexican shack as broken old men has an emotional resonance that just telling Ben Affleck not to shave and trying to pass him off as an older Batman couldn't hope to.

This is actually a pretty big problem for DC: they keep trying to deconstruct things they never properly constructed in the first place. They tried to do the big blow out fight between Batman and Superman with a Batman we've never met before and a Superman we barely know; they've commissioned a Nightwing movie without doing any work on the idea of what Robin is so we can't appreciate what it is in this world for Dick to have moved on from the role; we were expected to care about Wonder Woman over a year before we got her origin story.

Not that I think DC are the only ones scheming away trying to work out how to make their own Logan. You can bet your arse that some misguided soul at Sony is trying to wrestle Spider-Man: Reign into a pitch document, an idea that might just have worked if Tobey Maguire was still in the role but there's not enough make-up on Earth to turn Tom Holland into Old Man Peter Parker so we'd end up with yet another live action Spider-Man.

So let's... not, okay? Let's allow a unique film based on unique circumstances no one could have planned to remain the singular little gem it is and move on to good ideas.

Please?

Let's talk about this new Spider-Man

(Spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, especially the bits about Spider-Man)

My thoughts on Civil War are complex and we'll get to them once they've percolated a little longer. The short, tentative, early version is that it's a good film. The good bits are amazing but the bad bits are a little too vital to the plot to entirely ignore. Overall I'd say its a better film (certainly a better Avengers film) than Age Of Ultron but not as good as Winter Soldier, there are just a few things I want to work out before I discuss the whole film at any length.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man, though? I know where I stand there. I like him, I'm looking forward to the new movie.

Okay, okay, I know the character is only in this film as an extended trailer to reassure the audience that this reboot will go better than the last one (and let's hope so, if we have to go through this again, Aunt May will end up in her teens) but that doesn't stop it from being very convincing.

So what's to like about this version? Well, for one thing I think Holland's version is the best yet at the half-sardonic, half-hysterical fight banter. For another, he has a couple of moments of utter panic in his first scene which sell how he hasn't been doing this long and doesn't have the coping mechanisms in place for when Peter and Spider-Man's worlds collide, which is a pretty big element of a lot of Spider-Man stories. Seriously, Tony Stark frantically signalling to Peter to be cool by blinking with both eyes would be the cutest thing in this film if not for the Vision trying to cook.

The costume looks better than the trailer led us to believe (and is there an element or two of Ben Reilly's suit there? Just me?) and there are plenty of cool “Spider-Man poses” to keep things visually interesting. The new ebbing also looks great, too. Most of all though, Holland splits the difference between the two previous versions. He's a believable teenager (like Garfield) and he isn't classically “Hollywood attractive” (like Maguire, sorry pardon).

Of course, holding down a couple of extended scenes and holding down an entire movie are two different things. On the evidence, Holland at least has the charisma to stand out in an ensemble piece. Rumour has it, based largely on the title Spider-Man: Homecoming, that Marvel and Sony are going for more of a Buffy-style high school dramedy, which I think Holland would be perfect for.

Time will tell, of course, and for the first time in years I find myself looking forward to a Spider-Man movie.