Avengers: Infinity War aired a spot during the Super Bowl which is mostly rehashed from the trailer we saw late last year. But there were a few seconds of new footage, so let’s talk about that. The money shot is Captain America standing next to T’Challa and arming his new, Wakanda-designed “shield”. It kinda-sorta looks like the arm shooters Princess Shuri sports in Black Panther, which I assume means Steve Rogers has been adopted into the royal family of Wakanda. So, basically, Tony Stark was like, “You’re not welcome in my clubhouse anymore,” and Cap was all, “I live in Wakanda now.” There is no comeback.
Another little bit of new footage is Iron Man blowing through some magic sh*t Doctor Strange is doing, which is RUDE. These two have a fun frenemy vibe in the comics, and it seems that is coming over to the movies, which is great. But this moment also a perfect distillation of a decade of character-building. That one shot tells you everything you need to know about Tony Stark—he simply cannot let anyone else solve a problem. The timeline in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is all f*cked up—thanks, Spider-Man: Homecoming and your continuity blip—but by the time Infinity War is happening, several years have passed since Doctor Strange gained his powers. We’ve seen what he can do with time, and Thor: Ragnarok gave us a little taste of how facile he’s become slinging magic. So maybe, JUST MAYBE, Iron Man could sit down for one f*cking minute and let the ACTUAL MAGIC PERSON solve a problem with ACTUAL MAGIC.
My predictions for Infinity War stand as follows:
It will have a lot of great character beats and group interactions but cannot help but feel a little bloated. (Recently Duana caught up with Captain America: Civil War and she mini-ranted that it’s all sub-plots and no character development. I don’t agree, but if that’s a problem for you in Civil War, I don’t see it getting better in Infinity War.)
After the high of Black Panther, Infinity War will feel like a bit of a letdown.
There will be some combination of time travel and Tony’s memory-recreating BARF tech from Civil War taking us back to the events of the first Avengers.
Tony Stark will continue to completely disregard the expertise of others, thus creating more problems that other people have to solve because despite at least a decade passing in the MCU, this is the lesson he refuses to learn—OTHER PEOPLE ARE SMART, TOO. God, sit DOWN, Tony.
