Infinity war pt1

analysis
#61

@adanawtn is right — Story Judgment is the Author’s assessment of whether or not the efforts to resolve the inequity were a “Good” or “Bad” thing. Frequently this is seen as a release of the Main Character’s personal angst.

That said, there’s no real indication of his personal issues. We’re watching his struggle from a distance. His tears on the cliff are something we hear about and need to have explained to us by another character. This is a weird experience if you’re trying to make a certain character the Main Character in the Dramatica sense of the word.

And it’s even stranger that they were purposefully trying to make him the Main Character, albeit from the broken subjectified false notion of the Hero’s Journey—yet still frequently positioning him as coming in “last” to a scene.

I think this is an awesome case of what happens when you write from the Hero’s Journey, but don’t account for Main Character and Influence Character perspectives.

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#62

In my storyform, its a Success/Good story. :smile:

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#63

I guess the film does kind of feel off balance. As it stands, it seems like a single bloated storyform that would have benefited from two complete storyforms that collided in the beginning and end of the movie. Two journeys that started and ended in the same places.

I think this is a case of failing with style. Perhaps this is an example of something Dramatica can do and the other theories just don’t have the complexity to handle.

As much as I loved it when the GOTG crew came and stole the show every time poked their noses in a scene… I think that Marvel finally DCed something. Well, maybe not that bad. But they missed a chance for something extraordinary.

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#64

I didn’t see that line as being for the audience. I think, as the audience, we knew why he shed tears on the cliff. Especially after his conversations with Gamora before they got there. It felt like that line was specifically for Gamora.

Then again, there were times when Thanos did things that we didn’t know about until it was revealed (like using the Reality stone at Knowhere). That’s one of those things that knocks him out of the Main Character slot, doesn’t it? If we’re not seeing from his perspective the whole time that he’s in the story?

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#65

I don’t think there was a Main Character. They tried to make Thanos fill this role, they just didn’t commit to it.

You’re right @adanawtn, there’s just too much that we didn’t get to know concerning Thanos. They kind of wanted to have their cake and eat it too in regards to his MCship.

They needed Thanos and Thor to be two MCs in two storyforms, but they didn’t know how to do it.

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#66

I agree about the bloatedness. They shoe-horned a lot into the movie in order to set up future events. The whole subplot with Thor was probably my favorite part, but going to Nidavellir was kind of pointless if it weren’t for the easter egg and finally giving Groot his moment.

Also, even though I love Wakanda, going there proved pointless and only served to give a different backdrop for the final battle. Then again, you could argue that it was another option that they were trying… Which brings up another thought.

In nearly every Marvel movie, Captain America is the moral compass, the Guardian of the story, if he’s not the Protagonist, and Tony Stark has been the Main Character in almost every Marvel movie he’s been in. He’s the one that has the most growing to do in the story.

In this movie, we first see Tony when he’s talking to Pepper about his dream about her being pregnant.
Then he has to cancel their date because he got on the Q ship.
Then he has his moments with Spiderman, his surrogate son.
In the end, he loses that son, and is devastated.

So maybe Stark is the Main Character. Again.

And now that you mention it, Thor as the second main character makes sense. He’s also dealing with his own personal issues – all of his family and half his people are dead. He wanted vengeance. He explained his feelings himself, and didn’t do anything that we didn’t see (as far as I remember).

And his whole story line was mostly independent from the Infinity Stones. Sure, he talked about it and knew that Thanos would be way too powerful with all six of them. But Thor was focused on getting a new hammer – the symbol of his sense of self as a warrior god – so that he could kill Thanos for what he did to Thor’s people.

The thing that’s bugging me now is that, if going to Wakanda was another option for the crew to take in keeping the Mind Stone from Thanos, then does that make the actual Story Goal “Keeping the Mind Stone Away from Thanos”?

It wasn’t so much that the heroes on Earth were worried about the other stones. And Stark and Strange et all on Titan were more focused on getting the Infinity Gauntlet away from Thanos.

So maybe I was wrong about the OS Concern being Doing. It works for me if Thanos is the Main Character, but if Stark and/or Thor are the Main Characters (and even Vision to a degree, with his personal issues of wanting to have a relationship with Wanda), then the OS Goal would be Obtaining.

I definitely agree, though. The story would have worked a lot better with multiple storyforms. I’m just not sure if any of them would be complete. And I’m having a hard time remembering everyone who was involved, and separating what was actually in this story with what I know from previous or about future stories in the MCU.

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#67

There’s also the issue of the fact that we’re with everyone pretty much all the time, so there’s nothing especially subjective or personal that comes to mind because you’re just going from place to place every few seconds.

I mentioned somewhere above that after seeing it for a second time, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a dysfunctional story. I was hoping that wasn’t the case (not sure if Jim is saying that it is dysfunctional or just that they botched their intended Main Character), but it felt like so much was going on that none of it was really holding together, no matter how hard I tried to make it fit. And then Adana’s argument (and Khodu’s, and a few others actually) made me even more confused, because I could see really clear pieces in there, but nothing in ‘entirety’.

I don’t know. I’m with you guys. The more I think about it, the more it just feels like a lot of different incomplete storyforms mashed together. Probably a result of paying off stories from the past 10 years – lots of different concerns, etc. But it doesn’t really lead to anything.

Also, interestingly: in speaking with friends, there’s a big disconnect between people that loved it (most of whom have seen all of the MCU movies or love the comics) and those that found it incoherent (those that are either new to it or just not invested in the movies), which would suggest that it’s probably not going to work as a stand-alone storyform in the way Civil War or Black Panther did.

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#68

I may be misremembering, but I remember only one ship leaving Asgard at the end of Ragnarok. The people on that ship were decimated by Thanos. So, there are probably far fewer than half the Asgardian population still alive.

#69

They went out of their way to make us sympathetic to Thanos. Perhaps this means that he is the Protagonist?

Could it be that Thanos is the Protagonist and we are given FOUR MCs? I kind of agree that we are often on the outside looking in.

And the Antagonist is Earth’s heroes as a whole?

On a side note, Captain America almost served zero purpose in this movie.

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#70

Thor tells Rocket when they’re on the way to Nidavellir that half his people are dead. I agree, it looked like everyone was dead. But Thor said half, and Thanos’ M.O. is to kill half the population.

I agree. They tried to make Thanos a sympathetic character, but we were supposed to be rooting for the Good Guys. So it’s almost like they tried to make Thanos the Anti-Protagonist/Main-ish Character. The more I think about it, the weirder it gets.

Though I still say that Doing and Progress were concerns with Thanos. But maybe that’s only the part with Thanos and Gamora/GotG. They needed to do things, and Thanos’ issues with Gamora and Nebula were about progress and the way things changed between them. I’m just not sure that Thanos is the Main Character in that regard anymore.

This is true. I literally only remember him being on screen seven times in the whole movie.

  1. He caught a spear.
  2. He sassed that Government guy.
  3. He said “We don’t trade lives.”
  4. He thought to bring Vision and Co. to Wakanda.
  5. He ran and punched.
  6. He tried to play Thumb War with Thanos at the end.
  7. He said, “Oh, God.”

That’s it. That’s all I remember about Captain America in that movie. :sweat_smile:

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#71

Actually, it kinda makes sense…if you think about it in terms of bringing that many of the MCU heroes together for an ensemble vehicle…you can’t really make any of them the hero or it would be and Thor movie or a Cap movie or an Iron Man movie. But by making Thanos the MC they could use any of the heroes anyway they wanted.

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#72

I forget who posted this answer in the past for another movie, but I feel it rings true:

All.
Signs.
Point.
To.
Tale.

Sure, it has sprinkles of possible subjective perspectives, but ultimately I think they amount to backstory in a tale.

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#73

I agree. I’m not an analysis guy, but the story feels off. There were two ways that they could make this work:

  • Make Thanos the MC.

  • Multiple Storyforms

And they kind of Frankensteined both methods together.

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#74

This. 100%.

Yes, yes, yes.

This is the Passion of the Christ phenomenon. Christians love that film. Non-Christians are like WTF Why are they being so mean to that guy? Superfans make all kinds of connections and fill in all the blanks.

A fully committed MC Villain Thanos (in the Dramatica sense) would have been insanely awesome–but they had so much to serve. I was thoroughly entertained from beginning to end, but agree that it was a masterful Tale, not a complete story.

That’s why I was asking what the argument was? Pretty much every other paradigm or understanding of story says “This is what story is, find our magical beats.” Dramatica differs in that it says, “Well, if the story in question is trying to make an argument, here are the essential pieces.”

Thor: Ragnarok was super clear about the argument it was making. I’m pretty sure Black Panther is the same (finally streaming today!). After awhile, you can begin to pick up the difference between a story making an argument and a story telling you a bunch of stuff. IW was more of the latter.

Oh, and I actually thought they were going to pull another Iron Man as MC (which I would have loved for personal reasons, deCastell!) with the Pepper Potts thing at the beginning, but then that just completely dropped off.

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#75

@jhull If you could fix this, what kind of personal baggage do you give Thanos based on what we experienced from this Tale?

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#76

Could the MC be a trade off Player? I haven’t seen the film yet.

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#77

FWIW, here’s my take.

—

###OVERALL STORY
This is a story about heroes trying to stop a bad guy from destroying the universe. Specifically, they’re trying to make sure he doesn’t get all six Infinity Stones while the bad guy is intent on collecting them.

###WHY THANOS ISN’T THE PROTAGONIST
This movie is meant to be a tragedy. You can feel that and see that in the audience response to the movie. The bad guy wins. The heroes lose. Period. And their losing has catastrophic consequences.

Thanos is clearly the antagonist. Ask anyone and they’ll say he’s the bad guy. Just because in Dramatica we can flip-flop and make the antagonist the protagonist it’s a mistake to do so here. It would change the message of the movie and the feeling the audience leaves with.

If Thanos were the protagonist the outcome is a success—he gets the stones and kills half the universe. His smile at the end indicates he’s resolved his personal issues. He’s accomplished his goal (MC good judgment, OS success).

I ask you this: Did the movie have a happy ending? Did this feel like a triumph?

###HAND-OFFS
In Dramatica you can hand off narrative functions. You can change the antagonist mid-movie (e.g., Frozen, Elsa>Prince Hans; Toy Story, Buzz>Sid>Physical obstacles)[1]. You can change impact characters (Fountainhead, Dominique>Gail Wynand)[2].

So as long as the function and message stay consistent, you can also hand off the functions of Protagonist and Main Character during a story. I believe that’s what happens here.

I think the easiest way to think of the protagonist here is to think of it as a collective of the heroes. They all pursue the same story goal. Because of the scope of this story, it requires us to experience it through the eyes of many characters. But, in the OS, no matter who the Protag is, they’re pursuing the SAME goal and that’s what’s key.

###DIZZYING MC/IC HANDOFFS
Usually, we look out of the eyes of one Main Character throughout an entire story. This allows us to experience their personal issues and to see how those issues are influenced by another point of view, the influence character.

The relationship story is the emotional heart. We can use our feelings to guide us. Look to the parts of the movie that elicited the most emotion, specifically in regard to the relationships between two people and not the overall story. I discern a number of meaningful pairs:

  • Scarlett Witch/Vision-romantic
  • Tony Stark/Spiderman-ward/father figure
  • Thanos/Gamora-father/daughter
  • Tony/Penny-romantic
  • Star Lord/Gamora-romantic

It’s pretty clear in each of these who the Changed and Steadfast characters are.

Also, it’s clear that the emotional result of every single one of these relationships is BAD (story judgment). Add up all this emotional badness and you can see why the film carries such tear-jerking negative weight.

###THE ARGUMENT/MESSAGE
I think the story has a clear argument :

‘No matter what you do, you still fail.’

I might say it more verbosely as follows:

‘No matter how strong you are, no matter how hard you try, no matter what resources you have, you can still fail… catastrophically.’

Or perhaps Thanos himself said it best at the very start of the movie:

‘In time, you will know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you’re right. Yet to fail all the same. Dread it. Run from it. Destiny still arrives.’

This feels depressing and echoes the movie’s emotional tone. Because of this argument, I think Infinity War meets Dramatica’s definition of a Grand Argument Story. The events of the movie consistently support a clear argument, repeating the message over and over in the resolution of almost every conflict: ‘Try and fail, try and fail, try and fail’. A theme emerges. It’s just one that most people don’t expect and perhaps don’t want to see in their Superhero movies.

–

I don’t envy the screenwriters tasked with writing this script. I can only imagine the decisions they needed to make and the difficulties in weaving together so many important characters. That said, I think they did a masterful job and I can see myself watching this movie time and again.

[1] http://digesting-dramatica.blogspot.be/2018/03/antagonist-handoff.html?m=1
[2] http://digesting-dramatica.blogspot.be/2010/01/fountainhead-analysis.html?m=1 (Sorry for the horrible formatting—hope to fix soon)

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#78

I think its a mistake to confuse “protagonist” as most people use the term and as Dramatica uses the term. They mean completely different things. It is best to treat Dramatica as a completely foreign language.
Whether Thanos is the Dramatica protagonist comes down to whether he represents consideration, pursuit, certainty, proaction, proven, effect, knowledge, and actuality.
And, I know I’m just the noob and have a lot to learn here, but, in my opinion, he absolutely does!
Pursuit of the stones (rather than acting purely defensively, reactively)
Certainty in the morality of his objective (no waffling about saving people, such as Vision, first)
Proaction to wipe out half the population before over-population destroys everything
The Effect of wiping out half the population
The Knowledge of what the stones can do together and where the stones are
etc.

And I can’t count how many people have confessed that they were secretly routing for Thanos during the movie.
I think the goal here (in a non-Dramatica sense) might have been to see just how bad a villain could be portrayed and, yet, have the audience support them. The movie is incredibly subversive that way.

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#79

You’re right. I did conflate the everyday meaning of ‘antagonist’ with that of Dramatica’s. This happened whenever I brought in the morality aspect of ‘the bad guy’ and especially when I said ‘if you ask anyone they will say…’.

Beyond that, though, I’m not confusing the everyday terms with the Dramatica terms in my post. Every other use of ‘protagonist’ or ‘antagonist’ refers to their dramatic functions and elements per Dramatica theory.

The protagonist pursues the OS goal and gets others to consider its importance.

The antagonist avoids the OS goal being achieved and gets others to reconsider its importance.

Applying this to Infinity War:

The Avengers and allies pursue the goal of stopping Thanos from collecting the Infinity Stones. They get people to consider how important it is to stop him.

Thanos works to avoid (prevent) the goal of the Avengers and allies stopping him from collecting the Stones. He gets people to reconsider whether they can or should stop him.

These conflicting purposes provide the dramatic tension for the Overall Story.

In regard to[quote=“YellowSuspenders, post:78, topic:1730”]
pursuit, certainty, proaction, proven, effect, knowledge, and actuality.
[/quote]

You can easily explain almost any villain using these ‘protagonist’ words. Try it with a Bond villain. They’re all pursuing a clear agenda, certain in their morality, proactive in working to achieve their goals, seeking a certain effect, and confident in their knowledge of what they can/will do with their ultimate weapon or whatever. So, used this way, because these terms can be used to explain so broadly, they end up explaining nothing.

Remember the Protagonist is for the Overall Story goal. The Antagonist is against it. So really, it depends on what you think the story is about and who’s viewpoint you think the writers wanted us to take.

If you had to pick one, do you think the story is more about:

A team of heroes trying to stop a villain from doing something bad?

Or

An antihero trying to get past a bunch of obstacles to do something morally right?

If the former, the Overall Story Outcome is Failure, in Dramatica terms.

If the latter, the Overall Story Outcome is Success, in Dramatica terms.

Further, if the Avengers failed to stop Thanos, do you think the individual Avengers characters resolve their personal issues? If not, you’ve got a Dramatica Tragedy.

If you feel Thanos is the Protagonist then he Succeeds in achieving the goal. And his smile at the end shows he’s content with this outcome—his angst is resolved. This gives you a Dramatica Triumph.

How do you think the writers wanted you to feel about the story’s ending? Elated or despondent? Dramatica, when used for analysis, is attempting to determine author’s intent. But regardless of author’s intent, how did you actually feel at the end of the movie?

I think, as others have mentioned, we do at times sympathize with and understand Thanos. I understand those who root for him. I love this tragic ending because it’s uncommon and compelling.

Making an effective villain, one not shallow, requires giving the audience some insight into the mind of the Antagonist (a literal serial killer in this case) and even understanding their skewed perspective and how their abhorrent behaviors logically follow from this perspective. This doesn’t make these antagonists into protagonists. It makes them deep, realistic and effective antagonists.

I hope this helps clarify.

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#80

The definition of antagonist, in Dramatica, is Reconsider, Avoidance, Potentiality, Reaction, Unproven, Cause, Thought, Perception.

The Avengers don’t represent pursue as well as Thanos does. Thanos doesn’t let anything stop him. The Avengers are waffling constantly. If the Avengers were representing pursuit as well as Thanos does, they would have killed Vision in Act I. Star Lord would have killed Gamora before Thanos got her. They are reconsidering. They are avoiding. They are reacting.

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