I have to confess that I wanted to write this story earlier, but I decided to wait in case some of you wanted to go see Avengers: Infinity War this weekend, so I don’t spoil it for everyone.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you should know that there are some important spoilers in this post as this is a film analysis post where we break down certain storytelling techniques used in Infinity War.
The Dramatic Power of Inevitability
The main plot focused around Thanos’s quest on collecting the six Infinity Stones and then snapping his fingers to destroy half the life in the universe.
Marvel made sure that this message “the end is inevitable” not only sticks with the viewers, but gains momentum as Thanos gets more successful in collecting the Infinity Stones one after the other.
There were also two side-plots where we see the very same inevitability technique used to create a deep emotional connection with the viewer.
The first one is with Gamora and her inevitable death. The build up in this case was masterful.
It starts with her telling The Guardians that she’s the only one that knows some secret that Thanos should never learn, doing so with a deep sadness of a woman who knows how her story ends.
Then she tells Peter Quill in confidence that the day may come where he must kill her. And that day is coming very soon.
After that came the powerful scene where Starlord struggles to kill Gamora as he promised her just so Thanos couldn't take her. And when finally he’s able to swallow his heart and pull the trigger, he fails anyways.
Then we all get surprised to see Thanos crying when he realizes that he needs to sacrifice his own daughter. It kills him to do so, but he must do it anyways.
Seeing the villain cry before end her life, makes you empathize with her even more.
The climax arrives when Gamora tries to kill herself using a childhood gift from her adoptive father, just so that the sacrifice isn’t consumed to stop Thanos from getting the soul stone.
But she doesn’t succeed and the inevitable sadly happens.
The inevitability is such a powerful tool and Marvel did an amazing job with the emotional side of the story line in such an action packed movie.
The other emotional subplot was about The Vision. His death seemed pretty damn inevitable from beginning to end.
Throughout the movie all his friends keep trying to save him, from Scotland to Wakanda. They all band together and assemble around the Vision forming one last line of defense.
Then in the end, it becomes clear that his death was always inevitable and just like Gamora it’s the people who loves them the most that have to kill them.
In this case, his partner and lover Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, providing us with another great emotional scene.
The build up to that scene was epic as hell, especially the evolution of Wanda, a woman in love willing to do everything to save the man she loves.
Her charisma and power kept shooting up like a meteor to such point she went from beast mode to God mode.
Just when the Black Order and the Outriders were about to storm in Wakanda, she jumps into the battlefield to wipes out a huge part of the invading army.
Leading to that funny line by Okoye: “Why was this woman upstairs all the time?”
Her epic part, is only second to Thor who in my opinion has the most amazing entrée en scène in the Battle of Wakanda.
There’s a another scene where Okoye and the Black Widow were teaming up against Proxima Midnight who was still holding her own and looking extremely powerful in the process.
But she crosses Wanda and hits her from behind. Wanda, who was in a mission to save the man she loves was the last person to be messed with and so she end Proxima Midnight in two seconds.
Proxima Midnight is the most skilled fighter of the Black Order by the way.
No Time to Say Goodbye
There was no stopping of the Scarlet Witch, but then again there’s the dramatic whims of fate.
In the most emotional moment of the movie, Wanda learns that she’s the one who has the heavy burden to kill her own lover The Vision, the man she was trying to save all this time.
Because she’s the only one powerful enough to do so.
And finally she does it, she kills her man, breaks her own heart and crumbles to the ground.
Thanos comes and empathises with her. He command sher heroism and tells her that he understands her pain. “Today, I’ve lost more than you know”.
Then in a cruel twist, he uses the Time Stone, turns back time and revives the Vision, only to kill him instantly by removing the Mind Stone from his forehead.
“Dread it, run from it, destiny still arrives.” ― Thanos
When used correctly, the inevitability is such a compelling way to tell a story and Infinity War was a great example of that.
But the only powerful storytelling technique that Marvel used that is more important than inevitability is the misdirection.
Just like a magic trick, you make people believe that the story is heading one way, you pull the rug leaving the audience in awe.
And that’s exactly what took place in Infinity War, while everyone was looking somewhere else and hooked in such an emotional journey, the story was going in a different direction all together.
Or should I say “the endgame” was going in a different direction all together.
Remember what Dr Strange said to Tony Stark before turning to dust? “That was the only way”.
The brilliance in execution is that from all the famous characters in Infinity War, they used the magician supreme to pull the most fantastic trick of all.
And just like magic, if you blinked, you’ve missed it.
