themarysue.com

Good Characters Don’t Need to Stay Dead to Make an Impact

The idea that Steve Trevor should have to stay statically dead in a film where anything is possible in order to elevate his actions and what they did to Wonder Woman is mind-boggling.

[veliseraptor]

As the Russo brothers and Marvel Studios co-president Kevin Feige gleefully tease that some of the characters lost in Infinity War will really stay dead, they’re missing the point of why we love these films. We don’t need characters that we adore to remain dead for their lives to matter, but we’d like it if their deaths meant something when they happen instead of merely serving as a momentary plot beat.

It’s this kind of cheapened take on death-as-heroic-motivation that makes the Russos open Avengers: Infinity War with the horrific genocide of the Asgardians and the brutal deaths of Loki and Heimdall, just so that Thor is feeling sad and mad enough to go on a reckless quest. Do they know Thor at all? He would have done that anyway.

[…] Good characters in fantastical films don’t need to stay dead, but they do need good plotlines. The problem here doesn’t hinge on whether these characters should come back, but whether they should have died so wastefully in the first place. I don’t go into Avengers for gritty genocidal realism. I want to see them do the impossible.