Infinity War was not Greatly Setup; Doomsday has buildup (Revisionist History Discussion)
I keep seeing people claim that the Infinity Saga was a perfectly built long term plan and that Marvel today has lost its ability to set up major storylines. The more I revisit the early films the more this feels like revisionist history shaping the narrative. A lot of what people praise as careful planning looks more like ideas that were later fitted together once the scope of the MCU became clear.
Thanos is the best example. He appears for a few seconds in the Avengers end credit scene, then he does not show up again in a meaningful way until Guardians with a “even bigger baddy” cameo and later Infinity War. That is not deep setup across multiple films. It is one tease and then a long gap. Yet today people seem frustrated if a post credit scene does not pay off almost immediately.
Loki’s scepter is another thing for me. The stone changes color across films until Marvel eventually decides it is the Mind Stone. There is never a clear explanation for why Thanos would give an Infinity Stone away to Loki. It reads like a retroactive choice that happened once the writers committed to the later Infinity Saga direction.
This is why I think people are being inconsistent when they fear that something like Doom or Secret Wars lacks setup. What we have right now is already more substantial than what Thanos had in his early years. There is a post credit scene with Doom interested in Franklin (a cosmic being, who they spent the whole movie hinting at his unmatched potential) that ties directly into a plot element rather than a silent smile from space. That seems like more groundwork than the Infinity Saga actually had at the same point in time. Calling it no buildup feels like revisionist history.
I am curious what others think. Do you feel like the Infinity Saga was genuinely planned or did it grow and shift as the studio adapted. Am I missing examples either support or challenge the idea that Doom or Secret Wars has comparable build up to IW or EG.
Thanos is the best example. He appears for a few seconds in the Avengers end credit scene, then he does not show up again in a meaningful way until Guardians with a “even bigger baddy” cameo and later Infinity War. That is not deep setup across multiple films. It is one tease and then a long gap. Yet today people seem frustrated if a post credit scene does not pay off almost immediately.
Loki’s scepter is another thing for me. The stone changes color across films until Marvel eventually decides it is the Mind Stone. There is never a clear explanation for why Thanos would give an Infinity Stone away to Loki. It reads like a retroactive choice that happened once the writers committed to the later Infinity Saga direction.
This is why I think people are being inconsistent when they fear that something like Doom or Secret Wars lacks setup. What we have right now is already more substantial than what Thanos had in his early years. There is a post credit scene with Doom interested in Franklin (a cosmic being, who they spent the whole movie hinting at his unmatched potential) that ties directly into a plot element rather than a silent smile from space. That seems like more groundwork than the Infinity Saga actually had at the same point in time. Calling it no buildup feels like revisionist history.
I am curious what others think. Do you feel like the Infinity Saga was genuinely planned or did it grow and shift as the studio adapted. Am I missing examples either support or challenge the idea that Doom or Secret Wars has comparable build up to IW or EG.
Commentaires
Slowly adding in more and more characters who cameoed in other pics.
It was subtle. That’s what made it great.
They made you bond with characters over years and years, literally growing up with some of them.
Will never happen again
Marvel had the same Midus touch Netflix had many many years ago.
If they made a movie, you KNEW it was going to be a banger and keep the storyline going.
Now it’s not like that (for either company, Netflix fell off a lot longer ago)
It was all retroactive continuity. The scepter wasn’t an infinity stone at first, the tesseract wasn’t a stone, the Thor 2 ether wasn’t a stone. They decided on that later.
The Thanos credit scenes also make no sense with what they ultimately decided on. First one a clear reference to Death. Second one he says “do it myself” - he did nothing for *3 years*. Guardians 1 made Thanos look weak.
They eventually had a rough idea for infinity stones and only actually figured out the Thanos character when they were writing Infinity War.
You don’t need it to be spelt out that something is an infinity stone 20 movies beforehand lol
Please don’t have dishonest bad faith conversations dude. Sure this is entertainment fluff here but if you do this in real life no one will want to engage with you.
Simply saying “oh they made it make sense after the first 3 movies, oh they went back in this movie and clarified that movie” isn’t any argument at all. It shows growth, evolution of the idea. If anything, going back and making everything connect without completely derailing the entire saga is even more of a compliment to what was done here.
I don’t think much.
Maybe in hindsight they could have clearly shoved the stones down our throat, sure. But would that have been better? Nobody needs to be told everything super clearly every single time. Especially with a 10 year saga. They couldn’t simply shut themselves into a box by laying everything out in movie #1, nor would that have been enjoyable.
Unlike you, I can appreciate these films, and I do very much so, without being delusional and thinking everything is “perfect”.
I do however, believe that overall, through the twists and turns, it was pulled over rather flawlessly.
AND the sagas success backs that up, imo
Marvel took the general audience on a ride for 10+ years that paid off beautifully in a way no studio has done or will do ever again.
It is a chore to try to have a normal conversation with you.
However, when they did decide to introduce the infinity stones they were clearly building towards what infinity war became and they spent 5 years releasing movies that built up to it.
Until Doomsday comes out we can't know how the pieces built in the last few years will come together. Maybe everything will come together and we will realize there was a plan this entire time, or maybe that won't happen. But we don't know right now and speculation doesn't help.
Both of Thanos’ end credit scenes are ANTI setup in that they don’t fit with what they ultimately decided Infinity War was going to be. Death didn’t end up being related to Thanos in the MCU. “Do it myself” makes no sense because he purposely sat tight and didn’t make a move for THREE YEARS.
Guardians 1 sets up Thanos’ daughters, and that Thanos wants a stone, sure, fair enough but Thanos, as a character there, is embarrassing. He comes across as weak and whiny. Even Gunn publicly has discussed how it was weird that he had Ronan walk all over Thanos, when Thanos is supposed to be the big bad later.
There is a subset of Marvel fans who are completely delusional and make claims like “Thanos had good setup” when in reality he so obviously did not. Sane people who appreciate these are series of movies and not a single novel completed all at once can admit to that, delusional people try to argue otherwise.
Doom - we know he is interested in Franklin and that's it - but unlike the infinity stones whom were shows in different movies how powerful they are, for Nathaniel we basically have that he has the power cosmic and resurrected Sue... so how that fit into the multiverse, timelines, Doom himself and why he is interested in it?
Infinity Saga wasn't perfectly built, given Marvel themselves didn't know if the whole thing will work anyway, but retroactively retooled and worked surprisingly well. Infinity Stones name was dropped in 2013, 1 year after Thanos appeared so it was clear Marvel tried to go that route.
Cap 1 / A1 - deal with the Tesseract
Thor 2 - The Aether
Guardians - The Power Stones
Age of Ultron - The Mind Stone
Doctor Strange - The Time Stone
Endgame build was both upon IW and the aftermath + what previous movies have done (The Time Heist).
Maybe they will salvage ideas for Kang and imprint them for Doom, but for now the buuld up isn't looking as good as it was for IW
The post credits scene was shot during production of Guradians 1, but it was still a part of Thor 2, not something they added in long after the fact.
He was linked to Loki. He had his post credits. He was strongly linked to in GotG (Ronan, Gamora, Drax, power stone).
The Asgardians left their stones with the collector.
Maybe they didn't know the ether was going to be a stone but they pivoted quite well with all the artifacts.
They even tied in Tony's fears from Ultron to thanos.
Everything was very elegant, many breadcrumbs were layed out, they definitely layered thanos into the fabric of the universe.
Doom? There's a single post credit. It makes sense, because it's the first time we come across this universe, but for that same reason you can't say they've been laying the groundwork for doom for ages/over more than 1 title.
All along the first 3 phases there was this anticipation that we'd be seeing a major conflict with Thanos. That drove storylines, drove interest, drove demand.
They started that again with Kang but majors got fired and they scrapped the whole thing. So far there hasn't been a drive to the multiverse. It's just there. Not only is it just there, it's not a problem because Loki is overseeing it now that Kang is dead.
I have no ideas what's coming next or a reason to go back to the next thing because things are either left wide open and I don't believe they'll do anything with it (clea in MoM, GotG appearing in Thor 4 and dispatched without any relevance to the plot, secret invasion was ignored by everything, bread crumbs for young Avengers but there's nothing in the pipeline, Eternals end credits hinted at Blade but that's never happening, Chang Chi wasn't mentioned in Marvel's or anything else).
There's no sense of direction of where I can realistically expect to see my favorite characters again because there's either no cliff hanger, no lead, it seems MCU has abandoned this character entirely, or I just don't trust them to follow up on the ones they offered because there's no project in the pipeline.
People went to see infinity war because of the build up to Thanos.
We know what happened ofc but it seems like Marvel switched to Doom at the last second without really a clear plan.