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Let’s be the only people online to break down the ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ trailer

November 29, 2017
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Rejoice with me, Internet, for this day we can break from following our human president’s brave response to North Korea’s missile test the firing of a morning television host because the “AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR” TRAILER DROPPED THIS MORNING, during an episode of “Good Morning America” for your mom and on the Internet for everybody else.

The release of any Marvel trailer causes fans to clutch their own infinity stones in delight and hundreds of studio executives in California to order suits made of actual elf-made gold, but this movie’s an especially big deal, even in a movie industry that’s defined by Especially Big Deals. (You will remember that it’s been all of 20 minutes since the last Superhero Mash-Up Movie, which we’re all apparently done with). So let’s go through the “Avengers” trailer, piece by piece, and see if we can ruin some surprises before its May 2018 release.

Things We Learned From the “Avengers: Infinity War” Trailer:

Every actor who was ever born is in this: Directors Joe and Anthony Russo told Vanity Fair that they set out specifically to include every character from the MCU, so “Infinity War” will be stuffed like a turducken with Thor and Iron Man and Hulk and Funny Teenage Spider-Man and Doctor Cumberbatch and the talking Guardians of the Galaxy tree and Black Panther and a bunch of actual black panthers. At the risk of writing the kind of hyperbole by which I’ve been accused of every single person in the universe, it’s an insane amount of star power/characters to jam into a movie. It’s like “The Last Waltz” of superhero movies. (Google it, millennials.)

Which might be terrible! Scientists and nerds generally agree that the worst part of superhero movies is anything Zack Snyder shoots in the dark exposition, and fitting all these characters into one two-hour four-hour movie is going to be a hell of a trick. It will help to have seen all of the previous Marvel movies, which you can accomplish before May if you start today.

This is the end of the MCU as we know it: In that Vanity Fair article, Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige says “Infinity War” and “Avengers 4,” due in May 2019, represents the end of the storyline that’s developed over nearly two dozen Marvel movies. The series has an actual ending! Because it makes sense to wrap up a narrative that’s unfolded over a decade, and also because everyone’s contracts are up. So these two films may well represent the last dance for Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow and Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, which will be exceedingly disappointing news to my wife.

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Thanos is here. The evil purple Grimace from 39 post-credit scenes finally appears, talks, sounds like Josh Brolin and plucks an infinity stone from Vision’s head, which frankly has to be kind of a relief, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a pebble stuck in your forehead but that shit hurts.

Iron Man loses somebody important. At least that’s the impression from the first shot, where he’s clutching someone’s awfully lifeless-looking hand. Either that or he’s just glove shopping.

Vision is a person? The flying godlike stone-brained semi-cyborg started life as Tony Stark A.I., got a body through some weird Serpentor process in “Age of Ultron” and now appears to look like Paul Bettany, albeit Paul Bettany with a glowing orb in his head. Someone better explain that.

Spidey’s sense tingles: Spider-Man’s arm gets all tingly on a school bus, probably when Thanos shows up and starts grumbling evil dialogue. Also I’m pulling for Michael Keaton to appear in this somewhere, if only waving from prison.

Loki’s got his blue cube thing from the first “Avengers”: I can’t for the life of me remember what it does, but it looks important. Just happy to have Tom Hiddleston involved, although if we’re taking bets, I’ll lay $20 Loki doesn’t make it out of “Avengers 4.”

The official Guardians crossover has happened. In the trailer’s final shot, One-Eyed Thor meets the Guardians, in a 4-second shot that includes more unforced organic humor than all 600 minutes of Batman vs. Superman and Justice League combined.

To recap: This is the first *half:* So we’re going to do this trailer dance all again in 12 months.

Nobody says “Assemble.” Weird.